Mission: Professional Chef: Eliminating Waste

Chefs who like employment quickly learn to limit waste as much as possible. Any scrap that can be used should be. In a restaurant kitchen a wide variety of techniques is needed to get the most out of what you buy. Whole chickens are ordered, and broken down by cooks, to yield the usable cuts at half the price, plus material for stocks that go into sauces, risottos, soups, or staff meals. Vegetable scraps are saved for the same purpose. Restaurants that budget for staff food can use excess to feed the staff, and through the magic of accounting lose less than if the food were wasted. Specials are created to use excess food.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of wasted food in the West comes from the home. With the recession upon us, and my ambition to incorporate the chef's techniques in every facet of my cooking, avoiding waste becomes mandatory. So when I tired of taking notes about what I'm cooking, I looked to the bananas on the counter.

Bought for Honey's breakfast, I knew from their dull allover brown that they were gorgeously ripe. Unfortunately, I still haven't exorcised my food prejudice against bananas, and years of uniform, blemish-free, flavorless food in megamart produce departments have conditioned Honey against brown fruit. So banana nut bread it was. I got a couple of loaf tins and ingredients for the PC's recipe and then I weighed my bananas, a preliminary step that probably should have been undertaken before I left for the shops.

I had 1/6th of the banana needed for the recipe. This was fine; it worked out to one loaf, would get plenty of flavor and moisture from four bananas. I even tried a little of the raw fruit while I was making the batter. I'm not buying a bunch for myself anytime soon, but it wasn't disagreeable.

For the purpose of my project, I learned the blending method, mixing solid and liquid ingredients separately, and then quickly combining. As soon as they come together, they go in the pan and then the oven. Generally, the blending method is used for chemically leavened quickbreads that are supposed to be moist and tender. Mixing thoroughly works against this in two ways: liquid activates the leavening before cooking--since it's a chemical reaction, each recipe has a finite amount of lift-- and overmixing develops gluten in the flour. And nobody wants tough muffins.

The resulting bread convinced me that bananas could be delicious. Especially when the bread was toasted with butter--Grandma's poundcake treatment. Or toasted and turned into a peanut butter sandwich.

Mission: Professional Chef: More than you can chew

The early stages of any project are marked with vast ambition. Last year I planted about ten different tomato plants of four or five varieties, and three kinds of peppers in our friends' back yard.

Professional Chef was no different. I saw no reason that every part of my meal couldn't contribute to my ultimate goal. Sooner begun, sooner done, right?

What I'd forgotten since my university days is that everything has a process and laying the foundation is the most labor-intensive part of learning. In the case of Professional Chef, taking notes about steaming vegetables, braising lamb and making chicken stock would be terribly disjointed if I neglected to cover the details of mis en place and prep technique. I decided this after buying for our dinner and starting the meal.

The lamb stew was good, the steamed sweet potato and rutabaga played nicely with it, and the brown rice pilaf was...edible. I'm allowing myself some do-overs in the name of perfection. I've gotten about halfway through the relevant sections of the text, finishing the veg mis en place chapter the other day.

Veg mis en place was really helpful. That's where I found the basic knife skills, information that isn't complex or difficult to remember, but is vital. It made for easy and highly productive note-taking, and even found me, Ms. anti-superfluous garnish, fluting a mushroom the other night when we were slow.

I still need to cover the actual cooking of the veg, and the mis and method for the rice. Since then I've cooked quickbreads (notes taken), bechamel (not yet), and I'm finding it much easier to cook through the book than to keep up with the notes.

But the slog continues. There are only so many mise chapters after all. Surely my pen will catch up with my pans eventually.

Mission: Professional Chef

I've heard it for years. After I got in Scotty's car at the Jacksonville airport in March of 2006, and he sold me on bypassing culinary school. From Chef, every few months when I asked what I should be doing. From linecook on his blog last month.
"Buy Professional Chef, and cook through it. Learn all of it."

Professional Chef is the CIA's textbook. It's big. It's a little intimidating. It's kind of expensive, at least new. For nearly three years, I rationalized spending the money on expensive produce, beer, and to a far lesser degree, kitchen tools. Then I learned to play poker.

My first week here in Coventry, Honey taught me the game at the picnic tables outside the hotel we called home. Two introverts in a pub need a pretense to meet locals, to talk to people, and getting pissed enough to get over our shyness isn't a winning strategy.

It took months, but I'm now consistently decent at poker. I do well at the league game, but the cash games bring out the worst in me. I'm impatient, I try to bully new players, and inevitably get beat by someone I can't read. Finally, two weeks ago I committed. I was going to win money. I would stick it out through large chip stacks and small. I even kept myself from trying to scare off the new guy at the table--a good move, as he was a hell of a poker player. Fours hours later, I won £30 after accounting for our buy ins.

I'd lost my paring knife in February. The temptation to replace it was strong. But my need to improve myself finally, finally won out. Reader, I bought the book. It arrived a few days later, waiting for me two feet from my front door, as though the postman could lug it no further.

It's massive. I threw it down on the pass at work with the announcement that if my fellow chefs--who have heard my unequivocal pronouncements that one cannot put members of the brassica family in stocks and demi glace, that a vinaigrette does not contain that much mustard and can't be made with just malt vinegar--thought I was obnoxious before, they were in for a world of hurt. The plates under the pass rattled. The CD in the stereo skipped. The new commis chef chuckled nervously.

I've bought two notebooks, and will buy a third for the portion of the book that deals with ingredient identification and food safety. I have taken detailed notes on the mise en place and method for stocks, the mise for meat, and tomorrow on the preparation of grains and legumes, the blending (or muffin) method, braising, and steaming. I will work my way through the entire 1200-page tome, taking notes and committing to memory everything that I need to know.

My job here has been frustrating at times, and less rewarding and educational than my year at Woodfire. I am resolved that the next time I have to find a new one, to be confident in my role as chef. Expect updates.

The special you'll never eat

Every cook coming up the line knows her limitations; those areas where knowledge, experience or palate are lacking. The kitchen, or at least a good kitchen with a good chef, is not forgiving, and if you operate in oblivious unawareness of your shortcomings, you won't do so for long.

I'm not a fish person. I like to eat pork and vegetables. Baking, charcuterie, the types of cooking that take time and care well in advance in order to be successful are where I'm happiest. Fish is generally fast: cook it quickly, and just enough to be tasty. Serve it simply, with light flavors so that the guest tastes the fish he's paying for first. In the world of line cookery, fish requires skill. Also, it's expensive.

Or at least that's how I see it. There's a high likelihood that I've made a bogeyman out of fish cookery. And I want it to stop. Yesterday we got a shipment of red mullet. The chef was out and it wasn't on our specials board. I talked with our senior chef de partie--an admitted fish-hater--about what to do with it.
"What's it taste like?"

"It's awful. Very, very earthy. But the skin stays that gorgeous red colour. Maybe a risotto?"

"Hmmm. or something with orange and olives."

I went on my break and thought about risottos with fish. The idea has never quite appealed to me, but a citrus risotto with an earthy fish fillet sounded promising. And I could introduce the senior chef de partie to gremolata, one of my favorite garnishes for it's ability to lighten and elevate the flavor of dish without overpowering it, and to bring more colour to the plate.

My risotto was too lemony, so it took a lot of butter to bring it back to the proper flavor, and the the fish--seared on the skin side, and finished in the low section of the grill with cracked pepper--stuck to the pan, so I lost that beautiful skin, but the whole dish tasted great. I'd like to add peas to it if we served it.

It won't make it onto the specials list, though. I'm a commis chef, and my duties don't include creating a special. A fish risotto would be pretty out of the ordinary for us. And as today is my day off, I'm not there to make the case to the junior chef de partie and the head chef.

But it was good fun on a slow Monday night. I liked the fish that I made. I'm curious to try other preparations, fish and shellfish.

In other news, I want:
On the Line. I've been looking at the excerpts all morning, and it looks so good.
Ratio. Not out yet, but looks like one of those really useful books.
A bigger case for knives and tools. I haven't found one I like yet, but I'm typically indecisive.

Green Eggs!

I had the rare Sunday off, and Honey and I were hungry. It was one of those days when what's in the fridge is all technically food, but whether or not it can make a coherent meal is debatable.

The cook's mind immediately goes to fantasies in the face of potential breakfast and an empty stomach. I wanted gofio pancakes, either sweet with fruit, or savory with dried porcinis. No milk, no porcinis, and only a sad banana, killed that dream.

All our cheap knives--which I'm not wild about after the dull chef's knife turned and cut my middle finger a couple of weeks ago--were dirty. So I decided a knife-skillsless meal would be a good idea.

Pancetta scraps, a grated potato and enough time to render fat and wash some dishes yielded passable hash browns.

About a half-cup of Canarian mojo verde, an ounce and a half of grated pecorino that needed to be used weeks ago, and three eggs made an olive-drab omelet batter.

This omelet was not about proportion, delicacy or technique. It was about making three eggs for two people into a meal that would keep us satisfied for more than an hour and using food that would otherwise have been wasted. It was also about being damn tasty, and I plan to keep up this practice of using sauces as omelet-extenders in the future.

American and British breakfasts are meat-heavy affairs, and I completely agree with Mark Bittman about the necessity to consume less meat. I've tried to start treating meat more like a condiment. Since this means adding bacon or pancetta scraps to nearly everything, Honey hasn't complained. And since I'm using pieces that would otherwise be thrown away, we're reducing our waste. Green eggs indeed.

Now if only we could get around to eating more of our leftovers while they're still edible...

Food News and Links I Like

USDA trims patas negras, doubles price:

Drunken Animals in the NYT

New Orleans Cookbook

Or you could call it recipes for a recession: Cheap Lentil Ragout and Pasta.

Lots of NYT links this time around. I'm cleaning out my reader after the honeymoon. Expect more from Serious Eats and Ruhlman later.

Missing the Point

In the book that I'm reading, Terry Pratchett describes a desk:

"There was a blotter on the oversize desk, but it was part of it, fused to the surface. The drawers were just raised areas of wood, impossible to open. Whoever had made the desk had seen desks but clearly hadn't understood deskishness."

Sometimes, bellying up to the English table makes me feel like sitting at this fictional desk. Sandwiches in coffee shops are freshly made every day. In factories, and then shipped in. The gourmet sandwiches advertise applewood cheddar--whatever that is--next to "reformed ham."
Pubs make their food fresh, according to recipes in the Ma Broon's cookbook. Then they store the food in a residential refrigerator and reheat it in a microwave to order. Pie and pasty shops advertise deliciously slow-cooked fillings, well-seasoned. They arrive par-baked and frozen at the shop, and a baked the day of service. This is advertised as "fresh baked." A commercial that I'm watching right now is marketing frozen salmon as the sort of high-quality product that deserves the simple treatment. Without salt. I've seen lots of cured meat labeled as salami or chorizo, but it bears no resemblance to what I've had in Spain or in fine delis. Most of it is obviously salted, cooked meat stuffed into casings.

There is a lot available here that looks like food, but it seems that an understanding of foodishness is lacking. Gorgeous Scottish or Welsh salmon could be shipped fresh to the entire country within 24 hours of being caught-there's no need to freeze it. Surely the students who work in the coffee and pie shops can assemble sandwiches and learn how to cook. And as we're fewer than 100 miles from Tamworth, namesake of the famous pigs. Perhaps we could use ham that doesn't sound like it's been on the wagon for awhile?

I'm aware that these little deceptions occur in America, but I know the language to find them there. My only salvation has come from knowledge of processes generally employed.

I've tried to be gracious and inoffensive to the country that's generously hosting me and employing me. But my inability to find the quality food that I know is produced here is frustrating. The acceptance of unpalatable food in tins and jars, just because it's sold by a high-street grocer, is a disservice to a nation that's in need of healthy, honest food. And after six months I feel like accepting these practices condones them.

I'll bring the hot sauce...

I might be romanticizing, but the food, drink, music, art and other aspects of culture in a place are fascinating, and separate one otherwise indistinct place from another. Since we've moved across the ocean I've pretty much stuck to English and Continental food, with the occasional foray into Chinese, per Honey's newfound interest. I love Southern food, and I still cook a good Southern meal about once a month, but without the stoneground grits, the gorgeous pink turnips stunning array of winter greens, it just doesn't feel, well, Southern.

Of course a lot of major components to the Southern meal can be found in England, and that's what I've tapped whenever culinary homesickness strikes. For New Year's Day, I bought some spring cabbage, English cider, smoked streaky bacon--ham hocks can be found, but it requires more planning than I'd invested--and broke out the black eyed peas that came as part of our flat's furnishings. A little chunky tomato sauce went into the peas, in the hope that Honey would like them if they tasted less like peas. And my gorgeous, gleaming cast iron cornbread pan was pressed into service, along with the stoneground cornmeal from Riverview, smuggled in a Dutch oven back in July.

I should have made pepper sauce months ago, when we emptied our first bottle of olive oil, but I'm indolent at best, and the greens needed something. So I dredged up and modified a friend's hot sauce recipe: Equal parts cider and white vinegar, a good bit of cayenne: at least 4 tablespoons for about 250 mL, and about an equal amount of hot and sweet pimenton, mixed evenly. This is all based on taste, as I sure wasn't measuring while trying to make hot sauce, retrieve cornbread, and dish out peas and greens.

Sitting on the couch and eating for money and luck, with my good smokey hot sauce, humming "Unhappy" by Oukast, I felt comforted, even I daresay optimistic. And honey and won respectably at the casino the next night, so maybe there's something to these old rituals.

Or do you just like the uniform?

When I first decided to walk down the long, doubt-ridden road to chefdom, I was fortunate. I'd already worked for about 18 months, under three very different chefs. Each of them, and at least one of the chefs at the Italian Restaurant gave me The Talk.

The Talk goes something like this:
"So you want to be a chef."
"Yup."
"Do you know what that means?"
"Yes."(Note to aspiring chefs: your answer does not matter here. Get used to that; in the future, you will be given the answer, whether or not you know it.)
"You will never spend New Year's Eve with your friends, Christmas Eve with your family, Valentine's Day with the one that you love, or Mother's Day with your Mom. You will not get a Friday or Saturday off for a party, no matter how important. Every Halloween, people will ask if you're dressed as a chef, and the answer will be no. You'll work 12 or more hours a day. You will get burns and cuts, and still have to work, and the scars probably won't go away. People will scream at you. A lot. You will fuck up. A lot. You will not have a successful relationship, unless you find another chef, or a saint. And no one will understand what it means when you say 'I'm a chef.' They'll think that you cook really well."

There are certain things that I would add to this, though it might scare potential chefs off from the gig.

You might never earn the right to be called "chef." More and more people get called chef--hell, I get called chef--without the responsibilities that real chefs have. You might find yourself as a line cook at 45, and line cookery is a young person's game. Your job is not just to cook: you must manage people and costs. You need to understand what happens in the dining room, and when it's broken, you must fix it. You need to know food: you must know how to fabricate meat, fish and veg, you must know not merely ethnic, but regional cuisines, and you need to know how to create at least a basic version of most dishes on command. You need to get every red cent (or pence) from every item in your kitchen, and you need to be comfortable harassing slackass cooks into doing the same. You need to be willing to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning as a restaurant chef, and if you want to be a pastry chef, you'd better be ready to wake up at 3 A.M. You need to know how food gets to your kitchen, how to make that path more valuable to your bottom line, and where something exciting is that your competitors haven't found yet. You need to understand that if people call you Chef, everything that comes out of your kitchen has your name on it. You need to taste everything. All the time. And you need to be brutal with whoever made it, even if it was all you.

If you don't want to do that, if you're convinced that surely there's an easier way, I have to ask: Do you want to be a chef, or do you just like the uniform?

Recently, our breakfast commis, admittedly a kid, was bitching about the hours in December. When I put the above question to him, everyone else on the line assumed I was taking the piss, but it's a question to ask not only other cooks, but oneself.

I have a degree in journalism. I was a smart kid. My parents always wanted more for me, and I like to think that I have the mind for this nebulous "more." Nothing makes me feel better than working well in the kitchen, but I regularly burn bread, make basic procedural mistakes, and need advice for simple processes. I want to work my way up the line, but it's impossible both to be aware of my limitations and assume that I can go where I want to.

Being a chef requires both suspending doubt in one's abilities, and being painfully, constantly aware of one's limitations. The best chefs teach you this, and how to overcome it. They punish mistakes, lend confidence in the face of the unknown, and encourage you in your experiments. And even with the best chefs, you'd better be your own worst critic.

Tomorrow, what a chef, or aspiring chef needs in reading materials.

December in 101 words

Landing from Atlanta, straight to work for nine days, sous chef quits, day off, seven days, friends from Brussels get embarrasingly poor service at the restaurant, day off, pork soup, carolers in an empty restaurant, easiest set menu EVER, wine for Christmas, new sous chef, grease fire with 26 guests in the restaurant, the show goes on, hockey game, ordering gifts for family back home, contracting the plague, day off, poker win, slow Christmas Eve, drinking with friends in their pub, waking up to potato pancakes, scrambled eggs, tomato sauce and pecorino and Authentic Mexican and The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.
Happy Christmas!

Information wants to be free; Mission Thanksgiving

I'm visiting Atlanta and have made it to Woodfire, a farmers' market, a friend's restaurant by Oakland Cemetery and Northside. I totally failed at the Highlander, but am about to head to Little's. And maybe Whole Foods.

It's been four months since I possessed the knowledge necessary to eat really well. Having the meager money from my job has helped. But just being able to find good food honestly sold requires being networked through inefficient channels, and that takes time.

I'm reading a book on markets, and just finished a chapter that advocates information's uninterrupted (and thus free) flow in markets, and the existence of entities that facilitate that flow. And I thought about buying locally in Coventry. The terminology of farming and preparation are different. Chemical composition, not ingredient name, becomes the standard, and a constant source of doubt. Knowing as much about the foodways as I do here would certainly make life easier.

So to facilitate the flow of information to the Georgians who read this, here's a link to the Georgia Organics Directory. You can locate nearby markets, CSAs and restaurants, even a farmer if you need one. The printed version has the added bonus of being organized by location as well.

I get to shop because I've been asked to MacGyver a Thanksgiving dinner without a range or oven. My hardware consists of a grill, a smoker, a large outdoor burner, a small sauce burner, a slow cooker, a toaster oven, an electric skillet, a microwave, and possibly a torch. My software thus far is two turkeys of an as-yet-undetermined size, two paper grocery bags of various braising greens, and a few pounds of winter veg: turnips, radishes, parsnips and winter squash. I think I've got a line on some good stuffing. And I possibly have a satellite kitchen.

Now I just need to get a replacement notebook. I have lists to make.

Cowboy caramel, learning new methods and opening a restaurant

I've been at the new job for a couple of days now, and I'm getting used to working again, to riding 2 miles to and from work, new coworkers, a new kitchen, and a new chef.

We start dinner service in a few days, so I've mostly been working on prep for my station while the other cook and the sous chef run breakfast and lunch services. My station is huge: salads, starters, pizzas and desserts. I feel like I'm in the weeds already, even though the chef has instructed the other cook, an incredibly capable chick, that she'll be helping me. I'm trying to keep positive: work this incredibly busy station, and I will get faster, more organized, clearer. My systema will be strong. I'm a natural optimist, but it's a challenge.

The prep list is daunting, and I can't see how it'll all be done before we open. Opening a restaurant, I've decided, blows like a hurricane. It's hectic, the lists have to be completed, and we only got a copy of the menu yesterday. A cook no-called no-showed on my first day, and was standing outside smoking when I rode up the next day. As a cook, I hate having to talk to cooks who are deep in the shit, usually about to get fired. Inevitably, there are the explanations, the rationalizations, the guesses of the clueless, the desperate questing about for some reason to hope, to believe that they won't soon be finding out how exciting the prospects are on the current job market. When it's a good cook who just made some mistakes, I feel bad, and wish that I could realistically offer some help, but I don't make the decisions. When cooks screw over the team out of laziness though, I just want them to get out of my way and let me do my job. Cooks are funny that way; most are pretty forgiving if you aren't a total fuckup, but screw over the team or half-ass it, even once, and you're already operating in the past tense. You're not here anymore, you're just in the way.

But yesterday was fun. We were slow during lunch service, and chef had me clear away my prep during lunch. He doesn't want any prep done during service, and I've got to get ready to transition from prep to service. Then, of course, we had the slowest lunch service ever. So he showed us how he makes risotto, pasta carbonara, and caramel.

We made risotto at Woodfire, and after a year there, I knew how to do it the Woodfire way. Cooking requires discipline, and if you're learning well, there's only one way to do something: the right way. So I tend to approach different methods with lots of skepticism. But I'm here to learn, and even though his method was different, and didn't look like it would work, the risotto was great. The ingredients weren't the super-special produce that we worked with at Woodfire, but it was simple, hearty and delicious. Especially as I hadn't eaten much that day.

The pasta carbonara was good to watch. It's a dish I've tried once, and predictably made scrambled eggs. I was surprised by how much the copious pepper brought to the dish, by the transience of the sauce--within about 5 minutes, it had broken, something to remember for service. It was also a simple rendition, a reminder as we recalled all the gussied-up versions with peas, mushrooms, meatballs, or cream for people who couldn't emulsify with eggs alone, that Italian cuisine is simple, meant to be whipped up at home, and as it's been exported, it's almost baroque in its complexity.

The caramel was for a special dessert on the lunch menu, and the chef made it "cowboy style" with just butter and caramel in the pan. It came together beautifully, and made me want to go home and try it myself. Of course that was before another six hours and a pizza lesson, complete with excited children. More on that tomorrow.

Notes

We got bicycles last weekend. I rode about 13 miles Saturday and Sunday, and I think about 3 today. I can already feel my metabolism kicking up. I can't wait to be able to eat more without getting fatter.

I made quince jam. It's pretty nice, but 1 kilo of fruit makes a LOT of jam. My neighbors downstairs were supposed to get a jar, but didn't answer the door. Which sucks, because I want to try and make something else with quince before the season is over.

Purple-sprouting broccoli has shown up in the markets. I can't wait to get some.

Everyone who's spent time in Europe has told us that we'll miss real Mexican food. There appear to be about three types of dried chiles available in the markets, none of which I've ever seen in Hispanic and Latino markets in Atlanta. On an episode of The Restaurant--which I don't like as much as the first season, for the record--one couple actually served Doritos and green bean and carrot "burritos" to Mexicans. They had no clue why the Mexicans were insulted, and claimed that they couldn't make Mexican food because they didn't have a working oven. Right.

Leaving aside the obvious rant, today I found two sources for dried chiles, posole, masa harina, jamaica, tomatillos, and all the other wonderful things that I need to make actual Mexican food. Now I just need to temper my enthusiasm with some sort of budget, lest I spend my first paycheck on dried chiles.

Oh yeah, one other thing: after obsessing about it for days with no particular cause, I spotted Malabar Spinach at the Carribean stall in the market today. Coventry may not provide all the opportunities that Atlanta does, but the daily surprises are nice.

Thank You, Grandma

When I was a kid, my little brother and I spent at least one evening a week with my mom's parents. Grandma grew up in the tobacco-farming (and last I heard, Nissan-manufacturing) mountains of east Tennessee, and was born smack-dab in the middle of the Great Depression. Theirs was not a rich family, despite the rumoured ownership of a Stradivarius violin--which perished in a fire.

As kids, one of our favorite dinners and Grandma and Papa's was creamed dried beef, known charmingly in the army as "shit on a shingle." Crispy toast, milky gravy, salty dried beef--cut up with scissors, natch--and not a vegetable in sight, it was easy food for kids to love. And last I checked, it cost about 50 cents a serving. I haven't had it in years.

I come to this because tonight I attempted Potted Hough. The British are big on potted proteins as a way of preservation. From what I can gather, they are finely chopped meats refrigerated either in a rich stock or butter (in the case of crab and shrimp.) They're usually served cold, but occasionally warmed and served on toast. After riding 8.5 miles today (see the other blog), I was not in the mood to wait until the paltry amount of stock I had jelled, and wasn't convinced that Honey would be in the mood for cold meat jelly after a day spent out in the brisk wind.

Tasting the Hough (Scottish for beef shin, apparently), I felt that I understand why this delicacy had stayed for the most part in Scotland. Highly spiced beef reminds me of medieval recipes involving eight or nine different warm spices, and a dearth of salt or acid. A cook never wants to disappoint, however, and I'm no different. After such a long day, I felt we deserved something nice. So what to do to this tepid beef to make it delicious?

And here the inspiration of Peggy Belcher's thrift food struck me: a slab of toast would save the beef from being a pile of mush on a plate, and soak up the admittedly rich beef broth. I even got a compliment from Honey.

So thank you, grandma, for teaching me about the food of thrift, and how to make something special out of something that most people would ignore.

Things I'm not in the mood to do:

Work on another draft of the menu.

Start dinner.

Clean.

Write emails to chef, former coworkers, and family.
Call the butcher to secure venison mince.

Make gnocchi.

Convince English pubgoers to eat gnocchi, ragu and gremolata.

Correct the seasoning on my pumpkin soup.

Find something to do with a litre of aioli.

Check my bank balance.

Order a new steel, four six pans and a two-thirds pan from Nisbets.

Shower.

Clear my reader.

Go to my second shift tonight.


Things I'm in the mood to do:

Sit.

Eat Crisps.

Watch television.

Make unproductive lists.

I didn't know that it was possible to drool and cry at the same time.

And then I saw this.



Gorgeous, isn't she? I don't know how it'll happen, but I intend to get to The Pit at the earliest possible opportunity.

The photo is off Jason Perlow's blog, Off the Broiler. If you're in the mood for serious barbecue porn, I'd recommend checking it out.


I had my own post, about my lunch, ready to go, but I think I'll wait a day out of deference to the 'cue.

Reading the New York Times in England

We finally got our internet at the flat, so I've been trying to catch up with my reader. This story in the NYT is a good example of the singlemindedness that occasionally infects the people involved in local food movements.


We're optimists, there's no disputing that, and much of the experience of buying local food involves exciting discoveries: heirloom vegetables, unique produce or breeds that you can't find elsewhere--see ramps in the South--items that haven't been bought, and may not have been cultivated for decades, and new foods that some passionate soul has just dreamed up are all part of the experience of eating locally. We just can't understand why anyone wouldn't want these amazing products, or would accept homogenized industrial products instead of something with a funky flavor and an interesting backstory. And of course there's the old chestnut that if we want to make these foods that we love more available, more affordable and more attractive, we must do everything we can to support the people already producing them.


But professionals are not optimists, and neither are passionate, informed amateurs. The flours discussed in the NYT story may be exciting, delicious and the results of admirable community collaboration, but that doesn't make them commercially viable in a wide range of baked goods. I expect that there are many small-scale heirloom millers who read or were interviewed for this story who've stated that Americans just need to stop expecting these amazing products to make Wonderbread.


That's where optimism and infatuation with a unique, exciting food turns into singlemindedness, and singlemindedness is dangerous. Not for the predictable reasons; I don't care if local farmers resemble street-preachers, or get perhaps frighteningly enthusiastic about their products. I expect it. Their job is to sell what they make, and enthusiasm helps.


By insisting that these flours be used for yeast and starter-risen breads, or even for the usual quickbreads, one ignores some really interesting possibilities. What, these farmers, millers and bakers should ask, were these flours used for the last time that they were grown? Tracking down old cookbooks and recipes is a fulfilling pursuit, and by using the recipes to market the flour (and perhaps to produce value-added products themselves), the flour will be more attractive a purchase than something that tastes nice, but might make your loaf fall.


Another possible use for these flours that I see ignored is in dishes similar to arepas, porridges, and farro. Dishes that use wheat as a starch but not for a baked product are delicious and would surely show off the wheat's unique flavors and stoneground texture better than a grainy slice of what should have been sourdough.


The comparison in the article is made between heirloom flours and small-scale cheeses, and the implication is that the variability of these flours should be enjoyed, not a drawback. But cheese is used differently; a different aged cow's milk cheese on a cheese plate won't do any harm to the plate overall, unless it's rancid. Even when cooking, the chemistry involved in cooking with cheese often allows for a little variability, and the practiced cook can substitute one similar cheese for another with little worry that the sauce will break or that the dish won't taste right.


Baking is far more precise, but farmers, millers and bakers are not without options when it comes to marketing and using these flours in recipes that they're already familiar with. Just as the large flour companies test for gluten content (and other factors), so can artisanal producers test their own flour. If they don't want to adulterate their product--and they won't--by blending it with another wheat's flour, then they don't have to; just label the flour with the results of the test, and note which kinds or brands of flour are most similar to the flour they're selling at the moment. No one will then find themselves making a cake with a high-gluten flour or trying to re-create a chewy baguette with milled soft wheat. Customer satisfaction improves, customers come back for more, and lo and behold, heirloom flour becomes one more viable business model in the local food stable.


And darn it, now I really want to make some bread.

What I'm Eating:

Y Fenni cheese: I got this at the Polish deli because it said "cheddar" in the description and was cheap. As the lady behind the counter lifted it, I saw what it was. It's made with whole-grain mustard and brown ale, and makes one hell of a grilled cheese sandwich. I think I'm going to make a gratin of potatoes with it for dinner.

Spring cabbage: Now summer cabbage. This is the closest that I can find to collard greens. When I'm feeling homesick (and industrious)I make my collards recipe: garlic, onions and chile flakes get sauteed, then made into stock with "smoked gammon joint"-- British for smoked ham hocks, but they're freakin' huge-- and British dry cider. Add the greens and braise and you've got the most proper Southern greens you can imagine.

Salsiccia Piccante and an unnamed Pecorino: Honey and I went to the Leamington Spa food festival on Sunday, and since Honey's favorite dessert is charcuterie and cheese, we picked up a big piece of salsiccia and a pecorino that I've never had before. Unfortunately, there are more pecorinos than there have been Italian governments, and I was remiss in writing down the name. We had a very Spanish dinner that night of salumi, cheese, and wine, with some gazpacho from the soupery. Mine's better, but it was a nice easy dinner.

Fried noodles with crispy belly pork and ginger and green onions: I suck at ordering. My instincts are good, but servers are never fast enough to keep me from second-guessing myself and ordering the most esoteric thing on the menu. Thus I have gotten mackerel when I should have ordered pork, tried to eat flat noodles in a broth with chopsticks, and all sorts of other nonsense. But after multiple visits to our local noodle bar, I was resolved. I would get the belly pork. I would order it with fried, not soup noodles, and I would not fuck it up with some crazy sauce. I stuck to my resolution and the result was the realization of a culinary dream.

What I'm Reading:

Simple Chinese Cooking: Honey saw a wok at IKEA for three pounds and his eyes lit up, so after a week of improvised noodle dishes (good for leftovers at the worst, awesome at best)I checked out this book. We made sweet and sour pork as a kind of special night in, and the Mongolian beef doesn't suck at all. Oh and there's a deep-fried egg recipe that rivals Theatre of the meat for it's entertainment value. Some of the recipes are a little less than traditional--the sweet and sour sauce uses chopped and sliced veg instead of pureeing the whole thing, but I've never minded the difference.

Writing at the Kitchen Table: I had to turn in French Country Cooking, and when I found this biography of Elizabeth David, I got all excited. Unfortunately, like so many good writers, the personality that comes through her books seems superior to the personality she actually had. She seems to have led an interesting life, born out of a wealthy family that could support her traveling, and her hatred of the traditional obligations of said wealth. But hey, maybe it gets better.

The River Cottage Meat Book: Another one that I promised to just go ahead and buy, but it's seeing a lot more use than the Taste of Britain, which is interesting if one has the context to use it, and poorly indexed. I wish there were more butchery in it, but it includes what looks a lot like a recipe for the belly pork mentioned about. As well as a few other tempting ones.

And today I'm checking out The Pauper's Cookbook, and Prue Leith's Cookery School. We'll see how they treat me.

Local Find: The Farmers Market!

According to a website that has been consistently out-of-date, there was a farmers market last Thursday at Spon Street. I awoke hopeful, but dubious. Spon Street is very pretty, where they relocated all of Coventry’s remaining medieval buildings after the severe bombing during World War II. It’s now home to a few fine-dining restaurants and generally working-class pubs with convenient access to the nearby clubbing district. I haven’t seen much of it during the day, but it doesn’t get much foot traffic. Sure enough, when I showed up at 9:30, I found no farmers market.

Fortunately I’d been informed that there was a weekly “French market” in Kenilworth, and as the day looked pretty, and Kenilworth is always scenic, decided to go check it out. But if there had been a market, surely it hadn’t just disappeared, right? Any smart organization would have at least tried a better location. So I headed for the upper precinct. It may be a bit of a detour, but the window shopping is nice.


I got just past the library, almost to the fountain in the middle, when a glorious sight appeared: Pavilions, tables in front, striped awning fabric behind. I could see tomatoes. And bread! There was a farmer’s market after all! Of course I’d forgotten my camera, and I’ve been meaning to introduce more photojournalism to this little blog. So I turned around and hot-footed it to the flat, and made it back, camera in hand.
There was plenty of good stuff: crates and crates of eggs: chicken and duck, produce covering the ubiquitous spring onions, cauliflower, spring cabbage, tomatoes, strawberries, red currants and raspberries, sausages, smoked and cured meats from Tamworth pigs, lamb, pork and beef, artisan beers, ciders, fruit wines and cordials, bread, and the sign that excited me the most: cheese.


Sure, we had cheese at home. But it wasn’t farm-made. I got some traditional Warwickshire Truckley, smoked. It’s great, even if the smoke is unnecessary: pungent and chalky, just a touch flaky. I’m only sad that I didn’t buy the walnut bread to go with it.
I also got some spring cabbage, the closest-looking thing to collards. Hopefully since they’re both Brassicas, the flavour will be similar. And a giant smoked ham hock. I’m going somewhere with this, in case you haven’t picked up on it, and I’m trying to convince myself that it’s not worth going back for some of that artisan beer or cider. And next time, I’m trying the blue cheese.
I picked up a flier too, which seeks to convince the customer of the special nature of the products: all are produced within 30 miles, unless they’re a value-added product like honey, cider, bread or sausage: then the producers can come from up to 50 miles away. A producer (farmer, butcher, cider-maker or brewer) has to staff the booth to answer customers’ questions.
I don’t often write about the actual argument for local food: Honey and I debate it regularly, and it comes down to finding value in products that are grown or made near to you, in being able to talk to a farmer about his or her practices and products, and in believing that the symbolic statement of buying at a market like this outweighs the economic statement of buying from a chain supermarket.
I obviously find value in these points. An item’s place of production affects its flavour. It’s why I’ve bought Spanish olive oil for years, why I like South American wines, and why, after years of buying local Southern produce, I got really interested in Southern food.
Now that I’m somewhere unfamiliar, I seek to understand it through the food. I think that if I eat enough of these emulsified sausages, grassy onions, soft breads and sharp cheeses, I’ll come to understand what makes West Midlanders feel comforted and at home, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll come to have the same sentiments.

BOOKS

All of mine (save The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook) are on the slow boat to England, along with everything else that I though I could go six weeks without. And I'm still unemployed. So what's a cook to do?

Why, hit the library of course. I have to limit what I check out, as I have a near-pathological problem with turning in books on time, but my new routine is to come in, grab three books, open up the laptop and take notes. Unfortunately, the library has wireless, and I have no discipline. So while I've been trying to get my reader to below 1000 stories, my three books have mostly sat unread.

But I did allow myself to check out Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking yesterday, and it lives up to its reputation. It even made me, the avid fish-avoider, walk to the market to see what comes out of these cold waters. The answer: after 2:30 on a Thursday nothing. The market closes early.

Today I'm sharing my little table with: Le Cordon Bleu's Complete Cooking Techniques, The Taste of Britain, and Complete Italian Cookery Course by Ursula Ferigno.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the selection at the Coventry library. Last week I got to cozy up to The River Cottage Meat Book, and I keep finding slim little surprises, like French Country Cooking, tucked away between the tomes that everyone wants (Larousse Gastronomique, I'm looking at you here).

But this is an apprentice cook's blog, and when an apprentice cook is unemployed, I feel that it's only seemly to keep up the learnin'. Here's why I chose to invite these books to my table today, and what I'm learning from them:

LCB Complete Cooking Techniques: I need to buy a technique book, really I do. I've been told somewhere close to a thousand times, and I know that it's true, but these things tend to be huge and expensive, and there were always other things (food) that my meager salary went toward. Now that there's no salary, it's a lot harder to justify spending 30 quid on a technique book. But I only worked my way up to fry station at Woodfire, and I've got to get comfortable with cooking fish and meat at the restaurant level. So today I'm refreshing my memory on how to clean and fillet fish and how to cook meat and fish. I like this book. It's not huge, it's got lots of good information, and it 17 pounds instead of 30, though it takes a typically British indifferent attitude to meat temperatures, and don't ask about fish. I should really buy one of these...

The Taste of Britain: I should not be reading this today. I already looked at it last week. But it's SO GOOD. There's professional organizations, resources for cheese, local specialties, all the sorts of things that make cooking locally exciting. I have limited time, but darnit, I want to read this sucker cover to cover. And it's beautiful too, complete with the embossed hardcover and ribbon to mark one's place. Unfortunately, it's expensive, so here it stays. Maybe I'll buy it for myself for Christmas.

Complete Italian Cookery Course: I have an interview at an Italian restaurant tonight, so I'm trying to bone up on my Italian cooking. And I'm surprised by what I remember: how to make risotto and gnocchi, pizza dough, some basic pasta sauces. I've got my fingers crossed and have found myself muttering to the universe all day: "Please don't let this place suck." This book, for practical reasons, may come home with me.

And damnit, now I'm hungry.