My Secret Garden
Okay, so it's not so secret. And it's not your Nancy Friday variety. I've got a little garden growing in my apartment building. It's on one of the landings for the fire escape. The inspector has never said anything about it when he's come through, so I think I'm in the clear. In the meantime, I'm learning about how much of a green thumb I really have.
The answer? Not much.
I think the secret to windowbox gardening is twofold: first, make sure you've got hearty varieties of plants ... windowboxes dry out easily and so stress out your plants. You've got to be diligent about watering them, make sure the aphids don't get into them, etc. Second, you need to make sure you buy plants that work well in windowbox situations. Herbs? Great! Cherry tomatoes? Great! Beefsteak tomatoes? Not so good.
There's a certain care that you take with things that you grow on your own, and it's true. Since the first cherry tomato became ripe just a few weeks ago, I've been savoring each one that has come off the vine. Sweet, tart, delish. And finally today there were enough tomatoes on the vine to make a little meal for myself. Quartered cherry tomatoes with some purple basil chiffonade, olive oil and some salt and pepper.
It's unlike anything you'll get in a store. So lusciously sweet, perfectly ripe, and, well, yummy. Yeah, I hate sounding like a foodie, but there's a certain satisfaction in eating something you've grown that just doesn't come out any other way ... do this enough and I'll want to start a farm.
In the meantime, these small windowboxes will be used again next year ... I've already got plans on buying some grow lights so I can give them a head start for the next year.
I have no hair on my left forearm
There's nothing like the feeling of a sharp knife. And I mean sharp, wicked sharp, so sharp "I could slit someone's throat and they wouldn't even feel it" sharp.
How sharp is that? So sharp that you can slice through paper, no problem. So sharp that you easily go through the skin of a tomato. So sharp that when you run your fingers over the blade, you can feel the blade bounce over the small ridges in your fingertips. That sharp.
So how do you get a knife that sharp?
Well, you don't just rub it up and down that long, round bar of metal that came with your knife block. See, that's not a "knife sharpener" as some folks call it. That's your steel. It's used to hone your blade, to bring it back to true.
Why hone?
Your knife, though made of steel, is not particularly hard. In fact, after just a little bit of use, the metal begins to bend. So what looked like a nice, sharp V becomes a V that's a little bent to one side or another. You can reduce this by buying a knife made with a hard alloy (like cooking, even steel for knives comes in recipes), but in the end, all steel knives will need to be honed. Basically you make passes on the steel, alternating the sides of the blade against the steel while holding it at a 22 degree angle to the steel. You'll soon bring it back to true.
But eventually, no amount of honing will help. Now you need to sharpen. Sharpening involves the same basic motion as honing, moving your knife at a 22 degree angle against a surface, but in this case the surface is usually a whetstone. I prefer a three grit stone (superfine, fine, coarse) because of the control it offers. You usually don't have to use the coarse grit ... that's for severe situations. Usually a few minutes on the fine, then superfine, brings the knife back to a razor-sharp edge.
And I do mean razor sharp. The way I test my knife's sharpness? I shave my left forearm.
No Respect
I have a love/hate relationship with praise and on some level I think everybody does. Being raised in a somewhat conservative background, I have come to believe that I shouldn't showboat (surprising that I'm a bit of a cocky bastard that likes, at times, to showboat), that actions and, in the end, the final product speaks for themselves. Having praise given to me for something that's already my job is something that just rolls off me, especially the kind of praise that's perfunctory. Just shut up and run the damn food.
It's a complicated issue. When I work my station, I know that already I'm better than a good portion of the cooks there, and if I keep working to ingrain some good habits, I will be better than all of the cooks there. Self-satisfaction is a good motivator, but only up to a point. Praise comes in a number of forms, be it money, a friendly word, or some sort of in-house compensation system. Where I currently work, people get rewards points for doing a good job for a customer, be it seen by a supervisor or mentioned by name in a letter from a customer. That's great for the front of the house staff, who get face time with customers, but what about us back of the house trolls that never see the light of day? I never get anything for doing a special order for a customer, even when that item isn't on the fucking menu. It's ridiculous. Me and my fellow cook pushed out a thirteen top today in 12 minutes. Server? Extra gratuity on top of the house cut. Me and my fellow cook? Not even a fucking thank you. The server? Breaks $700 in sales today, gets a free martini. Me and my fellow cook? Nothing.
We actually had a conversation about this with one of the managers today. In the time that me and my fellow cook have worked there, we have never received anything from the in-house compensation system. And yet, the people who benefit the most, front of the house, get all of the gravy. Which sucks considering I'm just starting off and have made a massive shift in salary (I'm currently making 35% of my previous salary in the IT world).
So it's interesting to seeing the hoopla around Thomas Keller's announcement that he is going to be adding a flat service charge to Per Se's pricing and splitting the proceeds between front of the house and back of the house. About fucking time. Very few restaurants in the USA have any sort of system in place to share money between back of the house and front of the house. Front of the house and back of the house are both there to do the same thing: serve the customer. But why in the hell should font of the house keep all of the reward? Yes, they are the ones that deal with the customers, but we're the ones that cook the food, we're the ones that have to actually cook those special requests, and they're dependent on us for getting the food right and out in a timely manner.
But I was warned about the fact that this industry is unfair, that it doesn't make sense, and you'd better be prepared for it. I am. And I'll still show up to do my job. And enjoy it. But it doesn't mean that I'm giving up my perogative to bitch about it.
In the end, one of the servers that I work with has the right idea. If a customer has a special request, is particularly freakish about something, or sees that we in the back of the house are directly responsible for a tip she's getting, she comes back and hands us some cash. It's an extra beer at the bar, but I won't say no to a free beer.
Wait, scratch that. I earned that money. That's my beer. And that's praise enough.
An evil thought
Todd English ... the pretty boy of the modern cuisine world. He made his way to foodie fame not necessarily through the usual channels of Bon Appetit or Food and Wine. Yes, he did get recognized by the Beard Foundation, but it seems like he only really came to fame when he appeared as one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2001. Only then did his name start to really appear on foodie's lips.
In a real cook's world, he tends to get laughed at. A lot. He's such a fucking pretty boy. Where are the burns? Where are the scars? I wonder if he's ever even lost an eyebrow. On his website, he seems to have as many photos of himself with Glamour Shots (TM) poses as he seems to do of his food. In the PBS series
Cooking Under Fire the grand prize is working at a Todd English property (not exactly working with Todd English considering he has, at last I saw, 14 restaurants). When I asked what the value of that would be, one of my fellow cooks pointed out you could learn some great skills: eyebrow plucking, manicures, and, of course, manscaping (think trimming hedges ... on a guy ... thanks to Queer Eye for that term).
So with such a pretty boy, the thought occurs to me, "What would happen to Todd English if he got into a car accident and was horribly disfigured?" So much of his fame is based on his looks ... what would his appeal be if that disappeared?
My guess? Crash and burn. He loses his restaurants, then turns to alcoholism, possible mainlining, an eventual trip into the Betty Ford clinic. Eventually, other chefs feel pity for him and they throw some sort of benefit gala once he's detoxed.
Evil. Oh yeah. Welcome to my world.
Taking a break from the stage
I've taken some time off from my stage. At least two months. Why? My life is insanely busy right now. I'm organizing a
blues festival here in Seattle at the end of October, a task which seems to take 20-30 hours a week of my time right now. It's in a critical phase where classes need to be organized, venues booked, bands signed, etc. I could fit it into my current schedule, but it would also involve completely abandoning any time to take care of things around the house and, most importantly, take care of myself ... so I took the time off. As much as I would like to keep cooking at my stage, I'm not getting paid there and it's an easy answer to take the time off.
Hell's Kitchen FinaleMichael won. Out of the two of them, Michael and Ralph, he deserved to get it. In my opinion, it shouldn't have been the customer responses that won it. Instead, it should have been that one telling moment, when Ralph let the broken piece of salmon sell, that should have decided the show. Michael had higher standards. Ralph didn't. Simple as that.
In the meantime, how do I get on the show next season?
