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.

Going Kosher

It was 1 in the morning and I was madly etching a letter B on every sheet pan. I'd already been through a long production shift and behind me the overnight bake was in full swing, but there I was, discovering my lack of Dremmel tool skills, and there I would be for a good hour. I had to be, there was no other time.

The rabbi was coming at 6 am, and he was bringing his blowtorch.

I think I had been at my job for a week when people had first started asking, "Are you going to be Kosher?"  Well, now, that was a good question.  There's a sizeable Jewish community in town.  There's a local organization dedicated to helping people make that happen. Oh yeah, and I'm making bagels.  The first problem, though, was where I was making them. A kitchen space that enjoys a wide range of clients including some serious pork people? Yeah, not so kosher.

But then we started planning out our own space - we were already getting too big to comfortably share the freezer, the walk-in and if we wanted to continue that growth, our best option was to get the space next to the kitchen and build a bakery. If we were going to do that, then, sure, why not go kosher?

So what did that mean, exactly? Well, first it meant that our Kosher certification representative came to visit the kitchen on the inevitable day there was a big pork photo shoot going on. Seriously. We're talking sides of pig laid out across three tables in all their glory. Because that's the way my life goes.  I respectfully did not offer to shake hands (Thank you, Dan, for teaching me this etiquette tidbit years ago!) we snagged my boss and went to sit somewhere pork-free.  Then, we learned what we needed to do.

One part was paperwork.  We'd already done quite a bit, chasing down Ks and circled Us on labels and considering substitutes where there were no symbols.  I heard about disreputable merchants who use false symbols and very reputable ones that don't see a need to go through the process. I learned why spice blends are more suspect than the spices themselves and how an initially Kosher product that gets repackaged by a food distributor means we better make sure the distributor is certified.  Better to go to the source. Also, all those crazy Asian ingredients in our Miso Soy Ginger bagel? Mostly not Kosher. We would have to make, boil and bake those in the other kitchen. We had to track down actual certificates for all of those products, and submit our formulas.  I wondered, briefly, if this meant that some rabbinical council had the formula for Kosher Coke somewhere. I bet they had to sign something.

Then there was equipment.  We have an advantage in having a separate kitchen, in that we can still make things for the shop with bacon and sausage (only the bagels are certified), but it meant we had to have absolute separation between all of our equipment - bowls, sheetpans, knives, bench scrapers - and the kitchen's tools. So I dremmeled my way through the wee hours.  In the morning the rabbi brought his blowtorch to cleanse the items that had been used before, and to get a complete list of all of our equipment to keep on record. They count the sheetpans. Seriously.

So, beginning just before the High Holidays, we became a Kosher bakery.  We get weekly inspections, usually during the wee hours.  I consider it a compliment that after the inspection they often ask for bagels.  I've had great conversations with some of my farmer's market friends who produce Kosher items. "Oh, did you work with Tuvia? Tuvia's great!" "Oh, we worked with Tuvia, too!"  We can't control for where knives in the shop have been, so our qualifying bagels are only certified kosher in their whole, uncut state which has caused some giggles from our customers.

In the end, was it worth the time, the expense? The little rules that we have to keep an eye on, the paperwork we need to process every time we buy bowls or want to add a new flavor?  For me it's not about their religion, or my lack of religion.  It's about wanting to bring this great stuff we make to as many people as possible.  We didn't have to change our recipes, just substitute one product for another and now there's a whole community of people who can try one of my pumpernickel bagels.  That makes it worth it for me.

Demon's Farts and Other Legacies

So, I have a new job. Actually I've had this job for a smidge over a month now, but I'm just starting to get a finger and toe hold of an idea of what my life will be like on this train I am currently riding. It's been a fun, crazy, breathless time, and somehow in there I managed to learn something about pumpernickel.

 Me and pumpernickel, we go way back. I know it appeared for sandwiches (pastrami was probably my gateway to pumpernickel) but mostly I remember the bread dip. It was a recipe from my aunt, and it was creamy and full of dill and always served in a bowl of pumpernickel bread. On such occasions as this dip would appear, I would happily eat what was left of the bowl, with its thin layer of remaining dip, delighting in the flavors and textures. Those loaves even had the occasional raisin in them. I have no idea what made that baker put raisins in the pumpernickel, but it's probably the reason I like raisins, especially in savory items.

When faced with the prospect of making my own pumpernickel, it was that pumpernickel of my memories I wanted to recreate. Like so many other cooks before me, I found the task daunting, frustrating and perplexing. True pumpernickel is not what most Americans eat. The name refers to a sourdough rye bread that was baked low and long to get its dark color and was considered so indigestible that the name describes what the consumer was to experience later as a result of eating it. I'm not quite sure what demon's farts are supposed to be like, but it sounds really awful. So I'm mostly glad that the recipe in America was lightened up and enhanced, even if the name stuck. My sticking point was the enhancements. Pumpernickel color makes a nice dark loaf, but it is really just food coloring. Bleh. Pumpernickel flour, when checking the label, turns out to be dark rye flour with a variation that existed only on the price tag. Phooey. And everyone who loves pumpernickel has their own absolute list of what can and cannot appear: caraway or no, onions or no, coffee, chocolate, etc, etc, etc.

So I made my own list, and did what anyone experimenting with food should do - I played until it tasted right. I know without a shadow of a doubt that there are those who will tell me how wrong I am doing it, but this is mine. Yes, dammit, there is caraway.  And despite the naysayers, there are those out there who have told me, "Hey, this is really good pumpernickel." I'm glad they like my memories.

A question of Raspberries

Rhubarb has taken over my world, pies, turnovers and cases in the walk-in. The danish doesn't even have apples on it anymore and I thought that would be one of the holdouts. Yeah, sure there is a rhubarb apple pie, but seasons don't change overnight. Lemon curd still lingers. We're all looking ahead to strawberries. And savory is in on it too with rapini that makes me flat out hungry every time it is prepped.

But we also have a cake with raspberry buttercream. Now, it's raspberries that we got fresh and froze ourselves back in warmer times, but still, the berry bushes are spindly, mostly leafless and invisible. Even the plum tree in my back yard is barely past budding. So is this ok? A slippery slope? Where do you need to cross the seasonality line? When is chocolate's season, really?

Regardless, it is a damn good cake. And that's a slippery slope too. Someday I'm going to be the one deciding where the line is. What happens when it is a bad year for raspberries? Does an item like this, one of our cake staples, fall off the menu? Or do you devote what supply you have to just this item and change out something else? This is what I am learning about now. Good lessons.

10,000 Hours

That's the magic number, as far as brains are concerned.

Even before diving in to Outliers, I'd heard the number before. It goes something like this: in order to master something (and I mean You are the Shit, the Bee's Knees, recognized for what you can do) you need to practice it for ten thousand hours. That's when the brain flips a switch and says "Ok, this? We've got it." The difference between good and great isn't just practice. It's many, many hours of practice.

Ten thousand hours works out to be about eight hours a day, seven days a week for four and a half years. Without a vacation. For most people, though, it works out to doing something for about ten years. Nine, if it's chess and you're Bobby Fisher. I wonder how it falls out with chefs, though. And I do mean Chefs - the real thing. Because yes, I imagine that if I am still at this job after four more years, I will be pretty well set in my laminated dough skill set. Less that that, even, because well, the crazy hours cooks can keep. But what about the rest of the products? Menu creation? How does 10000 hours translate into the development of one's palate? Do you need to taste things for ten thousand hours before you can really tell what is sublime? And then do you need ten thousand hours of plating techniques?

All I know for sure is I've been cooking professionally for five years now. I still have a lot to learn. But I think I've got scooping cookies down.

Think Pink! And Caramel

The First Two Hours

I remember retail.

I remember for years and years I would walk in to work, punch in, check the schedule, and more often than not, meander over to get a cup of coffee. Sure, there was a chance that I would be on register first thing, but I would still have time to get that beverage, say hello. At various points in my career, thanks to a certain kind of boss, my day could even start with a meeting; arrive at work to be forced to sit down, chat and have a nice drink for 20 minutes? Sybaritic luxury!

Now, if I'm not starting work at least a couple minutes early, I feel like I'm behind.

Cooks work in a cascade. The time one thing can take directly effects when you get to the next thing, and when hell breaks loose? Well, we all understand trickle down theory. One shift can teach you that in just about any cooking environment. For example, if we need pies for Saturday, then on Tuesday I'm prepping dough because Wednesday I mix, Thursday I sheet out and cut, Friday the pies get made, and Saturday we bake. Yes, you could shave a day or maybe (maybe!) two off that time but for the best pies, that's our schedule. Five days. Sure, the actual time involved on Tuesday is minutes, nothing compared to Friday's time - and notice I didn't mention the fillings get made somewhere in there, too. I had just better notice on Tuesday we need pies on Saturday.

I work two cascades, my daily one for the laminated doughs, and the one for multiple day projects. The multiple days work happens between the daily, so I'll do my first turns for the croissant, and while that rests I'll do the pie dough, or cut puff pastry, or pull out the product for tomorrow, then I'll go back and do my next croissant turn, and so on. On a good day, I'll have completed my first turns as well as a few of my multiple day projects and be into my last turn in two hours.

Most days are pretty good. I look at the clock constantly, checking my progress. Each time I look, I have no idea what the time actually means. I know how many minutes a set of turns should take (Six, but if I get it down lower I am doing great!). I follow the patterns, thinking about where I can shave minutes, because that will give me just a little more time in case something comes up, a few more minutes just in case. The idea that a clock can tell me where I am in my workday just doesn't follow. Then, I pause, breathe, look at the clock and think, "Huh. That time already? Two hours? How did that happen?"

I know how it happened, of course. I was watching the clock the whole time.

The Problems with Good Bread

1. It's time intensive.

2. Basic cost of goods is relatively cheap, and everyone knows it, so you can't charge enough to make much of a sustainable living off bread alone.

3. It has a very, very short shelf life. And you had better be able to come up with something to do with the leftovers when you have them.

4. The labor to make 15 loaves and 25 loves is similar, but you need to have something you can do with the other ten loaves, see #3.

5. Once you start feeding the bitch, you can't stop. It needs feeding at regular times, gets finicky about the day, the time, even the weather. And even if you are nice to it, there is no guarantee that your bread will be as nice today as it was yesterday. And if the bitch dies, it takes a while to get a new one going again. (Don't ask me what happened to the employee who threw away all the levain one morning.)

6. It requires special equipment. Not that a spiral mixer or a deck oven can't be used for other things, but for really good bread, that's thousands of extra dollars.

7. Every baker knows these things. They also know that there are wholesalers that they can just buy bread from and with everything else, it would just be so, so easy....

8. Everyone wants it. Why is this a liability? If you make enough to fill the need, it tends to be a dedicate your life to it or let it go choice. In this industry, which do you think works best for most small bakeries?

Scary list for a bread geek like me.

Find a bakery. If they make their own bread - and I said "make" not "bake" - start buying it. This is an affordable luxury even just once a week, and I don't think I need to list all the reasons why good bread is better than the preserved flour sponges that sell at the big chains. It's better than the "artisanal bread" from those same grocery chains because you know who made it, and can ask all the necessary questions, like, "Has this been frozen?". If the baker looks affronted at the thought, buy the bread.

I mean, look at the crust on this. I make good bread, but this? Totally worth $3.50.

Exit wounds.

I read something somewhere that when it comes to kitchen injuries, burns are sexy, cuts are when something stupid goes wrong. It was probably Tony Bourdain.

I was sitting in front of an endless pot of chocolate pastry cream one day (guest chef insisted that the recipe could not be increased and so to feed the event I had to make the same batch 16 times). Event cook of reasonable aptitude totally gets me with the oil he's using to pan sear his tuna. I flinch (I've named the scar after him) and keep stirring. "Oh did I get you?" he inquires. I flash the blistered skin. "Yeah, you pastry cooks don't know about burns."

Ahem, what?

When I interviewed for this job, as things were winding down we noticed that all three of us - owner, manager, and me, had identical marks. I told them of the wisdom of hot side event cooks. There was laughter. Sheet pans are hot. Pastry cream is hot. Water baths suck and I hate them. Anyone who suggests that pastry cooks don't know from injuries can go suck an egg. Just not the farm ones because those are expensive and better for the custards and Oh you don't know how to tell them apart? Snort.

I have a knife cut on my hand. Our butter comes in beautiful 44 pound blocks and my croissant detrempe does not need quite that much. So in cutting it down with the machete my hand slipped across the top edge the wrong way. Yes that is right I cut myself cutting butter, and I did it with the non-sharp side of a machete.

Tony Bourdain may have been right.

Rustic or refined?

I'm in the honeymoon phase. I'm feeling slightly awkward, slightly off kilter... the order of things is just different enough to keep me on my toes. My confidence level is weird, and I find myself asking for assurances in such a way that I find it annoying.

I'm working on that.

But the work itself is fun, interesting, the atmosphere a gazillion times better from what I left. (Sometimes I think that is part of the problem. I'm waiting for abuse that doesn't happen so I'm all confused. Human beings can be so ridiculous.)

The product we put out is lovely - small batch, artisan care, and serious commitment to the local. Our flour is locally milled. That is just crazy, and couldn't happen just anywhere. The style of the work is rustic.

Rustic is interesting. It doesn't mean careless, sloppy. There is a level of concern over the quality of our goods that I haven't seen in a long time. Indeed, sometimes the concern is a bit mystifying, given what I've been doing. What I have been doing, professionally, would not be called rustic. It would be considered a more finished style, more artful and stylized. Indeed, that's the kind of thing I tend to do at home as well, maybe even more so.

Now, I'm being asked to forget that. But still, there is finely detailed piping on those plain cut cakes. Deliberately placed currants among rough curled chocolate. Carefully cut and scaled laminated doughs filled with a local seasonal fruit mix. So I'm looking at a different style at home, too, for practice. The most perfect fresh prunes I have ever seen (The farmer told me they would be best baked, and then smiled and said considering where I worked, I would know what to do with them) become a rough torte. Monsieur le chef would have approved of this one.

Even if it is rustic.

Notebooks

In my past existence, I had a notebook fetish. I did a lot of project based traveling, and each trip had its own notebook - a lifeline of everything from expenses and coworkers' hotel room numbers to daily lists of necessary tasks. I still find these notebooks, tucked in corners. They are virtually useless now, but each time I find one, bent and broken from being shoved in pockets, I find it difficult to get rid of it. For a month, each one was my life. I may not remember the faces of those people, or the meanings behind my own shorthand mutterings, but there it is, that month of my life.

Notebooks have a different meaning in my life now. They are no less crucial. Perhaps they mean even more because now they live on, potentially long after me. Now, they are my recipes. Each job has had a different notebook, and what I put in them was a direct reflection not only of me, but of the person I worked for.

Monsieur Le Chef never required that I have a notebook, he gave me free range of his own. I made one anyway, pocket sized. The cover is gone from repeated use. The recipes we used all the time were at the front, strange seasonal and experimental ideas were at the back. The recipes themselves are just lists, the barest notes on process. I refer to them regularly.

My most recent notebook is in pristine condition. It did not fit in my pocket. Each recipe is categorized by type, and lists not only the ingredients but also extraordinarily detailed ("Three sheet pans, lined with paper, pan spray around edges") notes. The chef would check our notebooks regularly to see if we were writing down each detail, and even told my coworkers that my promotion had been in part based on the quality of my notebook. I care about maybe three of the recipes in this book.

Then there is my home book. It is not pocket sized. I've copied over all the important recipes, and have that first notebook tucked in the side pocket. It has my own recipes in it, sketches, plating notes, notes of inspiration. Inside the cover I tucked a photograph. It's not my own, and one of a series of three showing a flowering branch with varying levels of focus. A standard to reach for.

I started a new book this week. It's pocket sized. I'm trying to figure out how to balance the characteristics of the other notebooks. If I can do that, it will really mean something.