Super Simple Orange Basil Chicken

I had a recipe, but then I didn't really use it. This is what I recommend doing should you try it.

2 chicken breasts

1 TB Brown Sugar

Zest and juice of 1 orange

1/3 cup white wine

4 garlic cloves finely chopped

4 or 5 good sized leaves of Fresh basil roughly chopped (a tsp would probably be fine if your using dried)

2 TB Olive oil

1 cup water

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Add the chicken* and allow to marinade for at least a couple of hours. My dad has perfected a marinading technique that I recommend using. Put the marinade and the chicken in a large freezer bag, then put the bag in a sink full of water forcing most of the air out, then seal the bag. It does a very good job of covering the chicken.

When ready to cook, strain the marinade into a pan and place the chicken on a well oiled pan suitable for baking. Use some of the basil/zest pulp left behind to add color to the chicken leaving some for the leftover marinade.

Bake the chicken at 375 for approx. 30 minutes. The oven in my house sucks so it's hard to say precisely how long it'll take. Just remember chicken is to be cooked to 165 degrees.

Reduce the leftover marinade by at least half and then thicken with a slurry (corn starch and water) to use as a sauce.

I served the chicken over a bed of white rice with steamed veg and bread. It turned out well, but I think it could be better.

*I suggest pounding the chicken breasts

Pastitsio

keep in mind this is a banquet sized recipe

Elbow macaroni - 3 pounds

Ground beef - 3 pounds

Zucchini (cut into crescents) - 5 pounds

Squash (cut into crescents) - 5 pounds

Onion (chopped) - 3 Large white

Minced Garlic - 3 tablespoons

Tomato Sauce - 50 ounces

Salt - 2 Tbsp & 3/4 tsp

Ground cinnamon - 1 Tbsp & 1/4 tsp

Ground nutmeg - 1 3/4 tsp

Eggs (lightly beaten) - 6

Grated Parmesan cheese - 2 pounds

Sauce:

Butter 3 1/3 pounds

flour 1 1/3 pounds

ground cinnamon 1 3/4 tsp

milk 10 cups

eggs (lightly beaten) 7

grated parmesan cheese 1 1/2 cups

Cook macaroni

In a large skillet, cook beef, onion and garlic over a medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in tomato sauce and seasoning.

Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a skillet, cook zucchini and squash

In a large bowl, combine macaroni, egg and parmesan cheese: set aside.

For suace, in a large sauce pan, melt butter; stir in flour and cinnamon until smooth. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook and stir for two minutes ot until slightly thickened.

Remove from heat

Stir in a small amount of hot mixture into eggs, return all to pan stirring constantly. Stir in cheese.

In a greased 3-qt (this is key for any of you home cooks, I doubt you want to use a 3 qt baking dish - the recipe I have from school features no other indication of size) spread half the macaroni mixture. Top with beef mixture, zucchini, squash and remaining macaroni mixture. Pour sauce over top.

Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until bubbly and heated through. let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Also, keep in mind, I did not get to be a part of the preparation of this dish. Therefore, I have no tips or tricks, and I don't know of any tweaks* that might exist, nor do I know exactly how much this recipe makes (the 3 quart baking dish is a pretty good indicator though). However, I do know that this is an amazing dish and I would think - for my vegetarian friends - easily adaptable.

*I say this because nearly every recipe I have used at work has been altered at least once, but never updated to include such tweaks. Something I have learned to be careful of.

Spring Time in Greece

Tonight was the Spring Time in Greece dinner at OCC. I was a part of the kitchen staff. It was fun, but not at all like I expected.

I didn't get to cook anything! The Banquets & Buffets class prepped and cooked everything. Boo.

All everyone else got to do was some prep work and then plate the five courses for ~180 people. It was still cool, since all the food was amazing looking, and delicious. I wish I had brought a camera as other people did, so i could show you just how awesome everything looked. I might be able to get a hold of some to show you.

On to the menu:

Employee Meal:

Greek Salad with Rosemary Pita Chips - Standard fare. The dressing was quite good.

Greek Chicken Kabobs with yougart - also very good, though a lot of the chicken was under cooked and served anyway. Oops. I didn't have any part of that.

Spanikopita - delicious spinach pie.

Gyros with Tzatziki - the tzatziki was good, but I'm not a huge gryo fan. Which is strange, since I adore lamb.

Pastitsio - This was my favorite. Recipe to follow.

And for dessert, Baklava - wonderful.

That's just what we got to eat for dinner, though when the actual dinner was being served there were a lot of leftovers and extras that we devoured throughout the night.

Dinner Menu:

Hors D'oevres:

Tzatziki and Tabouli on pita chips - my favorite

Spanikopita

Stuffed Grape Leaves - my second favorite

Octopus Salad - regretfully I was not able to try this, but it was a huge hit.

Tyropitakia - It's like quiche with feta cheese and egg with a phyllo crust. Really good.

and of course, Saganaki - Flaming cheese. OPA!

Soup:

Kotosoupa Avgolemono - Chicken and lemon rice. Unfortunately I did not get to try this, but it looked so so good. It was garnished with lemon zest, capers, chive oil, and scallion.

Salad:

Greek salad with baby beets and a warm goat cheese cake. The goat cheese cake was amazing. It was sweet with a graham cracker crust and savory with the goat cheese. There was some serious umami going on there. The extras did not last long.

Fish:

Barramundi with Lemon and Garlic served over a warm orzo pasta with artichokes and tomatoes with a lemon caper butter sauce and a ramekin of pastitsio. This was also very good. It's an australian sea bass, extremely mild. The pasta and sauce were fantastic.

Main Course:

Greek Trio of grilled Lamb chops, chicken stuffed with olives and feta, a lamb sausage presented with a stuffed grape tomato (which was not a part of the original menu so I do not know what went into it other than ground beef, I can tell you it was spicy and very good) and baby green beans. There was nothing about this dish that was not super fantastic. Everything was delicious.

Dessert:

Vanilla ice cream with strawberries and a strawberry sauce toped with a rich chocolate curl and what appeared to be a white chocolate/chocolate praline "cigarette". It was also served with a chocolate ouzo sorbet. Ultra decadent and equally delicious, especially the chocolate ouzo sorbet.

The whole evening was fantastic, I just which I could have cooked something. I post the recipes for the pastitsio soon.

Just what I needed

Today at work was interesting in a good and bad way.

My morning sucked, like totally blew chunks really hard everywhere. Aggravating co-worker and tedious/monotonous/completely disinteresting tasks.

Boring has been the theme of most of my days at the Palace of late. I like my job, but the boring monotony is really getting under my skin. I want something more active. I used to learn something new every time I walked into work, but lately I haven't done anything new or exciting in quite some time. No learning experiences, no adventures to write home about.

But today ended on a high note, thankfully. It was the sort of burst I needed to revitalize my desire to work at the Palace. I got to work with my bosses boss. The executive sous chef to be more accurate, Chef Jeff. He kept calling me General Patton, I guess it's a play on my last name. I liked it though.

Tomorrow night is the employee of the year recognition dinner and for it they are having braised short ribs=yummy. I had the pleasure of preparing the short ribs for their two hour hot bath. I seared four sheet trays worth of short ribs in a large tilt skillet with mireapoix (that's a 1:1:2 ratio of carrots, celery, and onion), garlic, bay leaves, and thyme. Then I added tomato paste and deglazed with merlot and beef stock. Smelled fantastic.

It was the perfect ending, I got to something new and exciting with great product (not to mention I finally got a great hot cooking experience) and Chef Jeff taught me quite a few things about braising. Tis good.

I only wish I could taste those short ribs once their done.

I love scallops

Yet another notch on the culinary tour of things I used to hate or evade.

With a classically french herb butter it was superbly delicious.

Roasted Vegetable and Wine Sauce

A delightful but complicated sauce. Very complex and rich. I loved it.

The leftover stock has been used in such things as the monkfish from the previous post.

Trying New Things

It's fun, especially when you begin to understand how enlightening it feels to open up your palate to things once forbidden.

I'm still developing my taste for fish and shellfish, but tonight my dad made monkfish.

Since coming into my own palate-wise I have always wanted to try this poor man's lobster. Ugly though it may be, it tastes divine.

It was barded with bacon and seasoned with oregano salt and pepper. He also used a vegetable stock (I'll post the recipe, it was mighty tasty. We used it on a roast the next day) I had made for a Thanksgiving dish that we had extra of and froze. The monkfish was amazing, I'm a believer for sure.

The next experiment is scallops, never had one. Never wanted to have one. I'm dying to try one.

The Semester's End

Well I have completely the first semester of culinary classes meaning that number of updates here might decline.

I got a low B on my knife skills practical in Intro which has me super bummed out. I'm not too nervous about the final grade. Not the case with meat cutting. We'll see I guess.

Slaughterhouse

Not for idealistic vegetarians or the faint of heart.

* * * * *

Today was the last day of meat cutting. We had an exam and we learned how to breakdown a lamb carcass. I'll go into that later, it was fun.

We also watched a slaughterhouse instructional video. Wowzers

I'm going to go into great detail describing this, be forewarned.

There is a very elaborate inspection process before anything even happens. A USDA inspector has to approve of the facilities and then looks at the animal to be slaughtered. He looks at the face, the legs, the hindquarters searching for any abnormalities. If something seems wrong he can grade it as U.S. Suspect which require further veterinarian inspection or U.S. Condemned

The next step is stunning the animal, with a captive bolt pistol. It's a .22 caliber pistol that shoot a small rod out of the barrel stunning the animal. Ever see No Country For Old Men? It's a small version of that essentially. While the animal is unconscious it is transported to the slaughterhouse, literally rolled down a chute into a holding pen. The unconscious animal is then strung up and bled out. They keep the animal alive for bleeding so that the heart will pump the blood out of the carcass, more efficiently draining the carcass. Once it's thoroughly bled out the head is skinned then removed. The tongue is inspected along with the lymph glands in the throat.

Once the head is removed they tied the hole shut with a heavy string to prevent the rest of the carcass from being contaminated while it is skinned. Once the hide is removed the visceration process begins. The animal is strung up on spreaders and is split open down the belly. Starting from top to bottom the major organs are allowed to roll out of the carcass into a cart. The intestines, the stomach, lungs, heart etc. gently roll out. The reproductive organs are removed and the kidneys are exposed for inspection.

Finally with a giant saw the entire animal is split into two (we were watching a cattle slaughter, smaller animals would not be sawed in half) and cleaned for storage.

It was an eye opening video. And apparently the Eastern Market Wolverine Packing House in detroit is one of the better packing houses in the midwest. It is highly recommended that given the opportunity, I ought to pay them visit. Says Chef Doug. Very enlightening he says. I'm interested but I don't know if my nostrils and stomach are.

_____________________________________________

No more slaughter talk. It's lamb time.

Chef Doug broke down an entire lamb into it's primal cuts. But we were only to be concerned about the rack. The rack is the 8 rib bones that start between the 4th and 5th rib and end between the 12th and 13th (Sometimes the animal will have 14 ribs but that's not very common). We had to clean the fat and french the racks. Simply put we pealed the meat away to expose the rib bones all the way down to the tail meat. The tail is a small portion of meat immediately above the eye loin, the eye loin and tail make up the rack chop. Delicious by the way.

With the rest of the demo animal that Chef Dog broke down we took the primals and trimmed their fat and prepped them for either stewing or grinding. I had the pleasure of trimming the foreshank and breast primal as well as the neck. It was rather enjoyable, since it was being used as stew or grind you couldn't really screw it up. Just trim the fat and cut into smaller pieces.

Today made me hungry for lamb, I've had rack chops before but apparently the braised shank is to die for.

Thursday is my last day for intro. I doubt it will be this exciting.

When things don't always go as planned

you improvise.

Sometimes that doesn't even work.

This Baked Penne with Sausage for instance. I didn't like the recipe but that's because I like be hands on. I don't like the idea of using three canned tomato products to make a sauce. But I understand the utility of something cheap and easy so I gave it a shot.

But what I liked least about this recipe is it's portions. With such a large pan, 12 oz of pasta and a pound of sausage is really paltry. I was cutting the recipe in half (to feed three people), but I modified a little bit.

First, and foremost, pepper. Needs pepper.

I didn't like how much garlic was in the can of diced tomatoes and garlic so I minced three medium sized cloves. 

3/4 of a pound of sausage. Ground sausage, don't use linked. If you can't find ground sausage then use the links and peel away the casings.

I went for the whole cup of onions.

I also used the whole 12 oz box of pasta. 

Baked in an 8x8 pan.

It turned out to only be mediocre. The problem was in the pasta. The sauce itself was very tasty but the volume of pasta detracted from it, making the sauce very thin and bland. Should have cut it in half. However with that in mind, I would keep the the 3/4 pounds of sausage and all the other ingredients. You'll have a significantly smaller dish. I made enough for three plus leftovers for lunch - probably six servings.

Not everything works out. It also lacked texture. Larger dice for the tomatoes, add mushrooms (if you like that sort of thing), small dice bell peppers (red and yellow for their color and flavor), and add more whole garlic cloves (Smash 'em or cut them in half length wise). Things of that nature.

Concessions

I don't mean hot dogs and popcorn, I'm talking about the question.

When is the diner's wishes more important the intentions of the chef?

Dishes do not just appear magically out of tears in the fabric of space, they are often toiled over with great care and anxiety to reach the goals of the creator. Then it becomes something very important to that chef so to order it in his or her restaurant and ask that it not have mushrooms can have an big impact.

The chef puts mushrooms in that dish (I'm using mushrooms as an example because I typically will not eat mushrooms and if I order something with them, I do ask for them to be omitted) because he feels it is an integral part of that dish. To omit them alters the delicate balance of flavors and thus cheapening the dish.

Right?

Or is only the customer that is relevant? You can't make money if the customers aren't happy enough to pay or come back (or in the first place). So wouldn't it then be more important to serve the customer as the customer sees fit?

It's a fantastic dilemma. A chef is an artist through and through. If you told Van Gogh that starry night has too many stars, or that Beethoven's fifth symphony could use less intensity you would be insulting these masters of their craft. Suggesting you know how to do their craft better than they is a slap in the face. Such is the same with a chef and his dish. 

This is why I like the growing popularity of degustation (tasting) menus. Not to be confused with small plates or tapas*, a degustation menu can be as many courses as the chef is willing to prepare. It puts you, the diner, at the will of the chef. He can prepare whatever he feels like will be his strongest dishes in a couple of bites for each course. You submit to the food and the chef. If I am ever fortunate enough to go to places like Thomas Keller's The French Laundry or Per Se, or El Bulli, Charlie Trotter's in Chicago I would have no hesitation in requesting a degustation menu. Regardless of my aversion of seafood and mushrooms, whoever the chef in the kitchen may be they will prepare for me their absolute best. Degustation menus allow a chef to put his best foot forward in five course (or however many).

Hell, I would even go to Le Bernadin in New York and ask for a degustation menu. I would eat anything Eric Ripert, The Prince of Seafood, or his staff might prepare for me. Everything can be delicious if it's made right. Right?

I also admire the idea that condiments are not allowed. You might see this in high end sushi. It is considered a slap in the chef's face to season your sushi after it has been served. The chef strives to reach something as close to perfection as he yet knows and you are going to sit there and add soy sauce? How dare you!

I like that idea a lot.

But is all this just too dramatic. Yes what a chef creates is deeply personal, but isn't also the goal of the chef to please his diners? Chefs are very much a part of the pleasure business, and I know I am not alone in this sentiment. It's no coincidence the Puritans forbade taking in too much enjoyment a the dinner table. So then shouldn't the chef want for every person to eat at his restaurant to have whatever their heart's desire? Even if that means omitting the mushrooms of your signature dish or making sure you have a slue of condiments at the ready on each table?

My dad doesn't like tomatoes that much. He can't stand chunks, so whenever he makes something with a tomato sauce he makes sure to puree it so there aren't any chunks. This fundamentally alters the texture of a dish. This kind of concession would probably offend me in my hypothetical high end award winning restaurant. But would I do it anyway? I don't like mushrooms and that's exactly the same type of thing.

I like to think about Chef Marco Pierre White when pondering this. Notorious for tossing people out of his restaurant, he once charged a diner 25 pounds for a plate of hand made potato chips because the customer insisted on a side of potato chips when none was offered or available.

*small plates are not tasting menus because they are whole entrees reduced in size primarily for aesthetics and cost though are also currently quite trendy. Tapas is different still, tapas are just snacks served concurrently with drinks like at bars before dinner. This makes them more like appetizers than small plates or degustation menus.

I have one thing in common with Wylie Dufresne

Breakfast is my favorite meal. I love tempting fate with pancakes. My usual deviations include some manner of adding cinnamon, ground cloves, vanilla, and nutmeg. Lately, I have also introduced almond extract (or Amaretto if I am feeling especially indulgent, although amaretto changes the gelatinous nature of the batter, be forewarned). This morning I went way off the reservation.

The batter itself included cinnamon BUT, oh but, I messed with the liquids. I replaced a quarter of the milk I would have used with heavy whipping cream. On the side, I took some apple and diced it up (small to medium dice, I went somewhere in between). Brushed it with butter and a gave it a super quick saute. Just enough heat to get that butter to brown. Then I sprinkled more cinnamon on the apples. Took it off the heat and poured the pancake batter on the flat top. That's when I distributed the apples.

It didn't really work out. I have some details to tweak. The apple didn't cook enough - should saute it longer. Things like that. The batter itself wasn't thick enough to support apple chunks. Anyway the whole thing needs work. 

The point of this post is to encourage experimentalism. Where would we be with out it?

The Greatest Chef in the World

Ferran Adria is god

El Bulli is Mecca. It is located in Roses on Coasta Bravas in the Catalan region of Spain.

Ferran Adria does not have does not have a formal training. He started as a dishwasher when he was 18 (remember this) in some hotel. The chef de cuisine took him under his wing until he turned 19 when he was drafted into the military and became a cook. At age 22, and this is the most important part - four years into his culinary career - he gets a job at El Bulli...

18 months later he became the head chef.

Five and a half years in the industry and he's already the head chef of a restaurant with one michelin star. Adria would earn the following two more over the next fifteen or so years.

Wowzers!

in 2005 El Bulli was ranked 2 in the Restaurant Top Fifty (Restaurant being the magazine and Top Fifty being out of the entire world). Since 2006 El Bulli has been at number 1.

On top of El Bulli, Chef-God Adria has El Bulli Taller which is a studio slash laboratory. El Bulli closes for six months out of the year and his research team go to Taller and like mad scientists create wonderfully unique dishes and solve culinary problems. Not to be confused with molecular gastronomy.

He has released volumes of "cook books" chronicling everything from 1984 to 2005. I want them all. I also want to read A Day at El Bulli which details a 24 hour experience at El Bulli.

You probably won't be able to eat at El Bulli this year. The amount of reservation requests for the 2009 season has already far exceeded their capacity. Best Restaurant in the world, what are gonna do.

p.s. I'd learn Castilian for the sole purpose of being able to talk to him

An Orgy of Vegetables

Today was veggie day in Intro.

One thing I need to do first is explain the dynamic of the class. It's an introductory class of 12. Half of the class is over forty and they all have no experience. Half of what remains (that's 3 for those not paying attention) have some culinary experience. One of them has only just started - i.e. less experience than myself. So that leaves Jason and I. Jason is 19 and has 6 years experience. I'm 23 and have 5 months.

That being said, the class was divided into four groups. Today there were only eleven of us. So Chef Sue decided to pair the two with the most experience and then evenly divide the rest of the class. She then tacked on two extra dishes for us to prepare. Which I actually was excited about, I read between the lines and felt good about it.

So the assignment in general terms was to bread a veg, saute or blanch & shock three different veg, roast a squash, roast a red pepper, and saute a leafy green.

Team 4-Ever Awesome To The Max (that was me and Jason) was responsible for B/S haricot vert (french green beans, longer and skinnier than green beans), sauteing shitake and oyster* mushrooms, sauteing patty pan (small squash, kind of flavorless), sauteing turnip leaves* and swiss chard, roasted butternut squash, and 2 roasted peppers

*extra dishes tacked on.

I rocked out the leafy greens. Chiffonading the hell out of those leaves, leaving the stems out, small dicing some bacon for rendering(you could just as easily use butter), and mincing up some shallots. I sautéed those suckers and kept them warm, all the while Jason is rocking the mushrooms and patty pan. We both kept our eyes on our roasted butternut (took forever, by the way) and while he finished up his sauteing I got our haricot vert set to blanch. The salted water was boiling (1 tbsp salt for ever quart of water is a good reference) and I cleaned the beans and got the ice bath set for some shock action. By the time I got that all set up jason was done so he took over the haricot vert and I roasted my pepper. That was done, so I checked on our roast squash, not even close to being done. That was fine because someone had to watch the haricot vert. Jason did that, while I cleaned up our station as much as I could. It was just about time for service when the haricot vert "finished" and our squash had finally gotten soft enough. I pull that out of the oven and we tag team the squash to scoop it out. Plate the beans and blamo right before service all of our dishes were out and still steaming.

I was superbly happy with how well we did - despite the hardly cooked haricot vert (not my fault). Every other team had an extra member and two less dishes to prepare and we still finished before two of them. Plus, oh there is a plus, the team that finished first DID NOT reheat for service, so all of their dishes were cold. Team 4-Ever Awesome To The Max deliberately timed everything to hopefully be finished at the time of service (12:30). The only thing we needed to reheat was the leafy greens. Also the haricot vert was not fully cooked. I was pleased, particularly since my 5 months in a commercial kitchen has been almost exclusively cold foods - I have not done much hot food cooking.

Despite the lack of proteins at lunch, it was a fun day. Next week we are going on a field trip to a local kitchen. Might be interesting if we go some place cool.

Fame in the Kitchen

First and foremost I think there are two kinds of celebrity chefs. Those who are famous because of TV and those who are famous because of their kitchen. I tend to dislike celebrity chefs who have become famous entirely due to the former. Whereas I tend to like very much those chefs who are famous because of their kitchens.

I'm bringing this up today because Gordon Ramsay was on Conan last night and I also saw an advertisement for a new cooking reality show called the Chopping Block - hosted by Chef Marco Pierre White. One chef I like, and one I don't.

I hate Gordon Ramsay, I won't even called him chef. He is a douche bag on the highest level.

I have incredible admiration for Marco Pierre White. He was an innovator, a rebel, and freaking genius.

And Gordon Ramsay would have had a much harder time getting where he is if not for having worked under Chef White. Which is the primary reason for my disdain of Ramsay.

Forget about his attitude or his language. I don't care. Chef White was often called a devil in the kitchen, attitude like that can almost be seen as necessary in a fast paced kitchen environment with high standards. However, when you quit your job at Harvey's (Chef Marco Pierre White's restaurant) citing the chef's bullying and harsh temperament and then turn around and act arguably worse in your own kitchens, that makes you a hypocrite.

By the way, in the book White Heat, Chef White includes a picture of a young Ramsay weeping in his kitchen saying that he didn't make Ramsay cry, it was Ramsay's choice to cry.

When you work at a restaurant, let's call it Chelsea's, and you steal the reservation book and frame it on your former mentor - that makes you a world class douche bag.

I don't care if you have three michelin stars and several very successful restaurants, if you pull a stunt like that you no longer have any validity as a chef. 

Also, who the hell knows Gordon Ramsay for his restaurants? I never did, people only know him because he's had quite a few TV shows and likes to be mean.

Chef Marco Pierre White on the other hand is a legend for his talents not simply his attitude. The youngest (at the time) British chef to receive three michelin stars and did so so dramatically. He was the bad boy, with his long disheveled hair and his boisterous personality. He was a punk and looked like a badass.

But he had the talent to back it all up, he put english cuisine - a somewhat undesirable cuisine - on par with haute cuisine. Working under him, during his prime were Gordon Ramsay and more notably Heston Blumenthal who now owns The Fat Duck (a restaurant that is regularly in contention for best restaurant in europe).

He ultimately returned his michelin stars saying;

"I was being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, so what was it truly worth? I gave Michelin inspectors too much respect and I belittled myself. I had three options: I could be a prisoner of my world and continue to work six days a week, I could live a lie and charge high prices and not be behind the stove, or spend time with my children and reinvent myself."

So with that he retired, sort of. He has stakes in several restaurants including The Yew Tree Inn which is a 17th century english pub. But he also does TV. He was the second host of Britain's Hells Kitchen following Ramsay saying about Ramsay's style; "Gordon did it his way, I'll do it my way. We all have different ways of expresing ourselves. I want my emphasis to be on the food and the kitchens rather than the swearing."

Now he's slated to host the Chopping Block on nbc starting this march. I'll watch. Maybe.

Chef Marco Pierre White is one of my idols, along with Ferran Adria, Thomas Keller, Jose Andres, Anthony Bourdain, and others.

Gordon Ramsay is jackass. I also don't like Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Racheal Ray, and others. Mostly the people on Food Network irritate me, with few exceptions.

Food Porn

To use kitchen terms the pilot that lit the burner of my desire to enter the culinary world is arguably Anthony Bourdain. Watching No Reservations gives you quick but essential lessons in the art and philosophy of food. Last night, instead of traveling to some exotic location he did a special on "Food Porn". Food that looks, sounds, smells, and tastes so indulgently it can't be anything but a deadly sin to consume it.

He met with Jose Andres, a friend of his and molecular gastronomic* genius. Eric Ripert, a three michelin starred chef in New York**, considered the Prince of Seafood. Among others.

The reason I bring this up is that it reminds me of several things I want to talk about - not in this post, but in subsequent posts.

There are chefs out there who are doing unthinkably amazing things with food using ordinary and extraordinary ingredients. The more I learn about them the prouder I get of my chosen profession. And these chefs have (or in some cases of retirement, had) restaurants that are the models for perfection - or at least as close to as so far achieved.

So that said, in future posts I'm going to discuss chefs that I truly admire in the obsessive way that most people admire athletes or celebrities. Their restaurants and other restaurants/locations that I am making it a goal to some day sit down in. Foods that I must try before I can die satisfied. And finally, my own personal food philosophy.

But for now, I want to tell you about what I did in Meat Cutting. It was charcuterie day! We didn't make pates or anything that complicated, but we did make sausage. I semi-successfully made a knockwurst. It wasn't yet smoked, but we did cook a little bit of it up for tasting and it was delicious. 70% pork, 30% veal with paprika, coriander, garlic, white pepper, mace, and allspice. With dextrose, dry non-fat milk, tinted cure mix (sodium or potassium nitrite tinted pink so you don't confuse it with salt), dextrose and ice water to emulsify and cure the sausage.

Sausage making is not easy, not easy at all. But it's fun. I can't wait until I can take Garde Manger II because they apparently do a lot more with charcuterie. I love charcuterie, I can't wait till I can get a crack at a galantine or terrine.

*molecular gastronomy is a pretty controversial cuisine that combines chemistry and cooking at a far more scientific and experimental level than usual. You see a lot of unique flavors being made into foams (salt foam, carrot foam, etc), any way to change the physical properties of ingredients to invent new dishes is the goal. It's controversial because of a few reasons. Nutritional opponents claim the use of chemicals and strange processes endangers the health of consumers. But the strongest opposition seems to come from the blurring of the lines between molecular gastronomy and other kinds of research and scientific development to create new dishes. Many chefs who are identified as practicing molecular gastronomy take quite a bit of offense, for instance Ferran Adria (someone I will talk about extensively in the future) repudiates the term and actually refers to it as a movement and does not acknowledge it as a cuisine. Chefs like him make efforts to disassociate their food and cooking style with molecular gastronomy by actually issuing a joint formal statement. Ferran Adria describes himself as a deconstructivist. I don't know if Jose Andres considers his cooking to be molecular gastronomy. Hence the controversy.

** Eric Ripert owns Le Bernardin in New York. His three michelin stars are significant because it wasn't up until recently that the Michelin Guide included any American markets. In 2006 when he received his stars, he was one of four in NY to be honored as such. So he's pretty much a big deal.

A little about school

I did a similar post about work so I thought that I ought to include school as well. I won't discuss my gen-ed classes they are not important to cooking.

I'm currently taking Introduction to the Culinary Arts. It's pretty easy, especially since all of the practical work we've "learned" are things that I have already learned at work. Basic knife skills, recognizing herbs and spices, how to make a concasse.

-a concasse /con/cah/say/ is the easiest thing to do, but can be wonderfully tasty. Take some tomatoes (romas) and place them in boiling water for 15 seconds then immediately cool them in ice water. Then you can peel and quarter the tomatoes. Give them a nice rough chop, you can medium or small dice if you like (depends on what you're going for texturally). Put them in a pan with some olive oil, salt, pepper, your choice of herb(s) and simmer - how long depends on how much. Perfect for pasta-

But because intro has been so easy thus far there is a little weight on my shoulders. I'm one of three people in the class with culinary experience. We are oft looked upon to know what everyone else should be doing and if they are doing it right. I don't mind, since it makes me look pretty stellar in front of the chef professor. 

Restaurant Meat Cutting is a bit tricky. Prior to the class the only experience I have had is cleaning whole chicken breasts with rib meat. But now I have cleaned whole chickens, veal loins, pork loins, round and flat fish. This week we are doing a little charcuterie - I'm excited - we are going to make sausage. I don't know what kind yet. 

Meat cutting is hard, there is so many things to remember about the primal and sub primal cuts in each animal. It takes a keen eye to recognize some of the parts and a very strong but delicate hand to make the massively precise cuts. 

I devastated my first chicken on the first day. Barely skinned my fish. But I cut some killer chops.

I'm really enjoying it, can't wait to graduate in two years. Then I can't wait to get all certified up in this piece.

Mommy made dinner tonight

My father does all the cooking in the house and has for a very long time. But lately, mommy has returned to cooking.

I should say she's always baked, as long as I can remember she's been a home baker. But now she's branching out into cooking a little more.

Tonight she made a marinated london broil with an herb butter (tarragon, lemon, parsley) that was fantastic. She also made these parmesan pull-apart rolls that were wonderful and broiled mashed potatoes with goat cheese. It was a killer spread. Then, for desert she made a lime cake - it was just a yellow cake (albeit very thick and dense, like pound cake) with lime and a lime glaze. Very refreshing and tasty. 

I wanted to talk about it because london broil embraces a culinary concept that I absolutely adore. Find a way to use undesirable parts in a remarkably delicious way. A london broil uses beef top round, which isn't even a mediocre cut of beef. If you look at the applications for top round you'll see that there are not a lot of seriously good uses. London broil easily tops the list, but aside from that it's only good for stewing or some ancillary topping like fajitas or sandwiches.

But I love the idea that someone found this wonderful use for this cut of beef. Which brings me to charcuterie and offal.

Charcuterie is just an art that ceases to amaze me. Sausages, pates, pate en croutes, terrines, galantines, ballotines, are so cool!

Grind up some meat and fat, puree some of it to add an excellent textural sensation, season, mold it in a vessel or shove into some poultry and bake. At work recently I had a pork terrine made of ground pork and fat back with dried apricots, shallots, garlic, basil, black pepper and parsley. It was awesome. A while back I had a duck terrine with whole gloves of garlic jammed up in there. Superb.

So you may not know the difference between a terrine or galantine. Well:

First an foremost, the forcemeat, a type of meat that has been ground in a specific way, there are basic forcemeats, mousselines, and country style forcemeats. Country style is more coarse than basic and mousselines include egg whites.

A pate is a general term, traditionally is was a forcemeat baked in a savory pastry. Now, a pate usually has no pastry and is baked in a mold which would technically make it a terrine.

A pate en croute is the new name for the traditional pate with a crust.

A galantines are incredibly indulgent and awesome. They are forcemeats of poultry, game or suckling pig wrapped in the skin of its animal and poached in a stock. Ballotines are almost the same thing only they are always served hot whereas galantines are served cold. Also, I think ballotines typically only use deboned poultry.

The reason why I admire chefs who are good at this is because it's an art born out of a desire to not waste so much food. Traditionally, the purpose of doing this was to take all the scraps you were producing on a daily basis and use them up in a easily preserved way. It's artistic utilitarianism at its best. I love it.

Which brings me to offal, something that has seen a bit of a resurgence in popularity. Offal is the nasty bits, literally. Organs like intestines, stomachs, hearts, fries (code for testicles), sweetbreads (lymph glands), and brains. The more and more I get into this career and its lifestyle the more and more I want to try things like sweetbreads and hearts. I don't know that I'm ready for fries or brains.

I love the philosophy behind using everything the animal has to offer. It's part education, part economical, and part creative. And you must admire a chef who's talents allow him to make something like animal testicles desirable.

A little about my job

The Palace of Auburn Hills has an extensive kitchen. Well, kitchens. There is the Main Kitchen - where I work - that houses the "front line", "banquets", "pastries", the not oft used "deli/pantry", "suite kitchen", and where I work specifically "garmo". There are also satellite kitchens that specialize in certain areas of the Palace, like the Ameriprise kitchen services The Ameriprise Club.

The front line almost exclusively serves the restaurant, though they also help with banquets. The front line is most likely what you picture in a regular restaurant as being the whole kitchen. This is where I would like most to be working.

Banquets services all the clubs and suites and other VIP rooms/parties. Sometimes assisting the front line

Suite kitchens do something. I've yet to figure out just what quite yet, but I know they have lots of sauces, but no chef.

And finally, there is Garde Manger. That's me.

I'm a garde manger commis (cold foods prep cook). I also set-up and often operate the "raw bar" at the Old No. 7 Club directly adjacent to the Palace Grille. 

The raw bar is what they call a scoop and serve operation. That is to say everything that needs to be cooked is cooked. All I have to do really is plate it. At my raw bar we serve salads, hot and BBQ wings, chicken strips, nachos, sliders, caesar wraps, and a nightly special.

On event days I am typically preparing all cold food items for that raw bar as well as the raw bar in Club 53 (if there is one). That means dicing and quartering tomatoes, dicing and slicing onions, chicken, making the caesar wraps and all of those sorts of things. Then as I'm setting up the cold food at the raw bar I am also picking up the hot food from banquets.

On prep days (and indeed sometimes on event days) I spend my time fabricating fruits and vegetables as well as meat platters, subs and anything else we may need. I often make salads like a yukon chipotle roasted poblano flank salad, it was quite a salad, my best so far.

That's what I do in a nutshell. I love my job, I'm learning so much and all the chefs there are really awesome. So are most of the cooks.

School is pretty cool too.

Tarragon Chicken Fricassee

First recipe that wasn't from the big white binder that I ever cooked for my parents. It was a huge success.

I had modified it thusly:

I used skinless boneless breasts since that's what I had

I upped the garlic to two cloves

used a turkish bay leaf

Upped the wine to 3/4 cups

lowered the broth to 1/3 cup

and upped the tarragon to 1 3/4 tbsp because that's what was in the package. It seemed a shame to leave such a little amount of fresh tarragon leaves.

The finished product really was bright with green, it was very cool looking.

Having the Dream and its Consequences

When I was in seventh grade I knew that I was going to be a lawyer when I grew up.

When I was a freshmen in high school and asked a lawyer for his advice regarding a young man wanting to be a lawyer he told me to "get an MBA". Point taken.

Sophomore year, I knew I was going to have a career in politics

This is not a blog about that stuff though, it wasn't until senior year that food seemed to be relevant at all. However, a poly sci degree seemed much more respectable than a culinary arts degree. Not that I even considered culinary school at that time.

The next few years were pretty rocky and I was at a point where I needed to figure out once again what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Thanks to the efforts of Anthony Bourdain (who I am sure did it just for me) I arrived at the answer. Culinary School for the win!

It's awesome, I highly recommend it. The education you receive is so different than any other. You learn how to appreciate things. I suppose art school is similar, but the physical nature of your education allows to learn new things about yourself. For instance, my palate. A year ago, I would have told you that I hate all seafood. I don't and can't say that anymore. I love mussels, mako shark, and swordfish. I like white fish, orange roughy, and shrimp. I had arctic shad (variety of trout) with a shrimp and dover sole (the only true flounder) mousseline (a sauce or cream with egg whites and in this case ground fish) at school a little while back that was fabulous.

I used to hate pork.

I also had no idea that I liked such things as veal, pheasant, turnips, or jicama.

Now, I'm learning that there is a meaning, a purpose for every flavor. 

It's great, I highly recommend it.

Another neat consequence to all this is that my parents have become more interested in food as well. Prior to my interest in culinary school my folks had a big white binder of recipes. They almost never deviated from this binder, rarely looked for new things, and were apprehensive to do try anything new. Now there is that big white binder, but on the counter by the fridge is a big purple folder with "Recipes to Try" scrawled on a sticky note. In it are things like chipotle short ribs with green chili sauce, goat cheese mashed potatoes, marinated london broil. Sophisticated dishes, sometimes exotic (to the confines of my parents' diets) - all around good food.

I like that.

An aside, while I'm talking about my parents and food. It is really upsetting to me that the only time my father takes his diet seriously is after he has hurt himself or there is money on the line. The only time I have ever seen him diet steadily for more than a month is when he has hurt his back and fears surgery (which he has had) or when he's participating in a company bet to see who can make weight. 

I don't like that.

But anyway, food is great. Great food is divine.

I still have about two years of school, after that I want to take the ACF (American Culinary Federation - acf.org - they're kind of a big deal)  certification ASAP. I want to move back home to Chicago and work there, maybe open my own place after some years. But you know, and you can call me silly if you'd like, my ultimate dream is to move to France or Spain (the new France) and open restaurant there. I don't care if I never get a michelin star there, though it would certainly be nice. Just as long as I'm successful.

I'm going to try to find the first "original" recipe I ever made for my parents. Original in the sense that I printed it off the internet and modified it slightly and my parents had never had it before.

Premiere Post

An intro, perhaps.

My name is Kevin Hatton and I am an aspiring chef. Currently, I am working as a garde manger commis (cold foods prep cook) in the main kitchen at the Palace of Auburn Hills (you know, where the Detroit Pistons play) and attending culinary school at the Culinary Studies Institute at Oakland Community College.

They're both pretty good gigs. I ought to be getting paid more at the Palace (and my first performance review is coming up - I've only been there for about 4 1/2 months) but such is life. School is going well, the culinary classes I'm currently taking are Restaurant Meat Cutting and Intro to the Culinary Arts.

Intro has been a breeze so far since all the practicals are things I've already learned how to do at work.

Meat Cutting is tricky, there is a lot to remember and it's remarkably precise art.

I'm also taking English Composition I because I have to - but don't worry, I still like it. Intro to French, because I need an Arts or Humanities and I love french culture. And finally, Astronomy because I need a math or science and it's fascinating. Hard, but fascinating.

So that's me, what's this blog?

Inspired by my dear friend Katie Mack von Erck's chronicling of her home gastronomic adventures, I've decided that someone might actually be interested in what I'm doing. Other than myself and my parents that is.

So the contents of this blog will include dishes more than recipes. If I cook something at home I'll post the recipe, but things I do at school or work might be harder to remember (or remember to bring my copy of the recipe home). I will also include  things that I have eaten as my palate becomes more advanced and I become open to new things (seriously, the things I've eaten the last six months and the things I have been dying to try would probably have made me vomit a year ago). Finally there will be included rants about chefs, food trends, miscellaneous jibba jabba, and etcetera.

So there it is, please enjoy