eggbeater

Peaches, Cherries, Apriums and Strawberries, O My!

Here it comes!
Fast and furious!
Summer!
In May, no less!

Just in time for my Ice Cream & Sorbet class today!

Who are you picking up from the farmer's market? What are you doing with your fruits?

"Queercents" Shuna Lydon Interview at BlogHer...

Last fall I was interviewed about money, class and personal/professional economics by Nina Smith at Queercents. Find my experience, opinions, feelings and background as it has to do with these subjects, updated and reposted at the BlogHer website today.

Last year I attended one day of the first ever blogging conference I've ever been to. This year I'll sit on a panel!

See you in Chicago?

The Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market Is Taking Suggestions For Improvement

A few years ago I was an active volunteer with CUESA, the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, the non-profit organization behind 4 farmers'markets at The Ferry Building in San Francisco. A number of times I filled out surveys which were meant to improve the market, its usability and help their board to see what customers' and chefs were thinking. But I never saw the results.

CUESA seems to have changed their attitude. In lieu of recent controversy started by the inimitable, passionate founder of the Slow Food Movement, Carlo Petrini, and the sad news that a number of farms and food purveyor's exits from the market, the non-profit has put forth a call for suggestions for improvement. Any and all ideas welcome.

Not only can you comment, but you can hear what improvements might be made based on those words.

Make suggestions by clicking on this link and scrolling down to the bottom of the post titled, This week's feature: Change is the only constant. If you want to see what people before you have said, and the changes on CUESA's horizon based on those comments, follow this link to their newsletter.

One day, when I'm up for another opinion war, I'll weigh in on the Carlo Petrini debate. I've seen him speak a number of times, and like all leaders, he has strong opinions, a fearlessness about his words and a message he has successfully delivered to the world over. His critique needed to be voiced, whether it is wholly wrong, partly true or, more likely, a little of everything. People are complicated. Ideas that turn into realities always need to come out a little stronger, they need to have a little more force, if they want to turn into concrete things. An unevenly weighted paper airplane can only go so far.

The leaders in this world are not shy. Bravery comes in many guises.

And those whom I look up to the most? Those with the ability to compromise, to learn from their "mistakes." To try again, start anew, listen to other possibilities. I'd rather hear critique, or something wacky from a person, begin a discussion, learn something new, than be stuck thinking I always know the right way, the only way or that my way, my ideas are the only ones that can exist.

There's a saying, "Be the change you want to see made."

Try it out. Worst case scenario? No one listens. This time.

 

Chef Interviews & Negotiations

Today, this morning, I am on a street in downtown SF about to meet the chef. The chef with whom I have met, now almost half a dozen times, who may or may not: make me an offer, give me feedback on the tasting, tell me what we will do together next, start negotiating salary, bid me farewell.

Any good business person knows how to talk to a prospective emplyee. It's a game of tug-a-war, kick the can, dodgeball, 7 minutes in heaven, who's on first, stoicism, and chess, all rolled into one. It's about giving away too little but making the other person think they have it all. It's about communication, body language, the ability to turn on a dime and professionalism.

In an embrace it's about an intention of touch, in a handshake, about eye contact.

This has been a most incredible few months. Today a chef friend of mine asked how this tasting differed from my last one. I snorted. The last one? They were ridiculous individuals. In that whole, many-week process, they were never honest, professional, upfront, unified, and in the end they didn't even re-imburse me at all on my invoice.

{This is a small sampling of the exchange I, and said restaurant had last summer:

    "Tastings, like trails, cost money for both participants. It is the inherent cost of seeking the best employee, the right fit. I am not overcharging A., I am asking for what I was told, after I asked explicitly what I would be reimbursed for. If you choose to pay me a fraction of what my invoice states I will take that to mean you are willfully breaking an agreement you gave your word on.

    In a business which relies almost exclusively on "Gentleman's Contracts" we, as professional chefs and cooks and owners, are beholden to respect what these agreements represent. When I give my word I mean it, even if the exchange was not documented on paper with legal binding signatures.

    Again I find it unfortunate that A. does not take these tenets of our industry seriously enough to respect that when I did the work necessary to create a small sampling of what I could have brought to the kitchen, both professionally and passionately, I gave A. a wider view of who and what was out there, and that can't be invoiced. The amended invoice is a small price to pay for my services rendered, for helping you to make the decision you were able to make."}

So to be in a process as long and detail oriented as this one is such a relief. Proof that there are indeed restaurateurs who are professional, do know what they are doing, don't lead people on and fuck with them just because they can, and can, in fact, have an interview process which respects all parties at once. It is possible, to have one's hard won career taken into account. It is possible to meet a savory chef who understand that the pastry chefs role is just about as important as theirs!

I hope to know more by the end of this day than I did at the end of last Monday.

And to leave you hanging no more, this coming Monday I will post the menu {at KQED} I presented for the tasting. There's still time to weigh in on what you would do with all those components and dishes... go on and have the most fun you can have with all those sweets and not get at all sticky!

dreams & nightmares.

I have always dreamt. Wild, fantastical realities fill my nights. I not only dream in color, I dream things before they happen. What goes on while I sleep informs who I am, my friendships, my romances and the way I work. Or the work I do. My dreams send me messages. And I don't mean books telling me what my dreams mean. I don't need someone else's words, I have my own.

When I was a child, and well into my young adult years, I had a number of rotating/recurring dreams. Many of them nightmares. Because of my odd knack for knowing "seeing the future", few of my family members discredited my dreams. How I dream, what I dream, tells me a lot about what's really going on in my waking life. Or they inform me  in ways other people might forget or omit.

One night, while in high-school and living with my grandparents in Long Island, NY, I awoke in the middle of the night crying. Something was very wrong but I was too shaken to know exactly what. I woke my grandmother up and begged her to try calling my mother in Minnesota. By dawn, and after innumerable phone-calls, we knew for certain where my mother was. She was not ok, but at least she was alive.

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Every job I have produces a nightmare. In retrospect, some of them can be be quite funny, if dark. In the days, or even weeks before a new job, I tend to have the nightmare from the previous workplace. Like a child barely sleeping before Christmas morning's arrival, I sleep fitfully before a new job or dream the first day  through, as if I am there already doing it, before the alarm wakes me.

Sometimes the nightmare's subject is vague. No lead in, no plot, no resolve.

The night before my recent tasting I dreamt that I went back to work at Bouchon. You could call this a recurring nightmare, except that it's not the same exact dream landscape-set over and over, but it is similar. In this most recent version I was back living in Napa (also part of the nightmare), but while they made room for me at Bouchon I was to go back to The French Laundry and help out in pastry.

In the nightmares, The French Laundry has the exact same kitchen feel as the actual kitchen (tight and pressed like a permanently furrowed brow) but its surroundings look like an English country estate, complete with stiff hedgerows and quaint gardening sheds. Ironically, The French Laundry of my dreams is much bigger than it is in real life. But I knew the kitchen was a dream because the pastry chef was someone who looked like Alex Espiritu, whom I only recently met, but older, and the counters were sticky. (As you can well imagine, it stays quite clean there. Like a laboratory.)

The nightmare was current, which threw me for a bit of a loop, because when I saw Thomas, I expressed my concern about his father's recent car accident.

At the edge of the nightmare, my mother visited. In the dream she was attempting to support me before the tasting. Just sit with me, as it were. I wasn't sleeping well, with the nightmare and the nervousness about getting all my ducks in a row by 5 am Monday. (I don't really like waking up that early. Ever.) But, if you can try and imagine this, I attempted to come out of the nightmare just enough to acknowledge my mother, but not wake up completely, or anymore.

In the dream she apologizes for keeping me awake. For attempting to be there for me, but keeping me from sleeping. Moments before the dreadful alarm beeps (I can only imagine that the person who invented this awful contraption was blessed with Narcolepsy) I am trying to thank my mother for visiting and disallowing her to say sorry for something I am not at all sorry for, but grateful. Eternally and truly.

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Sometimes the nightmare or dream is as real as the life it is attempting to replicate.

Sometimes the nightmare or dream is many things, like life.
A visit from someone who is gone.
Bittersweet.

What Is White Truffle Oil Made Of?

And why are the chefs who know what it is, still using it?

Finally, Truffle Oil Exposed!

Follow this absolutely permanent link (thank you Lynn D) to today's NY Times article by, yes again, Daniel Patterson on the chemical, artificial truth about white truffle oil. "Hocus-Pocus, and a Beaker of Truffles"

My favorite quotes from the piece:

"The question is, Why are so many chefs at all price points — who wouldn’t dream of using vanillin instead of vanilla bean and who source their organic baby vegetables and humanely raised meats with exquisite care — using a synthetic flavoring agent?"

" He described the essence that his company uses as “something from the truffle that is not the truffle.” "

"And Americans, as many were quick to note, like big flavors. “People expect the slap in the face of truffle oil,” said Jonathan Gold, the restaurant critic for LA Weekly. “They have lost their taste for subtlety; they want bigger than life flavors that are amped up with aromatics. That’s American cooking at the moment.” Many chefs are turning to truffle oil as a way to get truffle aromas that, as many chefs put it, “jump off the plate,” often dressing real truffles in the oil before sending them to the table to heighten their effect. It raises the question, What will happen when there is a synthetic heirloom tomato scent or an imitation ripe peach flavor? Are we moving toward an era of fake food?"

This last quote reminds me so much of Will Goldfarb's seemingly existential questions posed at the Pastry Chef Conference.

Go Daniel! America needs more food journalism muckraking!

We all have a responsibility to research and fact check what we write. Even little ol' food blogs.

I've written about Butterscotch and its current comeback, albeit one dirtied with certain pastry chefs' refusal to treat it with the historical, truthful respect it deserves. And even though Food & Wine was too cowardly to print my outraged letter at their printing a recipe using artificially flavored chips, I gave you a recipe for real, home-made Butterscotch Pudding.

Go on, ask the restaurants you dine in, why are they using artificially flavored flavor enhancers?

Refrigerator: The Inside.

It appears that Sam, over at the popular Becks & Posh, has started a guerrilla Meme-- "the inside of your refrigerator." Unedited, un-photoshopped; spontaneos, very "Candid Camera." (Although I could not climb inside.) Look to the bottom of the post for the (boring?) details.

This is my fridge door.

Freezer.

Freezer door.

Outside Refrigerator, in and amongst the other kitchen goings on.

By mere glancing you could think that I eat dairy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most of it is for baking. In these photos/at this time I made room for The Tasting mis en place. And I try to keep a back stock of butter in the freezer for future baking/consulting/teaching.

Although, that said, I will say that, after a recent butter tasting with a friend, I wish all the butter in my fridge was the new Clover Organic. But, I imagine I can put that butter to use elsewhere. Everything is good for something...

I go through phases of cooking at home. I'm not in one at the moment, so I keep a lot of fruit around for snacking, always bacon, yogurt for a quick shot of protein and milk for cereal. The cabinets? Well that's another meme altogether!

It's rare I can catch a meme in time. I liked the quirkiness of this one. I liked the rule-less ness, the wacky voyeurism. Yeah Sam!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Some others who have followed suit: Pim, Kat from Kung Foodie, Restaurant Widow, The Perfect Pantry's Lydia, some wonderful containers at Umami, Ikrier at The Kitchen Illiterate, the wondrous Vintage Kitchen, a full cartoon- bubble laden photo at The Traveler's Lunchbox, David Lebovitz, Fridge Flashing at Brett's newly revived In Praise of Sardines, a Naked Fridge and a highly controversial comment section at The Ethicurian, and about 40 more-- find them all by clicking here.

Plated Dessert Menu Game!

         

Wanna play a game?
                                                    Come on, it'll be fun!

game! game! game!

Not competitive! Sweet! Delicious! Quirky! Silly! Sticky!

                    game!   game!       game!

I give you my mains and the components and you make your own dessert menu!

Play the Plated Dessert Menu Game over at KQED! Go Look!

*please leave yer comments over there, so they're all in one place, thanks!*

Plated Dessert Tasting, last full day of prep.

Sunday.

Ooof, I'm tired. Tired of baking. But mostly tired of baking alone. Sometimes the vacuum quality of dessert tasting baking gets to me. Last night I got to share a leetle something with friends. It's good to get feedback, albeit singular. Meaning that these folks tasted one component from a plate of many other flavors and textures.

Today I will go into a restaurant kitchen {at 7 am} in SF and be:

baking butterscotch pot de creme, testing veloute baking atop dacquoise, changing a garnish/pitting cherries (could not find the strawberries I'm in love with at the market today), testing doughnuts, making vanilla syrup for an egg cream, prep and churn lemon sherbet, churn brown butter ice cream, molding ice creams for a Baked Alaska, cutting-docking-forming tiny graham crackers, prep rhubarb, chop candied citrus zests, and drying vanilla bean pods for a garnish.

Saturday, at home, I made carnaroli rice "pudding" [sans eggs or yolks] lightly infused with California Bay Laurel, cocoa nib dacquoise, test baked 2 milk chocolate veloute, and produced a 1/2 sheet of devil's food cake.

It's been really good to organize my list over a period of a week, because it means there's been plenty of time to test and taste, bake and re-bake, arrange and re-arrange, discuss and email, question and ponder, and sleep on it all.

Monday, at noon, is the moment of truth.

the life of pie {and galette}

good, informational reading & looking

I hope you'll allow me to point your reading eyes in the direction of a few  interesting things ~

San Francisco's own Daniel Patterson, chef/owner of the intimate and innovative Coi (pronounced kwah) in North Beach, has written a 2 part series at Chez Pim about his restaurant's opening day and night, just one year ago. Peterson has written for the NY Times and Food & Wine. He's a good, snarky, smart writer, and the pieces are good reads. Part One. And Part Two.

For the closeted, or flamboyant, "Molecular Gastronomist" in you, be sure to bookmark Chadzilla. The chef behind this blog is cooking in Miami (who woulda thunk?) Want to build your own molecular gastronomy equipment? Or find out the reasoning behind pairing seemingly disparate ingredients? Be sure to check this quirky blog out.

My new favorite thing is visual blogging. The best, most magnificently voluptuously beautiful example of this wondrous medium is 3191 a year of mornings. Every day two photos are shown kissing (a la photoshop). They are taken by two people who don't know what the other one will pick. Stunning. Breathtaking. Quiet. Colorful. Subtle. These are just a few words which come to mind. Check it out, your visual library will not be disappointed.
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For those of you with enough guts to try out the recipes in The French Laundry Cookbook, take a gander at this gal's take on making each and every recipe at home! And she's hysterically funny to boot. French Laundry At Home. Go on! It's quite fun...

Nicole, over at the insanely prolific Baking Bites (used to be bakingsheet) has announced some of the winners from my industry's very own version of The Academy Awards, (sans face-lifts, boob jobs and high salaried positions), The James Beard Awards. Click on this link to see who some of this years winners are.
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I realize we all spend too much time on the web. In front of computers. Dating, writing, sexing, commiserating, surfing, diving, planning, flirting, hiding, reading. But remember how good it used to feel to get a hand written letter in the mail? I have a massive stationery collection to prove what a hopeless romantic I really am. I still use scissors and glue sticks and rubber stamps, making cards, sending postcards and relishing in my favorite pens. If you are even remotely like me, you'll appreciate port2port press "the card society." Or their special projects. Or their take on visual blogging.

Every once and a while I develop far away crushes. People and creatures and visual artists and web finds. Not to exclude fruit and friends and places. Sometimes I tell, sometimes I don't. If I could speak with something besides words, I would.

May 20, 2007 Ice Cream & Sorbet Class is Full!

 May 10 ANNOUNCEMENT:

*******The May 20, 2007 Ice Cream & Sorbet Class is now FULL! Thank you for your interest!*******