Food Costs/Oil and Vinegar/Greens and Vinaigrette (The Mathematical Measurement of the Olive Garden's Evil)

Waste will put your profits in the garbage, kill a restaurant dead, and destroy the environment to boot. This seems to be a running theme in Chef M's lectures, none so more so than our brief look into the management of food cost. I'll skip the mathematics here, but any executive chef or restaurant manager will be very concerned with the Food Cost Percent (the cost of the food divided by the menu price) and more crucially, the Prime Cost Percent (Food Cost% + Beverage Cost% + Labor Cost%.)

A good restaurant will have a prime cost of about 60-65%, with about half of that going to food. In a mediocre place like, say, the Olive Garden, food costs will only be 15% because they buy 2nd-rate ingredients in bulk, and labor another 15% because they pay near minimum wage. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for advertising and overpaying CEOs.

Back to the matters at hand. We ran through the different kinds of oils, their uses and individual smoke points. When Chef M went to culinary school, he was told only to use olive oil for dressing, never cooking. In his career, he has met Italian people who cook with nothing but olive oil, including deep-frying. Now that olive oil is perceived to be a great healthy oil, the common wisdom has changed. As for vinegar, we learned about its bacterial beginnings -- it's rotten wine, after all. Or rotten juice, depending on the kind of vinegar.

The knives came out and we had our way with a bucket's full of shallots, minced finely. Chef M showed us the proper way to remove stems and veins from various kinds of cooking greens; then we rough-chopped them and sautéed them with a little olive oil, shallots, and salt -- wow! Mustard greens, chard, bok choy, kale -- I tend to avoid this stuff, but these tasted surprisingly....palatable!

Using a hand whisk, we put 1 part vinegar (I used balsamic vinegar, though any acid, like lemon juice, will do) and a small dash of Dijon mustard and a pinch of salt in a bowl. While whisking, I slowly poured 3 parts olive oil in the bowl until it was all in and it became thicker than any of the original ingredients. With some pre-mixed mesclun on hand, we tossed it with the dressing and had our late morning vittles.

Everyone in class is warming up to each other a bit, and Chef M seems to be enjoying himself, peppering his lectures with personal details. He's in the process of opening up his own restaurant near where he lives, and will be looking for externs around the time we'll be graduating. Other personalities are emerging, some rather loud and talking too much, some as focused on absorbing as much as possible without fuss, others dumber than I first assumed. Well, as long as they don't stab me on the way to the sink to wash their knives, we'll all be OK.

ADDENDA:
Tomorrow we have off, but Thursday we are going to experiment with a bunch of different cooking oils by making scrambled eggs. I don't want to make a big deal of this, but since my mom used to force me to eat really badly prepared eggs several times a week, the smell of scrambled eggs makes me nauseous and the thought of putting them in my mouth makes me gag a little.

That indulgent pint of Ben & Jerry's pisses me off. I used to scarf gallons of the stuff in college, thought it was great. Now it tastes tainted with glue! Thanks, Ilsa! Today after school I went home and built the batter for this ice cream, gonna run it through the ice cream attachment of my mixer after a long bike ride tomorrow. I roasted and salted some raw cashews and took a hammer to a good block of 70% dark chocolate, ice cream nirvana awaits...

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, 2 pancakes, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Milk was slightly off, so cooked these to prevent waste. Two other pancakes went in the freezer for future consumption.

AM SNACK: 9:30am, small piece of french bread, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM TASTING: 11:30am, sautéed cooking greens with shallots and olive oil, mesclun salad with vinaigrette, 1 bowl

LUNCH: 12:45pm, various BBQ meats, small amount of mac & cheese and french fries, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Greens were too healthy, had to get them out of my system fast!

PM SNACK: 3:15pm, B&J's Half Baked ice cream, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, tablespoon of hot salty roasted cashews, hunger 3/5

DINNER: 8:45pm, 1 grilled cheese sandwich with Racette soft stinky raw milk cheese, the good butter, and superhippy bread, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Really tasty. Needed salt.