Karri

I use oven cleaner to wash the oven in the kitchen every night, I use all the equipment when I use it. It comes down to your contract, is it stipulated? Are you part of regular cleaning activities, or however it is worded? It is a cleaning chemical, and as long as you follow the safety guidelines, you will be safe, as long as you don't, you know, hold the bottle the wrong way around and squirt it in your mouth by accident. And this I have noticed is two-way, it is either scullers or the cooks who clean the ovens. Depending on the restaurant.

I am currently working at this hotel on the beautiful, sunny island of Gran Canaria I know for a fact we take students. Moneywise the hotel will pay for a part of your flight, offers a room to stay in in the hotel and three meals a day. It's a five star hotel, if you decide to send an application, put in that you are interested in working in La Trattoria and the Orangerie. The kitchen is very experimental and the menu is actually changing now. We run a 4-piece set menu on a two week rotation. The culinary style is Italian in La Trattoria and French in the Orangerie. Welcome!

Hello, I'm currently living in Spain, so I'm going to put in my two cents in what I've had this week at a tapasteria: Tortilla española, very easy, very labor friendly and approachable. Rabbit kidneys, and liver. Pan tumaca, it is a type of uncooked tomato sauce spread on bread and topped with jamon. Tartar is good here, they use Veterano, egg yolks and anchovies for flavor, for me personally, a revelation. Marinated cheese, cut into cubes, stored in olive oil with different aromatics. Shallots poached in vinagre of Jerez. Can you get your hands on fish heads? There is a traditional dish called cocotxa pil pil that is amazing. Do you own an isi whip? You can make different types of cheese foams by melting in reduced cream, charge, pipe on piece of... baked puff pastry and garnish with some chives or what-have-you.

Hey skyhskyh, First off: oven cleaner be it black, orange or green, the color or what it is made of is irrelevant; the fact is it is a heavy duty cleaning chemical. I have worked with many different kinds, currently I'm cleaning with ovencleaner from a company called Johnson Diversey. I have worked in Africa and Europe, and all the places I have ever worked, cleaner manufacturing companies are by law required to provide their clients with 'Material Safety Data Sheets' or MSDSs. This is a chart that shows you all of the active components, the steps to be made for a safe application, the no-nos, etc. Now I would advise against contacting your local authorities about possible unsafe working conditions, even though it might be the right thing to do, from experience I can tell you, you will not end out as 'the good guy'. I know a lady who worked as a sculler for 30 odd years in Africa, and she was unaware, or she didn't care about how strong oven cleaner is, and she used it without the mask, without gloves, without eye protection, she would just splash it in the oven, on the hot stove, etc. She was about 60 when I met her, and she was black all over else but her arms had started to fade and she was told by the doctor that she had permanently scarred her lungs with the chemicals she worked with. I learned then to use a mask and wear gloves, and not those latex examination gloves, but real thick ones that go up to the elbows. The most dangerous thing about the oven cleaner are the fumes, when you splash it on a hot stove to get the dirt out, or spray it in a hot oven, it starts to vaporize, and inhaling this is extremely dangerous. If you get it on your arms, it will start tickling, and then it will start hurting, and after you wash it off you will notice a rash forming, but it will disappear in a day or two. Do you work in a hotel? It is common practice for the maintenance department to keep all MSDSs on record. And if your company does not have them, it is considered a severe health hazard for the employees. And usually a violation of work safety statutes. I would agree with mjx, that ovencleaner to clean plates seems a bit like overkill. And from ovencleaner you can always feel a residual 'slipperiness' on the surface, which you need to scrub off with clean water. Secondly, What type of dirt is accumulating on the plates? -If it is burning on from the plate warmer or if you keep your plates hot under the pass, I can tell you by experience that stuff will not come off. Thirdly, we used to clean tea pots by soaking them in nearly boiling water that had vinegar in it. Anyone who owns a ceramic tea pot knows the dark layer that starts forming inside, and can imagine what it will look like with 100 uses a day after a month. What we did was we put all the teapots in a tilting pan in the kitchen, we poured in a few bottles of vinegar, covered with water and brought up to slightly below boiling point. Kept there for 2 hours and after we took them out, the dirt came off with a paper towel, without damaging the ceramic one bit.

I think that there might be an evolutionary incentive involved as well. A candy bar that packs a 300kCal punch, something that small and that high in energy can be found nowhere in nature. On a personal note I took a job in a foreign country and I know no one here, before I used to eat chocolate and it was a snack while watching a movie or some such. Here a few months back I started buying more and more chocolate because when I ate it, it activated my pleasure centers. I believe the chocolate was replacing my brains need for stimulation. This is ofcourse all pseudo-scientific nonsense and I base it all entirely on absolutely nothing, except my own experiences. So I replaced this stimulation by jogging home every night and baking bread. I also went cold turkey after amoking for 14 years, so it might as well be that I was switching one addiction to another. This is the way to do it right.

Go high, 5* hotels, michelin star restaurants apply for staff meal cook or stock/sauce cook. If you want to be a shoe-in, low-ball salary request, for these positions you don't need a lot of experience, and once you're in you can start cross-training. Ask questions take copious notes and work 12 hour days.

If it is just an extra bone and more meat, whereas the thickness is the same. It makes no difference, bones conduct heat at the same speed in your case, no matter how many are side by side. But if other people like theirs more done, put this rack in the oven before the other.

Thank you very much for the translations! I'll try the potato because it's too hot here to grow rhubarb.

Pearl is easier, but you are correct, sponge it first. I don't know if you know this but you can actually melt pearl gelatine before adding it. You just add enough water to "bloom" it and then place it in a bowl over a double boiler. I like to do this when making a bucketload of chocolate mousse. Ah e or no e, we understand eachother

Hi all, I have a problem and I was hoping someone could help me. So, I've been attempting to make a sourdough starter. The recipe I got for it from a Spanish baker's -named Xavier Barriga -book, and it gives strict instructions to this: Step 1 cut up two apples and remove seeds, place in airtight container with 25g of honey and cover with mineral water. Store at 35 - 40 degrees celsius for 5 days. Step 2. Strain and mix in 100g of "harina integral", in english I believe it's unprocessed flour. Store this in airtight container at 35 - 40C for 48 hours. Step 3. Weigh 100g of this mix and mix in 300g of warm mineral water and 300g of "harina de fuerza" I think it's bread flour in English, 12g of protein/100g. Store again airtight but at 30C for 24 hours. Step 4. Weigh 150g of this and stir with 250g water and 250g of flour as before. 24 hours, 28 degrees Step 5. 150g mix 300g water, 300g flour, 6 hours 28 degrees and it should be ready. My problem is this. The starter is very wet. It's the consistency of very wet and sticky porridge. And when I try to make bread with it, the bread won't rise at all. It just turns sour. The starter itself just creates these tiny bubbles that have the same color as soap bubbles... Can someone please offer guidance or a better recipe? Thank you!

I'm sorry I don't understand, I meant you can dissolve the gelatine in to the chutney. Gelatine can be melted over and over again. Have you given a thought to jam sugar? If you make a thick enough chutney you could set it with just the pectin, or a combination of gelatin and pectin. Man, is gelatin spelled with an e at the end or not?

Yes mango is one of the fruit that will do that, circumvent by adding sugar or slight cooking, i. e. boiling the puree beforehand. But you are making a chutney so I gather everything is going to be cooked anyways. So if you want to try it, cook the chutney, dissolve the gelatin and take a small sample and refrigerate it. If it sets, you're good to go. If not add a little bit of sugar and dissolve some more gelatine. Step 3. Repeat

Maltodextrin, does it make it... better? The dried pudding with the coconut milk? I can walk to any dupermarket and buy these things. This game with food additives is interesting and I'm sure they taste good. But haute cuisine is by definition, at least in my mind the process of going an extra five miles to prepare something amazing, not taking shortcuts and just providing a wow-factor after another... But as I said this is my opinion and being a chef myself I just don't like the way they seem to be doing things. Have you ever tried maltodextrin?

Alex, I see what did there you.

A triturator, or pasapuré (pass puree) as it is known here in Spain is a metal "bowl" with a perforated bottom, in the bowl is a contraption with two blades that look like propellers that force the matter down and through the holes in the bottom. Effectively pureeing and straining at the same time. Very labor intensive as you work a handle in a circular motion over the triturator. A quick googling showed that you can buy changeable bottoms for finer straining. We use one in the kitchen for mash, tomato sauce and a few other things. If you want really fine results I would suggest buying a fine tamis and working your puree through this with a plastic scraper or your hand(in a latex glove, ofcourse).

Why don't you just fry them medium before and finish them with the sauce as needed?

As fortune would have it we just made about 10L of the stuff the other day for cheese plates. Exact same M.O. except that we boiled it on high for about a good half-hour. It is like a volcano ao be very careful. And it was also a bit liquid to our liking so we just left it in the fridge for a week. And today it was perfect. So I don't know why but the added time set it.

Fingers.

Aye, but that was off-topic. I've seen demi-glace made in an instant with aromat, soy sauce and bovril. I've seen a creme brulee from start to finish in one minute. It involved natural yoghurt, vanilla essence and eggs done in a micro. Quite impressive actually. To me the most disgraceful are the chefs who cook with powders of stock or sauce. The central kitchen that serves 600 meals per night are making roux from powder... Really, you don't have time to fry flour and butter? I'm working in a 5* hotel. Edit: le spell cheque

Correct! Regardless, I am still advocating that slap.

That chicken lamb thing is a nightmare. But also on a sidenote one becomes desensitized the longer you work and the more you see. Cockroaches in blanching water, etc.

Neither of which are BAY, as in bay leaves and zill as in chill with a z. My point exactly.

Consommé, beat a burger patty, fry it, put it in beef stock, boil. Meanwhile beat soft peak egg whites and pass the strained liquid through this. Tastes terrible, but hey... Consommé in 10 minutes.

Webster only differentiates between basil and baasil, as both being correct pronunciations. Might be a humor, humour situation. Main Entry: ba·sil Pronunciation: \ˈ ba-zəl, ˈ bā-, -səl\Function: noun Etymology: Middle French basile, from Late Latin basilicum, from Greek basilikon, from neuter of basilikos Date: 15th century 1 : any of several aromatic herbs (genus Ocimum) of the mint family; especially : SWEET BASIL 2 : the dried or fresh leaves of a basil used especially as a seasoning Edit: added what M&W had to say.

In italian a c followed by an e is the ch as in che guevara but a little bit sharper. Just as in Castillian a c followed by an e is a th as in cena or thena. But very soft.