Salted and spiced and all overpriced

So the last week or so we've had atlantic cod on the menu at work. It's very rare to to see it on west coast menus, though back in boston it's a pretty common fish. I forgot how much I like it and how nice it cooks up in just about any capactiy. So anyway, last night was the last night for cod on the menu and we had some scrap pieces that I brought home to cure for saltcod. When I got home I realized that I didn't have enough salt at home to cover it all, so this morning I went to safeway to get some more. The salt and dried spices are all in the same aisle and apparently I havn't bought spices from a supermarket in quite a while, because I forgot how totally outrageously rediculously overpriced they are. I mean, I understand that home cooks don't have the same buying power as restaurants, nor do they ever need 50 pounds of salt at time, but still. Baleiene brand sea salt, for 26 ounces, was $5. We get 50 pounds for $10. The spices were even worse. Coriander, for a 1 ounce jar, was $5. We get a 1 pound bag for $1.10.....and so on and so on. You get the point. I understand it's got to cost more at the store, but this is me telling you that the next time your peppermill runs out, bring it with you the next time you go out to dinner and ask them to fill it up for you. They'll give it to you for nothing, because thats exactly what that much pepper costs a restaurant.

Coffee tastes good.....

...coffee right after getting your teeth cleaned at the dentist tastes bad. :(

Ignorance is bliss

At least when it comes to food, anyways. Which is why even though I love food, I hate food.

I remember a time many years ago when I didn't think twice about what was put in front of me. I just ate it. I cut a piece off, jabbed it with my fork, plopped it in my mouth, chewed and swallowed it. Repeat process until it was gone. There...nice and full...food's main function - sustainance. If you happen to have enjoyed it, well then great, that's a bonus.

It seems like the more I learn about food, the more I want to learn about food, but the more I learn about food, the more I wish I knew nothing about it.

The power of the written word

Over these last few years, as I have learned to compose menus and menu descriptions, I have come to notice an all-too-often let down when it come to eating out: what it says on the menu vs. what I actually get. Now I'm not talking about the waitress...oh, sorry....server bringing the wrong thing, I'm talking about the sexy way that an item description can roll off of your tounge vs. what is actually put in front of you. For example, my buddy Joe runs a catering company and last week I helped him out with hors dourves (yes, I had to look up how to spell "hors dourves". And it seems as though no one in the english speaking world knows where the damn apostrophie goes, so I left it out entirly). In true Joe fashion, all the food was top notch. One little thing bothered me, though. The Percorino crostini with quince mostarda. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Oh, don't get me wrong, it certainly was, but the taste isn't what bothered me. It was the fact as I was assembling these tasty little treats, I realized what they really were: a tiny slice of toast with a tiny smear of jam ("mostarda" is italian for chutney or jam and contains zero mustard like the waitress in Montreal tried to convince me of) and then a chunk of pecorino. Now, before I go any further, let me just say that I in no way look down on Joe or think he did anything wrong in any way. In fact, Joe is one of the few people I have had the pleasure of working with in both restaurants and in catering who really cares about making great food. Every chef should be like Joe.

I found it interesting that what my mind read, "Percorino crostini with quince mostarda" sounded interesting and exotic...and what my eyes saw was toast with cheese and jelly. It got me thinking about the difeerence between something "looking" good and something "sounding" good. It's interesting to think that if you were presented with a written menu and told to choose something and then were presented with a table full of all of the dishes from that menu that you might (and probably would) pick something else, trusting your eyes more than your mind.

A clever menu description can make anything sound like more than it is. But I guess at the end of the day, a restaurant is a business trying to sell a product. If one company was selling "Pecorino crostini with quince mostarda" and the other was selling "toast with jelly and cheese", it would be a no-brainer.

Brioche results

So this morning I took the dough out of the fridge and let it sit at room temp for an hour. Then I put it in a warm place for an hour to rise again....and nothing. Not even a milimeter. I knew then something was wrong. Nevertheless I preheated the oven to 425 and put it in. I baked it for 30 minutes...and it still didn't rise one milimeter. I stuck a cake tester in it to see if it was done, and it came out clean, so took it out of the oven and let it cool for a while. Due to the non-rising, I knew I had already failed. Was it not enough yeast? Possibly. Did something go wrong in the whole having-to-refridgerate-it-overnight process? Could be. Then I cut into it. Not only did it not rise at all, but I had underbaked it. I tasted it. It does not taste good. Or maybe it does and I just can't get over the chewing-on-raw-dough sensation in my mouth. It does not have anywhere near the consistency I'm looking for, and to top it all off, it's doughy in the middle....oh, and it looks like a brick. A big, doughy brick. Ususally, at the very least, my failed brioche attempts can be salvaged into a decent bread pudding...but not this time. Underbaked=Garbage. Megan likes to eat dough. Maybe she'll like it.

Silly tire company

Yesterday in the Chronicle, Patricia Utterman wrote a tiny little blurb about Range, describing her dinner she had had last week. She explained how everything was just as good if not better than when she originally gave it it's great review back when it opened. But then she went on to describe the dishes she ate, and something went amist. Suddenly, I wasn't reconizing anything she was talking about. For instance, she describes the pork loin as "cooked sous-vide." Now, sous-vide, which literally translates to "under water", means putting something in a plastic casing (usually cryo-vac) and cooking it very slowly in a temperature controlled water bath. I can say from experience, Range does not "sous-vide" anything, let alone even own a multi-thousand dollar cryo-vav machine. That pork is slow-roasted in a very dry and in no way bath-like oven. Was she so pretensious that she just assumed that she could tell exactly how it was prepared? Would it hurt to ask a simple question while you're at the restaurant before making false statements in a major publication?

Well, Utterman aside, this got me to thinking. How many other of the thousands of menu descriptions that I've read in magazines and newpapers over the years have been wrong?
All of the cool things I've read about cool chefs at cool new restaurants doing...all could be lies. Well, not lies, per se...but certainly not truthes. I metioned it to my chef, Phil, who agreed with me and said that the new Michelin guide was full of inacuracies......................................................
Fast forward to this morning, where the major headline on the front page of the Chronicle reads "IS MICHELIN MISGUIDED? At least 10 significant errors found in first Bay Area edition of restaurant handbook."http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/06/MNGPULK6VQ1.DTL What!!??? You mean to tell me that the guide whose ratings have over the years led chefs to commit suicide is run by a bunch of morons that don't know how to pick up a phone and do some fact checking? In the famous words of Charlie Brown.......good grief. The star allocation, as questionable as it was, was one thing.... but this is undeniably inexcusable. Michelin is dead to me. You hear me, Michelin!!?? DEAD!!

The one that continually gets away (a bread story)

We've all had one. That person who, at some point in our lives, we couldn't nail down. Despite weeks, months, or even years of secret (or not so secret) attempted courtship, they always for one reason or another slipped through our fingers. Most of us, however (and thankfully), at some point realize its just not meant to be and move on. Sadly, though, it seems that a certain few of us are destined to have someone (or something) like this in our lives forever. I am one of those people. And my someone (or something, in this case) is brioche. For those that don't know what brioche is, it is, in one word, bread. But really, it's much more than that. Brioche is a the perfect (if done right) cross-breed between bread and pastry. What makes it so is the addition of eggs and butter, both of which are not usually found in regular bread. These give brioche a much richer and more flavorful....er...flavor.

However, not only is the flavor of briche important, but equally so, and where my shortcomings stem from, is the texture. I have tried roughly 20 different recipes for the illustrious bread, most of which produce roughly the same flavor, which is wonderful. It rides the fence between sweet and savory, needing only one simple ingredient to swing it either way. But the flavor is not my problem, it's the consistency. Every time I mention my bread woes to fellow co-workers they are quick to offer remedies. "Did you mix the dough enough? You know you have to develope the guten in the flour, right?" Yes. I did know that. "Did you slow proof it overnight in the fridge?" Yup, tried that. "Did you make a starter dough and then add it to the other dough?" Yes. It's stupid, but I've tried that. Now, I have worked in kitchens for several years and had access to some of the best culinary minds on the west coast. I mean Michelin star awardees. I mean James Beard Awardees. All of whom I have witnessed produce perfect brioche at their respective restaurants. But when I walk them through my step by step at home process, they always offer the same advice.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I guess my point to all of this is that I am going to start blogging all of my brioche attempts, complete with recipes. Maybe someday I'll figure it out.

1/8 c. warm 1% milk
1 tsp. dry yeast
1 tbsp. sugar
4 egg yolks
1/2 c. 1% milk
3 c. bread flour
1/4 c. (4 oz.) French butter, softened and cut into chunks
1/2 tsp salt
another 1/8 c. 1% milk

I mixed the first 1/8 c. milk with the yeast and sugar and let it sit for 10 minutes to acivate the yeast. Meanwhile, I beat the egg yolks and with the 1/2 c. milk, then added the yeast mixture. I then gradually added half the flour, then slowly added the butter and then the rest of the flour and the salt. I let it mix for a couple minutes on speen one of my kitchenaid with the dough hook, but it looked uncharacteristically (wow thats a long word) dry, so I added another 1/8 c. milk and mixed it for about 7 minutes. I removed it and kneaded it into a ball and let it rest in a greased bowl for about 2 hrs. in a warm place (my oven turned on for a few minutes then turned off - ok, so this isn't a 100% controlled experiment). Then I removed it from the bowl and kneaded it gently for a minute, then put it in a buttered and floured loaf pan and let that rise for another 45 minutes in the "warm place". Here is where I would have baked it, but it seems as though I've run out of time and have to head out to work, so I punched it down and put it in the fridge to bake in the morning.

Stop!.............Blogger Time. Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh

Well, here I am. I wonder if I never tell anyone that I have a blog if it will ever be read, or if it will just sit in cyber space for eternity like those old paperbacks you find at the bottom of the bargain box at the used bookstore that you know have been there for decades and run a serious risk of never being read again. Wow, that was a really long sentence. Sorry.
I worked with guy once who had a band and they released a CD. I never bought it, but two months after they released it I found it in such a bargain bin at Amoeba Records. I never told him. If it was my CD I wouldn't want to know.

I digress.

So the restaurant I currently cook at, Range www.rangesf.com, this week was awarded a star in the new San Francisco Michelin Restaurnt Guide. Even being one of the 356 restaurants listed in the guide is a giant nod to the success of your establishment. However, only 28 out of those 356 were awarded stars, which is nothing short of an honor. There are, though, some indiscrepancies among those whom recieved the same accolades. Some much "fancier (pretentious)" chefs at some much "fancier (always more expensive but seldomly any better)" restaurants are pretty angry. Not at us, per se, but at the fact that we're all lumped into the same category. Hey, I'd be pissed, too, if I spent $50K on china, silver, and linens only to be given the same rating as a neighborhood resataurant where all the plates are all the same and the tables have never even seen a tablecloth. Cest' la vie, I guess. What's done is done.