DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

[This is part II of a 3-part series. Read part I, intro to chefdom, or part II, soup from concentrate]

One of the most interesting food-service tricks we’ve learned is something I’d first realized when reading Kitchen Confidential — that most restaurant food is prepared in advance. In our case we served a six-course meal, and the only item that was actually cooked to order was what the chefs called the “veg,” the token plain vegetable served on the side of the fancy vegan entree. Everything else was either kept warm after having been cooked earlier in the day, or reheated out of the cooler.

It’s a good lesson for entertaining at home. For small groups, it wouldn’t matter so much, but even then, this approach makes way too much sense.

This afternoon, my task was to make one of the two entrees, jambalaya. This particular dish appealed to me because it was cooked in the oven with minimal fuss. I combined all the ingredients (including uncooked rice) in big “hotel pans,” and then stuck ‘em in the oven. It couldn’t get much easier than that.

The prep took time, though. The “Cajun spice blend” called for in the jambalaya recipe put me back at the spice rack with my calculator and pad, measuring micrograms of cayenne and fennel and file. We were doing 5x the written jambalaya recipe, so I made 5x the spice blend. Toward the end of the process I realized that I’d just combined about $80 worth of dried spices, enough to feed Cajun food to 100 people every day for the rest of the month. Turns out the spice-blend recipe was already multiplied out, and I’d just made 5x more than we needed. I had a big salad bowl of spices and a sheepish grin on my face. The chefs didn’t mind, though; they make batches of this stuff periodically anyway. (Maybe not again this year, though.)

My soup changed dramatically overnight. It was hugely better; the flavors had combined and balanced. As we were getting ready to serve it, I panicked, realizing that the head chef, out front acting as hostess, hadn’t tasted the soup to adjust seasonings. Back in the kitchen, I asked the sous-chef to do so, and she said, “I can’t taste anything; I have a cold. It’s on you!” So I had final say on the seasonings, and we were just about to serve the soup to 30 people.

I’ve never trusted my palette. Great chefs become great because they constantly taste and adjust. Identifying what’s lacking, or what’s overpowering, is a big part of the skill of a talented chef, and that’s the one skill I’ve never developed, or even attempted. I regularly serve food that I have not tasted at all, whether I’ve followed a recipe or not, because the few times I have tasted something I’ve never known what to add.

So, under this enormous (but largely imagined) pressure, I dunked a spoon and slurped some soup. It was fantastic. It needed nothing, and for once I knew it. There was no question in my mind. So we served the soup as-is, and it went on to get raves from everyone — I heard people talking about it in the restaurant. That was pretty cool.

I put in a 2-hour shift in the kitchen, plating all six courses. It was fun for that amount of time, knowing that things would never get too crazy. Afterwards I got to sit in the dining room and eat while other students took over plating. This was a nice end to the process, to return to the front room and act like a customer again, to have shaken every hand that had touched the food, to know the stories and the faces and the personalities and the near-accidents, and to have the recipe book open as I ate dinner.

The best part, though, is that someone else did the dishes.

[This is part II of a 3-part series. Read part I, intro to chefdom, or part III, the big night]

My stock was excellent. Excuse me while I finish filling out my application to the CIA.

Tonight we continued preparing for tomorrow’s big dinner event. My project tonight was to make soup for 70. I think I’ve only made soup once in my life. (And it gave me gas for three days, which explains why I haven’t made it since.)

Of course, we’re working from recipes. But there are still plenty of opportunities to ruin something. Tonight I smoked my saute oil, and had to rinse out the pot and start over. Then I under-carmelized two pots of vegetables because I kept stirring them, afraid they’d burn otherwise. But then I got distracted, and nearly did burn one pot. Working with unfamiliar tools, e.g. a commercial gas stove from about 30 years ago, and pots the size of bathtubs, just about overloaded my attention.

Another student was melting a big pot of chocolate and it seized up into a softball-sized lump with a big metal whisk sticking out one side. That took an hour’s work with the food processor to recover.

I guess most kitchen accidents can be fixed. But I definitely grew more paranoid as the amount of time I’d invested in a dish increased. For example, you can’t really make a mistake while chopping vegetables, so long as you don’t draw blood. But if, two hours later, you accidentally dump 2x the right amount of salt into the soup pot, you’re screwed. When it came to seasonings I was ultimately overcautious, measuring and calculating 4-5 times for every addition.

The chefs were laughing, because they never measure anything any more. I’m a baker, though, and as they’d concede, accuracy in measurment is one of the keys to successful baking. Add to that the fear that I was about to spoil 14 quarts of soup, and you’ll get an image of me with pad and pencil and calculator: 3 tsp to the Tbsp; 16 Tbsp to the cup… I even asked for a scale. I was gently scoffed at.

Dinner was again outstanding: baked winter vegetables and tofu with “Brazilian sauce.” I’ve been promised the recipe and have taken an organic rutabega hostage in case they don’t comply.

[Read part III, the big night]

For all the cooking I do, and all the thinking about cooking, I’ve never once worked in the food-service industry. I have a ton of restaurant experience, but none on the other side of the menu. So today, I started a three-day intensive cooking class at a nearby vegan restaurant.

This class provides a second opportunity: we’ll be cooking for the public. And really it is a bigger deal than even that, for this restaurant is closed during the winter except for a handful of special-event meals; my class of six student “guest chefs” will be preparing the restaurant’s Mardi Gras dinner, the one meal the restaurant will serve this month. The owner expects 70 guests, including four VIPs. No pressure!

After just one class, I now have “knife technique.” Sure, it may not be very good, but at least I have one. I also have two hand’s worth of abused knuckles and a raw spot on the side of my index finger from chopping approximately 500 vegetables. (OK, well, probably it was more like 30 vegetables. A lot, anyway.)

Tonight’s session used a learn-as-you-go format; the class offers little formal instruction but lots of hands-on experience. The chefs identified the half-dozen items that could be prepared two days before service — dressings, sauces, stock — and assigned students to each. I made 4 gallons of stock. I was working without a net, but I guess it’s hard to ruin a pot of simmering vegetables. If they ask me to make another 4 gallons tomorrow, I guess I’ll know the verdict on the first batch.

At the end of the class, we ate dinner. This was a highlight; we had a Thai carrot bisque that was among the best soups I’ve ever eaten. The story of the soup is a testament to the knowledge of an experienced chef, and the power of a good recipe: someone requested that we have soup for dinner, so the chef scribbled a recipe from memory, scaling it as she wrote, and the result — as executed by two students who had never made it before — was spectacular.

[Read part II, soup from concentrate]

I saw a weird bumper sticker on a lightpost downtown recently: “Drive Vegetarian.” It’s funny, but what does it mean? My motorbike isn’t on the Atkins diet.

Below the slogan appeared a domain name: greasecar.com. The website there taught me something astounding: any diesel passenger vehicle or light truck can be converted to burn used vegetable oil instead of diesel fuel.

Think about that for a minute. You could drive a perfectly regular car, but burn no fossil fuels. It’s great for the environment and great for US foreign policy. (If the Bush administration knew about this technology, they’d be staging an armed invasion of your local diner.)

Alternative-fueled vehicles usually carry some sort of compromise. I don’t see any here. The cars are full-sized, work in any weather, and have plenty of power. You could even continue to burn diesel fuel (or, better, bio-diesel if it’s available). This means that, if need be, you can pretend you don’t have an alternative-fuel vehicle; you can just drive to the neighborhood gas station and “fill ‘er up” like everybody else.

There are significant advantages to burning grease, as compared to diesel or gasoline, according to the SF Chronicle: “[Grease-burning engines] emit fewer toxic byproducts, they utilize fuel from renewable sources and they consume a waste product that must otherwise be disposed of by less efficient means.”

If you think that’s neat, check this out: grease is free. Most restaurants would be happy to have someone take it off their hands.

My research indicates that it’s getting even easier to buy used cooking oil — you need not strike back-alley deals with the fry cook at the neighborhood greasy spoon. Co-ops have formed in California, Oregon, and Massachusetts. See also the Regional Biodiesel links in Biodiesel.com’s forums.

Here’s the thing that most people never think about: fossil fuels are not a renewable resource. The ubiquity of filling stations might make it seem as if there is an endless supply of oil, but this is simply untrue. We will run out — sooner rather than later, according to the trend analyses showing increased demand. We can drill more wells, fight more wars, or fund alternative-fuel research. Seems to me that driving a “greasecar” is a painless way to be part of the solution.

Today I made the most ridiculously complicated and fatty cake of my young life. It’s a recipe I found in a discarded copy of Bon Appetit a few years ago at the gym. (Yep, it’s pretty ironic that I came off the treadmill, picked up a magazine featuring a million-calorie dessert, and thought, “I really have to make this!”)

1. Bake a nut-cake (ground nuts, sugar, egg whites) and slice it into thin strips. This is tough to do well. Fortunately I’m an engineer — note the ruler. (The T-square is out of frame.)
2. Line a bowl with the cake strips. This is impossible to do well because the strips break easily and have to be fitted back together. As it turns out, it doesn’t really matter; the finished dome holds up even if the strips aren’t all in one piece. Even so, this was by far the hardest part of the process. The small pile of shards in the picture doesn’t really illustrate the half-hour spent cutting, picking, and fitting. Moreover, toward the end I was able to re-use about 2/3 of the previous discards, which I felt good about in the sense that I was conserving resources, until the next day when I tossed the uncut leftover cake in the trash anyway.
3. Spread the cake-bowl with chocolate ganache (bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream) made previously. The gooey ganache tends to pull the cake apart as it runs down toward the center of the bowl. Cursing might ensue.
4. Fill the cavity with hazelnut cream (heavy cream, chopped nuts, amaretto, chocolate bits). Top the assembly with more cake-strips.
5. Make a full batch of cranberry-coconut cookies in case the cake doesn’t turn out.
6. Invert cake, top with cocoa and fresh berries just for effect. Discard berries after photo — no sense spoiling a perfectly good chocolate cream cake with fresh fruit. Slice and serve!
7. (optional): have bad dreams about the four cups of heavy cream in the middle of the cake. Wake up sweating as your liver works overtime to cull the milk-fat from your bloodstream. Call the nurse line to have them talk you down.

So, was it any good? At first I was unimpressed — because after having spent 3-4 hours on this I expected something of otherworldly goodness. My initial impression was that it was just over-the-top rich, but not necessarily great.

I had a bite the next day, though, and was knocked out. The cake really is excellent. The problem the night before was that I’d already eaten my body weight in pizza, so my fat appreciation gland was blown out. Serve this after a light meal, or, what the heck, instead of a light meal, and you’ll get the effect promised by the recipe (i.e. cardiac arrest).