There's a lot of overhyping of chefs these days. I used to be a Gordon Ramsay fan, and now all I want him to do is stop using that orange self-tanner and sit down and be quiet. All the overexposure about his multiple restaurants, his near bankruptcy and his alleged affair with a "professional mistress" have detracted so much from what made him famous in the first place: his food.
Being used to that...I expected something similar when I went to watch Heston Blumenthal recently. He's got multiple TV shows as well, many cookbooks (although I don't know anyone who actually cooks with them) and has generally become one of those hot shot chefs who's names are tossed around internationally.
I'll tell you one thing. From what I've seen, Heston is not a man who loves to talk about himself, or much at all. But when he talks about food, you can see why the man has earned three Michelin stars for his restaurant, The Fat Duck.
Heston was in town to promote a new home sous vide machine. That's right, you read correctly: HOME sous vide machine. As in, you can sous vide at home. For people who don't know, sous vide is when you vacuum seal food into plastic bags and cook them at very low, controlled temperatures in water. A lot of professional kitchens now have these things, which look like big plastic tubs of water with thermometers in them. They're quite expensive though, so American Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades invented this home sous vide machine called Sous Vide Supreme. It's just starting to get off the ground now so they're trying to build momentum and demand in the chef/foodie community. They say it all started with the search for the perfect pork chop...which can evidently be achieved via sous vide.
Who better to enlist as a promoter than one of the world's foremost chefs and proponents of sous vide? I mean, the minute I saw Heston's name I agreed to go. And I'm so glad I did.
It was a pretty small room of people, mostly local chefs and food writers. It was so intimate that Heston spent the first fifteen minutes just walking around and talking to people in the room. He did not, as I expected, spend any time checking his Blackberry (if he even has one) or stick with his entourage (which was only his sous chef). He was totally down to earth.
Listening to Heston Blumenthal talk about food is like taking a university course. He doesn't dumb down what he says and man...does he know his stuff. He doesn't pretend like sous vide is God's answer to food. He admits there are certain things, like langoustines, that actually become worse when you try to sous vide it. He described how the protein strands "snap" and the texture becomes "pappy", which I took to mean that the meat becomes cottony and unpleasant.
The true highlight of the evening was when he described his recreation of a Victorian era dish, mock turtle soup. It's a dish that was created when the British stopped drinking turtle soup. Mock turtle is different parts of a calf (tail, head, etc) boiled together. I suppose it's the gelatin from these parts that create a mock turtle texture. Heston showed us a slideshow of this. It started with him talking about Alice in Wonderland and describing a drawing of one of the characters, a mock turtle, that had the head of a calf. The whole "mock turtle" recipe explained the drawing of course. But I had no idea where he was going with this whole "Alice in Wonderland" thing.
I never should have doubted him.
AS the slideshow played on, you saw a video of the stock they prepared. They boiled the ingredients and vac packed it, froze it, then let it defrost over a piece of muslin. The cloth kept the solids while releasing the liquid. They further concentrated the flavour without boiling (heat decreases the flavour) by freezing it again and using a machine to shred the ice. The water is separated from the rest...somehow. After further concentration they add gelatin sheets to create an even stickier concentration.
Here's the genius bit that ties it all together.
They pour the liquid into molds of little watches (ala the Mad Hatter tea party in Alice in Wonderland, get it?) and they COVER THE STOCK WATCHES WITH GOLD LEAF. They're suspended on little strings. They're served in big teacup bowls. You pour boiling water over the watches and it becomes the mock turtle soup with gold flecks in it. It's all poured over an intricate arrangement of vegetable garnishes.
I was amazed and delighted. And Heston just loves talking about food. He gets really excited explaining it all. He can barely keep up with the video, there's so much detail he wants to tell us about. If only he could explain every dish he made to his customers, he could probably charge double what he charges already.
Of course, we were there to see what these home sous vide machines could do. We ended up trying scrambled eggs (Heston topped it with some beurre blanc and shaved white truffles), brined salmon, steak, eggplant, chicken and poached pears. The best tasting parts for me were the salmon, steak and eggplant. However, the steak and eggplant were both seared off in hot pans after they were removed from the bags.
My one criticism would be that people are not going to love the texture sous vide creates in everything. The chicken in particular had a very soft, almost mushy texture. However well cooked, the texture took some getting used to.
I still have my doubts about whether or not this home sous vide thing will take off. Not because the machine doesn't work or anything. It seems to work the same as an industrial one...but more compact and less expensive. Still, it's going to retail at just under $500 US, so it's not an impulse buy. Plus, cooking for hours at a low temperature when you can't exactly combine foods (cooking chicken and celery in the same bag probably won't work unless you want them cooked for the same length of time) isn't going to be helpful to someone pressed for time. Sous vide is also a relatively new concept in the culinary world and even chefs are still figuring out what they can do with this. I guess time will tell if the home cook is ready and willing to sous vide.
But I am a bigger fan of Heston's after meeting him. I went up to him after the demonstration and he was unfailingly polite and surprisingly humble. I mean, the man doesn't expect applause when he walks into the room. He flinches when people mention his Michelin stars. But he loves food. He is NOT a natural public speaker. Half the time he pretty much forgot about the talking and went to plating, tasting...basically what he does best. I hope he doesn't lose sight of the food. We need him to help the culinary world get a grip and get back to cooking.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Confessions of a Stagiere -- Week Twenty
I have missed a couple of entries here, and I figured it's better to be accurate about what week I'm talking about rather than having them all sequential.
This week was my last week at Lumiere -- at least, my last week going consistently. I've had an incredible six month run. When I first started I was working just to become familiar with my surroundings. In the last few weeks, I finally nailed down the art of forming a quenelle of cream with one spoon.
I've been referring to my final day at Lumiere as my "final exam". It's very appropriate. The minute I walked into the kitchen the meat cook says, "you know today's the Steve Nash dinner right"?
The Steve Nash dinner he is referring to is the fundraiser for Steve Nash's foundation. A $1500 a plate dinner. I had gotten multiple emails about this through work via press releases, but for some reason it hadn't sunk in that if I showed up that day, I would in fact be working for the dinner.
It also hadn't sunk in that executive chef and restaurateur extraordinaire Daniel Boulud was also going to be there.
"I assumed that's why you were here".
Noooooo, no no no. I had been so glad I wasn't there on another weekend Daniel had come to town because I specifically wanted to avoid having anything I was doing scrutinized by this legendary chef.
So the dinner involved prepping for a yet unspecified number of guests ("thirty to sixty people" is what I heard). The dinner was happening at db Bistro -- they closed down the restaurant for the event. The only dishes coming out of the Lumiere side was the crab dish from the garde manger section. Keeping in mind that when I say "only" I mean we ended up prepping enough crab for about 100 dishes...on top of the regular prep for dinner service.
That's ten pounds of crab that needs to be picked over, then mixed with half a litre of chopped herbs among other things. I don't even know how many mangoes they went through, slicing them with a mandoline and cutting strips to wrap the crab with. Then preparing half a litre of mango bruinoise and piquillo peppers. Then forming and wrapping all the crab. Then wrapping over eighty crab rolls with rice paper wrappers.
It was go time.
In the midst of all this, as I'm squeezing a dozen grapefruits into juice, I hear a deep rich voice calling out behind me. I know it's Daniel. The Vancouver Sun was there to film Daniel and Dale making the scallop dish with corn succotash. I didn't dare turn around to watch, but listening to Daniel direct the action was amazing. He's a producer's dream. He knows what angles are the best, what to shoot, when to shoot it, what to say, how long to talk...considering he does this kind of thing all the time I'm not surprised. But I am in awe.
What's Daniel like in the kitchen? A pro. He doesn't have time to waste, he knows what he needs to get done and gets it done. I got to see that first hand during "the" dinner service. We had set out 87 plates on tables in the narrow hallway that joins the two kitchens. I had been tasked with plating the bruinoise of mango and piquillo peppers onto all the plates. The staff at db were tasked with building the crab stacks, slicing the rolls and plating all the rest.
We were right in the middle of Lumiere's dinner service and I we've run out of the coriander sticks we're using in the crab stacks. The rest of them are all in the db kitchen. I go out into the hallway and everyone is right in the middle of trying to get these 87 plates of crab out of the hallway and to the tables. Because it's so narrow nobody can fit around each other. The servers are on one end, the chefs are at another, the chefs are yelling for people to take certain plates away. Not all the plates have the same design on them so a lot of juggling is involved. Add to this the fact that the crab stacks are plated on top of mango puree which is making the stacks slide around and you can imagine the pressure.
Of course, I know better than to actually try to get anything from the other kitchen during all this. I head back and wait for the rush to subside.
The dinner was supposed to run from 7 to 8 pm. That was going to work out perfectly because the Lumiere dinner reservations had a gap between 7 to 8. There would be free hands available. At least, that was the theory. The dinner got pushed back to 8:15...when a bunch of reservations would have just arrived. It's amazing what you can do when you have no other choice.
And that's what really divides people who work in kitchens and others who don't. There's a breed of people that thrive on adrenaline and stress. The thrill of getting it all done and knowing you can do it.
I got called over to the db kitchen for the main course plating. Picture two lines of cooks on either side of a massive stainless steel prep table. db's chef, Stephane, yells out instructions. I end up near the end of the line, plating the beef and adding a romaine garnish to the plate just before Stephane sauced them. We probably plated everything in five minutes or less. I loved being part of that.
In the middle of everything Dale comes over and asks me if I want to take a picture with Daniel Boulud. Note: you do NOT say no to a picture with Daniel. I'm pretty sure that's a law somewhere. I was thrust into a corridor with him. He has no idea who am I or why I'm there but takes the picture anyway, which you can see to the left. Yes, I'm planning to print that out and hang it somewhere in my house. I don't even have pictures of my family hanging in my house yet, but you can be damn sure there'll be one of Daniel.
So the dinner went off successfully, as did the dinner service we did. Lots of momentary panic but it all got done as it always does.
I've had a bizarrely circular relationship with Lumiere over the past year. When I ate there the first time it reopened last November I met Daniel, as a patron. I gushed about it profusely in this blog posting. Now I've met him as a pseudo-employee. I won a chance to eat and work in the restaurant and ended up staying for six months. I don't know how it all worked out so seamlessly, but I know this has all been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
People ask me what I've learned. Everyone thinks I'm hosting these incredible dinner parties now but the truth is that the most thrilling experience I've had is getting to be around people who genuinely love food. It's an egalitarian love. You can love ham and cheese sandwiches just as much as duck confit. I could talk about wanting baked Alaska and have a roomful of people talk about their awesome baked Alaska experiences with no hint of snootiness, just a pure love for food. I got to be a part of the monumental task of putting a fine dining meal together. I found out what lengths people will go to work with food just because they love it. Oh yeah, and I finally nailed one-spoon quenelle making!
My time at Lumiere has been absolutely incredible. I am so lucky that chef Dale Mackay and everyone in the kitchen not only allowed me to be there but took their time to work with a total novice. I used their tools, I made mistakes but I hauled ass as best I could. Thanks so much to those who've stayed and those who've moved on: Dale Mackay, Nathan Guggenheimer, Doug King, Alex Amos, Brad Hendrickson, Jesse Zuber, Rhys Jones, Suyin Wong, Celeste Mah, Tony Chang, Trevor Bird and all the people at db Bistro as well for making me part of the team. I'm going to miss working with you but I know I'll be seeing you all around.
This week was my last week at Lumiere -- at least, my last week going consistently. I've had an incredible six month run. When I first started I was working just to become familiar with my surroundings. In the last few weeks, I finally nailed down the art of forming a quenelle of cream with one spoon.
I've been referring to my final day at Lumiere as my "final exam". It's very appropriate. The minute I walked into the kitchen the meat cook says, "you know today's the Steve Nash dinner right"?
The Steve Nash dinner he is referring to is the fundraiser for Steve Nash's foundation. A $1500 a plate dinner. I had gotten multiple emails about this through work via press releases, but for some reason it hadn't sunk in that if I showed up that day, I would in fact be working for the dinner.
It also hadn't sunk in that executive chef and restaurateur extraordinaire Daniel Boulud was also going to be there.
"I assumed that's why you were here".
Noooooo, no no no. I had been so glad I wasn't there on another weekend Daniel had come to town because I specifically wanted to avoid having anything I was doing scrutinized by this legendary chef.
So the dinner involved prepping for a yet unspecified number of guests ("thirty to sixty people" is what I heard). The dinner was happening at db Bistro -- they closed down the restaurant for the event. The only dishes coming out of the Lumiere side was the crab dish from the garde manger section. Keeping in mind that when I say "only" I mean we ended up prepping enough crab for about 100 dishes...on top of the regular prep for dinner service.
That's ten pounds of crab that needs to be picked over, then mixed with half a litre of chopped herbs among other things. I don't even know how many mangoes they went through, slicing them with a mandoline and cutting strips to wrap the crab with. Then preparing half a litre of mango bruinoise and piquillo peppers. Then forming and wrapping all the crab. Then wrapping over eighty crab rolls with rice paper wrappers.
It was go time.
In the midst of all this, as I'm squeezing a dozen grapefruits into juice, I hear a deep rich voice calling out behind me. I know it's Daniel. The Vancouver Sun was there to film Daniel and Dale making the scallop dish with corn succotash. I didn't dare turn around to watch, but listening to Daniel direct the action was amazing. He's a producer's dream. He knows what angles are the best, what to shoot, when to shoot it, what to say, how long to talk...considering he does this kind of thing all the time I'm not surprised. But I am in awe.
What's Daniel like in the kitchen? A pro. He doesn't have time to waste, he knows what he needs to get done and gets it done. I got to see that first hand during "the" dinner service. We had set out 87 plates on tables in the narrow hallway that joins the two kitchens. I had been tasked with plating the bruinoise of mango and piquillo peppers onto all the plates. The staff at db were tasked with building the crab stacks, slicing the rolls and plating all the rest.
We were right in the middle of Lumiere's dinner service and I we've run out of the coriander sticks we're using in the crab stacks. The rest of them are all in the db kitchen. I go out into the hallway and everyone is right in the middle of trying to get these 87 plates of crab out of the hallway and to the tables. Because it's so narrow nobody can fit around each other. The servers are on one end, the chefs are at another, the chefs are yelling for people to take certain plates away. Not all the plates have the same design on them so a lot of juggling is involved. Add to this the fact that the crab stacks are plated on top of mango puree which is making the stacks slide around and you can imagine the pressure.
Of course, I know better than to actually try to get anything from the other kitchen during all this. I head back and wait for the rush to subside.
The dinner was supposed to run from 7 to 8 pm. That was going to work out perfectly because the Lumiere dinner reservations had a gap between 7 to 8. There would be free hands available. At least, that was the theory. The dinner got pushed back to 8:15...when a bunch of reservations would have just arrived. It's amazing what you can do when you have no other choice.
And that's what really divides people who work in kitchens and others who don't. There's a breed of people that thrive on adrenaline and stress. The thrill of getting it all done and knowing you can do it.
I got called over to the db kitchen for the main course plating. Picture two lines of cooks on either side of a massive stainless steel prep table. db's chef, Stephane, yells out instructions. I end up near the end of the line, plating the beef and adding a romaine garnish to the plate just before Stephane sauced them. We probably plated everything in five minutes or less. I loved being part of that.
In the middle of everything Dale comes over and asks me if I want to take a picture with Daniel Boulud. Note: you do NOT say no to a picture with Daniel. I'm pretty sure that's a law somewhere. I was thrust into a corridor with him. He has no idea who am I or why I'm there but takes the picture anyway, which you can see to the left. Yes, I'm planning to print that out and hang it somewhere in my house. I don't even have pictures of my family hanging in my house yet, but you can be damn sure there'll be one of Daniel.So the dinner went off successfully, as did the dinner service we did. Lots of momentary panic but it all got done as it always does.
I've had a bizarrely circular relationship with Lumiere over the past year. When I ate there the first time it reopened last November I met Daniel, as a patron. I gushed about it profusely in this blog posting. Now I've met him as a pseudo-employee. I won a chance to eat and work in the restaurant and ended up staying for six months. I don't know how it all worked out so seamlessly, but I know this has all been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
People ask me what I've learned. Everyone thinks I'm hosting these incredible dinner parties now but the truth is that the most thrilling experience I've had is getting to be around people who genuinely love food. It's an egalitarian love. You can love ham and cheese sandwiches just as much as duck confit. I could talk about wanting baked Alaska and have a roomful of people talk about their awesome baked Alaska experiences with no hint of snootiness, just a pure love for food. I got to be a part of the monumental task of putting a fine dining meal together. I found out what lengths people will go to work with food just because they love it. Oh yeah, and I finally nailed one-spoon quenelle making!
My time at Lumiere has been absolutely incredible. I am so lucky that chef Dale Mackay and everyone in the kitchen not only allowed me to be there but took their time to work with a total novice. I used their tools, I made mistakes but I hauled ass as best I could. Thanks so much to those who've stayed and those who've moved on: Dale Mackay, Nathan Guggenheimer, Doug King, Alex Amos, Brad Hendrickson, Jesse Zuber, Rhys Jones, Suyin Wong, Celeste Mah, Tony Chang, Trevor Bird and all the people at db Bistro as well for making me part of the team. I'm going to miss working with you but I know I'll be seeing you all around.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Confessions of a Stagiere -- Week Seventeen
I can explain my procrastination this week. My parents were in Vancouver visiting. After a few days of parental catharsis they're now gone and I'm free to blog once more.
Either I've really earned some trust in the kitchen or the garde manger is giving me new stuff to do just to see what I'll say about it. Just kidding. Sort of. Lots of new dishes at the restaurant means lots of new tasks for me.
I have a new favourite task: making grapefruit juice. I don't have to make beet juice anymore (victory dance) because the hamachi dish has been changed to a beautiful grapefruit salt cured hamachi with grapefruit gelee, tofu puree and other delicious things. Yeah. That'll do as a description.
We can't put the grapefruit through the juicer because it makes it cloudy. So I just cut them in half and squeeze them as hard as I can over a chinois. I believe the garde manger's exact words were "use your superhuman strength to squeeze them". My reply was, "have you met me?"
Lack of superhuman strength aside, it's actually fun to squeeze the bejeezus out of grapefruits. Very theraputic. It also makes your hands feel awesome, really smooth. And they smell nice afterwards.
The tomato gelee and mascarpone roll component of the amuse bouche has been changed. Now we made a mascarpone that's set with gelatin, pour it into our eyeplates and once they're set we top them with chopped up tomato gelee.
Because the amuse bouche is so much easier to plate, I get to do more in the way of plating with the cold starters. It feels like a promotion. I take my victories wherever I can get them.
I couldn't pass up the opportunity to bring my parents to the restaurant. They'd be hearing about it all this time and they had never been to a fine dining restaurant. I was so excited to bring them there and it pretty much lived up to everything I could've thought of. The chef came out to say hello and he took one look at my mom and said "wow, you guys look exactly the same". My mother and I DO look very similar. It made me laugh because I've often thought about the fact that the older I get the more I look like her.
They certainly got a full experience. A couple of the owners -- David and Manjy Sidoo -- were sitting with a party at the table next to us. It was my parents' second trip to Vancouver and they were getting to experience quite the West Coast life.
I had a fabulous meal of the aforesaid hamachi (which I was forbidden from trying the week before because I was coming in for this meal), scallops with corn succotash (I had been dying to try this, it was fabulous), the new duck dish with daikon and cherries, the beef dish (one of my favourites that I'd never eaten in its entirety until then), finished off with cheese and a new dessert: tiramisu sundae. I think we all got sundaes because Fernando wanted "the thing you pour chocolate onto and it melts", by which he meant the sundae. My dad was full so I actually ate his too.
Part of the mignardise was a tiny carrot cake with a tiny marzipan carrots. My mom was fascinated by it. She couldn't stop talking about how small it was. Even the next day I kept hearing about it. She'll never forget that detail. So this meal definetely qualifies as one that's unforgettable. Thanks to everybody in the kitchen and the front of house for making them feel so at home and taken care of.
Either I've really earned some trust in the kitchen or the garde manger is giving me new stuff to do just to see what I'll say about it. Just kidding. Sort of. Lots of new dishes at the restaurant means lots of new tasks for me.
I have a new favourite task: making grapefruit juice. I don't have to make beet juice anymore (victory dance) because the hamachi dish has been changed to a beautiful grapefruit salt cured hamachi with grapefruit gelee, tofu puree and other delicious things. Yeah. That'll do as a description.
We can't put the grapefruit through the juicer because it makes it cloudy. So I just cut them in half and squeeze them as hard as I can over a chinois. I believe the garde manger's exact words were "use your superhuman strength to squeeze them". My reply was, "have you met me?"
Lack of superhuman strength aside, it's actually fun to squeeze the bejeezus out of grapefruits. Very theraputic. It also makes your hands feel awesome, really smooth. And they smell nice afterwards.
The tomato gelee and mascarpone roll component of the amuse bouche has been changed. Now we made a mascarpone that's set with gelatin, pour it into our eyeplates and once they're set we top them with chopped up tomato gelee.
Because the amuse bouche is so much easier to plate, I get to do more in the way of plating with the cold starters. It feels like a promotion. I take my victories wherever I can get them.
I couldn't pass up the opportunity to bring my parents to the restaurant. They'd be hearing about it all this time and they had never been to a fine dining restaurant. I was so excited to bring them there and it pretty much lived up to everything I could've thought of. The chef came out to say hello and he took one look at my mom and said "wow, you guys look exactly the same". My mother and I DO look very similar. It made me laugh because I've often thought about the fact that the older I get the more I look like her.
They certainly got a full experience. A couple of the owners -- David and Manjy Sidoo -- were sitting with a party at the table next to us. It was my parents' second trip to Vancouver and they were getting to experience quite the West Coast life.
I had a fabulous meal of the aforesaid hamachi (which I was forbidden from trying the week before because I was coming in for this meal), scallops with corn succotash (I had been dying to try this, it was fabulous), the new duck dish with daikon and cherries, the beef dish (one of my favourites that I'd never eaten in its entirety until then), finished off with cheese and a new dessert: tiramisu sundae. I think we all got sundaes because Fernando wanted "the thing you pour chocolate onto and it melts", by which he meant the sundae. My dad was full so I actually ate his too.
Part of the mignardise was a tiny carrot cake with a tiny marzipan carrots. My mom was fascinated by it. She couldn't stop talking about how small it was. Even the next day I kept hearing about it. She'll never forget that detail. So this meal definetely qualifies as one that's unforgettable. Thanks to everybody in the kitchen and the front of house for making them feel so at home and taken care of.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Confessions of a Stagiere: Week Sixteen
I've been really terrible at getting these up on time lately. My apologies.
So I didn't go last Friday because I was busy moving into my new home. Woot! Now everything's moved in and almost everything's been unpacked and put away. I can finally concentrate on food.
I did a lot of rejoicing the week before when I found out the amuse bouche had been changed. Not because I didn't like it, but because the new one is 150% easier to plate.
Old amuse: heat up pea puree (which almost always exploded on you if you heated it just a LITTLE too much), heat smoked sablefish under salamander, get heated soup (which turned brown all the time because of the chlorophyll), yell for the bacon foam, coordinate that all together and out it goes. It's not the most difficult thing in the world but man...it could be trying.
New amuse: plate tomato gelee and mascarpone roll ahead of time. Pull out of lowboy when needed. Place heirloom tomato pieces at bottom of cup, pour cold soup into it. Fill puff pastry piece with tomato jam. Done.
This will have changed significantly by the time I head back this Friday. It's a work in progress. But I love the soup. It's a really simple tomato consomme: tomato, basil, cucumber and celery put through a food processor and left to hang over a bowl overnight in a cheesecloth. It's simple and refreshing. The small pieces of tomato inside look like little jewels. Sometimes they float and sometimes they don't. The sous chef figures it has something to do with the size of the pieces. I personally love the way it looks when it floats. With the drops of basil oil dripped into it it is a visual sensation.
There were an inordinate number of people complimenting the dishes this week. Perhaps it's because there are a number of new dishes on the menu, including this absolutely mouthwatering corn and scallop dish I have yet to try. Usually people just send their compliments in with their server or occasionally come into the kitchen to say hello.
This week two guests came in that I will never forget. They were an older couple from Austin, Texas. I only know this because that's what they said. I can't quite describe how they looked, only that they were very American looking (perfectly coiffed hair, artifically whitened teeth). They said it was a "life changing meal".
The woman says, "We're from Austin Texas, where the streets are paved with guacamole".
I don't know what it was, the accent, what she said and the whole American-ness of it, but I could barely hold in the laughter after she said that.
I suppose she was trying to illustrate that there isn't a lot of fine dining in Austin. But it was hilarious to me because only Americans say things like that. This is why we have a saying in (Canadian) radio: Americans on the radio are gold. Because they'll say anything. Love them. They scooted out of the kitchen, saying they would "tell everyone" about this. God, I hope they send more Texans out this way. And if I ever go to Austin I'm bringing along a big bag of nacho chips to sop up all that guacamole.
So I didn't go last Friday because I was busy moving into my new home. Woot! Now everything's moved in and almost everything's been unpacked and put away. I can finally concentrate on food.
I did a lot of rejoicing the week before when I found out the amuse bouche had been changed. Not because I didn't like it, but because the new one is 150% easier to plate.
Old amuse: heat up pea puree (which almost always exploded on you if you heated it just a LITTLE too much), heat smoked sablefish under salamander, get heated soup (which turned brown all the time because of the chlorophyll), yell for the bacon foam, coordinate that all together and out it goes. It's not the most difficult thing in the world but man...it could be trying.
New amuse: plate tomato gelee and mascarpone roll ahead of time. Pull out of lowboy when needed. Place heirloom tomato pieces at bottom of cup, pour cold soup into it. Fill puff pastry piece with tomato jam. Done.
This will have changed significantly by the time I head back this Friday. It's a work in progress. But I love the soup. It's a really simple tomato consomme: tomato, basil, cucumber and celery put through a food processor and left to hang over a bowl overnight in a cheesecloth. It's simple and refreshing. The small pieces of tomato inside look like little jewels. Sometimes they float and sometimes they don't. The sous chef figures it has something to do with the size of the pieces. I personally love the way it looks when it floats. With the drops of basil oil dripped into it it is a visual sensation.
There were an inordinate number of people complimenting the dishes this week. Perhaps it's because there are a number of new dishes on the menu, including this absolutely mouthwatering corn and scallop dish I have yet to try. Usually people just send their compliments in with their server or occasionally come into the kitchen to say hello.
This week two guests came in that I will never forget. They were an older couple from Austin, Texas. I only know this because that's what they said. I can't quite describe how they looked, only that they were very American looking (perfectly coiffed hair, artifically whitened teeth). They said it was a "life changing meal".
The woman says, "We're from Austin Texas, where the streets are paved with guacamole".
I don't know what it was, the accent, what she said and the whole American-ness of it, but I could barely hold in the laughter after she said that.
I suppose she was trying to illustrate that there isn't a lot of fine dining in Austin. But it was hilarious to me because only Americans say things like that. This is why we have a saying in (Canadian) radio: Americans on the radio are gold. Because they'll say anything. Love them. They scooted out of the kitchen, saying they would "tell everyone" about this. God, I hope they send more Texans out this way. And if I ever go to Austin I'm bringing along a big bag of nacho chips to sop up all that guacamole.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Food porn
Thanks to the hard work and photo taking skills of our expeditor, Christopher Cho, I now have plenty of gorgeous pics from Lumiere to share. I'm also largely relying on him for descriptions, given that's what he does for customers every night. Set your tongues to drool.
Pistachio crusted rack of lamb, apricot "canelloni" stuffed with braised lamb, stewed japanese eggplants and chick pea panisse
Curry and cornmeal encrusted scallops on corn puree, fried okra and corn succotash
BC spot prawns, cauliflower puree and pork belly crusted with puffed rice
Duck breast on a bed of spinach, poached cherry, Hennessy gastrique and daikon filled with cherry cardamon puree
Uni crusted halibut, asparagus risotto, asparagus salad and black garlic sauce
Sweet and sour glazed duck breast, duck shoulder spring rolls, banana yam and red wine braised cabbage, pomegranate glaze
I get to watch them recreate these dishes week after week. More pics to come!
Pistachio crusted rack of lamb, apricot "canelloni" stuffed with braised lamb, stewed japanese eggplants and chick pea panisse
Curry and cornmeal encrusted scallops on corn puree, fried okra and corn succotash
BC spot prawns, cauliflower puree and pork belly crusted with puffed rice
Duck breast on a bed of spinach, poached cherry, Hennessy gastrique and daikon filled with cherry cardamon puree
Uni crusted halibut, asparagus risotto, asparagus salad and black garlic sauce
Sweet and sour glazed duck breast, duck shoulder spring rolls, banana yam and red wine braised cabbage, pomegranate glaze
I get to watch them recreate these dishes week after week. More pics to come!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Confessions of a Stagiere: Week Fifteen
Last Friday was my first time back in two weeks. I really did miss being at Lumiere last week.
Although I haven't worked in any other restaurants, I know the kitchen at Lumiere totally kicks ass. All the counters, cabinet doors and drawers are stainless steel. Refrigerated areas are built into the back part of each counter for butter and other refrigeratables during prep and service. All the drawers are refrigerated. It's large enough to accomodate the six to eight people who work in there a day. It's beautifully streamlined. It's even air conditioned (at least, the area that's close to the front of house is). I'm guessing this is necessary for the pastry station with all their meltable chocolate creations.
It's gorgeous. And because I generally don't spend much time near the stove areas, I never really get that hot.
I got a nice dose of heat last Friday though. The temperature outside was over 30 degrees Celsius, which is about as hot as it ever gets in Vancouver. No amount of air conditioning was going to keep things cool in there. The poor cook working the meat section had to change his jacket halfway through the day after sweating so profusely it had pretty much turned into a transluscent sheet.
I should mention that I'm far from the only stage working at Lumiere. Although I seem to be the only one that comes in consistently, there are a number of people that come in during the week for a day at a time. This week there was Jennifer, a student from the Pacific Culinary Institute on Granville Island. She was there at the same time I was. She came fully prepared (as one is supposed to) complete with all her tools. I continue to show up wearing my camo canvas sneakers and NO tools.
I'm continually amazed by the people drawn to food. I've been getting to do a lot of food stories as a result of my work for The Early Edition. One of my favourite pieces of all time was one I did last Thursday. It's about a Vancouver chef named Don Guthro who's started a culinary school of sorts at a North Vancouver homeless shelter. His students are mostly residents at the shelter -- either homeless, formerly drug addicted or disadvantaged in some other way. These students work all day long learning to make food, which they in turn serve to the residents at the shelter. They do a lunch AND dinner service every weekday. After sixteen weeks, they go on to an apprenticeship and then hopefully onto paid work and a career in the culinary world.
When I got there, they were just finishing up lunch service. They had made Monte Cristo sandwiches. After a quick break it was onto mayonnaise. They were whisking it by hand. If you've never done this before, it takes FOREVER. I'm talking over an hour for a decent bowlful. It was a wonderful sight, seeing these people from various backgrounds in their whites, patiently measuring out Dijon mustard, separating egg whites from yolks and whisking away steadily. Everyone was concentrating hard. You could tell they really wanted to be there. It was incredibly heartwarming.
Contrast the above mentioned hour long whisking with my failure to properly whisk a chick pea mixture over the stove on Friday. It's supposed to be whisked over the stove until it's thickened up enough to form a cylinder that stands on its own. I don't exactly have strong arms. After a couple minutes trying to force my forearms to keep going in the tremendous heat I was melting. I will NOT be making mayonnaise by hand anytime soon.
I kind of redeemed myself by whipping some cream later on. I didn't have to stand over the stove for that. Plus the pastry chef showed me an uber easy way to do it. Just move a balloon whisk rapidly back and forth through the cream in a metal bowl rather than in a circular motion. Apparently my method of whisking in the traditional motion would've taken "a month" to finish.
While I was whisking I thought about those students at the shelter making mayonnaise. I thought about how much food can bring people together, not just eating, but creating. It's what keeps you going even when you're ready to burst into flames.
Although I haven't worked in any other restaurants, I know the kitchen at Lumiere totally kicks ass. All the counters, cabinet doors and drawers are stainless steel. Refrigerated areas are built into the back part of each counter for butter and other refrigeratables during prep and service. All the drawers are refrigerated. It's large enough to accomodate the six to eight people who work in there a day. It's beautifully streamlined. It's even air conditioned (at least, the area that's close to the front of house is). I'm guessing this is necessary for the pastry station with all their meltable chocolate creations.
It's gorgeous. And because I generally don't spend much time near the stove areas, I never really get that hot.
I got a nice dose of heat last Friday though. The temperature outside was over 30 degrees Celsius, which is about as hot as it ever gets in Vancouver. No amount of air conditioning was going to keep things cool in there. The poor cook working the meat section had to change his jacket halfway through the day after sweating so profusely it had pretty much turned into a transluscent sheet.
I should mention that I'm far from the only stage working at Lumiere. Although I seem to be the only one that comes in consistently, there are a number of people that come in during the week for a day at a time. This week there was Jennifer, a student from the Pacific Culinary Institute on Granville Island. She was there at the same time I was. She came fully prepared (as one is supposed to) complete with all her tools. I continue to show up wearing my camo canvas sneakers and NO tools.
I'm continually amazed by the people drawn to food. I've been getting to do a lot of food stories as a result of my work for The Early Edition. One of my favourite pieces of all time was one I did last Thursday. It's about a Vancouver chef named Don Guthro who's started a culinary school of sorts at a North Vancouver homeless shelter. His students are mostly residents at the shelter -- either homeless, formerly drug addicted or disadvantaged in some other way. These students work all day long learning to make food, which they in turn serve to the residents at the shelter. They do a lunch AND dinner service every weekday. After sixteen weeks, they go on to an apprenticeship and then hopefully onto paid work and a career in the culinary world.
When I got there, they were just finishing up lunch service. They had made Monte Cristo sandwiches. After a quick break it was onto mayonnaise. They were whisking it by hand. If you've never done this before, it takes FOREVER. I'm talking over an hour for a decent bowlful. It was a wonderful sight, seeing these people from various backgrounds in their whites, patiently measuring out Dijon mustard, separating egg whites from yolks and whisking away steadily. Everyone was concentrating hard. You could tell they really wanted to be there. It was incredibly heartwarming.
Contrast the above mentioned hour long whisking with my failure to properly whisk a chick pea mixture over the stove on Friday. It's supposed to be whisked over the stove until it's thickened up enough to form a cylinder that stands on its own. I don't exactly have strong arms. After a couple minutes trying to force my forearms to keep going in the tremendous heat I was melting. I will NOT be making mayonnaise by hand anytime soon.
I kind of redeemed myself by whipping some cream later on. I didn't have to stand over the stove for that. Plus the pastry chef showed me an uber easy way to do it. Just move a balloon whisk rapidly back and forth through the cream in a metal bowl rather than in a circular motion. Apparently my method of whisking in the traditional motion would've taken "a month" to finish.
While I was whisking I thought about those students at the shelter making mayonnaise. I thought about how much food can bring people together, not just eating, but creating. It's what keeps you going even when you're ready to burst into flames.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Confessions of a Stagiere: Week Fourteen
I'm really late posting this one. I actually ended up missing last week's stint because of money transfer issues re: my new mortgage. Here's some of what happened the week before (which would be July 17).
When I first started at Lumiere they had a whole slew of menus going. There was a five course menu, a seven course menu, a nine course menu, a BC menu (three courses for $55) and a la carte. It's no wonder I never fully figured it all out. Now they're back to tasting menus (three of them). The way it was explained to me, this was supposed to make things easier on all the stations because there were fewer dishes to prepare.
However, the fish station was eliminated, shifting the prep from that station onto two others instead. When I first started I used to go from station to station waiting for someone to give me something to do. This week I ended up with people waiting for me to be done one thing so I could do another.
I ended up making a giant batch of sable dough. We put the tiny sable crackers under the morel and pea quiche for the amuse bouche. They've got a lovely crumbly sandy texture. When the garde manger pulled out his notebook for the recipe, he warned me "it's going to take you half an hour to measure this out". I thought, there's no way. There's like, six ingredients on that list. Of course he was right.
At home you end up measuring everything using volume. Teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, litres, etc. In the kitchen everything is measured by weight. Because of that, I now know that an egg yolk weighs about 20 to 25 grams. Flour, butter, salt, yolks and something called inverted sugar. Wikipedia tells me that it's a "is a sucrose-based syrup, produced by splitting each sucrose disaccharide molecule into its component monomers, glucose and fructose. The splitting is achieved through the action of invertase (a glycoside hydrolase enzyme), or an acid. Comparing solutions with the same dissolved weight of sugar, inverted syrups are sweeter than sucrose solutions; at equal molar concentrations, inverted sugar syrup has only 85% the sweetness of sucrose solution but complete inversion of a solution of a disaccharide (such as sucrose) doubles the concentration of sugar molecules - this makes the resulting, inverted, syrup sweeter than the original sucrose solution." All you really need to know is it's a very very dense sugar syrup.
There's also ground up Szechuan peppercorns in them too. When I first got to the spice shelf I had no clue what to look for. There are at least five different kinds of peppercorns, none of which are labelled. When I asked I was told they were the ones "that smell soapy". Sure enough, they have a spicy soapy smell that is very distinctive from the other ones.
Anyway, I finally had all my ingredients together. Everything had to be blended in this industrial sized mixer.
To make the actual crackers, you take some of the dough, roll it out until it's a few millimetres thin and then cut them using a dough cutter set to about an inch and a half. You bake the squares on a Silpat until they're just golden. Too long and they get a funky darker brown, which is still fine but not that perfect golden colour.
The more I learn about what goes into each item, the more I weep (inwardly) when I see someone send it back.
While I wasn't actually in the kitchen last week, I have spent the past two weeks filling in for the reporter on the morning show. She gets to do the food column every Wednesday and this week I got to do it. I finally got to tackle some food stories! I got to make THE quintessential Brazilian dish of feijoada (pork with beans) with the "Queen of Samba" Lucia Azevedo. I can't believe there aren't any authentic Brazilian restaurants in Vancouver. The one that existed apparently shut down some time ago, which is sad because I'd actually eaten there and enjoyed it a lot. Anyway, Lucia and I (mostly Lucia) made enough food for a small army. From Lucia I also learned that chefs are the same everywhere, whether in a restaurant or at home. They all want things done their own way, so the best thing to do is just stay the hell out of the way. Her way works though. Her feijoada is delicious, as is all the side dishes she made as well.
This week I took a tour of the UBC Farms with chef Andrea Carlson from Bishop's Restaurant. Bishop's is all about utilizing fresh food from local producers and sustainable growing. It was great meeting chef Carlson and talking to her about the industry, women in the industry and the kind of people who get into it. Apparently they've had a stagiere in their kitchen for some time. He's a lawyer who isn't changing careers. He just wants to keep a hand in. I'm happy to learn I'm not the only one in this limbo. And it was great to make just a salad, but not just a salad. Pea tips, baby kale, mizuna, etc. with turnips and raspberries and a fresh raspberry vinaigrette. Exploring different kinds of greens is something we rarely do nowadays because what you find in the supermarket is about as diverse as the gene pool in the Ozarks.
Andrea also told me about her most vivid food memory, involving a shipment of turnips from a local producer. Her description of the crisp, sweet taste was the one thing I had really wanted to hear out of everything else. I find that people who love food have the best food memories and it usually involves something simple, like turnips. I love hearing those stories because everyone's face changes when they tell them. It's like they're remembering their first loves. It's a reminder that the simplest things can bring you the most joy.
When I first started at Lumiere they had a whole slew of menus going. There was a five course menu, a seven course menu, a nine course menu, a BC menu (three courses for $55) and a la carte. It's no wonder I never fully figured it all out. Now they're back to tasting menus (three of them). The way it was explained to me, this was supposed to make things easier on all the stations because there were fewer dishes to prepare.
However, the fish station was eliminated, shifting the prep from that station onto two others instead. When I first started I used to go from station to station waiting for someone to give me something to do. This week I ended up with people waiting for me to be done one thing so I could do another.
I ended up making a giant batch of sable dough. We put the tiny sable crackers under the morel and pea quiche for the amuse bouche. They've got a lovely crumbly sandy texture. When the garde manger pulled out his notebook for the recipe, he warned me "it's going to take you half an hour to measure this out". I thought, there's no way. There's like, six ingredients on that list. Of course he was right.
At home you end up measuring everything using volume. Teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, litres, etc. In the kitchen everything is measured by weight. Because of that, I now know that an egg yolk weighs about 20 to 25 grams. Flour, butter, salt, yolks and something called inverted sugar. Wikipedia tells me that it's a "is a sucrose-based syrup, produced by splitting each sucrose disaccharide molecule into its component monomers, glucose and fructose. The splitting is achieved through the action of invertase (a glycoside hydrolase enzyme), or an acid. Comparing solutions with the same dissolved weight of sugar, inverted syrups are sweeter than sucrose solutions; at equal molar concentrations, inverted sugar syrup has only 85% the sweetness of sucrose solution but complete inversion of a solution of a disaccharide (such as sucrose) doubles the concentration of sugar molecules - this makes the resulting, inverted, syrup sweeter than the original sucrose solution." All you really need to know is it's a very very dense sugar syrup.
There's also ground up Szechuan peppercorns in them too. When I first got to the spice shelf I had no clue what to look for. There are at least five different kinds of peppercorns, none of which are labelled. When I asked I was told they were the ones "that smell soapy". Sure enough, they have a spicy soapy smell that is very distinctive from the other ones.
Anyway, I finally had all my ingredients together. Everything had to be blended in this industrial sized mixer.
To make the actual crackers, you take some of the dough, roll it out until it's a few millimetres thin and then cut them using a dough cutter set to about an inch and a half. You bake the squares on a Silpat until they're just golden. Too long and they get a funky darker brown, which is still fine but not that perfect golden colour.
The more I learn about what goes into each item, the more I weep (inwardly) when I see someone send it back.
While I wasn't actually in the kitchen last week, I have spent the past two weeks filling in for the reporter on the morning show. She gets to do the food column every Wednesday and this week I got to do it. I finally got to tackle some food stories! I got to make THE quintessential Brazilian dish of feijoada (pork with beans) with the "Queen of Samba" Lucia Azevedo. I can't believe there aren't any authentic Brazilian restaurants in Vancouver. The one that existed apparently shut down some time ago, which is sad because I'd actually eaten there and enjoyed it a lot. Anyway, Lucia and I (mostly Lucia) made enough food for a small army. From Lucia I also learned that chefs are the same everywhere, whether in a restaurant or at home. They all want things done their own way, so the best thing to do is just stay the hell out of the way. Her way works though. Her feijoada is delicious, as is all the side dishes she made as well.
This week I took a tour of the UBC Farms with chef Andrea Carlson from Bishop's Restaurant. Bishop's is all about utilizing fresh food from local producers and sustainable growing. It was great meeting chef Carlson and talking to her about the industry, women in the industry and the kind of people who get into it. Apparently they've had a stagiere in their kitchen for some time. He's a lawyer who isn't changing careers. He just wants to keep a hand in. I'm happy to learn I'm not the only one in this limbo. And it was great to make just a salad, but not just a salad. Pea tips, baby kale, mizuna, etc. with turnips and raspberries and a fresh raspberry vinaigrette. Exploring different kinds of greens is something we rarely do nowadays because what you find in the supermarket is about as diverse as the gene pool in the Ozarks.
Andrea also told me about her most vivid food memory, involving a shipment of turnips from a local producer. Her description of the crisp, sweet taste was the one thing I had really wanted to hear out of everything else. I find that people who love food have the best food memories and it usually involves something simple, like turnips. I love hearing those stories because everyone's face changes when they tell them. It's like they're remembering their first loves. It's a reminder that the simplest things can bring you the most joy.
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