Lecture (Keepin' It Real)

Sorry, no amateur food porn today -- class today was all lecture, given by a nice woman I'll call Darla. The subject was the business of food, and the jobs (and salaries) we could expect to encounter when we leave the ever-loving arms of academia. Darla started off by talking about herself, which concerned me for a moment -- is this going to be some sort of weird self-help guru thing?



No, Darla was actually really interesting and well-spoken. Darla was in publishing until she got bored to tears, went to a similar culinary school, and did some hard time on the line in a few kitchens before finding herself burning out. Because she was a bit older than the other line cooks, she had the maturity to, well, show up and be on time and be dependable. When she informed her boss/chef she was at the end of her tether, she found herself managing the kitchen, which lead to managing all sorts of interesting posts. When she gave a tour of a high-visibility burger shack she was managing to a class from our school, some one had the good sense to give her a more regular podium.

Darla went around the room and asked for people's short- and long-term goals. I told her that mine were to work in a pizza-oriented kitchen; long-term, to bring a product to market. She immediately name-checked a pizza joint I was thinking of approaching for an externship soon, which was eerie. Darla spoke of salaries in the food biz, particularly how poorly and potentially unfairly linecooks tend to be compensated. She reviewed the pitfalls of running a restaurant, and offered a basic sketch of the deceptively simple logic of relatively few revenue streams (the food) and the many expenses (food, labor, rent, insurance, licenses, publicity, linens, licenses, disposables, etc etc); not to mention how expenses are especially screwy in today's economy.

Still fuzzy on what I want to do for the rest of my life, but feel like I just got another good link added to my chain mail.

ADDENDA:
I was surprised this morning to find the scale reading 222, after it reading 224 for several months after an easy drop from 235. I know it's going to annoy some people, but I can't help but think it's simply from eating too little and sleeping too much this past weekend, and it'll be back in a flash once I get back into the normal groove of things.

I went to yoga for a 6:45 class. 100 people shoved mat-to-mat in a small room, way too hot. If I was in a cubicle all day, why would I shove myself onto a packed subway to make it to a sardine-can yoga class? Total insanity, all those people must be spending extra money on therapists. After the first 20 minutes, I walked out and got a refund. I guess I'm really lucky to have a non-9 to 5 grind right now, definitely going to stick to afternoon classes and other less trafficked yogathons.

The organic carrots in my salad looked young, and they have a very tingly, vaguely unpleasant flavor to them.

After stopping by Laboratorio de Gelato on Orchard St., I picked up ingredients to make fresh mint ice cream this evening. Just taking my vanilla ice cream recipe, quartering the vanilla, and instead of just heating half & half to a simmer, I plan to place a few cups of mint leaves in the half & half and let them steep for 30 minutes off the heat. Hopefully it'll be good, we'll know tomorrow. My first stab at a flavored ice cream that's not chocolate or involving an extract.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, organic cornflakes with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 10am, handful of peanuts, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1pm, veg, shrimp and pork dumplings, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

LUNCH #2: 3pm, large green salad, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Fresh from the green market.

PM SNACK: 6pm, 8oz of 3 flavors of gelato, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
On the way to yoga, so hot and having a sugar craving -- guess I didn't eat enough. Makes me want to make my own.

DINNER: 7:30pm, seitan, quinoa, seaweed stuff and tahini dressing, water, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Vegan food at the yoga studio with the HVS.

Brigade System/Executive Chef/Purchasing/Fats and Oils (Not My Mother's Scramble, ohmmmmmmm)

Yesterday, I had the day off from school -- I rode a bicycle all day and cooked up a storm in the evening, including my first-ever proper broiling of a crustacean. I also made this interesting ice cream recipe, which involved espresso. I had one serving around 7pm for dessert, and still hungry had a 2nd serving around 8pm. When I tried to get to bed around 10pm, I realized I was wired. I didn't hit the hay 'til around 1am. When I woke up at 6am, my stomach was tight -- OH NO, I had to eat scrambled eggs today! (See Addenda.)

First, however, was the day's lecture . Chef M reviewed the militaristic hierarchy of a large kitchen, starting with the 4-Star General, a.k.a. the Executive Chef a.k.a. Chef de Cuisine a.k.a. Boss of the Kitchen. The Sous Chef is the 2nd-in-command and can fill in for the boss. Under the Sous are several different Chefs dePartie -- section heads, which include Saucier (sauces), Grillardin (grilled items), Patisseur (pastry). Of these sub-commandants, the top would be the Tourenant, the one who can fill in at any station. The lowest, most junior would be the garde manger: cold prep. Things like salad can be worked up before service time and when the pressure is on, no cooking is involved -- just assembling. Having the new guy work garde manger is logical; without the heat of cooking, you can hurt yourself (and others) less.

After going on at length about the responsibilities of the Executive Chef (hiring, firing, purchasing, menu writing, payroll, marketing & PR, sanitation, training, delegation, getting face time on the Food Network), Chef M pointed out the drama of purchasing and dealing with purveyors, the salespeople who sell food and consumables to restaurants. "Always check everything," he told us, "they will always try to rip you off." The class took a walk to the purchasing department of the school, which is equivalent to the purchasing department of a mid-sized hotel. With a refrigerator as big as my bedroom, a pantry like a couple of well-stocked aisles at Wholefoods, a liquor cabinet that fills up a large walk-in closet and 50 and 100-gallon steam-kettles to make stock, this was something to behold.

After some basic knife-skill drills, we were shown the proper way to care for cast iron. Since it is porous, it will rust easily so never get it wet. To clean, heat and scrub with coarse salt repeatedly (my caste iron wok is gonna get some good luv from me next time I use it!). Then, he showed us the proper way to scramble an egg: 1.) whisk 3 eggs (less will cook too fast) until the yolks and whites form 1 homogeneous color. Hit with a healthy dash of salt. 2.) Heat cast-iron skillet and drop enough fat of your choice to coat the bottom of pan, no more. Do not let smoke. Put a drop of egg mixture in pan to see if it cooks quickly. If not, heat more. 3.) Drop in egg mixture and immediately start shaking pan AND stir rapidly with wooden spoon. Repeatedly scrape down sides and bottom. 4.) When the egg still slightly runny, after about a minute, plate and serve. It will continue to cook and firm up on plate.

My partner and I did three rounds of different oils to taste and see how they cook. The sesame oil tasted very strong, overwhelming the eggy flavor. The peanut oil was mildly pleasant, with only a faint peanuty aftertaste. The clarified butter, however, was very pleasant, giving a round, almost sweet mouth feel to the springy egg.

I made the first batch with sesame oil, and put it on the plate. I grabbed some bread while my teammate washed the pan for the next batch. I put a small amount of the egg on the spoon, brought it to my face and looked at it, and it looked nothing like my mom's scramble (again, see Addenda). I popped it in my mouth and....it wasn't that bad. Pleasantly poofy, not sulfurous at all. The chef brought out a brick of foie gras to accompany the eggs, and the two items slathered on french bread wasn't a bad snack at all.

Tomorrow, I visit the Dean of Student Affairs to talk volunteer opportunity. C-school is art school, but it's also vocational school. Where am I going?

ADDENDA:
On the bicycle ride up to school today, I listened to NPR podcasts and chanted out loud, "NOT MY MOTHER'S SCRAMBLE" over and over again. I would of said, "Not my mother's eggs", but that just had too many off-colored meanings. The little meditation was my nutritionist, Ilsa's, idea.

When I met with Ilsa Tuesday, I confided that I was a bit concerned: Thursday would be scrambled eggs. If I am to be a serious student of the culinary arts, I can't just dismiss such a major foundation ingredient as 'inedible.' Over the past year or so, eggs have started showing up in my fridge, mostly as ingredients in pancakes, ice cream, and various baked goods, but the smell of frying eggs makes me literally gag. Why?

It's all my mom's fault. She was a brilliant, successful, intelligent, loving woman, but she could not cook if her life (hell, my life) depended on it. She would cook breakfast quickly for my brother and me every morning and, 4 out of 5 times, it would be scrambled eggs. Eggs quickly beaten, thrown on a hot pan without much of a shake, and what would appear on my plate would be a little bit burnt on the bottom, a little bit raw on the top, and bits of white and yolk everywhere. No salt, not egg, fried in no oil but in a (now recognized as toxic) teflon no-stick pan. Literally looked like fried boogers. My mom would not tolerate waste, and eventually I learned to place the cut-up egg on a napkin between my legs when she was not looking.

As soon as I could get out of the house, the last thing in the world I would want to eat is an egg. Looking back, it was the lack of choice, the powerlessness of having to eat those eggs that has given me such a visceral reaction to even the smell of a frying egg. Being confronted by a properly made scrambled egg, however -- and made by my own had -- might just help me to get over this detritus that has hung around my brain for so long. Therapy Session, $35K, with Culinary School thrown in for free!

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, banana, .25 bowl, hunger 1/5

AM SNACK: 9am, small piece of French bread, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTING: 11am, samples of scrambled egg fried in sesame, peanut and clarified butter, small piece of foie gras, french bread, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:45pm, good quality Margarita pizza, minus crusts, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
The pizza at Naples 45 at Grand Central is, surprisingly, probably in the top 20 of the city.

PM SNACK: 3:45pm, fresh shrimp spring roll, small quantity of seaweed salad, 2 inari, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Pre-made snackies from Wholefoods.

DINNER: 8pm, boca burger on whole wheat, 10 saltines with good peanut butter, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5