My Externship Thus Far (AKA: A Long Overdue Post)

A post has been long overdue.  And I know that I owe this blog the second part of my thoughts on rewriting recipes.  But, being as this is the end of my second week of my externship (yes, it's basically the same thing as an internship), I thought I'd document my progress and experience thus far.

For the time being, the restaurant I'm at will remain nameless.  I'm new to the restaurant game and don't want to unintentionally burn bridges.  Let's just say that I'm fortunate enough to have been placed in a restaurant that is run by a celebrity chef, and this chef knows food.  In fact, this restaurant's food is ridiculously good.  Most everything I've tasted is just exquisite.  An overused word to describe food, I know, but it's the word that best describes what I'm thinking whenever I put the food in my mouth.

I am very interested in this restaurant's specialty (which I won't reveal because it's easy to guess what restaurant it is) and I knew I wanted a tough externship.  While the latter didn't really cross my mind when I signed on, I expected an environment of high standards.

And what I got was a pretty intense place.

So intense, in fact, that my first week-and-a-half was spent with me being really stressed out.  My current trainer, the main prep cook, comes across as impatient only because his job is to push me.  This man can do everything there: make bread, pasta, all the meat prep... whatever needs to be done at this restaurant in terms of prep, he can do.  And he expects me, a lowly intern, a person with no professional restaurant experience save for a single day doing appetizers and pizzas at a local Sacramento eatery, to be perfect on the first try.  And to remember every.  single.  thing.  he.  does.  If he shows something me once, he expects me to remember all of the subtleties and steps.  Me being new to this type of work, my observation skills are not exactly keen on all the details, which I hate because I am a details person.  I'm a technical person.  I like methodology.  Once I've got those things down, I can work on making my tasks more second-nature.  Put me in front of a drumline and my observation skills rival those of Sherlock Holmes (yeah, I'm being cocky.  It's for the effect).  But, when it comes to restaurant work, I don't have the motor skills this guy does, he who has been with the restaurant's head chef for nine years.  So, when watching this man make professional pasta with the grace of a ballerina (no joke), it is amazing.  And daunting.  And no, my current set of motor skills don't yet include those types of movements to handle that type of thin, delicate material.  But if I get it wrong, which I did - several times, in fact - I get a contemptuous looks and often a verbal berating.

But it's what they do at this restaurant.  They push.  Everyone pushes.  In fact, last night, he actually, and oddly, apologized for pushing me, but qualified it by saying, "But it's good for you."  I replied, "You're supposed to push me."

It's what's been happening the last two weeks, the last 89 hours of work I've put in so far.  Even the head chef, the celebrity himself, really got on my case the third day in because I was too slow at picking parsley.  And I didn't start my day right, either.  I forgot to change my shoes, something I never do.  I forgot my notepad, something I never do.  And he was not happy.  But, I haven't made that mistake since.

But, when I do a good job, or even an improved job, I do get told.

I have always told my drumline students not to take criticism, harsh or pleasantly put, personally.  It's our job to push.  It's our job to criticize.  It's been a long time since I've been on the receiving end.  I'm usually the guy who's giving it.  Now, it's my turn to take it.  Except that this is so, so much more intense than drum corps was when I marched.  And there was a lot of yelling and cussing, not to mention running and pushups and standing at attention for long periods of time.  Granted, that was many years back so perhaps the memories of that experience have softened, but my current experience compared to my drum corps experience?  The restaurant business, at least the intensity at which this one is run, is a harrowing experience.  My psyche certainly took a lashing.  Perhaps it's because, at the end of the day, paying customers are involved, as is money spent on ingredients.  It's a for-profit business based on volume.

By the end of my second week, I have improved.  I can do certain things with more competency.  I get "yelled" at a little less.  Yes, I still get pushed, and yes, my trainer will still look at me with those big, contemptuous eyes and a snide, ego-pounding remark, but I'm taking my beatings and I know that I'll come out the other end tougher, faster, and more efficient.

I'll post another update at a later date with other observations.  Until then, I need to make sure my return to work after a couple days off starts with me progressing and not regressing.

[UPDATED 10-13-2011]

Reading, Writing, and Using Recipes - Part 1: What The Heck Is A Recipe?

One of the things I hate most about recipes is reading them.

You read that right. I hate reading recipes. Well, most recipes. They're generally a list of ingredients with amounts, sometimes with minor instructions (eg. 2 cloves garlic, minced), underneath of which are further instructions, sometimes written in paragraph form, and sometimes the steps are numbered.

In some of the books I have, the ingredient list and instructions are side by side and sectioned off so that a batch of ingredients correlate with a set of instructions, then the next section will have another batch of ingredients correlating with their instructions.

And it's all so... wordy.

Before I started culinary school, I learned to rewrite recipes before cooking them so that a) I could understand, in my own way, what needed to be done, and b) I could format them in a manner that was easy to follow during the chaos that could ensue during cooking.  This is important because before you cook you have to understand what you're doing.  Unfortunately, recipes often tell you what to do but not necessarily how to do it.

What does that mean?  Well, when a recipe tells you to saute mushrooms on medium high heat for two minutes, do you know what saute means?  Let's get rid of the word saute and place it with cook.  Okay, now we have a more generic term.  We'll cook the mushrooms on medium high heat for 2 minutes... except the mushrooms are burning and they've only been cooking for a minute-and-a-half!  So, let's change for two minutes to until brown.  Well, not all mushrooms brown, are they?  That's just a generic term cooks use to describe caramelization and the Maillard reaction (another post, another day, folks).  So let's change that to until dark.  How dark?  Um... twice as dark?  Really dark?  And what if it takes a really long time?  Perhaps the burner you're using doesn't have high enough heat, even though it's on medium high.  Can you bump up the heat?  Or is it supposed to take a long time?  Well, it's supposed to take two minutes, right?  Oh, wait, we changed that...

Yes, that's kind of a worse-care scenario.  Not everyone gets that confused while following a recipe, but then again, some people do.  I have met people that are learning how to cook but following a recipe is still confusing to them; I met two girls who went shopping for a casserole recipe that stated six stalks of celery were needed.  Not being cooks, and therefore not necessarily being familiar with cooking or food terminology (or plant terminology, for that matter), they didn't know what stalks were... so they bought six bunches of celery instead of one bunch with six stalks.  That is a lot of celery left over!

Following a recipe can be difficult for people learning how to cook, or inexperienced cooks.  Even experienced cooks can probably have a difficult time following a recipe if it is written in a complicated manner, and yes... I've seen some complicated recipes.

The thing is, a recipe can't necessarily teach a person how to cook.  They're not technical manuals; they can't - or rather, don't - teach technique.  It can state what to do with food in order to cook it, which should result in a specific dish, but it doesn't explain the subtleties of a saute and how to make adjustments.  It doesn't explain what a braise is and why you need to do it for a particular piece of meat and why you shouldn't substitute another particular type of meat.  There are technical things that are left out of a recipe that help keep the text of a recipe shorter than it otherwise could be.

So... um... what is a recipe then?

A recipe is, quite simply, a set of instructions designed to instruct the user how to assemble a dish.

Think of a recipe like a map or GPS.  If you have your driver's license, you know how to drive, right?  (We're not going to debate the quality of your driving here...)  But, just because you know how to drive, doesn't mean you don't necessarily know how to get to every destination you need to drive to.  Thus, a map or a GPS can provide some sort of guide or instruction designed to provide you a route from where you are to your destination.  This is a recipe.

There are two words of note: assemble and guide.  Just because you're told or shown how to assemble something, doesn't mean you have the technique behind the methods to assemble the dish that will result in awesome, blow-your-mind food.  Or even to assemble it well.  Or, in some cases, assemble it so that the outcome remotely looks like edible food.  The recipe also acts as a guide because recipes are generally written in a step-by-step manner where the the steps are (hopefully) arranged in a chronological manner so that each task is presented in an order that allows efficient assembly.  For example, if making pizza, you wouldn't necessarily want to prep all your toppings and then start your dough, because the dough needs time to rise and rest.  Prepping beforehand would just make the entire process longer.  A good recipe will have you make the dough first, then prep your toppings, then instruct you to stretch the dough, assemble the pizza, then bake.  Think of it like this: You wouldn't want to be lead around in circles all over town by a GPS when you could have made a right, two lefts, and a final right, would you?

So, whether you're an experienced or inexperienced cook, it's a great idea to rewrite recipes before using them.  And, if you're intent on teaching yourself to how cook using recipes, one of the best ways to start is to rewrite them.  We'll get into how and why next time.

Genetic Fabrication - Meat in a Petri Dish?

It's been awhile, I know.

But don't worry. I've got ideas.

Since my last post, I've completed several classes and I must say, I can see how much I've learned and how much I've improved since day 1. Sure, not all of the lessons are as academic as I thought or hoped they would be, but many, many little lessons culminate into larger competencies.

Academia does enter the picture often, though. In my current class, Contemporary Cuisine (which, the instructor, Chef Eric Veldman Miller, said should be renamed "Play With Your Food"), the Chef started class with a discussion on the topic of what I refer to as "genetic fabrication", that is, the creation of meat from stem cells. He opened up the floor to student opinions, and the comments were quite diverse. Some thought it scientifically interesting but were worried about what the food would taste like. After all, an animal's diet influences the way it tastes. Then there were questions about how far such a practice could go; someone asked about growing humans in a petri dish and went so far as to mention cannibalism (I couldn't really hear the comment, but wow... but a leap!). There were questions of muscle development, to which the chef responded that electricity was run to the "meat" to stimulate the muscle in the absence of exercise. I even asked about fat development: if one grows meat in a petri dish, will there be fat development? It was postulated in class by almost everyone, including the Chef, that if muscles don't do any work, it starts to turn to fat (however, a quick Q&A here at Shape Magazine's website determines that, no, muscle cannot turn into fat. They're two different types of tissues. Thus, I would be skeptical about fat development from petri dish meat). Then there was the moral question of, "Just because we can, should we?" Someone even brought up how such practices would affect food costs in restaurants.

I then took a turn at offering my opinion. My initial reaction was that, scientifically speaking, it's pretty amazing and if meat could be produced this way, a lot of hungry people around the world could be fed. However, I would fear a loss of appreciation for where our food comes from and for the food itself. If we can produce meat without raising it, would we appreciate how it was raised, how it was cared for, what it ate, and would we respect the animal by using it in its entirety (something we don't do much here in the US, but certainly is done more in the Old World - the Eastern Hemisphere)? I fear not. I fear that we would take meat more for granted than we already do. Mass produced meat in a petri dish would mean more readily available meat and would only promote gluttony (ever see Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs?).

The Chef, who I find extremely smart and is as curious as me when it comes to finding out how things work, posed a question as Devil's advocate: wouldn't raising meat in a petri dish be more environmentally friendly? We wouldn't be using natural resources to raise and feed the animals, thus preserving more of Earth's bounty. My response was this: if we don't learn to raise our food - animal or vegetable - in an environmentally friendly and responsible manner, we don't teach ourselves to live harmoniously with the Earth. In learning to cultivate food in balance with what the Earth provides, we can teach ourselves how to sustain our land and live with it, not against it, which is how I think we're supposed to be living anyway.

My opinion above was based on in-class discussion. I just read this article at npr.org (previously linked). And now that I've read it, my thoughts on electrical stimulation have been confirmed: it would be costly. After all, electricity has to come from somewhere, and natural resources would therefore be used, correct?

Also in the article is mention of how environmentally friendly petri-dish meat would be. After all, 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock. Then, of course, there's the need for water, feed, and land. As global population increases, we'll need to raise more livestock and therefore need more resources because, dammit, people want their meat! And then there's animal treatment. Commercial farms are known for treating their animals poorly. Force-feeding, small living spaces, brutal deaths...

The notion of raising more livestock, to me, just supports gluttony. Yes, I love my meat. But should I eat it every day? No. Should we eat it every day? NO. The article also dismisses the slow-but-steady rise in interest in organic and humane farming, where the production is smaller, sure, but the quality of animal life is much better and, allegedly, the quality of resulting food is better. Proof? Go seek out a show called Cook It, Kill It, Eat It and you'll see the difference between commercial farming and humane, sustainable farming. Are natural resources being used? Yes, but not in a wasteful way provided the farm is sustainable.

And really, is lower production such a bad thing? Or wouldn't it help us to learn how to eat within our means. Actually, a more accurate statement would be to re-learn how to eat within our means. After all, that's where humanity came from. We ate what was available to us. Therefore, if less meat is available to us, perhaps we should vary our diets to include, oh, I don't know... vegetables? Fish? Hell, even insects (dead serious). I'm not saying we shouldn't export or import food. Sharing is caring, right? But in terms of production, there is more food available to us than just beef and pork, however wonderful they may be. Smaller, natural, humane, and sustainable meat production could teach us to once again be more judicious about what we eat, how much, and how often.