Everything you never knew you needed to know

3/28/05 Brussels

2007-11-24T12:59:00.000-08:00

Megan and I woke up around 9am and the weather very much resembled that of San Francisco the past couple of weeks. It was rainy, foggy, and cold. Not exaxtly prime walking around conditions, so we opted for ordering coffee from room service and eating more of the chocolate from Antwerp. It was truely the breakfast of champions.

We didn't end up leaving the hotel until 11:30 or so, and by then the rain and fog had let up a bit. Since this was our only full day in Brussels, We had to see as much stuff as humanly possible. Besides several amazingly beautiful churches and cathedrals, we stopped in the Plaza Louise Louizapl, which is a very french-influenced shopping area on the southern border of lower Brussels. Not a lot of shops were open due to this being a holiday WEEK and all, but we were able to find a pastry shop serving croissants and sandwiches.

Our walking tour, which Megan lovingly mapped out and navigated, ended back at the hotel around 3:30, and after a nap, we went down to fitness room and worked out.

After showering, we got ready for dinner, which I was pretty excited for since we had found the restaurant earlier in the day and gotten to see its menu. We showed up 2o minutes early for our reservation despite it taking a while to walk there because Megan insisted on wearing high heels regardless of the fact that every sidewalk in this town is cobblestone.

The restaurant was called Belga Queen and it was impressive as soon as walked through the door. The door opened into a catwalk, about 30 ft. long, which led to the dining room. On the left side of the catwalk was a raw bar with 11 seats at it, all set for what looked like a full menu. One the right was a wet bar, which had candelabras at either end of it. The upper wall behind the bar featured what looked like ceiling fans turned verticle behind frosted glass and were lit from behind so all you could see was the sillohette.

After a drink at the bar, we walked down the catwalk to the dinig room which revealed that it was a converted old bank. The floor and walls were all marble and the ceiling was domed with beautiful blue glass. There were huge marble columns lined up in the center of the room and an old clock built into the wall marked where the teller boothes used to be. Although the decor was very nice, it lacked anything and everything to absorb sound. There weren't even linens on the tables. Every clink and clatter echoed though the dining room. That was flaw #1. Flaw #2, which was really just more funny than anything else, was the waitstaff uniforms. They wore these white smock things over their shirts that tied in the back. They resembled something between armour of the middle ages and the lead vest the dentist makes you wear when you're getting x-rays.

The only biger joke than the uniforms the servers wore was the service they provided. Though we were greeted and given menus by our female server in a timely manner, it seemed as though we were "passed off", because a guy came over a few minutes later to take our order. I would have understood if she was trying to go home or if she got triple sat and needed help, but she was there the entire time we were, and it was a seemingly slow and quiet monday night. I can only assume the "pass-off" went something like this: "Ugh. I can't deal with Americans tonight. Will you take them for me?"

We got our champagne and waited a painful 15 minutes for 6 oysters...raw oysters...nothing to cook here - two and half minutes per oyster...way to go guys. What pissed me off even more was that I could see our waiter and our old waitress horsing around by the server station. Go get me my fucking oysters!!!

Oysters came - Belons - which were good, but I was pleasantly surprised by our appetizers. Megan had shrimp croquettes, crispy on the outside, creamy inside, with fried herbs. Mine was puff pastry with crayfish tails and button mushrooms in a beer/cream sauce. Sound good? Wait...I'm not done. On top of that were...are those...fried monkfish cheeks? And, uh, wait a minute...is that seared foie gras? Yes. On both counts. This was one of the most confused dishes I have ever eaten. The chef had to be a schitzo. Now I'm not nessesarily against 6 components to a dish, but this one didn't make any sense to me. Why do you need cripsy monk-fish cheeks when you already have crispy puff pastry? And the plate was already covered in heavy cream sauce - there was no shortage of richness, so what the hell was the foie for? Don't get me wrong - it was all very good - but the composition was beyond me. Oh, and there were also, and I'm not exagerating, about 100 crayfish tails on the plate. This whole dish was a good idea gone terribly wrong.

Somewhere towards the end of our appetizers, I saw our waiter, in street clothes, walk through the dinig room and out the front door. What the fuck!!?? Whats that all about? Two minutes later our original waitress comes over, clears our table, and puts dessert menus in front of us then briskly walked away. Uh, OK. I guess that would have been fine...had we still not had entress coming. It took about 5 minutes to flag her down, and when she finally came over, she was chewing on something. Give me a break!! You're eating!!?? In my face!!?? As my server (and shitty one at that)!!?? "Yeah, uh, hi," i said, now getting mildly upset, to say the least. "We still have entrees coming," handing her back the dessert menus. "Oh yeah," she said, and walked away. Whoever trained these servers - if they ever got trained at all - should be hunted down and shot on site.

We got our entress, which, though the portions were out of control , were very good. Megan had braised cod over about 3 cups of mashed potatoes, and there a cool fried disk of celery root on top. I had roasted cuckoo (a Belgian poultry) over gingerbread with pear syrup, potato chips, and snow peas. Everything on the plate worked well with each other. We ended up opting out of dessert, mostly beacuse we just wanted to get the hell out of there, but partly beacuse we had the last of our Antwerp chocolates back in our hotel room calling our names.

Tonight taught me a valuable lesson in restaurants. The food was actually very good over-all, but the waitstaff just killed the experience. I felt bad for the cooks in back who were obviously the only ones putting any effort into their jobs. I used to think that getting great food was worth suffering through bad service. Tonight changed all that. Sometimes shit goes wrong - its inevitable and its part of the business. But everything that went wrong tonight - and I mean eveything - was preventable - and that sucks.

3/27/05 Brussels

2007-11-18T21:00:00.000-08:00

"Got back from the wedding at 3am last night and, as it turns out, for some reason, Europe does daylight savings a week earlier than the U.S. - so we really got back at 4am. Then we had to check out of the hotel by 11, so we only got about 5 hours of sleep - minus, of course, the half hour i layed awake listening to the guy in the next room snoring. I mean, these walls were really very thin in this hotel, but it sounded like this guy was in the same room. Megan said if I ever snored like that she'd dump me. I don't blame her.

So we got up and checked out and stopped at a laundrymat down the street to wash some clothes. I went and tried to find us coffee, but its Easter Sunday - just another reason for everything to shut down. Antwerp was a ghost town.

After the laundry was done we hopped on a train to Brussels. The ride was only about an hour, and thanks to Megan's navigation skills, we found the hotel in about 20 minutes. This hotel is a bit of a treat for us. I found a deal on-line for $80/night, and its a 4-star hotel. It's really very nice. Somehow, though, I wasn't surprised when they had no record of my reservation. Luckily I had written down all the web-sites I used to book hotels along with confirmation numbers and phone numbers. After a phone call, it was all fixed. The room is huge, with a king-size bed and a vestibule. The bed is so big that you can lay width-wise and not hang over the sides.

Megan took a shower while I began calling around for dinner reservations. Most places are closed on sundays, which would never fly in the states, but whatever. As it turns out, people here not only take sundays off, and not only Easter off, but a full Easter 'holiday'. A fucking week off for Easter!! And we're not talking about banks here, we're talking about restaurants - several of them - like, every one I called.

So I finally found a place that's open tomorrow and booked a table there. The only place that sounded good that was open tonight didn't take reservations, so we decided to just walk down there. We were walking down a small alley-sized street, when at the end it opened up into this huge plaza surrounded by severel-hundred-year-old buildings. It seriously didn't look like anything had changed here in 600 years. It was gorgeous, complete with a cathedral. You could totally picture the executions going on here centuries earlier.

After some more winding through back streets, we came to realize that the restaurant we were looking for was back in the plaza. It turned out that it was a tourist place...and with a wait no less. So we opted to wing it in the back streets of Brussels.

We settled on a Swiss place with wall-to-wall wood paneling. It was cozy and had a lodgey feel to it. After ordering up a couple of Hoegardens, I opted for the gruyere quiche. Megan, feeling the effects of all the frites and chocolate over the past three days, got a salad. Before the first course even showed up, we were brought bread and cornichons. I could have eaten just the bread with French butter and cornichons for dinner.

My quiche showed up and was delicous. With the bare minimum of egg to officially call it a quiche, it was cheesy - and the tart-like dough was crispy and crumbly. The whole thing was on a bed of iceberg lettuce dressed in lemon vinaigrette. It was a nice, refreshing contrast.

By the time I had finished that off, along with the half of a baquette and dozen or so cornichons, I was full. But I had to forge on. Next was fondue. Yes...more cheese. Megan was in heaven. Hers had tomatoes and mine had morels. All of the cheese, though, drowned out all the flavorings, so, being full anyway, I basically just pulled out all the morels and ate those. The fondue came with a big pot of boiled new potatoes. They weren't even cooked in salted water. I used the bread instead, reverting back to my old friends the cornichons in between bites to cut the richness. I wish the fondue had come with someting else like the quiche did to contrast it.

Overall, the food was very good, but the menu didn't seem very well planned or thought out. I guess they figured that if they stuff you with enough cheese, that you'll leave happy. Then again, what the hell do I know? Megan was a pig in shit the entire time."

RIP Nana 1920-2007

2007-11-16T21:56:00.001-08:00

3/26/05 Antwerp

2007-11-16T21:22:00.000-08:00

"The wedding was today. Pick-up time was 2pm back at the hotel, so Megan and I got up early to go check out the daimond district. We got down there around 9. The Hasidic Jews still run the daimond market just like in the movie 'Snatch', which I found quite amusing. It was also saturday, which is their sabbath, so weren't surprised when virtually everything was closed. We tried going to Daimondland, which is a big market, but it never opened. It was supposed to - at 9:30 - but at 10 the doors were still locked, so we said forget it. The unpunctuality of this place is really starting to piss me off.

So we walked over to the daimond museum, which was pretty cool. As it turns out, daimonds can only form at pressures found 80-150 down into the earth under temperatures of 1200 to 1800 celcius. Underground eruptions bring them closer to the surface where they can be mined - over a million years after they begin forming.

Afterwards, we had a hankering for some chocolate, so we bought a box on our way back through the town square. And of course, after eating sweets we needed something salty, so we stopped at a frittur and got some Belgian fries with mayonnaise. As I was buying them, a small parade strolled through the tiny cobblestone streets, marching band and all. Megan ran out and stood on a bench to watch and take pictures. She looked so happy. It is tiny moments like this that remind me how much I lover her.

The fries were amazing. Perfectly blanched and twice-fried with surprisingly little color on them. Hot and crispy with some of the richest mayo I've ever had. The only thing that could have made them better is if the there were truffles in the mayo, but there, in the sun, with Megan and the parade, they were perfect.

We headed back to the hotel around 12:30 toget ready for the wedding. Megan has now blown a fuse with her blow dryer and hair straightener.

There were cabs waiting for the 30 or so of us there were staying in the hotel for the wedding. We took them to a quaint town 10 miles or so outside outside of Antewrp called Lier. The cermony started around 3:30pm and was only abouot a half hour long. The cermony and the reception were at the same place, which was nice, because cocktail hour immediately followed in the back garden. There is something about drinking champagne and eating Belgian chocolate in a beautiful courtyard 10 milies southeast of Antwerp in the small town of Lier that seems to have made this whole trip worth it.

The reception had a buffet starring several items that I thought I'd never see served because of their 'cheeseball' ball factor. Among them were raw tomatoes hollowed out and stuffed with crab. I think the front cover of my main text book from the CCA has them on it, because i remember thinking 'who the hell would ever make that?'. But the clincher was the Pommes Duchesse - one of the first things we learned to make in culinary school. I swore I'd never eat them again, assuming I'd even ever see them made again - and I honored that vow. I wish I had a friend frim school there to share in the humor.

Dancing followed the meal, but went a little too late for my taste. I fell asleep in a chair in a seperate room at about 12:30. Megan came and woke me up around 2:30 to take me home. I guess I had too much champagne."

3/25/05 Antwerp

2007-11-15T19:24:00.000-08:00

"No notable meals today. Too bad.

Today 44 of us went to Brugges, which is a small medevil town about two hours outside of Antwerp. It was one of those towns that you think of when you think of old Europe. It had canals running through the whole town, and a lot of the houses date back to the 18th, 17th, and even 16th centuries. The roads are cobblestone and horse-drawn taxis line the streets. Unfortunately, the more we walked, the more all the little quaint streets turned into touristy places, unitl you couldn't tell who was a native and who wasn't. Has every beautiful town dong to shit? Whored itself out to the tourist dollar?

Anyway, we took a boatride through the canals and learned that some of the churches date back to the 12th century. Over 300 years before Columbus was even born, and they were building churches in Brugges - that are still standing. Amazing.

After the boat ride we went on a tour of a local brewery, only to find out that they don't even make the beer there anymore. What the fuck?! They called it a 'museum', but I called it a graveyard. It was just rooms full of old brewing equipment and rusted brewing tanks. Lame. The beer wasn't even that good.

And that another thing - Belgians seem to think that 2" of head is desirable in a beer. I call it a rip-off. The glass is 1/3 foam - and it's 4 euros! Fuckers."

3/24/05 Antwerp

2007-11-14T19:50:00.000-08:00

"Today we walked around Antwerp with Elka and Haseem and some friends/family. We all went to the Peter Paul Rubens house/museum. Man, did that guy know how to live. His house was like a mini castle. His paintings are mostly religous and have all sorts of great symbolism in them, especially in the Vrouwekathedral, where he has three tri-fold paintings. In one of the, each of the three paintings depicts jesus being carried in a different way. The first is in the whom by Mary, the third is as a baby by a prophet, and the middle and largest one of the three, he is being carried off off of the cross to be buried; in this one in a red robe is St. Christopher helping to lower Jesus' body. We came to find that 'Christopher' means 'the carrier of Christ.'

Dinner: I, as I'm sure everyone else does when they're going to another country, had somewhat of a preconceived idea as to what a great restaurant would be like on the inside. We'd sit in a large room with with some stuffy mait're d or some small country-like house and sit in wicker chairs eating eggs from the back coop. Well, the only thing about this that came into play tonight was the small part. Otherwise, it blew my expectations out of the water.

I had asked the receptionist at our hotel to make us a reservation and when I called the restaurant to confirm it, the nice woman confirmed it for 'between 8:15 and 8:30'. I've never had a reservation that was a window of time.

We walked into Gin Fish at 8:30pm, and the front door opens into a small vestibule with a door on either side of it. The one to the left leads to a small kitchen with a small counter full of people and seems to be very modern with a marble counter and stainless everything else. The door to the right, however, leads to a comfy living room setting with 8 plush chairs all around a long coffee table. It was a 'country living room' with large beams and a wooden spiral staircase with steps so old that you could swear they were from the French Revolution. The hostess, who turned out to be the chef's wife, greeted us as though we were guests in her house. She explained that our table was not yet ready, but we could sit and have an 'appertif'. The cozy room had a small bar at the far end of it and a tall cigar case next to it. We sat in two of the plush chairs and ordered drinks. With them came a plate of kalamata olives, parmesan crisps as thin as paper, and house cured salami with incredible thick marbling. 'If this is a sign of things to come', I thought, 'then I'm in for a treat.'

Some time passed, and the entire kitchen, which had glass walls so you could see in from the bar area, emptied at once. I assumed it was our turn, but the hostess only let two other couples in - then, ten minutes later, another partyof 4. I was starting to think that she had forgotten about us when she told us to enter. The others already had wine and the chef was plating their first course in the open kitchen. The whole seating area, to my surprise, was only 14 seats in total. Behind the line was one cook, one waitress, and the chef, who was wearing nothing but a gray t-shirt, jeans, and an apron.

The waitress poured us some wine and sliced us some whole grain bread off of a huge loaf. She put a small dish of fleur de sel, a small grinder with white pepper in it, and a large slab of the richest butter I've ever had in front of us.

Half-way through my slice of butter-smeared bread, the chef came over and shook our hands to greet us. He then explained the menu to us, reassuring us that he could change anything we didn't like. That wouldn't be nessesary. After speaking with us, he went back to plating the second course for the people who sat down before us. It was then that I realized why they have a staggered seating. It was so the chef is cooking/plating no more than 6 plates at a time. It made me jealous that at Farallon we have 10+ picks of 25 entrees/night and this guy does 4 picks of 6 per night. I envied his attention to detail and the time he had for it. He also never broke a sweat or seemed frazzled in any way. Must be nice.

With much anticipation, our first course arrived. Littleneck clams with steamed scallops, sweated leeks, and garlic. Although I think i prefer the flavor of seared scallops, these added a really nice textural contrast to the clams. The leek broth was perfectly seasoned and just begging that buttered whole-grain bread for a swim.

After polishing that off, we moved on to the second course. White and green asparagus, poached egg, shaved parm, and shaved white truffle. This white truffle was the size of a large egg and the chef was not stingy. On top of that he drizzled EVO. Glorious. I have never realized white asparagus' superiority over green until tonight, when I had them side by side. Fatter, sweeter, and much more texturally appealing.

The third course was a fish that I'm pretty sure he called 'brill'. I may be wrong, but he said it similar to turbot, and that it was. Not dense like halibut but not flakey like sole. He steamed it with a poached potato plank. He took the liquid from the fish's steaming tray and added it to the pot with buttered soy beans, from which he used the liquid as a sauce. These looked and tasted like fava beans, but Megan said they were soy, and she's a vegetarian who eats shit like that, so I'm gonna go with her on this one. It was all topped with some inch-long cut chives.

One of the best parts of this meal, was as we began to dig into our third course, the chef rolled out an ice cream machine churning fresh vanilla, cream, sugar, and eggs. Something about watching your dessert being made while you eat your dinner is very satisfying. It was topped with strawberries that the cook was slicing while the chef was plating our fish. Very fresh. The cook scooped the ice cream straight from the machine, concocting a huge perfect quenelle with one flick of the wrist. As we were scraping our bowls, he opened the ice cream machine, whipped out another quenelle, and put it on our plates followed by more strawberries. It was just beacuse he saw we were enjoying it, and there was plenty.

I think that was one of my favorite parts about this meal. Whenever our wine glass got low, the waitress just filled it up again. There was no set portion of anything - it was just 'eat and drink unitl you're done'. Granted, the evening was quite expensive, but that's just what it was, an evening - not a meal."

3/23/05

2007-11-12T19:10:00.000-08:00

"I've been awake for 27 hours. Of course, of all the things to forget, Megan and I forgot our clothes for the wedding - the whole fucking purpose of coming to Europe in first place. Luckily a friend of ours in SF who is also coming to the wedding isn't coming until tomorrow, so he's going to get them and bring them.

The flight was as smooth as it could be for the 11 hours. On demand movies and free booze - I've got to fly internationally more often. Sleeping was a bit uncomfortable - like, I got none. Ten and a half hours into the flight Megan showed me that the headrest could bend into this wonderfully comfortable position that she had known about and been using the entire flight. Sweet.

We Landed in Amsterdam and we met up with Dan and Ian. We had some beers then walked around for a while. I wasn't too impressed with the town, but I'll be back there later next month. We went to the Anne Frank Museum. Fascinatingly depressing...depressingly fascinating.

I noticed that the air in Amsterdam, at least the part we were in, smelled like manure, yet there were no cows or horses or farms in sight.

The Europeans move quick. Every Biker, walker, and driver has been darting in and out of traffic all day. I don't know where they're all trying to get to in such a rush.

From Amsterdam we had to take a series of trains to get to our hotel in Antwerp. I think its in a good location, but I was too tired to notice. So tired. I heard from a girl on the train that Jamie Oliver has a restaurant in Amsterdam - could be the highlight of that town.

These walls are as thin as paper."

So you really want to know me?

2007-11-11T22:39:00.000-08:00

I will not apologize for not blogging in 7 months. My life has been too hectic. The highlight was getting married. After that would be spending 11 days in a beach front cabin on kauai with no internet or phone. It was glorious.

This post, however, is not to tell you about any of that. This post is to mark the first of many that are about to come your way in the coming 6 weeks. One per day, actually - but its not what you might think (I actually have no idea what you might be thinking, but thats besides the point). I'll explain.

You may or may not know that Megan and I went to Europe two years ago. We had been together for a mere 9 months. It was an amazing trip. We spent two weeks together, and then she came home for work and I kept traveling for another month, by myself, eating my was through europe. On this trip, I kept a journal - 119 hand written pages of food, thoughts, and stories.

After the wedding a month ago Megan and I were cleaning out some things and we uncovered this journal. I havn't cracked it open since I wrote the last entry in it 2 and a half years ago. Starting tomorrow, I will be sharing an entry a day with you - 6 weeks, just as I spent it. Please keep in mind that as I prepare to do this, I really don't remember most of what I wrote about or what kind of languge I used. It was an inner dialogue that I will be sharing with you, word for word, just as I wrote it. It may be offensive, but I promise not to censor a thing as long as you promise not be offended.

Enjoy.

Quack!

2007-04-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

So last week I had the chore and pleasure of turning 18 6-pound dead ducks into food.....good food. And man was it a lot of work.

First, I had to butcher them all. This in itself took half a day. It had been quite a while since I had broken down a bird so I was a bit rusty, but once I got back into the swing of it, it got much easier. I got it down to about 7 minutes a bird, which I'm sure I could have done in even less time had I had a french chef yelling at me, but I don't...because I'm the chef now - so the french can stick it.

Once I seperated out the legs, breasts, and gizzards, i took all the bones and fat scraps and everything, washed them really well, and dumped them in a huge pot of cold water and made stock and rendered the fat at the same time. While that was going, I salted the legs and put them in the cooler to dry for the night. That was the end of day one.

The next day I heated up all the fat that I had rendered, seperated, and strained and put the legs in it to confit. With so many legs, I ended up doing two different rubs. For those that don't know what confit is, it's where you cook something very slowly for a long time in fat. The long cook time allows the fat to displace all of the water in whatever you're confiting, thus eliminating any room for bacteria growth...aka preserving it.

After that I took half of the breasts - the biggest ones - and burried them in salt and spices to make procuitto out of them. All-the-while reducing the stock down to half, which took all day. Once the confit was done and cool, I removed the legs from the fat and strained it along with the little bit of super flavorful juice that the legs leave behind. Then i poured the fat back over the legs to perserve them (they'll keep for six months easily in the cooler - i've eaten it a year later and it's still great). That was day two.

Day three I removed the breasts from the salt and smoked them in our combi oven, which thankfully has an airtight seal around the door. There's no better way to find out how NOT air tight your oven is than to smoke something in it.

Then came sausage. I ground the other half of the breasts alnong with all that super flavorful juice from the confit. I also added some toasted corriander and dates. My friend Dan helped me case it in hog intestine. Mmmmm....intestine. Then we decided there was too much to do fresh so we cased some in beef middle (middle intestine, that is) to dry cure for duck salumi. In about 8-12 weeks that'll be ready to rock & roll. Then, after all that, I still had the gizzards. At first I was going to confit them in olive oil, which would have been good, but I had too many of them and I never would have used all of them. So, I decided to make gizzard sausage - a feat I had never attempted before. After Dan and I cleaned all the hearts, livers, and kidneys, I soaked them in Grand Marnier and brandy with a little thyme and salt. Then back to the grinder. Mmmmm.....ground gizzards. I ended up with a little more than I could case, so I made a gizzard burger for dinner. That's something you can't say every day. I 'm gonna dry this one, too, and see what happens.

Then I removed the breasts from the "smoker" and hung them to dry. In about two weeks I'll have duck procuitto, though I may let them go longer than that, depending on what I decide to do with them. Also, this whole time I was reducing the stock even further, to a brown, sticky mass we call demi-glace. Then I put it in ice cube trays and froze it so we have it on hand....because we all know a kitchen's not a kitchen without duck demi at the ready. That was day three.

Three days. Three days of duck. And what do I have to show for it? Demi-glace, 2 kinds of confit, duck procuitto, fresh sausage, duck salumi, gizzard salumi, and enough duck fat to confit a small person. Mmmmmm....person.

Yeah, yeah, yeah

2007-03-31T19:47:00.000-07:00

Despite pleas from the three people that check my blog every week to write more in it, I obviously have done no such thing in the last several months. Ironically enough, the same few months have probably been the most eventful of my adult life....possibly the cause of said absence. I even promised my grandmother I would update it weeks ago...and to no avail. Now I have been called a "jackass" (sorry for the profanity, Grammy, but these were not my words) by someone in the blogging community. So now, with my blogger integrity called into question, I write.

In the interest of not sitting at this computer for the next two hours (the main reason why I havn't updated being that I could spend three hours easily writing my thoughts on everything from how top shelf margaritas may beat out champagne for the best drink ever to how rolling pasta out by hand is the best way to calm yourself), I am going to abridge....heavily.

I am now working days, as a chef (so to speak), at a restaurant consulting company. It's a mix of cooking, research, calculating, and communicating where I spend a good chunk of time getting paid for my opinion, which, as it turns out, is the best job you could ever have. "Oh, you have a problem in your restaurant? Well here's how to solve it. No, no, I'm not GOING to solve it, I'm going to tell YOU how to solve it." I have an entire commercial kitchen to myself. It's glorious. It also entails traveling and I have been going to places I would have never have otherwise been to and eating at places I would have never have otherwise eaten at.

A month later Megan got a new job as a project manager at Apple in the iPod department. I can't tell you any more than that about her job because I don't know any more than that about her job. She can't tell me anything...seriously. I know nothing. And no, I can't get you a free iPod. To be honest, I think she's a spy. I've heard her phonecalls. "I need the HTX on the FEC for NGS by tuesday so i can tell "Harold" that the GDT is ready for the LNJ. We had to buy a car for her commute to her secret headquarters. And she has to go to China every six weeks to the "manufacturing plant"....it's all very suspect.

All of this has not come without a price. I found out last week that I have an ulcer. It hurts all the time, and even more when I eat. And no drinking for six weeks. What kind of existance is that? I should be better just in time for the National Restaurant Association Conference in Chicago in May (another giant perk of my job) where I'll be eating and drinking at the best of the best restaurants as "research". I'll take an ulcer for all this....'cause the way I see it, everyone takes a beating sometime.

Never say never

2007-01-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

i did it. i did it and i'm not proud. i told myself i wouldn't...ever...but i couldn't resist. her sirenous call was too much fo me, and i buckled.

her name: paula dean
what i did: made something she made on her show
what it was: a pan fried peanut butter and banana sandwich
how it tasted: like love
how love tastes: very very good

Forgive me father....

2007-01-03T17:46:00.000-08:00

....for it has been two months since my last blog-post.

how the hell did that happen? i think i'm gonna try to make these posts a lot shorter, since only four people read them anyways, and i'm known to spend over an hour on some of them. and though i'm now unemployed and have plenty of time, i'd rather waste my hours playing guitar hero, which, by the way, i really think is giving me arthritis.

anyway...carrying on. christmas was solid, i got books on the history of chocolate, champagne, and bones. yes, bones. they are delicious.

i went to greens last night. it's a vegetarian restaurant. enough said.

i heart meat.

High Maintenence

2006-11-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

Wow. Has it really been two weeks since I've written anything? I'm sure that the two people that read this have stopped checking it at this point.

So I have given an official notice at work that December 2 will be my last day. This leaves me both excited and nervous, but before I explain why, I just want to point out how awkward giving notice to a boss is. First of all, all bosses at one point were not bosses. They, too, were mere employees who at some point had to give notice. So when you walk up to them and say, "Do you have a minute? Can we talk?", they know its coming. You've practiced the speech a thousand times in your head and come up with a retort for any possible topic that the conversation might procure. The most fun one to play out in your head is the one where your boss gets mad and you tell him off...but that one never seems to happen.

Then there's the conversation, which I have always equated to breaking up with someone. "It's not you, it's me. I've got some issues right now and it's better for everyone if I go. You've been great, really." Actually, I'd rather break up with someone than give notice. At least when you break up, you get to walk out the door and never see them again. At work, you still have to keep going until your notice is up. Imagine giving 3 weeks notice to your girlfriend. "Uh, so, yeah, three weeks from today will be my last day as your boyfriend."

And then there's the backlash. Once you tell all your co-workers that you're leaving, they never treat you the same. Not necessarily worse (though sometimes) but usually just different...distant almost. There are two major feelings that a cook can have when he/she hears that another cook is leaving. The first is jealousy. If they, too, are unhappy, they will be angry at you for beating them to the punch. The second is happiness, not because you're leaving per se, but because it opens up opportunity and moves the chains of the hierarchy. It's all very complicated, though I'm sure its not much different in all other lines of work.

So back to the excited/nervous part. Well, I'm excited because 1) I don't have to work there anymore 2) for the month of december I'll be doing some part time work that pays twice what I'm making right now 3) I don't have to negotiate time off for christmas (although tickets home are upwards of $600...yikes!) and 4) i get to spend some more time with megan.

The nervous part is that once the holidays are over, I have no idea what I'm going to do. This will be the first time in my adult life that I have left a job without another one lined up. It's not really someting I would consider if had a mortgage or kids, but since both of those mammoth responsibilites are just a few years away, I might as well enjoy the freedom while I can.

Salted and spiced and all overpriced

2006-10-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

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.....

2006-10-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

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

Ignorance is bliss

2006-10-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-10-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

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.