Cuisine Infiniment

The End of the Line, Pt II

2009-05-02T18:26:00.001-07:00

Since I'm not cooking anymore, I won't be posting here.

It's been a good run of it, and there are things I will miss. But something else just ended up being too important to pass up and change for.

Au Revoir,

Jackson Harter

The End of the Line

2009-04-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

I am about to do something that should have been done a long time ago. It took me cooking again, working hard, to realize this. I won't elaborate one bit. If you know me, you know already.

You can do anything you want to.

It's never too late.

Goodbye.

Is everything speeding up or am I slowing down?

2009-03-22T12:12:00.001-07:00

See, I was so right. "Until next week" - that phrase is about to be permanently deceased from my hot vocabulary. Well alright, maybe just temporarily.

I went paint balling for the first time in 8 years, just two weeks ago. It was the Top Hat Society monthly gathering, and although paint ball isn't exactly "old-timey", war games and hunting each other has been around for ages upon ages, so we went with that as our theme.

I didn't really know what to expect, seeing as I didn't have any sort of clear memory on my past experience, so I went in with willingness to learn and dominate. Now, this was an outdoor range called Splat Action!, and it was near the town of Mulino, which is kind of near Oregon City, which is...well I won't try and educate you on the geography, save that you should be aware it's a very rural part of Oregon. Lots of Christmas tree farms and married cousins out there, if you know what I mean.

It was a whole lot of fun, we played all kinds of neat games like team elimination, capture the flag, and then a really fun game called "speed ball" (sounds like a drug) where you just go around shooting everyone. Nick and I teamed up on most of the courses, with one of us providing cover and baiting, while the other would go up and annihilate the offender. Good times, it was great fun and a good release of energy. My legs hurt for a few days after, kind of like I had gone running for hours and hours.

Here's a picture of yours truly getting the drop on some poor sucker.

After the paintball was finished, we went to the local watering hole and got some weird looks (I was in sweatpants, running shoes, t-shirt, suit jacket, and stetson) and some very strange mountain dwelling broads tried to talk with us, stating that we were "Amish", and I quickly shut them down. Best. Conversation. Ever.

In other news, ants have appeared where there used to not be ants. Stupid bastards, I don't want to be killing them, but when they show up in force on my clean counter tops and kitchen, I have no choice but to destroy them with "cyanide for ants", also known as 409 Antibacterial Cleaner.

There's really not a lot of food news from me right now. We changed the menu at Olea, which is now even more awesome than it used to be, seeing as we're moving into spring. God I love spring. The colors, the flavors, the cute little chops we get from those adorable bleating little lambs. I started to make this boudin (a kind of sausage) from duck pieces (if I spare you the details on what is in it, you will probably be more likely to eat it) to be the secondary protein on the new duck dish, which absolutely kicks ass. Seared Duck Breast, Farro Risotto finished with Nettles, Rhubarb Jam, Hazelnuts, King Trumpet Mushrooms and Grilled Kale. That farro is farro-cious! Making the first batch took me about 1.5 hours, seeing as it's quite a hearty grain. To compare, a regular risotto (to par cook) takes about 30 minutes on average. Boy was it a tedious process! It made my arm real tired, like when I beat my girlfriend. Just kidding, domestic violence isn't funny.

I discovered a new poet this week, god damn is he good. I'm going to go buy his book today. Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency. I'm going to post the poem that got me hooked. By coincidence....it's also in an episode of Mad Men, one of my favorite television shows.

"Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again."

That's from Mayakovsky, and it's absolutely beautiful.

Once again, see y'all next time. Jackson signing off.

Oh and read Linda's blog, it's quite interesting and there are pretty pictures to look at as well. She also updates a lot more frequently than I do, as I am a huge bore. I went to high school with her and now she works for a rad magazine in Germany. Pretty awesome.

February Fun!

2009-02-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

You know, I ought to just stop saying "until next week" when I sign off here, because it must really be a letdown when there's not new stuff every week. At least, I'd like to think that way. Funny joke right? Hey take my wife! Please, take her!

Yeah.

So, in between the last time I updated, there's been some interesting happenings, I suppose. There was Valentines Day, which was absolutely crazy but it went really, really smooth. In fact, eerily smooth was the word I used to describe it. But yeah, I spent my Valentine's Day workin'! Which I was happy to do. Better that then be drunk crying somewhere, haha. It went a lot smoother for me than New Years, when I got my ass handed to me. I think this is because I had an idea of how nuts it would be, so I was able to prepare for it.

The Top Hat Society is very much alive and kicking, thank you. I know not many of you know about it, save for the actual members, but I was voted into the office of Vice President (See the campaign ad here). We also went out for a day of drinkin' and gunslingin', (I'm a gun enthusiast, as is the President) so we thought it would be suitable old timey to have a day of that.

Warning: Do not attempt this, using Flamethrower cartridges can be very dangerous.

Interesting, isn't it? More like bad-ass! Unfortunately more of our club members couldn't attend, but there's always next time! It sure is a lot of fun, we tend to have a pretty good time at most places we go.

And ooh, fancy, look at me and Patrick and Chris, we're on Chefcrush.com! Now I will be able to use a pick up line such as "oh hey there sugar tush, the names' Jackson, you might have seen me on such websites as Chefcrush.com" (What are the chances I'll get laughed out of the room if I used that?)

I learned a valuable lesson the other day at work. My chef is pretty great, working with him has made me a better cook, and I learn more as each day passes. This here was a lesson in observation, to look, to know what you have on hand at all times. There was a dish I did with mustard greens back in late summer and we had changed it about a month ago. Now, there was a bus tub of mustard greens in the walk-in, sitting there facing me every day. I had this disconnect because they were labeled "Masterd" (God bless Refugio and his English skills) and I didn't think to use them for staff meal before they went bad. Saturday night Patrick and Chris and I were breaking down and they told me that there was a situation that I was directly involved with and that I needed to figure out what it was. There was something out of place that needed to be taken care of and I needed to find it, they weren't gonna tell me.

Okay, I can deal with that, I thought.

This ate me alive for the next hour and a half. I went through everything of mine, everything on my station, in the walk-in, in the back kitchen, trying to decipher what exactly the fuck I was doing wrong and had to fix. I was freaking out a little, because it was so apparently obvious and I was missing it completely. It even affected the way I dealt with them, I ended up being short and snappy with them for the time I was trying to figure this out. I eventually went in the walk-in and didn't leave until I figured it out. I rearranged my proteins and straightened up my station, but that wasn't it. I eventually gazed up at the bus tubs with the vegetables, lo and behold there was this "Masterd" tub. It was out of place so it caught my attention, finally. I opened and peeked inside, and out of the tub came one of the foulest rotting vegetable scents that my nostrils have had the misfortune to smell; in a long ass time.

Immediately I started to laugh my head off, I trudged out of the walk-in and Chris had a big smile on his face, Patrick came in the back kitchen and gave me a big hug. I went and threw the rotting greens away. It now made sense, and I felt like a bit of a fool for not noticing them before. But it was a valuable lesson. Patrick could have told me and yelled at me, but I wouldn't have learned anything. He told me that observing and knowing what is in the walk-in at all times will be one of the greatest assets to me one day, and I believe him. Knowing what there is on hand is extremely good, in respect to ordering and rotation. One day I will be a sous-chef somewhere and ordering and knowledge will be my responsibility, and I want to be a prepared as I can be to do that job as best I can.

Anyhow, that's all for this week, and perhaps this month. Don't forget to go see Watchmen, out March 6th. It's going to be amazing.

Contagion?

2009-01-18T21:35:00.001-08:00

Are we not cheerful anymore?

Granted, there's not currently a whole lot to smile and be happy about in the day to day; money woes, losing your job, the terrible economic and world situations. There's plenty to be happy about if you just shift the plane a bit. I'm not in the situation where I make a whole lot of money, my restaurant could suddenly close and I'd be out of a job and on welfare, and hey, I could die tomorrow! But I choose to re-align my views a bit. I never forget the bad -never- but there's no reason to ignore the stuff about the world which is right.

What makes you smile? What stands out to you, what is exciting and brings meaning to an existence where we're born to die; what feels to many of us like being a car constructed on an assembly line. Each piece of metal and equipment added is another piece of meaning you pick up along the way to being complete, or some semblance of. Once we're complete, we drive off the line to try and make something of ourselves. We're owned for a while, get broken in, get damaged, possibly destroyed. In the end we all end up in the scrap heap. There are exceptions. Some of us end up, and are, assembled as luxury items. We're cared for, we care for ourselves, and our destiny is a bit different than the others. We still die, but we remain preserved for all of humanity to witness and learn from long after we are dead and gone and ground back into carbon from which we came.

Here's an example. I was out doing some stuff today, specifically going for a haircut and then to the grocery store. I tend to smile at people as I pass them if they are giving me any kind of eye contact, it's my silent communication of "hello, howaya?" I can't tell you how many people just looked away, I even got a cold stare from one girl (who was rather attractive, maybe she took my friendly gesture as a nonverbal hit-on-you kind of thing).

I'm not fake cheery. I just think there are things to smile about still. I know better than a lot of people how turbulent things can be....I guess I just don't let it affect me as much. Here's a short list of things that put a smile on my face, and things that make me laugh inside of my head and laugh out loud (that's a "lol"):

Puppies
Seeing parents being good with their children
People being good to each other
Pretty much anything that comes out of my brother's mouth
Wind blowing hard against me, walking down the street
Putting really good grillmarks on articles of food
Proper sauce reduction
Girls looking at me and them thinking I don't know that they are looking at me
New socks
New email and text messages
Bluegrass and some country western music

Alright, that's enough for now. But you get the idea, right? I could have filled that list with about 50 more things, anyone could do it.

My message for the time being is this: shift your viewpoint from the current bad stuff. Don't forget that it's there. Never forget the negative. But start looking at some of the good things about being alive. There's so much there, so much to enjoy. We're trained to only glean the vibes from big, noteworthy events. For instance, Obama going into office. That's gonna make a lot of people very happy, including yours truly. But my point is not everything has to be big tremendous amazing cool whammy! That's only one event. Our days are filled with infinitesimal events that could make us smile.

Look for the good; not in rivers, but in drops.

All slowed down, like honey in an hourglass

2009-01-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Slow season for the restaurant business. It's inevitable.

Your shift drags by, you go without making food for up to an hour sometimes. It sucks, but there's nothing we can do about it. Try and make the best of the situation. I have found that I can spend a few extra minutes on my prep items, making sure they are at a higher quality and caliber than usual. This is good, because it teaches you to do them that way all the time. I'm not saying I half ass stuff, but there are times when I can't devote as much energy into a single prep item because I've got tons of other things going on.

Anyway, I'm really hoping that once Obama goes into office it will make everyone a bit more confident and we'll see people out eating in restaurants again. Because the situation is pretty dire right now, no matter if you're an optimist or a pessimist.

There's not a whole lot going on otherwise. I'm growing a beard again for the cold weather ahead. I'm hoping the Top Hat Society will be able to meet again soon, we got canceled in December on account of weather.

Creativity is now an afterthought. It feels more and more like I'm learning how to cook again, which is really good. The time to create will come later. For now, I feel like I've got to get that edge, get skilled at actual cooking on the line.

A New Year

2009-01-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

Woo boy, I sure haven't been writing in this thing forever. I've been busy with work and everything else in between, and I haven't had time or the will to blog post. I'm going to write some new material to bring in the new year and all that stuff. But for now, a few things:

I work grill now at Olea, have been for about a month and a half.

I got my cooking ass handed to me on New Year's Eve! But boy was it exciting!

I realized I need coffee. Here I thought I was depressed or something because I had low energy, and all it was; is that I am older now and need that caffeine buzz to get me going.

The Top Hat Society has a website and will soon have a full page up and running.

I'm hip and I'm single! So....who's gonna drive me to the mall?

That's about it. Things are progressing at a sufficient rate. Time will tell what the new year brings to us, but thank God we have a new president, let's hope he'll un-ban stem cell research so that I might get cured in the next 10 years. This is a pretty good story about it.

Until next week, signing off.

Jackson

Lumberjackson Breakfast!

2008-10-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

Let's see here. This'll be just a brief overview of things that have been happening the past week. There will be a bigger update Tuesday or Wednesday.

One: If you guys (the American public) actually elect John McCain, I am going to shave all the hair off my body in protest. How the hell can you actually think that John McCain and Sarah Palin will be good for America? Wow. Just wow.

Two: Thank god I don't have any money in the stock market! While I was releived for a little while because the DJIA went back up over 9500, I am now reserved as to the outlook of the future of that market.

An interesting law in Nebraska that's going to go away soon: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7681139.stm

Fucking sad in my opinion. You are a real shitty human being if you just go and drop your kid off and think there's no universal consequence. Good thing the universe always evens itself out.

I decided not to go to the casting call of The Next Food Network Star. Even though I might have done well and gotten to be on TV and in New York and all that fun stuff, it's not really what I want. I want to keep cooking in restaurants and kicking ass and getting everything back on track. The way it should be.

I'm going camping tomorrow! To Prineville and the Crooked River. We're gonna catch trout and do fun stuff, I can't wait! I'll post plenty of pictures when I return.

Work has been awesome as of late. More responsibility, the menu item I put on has sold well, and people are responding very nicely to it.

Until next week, signing off.

Past Recollections and Current Notes

2008-10-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's not terribly difficult to make exquisite products taste good...foie gras, great cuts of meat, truffles, really beautiful porcini mushrooms, etc. The challenge lies with the simpler ingredients.

Latin roots of legumes:

Fabius - Fava Bean
Lentulus - Lentil Bean
Piso - Pea
Cicero or Cicer Arietinum - Chick Pea

Carotenoids - yellows and orange colors in fruits, vegetables, flowers, autumn leaves, tomatoes, watermelon, pink grapefruit, apricots, bell peppers. Carotenoids are always found in mixtures never singly. They plan an indirect role in photosynthesis by trapping certain wavelengths of sunlight and funneling the energy to the chlorophyll system. They also absorb excess solar energy and help prevent the chlorophyll system from being overloaded and destroyed. Relatively unaffected by cooking.

Polyphenoloxidase - enzyme responsible for browning. Oxidizes phenolic compounds. Similar compound makes humans tan in the sun.

Ah, to be a cogent life form. Fall menu changes coming up soon! Make sure you come into Olea.

The Top Hat Society

2008-10-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the inaugural meeting of the Top Hat Society, heretofor known as "THS". We're a society of gentlemen who are keenly interested in the "old timey" world and will strive to do good deeds and show society that gentlemen can still truly exist. We met at the Horse Brass, a suitably old-timey establishment, only to find that they don't really serve old timey drinks like we're used to, notably the Manhattan and Sidecar. Patrick "Ol' Rusty" did however, have an excellent Tom Collins.

A picture of Ol' Slim (yours truly) and Ol' Rusty:

Dames aren't allowed for the business portion of the meeting, which of course only lasts a short time, because we're mainly about having fun. We'll do good deeds for the community, just you wait and see! We might adopt a section of highway, who knows. And we'll pick up the garbage wearing our old fashioned duds.

The inaugural meeting of the Top Hat Society:

Left to right: Ol' Slim, The General, Ol' Dunbar, Ol' Mick, and Ol' Rusty

Stay tuned for more of our works in the future.

Special Newsflash!

2008-10-10T00:17:00.000-07:00

Okayyyyyy, so the Dow Jones fell nearly 700 points today, down to 8579. Oh my! Compare that to its high of 14,164 in October 2007. A year ago. The global finances are in turmoil! Americans are...GASP....going to have to learn to live within their means! We can't do that!

Yes we can. You can. I can, I have. One of the reasons we have this financial collapse now is because all of America seems to think we can live a dream life, where we can have the best of anything, no matter our financial status. Shame on you, to the people who got NINA loans from banks for $500,000 (No Income No Asset loan; you can make 40K a year and borrow tons of money, in a regular world this would never be allowed). Shame on the banks that loaned out that sort of money. You all got wrapped up in living the glamor life that you didn't realize the eventual fate of all of this, that your debts would catch up with you and you wouldn't be able to pay them...too soon? Then you don't pay them because you're a shrewd bottom-feeder, default on the loans, and the rest of us have to pick up the slack. Proud to be an American, aren't you? Sometimes I despair.

How about that. I sympathize little with the people who are at fault for this. You don't need tons and tons of nice things, especially if you can't actually afford them. I support a plan to fix the economy because unfortunately, I have to live by the majority rules, and the majority rules were, unfortunately, spend spend spend. And now we're paying the ultimate price. How much money is this 700 billion bailout plan going to end up costing taxpayers? How about taxpayers who actually live within their means, and don't spend money on frivolous objects? I have to help pay for the failures of the rest of you. I don't like it, but it's probably the only option I have, as I live in America, and will abide by the rules and try to help the cause as I am able.

Hey, here's a free strategy to the next President of the United States. You want to jump start the economy and work on reducing emissions all at the same time? Number one, I know this is gonna be rough, but STOP taking money from Big Oil. Persecute anyone who does. Number two, pick an AMERICAN company to develop a bad-ass hybrid car, it can use hydrogen, perhaps partial gasoline (I'm not totally opposed to this), vegetable oil, etc. Number three, offer a trade-in to any American citizen of their old, emissions heavy car, and give them a large credit on this new hybrid. BOOM, you have people and their families driving fantastically hybrid cars, having traded in their gas-hog trucks, SUVs, and sports cars; you have a stimulated industrial economy, using a US manufacturer (which creates lots of jobs) to turn out this hybrid car. We recycle the old gashogs to make the new hybrids or use them for other materials. Yes, indeed, the government picks up a portion of the tab for all this, but you'll create a stronger economy and raise American morale. Morale works for this game like it does for all other situations. You make the people feel good about what they do, they become empowered and do better for themselves. Which in turn makes it better for you.

Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain; the biggest clear and present danger to the United States is not terrorist organizations, it's ourselves. (Terrorists are still dangerous, though.)

The U.S. national debt is at 11 trillion dollars. That's all I have to say on the subject, it's all a bunch of crap, and we're all going to die when World War III starts and the planet annihilates itself with nuclear weapons. The end.

A Brief Interlude....

2008-10-09T02:21:00.001-07:00

Oh, I realize that it's been months since an update.

But hey guess what? I'm busy! I'm cooking again, hardcore style, and it's so, so, so good. I feel good about what I do every day, I don't slink home depressed anymore. This translates to the rest of my life as well. I feel free, clear, and certain about what I do.

My friend, Aaron Barnett, ex-Olea and current 23Hoyt Chef, is now featured on ChefCrush! It's so awesome, because I was the one who originally emailed the ChefCrush girls and told them about him. I feel so awesome about this deception tactic, that it actually worked. Not that he doesn't deserve it though. He's great! I miss him....like the deserts miss the rain.

I was cleaning a few minutes ago and I found this essay from my culinary school days. It's funny how you find little things like this, that take you back years and reinforce the strengths and ideas you've had all along your way.

July 2004

"I think that it is important to pay attention to detail, to never accept less than excellence, to try your hardest, to strive for perfection, also to respect all areas of cooking....and to respect the product itself. My ideal culinary scene would be a place where I could serve 10-15 courses, of many different flavors, textures, temperatures, and colors. I believe in concentrating flavor, not adding 10 or 10 flavors in a dish. I'd rather serve 2 or 3 flavors, but concentrated, so that you'd know what, say, a carrot tastes like, or anything that could be thought up. I think not rushing, but taking time to work on food, to "see it perfect", although perfection is something that can't be attained (according to Thomas Keller) and this is definitely something I agree with. We as cooks should try the best we can to strive for excellence, even though it can't be achieved. I didn't always think this way, in fact it took me at least a year of getting my feet wet at Magenta to realize the things I write about. I think about these things each day, the more and more I learn about myself and my approach to the food I work with.

It's important to be precise, although it isn't too important, because it's up to us to use our good judgment to flavor and create meals. Creativity, and a lot of people may frown on this, is a large part of what we do. Keller says "there is very little creativity in anything" and while I partially agree, I also thing there is a certain "it", which some chefs have, and some don't. It may be a thinking style, now some chefs perceive different plates. I look at an onion, in how many ways can I serve this onion to you? Sauteed, grilled, confit, roasted....and how can I serve it to you. How many different ways can I make you see this onion? As an onion, vertically, horizontally, diagonal, circular, what about a square? Triangle? Hexagon? What if I cut it, cook it, and form it back into an onion shape, so you can take it apart, like a puzzle or a riddle? You see, the possibilities are endless. As long as you keep thinking, pondering new ideas."

Damn.

I also came to the realization tonight, of how long I've actually been cooking in restaurants. Pre-culinary school I am not counting:

Gary Danko - 1 month 3 weeks
Bluehour - 5 months
Olea - 3 months 1 week

Total = 9 months

I don't count the time I spent at WCI as actual "cooking time". Though I WAS cooking, I wasn't actually in a real restaurant, on the line, getting my ass kicked at night. I count WCI as a job, a great job, but not actual line experience that I can count towards my career. Thing is folks, I was getting a bit downtrodden here, seeing how far advanced some other 24 year olds were and are in their careers. But look, they've been in professional kitchens for 4, 5, 6 years! I'm barely at a year. I was pretty much forced (by my own hand, pardon the pun) to work at WCI, as I was recovering from surgery. I did enjoy the work, however.

And I will continue to progress, mark my words. That thar be the truth, matey.

NaHa Experience (Chicago Part 2 of 3)

2008-08-21T23:38:00.000-07:00

My meal at NaHa was much like something you experience on a hot summer day, jumping into a large, cool ocean to escape the heat all around you. A feeling of satisfaction, of relief. The food I had was pretty damn amazing, and compared to my meal at Tru the night before, pretty much blasted that place out of the water, as far as I was concerned.

Let's start with a little background story on how I got to eat here. Patrick, Executuive Chef at Olea; trained here for 3 years. When I mentioned during my stage that I was headed to Chicago, he asked if I wanted to go eat at NaHa. I didn't know anything about the restaurant, so I said, "sure!" He made a phone call or two, and got me a great table at 18:30 on Saturday night.

Toby and I made the stroll from the hotel to the restaurant, passing a Rainforest Cafe and a McDonald's that took up one (1) entire block of downtown. My God. This McDonald's had like 3 stories, loft apartments, car wash, laundromat, and who knows what else.

We enter NaHa, which I'm pretty sure is short for "Nahabedian" (Chef and Owner's last name, I believe they are Armenian). Two hostesses greet us and we sit down. We sat right next to a window overlooking the rather bustling street, people walking by, limousines cruising, you know, whatever the happening is on a Saturday night in Chicago. Our server is a guy named Terry, someone who Patrick had said was the best server in the house. He certainly didn't disappoint. Charismatic, attentive...the qualities you want in a server. He brought us a few pre-dinner drinks, I had some kind of sparkling wine.

The menu was pretty amazing, all kinds of interesting food and preparations I hadn't seen before. It was staggeringly hot and muggy day, and the first item on the menu that caught my eye, I had to go with.

Tartare of Hawaiian "Yellowfin" Tuna, Cured Tasmanian Red Trout and American Sturgeon Caviar with a Mosaic of Nicoise Garnishes, Aigrelette Sauce and Toasted Brioche

Wooo! Dizam! I really liked this dish. The cured red trout was the bee's knees. It came out on this large square place, the stack of seasoned tuna (salt, pepper, lemon juice, nothing else) in the upper right quadrant, and the garnishes were literally, a mosaic. A large sea of capers, nicoise olives, red onions, you get the idea? "Aigrelette sauce"....I'm only going to assume it means "little sour" sauce. En francais, "aigre" means "sour". This is where we get the term "Vinaigre" from; Vin = Wine, Aigre = Sour. Sour Wine! Hooray for knowledge, hooray for me that I brought it to you. The dish was awesome though, all kinds of flavors popping out, with everything tasting so clean....and just right. As it should be. A smirk slowly unearthed itself across my face, I was feeling good about this experience. Much more so than the previous night.

Next up the kitchen sent out a second dish, unbeknownst to me.

Kennebec Potato Gnocchi, Fava Beans, Toasted Marcona Almonds and Crimson Pearl Onions with Sweet pea Flowers, Cauliflower, and Shaved Montelerraina Cheese

It was finished with goat's milk butter. And you could totally taste the difference, that kind of stuff is so fucking cool, the small touches restaurants put on their food is what makes them unique. The gnocchi were extremely tender, poached and then caramelized. The flavors of this dish worked so well together.

Chesapeake Bay Soft Shell Crabs with a Summer Salad of Green City Market Vegetables, Pea Tendrils, Rose Finn Potatoes and Lemon Balm Brown Butter

I love me some soft shell crabs! I was in the mood for crustaceans and fish tonight, apparently. I think a lot of people tend to gravitate toward that, they perceive it as a lighter meal on a hot evening, which does make total sense, I suppose. I don't really follow those sorts of rules though, I tend to pick what looks the most interesting, and what I might enjoy the most. I just say the whole thing about seafood judging from the past few nights at work. Fish station got raped, while it was hot out (my station gets raped on a more nightly basis, but it's where I'll learn to get fast!).

This dish was amazing. Dusted in what appeared to be semolina and then fried, the crabs were superb. They were a deep red, actually tasting like crab, with nothing to muddle. Upon tasting everything together, the crab was still the predominant flavor, with the other components supporting it marvelously.

We had like, four desserts, and for the life of me I didn't remember to write them down or grab a dessert menu. Suffice to say I was rather full at this point (and slightly hammered) and enjoyed a few bites of each of them.

I'll say this. NaHa felt alive. In contrast to my experience at Tru (which felt uncomfortably hollow on the inside), NaHa was warm, inviting, vibrant. I had a splendid time, and hope to eat there again at some point in the future.

It's all true. It's all about gaining experience. Going to see the different restaurants and seeing what everyone else does. Then you take the best you see in everything and mold it and shape iot to make it yours. Your vision. You have to see it perfect, even though it isn't.

Until next week (or however long it takes me to critique my 27-fucking-course meal at Alinea).

Tru Experience (Chicago Part 1 of 3)

2008-08-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

Friday August 1st, at 17:10 CST, I made the walk from the hotel, down Michigan Ave, to Tru. Tru is under the helm of Chef Rick Tramonto, and Pastry Chef Gale Gand.

I have fantasized about Tru for quite a few years. I was given the book Amuse Bouche while in culinary school, and ever since then, I have been a fan of Rick Tramonto. Eventually I picked up the Tru cookbook, and it proceeded to excite me. I thought most all of the stuff in there was pretty amazing, and it definitely made me want to go eat at his restaurant.

So lets start from the beginning. I was in a suit all dressed up and wanted to impress the folks who might see me as I was walking down the street and into the restaurant. Good idea, but not so much on a hot, muggy Chicago evening. I mean really hot. By the time I walked in the front door of Tru I was sweating buckets, so much that I had to look like a jackass and take my jacket off and flap my napkin in the air to blow a breeze in my direction.

To top this all off, my blood sugar was a bit low from the walk over. I had wanted a glass of champagne, because this sounded so good with how hot it was, but I had to chug a glass or two of Coke before that could happen. But you don't want to know all this. You want to know what Tru is like, right?

When I walked in, it felt like I had entered a holy, ancient temple. The foyer area is a bit dark, with all kinds of artwork hanging in various places. I felt as if I should engage library behavior, like I was in a sort of museum. The threshold into the dining room is a large doorway, and right in front of the door, in the dining room area, is a circular table-like thing, I'm pretty sure it was a server station of some sort, but it was decorated to look like some kind of centerpiece. There were a small throng of servers standing around this, but they quickly dissipated upon seeing me walk up towards them.

As I entered the dining room itself, this felt like a place of worship. It was absolutely quiet (although this was 17:30, there were only two other tables there at this time, but even as the night went on, it didn't get much louder at all), and we were shown to our table. There was much rush to pull the table out from the banquette which it paralleled, I'm pretty sure the servers here have this and many other maneuvers down to a science. The one thing I kept thinking to myself throughout the night was how amazing the service was. Our server was wonderful, a young guy, but he acted like he had been doing this for 20 years. We sat, I had my Cokes, and we were brought out our Amuse Bouche. It was a take on the strawberry-mozzarella-tomato combination...sadly, however, not done that well. There was a fava bean puree on the bottom of the dish, and on top of that a very unseasoned tomato water gelee was layered and refrigerated to become solid-state. Extremely small melon-balls of strawberry and mozzarella cheese finished this dish. The idea was there, but frustratingly for me, the seasoning was not. Folks, quick thing, if you hear me or another cook refer to the term "seasoning", we're typically speaking about how a dish is either salted correctly, or salted incorrectly. Good seasoning means it's salted right, the correct amount of salt has been added so that the flavor of the food comes through on your palate. If you don't season food, the full potential of its flavor cannot be realized.

After our Amuse Bouche, I was inspired to "go lux" and try the caviar staircase. In case you haven't heard, this is one of Rick Tramonto's signature items. It's a glass staircase, the stairs each have little etched ovals to hold caviar and garnishes. His name, signed in italic, is etched into the base of the staircase. The staircase was given to us with 3 types of caviar. Farm raised French Osetra, Italian Sevruga, and Iranian Osetra. The garnishes were egg white, egg yolk, caper, red onion, brioche toasts, creme fraiche, all the classical stuff. I was a jackass and made a mess by dropped a spoon of caviar on the table. Toby (my step-father) was embarrassed, it "wrecked his dinner" apparently. I'm sure he was just kidding. Interesting this about the three caviars, was that I preferred the French Farmed Osetra Baerii to the other two varieties. In the past I loved Iranian Osetra, but I have to say that I was sold out the bike shop on this farm raised stuff. It was awesome, the briniest of the three, and the malossol(look that one up) level was a bit higher than the other two. Well, that doesn't exactly make sense now, does it? Malossol means "little salt" in ruskie or whatever devil language it comes from. I'll say the salt level was perfect for that type of caviar. If I was a rich man, I would eat caviar weekly. That being said, when you eat amazing fancy food too often, when you indulge in the luxury, when you overdo anything even, it becomes commonplace, and loses its meaning. I'll be talking more on that subject subsequently. Please be patient.

Chef's Collection

Selection of Sashimi-Grade Fish, Complementary Garnishes
Frog Leg, Spring Garlic, Carrot, Watercress
Artichoke Consommé, Cucumber, Turnip Caramel, Cinnamon Mustard, Grilled Peanut
Antiqua Tagliatelle, Spinach, Summer Truffle, Pecorino
Pan-Seared Foie Gras, Morel, Pecan, Raspberry, Purslane
White Asparagus-Poached Sturgeon, Asparagus Spaetzle, Mushroom & Onion Infusion
Roasted Colorado Lamb Loin, Farro Verde, Nectarine, Picholine Olive
A Selection of Cow, Goat & Sheeps' Milk Cheeses
Gianduja Cremeux, Hazelnut, Manchego, Basil, Concord Grape

Selection of Sashimi-Grade Fish, Complementary Garnishes

This sashimi fish course was good. Three piece of fish - Hamachi, Medai, and Fluke; were presented on a flying-saucer shaped large plate, with Radish, Kumquat, and Sea Beans. There was an organic Soy sauce, as well as a White Soy sauce, which was infused with some sort of citrus, I want to say Yuzu, but it may have been something else. Maybe it was something fascinating, like a Buddha's Ear! I give up. The fish was nice, but I have to say, the wow factor for me on this dish was the White Soy itself. I tasted it by itself first, and yeah, wow. Combined with the Hamachi and Kumquat especially, it was a winner for sure. It ruled. The other fishes were nice. The Medai was good, mellow, and the Fluke, well, I'm sure you've all had it or a fish like it before.

Frog Leg, Spring Garlic, Carrot, Watercress

On to the next course! I love frog legs, and I was interested to see Tru's interpretation of them. I had worked with them at Gary Danko for the first time, and again at WCI when I put them on the menu (when I think back about the food cost for that dish, I feel compelled to slash out my eyes as a penance) for a month or two. Imagine my surprise when I bit into this thing, all it was, was a half piece of thigh muscle that had been encased in some sort of tempura crumb crusted wrapper and deep fried. Again, not seasoned. Not one trace of herb, vegetable, additional seasoning was inside with the frog leg piece. It was just a piece of frog leg wrapped and deep fried. Not even seasoned. You can imagine my dismay at this point. The rest of the dish was kind of weak. The frog leg was on a ring molded pile of blanched carrots and celery, a bit like a half-assed mirepoix. The garlic custard was nice and worked with the garnishes, but with the lack of seasoning and all, it was run of the mill at best.

Artichoke Consommé, Cucumber, Turnip Caramel, Cinnamon Mustard, Grilled Peanut

The presentation of this dish was kind of intriguing when it came out to me. There was a half moon shaped custard in the center of a bowl, surrounded with patterns of differently colored gels. It looked roughly like some kind of sewn together quilt made by one of the Quakers back in the 1800s. Not to say it looked bad, that was just what it reminded me of. The consommé itself was fine, it tasted like the base was chicken stock, which is fine, and then infused with artichokes. Pretty good, strong flavor. Any restaurant of this caliber ought to be able to pull off a nice consommé if it happened to be on the menu, and Tru did. The garnishes, however, were mostly "challenging" to me. Some of the gels, while I'm sure the flavor combinations in theory worked out well, did not work when actually combined with the consommé. I mean, some of this was almost like, experimentation. Which should absolutely not be done on guests. Experiment in the kitchen and in the lab. The custard had good flavor but was a bit too firm. If it had been a little softer it would have been awesome.

Antiqua Tagliatelle, Spinach, Summer Truffle, Pecorino

Thin noodles made from the grain Antiqua, which was characterized by a nutty, wheat-ish flavor, were set in a ball-of-yarn pattern on a pool of spinach puree. The dish was finished by a slice of truffle, and equal sized slices of pecorino and Prosciutto. Now, if this dish was everything minus the Prosciutto, it would have worked fine. But to me, the prosciutto added an unappetizing element...the cured flavor didn't work well with everything else. If they had made the Prosciutto crispy, it would have made all the difference. The dish was lacking in dimension as it was, and a crunch component would have kicked ass. The flavor would have worked. But eh. I did learn a new ingredient from all this though, the Antiqua.

Pan-Seared Foie Gras, Morel, Pecan, Raspberry, Purslane

The foie gras was expertly cooked, with the morels and pecans playing sickeningly well off each other. Pecans were in some other form, it was custard-ish, reminiscent of Tempeh. But I never got a clear answer on it. It was almost like that yellow egg stuff that you sometimes get on rolled sushi at lower quality Japanese restaurants, you know? But with bits of pecan in it and not so yellow. The raspberries were good, in addition to the purslane; both were a nice touch to cut the fattiness of the foie gras. Good dish, nothing that blew me away, but nice flavors all around.

White Asparagus-Poached Sturgeon, Asparagus Spaetzle, Mushroom & Onion Infusion

This dish was the standout of the meal. Sturgeon which was poached in a white asparagus enriched stock, seared and served with a little round of mushroom and asparagus. The fish was poached correctly, with a little sear on the top. Sometimes this doesn't work, poaching then searing, because you could possibly dry up the fish. But in this case, it did, and the fish stayed moist and tender as my fork pressed through it. The spaetzle were good as well, very loose and not tough, as is usually the case with most restaurants and their spaetzle. There was trout roe in the mixture too, and it was all colored a vibrant green by the asparagus cream in which it was warmed through in. The mushroom on top was kind of a cutesy little number, it was a round cross section of king trumpet with a hole punched out in the middle, with a tiny asparagus piece threaded through it. The plate was finished with a small amount of Shiso Oil, and a Mushroom-Onion broth was poured around the fish table side. I will say this was my favorite dish of the meal, they got it right on all counts. The flavors worked so well together, and I could actually get a hint of the white asparagus as I ate my sturgeon. So cool.

Roasted Colorado Lamb Loin, Farro Verde, Nectarine, Picholine Olive

Alright, it's lamb time. I've been buried in food for the past hour or so, and the meal is kind of coming to an end. I am brought the lamb dish and it's finished at the table with an apricot glaze. The preparation of the farro verde was interesting, it seemed like a straight up farro with a sort of gelatin rectangle on top, which melted into the farro. It had some good flavor to it, it definitely worked with the lamb. Now, the nectarine and picholine olive I had a bit of a dust-up with. They were both handled a bit too much. They were both cut to resemble thick washers, and there were three pieces total, a chive was threaded through the middle of all three. Very elaborate, but left me wondering, "how do I eat this?" The dish was finished with Johnny Jump-Up flowers, which have a cool name and they taste neat, and visually they are attractive. I suppose they are summer flowers, summer and lamb, maybe lamb eat flowers in the summer? Who knows. Aside from this jargon, the lamb was cooked well, and did taste good, to the kitchen's credit. Still lacking that correct seasoning, though...

A Selection of Cow, Goat & Sheeps' Milk Cheeses

The cheese course came next, and yes, they were all good. The cheese cart is interesting, the cheeses are all divided up into the categories of cow's milk, goat's milk, and sheep's milk. I wish I could remember all the names of them, there was one in particular I tried that blew me out of the water. It was an ash finished pyramid shape, but the top point was cut off and it was just flat. That cheese was incredible.

Gianduja Cremeux, Hazelnut, Manchego, Basil, Concord Grape

You're probably wondering, "what in the blazes is a cremeux?" Well, I had the same question. I had never seen the term before. It's a molded custard, in the simplest terms. I'm pretty sure by the way I saw it wiggle when I touched it, it had some gelatin in it. Under this oval shaped chocolate piece was some house made Nutella, if you don't know what that is, I'm not going to explain it, I'll just silently weep for your taste buds. There was manchego cheese foam, a concord grape sorbet, sliced concord grapes, candied hazelnuts, and a basil-manchego crispy square. This dish worked pretty well together, the saltiness of the cheese contrasting with the grape and the chocolate. The one qualm I had was that the basil-manchego crispy was a bit too strong for the dish. Everything else worked out well, I enjoyed this dish.

What can we learn from this? It's pretty fucking tough, even if you're a superstar chef, to have a nightly changing tasting menu. I mean this changes every day. Who the hell can keep up with it? Rick Tramonto did, for a long time, but he was no where in sight of me, I even peeked into the kitchen once and he was not there. I learned from a friend (not to mention reading online stuff) that he opened a bunch of other locations, I can imagine he's spread pretty thin. Yes, franchising is a way to make money, I just wish it didn't affect quality so much. I'll use Eric Ripert from Le Bernardin as an example, he calls that restaurant 'his baby', and won't be anywhere BUT Le Bernardin. That's bad ass. A chef ought to have just one restaurant, and devote all his time to it. Only my humble opinion.

That was it. I left the restaurant satiated, but I will follow up with the fact that it did not match my expectations. The service was amazing however, and on a level which we hardly ever experience. From everything I had ever read, I was expecting to be blown away, have some truly amazing food, and I was let down. Not that it wasn't good food, I will say that it was good food. But not what I wanted. I wanted stuff that would leave a stupid grin on my face. You know meals like that, right? Meals so good that you can't help but smile.

Chicago 2008 and More.

2008-08-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Well now, it's been about a month and a half since I did any kind of blog updates. I do apologize for this, if anyone out there still reads me. I had a bunch of crazy stuff happen in the first week or two of July, but it calmed down relatively soon thereafter. A lot has been going on. There will be quite a few updates in the next week, as I went to Chicago over the weekend and ate at three incredible establishments: Alinea, NaHa, and Tru (I ate at other places in between but they aren't nearly as interesting as these three are).

I started my stage at Olea restaurant in the Pearl District. The chef is a guy named Aaron Barnett, who I met and worked with while I was externing at Gary Danko in San Francisco. He's Canadian, and he's a brilliant guy. An extremely talented, capable, passionate chef, he's been at Olea since summer of last year. I happened to reconnect with him randomly as I went in for a drink one night. We'd been talking since then and I had told him I planned to switch jobs at some point in the summer...however after the WCI layoff, my plan got sprung into action a bit sooner than I had planned. No problem though, as he was glad to take me on as a stage. I had my first day shortly before my 24th birthday, which was fine, hooray, another year lived on the earth. This year will be different though. I'm back on my original career path, and I couldn't be happier.

The three most prominent characters I work with are Aaron, Graham, and Patrick. Graham is the fish cook (and an ex-student of mine), and Patrick is the sous chef. Patrick has been there since the opening, about 3 years now, and knows the place inside and out. He's been there through 2 chefs before Aaron, and he does a great job. He's an awesome guy, knows his food, and is someone I learn from daily. The first night I worked, I was assisting Patrick on a 5 course tasting menu that we fed some diners who had come in for a special event. I was nervous as hell, considering the fact that this was really my first experience in a kitchen outside WCI in about 3 years. Patrick in all his greatness made sure I was taken care of, all I had to do was prep for this event and help him go through it. He's taught me many things and I consider him a stellar colleague as well as a friend. He's the one who set me up with an awesome dinner at NaHa in Chicago (but you'll learn more about that in the next update).

Graham is, well, he's a good guy. I originally met Graham at WCI, he was in the restaurant practical while I was the instructor there. We knew each other by proxy, we both have younger brothers near the same age, and they knew each other in high school, blah blah, you know the rest; Corvallis a small town. Anyhow, Graham was one of the only students I ever encountered who actually gave a shit, that showed up on time and ready to go every day, no matter what. Someone like me! So I liked him immediately. We kept in contact after he left WCI, I met up with him on one of my subsequent trips to San Francisco. He informed me that he had gotten a job at Olea in April of this year, and I couldn't be happier for him. I had the opportunity to cater a wedding for his friends with him on one of the last weekend in July, we had a glorious time. Prepping in a kitchen that literally was about 120F, showerchickens, decomposing tomatoes, and mis-rotating a gratin were all part of the fun and games that were the wedding. Graham is a great guy, and he's really dreamy to boot. He likes to make inappropriate proposals to me as I work sometimes. Sometimes I reply. Most of the time I just snicker though.

It sure is hot! But we're blessed that we're on the west coast near the cool ocean, and not stuck in the Midwest. Chicago is a great city but, God help me, was I not used to the humidity. Here I was, trying to walk down Michigan Avenue in my suit and tie, and it was about 80F with 80% humidity at 6pm. Talk about embarrassing when you get to a restaurant that has a "jackets for the men" clause and you are forced to tear your coat off or you'll asphyxiate. Boy was my face red. And it might have only been slightly from the heat.

Signing off now, as I'm going to go proof and fix my drafts of my restaurant visits and have them posted here within the week (that's a promise, as I've found some more spare time after recently quitting some other habits of mine).

So careful, now
You don't belong

Back to the Grind

2008-06-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

Well, after about a month of being unemployed, and getting some inspiration and glares from a certain unnamed party, I think it's about time to write again.

So when we last left each other, I had a slightly less then amicable parting of the ways with my old employer, Western Culinary Institute. Well, parting of the ways in the sense that I was laid off.

I decided this would be a good opportunity to actually get my career goals back on the right track. For the past year while employed at WCI, I was depressed. I had wanted to go back and work in restaurants and cook again so badly, that it actually carried over into my work ethic and mentality while on the job at WCI. My interpersonal communications weren't the best. I still busted my ass and made sure things ran smooth in the restaurant, but sometimes my solutions weren't the best, the way I dealt with people and such. I was angry. I was tired a lot of the time. Classic depression symptoms, yeah!

Now though, things are on the mend. I've taken about a month off, which is great for me, I can spend time on my hobbies, catch up on TV, spend money, you know, all the good stuff. I'm planning to start a stagiere at local restaurants, the names of which I can't say at this time, but they'll be written about as soon as I start the work there. For those unfamiliar, a stagiere is a period of time where you go to work at a restaurant, for free. In exchange for your labor, you're taught how to do things properly, get to work with skilled individuals and chefs, and personally, be around people who actually care about food as much as I do.

So yeah! It's going to be back to work, working nights thank god, and I think I'll be more satisfied with the change of scenery and new work. Doing meaningful, gratifying, satisfying work will undoubtedly be good for me, fix my frame of mind. But I'll be tired! Sore! Possibly unfriendly certain days of the week! But who cares. I'll be doing what I love.

Reality struck me
Between the eyes

Black Friday

2008-05-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

Well, another chapter in my life has finally come to an end.

Friday the 16th of May, 2008, I was laid off from Western Culinary Institute; this was part of the reduction in staff that was the result of the student loan crisis and dwindling enrollment.

I'm not as bitter, sad, or angry as people think I would be. This is how life goes. You roll with the punches, and you weather the storm. It's what you do when bad stuff happens, that matters. How you handle it.

I've got options. I've wanted to go back to restaurant cooking for about a year now. I was depressed and hated work some days, and I knew that cooking in restaurants, actually being a cook again, would make me happy. I never got all that line cooking out of my system. I still have the energy and the drive to go far, and I will.

The most upsetting thing about being laid off for me was the fact that I had just gotten charged with more job responsibility, and being on the communication committee for WCI. I was set to manage more duties in Bleu, which I was thrilled about, as it would help out my Chef and allow me to gain more knowledge and insight for my future. The communication committee was in place to help change things around WCI, and make it a more positive environment for all the staff.

I believe businesses do the best when there is an element of community, of family. We're all in this together, whether or not we want the same goal and end result. We're all working toward some end, and things are better for all parties along the way if we feel connected and involved. This is what I wanted to help foster, and grow. I wanted to help grow a better community environment for WCI. Some days I may have disliked showing up and doing my job, everyone gets that way sometimes. But I tell you this, I will miss most of all my co workers and friends.

But in the end, it resulted in one question that I had to ask myself:

Did I make a difference? Did I help someone understand something better, did I teach someone a new skill, technique, or way of thinking? Did I make an impact?

I believe that I did. And everything will be alright for me.

Goodbye Western Culinary Institute.

Oreilles de Cochon

2008-04-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

Okay now!

So I've been talking about pig ears for a while at work and on the internet. So much that it finally annoyed the few friends I have (who say things like "Jackson, we're going to take your books away from you", so I decided to buckle down, buy some, and shut the hell up about them. This is the tale of how I came to obtain and cook these "oreilles de cochon".

So it's a month or two ago, and I read in this older, fancy, French cookbook (I sure do seem to have a lot of those) about "oreilles de cochon" or pig ears. This sounds interesting, because I've worked with pig caul, pig head, pig cheek, to name a few of the items that come from that wonderful animal. In this environment at WCI, I can generally test out things I want to, if I pay for them I can get them ordered for me, and use my kitchen space.

So the first order of business was, where the hell do I get pig ears? First thing I thought of was to ask Vicki, our purchasing director. I got the resounding "NO! I won't buy you pig ears. That's too far!" So it was. I kept asking this question once or twice a week, in hopes of "wearing her down", but she wouldn't/won't budge an inch. So I was left to my own devices!

Turns out, after doing a little research on Google, that I found a post in some obscure Asian forum that said the market of Uwajimaya in Portland sold pig ears, in fact they sold a great many items from the pig. So the thought of "Asian market" entered my brain, and that was the next step. Chef Gurr had mentioned another Asian market, he had bought some whole spot prawns there a month or so ago, and I wanted to go check it out. Fubonn, it was called. Frubronn!! So I end up taking a drive out there, punched the address into my neat little GPS navigator device in my phone. I tell you, if I'm ever stranded on a desert island, you know how people tell you the three things they would take if they were stranded? I'd bring my satellite phone with its GPS and an extra battery pack, so I could get the hell off the island.

So I get to Fubonn, and go in and start looking around. There's like 9 kinds of bok choy, so cool! I picked a few things up, as I told a few of my colleagues I was headed to this place and could get a couple specialty items. Fresh turmeric root, galangal, lime leaves, etc. But once these items were in my cart, I proceeded to the meat department, which I have to say was a bit daunting at first. But then I dove right into it! Pig uterus, bull penis, goat meat, pig bung, all forms of intestines, tripes, and organs. Good stuff, I have to say. I like offal and the mainly unused pieces of animal, so this was fun for me to see. Here's something I had never seen before that fateful day...

So I get two packs of these pig ears and head on my merry way back to WCI. In the car on the drive home I am trying to think of what ratio of salt and sugar to use, if I'm going to trim the ears completely, or if I'm going to leave them alone. The blend of spices and dried herbs has got to be good too. Am I going to confit them in duck fat or a more neutral fat? How long do I let them cure?

Lot of fun things to consider. I love that we have to go through this long process to get to the end result. Time is what I like to spend on these sorts of things. I think a slew of pictures will speak pretty well for this next part. Here is the process after I obtained the ears.

The ears right out of the box!

Pig ear, as a pita!

Flat ear, trimming skin off

After the cure went on, they got the weights put on them

The washed and pressed ears, on the third day

Pig ears, started 4/21 at 14:15

So as you might imagine, it was quite intense. I wanted to try trimming the skin off one of the ears, leaving just the cartiledge and veins, then I just left the other ones whole and untouched. My cure was a mixture of salt and sugar in a 5:1 ratio, pink peppercorns, black peppercorns, dried thyme, fennel seed, and juniper. I covered the ears liberally in the cure mix and then I put them in a pan and weighted them down, and let them sit in the reach-in for 3 days, curing and flattening.

I pulled them out on Monday, washed, and soaked the ears in cold water for about half an hour to leach some of the salt out. I prepared my confit bath, which was pure duck fat, bay leaves, garlic cloves, and fresh thyme, all set at a temperature of 160F. I have an alto-sham (hot box) at work, so I can hold things are a constant temperature for a set amount of time. Let me tell you, it's a joy for confiting, braising, and steaming (certain items), as well as holding stuff hot for service. So in the sham they went, for 23 hours!

The next day I pulled them out of the confit bath, set them on a parchment lined sheet pans, laid more parchment on them, and weighted them down pretty hard, I'd say about 15 pounds of weight distributed over the pan. This was to get them to chill in a flat shape, as they were still a bit curly looking when they came out of the confit. I let them sit for a few hours in the walk in so they would firm up and shape nicely.

The big moment. I took the ears from the pan, they were nice and flat and firm. They smelled wonderfully of juniper and pepper, and they had the familiar aroma of offal, which is that meaty, ethereal, rich scent, almost musky. I cut one of the ears into strips, and put them in the fryer at 325F. I watched them caramelize and bubble, and once they had reached a nice crisp outer layer (this is the skin getting crispy, mind you), I pulled them out and let them drain. A minute later, I took a bite out of one. The first flavor I recognized was salt. I had put too much salt on them, or they had cured too long! PUTAIN DE MERDE DE PUTASSE! The pig ears, they were too salty. Fuck!

I hate it when I mess up something like this. This was a few weeks brainstorming, 4 days of active time involved. I didn't have any recipe to follow, I purely "winged it" while coming up with how much salt and how long to cure them for. I had two options when it came to salting. I could cover the things in it, or I could have weighed them out and figured a salt/sugar ratio based on the weight of the individual ear, which in retrospect I should have done. They then would have stood up to a 3 day cure.

It makes me mad to even type about it, because I'm just recalling the painful memories I have. But enough of that. We make mistakes, we learn from them. Cooking is largely trial and error, you can read a ton about something but you still have to physically attempt it. So I got it wrong this time. The next batch of pig ears I work on will be tenfold better, because I learned things from this mistake of a first attempt. The moral of this story is to never give up on what you care about. Food and cooking are two things I care about very much. I'll always return and get back in and try to succeed.

You don't know what to do
There's a guy you know
Who'll be there for you

Quality vs. Quantity

2008-04-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

I think it's gotten to be common knowledge that most people who work in the food service industry work crazy hours, and at times of day that most of the normal world is either still sleeping, just getting off work, or out partying at the restaurant where we're working these crazy hours.

These hours seem to just "work" for most of us. I know that I don't personally like the 9-5 shift, although these days it seems like I'm doing that more and more...but more of a 04:30- 16:00 type of thing. You might have noticed I typed that in European time. Yes, I am working to shift my persona over to metric and European standard time, as eventually I want to be able to think in both units of time and measurement. I told you, we're crazy. Generally though, most of the crazies in the food industry are also talented and gifted beyond belief, so that's not a bad thing. But yeah, I get up at that time because it's my routine, but you'd better believe that I'm more comfortable working something like 08:00-24:00.

This leads me to the point of my story today. It begins with a student I had a while back, we'll call him "Telperion" for the sake of anonymity. I CHALLENGE you to find me someone in the United States named Telperion.

So Telperion gets into my class. Okay, I already got tired of typing all that out. From here on out, Telperion is going to be known as "T". T arrives and seems ready to go, wants a challenge, and I like that. I remember when I was in school, and I actually cared a lot about what I did, and he reminded me a little bit of myself. Now, I give each of my students all the attention that they deserve. They are paying a high price for this education and I not only must deliver a high quality product, but I want to. I am driven to do this because I care about it. The things in my life that I love, I truly care about. Food is one of those things, and because of this simple rule, I focus myself to deliver the best product I can. Nothing else matters.

Problem is, though, when students that I focus attention on have the attitude of "oh I could care less about what you have to say". That's kind of tough, because I do care about education. But when you have a ton of students, and you get the ones with that attitude, it makes it a bit easier to focus less on them, and focus more on the students who care about being there, who care about what is going on.

T decided that not only will he have this attitude, but that he will try to constantly "one-up" me because of my age and the fact that he thinks I am undeserving of the position I am in. Let me tell you something here, dear reader; I am extremely lucky to have the job that I have, I learn every day and I help people learn every day, and I feel good about what I do. I am not a Chef, I am aware of this; but I am a culinary instructor, and that's how it is.

So T tries to throw all kinds of food knowledge and trivia at me, trying to get me to trip up. He for instance, would say something like "blah blah Chef, what's the point of putting salt in the water that we blanch vegetables in"; which I know he knew the answer to, but he was trying to expose me as a "fraud" or something. I'll say this now, I don't have all the answers, and I will admit if I am wrong or don't know the answer; but I am no idiot.

T carries on about jobs he used to have and how much he worked, "blah blabah I worked 16 hours a day 6 days a week", and so on and so on. I asked him why he didn't still work in that job. "oh, I got fired". Alright, the truth comes out! Now, a large part of any job is actually showing up and putting the time in, yes. That's pretty much huge. Cooks have long hours, much more so than a 9-5er. It's important to show up. I am so happy when all of my students decided to come to class on a daily basis, especially when we've had small groups, and one or two people's absence really makes a difference. But I also believe in quality work. So you have this one moron saying "ooooh yeah I put in 16 hours a day". The question I would ask is "how much of that 16 hours was spent on cigarette breaks or doing crappy, sub par work?"

Yeah, showing up and putting in long hours is good. But being smart and doing the right sort of quality work is important too. If I can put in 12 or 10 hours and do the same amount of work, and do better quality work, that makes me much more valuable. Nothing irritates me more then to hear some slob saying he works 16 hour days, but when he fine minces a pint of shallots for me they are bruised and weeping because he doesn't have a sharp god damn fucking knife. So you can go to hell if you work like that, because I'll chop 5 pounds of shallots with my knife in half the time you did, and mine will be fresh looking and pretty because my knife is so sharp that it can cut molecules in half. This is what I mean when I say "it matters to me."

Why am I upset about seeing this sort of worker? Why does it matter? Isn't food food? FOOD ISN'T MADE THE SAME, THAT'S WHY THERE IS MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD. It's about how we interpret it, it's about how we execute it, and about how we apply the proper skill and techniques to food that make it what it is. That's what separates us. The men from the boys. Keeping your cool and producing the best dish you can. Do I know it all? Nope. But I do know what the traits of a good worker are? You're damn right I do, seeing what I have seen the past two years.

So hey, if my Chef wants me at work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, sounds great! That's what I love. But I can save him labor if I work harder and faster for 10 hours, or I can just make him happier because I produce excellent product in that 16 hours. It all comes down to your character, and if you're willing to go the distance for what you love. Because I know the things I love. And I am willing to go the distance for them.

Once I start I cannot stop myself.

Menu du Printemps

2008-04-16T19:37:00.001-07:00

So it's almost springtime...it's as if spring wants to run right in but then the big bad weatherman decides to make snow, rain, sleet, freezing rain, and wind happen. I went to the farmer's market last weekend with the most wonderful girl the world ever did see, and unfortunately all that I saw was kale, Yukon potatoes, rutabagas, more kale, some mushrooms, oh and did I mention kale? Because there was a lot of that! The selection wasn't the best because it's not truly "spring" yet. Just you wait though!

But for serious, the farmer's market is pretty awesome. What a great treat, what a way for the people who grow the food to connect with the people who eat their food. If I had my druthers, I would get up at 4:30am every day (I do that already), go shop and get the best products at the opening of the markets, before anyone else had a chance to. But this would require me being the Chef of a fancy restaurant, which I am not. One of these days, though; I will be doing that.

I feel as if that would make me happiest in the end. During the times I get down, one of the few thoughts that cheers me up is the fact that if I stick with cooking, strive to do the best I can in my current situation, and keep loving it like I always have, that I will one day reach my end goal, running my own kitchen and restaurant. Chef Thomas Keller, if you ever happen to read this blog; please know this. I want to work for you at The French Laundry, because I want to be part of something greater than myself. If I worked there, under you, Chef Lee, and the restaurant staff, I believe it will help transform me into a better cook. I was given The French Laundry cookbook as my first ever cookbook when my family realized I loved the craft. I read it religiously, as if it were my bible. Your philosophies speak to me, as does your food, and your portrayal of The French Laundry not just as "your" restaurant, but as one that functions at it's optimal level when the entire team makes their best effort. That's what I love to see and hear about. That's why I want to work for you. I would be a great fit for the job. I'd come and apprentice for 6 months to a year if that's what it took for me to be hired.

Anyway, he's going to think I'm an insane nut job if he ever reads this.

So the spring menu at Restaurant Bleu! It's about time, I'm pretty darn tired of winter menu, heavier items, and extremely low student counts. Like I may have written about in previous posts, student counts wax and wane, and the lean times are definitely late December through early May. However, we're picking up a bit and have more students now, so the time has come to do a few more challenging items. I have to scale the menu, you see, based on the student count and if they are cogent enough to handle it. Keep in mind this is a bistro style lunch menu, and these are culinary students preparing the food.

Appetizer:

Vegetable Tart - Puff Pastry, Caramelized Red Onions, Nicoise Olives, Goat Cheese; Upland Cress, Thyme Oil Vinaigrette, Applewood Smoked Bacon

Oysters - On the half shell, with Cucumber Mignonette and Pickled Shallots

Salad:

Fennel - Fennel, Corona Beans, Preserved Lemon, Nicoise Olives, Sherry Vinegar, Fennel Oil, Pepper Cress, Fleur du Sel

Laitue - Bibb Lettuce, Baby White Turnips (for now), Fresh Herbs, Grapefruit, Lavender-Grapefruit Vinaigrette

Dessert:

Profiteroles - Pate a Choux, Pastry Cream, Chocolate Ganache, Pistachios

Toasted Pecan Creme Caramel - with Madeleine Cookies, Lemon-Chevre Mousse

So yeah, that stuff will probably change at some point, but this is the preliminary menu. The entrees I don't actually do, that's Chef Gurr's corner. But this menu ought to be nice, I am working with an item I haven't cooked with before, the corona bean. These are probably the most noble of beans, if we have to discuss that. They are huge! We're talking almost the size of a silver dollar, fat white beans. Anyway, they are killer, so come by Bleu and have lunch some time! We serve from 11:00-13:00, Tuesday - Friday. If you're nice we might even give you a kitchen tour.

Nothing can compare
To when you roll the dice
And swear that
Your love's for me

Graduation Day

2008-04-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

I recently uncovered the video of my graduation ceremony back in January of 2005. I feel compelled to post the text of it because I think I made a very good speech. I believe I was able to sum up quite well the challenges and obstacles that we graduating cooks must face. This was written right after I returned from San Francisco, the city where Restaurant Gary Danko is. Working there was one of the better things I've done in my life, and I want to go back someday. I always can go back to that time I spent in California and feel good about what I do. And I know that I will one day return to that place.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

"Chef Gary Danko recently told me, during my externship, “it’s important, as a young cook, to keep your eyes and ears open, to be open to learning new things, because this business is constantly changing. When you cook something, think about the processes that go on at each step of the way. This will help you to become a better cook because you will understand how things really work.”

I think it’s important, as cooks, that we have passion for what we do. The last thing we expect to get from going to culinary school is to be stuck in a dead end job as a line cook for the rest of our lives. You have to be inspired, to keep the urge to create, to try harder each day. Being inspired about cooking is easy, taking pleasure in doing the simple things, the tasks we all know and do every day, because it’s a routine. And sure, eventually cooking becomes a routine, but who ever said you can’t enjoy the routine? It can range anywhere from making stock, peeling potatoes, to making the demiglace for the meat station; somewhere during these mundane tasks you have to search for enjoyment, to find what you like doing the most. Then the routine doesn’t become boring, it becomes something you look forward to each day. Imagine finding something great in each menial task you do, the enjoyment you’d gain from that.

But just having passion and inspiration won’t take you to the top, which is where we all want to end up, eh?

You also need to have the drive and the willingness to work hard. Being a cook isn’t just about wanting to play around and create new things. We need to have endurance and stamina to keep up with the heavy demands of restaurant work. It’s not easy, as many people who don’t cook in a restaurant happen to think. We need to be prepared to get our butts kicked every day of a job, and then come back the next day with a positive attitude about it. Because we will have good days, and we will have bad days. We need to come back with a positive attitude about things, and not let our situations get to our head, because this will definitely cause us to burn out early on in our careers, and we want this career, this “lifestyle”, rather, to last us a long and successful time.

Thank you, to the chefs and instructors I learned under. Each of you had different methods, opinions, and teaching styles, and I am glad to have been a student of each of you.

To those of you who were not in my class: although I may not know you, I will say I am glad to have been able to attend school with people like you, who have made it this far, and are doing what you want.

To the parents, guardians, friends, spouses, and companions of the western culinary students, thank you for being there and supporting us. This is a big deal, and we are grateful for your help.

To my classmates and friends: thank you. You have helped shape the person I have become today, and I am forever grateful. Thank you for letting me be a part of each of your lives as well."

Jackson Harter
January 2005

Concepts

2008-04-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

There's not much to say.

Right now the sun is being hidden by a few errant clouds, and I'm just returning from my physical therapy appointment. It's been going really well with all that. I have an idea of a stretch/workout schedule now and I plan to stick with it for a few months, then return to see my therapist again. From there, it would be the goal to start finding a place to apprentice at in Portland a few days a week, and see how things go from there.

We're changing the menu this coming week or so, I'm busy figuring out some ideas for that. More to come later when I actually iron out the final details. But for those interested, here's an excerpt of my journal of stuff I write down when the thought of spring and food come to me:

"Hills, grass, wind, fennel, wild plants, lemon verbena, citrus, flowers, colors, warm, airy.

Think lightly, tread lightly

Sweet onion, leek, baby turnips, garlic shoots, rapini, carrots, beets, chevre, manchego, , brie, tete de moin"

I'm pretty sure I make no sense to no one. I try and make an effort, but eh.

One of these days all the pieces will come together and make sense. Hopefully that'll be the day I have my own business. I will make it work for me and make all the right moves.

San Francisco Days

2008-04-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

Well, Friday the 28th of March was the last day for a week for me. We had a long overdue break, the week of the 31st to the 4th. It's pretty great to be able to get some time off in this job. Time off while cooking in a restaurant is unheard of, unless the restaurant's closed or something. My cook friends think it's kinda whack that I get 4 weeks of vacation a year, which I admit is pretty crazy in itself, but nice all at the same time.

This job, however, is a lot different type of stress than a regular cooking job. At WCI, I have to interact with hundreds of people on a daily basis, and deal with my class which ranges in size (depending on the year) from 10 to 80. I can't just cook and work with a prep list and do service and clean and bust my ass. I have to lead students in a production restaurant (and 85% of them have never worked in a restaurant before) which opens for service to the public every day, try my best to make sure everything I have on my prep list and menu is actually ON the lunch menu. It also has to be edible and presentable. I have to handle drama, fighting, theft, other interpersonal actions, among the issues when running a kitchen. But I handle it. It's fantastic experience for me for the day that I open my own restaurant. It's also made me a much better person. I wouldn't trade my time at WCI for anything.

Back to the fun stuff though. I had arranged for a ticket to fly to San Francisco that Friday after work, well, it was actually during work, but I asked Luke to come in and spot me an hour so I would make absolutely sure to get to the airport in time for my flight. Reminding you that I had also been sick as hell that week, I was just finally getting over my gastro-intestinal distress. So I made it to the airport all right, but due to my excessive analness (neologism at it's best here folks) with traveling, I showed up so early that my flight departure information wasn't even on the board. Ah well, such is life. I spent the few hours working on some new menu concepts for Bleu, as we are changing our menu in a couple of weeks. Spring is HERE!

So, I got into the San Francisco airport just fine. My step dad, Toby, picked me up and right from there we headed into the city, as we (Toby, Mom, Kelsey and I) had reservations at Jardinière at 8:30pm. I changed in the car! I had known about this restaurant since 2004, when I was living and working in the city. I didn't ever get a chance to eat there, because I didn't have the time to, and I couldn't afford it, but 4 years later, here I am, ready to go and experience it. The owner and Chef, Traci Des Jardins, won the James Beard Award in 2007, and I couldn't be happier. I had followed her work since leaving San Francisco in 2004, so it was nice to see that she got that to happen. I figured it was only a matter of time, as she's super-talented.

We strolled in around 7:50, and to my great surprise, there was Chef standing near the door! I went to introduce myself but at that moment my Mom grabbed me for something, and a split second later, Chef was gone. Oh, the humanity. I just wanted to say hi and that I had admired her. I don't typically mention the fact that I teach at a culinary school when I go out, it either opens way too many doors, or closes them. I can't discuss any more of that topic, however.

We sat upstairs, which was where the action was all going on. It was HOT! Like 80 degrees and humid. I had to take off my jacket and unbutton my shirt a bit, and that barely helped. I would have thought they could fix that issue, but other then that, there were no problems with our time that evening. We all opted to have the 7-course tasting menu. I will present it in exact replication format, and then review the dishes below it, in order.

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Carpaccio of Maine Diver Scallop,
Jalapeño, Chioggia Beets and Caviar, Soy Vinaigrette

Poached Alaska Halibut, Sugar Snap Peas and Sorrel, Lemon Emulsion

Tea Smoked Squab Breast,
Seared Foie Gras, Farro, Rhubarb and Tamarind Gastrique

Handmade Pappardelle,
Ragout of Suckling Pig, Lucques Olives and Pecorino-Romano

Colorado Lamb, Ravioli, Fennel and Fava Bean Pesto, Rosemary Jus

Bermuda Triangle
Celery Heart, Apple and Truffle Honey

Ricotta Cheesecake, Strawberry Sorbet and Hazelnut

Quite a menu eh? That's what I thought too.

Scallop was good. The combination of beets and caviar was interesting, I've never had it before; but it worked for sure. This was Osetra caviar, by the way, not some crappy paddlefish knock-off. The sweetness of the beets combined with the brininess of the caviar was lovely. The subtle heat of the jalapeño gave a nice undertone to the entire dish. I even got my sister to try it. Heh heh.

Halibut dish was good as well. The flavor combinations were awesome, you really cannot go wrong with sugar peas and lemon, in my opinion, when combined with a nice, white fleshed fish. The sorrel provided a nice, sharp bite. The only issue I had with that dish is that it could have been poached a bit differently. I learned a style for poaching fish about two years ago that really is one of the best and most practical, in my opinion.

The squab dish was a knockout, no other word for it. The farro, rhubarb and tamarind worked amazing with the foie gras and squab; they cut through the richness of the foie gras, and rhubarb and tamarind are almost naturally suited to the full flavor of squab. It was the only dish, however, that made my stomach turn a little bit, but not because it was bad in any way. I was still feeling sick and crappy. So sick that I opted not to have the wine pairing with the dinner, which I wish I would have been able to do. My Mom ordered a glass of Burgundy to go with her meat courses, and it was fantastic for being a by-the-glass Burgundy.

The pasta course was great, the pappardalle were lovely and tender and thin as paper, and the ragout of pig and olives worked beautifully. I found a new flavor combination I liked.

Lamb, dizamb! It was good. The ravioli was some sort of a lamb sausage, I couldn't identify everything in it. The rosemary jus was a good finisher.

The cheese course was phenomenal. I have never sampled this Bermuda Triangle cheese before, but it was exquisite. Paired with truffle honey, it was awesome. The cheese was a chevre type, with nice earthy, mild flavors. The truffle honey spiked it a bit and made it sublime. Plus, it looked really, really cool. It was in the shape of a (you guessed it!) triangle.

Good cheesecake, it was ricotta though, so it was light and airy. I'm accustomed to a heavier cheesecake like my Mom makes (she makes the worlds best cheesecakes), but this was nice with what it had. The sorbet was good, and they had this cute little sugar basket on top of the cheesecake filled with a brunoise of strawberries. Teehee!

The whole thing was great, and I'd even pay the same price for it again, $125. Not bad for 7 courses in the big city; a Gary Danko 5-course is $96, so that about works out.

So I've something to explain a bit here. One of my favorite food styles is taking good, classic and contemporary flavor combinations and refining and elevating them to new heights. Sure, I can appreciate all kinds of cuisine, from the greasy spoon diners to the temples of haute cuisine, but my preferred cooking style is to take the ordinary and turn it sublime. This is my focus for now, and who knows; it may change in 10 years, but I doubt it. Fads come and fads go. We saw low carb, no carb, tapas, etc, all over the last 10 years, and now we have the molecular gastronomy movement. Do I think that is going to last? No, I don't think it will.

I love the idea of it, but I don't think that you can base an entire restaurant off that concept. I pull ideas from molecular gastronomy to enhance my own cuisine, but I wouldn't make my food revolve around it. It's too unnatural. Food should be manipulated just enough to elevate it to the realm of transcendence, and not much further. Restaurants that are successful with that concept are run by brilliant chefs who know when enough is enough, who know the limit. To name a few of the more stellar ones: Alinea, el Bulli, the Fat Duck and Moto are all restaurants I'm familiar with. These guys aren't just chefs, they are scientists and masters of trickery and illusion.

That's it for Jardinière. More to come later today or tomorrow about the rest of my San Francisco exploits!

Velocifero.

Not Giving It Up

2008-03-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

Well, the option of doing some writing while home from work sounds good. I don't actually like leaving work ever, even if my bosses say "hey it's alright, I hope you feel better". I feel guilty and worthless. I guess I'll need to get over that eventually. People get sick, it happens, and we should understand. Maybe it's just my own work ethic type thing coming out of the woodwork.

So, on the weekend I was down visiting Corvallis. A good time was had by me, and hopefully by the people I visited (I'm going to have to re-evaluate my strategy if a particular person didn't have fun), and Sunday of course was Easter. It was pretty fun, my Mom made Easter baskets for my sister and me, something I hadn't seen in years. It was really cute and nostalgic.

Sunday night I'm looking for a snack, so I fix a croque madame, which is a sandwich that, classically is fried, has ham, gruyere cheese, dijon mustard, bechamel sauce, and is finished with an over-easy egg. I had every component for the sandwich minus the bechamel, so I went ahead and made one, with two over-easy eggs as I was quite hungry. Now, I feel that I have gotten to the point in my life where I can cook an over-easy egg quite well; I'm not currently trained where I can cook them extremely fast in a restaurant setting, I can at least cook them at home.

Let me wax poetic for a moment here, about the joys of an over-easy egg; and eggs in general. I feel bad for those of us in the world who cannot enjoy an over-easy egg for what it is, a thing of beauty and simplicity. Whites just set (NOT runny), seasoned well, and a raw, warm, runny yellow yolk waiting for you in the center. There are a few ways to cook eggs to over-easy, but I have become a fan of setting them in an egg pan, then transferring it to an oven to finish setting the whites and warming it through. This prevents that opaque skin on the top of the egg, giving you that pristine yellow color of the yolk shining through, just barely glistening with the sheen of the clarified butter that you'd brush it with.

Anyhow, I started feeling pretty terrible late Sunday night and into Monday, and even into today, Tuesday. Stomach cramps, terrible gastric distress, loose bowels, you get the picture. So I'm sick. I feel better, but for the past two days I've felt like crap. Originally, I thought it might be Salmonella, but my views have shifted to food poisoning. Just a bad case of food poisoning.

The point of my story is this: Just because you may get sick once in a while from foods that you love, doesn't mean you should give them up forever. How many times have you gotten sick from shellfish? Had one bad mussel in your lifetime of eating thousands of them? We don't want to deny ourselves the goodness of certain items just because we may become sick now and then. I'll take a few days of feeling sick now and then, because I enjoy eating foods that might be dangerous sometimes. So I encourage you to do the same. And I wish you the best of health.

Humility?

2008-03-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

- Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love

I wanted to touch on the subject of humility. This quote I've begun with is extremely powerful, and touches me on many levels, as well as most people who have read it.

People are divine. Each of us has within us our own power to do what we wish with our lives. I don't believe in fate, in luck, in chance. I do believe miracles happen, however. I believe that each of us are granted the power (when we are born) to make choices in our lives that will impact our futures and the people around us. We are granted this holy gift and we often take it for granted. I know I am guilty of this. I squandered a few years of my life doing meaningless, pointless activities when I knew all along, within myself, what my true path was. I found out what made me most happy in the end, because of the choices I made.

So be alive. Be awake. Pay attention to your surroundings. If you look at what's going on around you, if you observe and listen, you might find what you're truly seeking. I found what I wanted when I wasn't even looking for it.

The world is a dark, evil place, no matter how you spin it. You can try and ignore that fact, but it will come around to bite you in the ass. Be aware of the place we're in. Sure, we're able to act and function as if things are good, but in the grand scheme of things, they're really not. The wake up call is all around us. Look at what's going on around you. You can see it, if you observe. It's what we do that matters. I could sum it up as simply as this: doing things changes things; not doing things leaves them the same.

Do something about your life. If you want something, then in the name of all that surrounds us, just try. Give it a shot. Try and make a difference in yourself and in the people around you. Sure, you might fail. There's always a chance that you will fail, that I will fail, that we will fail. But if you lead a good life, a life that is filled with you "doing the right thing", then you increase your chances of a good outcome ten-fold. And that is the problem with people today. Most of us don't "do the right thing" when it comes down to it. I'm a firm believer in Karma. In the theory of Karma. I also am a firm believer in Chaos Theory. I want to go back to work in a restaurant someday. What did I do about it? I started doing physical therapy. I started to get my blood sugar levels back under control. I am going to make all the right moves and nothing is going to stop me. Because what we do matters. My message to anyone who's reading this: do something about your situation, because no one can truly help you; you can only help yourself.

28 Ghosts IV

End Result

2008-03-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a week or so since any updates. I've got to apologize, but I've simply been really busy.

First on the docket; in February I wrote about curing pork cheek. Classically it's called guanciale in Italian, as it's Italian in origin. I was interested in this, pretty much because I'm interested in all that's food. I decided to do some research and try and cure some pork cheek myself. I probably read about 4 or 5 different methods, in the end I utilized steps from each piece I'd read, as well as throwing some steps in there myself. I'm not going to share exactly how I did it, because that would just be giving all the fun away. You can experience it for yourself when I open my restaurant in about 10 years. So make sure to keep reading! Haha!

So I let this pork cheek hang in my reach-in refrigerator for about a month, and I pulled it last Thursday and it came out spectacular. It's like, like, refined bacon. It's got this depth of flavor that I haven't tasted in a dog's age. It's pretty tiny; you need to trim the cheek of all saliva glands, as well as the skin. I prefer to shape it a bit too, so I cut it into a rectangle, measuring roughly 3.5" x 7". They aren't too big, pork cheeks, but thankfully they only cost ~$1.60/lb from Carlton, which is where we get a lot of our pork products here at good ol' WCI. I cut a few pieces from it, in the shape of lardon, to try initially. I sampled this both cooked and raw. The latter I wouldn't recommend, as it gave me a wicked case of gastric distress. I spent about 2 hours near the bathroom, and I won't say anymore, aside from the fact that I'm a glutton for punishment. Cooked, however, is the way to go with this stuff. The fat (typically in most bacons, the fat stays somewhat opaque during cooking, going translucent but still cloudy) turned perfectly clear, which made me nearly lose my cool with pleasure. The lardons looked like little jewels, with the red streak of the muscle and the clear fat encapsuling them. Pristine, but not perfect. Food cannot be perfect.

So I did my typical dog-and-pony show of showing it off to everyone around me. I've written about not doing this, to stay humble, and I try not to; but at certain times I just am so pleased with how stuff comes out that I can't help but talk about it. If only my colleagues did the same. I'd be delighted if one of them came to me now and again with a dish they had made, and had me sample it. I'd give them feedback and tell them if it was good or bad. But that doesn't happen hardly ever. I wish it did. We're teachers, and we should be bouncing ideas off each other, not just about teaching, but about food in general. It would help to enrich our knowledge as well as foster some more camaraderie.

So for a few days I ruminated about how I wanted to serve this stuff. I pulled my typical move of writing down tons of ideas in my Book of the Dead, which is really just a moleskin pad with a bunch of tarot card pictures on the front of it about death. They are actually pretty cool. It just so happened that I was switching shifts with Luke on Friday night, so that gave me an opportunity to put a dish into action. During lunch service, which is the shift I oversee, it's more bistro, casual type food, and I definitely wanted to go with a dish that was a little more fancy. Dinner service at Bleu is typically a little more relaxed than lunch service. During lunch we have to supply our cafe with sandwiches and soup, which takes up a lot of manpower during these lean student population times and doesn't let myself or Chef Gurr focus on the food for the restaurant as much as we'd like to. I'd love to go into more detail about that, but I can't.

So, Friday night I'm doing some random stuff, I think I was working on staff meal for a while, and then I saw that we needed to move some oysters before the night was over. You want to move any seafood as quickly as possible. Quality degrades so rapidly that you must sell it as fast as you can. Getting the best quality ingredients to your guests is paramount.

I saw we had a bit of puff pastry, as well as a bunch of Quail eggs left from the lunch shift (I serve a Quail egg Lyonnaise salad), so I did the following. I cut the puff pastry into 2" x 2" squares, and baked them between sheet pans to keep them flat. I then cut those in half crosswise, to get nice, thin pieces of flaky puff pastry. I made a remoulade sauce out of the Quail eggs I had, which turned out pretty good. I took a bunch of soft herbs, picked them whole, and would dress them in a little lemon vinaigrette. I froze the cured pork cheek (I'm not calling what I made guanciale because it's got a different flavor profile than the classic stuff) and sliced it very thin on our meat slicer, and baked it off in an oven between silpats to get it nice and crisp and flat. We took the oysters (which were from Willapa Bay, WA) and breaded them and fried them a la minute. The finisher on the dish was some Meyer Lemon infused olive oil, which I had made back in February when we had Meyer Lemons, and frozen to use for a rainy day. Well, it turned out that it rained on Friday, so the prophecy held true. Below is the finished result, plated.

Fried Willapa Bay Oysters, Quail Egg Remoulade, Herb Salad, Crispy Cured Pork Jowl, Puff Pastry, Meyer Lemon Oil

In retrospect, if I had more time, I'd have further refined the dish. But there are some things I don't feel like I need to reveal. Mystique is a good part of the psyche.

Well, that's about all I can stand for now. Things are both positive and negative. I'm greatly saddened to hear that one of my most esteemed colleagues is leaving for a new opportunity. While I am extremely happy for his new opportunity, and chance to create and learn new things, I have to deal with the loss of a friend, and a stellar human being. His attitude, demeanor, and knowledge will be greatly missed. We'll still keep in contact, I hope, but not just the day-to-day that I prefer. I like interacting with people I like at least some of the time.

In other words, in case someone reads this tonight; tomorrow is the day that the episode of "Little People, Big World" that I have a guest appearance on, airs. It is on at 8:30pm PST, on The Learning Channel. Check it out if you're interested in seeing what I do. I was pretty happy about the menu we served, but I haven't seen the episode at all, so I don't know how much of me is actually on there. But you'll see some of my food. It was a good opportunity, and I'd do it again.

There's a little black spot on the sun today
It's the same old thing as yesterday

There's a king on the throne with his eyes torn out
There's a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt
There's a rich man sleeping on a golden bed
There's a skeleton choking on a crust of bread

That's my soul up there...

Respect

2008-03-04T18:24:00.001-08:00

Respect. No, I'm not gonna sing it like Aretha, there's no r-e-s-p-e-c-t singing going on up in here.

Respect is important. Both in the kitchen and out of the kitchen. In the normal world, having respect for things and people is important. In the kitchen, it is paramount that you have respect for your ingredients, your fellow cooks, and your fellow employees. Respect the equipment, don't kick the oven door shut just because you like the sound, or you're angry. Don't slam doors, don't throw things, there's no need for that.

This poses the question, why don't people have respect for things? Over the years (yes I realize I may be a bit young to say that phrase), I've come to see people who are disappointed in themselves, have little sense of self-worth and value, or honestly, just "don't care". It's hard to see this. I don't understand how you can just "not care" about things. Sure, don't care about material wealth, politics, etc. But people are our greatest gift. In people we can see the best of things, and the worst of things. I don't know what happened over the years, but it seems like in the 1970s we as a society just lost the core values we had before that time. It saddens me greatly.

But back to respect. Treat ingredients kindly, and they last longer. Rotate your dairy, proteins, and vegetables. It pains me to see quails just thrown around, bones breaking. Things thrown in the walk in all lackadaisically. Organize, take that extra 30 seconds to put things away properly, int he right spot. Think about where things come from. A farmer had to grow that fennel, someone had to raise those quails to the correct age, slaughter them, and have them packaged and sent to you. I think we tend to forget these things. Most people buy things prepackaged, precut, and precooked. Imagine if we had to put in the work, to grow that fennel, to take care of it until it reached market. Would we just let it sit and go bad then? What if we had to kill the quails ourselves. Have you ever killed a live animal? Not for like a job, just because you had to.

I remember back when I was a young boy. My aunt had a farm near Chehalis, WA. I used to fish in her pond there. She had this little Jack Russell Terrier named Sophie, and Sophie loved the farm. One day I was out fishing, and this mama duck and her little family of ducklings were crossing the pond. They were the cutest, little yellow balls of fur, and being a young kid, still naive to most things, I thought they were the best thing in the world. Sophie runs down and jumps in the water, and then it's like a scene from Jaws, swimming ever so quickly towards the prey, and then diving below the surface and less then a second later, her jaws closing around the duckling like great big sickles of death. I was powerless to do anything. I watched as Sophie snatched the life out of this yellow fuzzy duckling. Clutching her prey in her vice-like jaws, she ran up towards the house, and I ran after her, yelling. I broke a sprint getting up to the house, and found Sophie toying with the duckling, which was wounded and foundering. Knowing there was no way I could save the duckling, I decided to give it the most merciless death I could think of. I picked up the duckling, and shedding a tear or two, placed it on a nearby stump. I brought down my foot and stomped on its head, killing it instantly. I broke down and cried for a long while after this. It was the first time I had killed anything, and I haven't killed any animal since. Not that I couldn't (for food or survival), but it made me feel so vile, this brutal act (although an act of mercy), that I didn't think of anything else for a long time after.

I fished when I was a kid. I always practiced catch and release, because this is what my Father taught me. He taught me to respect nature and everything in it. Not to litter, not to leave a mess in a beautiful place. This world is a beautiful place, and it seems like every day we're hurtling towards the most messy end imaginable. The self destruction of our planet. It's hard to think about all this sometimes, which is why I do my best to ignore those thoughts and focus on the positive of what I can do. I recycle, I leave things the way I found them (or better), I do what I can. I realize I'm only one person, and that it takes millions to make a change, but I also believe that leading by example is one of the best ways to impact and make change happen.

Giving animals respectful deaths when we slaughter them for food is one of the most important parts of the process in eating them. Remember this.

I'm not soft but I do care about stuff. This is a remarkable incoherent post. Apologies.

Little People, Big World (A History Lesson)

2008-02-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

This is a blog I wrote about my experience on TLC's "Little People, Big World". I cooked dinner for Matt and Amy Roloff back in September of 2007. This blog was written shortly afterward. The episode will air Monday, March 10th, at 8:30pm PST on The Learning Channel.

Greetings...

My name is Jackson Harter. I am a Chef de Cuisine in Restaurant Bleu. Some of you may know me, some of you may not. Just this last Sunday, the 9th of September, I was given the honor of preparing a four course meal for the 20th Anniversary of Matt and Amy Roloff. For those of you who don't know, Matt and Amy are the stars of a reality show "Little People, Big World" -- the 1 rated show on The Learning Channel (TLC).

It all started on Thursday, when I was approached by Joanne Lazo, PR Director of WCI. She asked me if I was interested in cooking for this couple, along with a student (Shannon) to help. I accepted her offer, as it sounded like a lot of fun, and a challenge, as the shoot was on Sunday, and I was finding out about this on the Thursday before. I also thought it would be good for WCI to get some great media exposure. I attended WCI in 2003 and liked it so much, I came back to apply and teach here.

Just like that, we were off. The pre-shoot meeting with the Producer was set for Friday, the next day. We all drove out to Hillsboro on Friday afternoon and met with the crew at the Roloff Farm. This was my first time doing anything for television. I had to get hooked up with all kinds of sound gadgets and sign a fancy release form. After this, we drove over to Matt Roloff's office, where Shannon and I proceeded to talk with him. In planning an event for someone, especially when it revolves around food, the main objective is to find out the likes and dislikes of those in attendance. It turned out that Amy was a lover of gourmet cuisine, and would eat anything but raw fish. No problem there, which gave us plenty to work with. Matt, on the other hand, said a definite "no" to mushrooms, and expressed a faint dislike for onions.

Flash forward. As we parted ways after the meeting, Shannon and I decided we'd meet at 10:00 am the next day (Saturday) outside of Restaurant Bleu. From there, we walked up to the local Farmer's Market to get some inspiration. We had already hashed out a few ideas on paper, but as a cook, it is first important to see what you have to work with. Working with what is in season, preferably local produce and ingredients, is one of the things I value most. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I am able to do that almost constantly.

We walked around the market, looking for different items, and ended up buying quite a good selection of fennel, heirloom tomatoes, white corn, and a number of other things. The quality of the corn was incredible. It was the most delicate pale yellow, with plump kernels, which I couldn't wait to steam and turn into a ragout.

Next, we went to Whole Foods. The quality of food there is very good. and you're able to find more specialty, hard-to-find items.

Back to WCI around noon, We finished coming up with our menu, which we were pleased with, and we hoped that Matt and Amy would be too.

Amuse-Bouche: Heirloom Tomato-Citrus Tartare, Sugar Snap Peas, Poached White Shrimp, Paprika Oil

Appetizer: Coho Salmon, Horseradish Flan, Dill Essence, Baby Arugula, Fennel, Radish, Purple Pole Beans, Lemon-Shallot Vinaigrette

Entrée: Sea Scallop, Beef Tenderloin, White Corn Ragout, Tomato Confit, Baby Carrots, Caramelized Leek Sauce, and Bacon

Dessert: Flambéed Peaches, Cardamom, Crème Fraiche, Hazelnut Brittle

I typed up a prep list. It took a while, but it's important to be thorough and pay attention to detail, as the details will get you in the end. You must include everything, which means putting the entire menu in your head, thinking about each and every thing you'll need for each course, including the utensils, cooking and serving vessels. There's the garnish, seasonings, sauce spoons, plate wipes -- the list can go on. We began prep, and got quite a good portion finished before Shannon had to leave for work at 4:00pm. We agreed to meet up at noon the next day, at Bleu. I finished up around 7:00pm that night. I went home and brainstormed, trying to finish up the menu and think of the possible scenarios for the coming day.

Sunday, the day of the big film shoot!

I arrived at 10:00am, headed up to the WCI lounge and started getting ready. I hit the kitchen of Bleu and started hitting my prep list, and getting things organized. I had a separate list of gear to bring along with us to the Roloff Farm. Shannon showed up at noon like we agreed. She jumped right in and we finished our prep around 3:30 pm. We packed up our cars and left school, and I called the Director, Eric, to tell him that I was going to be a little late, as I had to drive slower than my normal warp speed to prevent any food spills in the back of my car. As it turned out, it was good that I was going to be a bit late, because Amy hadn't left the house yet. And as this was going to be a surprise, I didn't want to just barge in in a white Chef's uniform. I called Shannon in a hurry and told her not to show up, that I'd give her a call when the coast was clear.

We arrive at 4:30 pm. The crew descended upon us and hooked us up with microphones: We were going to start filming that very instant. From the moment we unloaded our cars and brought stuff into the house to meet the family, we were on camera. Now, this was the one thing that I felt a little nervous about the night before. I've never been on camera. What I did, and what worked, was just look at it as giving a demo to a very large group of people. I give cooking demos all day long to my students and I've done event demos on weekends at the school, so looking at it in this light really helped me overcome any "stage-fright". So, Shannon and I got to work getting the kitchen set up, going over our prep list to see if we had brought everything we needed. We talked about our timeline, how we were going to serve our dishes, and how long we needed between each course. Matt and Amy were set to arrive at 7:00pm, so we had a while to figure it out.

6:55pm, nearly go time. We plated the Amuse-Bouche, and prepared for the arrival of the guests. They were a little late, but I think you're allowed to be a little late to a surprise dinner party of which you knew nothing about. Amy walked in the door first and was wide-eyed with gaping jaw. She seemed awestruck that all this was planned out for her, and very pleased with it all. They took to the seats of the table, and we presented the Amuse to them.

The appetizer course went out second. All was well, except for that one of the salmon pieces got a little too much heat and cracked in the middle, which ruined the presentation on one of the plates. Oh well. As a cook, you must make quick decisions and adapt to change.

Entree went out just fine. The sauce went on just a little too early, so I had to do some last minute adjusting, as it had reduced a bit too much.

Dessert time, which meant flambé time. I had been specifically asked to get some good flames up for this course, which would be good on camera. Now, I have a bit of an obsession with flames. I have ever since I was young. The 4th of July was my favorite holiday, and I'm sure you know why.

I got my pan ready, medium-high heat. Yes, there ARE other settings of a stove besides HIGH and OFF. Write that one down there:, That's a free lesson. I added my whole butter, let it melt a bit, then added my brown sugar, cardamom and nutmeg. I let the sugar cook for a while, in hopes of forming a caramel. I added my peach slices after a few minutes, and sprinkled them with a bit more nutmeg. I caramelized each side evenly, controlling the heat. Once they were caramelizing on the second side, I swiftly moved my pan off of the heat, and squirted in a generous helping of Captain Jack Sparrow's favorite drink, Rum. I moved the pan back on the flame, which was now on HIGH, and swirled the pan, to ignite the rum. The alcohol ignited with a big plume of flame, which nearly reached up to the ceiling of the kitchen. Big smiles all around when we presented the dessert.

I thought everything went pretty well, with occasional conversation exchanged between us and the Roloffs. They thought all the food was stellar, and seemed very impressed with the whole thing. They're very nice people who have lots of things to teach the rest of us.

Lamb Insanity!

2008-02-25T20:33:00.000-08:00

Well, sorry for the lack of updates. It's been a great week and a half. I've been visiting home on the weekends.

First off, food updates! I finally put together a dish that uses the lamb breast braise technique plus the cured lamb belly I've been yammering about. I was pretty happy with the flavor components, if not the final presentation. So the result: Lamb Rib Chop, Braised Lamb Breast, Cured Lamb Belly, Potato-Artichoke Galette, Fresh Chickpeas, Blood Orange Gastrique, Lamb Sauce.

The artichoke-potato cake had awesome flavor. I trimmed the artichokes and poached them a la Greque, and let them get to the al dente state. I discovered a pretty cool way to trim them, which actually was pretty fast once I did a few. It's always important to find the quickest way to get something done, because then you can move on to the next task. But anyway, I started by trimming some russet potatoes into a cylindrical shape, and then slicing them very thin...I was a moron and forgot to bring my mandolin down with me, so I had to slice by hand. They were consistent but took me a few more minutes than I had wanted. But yeah, the simple combination of russet potato, Greque artichokes, salt, and beurre noisette was pretty good. However...!

I decided, because I was serving my family, to do one individual large galette. This proved tricky, however, when it came time to flip the damn thing. My spatulas slipped and I lost one of the edges......yeah. I wasn't happy about that. I freak out when stuff like this happens. To you it might seem trivial. "Oh well just one of the edges slipped. The cake still tastes the same!". True, it would taste the same, but it doesn't have the same visual effect. One of the edges was all askew, and it just looked not like it should. If I were to serve these in a restaurant setting, I'd make individual cakes, maybe with a 1.5" radius. I would try them as a square shape too, to take advantage of geometry. Math is cool, because math is true. Numbers don't lie.

The next part kicked ass. I was trying to figure out another vegetable component for this dish. I had thought about doing pearled zucchini, which would have worked, and could possibly work in the future. I'd poached them in a bullion of sorts, and then finish them in butter. I was browsing the shelves of WinCo, looking for any kind of inspiration, as well as ruing the fact that I couldn't find a fucking lamb loin rack anywhere in that one horse town. I glanced down at something, and to my surprise, it was a big pallet full of fresh chickpeas! My god, the feelings of euphoria that came over me were indescribable. It took me back to the fall of 2004, when I was at Gary Danko in San Francisco. I had my first experience with fresh chickpeas there; I had to peel and clean 2 cases of those things. Let me tell you, I'm glad they are so good, otherwise all that work would have been crappy. They are sort of like trimming fava beans, with the exception that there's not a big pod with 4-7 favas, chickpeas have their own individual pods....yeah. So you pull them from the pod, and blanch them, then very carefully (you want to preserve the whole shape of the chickpea), pull the outer membrane off. From here, you can finish them again with another blanch, or do whatever. I opted to finish them in a quick saute with the extremely thin sliced cured lamb belly.

Good ingredients can bring tears to my eyes.

Next was the blood orange component. I used blood orange zest in my braise of the lamb breast, so I wanted to add it somehow to the dish. I also needed a component to cut the heavy aspect of the dish. The sauce and the lamb breast were both pretty rich. So I made a gastrique of blood orange juice, balsamic vinegar (might try sherry vinegar next time), sugar, blood orange zest, and salt. It came out pretty nice, a good, rich deep purple color.

The sauce was pretty much just a reduction of the braise liquid from the lamb breast, which I infused with more basil stems and blood orange zest. I finished the sauce with butter, and that was about it. I salted the braise liquid a bit as to season the lamb breast over time, so I didn't need to add any salt whatsoever. It might have even been "too" salty. If anything I'd try to back the salt off the braise liquid.

The plate looked decent. It would have looked better if the galette was an individual portion, but the way I put the other stuff there worked out pretty good. I don't have pictures because I didn't let anyone take them. I was so embarrassed by the galette not looking right, that I didn't allow photos. That's what I mean when I say "it matters to me". If that happened in a restaurant, on a dish that I was in charge of, I would have died a thousand deaths just thinking about it. Of course though, I wouldn't let that happen in a restaurant, if I could help it.

In other news, I get to move out in May. To my own place. Thank god.

I plan to start looking to stage sometime in the realm of May. I want a good couple months of physical therapy in before I get cracking on that. I'll plan to look for something Monday-Wednesday. I want the weekends off still, because I need time off.

I met someone I like. Amazing, how someone like that can change how you feel about things. I don't tell her this though, but somehow I think she knows. She's smart and pretty and fun. I never been with anyone before who made me feel more intelligent by being around them.

Good night, and good luck.

Du Hast Den Shonsten Arsch Der Welt.

Oft-unused

2008-02-15T19:09:00.000-08:00

Well today was my first day back at work for a full day, 12 hours. I felt kinda crappy, but it was just my throat that was sore, so I didn't talk too much. It was the end of a cycle, we finished a bunch of students today, and that was nice. I had a few projects I worked on, one was braising more lamb breast, which came out just as good as the first batch. I also started more guanciale, made Meyer Lemon oil, barbecue sauce, and did a white braise of some pork spare ribs for the PM staff meal. Yeah this could all be done in like a 3 hour time space (braise time included), but I had to do some instructing during this whole thing.

I went today to ask Vicki, our purchaser, if we were able to get some veal ears in. When these words left my mouth, all I got was an incredulous stare, and a stout reply of "NO!" This was funny because our president was sitting in the office with her and smirked at me. Which was good, gave the prez something to laugh about, haha, that fool Jackson. But in all seriousness, I did want those veal ears. I wanted to do some work with braises, and enriching braise liquid and using it for other purposes. Braising veal ears for some of their meat, and would transfer a whole ton of flavor to the liquid, which could then be used for braising offal meats, or braising regular stuff.

I really like the concept of taking a lesser used item and turning it into something sublime. Thomas Keller has already written about this, but it's so true. It's one of my greatest pleasures to take a not-oft used item like breast, hock, offal, and transform it. It's fun and it make me happy. Which is one of the reasons I cook. It's fun and it makes me happy.

I also made my first real barbecue sauce today, it turned out pretty good. I can't remember the exact quantities, but I used shallots, ginger, apple cider vinegar, molasses, brown sugar, Stella Artois, Ketchup, some braising liquid from the ribs, Sriracha, and Sambal Olek. Basically just reduced the crap out of it and pureed it, and brushed it on the ribs to finish on the grill. I had done a white braise of the ribs for about 2 1/2 hours, which was plenty of time, because I didn't want them to totally fall apart.

Uh that's about it for tonight. I want to take a shower, drink a beer, and watch a little TV. I'm not going out tonight because I want to be in good shape for the weekend. I'm going to start looking for a job to stage at in the upcoming weeks, because my physical therapist gave me the go ahead as long as I keep stretching and working at my nerves. I'll get through all this, I know that I have to.

Perish thoughts like contraband.

This is Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T15:03:00.001-08:00

Well it's day 3 of being sick, so far, not a ton of improvement, but I haven't gotten any worse...so there. It's Valentine's Day, so happy V-Day to all you star crossed lovers. Tonight millions of couples will be going out for dinner, which means slam city for anyone in the restaurant biz. I remember what that was like and I feel for you guys. Soon I'll be knowing that again.

There's little food content in this post, because hey, I have been living off soup, Minneola tangelos, and light foods for the past 3 days. I had a few doctors appointments this morning, and they seemed to go well. I've been brooding over my wrists for a while now, to see if they'll ever regain full use and stuff, so that I can go back to cooking in a restaurant again. I had good news from the Orthopaedic surgeon, to the tune of no nerve trouble in the hands again, but of course, I went in to see him after not working for 3 days, so that makes a difference. Soon after, I went down to see a physical therapist, who told me my biggest problem was actually that my nerves themselves were tight. So I got a bunch of stretches to do, as well as directions to visit an acupuncturist, and to start working out. She says I could see some good results in a few months if I start these steps to getting healthy, so I plan to do all I can and work at it, to make sure my arms are strong enough to undergo the rigors of restaurant work.

That's the plan for now, at least.

Some devil is stuck inside of me

Seville Orange: The Return

2008-02-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

Well, what better way to spend some time at home sick from work like writing? Not that I stayed home willingly, I wouldn't do that...but my Chef told me to go me home, and I protested. He then said he'd hit me if I didn't go get some rest, so I took his advice. I caught some kind of bug when I was down in Corvallis over the weekend. Corvallis is where I grew up, and it's a lovely little town. Unfortunately, too often do college students/people in my age group not fully appreciate that fact...but I see where they're coming from. I like to visit Corvallis to get away from the city, but I did spend a good week and a half there over the winter, and it got kind of old. But if you had good friends to hang out with, all the better.

I've been feeling for a while that I'm a bit more light-hearted than I used to be. Something changed for me, for the better. I finally have gotten my Diabetes under a better, reasonable control, in fact better than I've been in years. It all started around Christmas of 07, once I came back to Portland, I started really working on getting my sugars down. It does wonders for my state of mind; which for the past few years really hasn't been all that rosy. One of these days I'll figure out why I made the change. My life isn't a picture-perfect film story by any means, but this facet of being has finally begun to shine a little bit brighter.

The weekend was great for me. I got to make some dinner for my family and this special girl. At first she didn't know if she was down to have dinner with my family, but I think I was able to persuade her. Either by my relentless whining, cooking abilities or something else, she stayed for dinner; this made me happy. She has pretty good taste from what I can tell, so she appreciated the dish (I hope!). Plus, I got to hang out with her after dinner, which was great.

The dish was a continuation of the scallops with Seville orange sauce that I had made a while back for my roommate and his girlfriend. I expanded and refined the sauce a lot. I used real carrot juice, when in Portland I didn't have a juicer, so I made carrot essence instead, pureed carrots strained hard to get the liquid. It wasn't the same...the one I made in Corvallis was much better. Anyhow, carrot juice + saffron and garlic infused heavy cream made up the color and heavy component of the sauce. The garlic note was very slight, I just infused a single clove for the amount of cream I was using. The fishy component was good too, I bolstered this with some fumet I made on Thursday at work, and on Friday I clarified it. Not because I needed to...the sauce was cream based so the color purity of the fumet wouldn't matter so much...it was just because I could. I like doing things sometimes...because I can. Like tourne of artichokes. Only a crazy man would do those. And I did them once.

The fumet was reduced by 1/3rd with a couple bay leaves, then I added quantities of shallot, fresh fennel, fennel seed, cumin seed, and Seville Orange juice. Finished with the addition of the saffron cream and carrot juice, a little more reduction, and then plenty of butter. I was pretty happy with the sauce, it complimented the scallops really well. The rest of the dish were potato-celeriac quenelles, watercress, sherry vinaigrette, Meyer lemon infused olive oil, bacon lardons, and seared scallops. Of course, I wish my guanciale was finished so I could wrap the scallops in that. And for a garnish, I'd try to incorporate scallop roe or maybe urchin roe. Woo fancy!

So being sick and showing up for work anyway and not calling in. That was what I did. It's an important quality that lots of people don't care about. If I'm sick, I'll try and work through it the best I can. At least I'll show up; if I'm sent home, so be it. Valentines Day is Thursday, as well as my appointment with the hand doctor, and from that I'll be able to see if I can ever work again in the restaurant real world. I sincerely hope so, and I'm going to do whatever I can to make that happen.

Always the summers
Are slipping away

New Gear

2008-02-06T20:43:00.000-08:00

I finally got my 3/8th" and 7/16th " melon ballers in the mail today. I also got my benriner Japanese style mandolin. These are all fancy neat toys. The mandolin is awesome especially, it's just as good as the French mandolin, but about 1/4 of the price. It's a bit easier to use too. There are bolts that control the thickness of the cut, they are beneath the board, unlike a metal French mandolin, which has a lever instead, and is much more often mis-calibrated. The downside to the Japanese model is that it can't cut any thicker then a batonnet...but I'm fine with that. I can use my knife for them instead.

The melon ballers are great because they allow me to make little round cuts out of vegetables and other inanimate material. I just made two cups worth of potato pearls, little tiny 7/16th" balls of potatoes. I think they're a great tool if you want to try different techniques and approaches to ingredients. For example, take the term "eggplant risotto". No longer can this term just mean straight up risotto rice cooked with eggplant. You can make small beads of eggplant and cook them risotto style, which is slowly cooked with liquid, and other seasoning items. Of course, you have to find an alternative to make the eggplant risotto thick and creamy, because eggplant doesn't quite release starch like Carnaroli rice does...this makes you think. In cooking, I believe it's important to think about your processes...to understand and realize why an ingredient behaves the way it does. It was one of the greatest lessons I learned from Gary Danko, he told me something very similar to this one day while I was caramelizing Fuji apples for the foie gras dish at his restaurant. I feel extremely lucky to have had him talk to me at all...as I was merely an extern at the time.

I just finished prepping ingredients for making coq au vin tomorrow night, and I made stock from the chicken carcass. It's a little challenging to cook extremely fancy at home for me, as I don't have all the required restaurant gear at my disposal. I would refer to my home cooking as "French peasant style", I guess. Not to say that I cook a lot differently at work, I just have tools available at work to greater refine my processes and ingredients. For a while I had this complex, and I guess I still have the complex, but I have relaxed on a certain standard for eating. The complex is that I won't/can't/have a hard time doing anything if I can't do it to the best of my ability; meaning I have a hard time cooking at home for myself or for friends because I don't have all the right tools, ingredients, etc. I still uphold this standard at work, and I think I do a pretty decent job there...but at home, for the longest time, I really didn't care how I cooked. Because I couldn't do it the way I wanted to. This goes on for a long time as far as explaining, but I'm partially crazy-savant, and I don't expect anyone else to understand this.

There's no spark
No light in the dark
It gets you down.

Potato Mania

2008-02-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

An interesting week. Thursday night I worked with a new ingredient, the Seville Orange. These are sour oranges, and I was greatly interested in them. At home, I had scallops, bacon, potatoes, watercress, among other things, so I made a sauce with the oranges. I juiced them and reduced with a little sugar very slowly, and I added the juice of carrots, and some saffron infused cream. If I was able, I would have added some shellfish stock or shellfish essence to the sauce, to make it more "seafood-y", but all I had were the side muscles from the scallops, so it was a bit weak in that aspect. I wrapped the scallops with bacon and seared them rare. If I was serving them in a restaurant setting, I would have wrapped them with parchment paper to get them into a better, extreme cylindrical shape, and then wrapped them with bacon, or in 2 months, some guanciale. I made a standard mashed potato, and the watercress I blanched, and dressed with a cognac vinaigrette, which was simple; cognac vinegar, seasoning, and a good, grassy olive oil. My favorite at this point in time is Altomena. The dish was pretty well rounded, although like I said, I was missing a bit more of a fishy component in the sauce.

Speaking of mashed potatoes, there's a good story I remembered on the subject of mashed potatoes. About 4 weeks ago, we had a class that was on it's last week before heading out to externship. There was a banquet for 30 that day, which was all we were doing; our student load dwindles so much between the months of January through April, so that was about all our service staff could handle. Chef Gurr and I had decided to let the students figure out the courses for the banquet, which was a 3 course, specified protein was poultry. We had whole chickens, which I showed how to break down into the 8-piece, which is airline breast cut in half crosswise, leg and thigh separated, frenched, and docked. This gives you 4 orders per chicken, serving 1 white and 1 dark piece of meat. Typically we braise the dark meat, and sear/roast the white meat. We gave them the methods, and let them come up with a braising flavor/aromatic, starch, vegetables, and sauce. We steered them towards a mashed potato, which in itself is a simple item, but to make it come out good, you must apply the proper technique in the cooking process, and the assembly process.

Apparently this was too simple for one of our students. He came to Chef Gurr and me, saying "mashed potatoes? Why do we have to make mashed potatoes? They are way too easy and boring." To this, I answered, "well, what would you like to make instead of mashed potatoes?" He said that he wanted to do steamed wild rice. Fair enough, but steamed wild rice is a bitch as far as presentation goes, getting any kind of height, even with stacking, is tough because wild rice likes to crumble and dissipate when you put weight on it. You could do a wild rice compote of some sort, or go more risotto-y, but we weren't going to suggest that. I believe I said "If mashed potatoes are so easy and boring, why don't you go make me the best mashed potatoes I've ever had." He looked at me, tried to stare me down, and said "fine." I get this a lot, being 23 and in an instructor position. Sometimes my students think I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm not smarter than everyone else and I don't know it all, but one thing I have learned is how to make good mashed potatoes.

So, away he goes to make mashed potatoes. I went to walk around and observe the process that he and his classmates were doing. I was determined not to offer any suggestion or help on that certain preparation, because he assured me he knew what he was doing. Peeled russet potatoes, check. Then he dumped them in salted cold water, and brought them to a boil. He boiled the hell out of them, they were pretty much broken apart in the water by the time they were done. From there, he drained them, and placed them in the hobart mixer with the paddle attachment. He added cheese, salt, black pepper, and very poorly minced shallots. You know, the kind that were haphazardly cut with a dull knife, so that they were leaking their juice and smelling not so great. Then, he put the mixer on speed 3, which is ultra fast. Kaboom, starch molecules blown apart!

The result was lumpy, shallot-y, gray mashed potatoes. When it came time to plate the banquet, he was standing there with his piping bag in hand, and the chunks of potato were so big that they wouldn't fit through the tip of the bag. All I could do was look on. I didn't even register anything else with him that day, I knew that if I started to talk to him about the potatoes, I'd just say something I'd regret later on.

I don't hate my job. I'm not an excessively negative person. But this was just one of those things that happens that makes me question life and the reason people are the way they are.

Anyway, super bowl time. I don't follow football, but my I'm going down to some bar with my roommate and friends. Hooray!

1-29-08

2008-01-29T20:18:00.000-08:00

Well today was an interesting day. Not really as far as class went; I learned I need to simplify things a bit, to make it easier. I needed to get my prime objective accomplished before starting on my secondary tasks - something I didn't do, but I should have. I needed to clean the walk-in, and I neglected it, and I heard about it.

On to the other part of the day...I procured pork jowl, lamb belly flap, pork belly, and lamb breast. Pretty good for scavenging parts from the butchershop. Good news, they'll be cheap on the food cost for the restaurant. I wrote them down as "pork carcass meat" and "lamb carcass meat". Haha, suckers. Not really, it's all part of the same cost. Butchershop breaks down a whole pig and lamb during their 3-week cycle, so I'm going to plan on taking the jowls, breasts, and whatever other unwanted offal or carcass meat they have. I like doing odd types of stuff, so this is good for me. With the jowl (singular, they only had one...what happened to the other, I do not know) I started curing for guanciale, which is Italian for "cheek". It's pork jowl that's dusted with a cure, and seasoned with a variety of things, but its basically cured and hung to dry for 6 weeks. The ideal environment is 50-55 F and a 45-50% residual humidity. I don't exactly have that, but I've cured duck prosciutto in the walk-in before, so it might be ok. The only exception is that it might be longer than 6 weeks to cure. Either way, it's the first time I've ever done this, and I like trying new things, so it was pretty fun to do.

Next up was my lamb flap. I want to roll it like pancetta (italian style bacon, cured and rolled), so I started off by trimming silverskin, leaving a certain amount of fat on. Lamb fat is pretty strong, so I was trying to make sure it's not overbearing when it's eventually eaten. So I soaked it for a few hours in a brine made up of salt water and aromatics, then tomorrow I'll try and get it seasoned, rolled, and curing. This is again, a first time attempt. So I hope it turns out. Once I try something for the first time, I can keep doing it until I get the best technique down. This is one of the levels in the stages of refinement. You keep doing it better and better, and you get faster at it.

Lastly, and the test that will yield the most immediate result, the braised lamb breast. I had two of them, so I trimmed silverskin, belly skin, and excess fat. I'm thinking eggplant to accompany it, so I chose flavors that could work with both of them, basil and blood orange. There were other flavors in there too, but base flavors. I layered the basil and blood orange on to finish. Braised the lamb for about 3 hours, when I took it out, it was pretty awesome. Since it was the first time I had worked with lamb breast, I didn't know what to expect. But the result was this extremely tender piece of meat. I pulled them out of the braise, strained the braise liquid, and let the ribs cool to room temperature a bit. I pulled the bones out, and then folded the meat over on itself. I placed these between hotel pans, with weight, and refrigerated them. I'm hoping that the result will be a good, solid piece of breast that I can cut out, and finish either by searing, butter-bath, or some other type of method. I'd like to pair this with lamb sweetbreads, or even try to be extravagant and add a seared loin as well; trio style.

I keep realizing that I need to be cooking in a restaurant again. I want to learn from masters, people who inspire. I'm only a cook now. I have a long way to go, but I think I know my direction. My arms will heal.

I don't ever want to make it stop.

Friday Night Hope

2008-01-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

I worked a double today, it was pretty fun. I was covering for Luke who had covered for me yesterday, when I had to go in for jury duty, but that's another story all in its own. The shifts went well, it was the last day of the cycle, and we sent a few students out the door, they finished the class and are going on to greener pastures. As much as I pretend not to admit it, or dislike stuff, I always feel good that people finish up and go out. Even with the people I interact with who let me down, or I wish weren't going out that door quite yet, I'm still happy they finished up. I have to understand that not everyone is going to be a certain way, not everyone's going to pay attention to the details, not everyone wants to cook in a 4 star restaurant, or be a chef. But that's just me, not them.

I did have a good time most of the day. I did a few experiments that worked out well. I made gnocchi for the first time, and they turned out pretty damn good. I read a method out of Pierre Gagnaire's book, and altered a few details, and the end result were these awesome, pillowy, cheesy gnocchi. Pretty cool. I made a real subtle smoked Gouda cream to finish them with, and it turned out quite good. I need to work on my shaping of the gnocchi, I'm not convinced that I want to do them like the bluehour shape, which was just rolling the dough into long strands, like bread dough, and cutting them with a board scraper into little 1/2 inch segments. I will try ovals, squares, as well as the classic shape of oval-ish with indents of fork tines. I wrote down what I did, so I will be able to repeat it and refine it. I made the mistake however, of talking about them too much. Which I shouldn't do, but I was proud of the end result of my first attempt. I believe it's important to support and embrace your colleagues when they do good work, even if it is a first attempt. Criticism is good, it keeps you thinking and changing all the time, but if something turns out good, even if you don't want to say it's good, you ought to support whoever made it, so that they feel good about what they did.

Second on the list, was the amuse bouche for the evening: Micro Anise with Croutons, Black Truffle Vinaigrette, Fennel Pollen Cracker, and Black Truffle Gray Salt. Not bad, the truffle vinaigrette had sherry, garlic, dijon, black truffle, and grapeseed oil. Next go, I'd hit it with some truffle oil and something to balance it a little more. But it provided a nice balance to the micro anise, which was soft and delicate, but had a pretty strong anise flavor. I was basically trying to use up what we had, which was a bunch of leftover stuff from OMSI; the truffle and the micro anise. I need to refine this a bit and it could be pretty elegant. The flavors are there, however.

On a side note, I'm gonna move soon. I feel uncomfortable at my place.

On The Importance of Clarified Butter

2008-01-22T19:08:00.001-08:00

It's important to finish what you start, and to not half-ass anything you do. Take clarified butter. It seems like such a simple task, even easier than making a good stock, per se. How do you clarify butter? You heat it gently over a flame in a pot, until the milk solids separate from the butterfat. General purpose American butter has about 15% milk solids, and about 80% fat. You can clarify a number of ways; slow heating and skimming, or more rapid intense heat, which simmers the butter, and ends up caramelizing the milk solids to the bottom of the pan, allowing you to ladle off the fat. This method, however, can have a greater chance of failure if you're not careful to watch it close, and pull it away from the flame before it turns into beurre noisette - brown butter. The slower, arguably easier way, is to melt it over a low flame, or even the pilot light.

Anyway, today I was at work, trying to do a demo. I reach to get the clarified butter from the alto-sham (hot box), lo and behold, it's basically melted butter that someone didn't follow through with on the clarification process. In turn, every time someone tried to make an omelet, fry a croquette, or sear some quail, this butter (containing milk solids) would caramelize and burn. I had to switch to duck fat and not use the clarified butter, which in itself wasn't too bad, because the fat went with the flavors we were going for. It's the principle of the thing.

If you have sub-par ingredients to work with, there's no way to get a good end result because the ingredients you use are bad. If you use bad product any step of the way in the process of cooking, there's no way to achieve the end result you're looking for. Spend time to make clarified butter the right way, to make good stock, to get the good ingredients. In the end it's worth it. In my opinion.

I realized at the end of the day, that clarifying the butter is a metaphor I try to uphold and show off; to finish what you start, and to not cut any corners. This is what makes a good cook, I believe. I have no choice but to read about techniques and in turn practice them, because I don't currently work in the industry at this point in my life. I should be. I'm grateful for books I'm able to read and learn from.

Start of something new

2008-01-21T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hello.

My name is Jackson Harter. I'm 23 years old, and currently an instructor at Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon. I've been cooking professionally for 3 years. The point of this blog is pretty much just to be a journal for me. I'm not an extremely private person, I'll gladly share most of my thoughts when asked. This is just a journal that I don't care if anyone reads.