02.27.07

More Kitchen Humor

Posted in The Story, Greatest Hits at 2:22 pm by Chef Matt

I wrote a while back about how the humor in kitchens can trend a little more towards the “ribald,” and I am guessing that is about as mildly as I can put it. My own sense of humor tends to skew in this way as well, so I was actually looking forward to working in an environment that not only catered to my “low-browedness,” but one that would encourage it and allow it to blossom.

Imagine my disappointment (and that of my good friend Boutros) when my first kitchen job (Cafe Tirolo) was about as straight-laced as they come. I don’t think I ever once uttered so much a single bad word in that kitchen. OK, maybe I said something when I burned my arm, but I don’t really remember… In short the humor there barely made it to the “PG” rating, though Vic did tell me one joke that made me laugh out loud. Here goes:

A man is walking by a store one day and sees a sign in a window offering a $100 river cruise. He is intrigued by this idea, so he goes in to ask about it. The man behind the counter says absolutely, they have a river cruise for $100, and it is about to leave. So the customer pays, and is lead down to the dock out behind the store.

There, the cruise director punches the man in the face, and pushes him into the river.

Shortly thereafter another man sees the sign, and the same thing happens. He pays, gets punched and thrown into the river.

The two men are now floating down the river together, nursing their aching jaws, when one says to the other:

“So, do you think they’ll serve any food on this cruise?”

To which the other man replied, “I doubt it. They didn’t last year.”

Damn funny. So the humor was cute, but hardly the “blue” kind of humor you would expect to hear in The Aristocrats, or a professional kitchen for that matter.

The move to Vero brought me into a kitchen whose humor is definitely more “adult-oriented,” and no, I am not going to share the jokes/topics of conversation held there - you’ll just have to use your imagination on that one.

But this recent joke/prank played in the kitchen was just too funny for me to keep to myself. I am still laughing about it now, several days later.

To set the scene, it was last Friday night, and of course it was busy. Orders, as I have mentioned before, are coming in fast and furious, and we are doing everything we can to keep our heads above water. At this time, the owners, Joy and Veronica, had dinner in the restaurant with some friends. While it may seem like this would be a bad time for them to take up a table, this is actually a great time for them to be in the dining room. They can observe from the floor how everything is handled when the restaurant is at its busiest.

“I’ll have a half-double decaffeinated half-capp, with a twist of lemon.”

In addition to that, they like to place complex orders on these occasions - I am guessing both to test the ability of the server to take and communicate a complex order, and to test us in the kitchen with our ability to fulfill these orders. That, and why not get exactly what you want when it’s your restaurant? Sure, we are not happy to get such a complex order when we are at our busiest, but when is there a better time to test us?

So to cut to the chase of the order that actually pertains to the whole “humor” aspect of this story, (sorry for all the administrative notes on how to run a restaurant there…) Joy ordered her rib eye with a small salad and a grilled jalapeno pepper on the side. My efforts to organize the walk in fridge have not yet been absorbed into the behavior patterns of all my fellow employees, so there was a bit of a mad scramble to find a jalapeno to grill for her. The rib eye was placed on the plate, and the pepper leaned up against the steak, then the plate was passed to me so I could make a quick side salad for the dish. I was putting the salad together when Jay (Joy’s brother) came over and with a devilish grin said, “Wait, I got something for my sister…”.

For those of you who are having trouble visualizing what I am talking about…

He then took two grape tomatoes from my salad and placed them on either side of the jalapeno. The resulting arrangement of vegetables made an unmistakable phallus that was hilarious, but maybe subtle enough that she wouldn’t see it. We were thinking that we had a great inside joke that was a kind of “revenge” for her complex order. David then finished off plating the dish with sauce and a rosemary sprig garnish.

Out went the orders to their table, and we continued on with our work, but giggling to ourselves about our little prank. Yes, it was a proud moment for us all to laugh like 12 year olds.

The waitress returned from Joy’s table, and she was holding the rosemary sprig from the plate in her hand. She announced to us, “Joy wanted you all to have this. Since you sent her a dick, she wanted to send you a bush.”

I don’t think we stopped laughing for a full minute.

So yeah, she noticed. And yes, the humor can be a touch crude at times, but it’s what helps us get through the busy nights. If we couldn’t laugh like that when we are working our hardest, the job might just be unbearable. Maybe I’ll share the cruise joke with them tonight…

Matt

Permalink 7 Comments

02.21.07

MY First Review!

Posted in The Story, Greatest Hits, Recipes at 2:01 pm by Chef Matt

This story requires us to go back to several previous posts, so please bear with me regular readers (all four of you) as I recap for the newly-initiated. Back in December, we were reviewed by the Washington Post, and it was a very favorable review. However, seeing as how this reviewer visited Vero before I was an employee, I could hardly take any credit for the praise we received. Quoting myself:

“I want to be clear about this review though. I claim absolutely ZERO credit for this glowing review. All of his visits occurred before I was an employee, so there is no way my additions for the past two and a half weeks had anything to do with what Mr. Nicholls experienced at Vero.”

The business at the restaurant really picked up as a result of that, and I was proud to be working in such a well-liked and busy restaurant.

As time has progressed on though, I have had more ability to flex my own “creative muscle” in the kitchen, and come up with some of my own dishes to serve to the public. The first addition to the Restaurant Vero menu I created was a trout and persimmon salad in Belgian endive that, while good, was ordered by exactly nobody. The road that must be climbed to reach culinary recognition is indeed a steep one…

Fast forward now to two weeks ago, and you may remember the incident where I was actually able to start a fire in the kitchen using only a stove, a pan and some cranberry juice. Well, further down in that post I mentioned that the redeeming moment of the day was how I invented a spinach and mushroom stuffed calamari braised in a tomato-basil sauce that was served to some local restaurant reviewers. Quoting myself once again:

“One of [the reviewers] ordered my recipe for stuffed calamari. I was nervous of course, but all the same, I wanted to know how it would be received. After that round of dishes came back, the server reported to me that this particular reviewer said that the stuffed calamari “exceeded all his expectations”…I [choose] to believe that this meant he felt that my creation was really something special.”

Well, yesterday Veronica showed me the review they wrote about their visit to Restaurant Vero.

This is another great review for our restaurant - and I especially liked the jab they took at the Post reviewer’s “wimpy palate”, with which I took umbrage as well. However, nestled in this review - if you don’t want to read it all - is the following comment:

“The special of SPINACH & MUSHROOM STUFFED CALAMARI Braised in TOMATO BASIL SAUCE with Endive, Watercress & Daikon Salad was also a gem with tender whole squid stuffed to perfection.”

I did an image search for “gem” and surprisingly, the results included zero pictures of squid…

Yes, this was my dish they were talking about, and I am still on cloud nine that the words “gem” and “perfection” were used in conjunction with a dish I invented, cooked and plated myself.

But again, I can hardly take all the credit for this. Look at all the other amazing dishes they mention, and the fantastic service as well! If you take no other point away from reading my blog, please take this one:

Working in a kitchen is a TEAM effort! Nobody can go it alone and expect to achieve any sort of success!So while my one addition was well-received, and even achieved “gem” status, I give all thanks to my bosses for taking the chance to allow me to be creative, my fellow cooks for letting me - the salad chef - take up space on the stove and in the bain marie for the creation of this dish, and to the servers for getting it to the right people at the right time. The seeming success of one in the kitchen is really the success of all - which may be yet another reason why “celebrity chefs” annoy me so much.

The road to culinary recognition may be a steep one, but with the help of my great co-workers, I think I may have finally taken my first step!

Matt

P.S. Allow me to beat the rush of those of you who are going to ask me for the recipe and give you the recipe for these stuffed calamari here:

Again, these are not my calamari, since I didn’t have a camera on me in the kitchen, but this is what they should look like.

Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Calamari with Tomato Basil Ragu

In one pan, sauté 2 cups of sliced mushrooms (a mix of them is nice) with olive oil, a clove or two of minced garlic and some chopped rosemary. Cook until most water is out of them, place in large bowl off heat.
In another pan, sauté a bag of baby spinach with oil and some more garlic until wilted down. Press excess water out in a strainer, and place in bowl with mushrooms.
To the spinach/mushroom mixture, add salt, pepper, lemon zest, parsley and finally some bread crumbs to give it a little “body”. You are not looking to turn this into a bread stuffing, but you want something there to bind it together.
In a large pan - like a Dutch oven - heat a few tablespoons of oil, sauté a minced garlic clove until fragrant, then add one can of whole tomatoes and their sauce. Bring sauce to a boil, and crush the tomatoes with a potato ricer/masher in the pan. (Can use a metal spoon for this too…) Add about 10-20 leaves of roughly chopped basil, a pinch of sugar, and let simmer gently while stirring occasionally for about 30 min.
While the sauce is cooking, stuff the calamari. This recipe should fill about 6-8 tubes of calamari, depending on their size. Make sure the “tip” of the tube is closed, and if it isn’t, close it off with a toothpick. Fill the tube only about 1/3 - 1/2 with the stuffing, and seal off the big end with another toothpick.
Slip the calamari into the simmering sauce, cover pot, and cook for a total of 45 min to an hour, flipping the tubes every 15 minutes.
When serving, please be sure to remove the toothpicks first - they could be a nasty surprise otherwise…

Permalink 10 Comments

02.19.07

A New Record

Posted in The Story at 10:56 am by Chef Matt

Saturday night is always a busy night in kitchens. Everybody else is as deep into their weekends as they can get, so they figure why not live it up a little? Tomorrow will be Sunday, and that usually means church and/or chores, so now is the time for them to go out and have a little fun, right?

Well, that seems to have been the thought pattern for all of Northern Virginia last night, and coincidentally they all were thinking that the ideal place to undertake their weekend celebration was Restaurant Vero.

I mentioned a few weeks back about how we all entered a pool to guess how many covers we would have during a Saturday night. I actually ended up winning that night with my spot-on guess of 120. We did this pool a few more times after this instance, but it soon lost any feeling of random guessing as the number of guests who would come in on a Saturday night was consistently falling between 118 and 124. There was such a lack of variety in the outcome that we soon all wondered why we should bother to create a pool to see who was the lucky bastard that guessed the right number out of only 6 or 7 possible outcomes.

“You’re a Baldwin, right?”
“Yes.”
“Which one are you again?…”

So the cover pool is no more. I retired from it with a record of 1-4. (Nobody ever won twice.) Which means I made money on the venture when all is said and done. (Which I lost in a bet as to which Baldwin brother was in “The Hunt for Red October”. Could have sworn it was William…)

The most covers we had ever done on any night to date was 127 - we did that shortly after our great review in the Washington Post came out. People really do read the reviews, and most of them think that the best time to come to a restaurant is right after it goes to print. I personally like to give it some time so the crazy scramble to get a seat can subside. But in our case, the average Saturday night was still only 6 or 7 covers off the record anyway. In short, Fridays and Saturdays have always been busy for us since the review.

Which brings us to last night.

Wandering into the kitchen I saw what can only be described as “the usual scene”. The same people that I would expect to see at 2:30 in the afternoon were all present, and the attitude in the kitchen was completely casual. I started about my duties, with no real concern as to the night’s schedule. The levels of all five of my vinaigrettes were low, so I had to make a fresh batch of all of them. Though I noticed that perhaps there was still enough apple cider vinaigrette for the night, provided we didn’t have too busy of a night.

“Hey Jay, how many covers do we have on the books for tonight?” I asked, hoping to perhaps weasel out of making more of that dressing.

“We got one hundred eleven on the books tonight,” said Jay.

“Yeah, 111 covers… that’s the ticket…”

Now most people would react with shock to such a high number of reservations. But you have to keep in mind, as I have mentioned before, that Jay is a master bullshitter. In fact, he usually gets the number on the books, and then tells us about double that just to scare us. So my reaction was based on these many past experiences - not out of some chip on my shoulder.

“Bullshit, Jay.”

“No, really!”

I still didn’t really believe him, but thankfully one of our waitresses, April, was walking into the kitchen just then, so I asked her about the cover count.

“Well, we just had a cancellation,” she started, so I expected a relatively normal count of about 65 or so, “which brings us down to 109 for tonight.”

“Holy crap!”

“Told ya!” said Jay.

I still don’t believe too much he says, but he was actually telling me the truth this time. (For once…) I began making more of the apple cider vinaigrette.

The night proceeded in pretty much the fashion one would expect it too when we were almost completely booked on reservations. Every time one of the waitresses would come back, they would regale us with horror stories about the dining room - about how there were too many people in there for them to even move around. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to offer much sympathy as our lines were usually 8 orders deep and constantly growing. For the first time in months I had to ask for Dave’s help to bail me out and help me with some dessert orders. I was about 10 or 12 salads behind, and had three full dessert tickets on my station as well. The frantic pace of the kitchen was truly a sight to behold for about an hour or two there.

Many people ask me what it is I love most about being a chef, and I have to say that to some degree it is the fast-paced mosh-pit like crush of a busy night. You either live off that adrenaline rush, or you get out of the kitchen. Well, this night was like an overdose. I was doing fine on the levels I was seeing before, and this was a heavier dose than I was used to. But hey - that which doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger, right?

The list of dishes that we ran out of was relatively short considering how many orders we had filled. But with only three tables left we seemed to have run out of the unthinkable. Kim came back and asked me, “Do we have any more bread?”

We had enough bread to feed over 130 people. One would have thought that would have been enough…

I was stunned by the thought that we might be out of this most basic of restaurant staples, but sure enough, the tub of sliced bread from which we fill our baskets was empty, and I didn’t see any in the usual spot where we kept our reserves. I jumped over to the fridge by the bread station and frantically began to shove blocks of butter and cartons of eggs to the side in a desperate hope to find…. yes! There was one slab of focaccia left. I pulled it out, sliced it up and began to warm it in the microwave. Hopefully this last pile of freshly sliced bread would last us until we clos….*sigh*.

It lasted about 30 seconds.

With one more table still sitting down, we again tore through the kitchen in the quest for any sort of bread suitable for serving to our customers, and Dave found a half loaf of bread somewhere. (I still am not sure where he found it, but it was indeed fresh…) We sliced and warmed that as well, and with careful portioning were able to make that last the rest of the night.

There is perhaps no better description for how busy a restaurant was on a given night than to say, “It was so busy - we ran out of bread.”

Well thanks to the unrelenting march of time, the night finally came to an end, and the feeling in the kitchen was a healthy mixture of exhaustion and relief. My hands were brittle from being washed so many times, my feet were sore from running all over the kitchen, and I felt that if I had to push one more waitress out of my way from standing in front of my dessert station I was going to have to kill them in the process. But the night was over, and that was all that mattered.

Such record-busting had not been seen since Takeru Kobayashi doubled the hot dog eating record in 2001 by eating 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

Our hostess came back into the kitchen to say goodnight, and as we always do, we asked her about the cover count for the night.

“One hundred thirty five,” she said.

“Wow! A new record!” we all said.

“Oh wait, we had one last table of two… One hundred thirty seven.”

“Holy cow.”

We broke the old record by ten covers. Sure, that may only be an 8% increase over the previous record, but think of it this way:

When was the last time you had 10 people over to your house and you had to cook for them? Was that easy going for you? Now imagine they all ordered something different, but you wouldn’t know what they wanted until they showed up… Yeah, ten people can be a bit of work all on their own, but add them on top of 127 previous customers, and well, you have yourself quite the record-breaking evening.

I wonder who would have won the cover pool this time if we had run it?…

Matt

Permalink 4 Comments

02.15.07

No Lovey-Dovey Valentine’s Here

Posted in The Story at 2:53 pm by Chef Matt

While so many other blogs that I read have had some sort of treacle about how great Valentine’s Day is, or all the cute things that they and their loved ones did for Valentine’s - mine is not quite that kind of story. However, being married, I am not also going to post the “I’m all alone for Valentine’s Day sob-fest” that I also am seeing so much of.

Rather, I am going to tell you the story of how Valentine’s Day works for a chef. Or at least how mine went down.

What DC looks like when it actually snows.

The story starts the night before, when my wife calls to tell me that she is staying at a hotel where she was having an off-site conference since the weather was getting really bad. I was in favor of this, since the quality of driving in DC is bad enough as is - add snow and ice to the equation and you have got yourself a total death trap on our roads. So I went to sleep alone that night, but still anticipating the next day since I had ordered flowers to be delivered to Caroline that she would love! And I didn’t have to go to work until noon. Any day I can sleep until noon is a good day!

Enough set-up? Do you see what’s coming?…

Let’s fast forward (not all that far) to 6:45 AM on Valentine’s Day. I awaken to something that sounds like my cell phone ringing in the other room. But it was way too early - there was no way anyone was calling me - so I didn’t bother to oget up and check it. Now that I was awake though, I heard this wheezing sound that was repeating itself over and over again. I figured it was one of my cats, Smudge, who has a habit of snoring loudly. So I gave her a bump to wake her up so she would stop. She looked back at me with a, “What the hell was that for?” look on her face, and the wheezing sound somehow continued. I looked out the window and saw that the sound was my neighbors gunning their car engine to get out of the snow and ice that was all over the road. The roads were indeed in sorry shape, and these people were living proof of just how dangerous the roads would be if they could ever remove their car from the rut they were stuck in.

When I was done laughing at their repeated attempts of “gunning the engine 10,000 times in a row,” I decided to check my cell phone to see if somebody had actually called me. Indeed Amy, our pastry chef, had called. From the message she left me I was able to discern that everyone else had made the choice not to try these roads. As much as I agreed with the judgement of my co-workers, this meant that Amy needed me to come in right away. This is not the time of day when I shine my brightest, but I got up, got out and made it into work at 8:15 AM.

Shoulda worn these…

The first order of business was making and delivering bag lunches for 30+ people in Arlington. Making deliveries means loading up the delivery van - and no, I had not brought my snow boots. I didn’t fall over, but my shoes were filled with snow. Ten in the morning is way too early to have snow-filled shoes. I made the delivery with my boss Joy, and she was even nice enough to buy me a hot chocolate on the way back! (Thanks again Joy!)

Back in the kitchen, I tried to call my lovely wife Caroline to wish her a happy Valentine’s Day, and to see if she had gotten the flowers from Organic Bouquet I sent to her office. But she wasn’t at the office. She was still at the conference. I had misunderstood how long this meeting was for, and thought she would be back at work today. I tired her cell phone, but she mentioned the night before that it was out of juice. In short, Caroline was inaccessible, and who knew what would happen to the flowers - or if they would even try to deliver them in this icy mess?

But it was time for more cooking and cleaning at Vero. I emptied out one of our vans full of leftover sodas and so forth from a previous catering event, and took out the ample amounts of trash that had piled up over the course of the day. Thank God for the help of our dishwasher Greg on this task, or it would have taken me all afternoon. But alas, the snow was back in my shoes. (And even though it was later in the day, I can safely say that it is still a bad time for this…)

A good 8-hour day. Time to go to my warm home and loving wife, right? Right?…

I had been on the job for 8 hours at this point. A full day’s work. But Valentine’s Day dinner had yet to begin. We were scheduled to be packed on reservations alone, since Valentine’s Day is to restaurants what St. Patty’s Day is to bars. (I’m not sure if I have done an analogy like that since I studied for the SAT’s…) The trick with Valentine’s Day that makes it a little harder than any other busy Saturday night is that usually it involves a special menu for all the lovebirds in the house. So that means I had to invent a plating design for the two starters I was in charge of, and when the rush hit, I had to have a “system” down for how to move them out the door efficiently.

My special dishes were a watercress salad with hearts of palm (get it? hearts? Valentine’s Day?…) and pancetta with a lemon-lime vinaigrette, and a tuna tartar on wonton crisps with a sesame drizzle. Both came out really well, and the night was busy to say the least. Thankfully, Amy (Remember her? The one who called me at 6:45?…) was still on as well plating her special desserts. I think that was the only way we were able to pull off this busy night so well, because if I had to plate so many of her special creations and make the salads, we would have been sunk.

Yummy.

The last meals wrapped up around 10:30, and in a grand stroke of mercy, I was let off to go home and enjoy what remained of Valentine’s Day with my wife. I clocked out at 10:45. 14.5 hours on the clock with pretty much no rest. But hey, it was just like the pre-Christmas rush all over again. And it was nothing compared to the hours Amy and Joy had put in that day. It is was a good example of just what kind of effort is involved in running your own restaurant. Not only is there the need to work long hours, but there is the need to work exceptionally long hours if the weather goes a little south on you - even if it is a holiday that was made for staying at home.

I finally dragged myself home to where the beautiful Caroline was waiting for me. As my Valentine’s gift she had gotten me a 12 pack of Bass Ale - my favorite. I asked her if she had been to work to see the flowers.

“Flowers?…” she asked.

Sigh. I guess she’ll be getting them today instead.

Matt

Permalink 2 Comments

02.12.07

My Hands - Part 2

Posted in The Story at 4:21 pm by Chef Matt

Back when I started this blog, I wrote a post about the starting condition of my hands. A “ground zero” position to begin at, so we could all track the progress of the damage I was doing to my hands over time.

Since then, I have shared with you the time when I burned my wrist badly as well as sliced into my thumb and thumbnail with incredible precision.

But I have yet to give an overall photo of my hands for the sake of comparison. I figured today was as good a day as any since I have a few injuries to show off, but it is a pretty “normal state” for how my hands look these days.

Let’s all take a look shall we?

Right Hand

Left Hand

From these photos we can take away a few lessons.

SO much more than just a friendly warning!

4. When you see the “corrosive” warning symbol on a barrel of dishwasher detergent, wear gloves when handling it.

And one last item I want to talk about - that my wife pointed out to me as I made these photos - when I say that the wedding ring was “getting in the way”, I do NOT mean, “getting in the way of my being a player with all the waitresses I work with”. I have about as much game with the ladies as Joseph Merrick. My ring “gets in the way” of reaching into cases of vegetables, the constant washing of my hands and other “kitchenly” duties. So I just don’t wear it anymore. But sorry ladies, I am still taken! More updates on that as they are available.

(Thank God my wife doesn’t read this blog regularly. Otherwise my next update on the status of my hands would probably be how they were both removed at the wrist for that last comment…)

More updates to come if I still have fingers,

Matt

Permalink 1 Comment

02.11.07

The Real End for the Beet Salad.

Posted in The Story, Recipes at 2:01 pm by Chef Matt

So what happens when you discontinue a menu item, but you still have some of the key ingredient in stock? As I mentioned a little while back, we discontinued the beet salad from our menu - a decision that I was totally in favor of seeing as how I think beets smell, and taste, like dirt. But we noticed a short while later that we still had about 5-6 pounds of beets sitting around. In one of the great moments of collective realization we all suddenly came to the conclusion that one of two things could happen with these leftover beets:

We of course chose the second option since throwing the beets away is the same as throwing money away, and that just never seems to make any sense.

So I had to come up with an idea for the final use of the beets. Our pastry chef, Amy, had made a wonderful beet terrine with some roasted beets before, but she has been busy as of late - especially with Valentine’s Day coming up - so the last thing I wanted to do was bother her for a quick special.

I had a few other ideas, but like all of my ideas, they involved way more work than they were worth. It was David who finally suggested: “Why not just run them on a beet salad?”

The look on my face was one of total dismay. The thought of returning the beet salad to the menu - even if only for a short while - was just such an unappealing thought to me. “No,” David said, “A special one that you can make up.”

This idea was much more palatable. It had the combined appealing characteristics that it would be my own creation, it would be short-lived, and it was a very simple way to use up the beets.

Oranges - they go great with beets. Or at least that’s what they tell me…

So my creation was as follows:

Bed of fresh watercress and arugula
Roasted red and gold beets that have marinated in fresh lemon vinaigrette
Orange segments (membranes removed) and red onion
Garnish with orange zest

Simple as can be, and it sold just fine to finish up the beet supply we had in house while they were still fresh.

The lesson here was quite a good one though. In a restaurant, you have to use up your supplies to their fullest so as to have as little waste as possible. And that is in fact a good thing simply because it allows you to be creative and think up new ideas, all in the name of making sure that no good beet goes un-served.

Though of course I can’t imagine what a “good” beet would taste like…

Matt

Permalink 1 Comment

02.09.07

Don’t Just Take My Word For It…

Posted in Rants and Raves at 2:05 am by Chef Matt

Kicthen Confidential. If you haven’t read it yet - go read it now.

Anthony Bourdain, obviously in a desire to copy my lead to write about what is wrong with Food Network, has written a blog post about (surprise surprise!) what is wrong with Food Network. The main target of his wrath is Sandra Lee, though he does concur that Rachael Ray is pretty unwatchable, and it is true - she really can’t cook.

The comments there are very clever as well. It is good to see so many people who have a sense of what good cooking really is. So many more than swing by my site to comment. Why must I be so cursed?…

Anyway, go check it out - and read the comments as well. It is a fabulously accurate posting by someone who knows more about the business than me - and heck, he just might even be a better writer as well!

Bravo Anthony Bourdain! It needed saying, and I am glad we have both said it. Even if our take on Bobby Flay’s latest show is different…

Matt

P.S. Oh, and I hate to add/change a post once I publish it, but I totally meant to include this as well, but it was late and I forgot. Anyway, do check out this amazingly hilarious Rachael Ray drinking game over at slobak.com. Really hits the nail on the head of just how much in her show is annoying, unprofessional and totally lacking in creativity.

My favorite example from it:

Awesome.

Permalink 3 Comments

02.08.07

Getting Organized

Posted in The Story at 1:46 am by Chef Matt

Cupping my hands up to my mouth and exhaling into them so as to return the flow of blood, I asked myself, “How did I get into this again?…”

Ahh, the DC winter. Cold, gray, but pretty much no snow. God this season sucks.

Here it is, finally winter in the Washington, DC area (damn you global warming!) and it is abjectly freezing outside. This is the time of year when it is supposed to be GREAT to be a chef. Unlike the summer when you are baking yourself in a 115 degree kitchen on a 98 degree day, this is when you get to come in out of the cold, and warm yourself by the fires of the stove. It is warm and cozy in the kitchen - so why in God’s name was I spending my whole night in the walk-in refrigerator?

Allow me to go back a bit. I mentioned a few posts back about how I had a major development that I needed to write to you all about - but then I didn’t do it, mainly because of a pan of cranberry juice that caught fire and other adventures that got in the way. So let me now catch you all up on this latest development.

Rewinding a few weeks, Jay started to teach me how to call in orders to our food providers. We call different people for different foods: like meat, seafood, vegetables and so forth. So part of the training is to learn whom we call for what. There are specific rules for when we order certain things from one provider, and then other times we seem to call someone else for the same thing. These subtle nuances are still eluding me, but I am hoping that I can pick them up with time and practice.

Well, the reason I chose today to update you, dear readers, on this is that I have now been further tasked with helping develop a rolling inventory for the restaurant. The margins in the restaurant business are seriously thin, so ordering too much food (or food we don’t need) is wasteful, and this eats into the overall profitability of the restaurant that is kind enough to provide me with a job. So why did I get tapped for this responsibility?… I guess somebody must have told them that I used to work with computers and stuff. Whichever one of you it was is officially grounded!

So I suggested that step one in this process be to organize the walk-in fridge. The pattern up until now, as far as I could tell, has been that there is absolutely no pattern. I often refer to it as my daily game of “hide and seek” as I head into the walk-in to see if I can find where the pears are hiding today. This is a problem from two fronts:

“No wonder there’s no room for things in here - there really ARE three cases of cucumbers in here!”

This second point was reinforced by my boss’ rather unhappy revelation that we had somehow ended up with three cases of cucumbers in the walk-in.

The drawback to suggesting a re-organization of the walk in is that it sounds to some like I was actually volunteering for the job. And yes, I was immediately promoted to the position of “chief facilitator of new walk-in schematics”. It comes with no extra pay or power, but I did get to make up that title. (Just now.) The real role of this was that I had to move a heck of a lot of boxes, cases, bottles, jars, trays and bags all over the place.

In the cold walk-in.

In winter.

During dinner rush.

It took pretty much all dinner, since I had to keep emerging from my 34 degree cocoon in order to re-establish blood flow to my fingers and for all those pesky “orders” and such. But at the end of the night, I had a set up that I am hoping makes some sense, and if I can just convince everyone else to use it, we will be in business.

So I can hear the masses (you) screaming at their collective computer screens: “Why is this such an important development?! Don’t you have some rant about Sandra Lee you want to share with us?!” Well, the importance of this development is also twofold:

Yes, if I could do this, there would be no problem with my re-organizing the walk-in any time!

I already know how to cook, and I have a lovely collection of burns on my arms to show that I have spent some time on the line. I can invent dishes, and my creations seem to have been received pretty well. But bringing in the food, sorting it, storing it and keeping track to make sure we always have enough of it - this is something that I have no experience with, and I would dare say is a pretty important part of keeping a kitchen running smoothly.

At the end of the day, while warming myself up with a mug of leftover coffee, I realized that I was actually happy to have been “nominated” for this position. But I am thinking stage two will be for me to invent a walk-in fridge warmer…

Matt

Permalink Comments

02.04.07

Fire in the Kitchen!

Posted in The Story, Greatest Hits at 3:26 am by Chef Matt

I am as guilty as anyone else in the kitchen of letting things go on cooking until they are burned. Even Vic, the chef at Cafe Tirolo (my first chef job), would frequently become sidetracked with various tasks in the kitchen to the point where we would all suddenly notice heavy smoke coming from one of his pans where there once was a happy sauté of garlic and onions working away. And he had over 50 years of experience in the kitchen - so it can happen to anybody. But today’s debacle in the kitchen far exceeded anything I had ever imagined was even possible. I actually managed to burn… well, let me go into the story more before I reveal what I was able to “accomplish” today.

“I just HAVE to get Matt’s recipe for this…”

The problem of burning things happens to me frequently. In the job of setting up for my shifts, I often have a lot of pots working their magic, and I am carefully trying to keep track of them all so as to not ruin anything in the process. The problem arises when something unexpected comes along to get in the way of my carefully laid-out plans for making dinner. (No, they are not carefully laid-out - it is just me trying to make sure I can cook as many things at once as possible…) The fact that something ends up burning as a result of my being distracted happens pretty much all the time, as I am an easily distractible pers… oh! I need a beer!

OK, back now. So as I was saying, distractions happen all the time. In today’s particular instance, I arrived early to help set up for some catering events that we had going out the door today. With only two events to set up for, it was hardly a “pedal to the metal” situation, but all the same, I had several plates to work on at once. I had my mystery ingredient on the stove, and was working on setting up a tray of mushroom tartlets while it cooked away.

Suddenly an order slip for a split pear salad appeared where I was chopping away. Normally working on orders during the lunch hour is not my job, but I was feeling magnanimous, and hey - I had everything under control. So I took it upon myself to gather the plates, split up the pears, build the salads and generally take care of this order for Edwin (the line cook at lunch) - just because I am such a nice guy. I went back to my mushroom tartlets amazed at how well I had everything under control.

“So wait, you mean I have to watch the pan when I am sautéing gasoline?…”

It was right about this time that Edwin casually mentioned to me I needed to look at the stove. It is hard for me to really describe what I was thinking at this moment in time. What I was seeing made so little sense to me that I just couldn’t comprehend it at first. Imagine if one day you woke up, and your best friend was over at your house, and he was hovering 6 inches off the floor, acting as if it were a totally normal phenomenon. Surely for a second you would be flabbergasted. I mean, this is just plain NOT POSSIBLE… right?

The flames rising from my pan fit this description perfectly. This was an actual FIRE in the kitchen. And I want to point out that a fire in the kitchen was a first for me. I (like my ancestors many MANY generations before me) had created fire. Sure, I had used a fire to do it, so I was sort-of cheating, but what I had constructed my fire with was probably something they had not considered to use. What was this amazing ingredient which actually proved to be flammable despite everything I know pointing to the opposite?… I think I have kept you in suspense long enough. The mystery substance was:

No, really.

cranberry juice.

Yes, I was attempting to reduce about two cups of cranberry juice to syrup so I could flavor some of my very popular blue cheese/cranberry crumble tartlets, but it was the intervention of the pear salad that had thrown me off in my internal thought process that kept track of just how long that cranberry juice had been on the flame. It had reduced to pretty much nothing but sugar, and, well, sugar can burn. And burn this did. We’re talking real flames coming out of the pan.

But seriously, wouldn’t you also do a double take? I mean, if you poured cranberry juice in a glass, and it suddenly caught fire, you would sort of stop for a second and think, “Wait… what the hell?…” Similarly, this is the situation where I found myself for a second - even if it was on top of a fire at the time, the thought of cranberry juice on fire just didn’t really make sense to me at first.

Of course the instinct of: “Oh, hey wait, a fire in a kitchen is a bad thing…” kicked in shorthly thereafter, and the fire was quickly extinguished by the placing of a larger pan on top of the flaming pan. As penance, I had to clean out the pan that I had seemingly attempted to melt. Which meant lots of scrubbing. Which put me behind in my set up duties once again. But all the same, I had achieved something that I had until then thought impossible, which is kinda cool.

This is what they look like when they are done braising. And I served them with the aforementioned side salad, and I of course took the toothpicks out.

And now for the redeeming moment of the day, which I will be brief with, as this post is already long, and this part is not nearly as funny. With respect to the stuffed calamari recipe I mentioned earlier, my boss and I decided that the crab meat stuffing was just not that good with the calamari, so I was given free reign to make my own stuffing, and prepare it in my own method. I went with the mushroom and spinach stuffing that I had previously envisioned, and I braised the squid in my own tomato basil sauce. We sold out of them last night, and tonight we made the rest of the squid we had in house (and sold out again).

But one of the orders of calamari went to a table of reviewers who give out local restaurant awards who happened to be dining with us that evening. They were specifically coming in to try lots of various dishes, and to see what we had to offer. One of them ordered my recipe for stuffed calamari. I was nervous of course, but all the same, I wanted to know how it would be received. After that round of dishes came back, the server reported to me that this particular reviewer said that the stuffed calamari “exceeded all his expectations”! Sure, perhaps he was expecting it to taste like sewage, and instead he thought it merely tasted of excrement - but I still choose to believe that this meant he felt that my creation was really something special. And, well, it is just hard to have a bad night after that.

Even if I did almost burn the kitchen down with cranberry juice earlier….

And even if later that night I knocked the mop bucket over and had to clean it all up…

Sigh. It was still a great day.

Matt

Permalink 9 Comments

02.02.07

What Makes a Rough Day at the Office?

Posted in The Story at 12:04 pm by Chef Matt

It’s because too many of my days felt like this that I left the world of the cubicles…

When I had an office job, I knew the factors involved that would make for a “rough” day. Unexpected emergencies cropping up, constant interruptions from coworkers and/or vendors, endless meetings to discuss why nothing is getting done, and an email inbox that would just refuse to shrink in size. My God, I can almost feel my blood pressure rising by describing that scenario.

But what about the kitchen? I have no email there, and I can only rarely hear my phone ringing in my pocket over perpetual background noise of the fans in the hood and the jets of the dishwasher. Sure, there is constant hard work, and if you look at new orders coming in as “interruptions” then you could say there are a lot of those as well. But then again, if you feel that filling orders is an “interruption” as supposed to “your job”, then perhaps a career in the kitchen is not right for you…

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is sometimes hard to pick out what makes a good day in the kitchen. But when it happens, you know it! The corollary of this is that it can be hard to describe a bad day - but once again, there is no mistaking one when it gets you.

“Hi, I know we didn’t make reservations and that it’s 7 o’clock on a Saturday night, but can we all get salads now please?…”

Lucky for you, dear reader, I had just such a day yesterday. The first thing that makes for a rough day without a doubt is getting weeded early. No, I am not talking about smoking up before your shift, but rather “weeded” is the term for falling behind - having so much to do that by the time you get to the thing that is last on your list, it would be too late. Getting weeded is what happens when you are maxed out, and then a party of ten decides to show up randomly and they all want to eat RIGHT NOW.

Usually, getting weeded does not happen until I have already been at work for about 5 hours though. The first 3 hours or so of the day is used for the preparation of my station so that I have everything at the ready, so that I don’t get weeded when the crowds come pouring in the door. Yesterday was a different story though as I was weeded pretty much as soon as I walked in the door.

Jay is out of town on a week-long vacation, and the loss of an extra set of hands can be rough on a kitchen crew. Tasks that he normally picks up were still undone, and since I am the first chef in for the afternoon shift, I had to pick up the slack. That meant doing some prep for some catering orders, getting “family meal” started, cooking the soup of the day (I was finally able to make butternut squash soup!) and planning a whole new dish for the appetizer specials. It was an idea I had always wanted to try: stuffed calamari.

Aside on the creation of this dish: Jay wanted to bring in some calamari, and we were going to make fried calamari as per usual, but then I suggested we try something new, and stuff them instead. Jay came up with a spinach and crab stuffing (I was going to do spinach and mushroom myself…) and I ran a test of cooking them on the grill. They puff up like little balloons since the calamari tubes shrink as they cook, but the end result was really quite good. I topped them with homemade pesto and served them with an endive/watercress/daikon salad with a fresh lemon juice vinaigrette. Very nice!

Looking at the finished result with perfect hindsight, that looks easy enough to create, right? But remember, this was something we were still inventing step by step, element by element - all while I was trying to cook all of the other things on my daily list, and with people starting to walk in the front door. Add to this that I still have the rather involved foie gras preparation on the menu, and I was nothing short of slammed from the get go. Even with a nice half-hour delay of people coming in, getting seated and getting the dinner rush started, I was way behind. If this had been a Friday or Saturday, I would have been sunk.

There is only one way out of the weeds, and that is to keep attacking everything in front of you as fast as you can while maintaining the quality of the dishes that go out to the customers. The problem is, just like an engine that is red-lining for too long, eventually something is going to give. Either you will get caught up, or you will completely break down.

I wouldn’t say what happened to me was a complete break down, but it was obvious that there were little things that I was starting to get wrong as a result of being stuck in such a panicked state for so long. I sent out a pear salad without the blue cheese and walnuts, the first order for foie gras came in and I had forgotten to toast the brioche ahead of time. The first order of calamari came in and I forgot to hand the cooks the lemons to grill (part of the presentation) with the squid. Sure, none of these are catastrophic errors (except for the bad salads - that still pisses me off), but one by one they act like drops of water weathering down my tenuous grasp on control my station.

I don’t drink caffiene myself, but I can really appreciate why everyone else does now…

By the end of the shift, I was shot. I placed the orders for tomorrow and began cleaning up. It had been a long day, and without a doubt, a very rough day. But the best part of this job - I get to start fresh tomorrow. (Which happens to be today…)

In fact, my situation is better than starting fresh! See, all the work that had me in the weeds yesterday is effort I can apply towards today. The soup is made, the calamari sauces and salads are done, the party for this weekend has been prepped. None of those things should rear their ugly head to strike me down again today.

Of course, there may be a whole new set of tasks - that I did not know existed - waiting for me today, but I’ll take those as they come. See, they aren’t “interruptions”. They’re just “my job”.

Matt

Permalink 2 Comments