New York
I'll be honest. I don't really like New York City. I've always felt that, though fascinating, there is a certain disconnect between the natural world and the East Coast in general, NYC in specific. Yes, I know there are parks and great natural areas in the east, but the area was the first area to be settled in the USA. Drive around much of the East Coast and you see the same thing: an old, crowded, dirty place that reeks of tiredness.
Yes, NYC is always in a state of renewal and yes, it's not really that old of a place when it comes to the surface and it's not really tired (in fact, its state of perpetual motion is something else entirely) but it is crowded and dirty and the biggest natural spot you can find, Central Park, is horribly crowded. Try finding a bit of solitude there.
There's other things to hate about NYC. The high cost of living, the shitty living conditions for people making a blue collar wage, the prevalence of the most monied of the upperclass and the aspiring idiots that want to be them (for a good example of this, watch "The Apprentice" on NBC and then proceed to laugh at how everyone makes fools of themselves while slitting each other's throats). I also detest the common New Yorker's attitude that NYC is the center of the universe. It isn't. Get over it already.
There's even stuff to hate within the restaurant scene there. Way too much money chasing way too many trends that eventually get overhyped and crumble under their own weight; trends for trends' sake, which usually emerge in NYC. I mean, come on, was foam
ever a good idea for garnishing food? Ugh. (About the only exception to this trend is the use of ultra-scientific thinking to produce cool food tricks ... it appeals to my inner geek).
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I hate NYC. Nice to visit, but why the hell would I want to live there?
Because it's NYC. For all there is to hate about it, the simple fact of the matter is that the population density and the sheer amount of money in the city make it a great place to start the next phase of my career - becoming a restauranteur. I don't mean that in the traditional way of being someone who owns and runs restaurants. Instead, I mean it in the sense of someone that coordinates the development and launch of restaurants. I love the idea of managing the process of creation of a restaurant idea to opening ... it's fascinating to see the ideas come together and I know I could be a success at it (when I am ready to do it - I still need more practical experience in how a restaurant works, and, more importantly, how to deal with people).
So the simple fact of the matter is there's a lot of people that want to open restaurants that are in NYC. I want to open restaurants. Therefore, one of the best places I can be is NYC.
Can I swallow my pride and live in NYC? Perhaps that's the next big step ... after learning how to deal with people.
I am a slave to the printer
Conditioned response. n. Psychology. In psychology , the response made by a person or animal after learning to associate an experience with a neutral or arbitrary stimulus. Conditioned response experiments by Ivan Pavlov paired a neutral stimulus (sounding a bell) with a natural response (salivating) by associating the bell with the presentation of food. --
Answers.comSometimes I feel like Pavlov is running an experiment with me inside of it. Nights like tonight really do a number on me. I'm running low on a number of prep items and things needed to get done for tomorrow - onion tarts, a new soup, clams, cookies, etc. And yet, I am at the mercy of that fucking printer. Today wasn't insane busy ... I wasn't stacked up to the point where I had 8 or 9 tickets in the window, but I had a constant stream of tickets coming in when I had a shitload to do.
I haven't gotten to the point where I can just relax and just let things flow. When it comes to the line, the most essential qualities of people come out. Throw them into the crucible and the shit starts flowing out. For me, I get stressed and I tend to become curt and pissed ... I have to move beyond that and at times, I'm acle to keep myself from being stressed out. At others, I'm not and on a night when I'm flying solo and I'm fucking behind in my prep, it's not so easy to be relaxed.
Stimulus. Printer spits out another ticket, putting me further behind.
Response. Go into the walk-in, scream, then come back out.
I've gotta work on that. I'm not a fucking dog.
Old Habits Die Hard
We don't have duck on the menu. About the only time duck appears anywhere on any of our menus is the banquet menu, which has a crostini with spiced duck breast and a cherry wine sauce. It's a delicious little thing to nibble on, but in order to make the crostinis, we order whole ducks. That's right. We just need the breasts, but we order whole ducks.
My French-trained brain starts salivating when I see those carcasses: domestic Peking ducklings, usually from Long Island, grown for their nice large breast/body weight ratio and their high fat content. A duck is a treasure trove to any chef and, in reality, the breast is probably the least valued part. Breaking it down, you end up with the duck legs, the carcass and the fat-laden skin. Duck fat is culinary gold. Great for sauteing, wonderful in so many recipes and absolutely delish. The legs? Wonderful as confit! And the bones? Wonderful for roasting and turning them into a lovely brown duck stock for duck soup and sauces.
But in my kitchen, do we ever use duck fat for cooking? Nope.
In my kitchen, do we have any menu items with confit? Nope.
In my kitchen, does any sort of soup with the word "duck" on it sell? Nope.
Ugh.
But I still use all of the duck. It would be wasteful not to. The fat, I just keep on rendering off and recycling for making confit. Problem is, all you do is keep on accumulating the fat. I started off with a nine pan of fat and now I'm up to a full half pan of duck fat. Delicious stuff, but I have no idea when we're going to use it. Soap keeps on coming to mind, which makes sense considering I saw
Fight Club the other night.
The bones? I've absolutely given up on using them for anything other than just throwing them in with the chicken bones for the general white chicken stock we use in fortifying our sauces and soups. Again, any soup with "duck" in the title doesn't sell and, in all reality, usually needs to be finished off with some veal stock to have a nice round flavor. But at least we're using them.
It's the confit that's really the habit that I can't break. 3 more ducks? 6 more legs of confit in the freezer. I think we've got 24 legs in the freezer right now. I love the whole process of curing the legs, cooking them in the fat, and relishing the wonderful flavor of confit with the perfect accompaniment, cassoulet, a rustic French white bean casserole with bacon, onion, thyme and sausage. But unfortunately, I just can't seem to sell it. Any specials with confit just never seem to sell. So I'll often make cassoulet with duck confit for family meal, but even then, many of the employees don't appreciate rustic French cuisine. So there's leftovers.
Old habits die hard. I don't want to waste a bit of that duck and, in the end, it works out well for me. I usually end up eating cassoulet with duck confit for days, which is all the better since cassoulet was one of those "love at first bite" dishes for me.
Just put another 8 duck legs away to cure today. Duck confit on Monday, cassoulet on Tuesday, leftovers Wednesday through Friday. Sounds like a plan.
Kitchen Confidential - The TV Show
Apologies on the tardiness of this post, but Blogger has been wigging out on me the past few times I've tried it.
I hate to admit it, but I like this show. Sure, they get a lot of details wrong (whites aren't dirty, no self-respecting restaurant would ever put their male servers in those outfits, etc) and yeah, it just isn't dark or filthy enough (the language they use on the show is, well, G, compared to some of the stuff you hear in the kitchen), but it's an entertaining show none-the-less.
What interests me about it the most isn't the actual details of the show, though, but instead the story arc that they've chosen for the character. We meet our hero after he's been a boozing, womanizing drug addict and has now reformed to become a better man. Nice, but not exactly the spirit of the book on which this show is - loosely - based. The book actually waxed nostalgic about the hedonisim of being in a kitchen where the cooks were cooks. On TV, well, maybe they're not ready for Adam Real-last-name-unknown or Bigfoot or their like ... or my like, for that matter, just yet. Actually, I think in a lot of ways I'm too damn clean for the subject material. But I digress.
You see, I find it a bit difficult for the show to be so in love with the idea of being in a professional kitchen and running a restaurant when they miss a lot of the darker areas. It's been sanitized, packaged for the general public, and has lost a little bit of the spirit that makes it such the insiders community. So, yes, Bourdain has admitted that he's sold out, but with the book and his travel TV shows, that's alright ... they appealed to a relatively small market and were still in keeping with the spirit of a cook. This show, instead, isn't the sell out of one man's story but of how we as an industry work and live. They've whitewashed our entire world to make a sitcom out of it. Now that's a sell out.
And that's why I hate myself for laughing while watching the show. Recent story line? John Laroquette plays a tyrant cook that was once a teacher for our hero, Jack Bourdain. He's had this third quad bypass and just wants to kill himself through eating over the top food. Naturally, Jack accepts at first, but then shows some semblance of a conscience at the end and serves him a crudite platter along with a moral message. Great. Me? I would have been shoving foie gras down the bastard's throat. Other cooks? I'm not so sure ... perhaps pancetta instead?
