On being a chef today, after you buy your local, seasonal produce

Not too long ago Tony Bourdain did a guest bit on Michael Ruhlman's blog.  I was excited to see the first question he was asked was "What issues do you see facing chefs today?" I wasn't happy with his answer.

Not because it was wrong; the points he made were fine.  I just feel there is a whole massive area that was completely ignored.  The question I wanted to see answered was "What staff related issues do you see facing chefs today?"  I wanted to see how those of us who wrangle the next generation of cooks, bakers, servers, dishwashers, minor criminals and pirates are seeing the shape of the future.

Since I didn't get his answer, I wanted to share some of my own observations.  These are the things I see, the things I try to handle as best I can, the things that I cope with to varying degrees of success.

First off, my staff doesn't expect to make a lot of money right away.  Contrary to the stories people tell about kids these days, these are cooks who even if they did go to culinary school aren't expecting to be the cock of the walk right out the door - there just hasn't been the employment market for that for years now.  They are happy to have a job. And, while they are making or just barely above minimum wage, they hope they have a chef that remembers what it is like to live on that kind of paycheck, when $600 equals two weeks pay, or when that Christmas bonus meant you could pay your bills and buy a few presents.  This matters. A lot. It's why they will scrabble for hours, take extra shifts, hope for a sliver of OT, get that second or third job. Luckily for them, there are plenty of us out there that do remember, because it wasn't so long ago when we were doing the exact same thing.  And as a manager who remembers that feeling, there comes the desire, especially with your best staff members, to wish you could change that, really pay a "living wage" whatever the hell that's supposed to be.  There's a big issue right there, and it doesn't even start to cover things like health care, paid time off or, the crucial one, where the money comes from to do these things.

OK, fine, the staff doesn't expect a lot of money - hopes for it, but doesn't expect it.  So what do they expect from their chefs?  Inspiration in one form or another.  To be taught, and have the chance to learn.  To be given the chance to try new things, to have their ideas taken seriously and with open mindedness.  In a perfect situation, to have the mentor that they will remember long after they have left the place.  Notice, I didn't say they "hope for" all of this, they EXPECT it.  This part is hard.  Every chef I know has days where all they want is a team that works with robotic precision exactly to their specifications day in and day out. Those are the days where baking powder gets used instead of baking soda in the brownies, where the tray of wineglasses gets dropped, and then, at the worst possible time, someone looks up and says, "But WHY do we do it this way?".  There was a time (and some kitchens still work this way, just none that I want to be in) where just looking up could get you fired, berated, a sheet pan thrown at you, all three.  Now, chefs need to anticipate that question.  To answer it before it comes at the worst possible time.  That's the only way to get the real hustle handled with the next generation - to equip your staff with everything they need to know, including the knowledge of when to ask, and when to put your head down and do the job.   And if they learn that, and do that for you, you need to make sure it gets acknowledged. Like I said, this is hard, but more and more, it's expected.

I'm sure some lament the loss of a military like obedience in the kitchen.  But really, I think the biggest issue facing chefs today is one that has always been there - how do we get done what needs doing?  That hasn't changed.  What has changed is the definition of what it means to be a chef from the perspective of your staff.  It doesn't matter what you think it means that someone slapped a four letter word next to your name on a menu. It matters what the people you hire, the people you train, and ultimately, the people you rely on to represent you think it means.

Sorry, chef, but without them, there's only so much you can get done, and we all know there's a lot that needs doing.

The allure of shortbread

What is the perfect cookie? Simple, yes, but not dull. Adaptable. Something you would reach for again and again. A treat, in the truest sense of the word.

There we are, me and Mary, Queen of Scots. Well, I haven't been accused of plots to assassinate Elizabeth I (I'm pretty sure), and I haven't spent any time in exile recently but we totally could bond over cookies. Specifically the delicate, buttery, infinitely versatile shortbread.  Probably the easiest and most useful cookie dough on the planet. It's 3 am and I need a cookie? I'm making shortbread. I need a crust for a cream tart or cheesecake? Ground shortbread. Something different to top my cobbler? Bring on the shortbread dough. Just a little something crunchy to go with my scoop of sorbet? Something I can smear with ganache, or jam, or peanut butter, flavor with nuts or cocoa, or dip in whiskey? How about a recipe that is easily adaptable to things like adding oatmeal powder or rice flour? Endless variation from a simple ratio?

Shortbread. You know that's right.

That's the thing about recipes that stand the test of time - they tend to be easy, with ingredients that are often just lying around, and they also tend to be good. If shortbread sucked, we would have stopped making them in the 12th century. Mary would have to have had something else sprinkled with caraway seeds (which, as it happens, I haven't tried yet but will have by the end of today) and I would be one of those people constantly searching for something but having no idea what that thing was.

The basic ratio for shortbread is simple: 3 parts of flours, 2 parts butter, 1 part sugar. I say flours because I like to use all purpose with a bit of cornstarch for crunch, but I have worked with rice flour, buckwheat, and my grandmother loved to make oatmeal shortbread. The butter is your key flavor so for the love of Sweet Potato, use good stuff. Some folks like to use salted butter, but I like to control the salt more, and go unsalted and add to my taste. If you want to play with sugars, try brown sugar (my favorite) or vanilla sugar. Add spice if you like, vanilla if you like.

As far as baking goes, I like to get good color on my shortbread, so I slice my cookies a little thinner, and let them bake a little longer, but once the edges are golden, pull them whenever they look good to you. Just make it the cookie you want exactly at that moment. And if you just want a recipe, here's my 3 am batch:

I Just Need a Cookie Shortbread:

125 g flour
10 g cornstarch
4 g salt
90 g cool unsalted butter, cut in small chunks
45 g brown sugar
white or raw sugar

Cram all the ingredients together with your hands in a bowl. It's three am, you really want to wash anything extra? Roll into a log, and press the white or raw sugar on the outside of the log. Slice into as many cookies as you need right now, plus two, just because. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet, and bake at 350 at least until the edges are golden brown. Wrap any remaining dough in plastic and freeze for the next cookie emergency. Try not to eat all the cookies until they have cooled a bit. Will store for a week in an airtight container if you aren't me.

A love letter to my kitchen

I went to fill the bird feeder yesterday and somehow, an hour later, I was standing in front of my stove with a toothpick cleaning out crevices and muttering darkly about ill fitting drip pans. I'm not quite sure how that came to happen, but the bird feeder did get filled. Eventually.

What I realized while I was doing this mad cleaning was that I spend more time cleaning my kitchen than any other room in my house. More time wiping, soaping, sweeping and clearing space in a room that has the same footprint as one armchair from the living room.

If I had to describe the kitchen, I would say small. My sweetheart goes to get a drink from the fridge and I stop moving because otherwise something will go horribly awry. I would then add comments about cabinet doors that don't close true anymore, especially in the rain. The single cabinet wide enough to hold my pans. Burner coils that only half work, and don't stay level. The fridge light has never worked properly. Two oddly placed outlets, total.

And yet, that tiny space is home. When I need comfort, I go there. When I want to celebrate, I go there. To bring together friends and neighbors, to find peace in solitude, that is the part of our house where I can make the world, for a little while, be what I wish it to be.

And really, that is why I cook for a living. Not because I love the craft of it, which I do. Not because I love the result, which without question is true. It's because that world that exists in my kitchen is a good world. If I move to a larger kitchen, then that good world I've created becomes larger, as well. If the people in that larger kitchen share their good world with mine, that good world becomes even larger. "Trying to make the world a better place" is trite and cliche to me. There is no try. When I cook, the world is better to me. I just want to get everyone else in on the action.

Putting myself out there

There is a comfort in working for someone else. The power goes out, and I just take care of what I know I need to, and call the Powers That Be. The Powers That Be handle the bills, the payroll, the order that didn't get placed and we need right now, screaming children, screaming adults. You know, all the fun stuff. But it also means that I am, basically, anonymous. The work I do is rightfully attributed to the place where I work. Unless someone recognizes me (it took the guy who runs the farmer's market, a regular customer, two years to make the connection) or I volunteer the information then I could be anybody or nobody. Now, I am not the kind of person to take advantage of that and slack off. This industry is way too small and I have too much respect for myself and those who I work with to not want to produce consistently great stuff. If I do make an error I am more critical of myself and my work than even my bosses, even if the customers don't know the mistake was mine.

Still, sometimes I want the whole package. I want to be known for the work I do, to have that work recognized as mine. But that whole package is scary, and fraught with, well, other people. Other people are a chaos factor, an unknown variable. One of the things I love about pastry is the organization of it all, the ritualized predictability. If you cook sugar to this temperature, it is soft ball stage, this temperature is hard crack. People don't work that way. Joy, sorrow, allergy attacks, euphoria. Completely unpredictable.

And yet, if I want people to know my work (which I do) I have to get it out there to people. So I'm trying. Here and there, I've been offering things up. Gentle, timid sacrifices to the mob.

We'll see where it takes me.

Fat

It comes up, inevitably.

Something along the lines of, "For the love of all that is good and glorious in the world how can you work with all of this stuff and not weigh a gazillion tons!"

Here's two secrets: 1. When you work with something every day it becomes just stuff, a "product", less of a consummation devoutly to be wished. Even if that something is well and truly beloved. 2. I ain't skinny.

I'm not bad off. In fact, if you look around my place of employment, you would see a bunch of people up to their elbows in butter, sugar and dough all appearing to be relatively healthy. But truth is, last time I saw the doctor I was told to lose a few pounds. Like at least 10. Seriously. And that was the first time a doctor has ever flat out told me that.

And of course, that was the day before making some 400 rhubarb mini pies with a ginger crumb topping. I really love rhubarb. And ginger. And pies. Especially small ones.

Since then I have given up nothing (except eating my fill of rhubarb mini pies). But I am walking to work more. I am watching portions as much as I can without making myself crazy, adding a bit more exercise. I bought a scale that was big enough for me. So far it is ok. I am losing weight, at a reasonably healthy rate. It isn't fun, it isn't my favorite thing, and I certainly hope it will be worth it in the long run.

But I'm not going to let it stop me from finding inspiration for a chocolate tart in a twix bar.

Why are marshmallows and cocoa so good together?

Is it something in the added creaminess without the addition of cream? A textural element? Nostalgia?

The cocoa was a gift, given generously by someone in my chosen (rather than birth) family. It's not handmade, the marshmallows came from who knows where, but it is all worth savoring anyway. In fact, it's delicious.

Happy Holidays.

Share or Horde?

It baffles me that sometimes people, in this day and age, won't share recipes. I mean, really, is there a recipe for anything that can't be found in some fashion online? No, it may not be your Uncle Edgar's secret recipe for dumplings, but still, the dumplings are there. And why not make it YOUR recipe for dumplings?

I think Jeffrey Steingarten, in one of his essays (gratins, maybe?) talked about an endless quest to perfect a recipe. He tweaked and puzzled and got one that he could make and make again and it was perfect. And it turned out to be nothing like the original recipe. So really, what difference does the original recipe make?

I have one recipe that I won't share. One. And I won't share it because the chef who gave it to me is someone that I respect, and he specifically asked me not to share it. I also won't flat out copy a recipe exactly from a book and post that as my own, but that relates more to my opinion of copyrights, and why it was unfair that Sam Clemens was broke so often. Otherwise, there is too much of a teacher in my blood to horde.

Chocolate Moelleux for Diane.

100 g dark chocolate (this is the meat of the thing so a good dark chocolate is in order. I prefer a 70-75% bar for deeper flavor)

70g butter (you don't have a kitchen scale? But, um, why not? Ok, 5 tablespoons)

45 g (4 Tablespoons) all purpose flour

13 g (1 Tablespoon) cornstarch

60 g (3 Tablespoons) agave syrup

a pinch of salt

2 eggs

flavoring (see gilding the lily)

1. Preheat the oven to 350. This may take longer than anything else depending on your oven, so yeah, do this first. Spray four small tart rings or one 9" tart ring (or pie pan) with pan spray and place on a sheet pan. Love the pan spray. Fear it not. It is your friend.

2. Melt together the butter and the chocolate over a double boiler, or, if you are like me, a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water. stir together every once in a while as it melts.

3. In another, larger bowl, whisk together everything else possibly including any appropriate lily gilding. This is really tough, eh?

4. When the butter and chocolate are completely melted but not hot, whisk chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. The batter will thicken up as the chocolate cools. Spread the batter into the prepared tart rings.

5. Into the oven it goes. Now is the time to not get distracted. Before, not so bad. Now, well, this cooks up in about 10 minutes, maybe less depending on your pan, so if you hear the cat making the incoming hairball noise? Pretend it is just CNN and ignore it for a few minutes. You are cooking this until the edges feel set to the touch, but don't wait for the middle to set completely. It's going to be fudgy.

6. Let it cool in the pan. If you can. I mean, it's good while still warm. So it can be kinda hard to wait. It depends on what is happening next. If what is happening next is fancying it up, and serving for company, go ahead and do that after it has cooled a bit. If it is just an immediate chocolate fix, I recommend a nice cuppa (Earl Grey is also stellar with dark chocolate) to go with it while it is still warm. Do you have any idea how hard it is to write out recipes? Man I need another piece now...

Gilding the lily

Ok, I'm better now. The beautiful thing about this recipe is that you can do a gazillion things to it to suit your menu. Easy rustic? Mix in some chopped roasted nuts like hazelnuts, and serve with your favorite ice cream variant. Tropical? Try a sauce of passion fruit and mango nectars and serve with starfruit and lychee. Classic? A dash of grand marnier in the batter, and some candied orange zest and ganache on top. Seriously versatile. And then there is the Chocolate Mint version here, where I flavored the batter with a bit of mint extract, and topped it with ganache and some crushed sugar free peppermint candies.

Now with Video!

So each year, one of my favorite newer thanksgiving traditions involves my friend Samantha and panicked phone calls. It started a few years back when she asked me for a from scratch recipe to make for her family. There was a voicemail I saved for years desperately asking about the difference between corn bread and corn muffins and that was all it took. We were both hooked. Eventually, I'll get her up to cooking the bird, but for this year, it is, by her request, gougeres.

And, since I have my shiny new camera, rather than just fabulous still pictures, I figured I'd help her out with a video demo, too.



The recipe is adapted from the French Laundry Cookbook, because that is what I served her when she had them, but you know, I think I still prefer a combination of milk and water rather than simply water. So my version would be like this:

.5 cup water
.5 cup milk
7 tablespoons (3½ ounces) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon kosher salt, or more to taste
Pinch of sugar
1¼ cups (5 ounces) all-purpose flour
4 to 5 large eggs
1¼ cups grated Gruyère (5 ounces) or cheddar, or cheddar and parmesan, or you know, cheese.

You'll have to find your own distractions while you wait for 10 minutes.

On Welcoming the Power of The Cookie in Your Life

It's become reflexive for so many people.

"No, no, don't do anything special for me..."

Well, why the hell not? I'm certainly guilty of it too, particularly where food is concerned. We have translated cooking into, instead of an act of community, survival, sharing and comfort, an act of effort, of time lost, of conditions and obligations. As a professional, I worry that someone will hold themselves up to impossibly high standards when really, I'm so damn flattered that you would make anything for me that you could probably poison me and I'd still say thank you. Maybe. Depends on the gentleness of the stomach pump.

And when I'm doing the cooking? Well, man, this is what I DO, how I'm wired, this is my "to be". I don't care if it is nut gluten sugar fruit chocolate dairy egg free (although that would be depressing. And tricky. Steamed rice cake, maybe?) I want to cook for you. Hell, it's a chance for me to show off, and if humans didn't want to show off they wouldn't have invented language.

The Power of the Cookie works because we are flattered by generosity when we receive it, and because we get a similar rush of good feeling when we DO it. So rather than deny myself those happy endorphins from giving to others I just bake. And it doesn't matter what time of year it is.

It's just nice that right around now, people are so much more willing to take generosity of spirit as it is offered, and enjoy it, without feeling obligation.

Now if I could just get more people to act that way in July.

sugar free sweet potato madelines