Time For A Disclaimer . . .

For whatever reason, people I hardly know have begun showing interest in this blog.  Accordingly, I think it’s time for a disclaimer.  So here goes.  This blog is intended for my friends and family, and obviously some of the content has been slightly embellished for entertainment’s sake.  I’ve generally sought to shield my identity and the identities of those referenced herein through fake/abbreviated names, but I’m also aware that most anyone with average Internet research skills could probably find out who all of us are.  Thus, to the extent anyone gets their feelings hurt, I hope you’ll forgive me; it is honesty, and not political correctness, that drives me to re-tell my year in the culinary world.

To the rest of you . . . Happy Reading!

My Grand Final(e)

Last day of Cuisines Across Cultures.  And, for me, last day of culinary school.  Sniff sniff.

As I’d mentioned before, in order to graduate with a Certificate in Culinary Arts, one has to take 9 months of classes followed by a 3-month externship (you continue to pay tuition during the entire 12-month period).  Since I’ve decided that cheffing is not for me, it doesn’t quite make sense for me to spend 3 months externing in a kitchen, while also paying an extra nearly $10k in tuition.  So I decided to finish things up here, start applying for food-related legal/business jobs, and see where it takes me.

But first, I gotta finish Cuisines Across Cultures.  The final exam:  Pick a food culture out of Chef L’s hat (literally) and cook one entree and one appetizer from that culture, using whatever ingredients you can find in the walk-in.  (There’s never that much left in the walk-in during Finals, since the school isn’t ordering new stuff at the end of a class segment.)  I drew “Mexico,” and (perhaps stupidly, in retrospect), decide to attempt Rick Bayless’ famous Red Mole with Lacquered Chicken for my entree, and his Chipotle Cream Shrimp for my appetizer.  Both turned out fine, though I can promise you I will never make mole again.

In Spanish, “mole” means sauce.  In English, “mole” means “you better go do some serious shopping because you’re going to need 5 million ingredients which you’ve never used before, not least of which is Mexican chocolate.”  Rick Bayless’s red mole actually takes only 18 ingredients, which is on the short side, but I can promise you it was still a ridiculous pain in the ass to make.  Among the many steps included (and depicted here):  Charring the tomatillos until they’re completely black on the outside and soft and squishy on the inside, frying golden raisins in pork fat that you’ve first flavored with whole pasilla, ancho, and mulato chilies (I’d never seen raisins puff up like that; they looked like gumballs), and simmering your final product for some 3 hours to reduce it to about 1/10th the volume.  By the end of the whole process, in which I was running around like a madman because I was given only 2 hours to do a dish that supposedly takes 4, my station was a complete disaster — frying each of the chilies in pork fat creates quite a splatter right off the bat, and by the time you’re simmering the dark red sauce at relatively high heat and purposely letting it splash all over the place, the kitchen looks like a warzone.  Then again, this is exactly why I decided to attempt this dish at school; I know I’d never have the patience to cook it, much less clean it, in my own home.

In contrast, the chipotle cream shrimp was ridiculously easy.  Just simmer some garlic, oregano, and chipotles in adobo sauce (the canned kind) over low heat, toss in some shrimp to cook, and ta-da.  Guess which of these two dishes I’ll be making again.

After finals, the class actually gave me a pretty serious (and touching) send-off, which involved Under-achieving Asian smearing my face with chocolate cake.  You know, it’s interesting.  Chef L and I had chatted a few weeks ago, and he’d mentioned that he thought our class was a perfect case study of positive impact group dynamics.  In the past, he said, he’d taught several classes where there were a couple serious people who really cared to learn about cooking, but their personalities were such (or were not such) that any positive impact they might have had on the class was limited; to use his words, “the clowns took over, and brought everyone down.”  In contrast, he said our class went the opposite way, because the serious cooks in our class actually brought the rest of the class up.  I’d like to think that had a little something to do with me.  I think Under-achieving Asian (who, happily, finally lost his virginity two months ago) put it best when he paid me what will likely be one of my favorite compliments of all time: “You know, I think you’re really well-rounded.  That’s what they call it, right, well rounded?  Yeah, I think you’re really well-rounded, because you could totally be a huge bitch, but you’re actually a pretty good person.”

It’s been an experience.  I’ve learned quite a bit on the substantive cooking side, but I’ve learned way more on the emotional side — working side-by-side with a bunch of people who, in my lawyering life, I would probably never have interacted with, much less come to depend upon and develop some meaningful friendships with.

Thanks for sharing all of it with me…

Stars, Dogs, Plowhorses, and Puzzles

As I recently learned in class, those four words — stars, dogs, plowhorses, and puzzles — are the four most important words when it comes to running a restaurant.

We all know that alcoholic beverages are, in many cases, what keep a restaurant’s doors open.  The profit margins on alcoholic beverages typically far far outweigh most of the food items on a restaurant’s menu, and it’s thus no coincidence that restaurants love to request that their patrons “wait at the bar while we make sure your table is ready.”  Profitability margins in the restaurant industry, as I’ve learned, are an average of only 4-6% (including alcohol); thus, every single penny counts.  And here’s where the stars, dogs, plowhorses, and puzzles come in.

In restaurant lingo, “stars” are menu items that are high-margin, high-popularity.  Typical “stars” include, say, omelets, stewed mussels, pasta dishes, etc.  (My recent menu-costing project revealed that even a terrific spaghetti carbonara — made with guanciale, top-quality pasta, and good grana padano — still ran me only about $2.60 a portion, and could probably easily be sold for a  good $14 if not more.)  “Dogs” are the precise opposite of “stars,” as they are low-margin, low-popularity menu items.  These are the ones that cost a lot of money to make (relative to the amount you can charge), but are not even close to popular enough to offset the extra expense.

Most interesting to me are the “plowhorses,” which are menu items that are low-margin, but high-popularity.  As the name suggests, these are the items on the menu that bring the customers through the door, and you just pray that they’ll order more than just the plowhorse item itself.  A classic example is steak; the food cost is proportionately very high compared to the price you can get away with charging, but having it on the menu is valuable for other reasons because, e.g., it enhances the cache of the restaurant, draws in the 4-top family where Dad refuses to eat salmon, and prompts people like me to buy too many martinis.  I recently learned that Ryan Farr’s famed 4505 Meats specialty butcher now sells what’s supposed to be the city’s most amazing hot dog, with an unheard-of food cost percentage of a whopping 65%.

Because all good posts need yummy pictures, here’s a photo of the most recent plowhorse I encountered:  The fresh whole-strawberry mochi dessert from Eiji in the Castro.  As described, it’s an entire plump juicy strawberry, coated in a light but not insignificant layer of azuki bean paste, and then wrapped in a freshly made glutinous rice dough.  The restaurant only allows its patrons to order one of these per person, for $2, and presumably its food/labor cost percentage is quite high given the shelf life of its ingredients and the huge pain in the ass involved in making mochi by hand.  Granted, all of Eiji’s food is terrific, but it’s this dessert that largely makes us choose that establishment over any other Japanese restaurant.  There you go, plowhorse.

Last, you have the “puzzle,” which is high-margin, low-popularity (read: bleeds you money).  I suppose it gets its name from the fact that, ordinarily, you wouldn’t bother investing in a high-margin dish unless you’d anticipate people wanting to eat it.  But there are almost always those duds on a restaurant menu.  And what do you do?  Dress it up on your menu by making it sound delicious, bump it to either the first or last item in the category (studies show that patrons tend to order the first and last-listed entrees the most), and obviously take it off your menu as fast as possible.

Momofuku

Last weekend was A’s business school 5-year reunion in Philly.  As with any b-school reunion, there was fun stuff (galas, picnics, drinking under tents) and boring stuff (“Now, 5 years out, let’s talk about how to grow your leadership even further”).  So I skipped the boring stuff and hopped a train to New York, where I met up with a friend to eat at David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar on the lower east side.  Depicted here: the roasted pig tails with pickled daikon, the famous pork belly buns that started it all, and the classic ramen.  Most notable was, as expected, the pork belly buns; as you’ll see, there are not one but two super fatty slices of the glorious stuff tucked away in each bun, and when you picked it up, it literally dripped delicious fat onto your plate.  It’s one of those dishes where the first bite was genuinely life-altering, but then each subsequent bite starts making you feel ickier and ickier because it is just so terribly, horrifyingly rich.  Once I finished, I had to sit there for 30 seconds to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack.

“America’s Got Culture Too”

So, as part of Cuisines Across Cultures, we’ve had the pleasure of covering Italy, France, Germany and Austria, Africa, South America, Mexico, China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.  As our second-to-last class, we covered America.  “Regional American,” specifically.  Split into 4 groups (Northeast/Midwest, South, Southwest, and Pacific), we were tasked with researching and then cooking at least one app, one entree, and one dessert.

My team drew Northeast/Midwest, so we did Poutine (French Canadian in origin, but has apparently since been heavily adopted by New Hampshire), Vichyssoise (French in inspiration, but in fact invented by the exec chef at the Ritz Carlton New York), Cranberry, Apple, and Walnut Salad (classic New England), Codfish Cakes with Red Pepper Rouille (again, classic New England), and Swedish Pancakes with Lingonberry Buttercream (a modern take on the Midwestern classic of Scandinavian origin).  [In case anyone wants to know, Poutine is basically french fries smothered in gravy and cheese curds; Vichyssoise is cold leek and potato cream soup.]  After time was called, we set our dishes on the front table as a buffet for the class.  Also depicted here is the best dish of the day, in my opinion — Group 1’s Southern-style shrimp and grits (courtesy of Yoga Girl).

. . . And Another Word, or Four Words, on Interviewing

Last week we had yet another mini-lecture from our Career Services rep on interviewing for jobs.  (This is the time when my fellow classmates are hunting seriously for the mandatory 3-month kitchen externship that they have to do in order to graduate in September.)  We got the usual sage advice:  Show up on time, have your knives ready if they want to test you, don’t ask about vacation.

And then we got four words of advice that I truly and deeply hope is mostly specific to the chef industry in San Francisco (though I know it isn’t):

“Don’t show up high.”

Another Word on Plating

Back to the food.  It was South America week last week, which involved such goodies as flank steak with chimichurri sauce and South American-style ceviche.  On the latter item, we were given an extra lecture on plating.  To wit, there IS such a thing as making something too beautiful to the point where no one wants to eat it.  Case in point, Sculptor’s final plate:

Certainly pretty to look at.  But not only is it difficult to eat, what with the shells and all, but part of ceviche’s appeal (which is missing here), is the melding of the various types of seafood and flavorings in one single bite.  When you’ve got fish, shrimp, mussels, scallops, clams, tomato, onion, cilantro, parsley, serrano chile, and lime all sitting in a bowl “getting all happy” together (wow, that Emeril quote came out of nowhere and I think I just died a little inside writing it), you want your customer to experience that.  Just something to keep in mind.  And, for those occasions (bouillebaise comes to mind) where you want to leave the shells in, make sure that you run your paring knife underneath the meat so as to cut the little tendon that’s holding mussel/clam to the shell.  Just a bit easier.  As we’re reminded constantly, “American eaters are dumb.  They will eat anything, and I mean anything — bones, shells, whatever — that you put in front of them.”

(Sidenote on ceviche:  This was the first ceviche recipe I’d used where the shellfish was actually pre-cooked (as opposed to relying solely on the acid to half-cook the stuff), and it was really quite good, so it’s useful for those of you who are antsy, pregnant, or both.  Bring some fish stock with a few scallions to a simmer, then dunk your shrimp (shell-on) in for 40 seconds til cooked.  Remove the shrimp, and take the pot off the heat.  Throw in your scallops and let them hang out for a couple minutes until cooked through, i.e., opaque in the middle.  In a separate pan, place your in-shell stuff (mussels, clams) with a little white wine and cook over med heat until the shells open up.  Cool all shellfish immediately (preferably in an ice bath), chop up your veg/herbs, then mix the two together and let everything chill out in your fridge for 2-3 hours before service.)

The Other Dosa Man

Those of you from New York are probably, like me, enamored with the Dosa Man (repeated winner of the Vendy Awards) on W. 4th near NYU’s campus.  Every day, this guy stands behind his sizzling giant grill, carefully pouring out dosa batter (usually made of chickpea flour — which gives you gas) and then filling it with all sorts of deliciousness like stewed potatoes in a masala spice mixture.      The South Indian paper-thin pancake is crispy on the outside, with just the right chew on the inside, and the perfect blend of flavor, heat, and texture variation — and also an appropriate level of greasiness which I personally feel is key to any properly-made street food, particularly of the hangover varietal.  Big plus:  All wrapped up like a crepe that’s way awesomer than crepes, you can eat it by hand.

I got to re-experience that last weekend at a friend’s baby’s pooja (traditional prayer session for the baby).  This was in the SF suburb of Pleasanton, which boasts a not insignificant Indian population, and apparently THIS guy (not the in-home spa lady, the cocktail dude, or any of those other fancy shmancy people) is all the rage at parties.  For any of my engaged female friends who are reading this — be prepared that this dude will be making his next appearance at your bachelorette party (and he won’t be strippin).  Stylish!

Silly Americans

As part of Cuisines Across Cultures, we get to learn about (and taste, for those of those who are 21 and older) wine.  Today we spent an hour on chianti, which, as some of you may know, is predominantly is a sangiovese blend from the Chianti region of Italy (Chianti Classico is generally viewed as the premium stuff, and is from the subregion of Classico within Chianti).  Personally, I have never been a fan of the stuff; I’ve always associated chianti with the cheap bulbous wicker-basket stuff you get off the top shelf of Walgreens.  (As a junior in college, my roommates and I were invited to some real adult’s house for dinner, and bought one of these cheesy-looking bottles of chianti because we didn’t know what we were doing.  I don’t think we were ever invited over again.)  Turns out, chianti’s historically poor reputation in the States is the result of its own doing (according to Chef L):  When Italy was finally required to draft up and impose a set of comprehensive wine regulations a la French, rather than doing what made sense for their own country, they pretty much adopted France’s system in whole.  Somehow, this resulted in only the crappiest product getting the proper label of “chianti,” and it somehow stuck.

That said, the Americans are responsible for the cheesy wicker basket bottling, which has done nothing to enhance chianti’s image except perhaps in the Disney Lady and the Tramp franchise.  Italians used bulbous bottling and wicker baskets for TRANSPORTING the stuff — as depicted above, since they could transport some of them upside down, this allowed them to move almost twice as many bottles as they otherwise would.  Once the wine arrived at its destination, it was typically removed from the wicker and certainly not brought to the table dressed in its transport harness.  We Americans, however, somehow find a way to (falsely) exoti-fy things at every turn.  I suppose it goes well with red checkered tablecloths.

(Additional note on bottling, for those of you who might actually be reading this blog to gain substantive knowledge:  Unlike chianti, where the particularly bulbous bottle shape arguably serves no purpose, champagne bottles very MUCH serve a purpose.  You know how each of your car tires requires about 33-38 pressure psi (per square inch)?  A bottle of champagne requires about 90 psi.  That is a lot.  Hence the big concave at the bottom of the bottle and the extra thick and heavy glass; that stuff can be dangerous.  And while we’re on the subject of champagne, I’m guessing most of you know that only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France may, by law, be called “champagne” (everything else is “sparkling wine,” at least in the US).  This particular law is apparently memorialized in the Treaty of Versailles; glad to know that bubbly labeling was a priority at the end of WWI.  There is, however, an exception, which I just learned last week.  Because Korbel, here in Napa Valley, was making the stuff prior to the law’s enactment, they and they alone (in the US) get to name their stuff “champagne.”)

The Mark of a Chef

Renowned food lit author Mark Ruhlman is partially responsible for turning me on to wanting (back then) to be a chef, with his “Soul of a Chef” and then “Reach of a Chef” books.  I can now add to his genre with “The Mark of a Chef,” which is, besides ghastly burn marks, super short fingernails, and a drug problem, this:

This is how a chef stays hydrated:  1) Realize that if you don’t have a drink of water in the next 5 minutes, you might fall over from the hundred degree heat and the strain of running around the kitchen for hours on end.  2)  Grab a plastic container — which is normally used, and then reused, for mise en place — so you can use it as a cup.  (As a rookie, you might actually stop for 2 seconds and think, “Hm, is there a cup around here?”  But you will very quickly learn that no self-respecting kitchen maintains usable cups, plates, or silverware, and that in the time you waste trying to hunt one down from the dining room, you will probably get fired.)  3)  Consider for 0.5 seconds that the plastic container has remnants of grease on it because it used to hold uncooked bacon and wasn’t really cleaned all that well since, well, it’s a crappy plastic container.  4) Decide that your thirst is more important than your stomach health and ignore the grease.  5) Scoop ice out of whatever ice bath happens to be standing nearby — usually the ice that’s surrounding some metal bowl in which you’re trying to quick-cool a sauce you made too late — fill the container with water, and grab any half-lemon you see sitting around and throw it in.  (You hope that the lemon will possibly, though not probably, protect you from the bacteria of the ex-bacon  grease.)

Now that’s something you’ll never spot on Top Chef, Restaurant Impossible, or any other restaurant-based TV show.  But if you ever see some guy in an alleyway gulping water out of one of these, you’ll be in the know.

The Things They Let Us Do in the Kitchen

Continuing on our exploration of Asian cuisine, last week we did Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.  Relatively ho-hum for me, personally, except for the fact that we were not only permitted, but encouraged, to do this:

Now, I’m all for learning new skills in the kitchen.  But let’s face it, as I’ve said before, it’s pretty amazing that none of my classmates has been killed thus far, what with everyone running around with pots of boiling stock and sharp knives.  So, once Chef L elicited major oohs and ahhs with his demo of the proper use of a wok and the requisite 4-ft flames that shoot up with its use, it was all I could do not to run and hide in the walk-in as each of my classmates took their turn potentially setting themselves on fire.

As a refresher (since I have taken a kinder, gentler path over the past few months but am now on a mean streak-revival), my classmates leave something to be desired in the common sense department.  Case in point:  Raider (he’s a huge Oakland Raiders fan, and will never let us forget it), who joined our class three segments ago when he failed out of his own class, is a 22-year-old pot-dealing father of two kids, from two different baby mamas.  When Raider first told me he had a 7 month old daughter “and another one on the way,” I thought he was just really bad at math.  I’ve since learned that, while, indeed, he is terrible at math, he actually got that right — he somehow managed to knock up another girl while the mother of his first child was still pregnant.  All of this, however, would be tolerable, except for the fact that Raider has a terrible work ethic — never does his share of kitchen clean-up, talks INCESSANTLY throughout class, and seems to have an infinite capacity for making inane comments.  (Chef L asked everyone today whether they’d cooked anything this past weekend.  Raider raised his hand enthusiastically and loudly proclaimed, “Oh yeah Chef, I made me some fruit salad with jello and cool whip.”)  

To fully illustrate Raider’s idiocy, I offer a quote from him dated 2 weeks ago:

Biker:  “So what’d you do last weekend [Raider]?”

Raider:  “Dude yo we had an off-the-hook baby shower for my girl on Saturday, and we got FUCKED UP!  Yeah!!”

You get the picture.  And Raider hardly has the market cornered on lack of smarts; last Tuesday another classmate got convicted of cocaine distribution and possession and is now facing a mandatory 15-year sentence (multiple strikes).  

Given that these are some of, even if not all of, the types I go to school with, you can see why I was nervous on wok day.  Turns out, my classmates are better at making Szechuan beef than at remembering to use condoms.  We churned out some great stuff.  Depicted here: Hot and Sour Soup (topped with “chinese parsley,” aka cilantro), Kimchee, Sushi, and Korean short ribs.