10.09.07
Posted in The Story at 10:13 am by Chef Matt
After almost two months of testing and refining and subjecting my fellow chefs to varying degrees of palatable bottle-fermented concoctions, my root beer has made it to the production block! Seven bottles of Rustico’s finest homemade root beer (I need a name for it, don’t I? I’m thinking “Fin Root Beer” - “Furb” for short…) were officially deemed worthy of serving to our customers (by Chef and myself) and so we put together the dessert for our servers to sell.
Root beer and vanilla ice cream. The best dessert flavor combination since… well… ever. |
We decided the root beer would go out as a dessert item with a scoop of high quality vanilla gelato for a “build your own root beer float”. Homemade root beer, awesome ice cream - what’s not to love about this?
Well apparently in the first night, there was a lot that was not to love, as exactly zero were sold. But on the second night, I was still hanging around (watching my beloved Philadelphia Eagles get their asses handed to them by the Giants) when Andrew came out and told me that one root beer had been sold.
I was ecstatic. Here was all my months of effort finally culminating in a single sale. The first review is always the most important I feel with a new dish. For me anyway, it sets the tone of how everyone else will perceive the dish from then on. I wanted this one to be perfect. I pulled out a scoop of ice cream, opened the bottle of root beer, let the fizz overflow die down, rinsed off the bottle and placed them together on a cedar plank (for the “rustic” look we go for at Rustico) and sent it out.
I pulled aside our floor manager, Jon, and told him that he had to “touch” the table that ordered the root beer float to see what they thought. I just had to know.
The next few minutes were arduous, both because I was dying to know how they liked my root beer, and also because the Eagles continued to suck.
Jon came back into the kitchen and gave me the news:
“Matt, they LOVED your root beer. One of the people at the table was a self-proclaimed ‘root beer aficionado’ and he said the root beer was ’simply outstanding’!”
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL!
Yeah, it kinda felt like that… |
Vindication.
Chef had given me an awesome project, one I really put my all into, and now, two months later, the result has turned into something our customers think is great. It’s hard for me to put into words exactly how that feels. It’s like seeing your own kid hit a homerun or come home with straight A’s. This root beer was my baby - and on it’s first time at bat, it knocked the ball clear out of the park.
I won’t say “scored a touchdown” because even the Eagles couldn’t manage that…
So come one, come all - please come visit me and try out our root beer float! I don’t have a huge amount of them - I make batches of about eight at a time, but I am trying to make sure we always have enough on hand for the next visit by an “aficionado”. If you are that special root beer lover - I think I have something here that will not disappoint you! And I’d love to hear what you think!
Chef Matt
P.S. I know that the next question y’all are going to ask is, “What about the recipe?” I’m not ready to post that yet for two reasons:
1. I only just came out with this root beer, and I want people to come by and try it first.
2. I’m actually still working on the recipe. It needs more little tweaks here and there - very minor ones, but tweaks all the same - and I don’t want to give you all the recipe until I have it perfected.
So patience please - it’ll come eventually!
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10.05.07
Posted in The Story, Teaching Classes at 8:54 pm by Chef Matt
About two weeks ago now, I had the second of my cooking classes up in Bedford, PA. The first class had a waiting list that was almost long enough to fill the second class, so we just decided to run my first class over again for those who couldn’t fit in the first time around. Apparently my first class received such rave reviews though; this class had a waiting list of its own! Ahh, the cost of fame…
Scolding my class for not using enough wine in their food. I am firm, but fair…
Photo by Ken Sepeda |
I wanted to give this second class a little something different, so I was going to make a different risotto recipe - risotto with pancetta and asparagus - but asparagus was just too far out of season to find anywhere. So I had to stick with my original recipe of saffron risotto with shrimp and marinated artichoke hearts. (Oh darn…)
Like my first class, the group really involved themselves in the class, laughed at my jokes, and asked questions about things they were interested in. I was worried when one of the first questions was, “What species of pine tree to pine nuts come from?” (Answer: “I have no fucking clue.”), but I covered for it well enough and the rest of the questions were more manageable. In the end I did receive a round of applause and everyone was effusive in their praise both of the food and my presentation.
Ladies, ladies please! There is plenty of me for all of you! |
The first surprise of the night came shortly after the end of the class when one lady came up to my demonstration table and asked me to sign her recipe packet. Yes ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life someone asked me for my autograph. Next stop, Hollywood! 
A few more people came up and asked me specific questions about the dishes I’d just demonstrated which I was happy to talk with them about. It was in this series of conversations that the next surprise of the evening occurred. A man came up - who knew my parents actually - and asked me if I would consider moving to Bedford. My raised eyebrow must have shown him that my interest was indeed piqued, so he continued. Some friends of his have recently renovated a hotel in Everett, PA, and they had a chef lined up from Pittsburgh who fell through. He wanted to know if I wanted to be the head chef at this new hotel/restaurant.
Not only had I been asked for my first autograph, but my first attempt at being “poached” had happened as well. Simply put, he was trying to steal me away from my job and give me the ultimate promotion in the culinary profession. I’ve been a professional chef for just under 14 months, and I have been offered my first executive chef position. I dare say that’s not bad by any measurement.
But I had to tell him “no”. There are three good reasons:
How could I leave all the glamour of teaching behind?…
Photo by Ken Sepeda |
1. I like living in DC for now. While I have mentioned before that I have no interest in working in downtown DC, the DC area still has many fabulous restaurants to work in and learn from. I’m situated in a great place to start my career and continue forward in the years to come. And the job I have in DC right now is one I love. It’s not every job that lets you make your own root beer and saw pig heads in half. And I get to do these things without the pressure of it being all on me if they fail…
2. I don’t think my wife and I are ready to move just yet. Not only do I have a good job, but my wife has a fabulous job that she is advancing in as well. Just because I have a good lead doesn’t mean she does, and I am not sure what Everett, PA holds for her as far as her career is concerned.
3. Most importantly, I just don’t think I’m ready for it. I’ve learned so much and come so far in this past year, but I know my limitations. Someday I’ll be able to open my own place, I know I will. But today is not that day, and neither is tomorrow. I’m not going to fall into the trap of setting phony deadlines for myself, so let’s just say that I know when the time will be right. And when it is, I’ll be open to such offers.
But until then, I’m just going to have to enjoy the fact that at least people are asking if I’m interested. I guess I’ll just have to pass the time holding more classes and signing more autographs!
Chef Matt
The obligatory group shot with my class.
I’m the guy in the chef’s coat in the front…
Photo by Ken Sepeda |
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10.02.07
Posted in The Story at 10:05 am by Chef Matt
The other night, after I had finished my kitchen work, and had entered all the invoices into our QuickBooks system, Chef came by to ask me if I could help him with a new layout design he was thinking about for the recipes we have in house. You see, most restaurants write down the recipes they are using in house so that if one chef is out for some reason, and more gremolata (for instance) needs to be made, then another chef can quickly take over for the absence of that item.
It just makes good sense.
“Dammit, the recipe for our mushroom sauce has got to be in here somewhere!” |
The problem at Rustico - and we all agree it is a problem - is that our “menu book” has only about 60% of the recipes in it, and the ones that are in there are placed in no discernable order, and with no consistent style/layout. Any time I want a recipe for a salad dressing, I have to scan the whole notebook, and even if I do find it, I may or may not understand what the recipe is telling me.
So Chef wanted me to help him with a standard recipe layout for our in-house book. One that was clean, yet professional, and stylized enough that if he ever wanted to go for the “next step”, he could use it as a starting layout for his own cookbook from Rustico.
It was time for me to show him what I could do. I mean, I had done this for 8 years - surely I could show him a few skills in layout design and so forth?
Well, it took a few hours for me to get something together, but it was looking pretty sharp by the end of the night. Chef was getting more and more excited as we went along and he saw it all coming together. So much so he went out into the kitchen and had Armando make me a steak while I worked. He only sort-of asked me if I wanted a steak though. He was in a hyper-manic state of production - something all chefs get into when they get into the “zone” - so the conversation went like this:
Chef: “Haveyoutriedoursteak? Doyouwantasteak? Youlikeitmediumrareright? ‘Mando! Onesteakmediumrareformattrightnow!”
Me: “Umm, a steak would be great. Thanks chef!”
“Just when I think I’m out…
they pull me back in…” |
So the layout went well, and Chef is excited about the implications of where this can go to help the restaurant out. My Adobe Illustrator skills continue to be weak, and the fact that I had about three beers over the course of this project did not make them any better for sure. But the part that amazed me was how Chef said that if I needed to take a class to improve my skills on Illustrator, he’d be happy to have the company pay for it.
And there it was. Here I am, away from the computer world, working in a professional kitchen, and I’m still being offered free computer training classes. It is indeed funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But I’m hardly complaining. I mean, after all, my steak was delicious!
Chef Matt
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09.20.07
Posted in The Story at 8:50 pm by Chef Matt
I wrote before about how I was lucky enough to have been tapped (no pun intended) to make root beer for the restaurant. It has been an exciting series of tests so far, and I had come up with two options for how to get bubbles into the final product.
The first was bottle fermenting. It is a lengthy process that takes about 2 weeks to achieve the right consistency, and after about 2.5 weeks, the product starts going downhill.
A skill from a bygone era. Was I about to revive it at Rustico?… |
My second idea was making the syrup, and then like a soda jerk, combining it with the syrup right there on the spot. The problem here was making sure the dilution ratio was right on the money.
I was refining both methods and yielding some great results. I would randomly give people samples of my latest tests, and I could see people getting more and more excited about the prospect that we were really going to be making homemade root beer in house. In short, it was becoming good enough to sell to the public, and that was exciting.
But there were SO MANY variables involved with what I was testing. For the bottle fermenting method there was how much yeast to put in the solution, the dilution ratio, the time spent at room temperature fermentation, the time spent in cold fermentation, and which water to use - just to name a few. With the soda-jerk style there were variables like should the syrup ferment before mixing, and for how long, and again which water should be used to add bubbles? These were the tests I ran over and over with the people in the restaurant, but the problem was we all liked all the results. It was too hard to make comparisons between them, so I had to set up a blind taste test.
Everyone in the kitchen agreed: Hires is still better than any of the three root beers I placed in front of them. |
I took three pint glasses from the bar and lined up three glasses of root beer. One bottle fermented for two weeks, one soda-jerked with club soda and one experimental version I was working on that had a fermented syrup that was then bottle fermented for only one week (an attempt to do a faster bottle fermentation). I brought everyone in the kitchen over to taste all three and tell me which one was the best (without telling them which was which.)
The long, slow bottle fermented won unanimously. Sure, the bubbles in there are an indicator of alcohol forming, but there was no question that the complexity and depth of flavors were richer, the quality of the bubbles were better and the overall taste was more like root beer than any of the others.
In short, I now have taken one of my major variables out of the equation. I know now which method I have to proceed with, so now it is just a question of fine-tuning the recipe. But with about 15 ingredients in my recipe - and one or two others out there I want to try and add in at some point - we can hardly say I have it all figured out.
Back to the drawing board.
Chef Matt
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09.18.07
Posted in The Story at 1:34 pm by Chef Matt
So other than just scaring co-workers, we did actually have a reason for bringing pig heads into our restaurant. Indeed one of the other sous chefs, Andrew, wanted to make a pork terrine from them. (That is our more palatable way of saying “head cheese”.)
I actually sold head cheese back in high school when I was working at the Heidelberg Pastry Shoppe in Arlington. In fact, we sold two kinds, regular and spicy. Didn’t much matter which you chose, they were both nasty. So with those troubling childhood memories in my mind, I had to admit I was mildly trepidacious before venturing down this road of boiling pigs’ heads in our kitchen.
Warning: The following story goes into some details involving pigs’ heads, saws, brains and other dissecting things you may find kinda gross. If that’s not your bag, stop reading now, and instead watch something seriously funny instead.
Oh good, the warning didn’t scare you off. So apparently the first step when making head cheese is to scoop out the brains of the pig, as they don’t add much to the resulting stock. (You can still leave if you want to…) The problem is that the brains of the pig - as is the case with most mammals - are surrounded by a lot of skull. Andrew had forgotten to ask the butchers to saw the heads in half when he ordered them so that this would not have been a problem. But even though this oversight of his allowed me to pull off my great prank (would not have been nearly as scary with only half a pig head…) it did place us in a bit of a pickle. How would we saw through a pig’s head? Yes our knives are sharp - but not THAT sharp.
So Andrew found a hacksaw in our toolbox at the restaurant, but a few seconds of that clearly showed that this was not going to work anytime soon as the blade was pretty old. We were thinking about calling some local butchers to see if we could bring them these heads for cutting, when suddenly it dawned on me that there was a maintenance man in the house repairing some lights and fans…
“Look, I know you’re busy and I don’t want to break your concentration or anything, but can the saws on your truck go through flesh and bone?…” |
“Excuse me sir,” I called to him at the top of his ladder. “We have a pair of pig heads that we have to saw in half… would you happen to have a reciprocating saw in your truck?”
I am willing to bet I am the first person who ever posed that question to him with that premise. The look on his face and follow–up question confirmed this belief.
“Did you say ‘pig heads’?”
“Yessir, we need to cut them in half, and we don’t have a saw that can do it in house.”
“Well hell yeah I got one that’ll go through metal!”
As I expected he was thrilled with the concept of getting a chance to do something so outlandish. We pulled in his saw, sterilized the blade and he made quick work of the jaw bones (to separate the lower jaw from the rest of the head) and then a cut through the inch-thick skull. Unfortunately he also made quick work of our cutting board as well. (We set it aside as one to use for future such projects…)
The repair man went back to work with the biggest smile on his face I have ever seen, and set back into the task at hand. The brains of the pig were liberated, and the pig heads were soon cooking in broth.
I put a lot of effort into the images I make for you people. Here is how the pig head slicing went down… |
A few hours later, we strained the broth, and it was time to pull the meat from the skulls. This was fascinating as I learned where all the meat on a pig’s face (there is a lot of it) is located. The jowls - which we had bisected with the reciprocating saw - were the biggest surprise as I was almost ready to throw out the skull when I found that huge pocket of meat near the eye socket.
And in the end, it is experiences like this - not just combining power tools and meat, which I have previously mentioned is awesome - where I can learn to make something totally new and different that keep me coming back day after day to work. Sure, it’s not everyone who looks forward to the odd chance to make head cheese, but if you could have tasted the end result, you would come back for more - it was fabulous!
Chef Matt
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09.13.07
Posted in The Story at 11:14 pm by Chef Matt
I guess I could be writing about all the cool recipes I’m working on, or how I see myself advancing in the kitchen, or how we are seeing a great increase in business with the onslaught of football season, but really, I know what my readers want. You want to hear about even more stupid jokes and pranks that are pulled in the kitchen. Some of the previous stories I have shared can be found here and here.
And as luck would have it, stupid jokes seem to happen around me all the time. Especially because I like to pull them.
So some of our recent special menus have had us bringing in a collection of seemingly odd - I guess I could say “less conventional” - ingredients. Lamb tongues, pig ears and quail eggs are all items I have had to place orders for as of late. I am not saying these are bad things - they all can be made into really neat food items actually, it’s just that most people will sort of take a step back for a second when they first hear that the salad in front of them is garnished with pig’s feet.
Yeah, they’re not that much prettier in a bag… |
This morning the meat delivery man arrived and he had with him his usual order of hanger steak, ground beef and other assorted goodies, and in a separate box he had something wrapped tightly in an opaque plastic bag. It’s my job to check in the orders in the morning, so I dove into the bag expecting there to be chicken breasts or maybe some pork bellies. Staring back at me were a pair of pig heads. Even though the eyes were removed (thankfully I might add) this was a touch of a shock to my system at 8:30 in the morning. I checked the invoice, and noticed that this order was placed after the order I had placed, so it was in fact legit. What a nasty surprise from my chefs. I guess they want to make head cheese.
However, the fact that my heart skipped a beat gave me an idea. Why should I be the only one to be surprised by these heads? I noticed that my jack-of-all-trades, Alemo, was not in the kitchen, so he had no idea there were pig heads in house. I started to poke around the restaurant to see where he was, and with luck, I found he was in one of the bathrooms.
Yeah, like this, only there was no way I was touching the pig head to my head… |
I called over an accomplice - Oscar - to call to him in Spanish to get him to come out completely unassuming. With everyone gathered around, I placed the pig head in front of my face and screaming I charged him as he came out of the bathroom. With a loud “Holy shit!” he quickly ran back into the bathroom, and the running joke for the rest of the day was that it was good he was going back into a bathroom considering what he probably did in his shorts.
Yes, a kitchen has no end to the humorous adventures it provides. Again, I’m just living in fear of the day when it is “my turn”…
Chef Matt
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09.05.07
Posted in The Story at 10:33 pm by Chef Matt
Wow, it has been a hell of a long time since I last wrote. It has been a busy time to say the least, so first, some quick updates:
Mmmm… root beer. |
1. The root beer recipe I originally worked with was no good. I have come up with one of my own, and have had my first successful bottle fermentation test as well. I am also working on some tests for carbonating a syrup on the spot with club soda, so there are a lot of tests and so forth I am working on. When I have it all together, and a final recipe, I will share my knowledge with you all.
2. The cooking class in Bedford went amazingly well. So much so, that I was invited back to do it all over again since they had so many people on the waiting list. I just enjoy the time in my parents’ cabin alone. That is the real reward for me.
3. The reasons for my being away involve a crappy network here in my house, my working on a website (yes, I still do some web design and building for extra cash) and the fact that I was in Chicago last weekend to see my best friend from elementary school get married. (Congrats again Phil!)
So with all that out of the way, allow me to get on with today’s story.
I came back from being off for three days to the expected combined messes of both the state of my walk-in and the state of the ordering invoices. Both were a disaster. Add to this that I have to work a station on Wednesdays (pizza station - loads of fun) and the result is a serious work load to welcome me back to the kitchen.
It’s my kind of town. |
But my three day sojourn to the Windy City had revived me somewhat, so I was ready to tackle the combined problems. I was soon throwing together garlic confit, cold soups and prepping my pizza station with ease while booting up the computer to calculate out the numbers for last week’s food cost report. In short, things were humming along at a great pace. (Does anyone else sense the imposing doom?…)
While seated at the office computer (yes, singular…amazing how we all get our combined work done) one of my line cooks came in to tell me that Emilio was in.
“Emilio?,” I asked.
“Si.”
“Aqui?”
“Si.”
“Por que?”
“No se.”
Since this conversation had proved not to be enlightening, and had also taxed about all of my Spanish language skills, I decided to get up and see what was going on.
I found Emilio in the bar, and I asked him what was going on. He looked down at his shoes, and mumbled something in Spanish. This was not productive of course, so I brought him over to Oscar - my line cook who is most proficient in English - and asked him to tell me what Emilio was saying.
Simply put… |
They exchanged a few lines in Spanish with all the employees gathered around, and after a few moments where I was the only person in the kitchen who did not understand what was going on, Oscar turned to me and said, “He is not working here any more.”
Oh great, I had just let Emilio quit in front of my whole kitchen. I ushered Emilio and Oscar aside, and found out why he was quitting - he said because he was moving, though I’m not sure I buy that - and I wished him well. The one thing that bothered me was that he was scheduled to work tonight, and now I was down one man. He said though that he had a friend who needed work, and I told him to have his friend come by after lunch. He said he would, and he walked out the door.
It’s amazing to me how someone who you share so many work shifts with can just simply walk away like that. Emilio and I have worked side by side to open Rustico on many a Sunday morning. And as he walked out the door this morning, I’m sure that is the last time I’ll ever see him in my life.
Anyway, shortly after Emilio left, Alemo - my morning “gopher” - told me that he too had a friend who would like some work. I gave him the same story - have his friend show up after lunch.
As amazing as it may seem, within 10 minutes of one guy quitting, I had two prospective applicants for the job lined up to come in that afternoon.
Also simply put, and in animated form… |
And come they did. One showed up at 3:05, the other at 3:07. I gave the job to the one who arrived first - Alemo’s friend. I showed him the schedule, told him the pay, and said I would see him tomorrow at four. He seemed happy with all this, and said he would be there. Emilio’s friend was sad that we didn’t have a job for him, but understood, and was happy to leave his name and number with us just in case.
So in the course of just today I lost a dishwasher, and gained one as well. Sure, I was down a man for tonight, but we were slow, so I am sure Miguel could make it for one night. And tomorrow he will have a new man by his side to train at the job.
One out, one in. Life in the kitchen continues as it always has.
Chef Matt
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08.21.07
Posted in The Story at 4:13 pm by Chef Matt
As a huge fan of Jane’s Addiction, I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to use this as a title for one of my posts.
One of the all-time greatest albums. |
I sense a vague feeling of unrest out there due to the title of this post, so let me once again put your collective minds at ease, I was not the one who was caught stealing. They have yet to catch me.
Yes, I’m kidding. Rather, twice this past week I was confronted with issues of theft from the restaurant that I had to deal with, and it is just another element of the learning process in how to manage restaurant workers.
The first instance had to deal with paychecks. The paychecks came out this past Thursday (whoo hoo!) and chef pointed out two of them as being excessively high in overtime. I couldn’t explain this anomaly, but as the keeper of the schedule, I was able to confirm that they should not have had that much overtime since they simply didn’t work that many days. So of course the next explanation is a simple mess-up in the system. If they forgot to punch out, then the system would give them more and more hours until it reset itself at 4AM. That is easy enough to look up and correct in our management software, so I logged into the system to check their records.
All the days they logged in had appropriate log-out times. But then I noticed what was wrong. Somehow they had been logged in and logged out every day for the pay period. Including days they weren’t even there. Simply put, someone was logging in for them when they were not around.
Punching in someone else’s card… naughty naughty. |
This, ladies and gentlemen, is theft. As of yet, we have not yet been able to determine who the culprit is for this, but we are keeping our eyes peeled for irregularities like this in the future.
The next instance happened right in front of me. One of my better nighttime line cooks was in the walk-in with me and right before me he grabbed some cherries and began to eat them. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe it was happening right in front of me! I informed him that the walk-in was not a salad bar, and he should not be snacking in there… I didn’t call him a “thief” or anything so extreme, I just simply wanted to get across the point that he should not be eating food other than the meals we make for them every day.
I don’t condone snacking on cherries from the walk-in, but I certainly understand it… |
He apologized, and a few minutes later came back with a dollar to pay for the food. Well, I didn’t want him to pay for the cherries, I just wanted him to not eat them any more. Alas, this refusal of the dollar by me made him more upset. He is a very prideful man, and as a result, he left. Just walked out.
We were wondering if he would return or not two days later when his “break” was over, and much to the relief of most who work there, he did. I am of split feelings on this. On the one hand, he is one of our better line cooks. He is a hard worker who consistently is on the ball and turns out a good product. On the other hand though, a worker who can’t handle a simple reprimand to the degree where it causes him to leave the line for a whole shift is not necessarily someone I want working for me.
Simply put, I can’t be expected to make food cost if my employees are helping themselves to all the ingredients. And if I can’t train them not to do that… well, I guess they will have to be on their way then. I’m guessing he is not going to be snacking from the walk-in much any more, but the cost of the lesson to him was that I had to have a whole night in the kitchen without him there?…
My guess is we have not heard the last of this situation. When so much pride is at stake, the outcome is rarely a good one.
Chef Matt
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08.13.07
Posted in The Story, Recipes at 1:07 pm by Chef Matt
Sorry I have been away for so long, but this past week - the “six” I had to pull - was more like an “eight” as I had two double shifts in there as well. It was an incredibly long week, and my reward for it is that I now get to pull together and teach my class tonight. I hope I can stay awake through the whole thing!
So enough whining, on with the story.
A few weeks back I received my latest issue of Saveur magazine, and as always I ran through it cover to cover as soon as it arrived. One of the articles that seized my rapt attention was an article on root beer - it’s history and recent resurgence in America. I have always been a huge fan of root beer since I love the flavor, and since I gave up drinking caffeine, it is one of the few soft drinks I can still enjoy. Therefore, learning more about the drink, and perhaps learning how to make it as well, was naturally a subject I took great interest in.
When I got to the recipe part of the article though, I couldn’t help but be disappointed as it called for ingredients like dried sassafras root and so forth that would just be more effort than they were worth for me to track down just to brew my own root beer. I figured I’d just have to continue sticking with Hires.
A few days later, chef came up to me with a series of magazine pages that had given him ideas for changes he wanted to make to certain dishes (some of them were flights of fancy, others were put into action immediately). Imagine my joy though when I found amidst the pile of clippings the root beer recipe from Saveur! He wanted to try brewing his own for the restaurant. What a great excuse to learn how to make root beer on somebody else’s dime! The tracking down of these hard-to-find ingredients had just gone from “unnecessarily tedious” to “inspired adventure.”
Because procuring obscure items was a specialty of mine back in the days of my cubicle lifestyle, it only took me about half an hour of calls to secure a delivery of these special herbs to our store. I bought a few ounces of each so we could experiment with different flavor balances so as to get our own unique recipe just right.
Since nobody in the restaurant had ever done this before, we had to start at the beginning. Earlier this week I made my first batch of root beer following the Saveur recipe to the letter. Yesterday was day 5 of the aging process, where they say the root beer should be ready to go with all kinds of great flavors and so forth.
The recipe calls for 2 cups of molasses. Perhaps substituting some honey as a sweetener might be a good idea?… |
No such luck as of yet. Our daily tastings so far have shown that day by day it is increasing in carbonation, and the flavor is coming about, but it still tastes strongly of molasses and is not really “fizzy” per se. Maybe our walk-in is just too darn cold, and this will take a little longer than the recipe suggests.
But the really exciting part of all this is the experimentation and learning involved in such an endeavor. When you boil it all down, I’m being paid to learn how to make root beer! Many people look at me strangely when I tell them just how much of a pay cut I took to leave the web world behind to become a chef, but it’s adventures like this that reassure me that I made the right decision!
Chef Matt
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08.09.07
Posted in The Story, Teaching Classes at 10:52 pm by Chef Matt
A long time ago - back when I was still working at Tirolo in fact - I was wondering if I should go back to becoming a cooking instructor, or maybe pick up some extra catering hours to help earn some more money for myself. The Tirolo job - being my first cooking job was one that did not pay enough for me to stay afloat by itself, and the fact that Sarah was trying to keep labor costs as low as possible meant that I was earning a very paltry paycheck.
Well the times soon changed as I moved on to Vero, and was earning enough there - thanks to a larger hourly wage and more hours - that I didn’t have to work hard to find outside employment. Though in a weird twist of fate, I was actually doing quite a bit of catering work while I was at Vero simply because that was such a major focus of the business.
Now, as a chef at Rustico, and a salaried one at that, I make enough money that I only need to do these jobs when I feel like doing them. The urgent need to find other sources of income is gone thankfully, and in its place there is the chance for me to pick and choose the extracurricular activities I actually want to do.
And teaching cooking is always one of those things.
Italian style - the only way to make something look good without any sort of functionality whatsoever. |
With my incredibly full schedule, I was hardly going around looking for opportunities to be a teacher. Rather, this was an instance where the job fell into my lap. Up in Bedford, PA - where my parents have that aforementioned “cabin in the woods” - there is a new store that has opened that is dedicated to Italian food and design. It’s called “Lifestyle” and it is a wonderful addition to the (until now) culturally bleak offerings in downtown Bedford.
Well, as my mom loves to do, she got to chatting with the owners, and let them know how I’m not only a chef, but way back in the day, I used to teach Italian cooking. Well, they were of course very excited about this revelation, so to skip ahead to the good part, I’ll be teaching a class there on Northern Italian cooking this Monday night!
I’m extremely excited to be back in front of a class again. And this time I am doing so with a culinary degree and over a year of kitchen experience under my belt. When I first started teaching the course, I almost felt like a bit of a fraud - I was simply someone who knew a lot about the subject, but with no real credentials. Now I’m fully bona fide, and while on the one hand this puts me more at ease - people tend to accept that any for real “chef” who shows up is just right about whatever he says - it also has opened that pit in my stomach of performance anxiety. I mean, I’m really supposed to know this stuff now, so if I freeze in front of the class - well, that just won’t be cool.
On the menu for the night: Risotto! (YUM!) |
Fortunately, this is a subject I’ve taught before, so I’m intimately familiar with the subject matter. Throw in my love of cooking and teaching, and I am hoping that it’ll all be like riding a bicycle. Easy to remember, and easy to make a fast get away if things go badly.
Oh yeah, and the class sold out really quickly - so if I do a good job and get another gig, I’ll let you all know ahead of time!
Chef Matt
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