eggbeater

/back into the frying pan

wait. didn't I just do this? will someone pinch me?
yesterday I spent all day on the phone with purveyors, salesmen. placed orders, shopped, schemed, made lists, brainstormed, organized new product in brand new spaces, walked the neighborhood to get a feel for the place, and made one very strange trip to Jetro. have you ever been here? all I can say is this:

go here if you need to understand why we're doomed.

heh.

you might think Kmart is big. or maybe that's small next to Home Depot. still think I'm batting in a cage? think Costco times 10. the not-quite-as-good-looking Ikea of foodstuffs.
Jetro is the god of big.

Jetro makes Big Box look like a cheap forgotten gift under the tree.
my life is now complete.

you need a card to get in. you pass it over a scanner and then a voice from somewhere mechanically welcomes you. you can pick up a cart that's as big as my hatchback car to push around the "store." you will pass people along the way buying enough cases to line a tennis court. you must buy in case. you must buy no less than 25# of sugar. modern muzak echoes through, metallic as it bounces off one trillion tons of cardboard.

it's so inexpensive you wish you owned a storage facility so you could buy as much sweetened condensed milk as you wanted. you wish you're swimming pool could be filled with all those chocolate chips. how come no one told you about this place when you were addicted to Cheerios. life made simpler.

Jetro is the antichrist of the local, seasonal, organic, sustainable movement. don't go here if you have a heart condition. go here to do research. to understand how people who you think you don't know live. but of course you do.

I left empty handed and I thought someone might arrest me.

today I'm baking, sorting, signing invoices, and finding my rhythm in a new space. don't freak out, it's not a huge deal. I'm just happy to have my hand in the sugar bin again. delighted to reunite with rhubarb. will taste a number of yogurts. have my way with brown sugar and butter. mix up some cookie dough. test the ovens. zest some lemons. slice mandarinquats. candy citrus peel. scent the kitchen with warm ginger. organize containers. chop walnuts and poach dried fruit.

p.s. do you have a favorite brownie recipe you think I should take a look at? thanks!

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

something amazing happened today yesterday. something I was hoping for but could not have expected. something shattered and honesty broke forth. there are things I cannot talk about because they are not mine to tell. but for myself I will say thank you.

thank you to my friends who know me better than anyone else. thank you to a force bigger than I that I can lean on when I falter, when I waver, when I have no more hope. no more hope to give or use to go on. I want to be part of the solution. I want to inspire. I want to believe in possibility, in endless skies. I want to lead and mentor, learn and grow and to be humble. I want to believe.

thank you azo for knowing me. for knowing when my dark days come and for reminding me of my patterns. sometimes only a friend can give you perspective. it takes love to make courage. if honesty is filled with love, love no matter what, I can hear it.

*
in my field there are voices. they tell us we cannot get off the train. they say that if we are not behind a stove every minute of every day we don't deserve to wear the uniform.

but sometimes life gets in the way of those voices. I will never forget the matter of fact voice I used years ago when I called my kitchen to say I was not going to be at work that day, and maybe the next day, because I was in the hospital. plain, factual, emotionless. finally I could not be at work and I had no control over it. release. let go.

this business takes heart. if you're whole heart's not in it it's not worth it. and there are no cowboys on islands. for every success there is a team, not a person. I am not whole unless you can see all those who came before me. if you can't see every cook, every chef, every pastry chef I've ever worked for, worked with. I am a compilation. I have no recipe.

*

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

*

I belong to an organization with millions of members. we are a faith and hope lending machine. we have a lot of sayings.

   you can start your day over at any hour

is one of them. it sounds trite, I know. but believe me when I say these sayings have saved my life. I was not meant to reach the age of thirty, let alone forty. not at the rate I was going. so every day is something.

    sometimes god does for you what you cannot do for yourself

sometimes a window opens and there is light, if even for an instant. some days there is joy, and some days there is contentment. my joy is hard won. survival. struggle. I had the hustle. streetwise.

it takes heart. it takes humility to admit you haven't been who you suppose to be. it takes humility to admit. it takes heart to admit. it takes heart.

and then there's an opening. we can start over, you and I. I reach out and if you reach back there's possibility.

*

hope struggles out of the box. poor poor pandora.

*

what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? can you admit failure and make a promise for better? can you admit failure and know you yourself are not a failure? who will take advantage of vulnerability? who will be more honest in the process? who is willing to admit humanness?
sometimes bravery is quiet.

what are you afraid of?

my heart never ceases to amaze me. I can't promise forgiveness but I can promise that I'll try. I will borrow your faith if you've some to spare. I will lean on your trunk when I am empty.

*

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

*

I steer away from defining myself complete. I am a work in progress. I have more questions than answers. I am not a recipe. and I need to remember that neither do you. more can change with compassion and empathy than attack. if I give up on you then nothing will ever change. and if I don't learn this lesson with you I'll meet another you again soon, I promise you this. what are your patterns?

*

I want to thank my team. for allowing honesty and tears and opening up. sometimes bravery is quiet. for allowing the possibility that we can start our day over at any hour. and to my friends-- ceaseless gratitude, love, admiration and a promise to venture forth with you no matter how difficult our life paths become. I know that I am naive to think that communication can solve everything, but there it is. a delicate flower. a hopeless romantic. an optimist in a cynic's body.

for side hugs and humility, I thank you. for engaging in the dance, even when the future is uncertain. love is not insurance. passion is haphazard. faith is a dedicated practice. humility is not humiliation.

thank you for standing side by side on the firing line naked. here's to riding the roller coaster. thank you for strapping me in and holding my hand.

*

if you don't know who you are this will confuse you.

*

and if you think you know who you are this will confuse you. because there is no recipe for this ride. there is only your heart. how much can you love?

sometimes bravery is quiet.

Sens Dessert Menu, January 2008

There's no end of fun in our pastry kitchen. In between all the prep for the menu, services and private parties, we test and plot and conjure and eat and change, and new desserts are created. Poof! they come together and it's a new dessert, born. There are no recipes for plated desserts. Plated desserts are built, they are formed and re formed, constructed and de-constructed, and there are endless variations on anything you can imagine to eat, in every form and temperature possible.

Just as the seasons change so do all the raw ingredients we use. Dairy thickens and thins depending on rainfall and temperature, flour absorbs more moisture today and tomorrow all the bread is sticky, caramel heats quickly one day and next week you're waiting all day for the mercury to rise.

When I wrote down my menu for you last I had just changed all their names to reflect edibles and had eliminated poetic titles. Did it help sales? It's hard to tell because so much changed in the restaurant as a whole. Three newspaper reviews came in, the holidays came and went and Michael made a number of changes to his menu.

Selling desserts is up to me in part, but really it has a lot to do with how much the waiters are into it. I let them taste all the menu items and talk extensively about what makes them special. I provide an open door for questions and ingredient smelling and tasting. Anyone can taste any component at any time so long as we're not smack dab in the middle of service. But even then, if it's the difference between a customer going away happy or sad, just about any accommodation can be made.

            Pastry is the Pleasure Business.

Currently we are participating in San Francisco's Dine About Town. The interesting thing about serving a prix fixe menu is that all people automatically get dessert. It's difficult to judge dessert sales when everyone gets something, whether they would have ordered it or not. Of course it's wonderful because some people who would not normally order a sweet can try something of mine and maybe I've made a new fan. Pastry chefs who have only ever worked in restaurants with prix fixe menus get quite a shock when they go to work in houses with a la carte menus because dessert sales percentages can fall dramatically, and lead to their joblessness. A pastry chef must always be on one's toes, paying attention to and tracking everything, to insure their sales are worth their salary.

But that's another story, one that's fairly boring and confusing if you don't make a living by wearing a white jacket every day.

I am soon to make a major change in my dessert menu at Sens. I will take off an item which has been there since our very first day. I love it like a friend but it's time. To me this dessert is 100% Sens because I created it solely for us and was inspired purely by the regions we focus in on at the restaurant: Turkey, North Africa and Greece.

Honey-Cumin Pot de Creme

A ramekin of silky-smooth cumin infused pot de creme is garnished with vanilla sea salt, Marshall Farms honey and bee pollen. It sits next to a {sugarless} heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad tossed in California walnut oil and apple cider reduction. The little salad is inspired by charoset.

I guess it can no longer compete with the menu's varied and spectacular plates. And people are just plain afraid to order a dessert infused with cumin. Or our waiters are afraid to suggest one. Every time I talk about taking it off the menu my sous chef, bless her heart, asks me if I need a hug. I realize it sounds ridiculous and silly but I've grown fond of and very attached to this dessert.

There's another plate that will come off at the same time. Both have similar Autumn-like flavors and it's time for the menu to embrace Winter whole-heartedly.

Without further ado, my dessert menus as they are right now:

Lunch:

honey-cumin pot de crème
& heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad
8
rosemary caramel
slow roasted hazelnuts, supple semolina, rosemary-caramel ice cream & candied valencia orange
8
lemon essence
citrus soufflé, fennel shortbread, lemon sherbet & pine nut-date-anise-arbequina oil relish
9
frozen honey mousse
spicy gingerbread, candied citrus peel, balsamic caramel & pomegranate seeds
8
cool milk chocolate cream
chocolate-almond salad & sour cherry marmalade
9

Hot Cocoa with Honey-Marshmallow 4

-------> and for Dine About Town, at Lunch, there's

roasted pear & buckwheat clafouti with pear ice cream

Dinner:

honey-cumin pot de creme
& heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad
8
pistachio gift
vanilla phyllo wrapped pistachio frangipane
with mastic-rosewater ice cream
{ allow 20 minutes }
9
rosemary caramel
slow roasted hazelnuts, supple semolina, rosemary-caramel ice cream & candied valencia orange
8
cool milk chocolate cream
chocolate-almond salad & sour cherry marmalade
9
citrus!
mandarinquat marmalade, lebne cheesecake, moroccan almond “crust”
& mandarin supremes
8
warm chocolate
cocoa cake, sensuous chocolate, cardamon ice cream
& shuna’s famous dark chocolate sauce
9
lemon essence
citrus soufflé, fennel shortbread, lemon sherbet
& pine nut-date-anise-arbequina oil relish
9

Hot Cocoa with Honey-Marshmallow 4

Early Autumn 2007  & Early Winter 2007 dessert menus

See you soon?

Octopus Braise

The other day I caught one of my favorite preparations from the restaurant on film digitally: braising octopus. Michael is passionate about where these animals come from and he works hard to keep its preparation consistent. I love watching it start to finish and it's my favorite dish to order or suggest to friends who come in.

Octopus is easier to mess up than it is to make delicious and tender. I've worked with chefs who are good at both destroying and honoring this incredible creature. Some say it's outcome has to do with the size of the animal but I disagree as I've had both young and mature rubbery octopus. I think, as with all ingredients, animal or not, it has to do with understanding the molecular make-up of the ingredient's flesh, skeleton and its natural habitat. A collard green likes to be cooked longer than spinach because it grows in harsher conditions and its leaves are much thicker. Some citrus peels needs a lot of blanching before candying, while another needs none.

I have some conflict with eating octopus because I have always felt related to the sea and all the creatures who live in water. When it comes into the restaurant I try to send my thoughts its way. But I was excited to have my camera to photograph some of the process the other day, because these animals are so magnificent.

When I work with chefs who treat their menu ingredients with respect I can appreciate their food much more, and conversely, make desserts which follow their savoury thoughts that much better.

Working in a restaurant is building a relationship. It's hundreds of relationships and it's one, all at the same time. One of many is the relationship we all have with the myriad of ingredients and those people who get them to us from land and sea.

As I've begun to document, photographically and with words, the daily life of the kitchen I call home, I see there are layers and layers of life going on every second, every minute, every day, with every aspect and every person and every action. It is not possible for me to tell all of these stories, I am not omniscient. I am merely attempting to give you a glimpse, a peek from the inside and to the inside, with as much respect as possible.

For more photos of the octopuses and their braise preparation, check them out on flickr.

The San Francisco Chronicle Sens Restaurant Review

After many sleepless days, nights and weeks.
After tearing down one restaurant to build another.
After countless interviews
and recipes tested
and systems built
and training sessions taught.
After nail-biting and hair pulling and extreme highs and lows,

The {Crucial} Review is Here. <------- click on this link to get there.

In my own opinion, Mr. Michael Bauer has given us a fair and even review. I think he said well what our hurdles are and what we've accomplished thus far. I appreciate how much he concentrated on the food and Michael Dotson, our chef, in particular.

These days a restaurant review happens far sooner and more suddenly than it once did, pre-Internet days. As much power as various online community review sites have and hold currently, it is still that restaurant's regional newspaper which carries the most weight, especially in terms of a particular chef's career. Magazines pay attention to newspapers and newspapers pay attention to newspapers and trade magazines fill in the rest.

This was my very first time being personally reviewed by Mr. Bauer. I feel grateful for the experience and I hope it will do what restaurants rely on The Review to do-- put us on the map and bring the people forth. What we do with the people once they get to us is up to us, not the SF Chronicle, but the SF Chronicle lets the entire Bay Area know we're open for business.

We all exhale now and continue on doing what we do. For me personally it means testing new ideas and locking in a schedule that is fair and serves everyone, concerning tasks at hand and educational goals.

I look forward to every day bringing challenges that will help me and my team grow. The Review is great because it gives us an outside perspective, a report card if you will, and let's the staff know that all of our efforts really do come through; they are visible to others. Pushing ourselves to be better and learn more, and make the mistakes which will help us grow as cooks and co-workers and supervisors and people, does work towards the whole of a restaurant's goal.

Goals can be made real. Within us and as a team effort.

This business requires a lot of self-motivation. As a whole cooking professionally is devoid of a constant stream of external back patting sayings. We don't often say, "Gee whiz, you're going such a Great Job!" because it's what we expect. But every once and a while a critic: an outside voice, a voice for the public (which you are in the business to serve whether you think so or not), a non-whites-wearing mouth, is an important one to hear words from. You might not always agree with or understand why they said what they said about who and such, but still it's an important perspective's shoes to try and climb into, if even for another way of understanding how someone else might see you, might taste your food, might understand your vision.

In the restaurant business you get to know your local critic in a way the public does not and can not. We read in between the lines and chefs talk and we notice patterns and likes and dislikes. It's a mysterious and locked up business, the review. Top Secret until the envelope is torn open.

Me, I'm so glad to get it, to read it, to see it and now to link to it. I hope that no matter what you agree and disagree with in Mr. Bauer's words you'll let us have you taste for yourself.

See you soon?

Opening A Restaurant: eve of The Review.

I'm not being dramatic when I say it is almost impossible to describe how I'm feeling right now. We, the entire management staff, are an emotional wreck, at least on the inside. There's the wringing of hands, the pacing of feet, an introspection which is nothing short of torturous. Demons arrive, cackle, cat-call, heckle, throw tomatoes and teeter on shoulders all day and night until The Moment arrives.

You can practically see the tension in the air. It's dense and heavy and there are a lot of furrowed brows. We are sticky with it. We've all given each other a wide berth to experience our individual emotions. But really, all this worry is silly because The Review has been written and we can only go about our day making lists diminish, cleaning up after our staff, prepping, changing menus, feeding party after party, service after service. All we can do is do the best we can every day and hope that tomorrow we can do it even better. Every day we hope to inspire our cooks to love what their doing as much as we do.

It's incredibly emotional to ride a roller coaster with people you appreciate, respect, and love. Compassion fills your heart, breaks it, and glues it back together. Frustration mounts as you delegate and watch your food handled by each and every person, and then eaten. We hold our breath and exhale loudly a thousand times a day.

Tomorrow We Will Know. And on Sunday You Will Know.

It's like being the teacher holding test scores and being the student, waiting, whose future depends on them, simultaneously.

    The Review is

        the first kiss after a long flirtation, or tease.

How I will sleep tonight is beyond me. It's a good thing I had a 15 hour day today.
I imagine tomorrow there will be tears and joy. A final exhalation of breath, at least until the next review.

It's hard to explain what the eve of getting The Review feels like. One part of my heart and mind are sitting in that room, where they've sat since day one, and another part of me is waving her hands through windows into that room saying, "Hey! Look at me-- no, don't think about that anymore-- come on, think about something else for a minute. Like that new dessert which finally became whole. Or this-- look at this! It's that problem you've been mulling over-- let's put some thought into solving it right now..." And so the banter goes. Then there's the resigned part of me. "It's done," it says. I am trying to expect the worst so I'll be happy with anything good.

The thing is this. A Restaurant is like a relationship in that The Relationship is something people make together but neither have unilateral control over it. There are so many humans' hearts and minds and spirits and hands and ideas and bodies involved in a restaurant. My food is barely mine once all those people take part in it. You could say that this makes my food bigger or more watered down, it's all about perspective. Depending on who comes to your table to describe my food, you would have a completely different experience, each time or compared to the table next to you.

And The Review is there to see Everything. Everyone naked, everyone exposed. It's thrilling and terrifying, adventurous and insane, dynamic and still, worrisome and wonderful.

It's your heart on a plate, being eaten.

And then it's not any of these things. Because how can a person sum it all up on one page? It's like turning a book into a movie.

But The Review matters. So much. It puts you on the map, gives you a permanent address, like it or not,

            ready or not

                                    here I come

10, 9, 8, 7,

you can run but you can't hide.

It makes me feel proud, to stand naked with all who are standing here with me. To have you, and they, see my weaknesses and strengths. All desserts not same, all plates unique-- there is no formula here. I cook and eat and inspire and create and am inspired and then I write and read and talk and cry and wail and

        I take the time to water my own garden. And in the quiet the answers come.

And then it all begins again.

And on the day The Review arrives, sunup and sundown will go as planned by the universe and no matter it's words and number of stars, we will continue to check in produce orders and go to market to see what's in season and cooks will button jackets and turn on ovens and ice cream will be churned and cakes will be baked and

we will cook and bake the best food we know how.

And I'll be here, at eggbeater, to tell my heart's tale.

Thanks for reading, it means a lot to have You there.

my dessert menu/ Sens ~ December 07

A lot has changed since the last time I came to you with my menu. For one, the names have changed. We thought it best to steer away from poetry and tell you all exactly what was going on. It's always hard to tell when a restaurant first opens why sales are headed in the direction they are. Who can be blamed for why this sells and that doesn't is tricky business.

My own honest experience is few of my desserts garner wishy-washy responses. People tend to love or dislike strongly my flavor marriages and choices. Sometimes I start with a traditional pairing and then I turn it upside down. Sometimes I go to the edge of the diving board and fall in backwards, not checking pool temperature first. Of course I'm always in awe and inspired by fruit, and I'm also shamelessly in lust with herbs and certain cool, watery vegetables.

I've been thinking way too much about how my dessert process comes about lately. I have a solid team now and they ask me questions, taste desserts en route, scale out recipes & make components, and are looking to me for their answers about it all.

Each of my desserts is like a separate person, and that can sometimes feel bizarre. Each have their own personality even though they all come from me. Like the writer whose prose shifts while reading another author's words, or painters who adopt stylistic flourishes depending on whose hands form the strokes empowering them, my plates ebb and flow with tides of inspirational forces.

I like odd numbers when it comes to how my plates are styled. I rarely work with more than 3 competing flavors and if I do, I treat the flavors like an oil painter; main flavors are in the foreground and then I paint the background with supporting components.

Nothing is on the plate that should not be there: eaten, worth mentioning or noticed.
Every food morsel is intentional.

{Pet peeve #480: Menus which sport the name of a component and when it arrives it's barely noticeable. Chefs & Restaurateurs: Please do not put something on your menu if no one can find it in the dish.}

In fact I abhor old fashioned plating techniques and will never garnish any desserts with mint unless someone holds a gun to my head. I would never again use a squeeze bottle if I could, but the truth is that, unless you are a scary clean efficient line cook serving only a hundred or so plates a night, they are necessary for getting liquids of varying viscosities on hundreds of plates at a time. Like a few good chefs I know, I also eschew tongs in the kitchen, but for lifting searingly hot ramekins filled with sizzling caramel, I prefer them over my fingertips.

(A hint for holding hot ramekins-- buy gardening gloves that have those leetle rubber dots on the palm. They work like a charm unless you have to hold onto said hot thing for an extended period of time.}

Why don't I have any photos to show you? Because Frankie Frankeny does and when our website looks the way we want it to, you'll see some of the below desserts in better light and form than I could do hand-holding my camera set at 1600 ISO during service. {I've begun shooting in the kitchen at Sens and you can see some here.}

Sometimes when I hit a dessert idea on the head-- we've tested it this way and that over and over and over-- I have one of those aha! moments and whoooosh, the dessert is released from my mind and heart and there it sits, happy and ready to be eaten with small fork and spoon.

Other times I set something down in front of cooks armed with critical mouths and I see what the consensus is. Even if a dessert does not feel absolutely and certainly complete I will place it on the menu because I know while we make and serve it every day, I will work out its kinks and stiff spots. It's a strange balance to strike because of course I am tortured by the ones which feel unfinished and I feel like the motherbird watching a chick fall to their death because its tiny wingspan was not fully realized.

But all in all I am happy with how the opening menu has fleshed out. My team is doing a fantastic job executing and as the season changes further specials will appear and maybe make it onto the menu.

last course/ dinner

pear & buckwheat
poached pear, anson mills buckwheat cake, brown butter crème anglaise
9

butterscotch pot de creme
warm apple crepe, long pepper cream-brown butter vinaigrette
& a dash of honey lebne
8

pistachio gift
vanilla phyllo wrapped pistachio frangipane
with mastic-rosewater ice cream
9

rosemary caramel
slow roasted hazelnuts, supple semolina, rosemary-caramel ice cream
& candied valencia orange
8

warm chocolate
cocoa cake, sensuous chocolate, cardamon ice cream
& shuna’s famous dark chocolate sauce
9

honey-cumin pot de creme
& heirloom apple-walnut-white fig salad
8

lemon essence
citrus soufflé, fennel shortbread, lemon sherbet
& pine nut-date-anise-arbequina oil relish
9

Hot Cocoa with Honey-Marshmallow 4

~ see you soon?

New Year's Eve Dessert Pondering...

I know what you're thinking.

"Good God Man, It's Not Even December Yet And You Are Talking To Us About New Year's Eve Already?!"

Like the fashion industry, restaurants need always be thinking ahead. Everyone plans a wedding and company holiday parties a year or more in advance, so we must always be thinking about the next holiday. When I was at Citizen Cake we had our first fall/winter holiday meeting in June.

Menus need to be written, press needs to be contacted, taste buds need to be teased and tantalized into signing on the dotted line:
        for, where do you want to be on the eve of this new year?

Me? I actually like to stay at home on new year's eve if I have the option. But this year I will be happily plating many a dessert plate with my team and the kitchen crew, waving in 2008 with my new family, in my new home.

So what to serve? What do most people want to have for dessert on the night of the big bash? What will be fun to plate minute after minute, hour after hour, until the wee hours? What will excite my assistants? Can I teach them something new? How can I challenge them and yet satisfy our diners?

What are the flavors most indicative of December turning into January?

Special events mean special menus mean new desserts to try out mean inspiration exploding and shattering over everything, new plates coming from wide reaching conceptualization.

On special nights I like to create delectables not found in the average mindbook, but I want to appeal to a wide-ranging set of palates and imaginations. I think a new year's dessert should be playful but not silly, sophisticated but not dusty, comforting and yet not too traditional.

Chocolate is obvious, but how...

Have you plans for December 31st? Do you do the same thing year after year and love the tradition of it? Do you love the countdown and the kiss? Do you hate the crowds and avoid the streets? Do you have your outfit planned or will wing it the night of? Did you make your reservations already or will you cuddle up with those you love?

One of my most favorite new year's eve nights was 1999/2000. Patrick and I took the dogs on a moonlight walk. Neither of us wore a watch so we had only the faintest idea of when midnight struck. The farm was quiet and the dogs were happy.

A Mandatory Draft. {for front of house workers}

I've always been known for my radical ideas. Not so much that my phone is tapped or I have to wear aluminum foil on my head to receive special signals. But enough so that some of my closest friends look at me askance, tilting their heads like confused woofs and say, "O come on Shuna! You don't really think that, do you?!"

I then look deep into their eyes and assess the terror level.

    [Decide, based on its intensity, whether to say if I was joking or not.]

Don't get me started on people who smoke cigarettes. Or the death penalty. Or needle-exchange programs. Or our impending presidential election. Or the state of our over-fished oceans.

Or the devastating oil tanker crash into the Bay Bridge, dumping thousands of gallons of oil into our water.

Believe me when I say you don't want to know what I think.

But this new KQED piece is on a much less serious note. I'm tired of hearing everyone's service sob stories about this waiter or that in that restaurant or mine or wherever! Go be a waiter! It's not an easy job! Go and be a floor manager and try training waiters in America! Or stop your moaning.

Or get your this-is-how-they-should-wait-on-me expectations in check.

You probably haven't even gotten this far into my snarky post. But if you have, check out my crazy idea at Bay Area Bites, KQED's food blog extraordinaire.

The Best Commercial Ice Cream Maker. In The Whole Wide World.

~Portrait of a Regal Being~

This is the Coldelite LB 100B.

This machine now has another name ~ CARPIGIANI.

It is a Masterpiece.

A Triumph.

An achievement beyond words spoken by mere mortals.

This Machine is not this machine. Don't be confused by false imitators.

out out damned spot!

If time is money than I have just been knighted a King.

Today I churned 4 Quarts of ice cream in 12 minutes.

The fabulous Coldelite CARPIGIANI, the LB 100B, is a machine I know well. I have used it in almost all of my workplaces. It's a trooper. One of the best pieces of equipment you can have in any kitchen. Mostly because pastry chefs and cooks take far better care of equipment than savoury cooks and chefs. We are meticulous.

We want scales to continue to measure down to the gram and we like our kitchens clean.

{Having a bit of OCD can help in a pastry kitchen.}

The first ice cream spun in my gift, my treasure?

Rosemary Caramel Ice Cream.

It's the center of my newest dessert. Slow roasted hazelnuts, valencia orange caramel, supple semolina and deeply buttery shortbread are also on the plate.

I love my new ice cream maker.

And, luckily for me, when I turn on my ice cream machine,

it returns the favor.

 

pastry dreams/ new dessert menu thoughts ~

rosemary caramel, hazelnuts, sage shortbread, candied orange rind, citrus souffle, toasted pine nuts & extra virgin olive oil,

            the scent your hands carry after you've pressed quince's abundant pectin through a cheesecloth sack stuffed with peels and pips

magenta liquid and it's magical fruit, hot devil's food cake fresh from the oven, semolina stiffening in cream and milk, red peppercorns & chocolate,

            the quiet homage, the reverie you pay to a ceramic blade as it licks the cutting board quietly;  most confident, through tough fruit skin

shoutingly bright lemon sherbet-- raw and creamy, icy like snow, fennel seeds found between teeth, a dash of salt brined lemon peel for wicked pleasure,

            jumping on and off of railroad cars: the way it feels to taste all those cumin pot de creme in a row and the lesson you teach your staff-- unspoken but for their mouths registering inconsistencies

sweet pistachio flavor condensed, focused like a tunnel leading to a grove of pistachio trees, crunchy, shattering phyllo, pink rose syrup, Chios Mastic waiting in the corner,

            what is the proportion of this mouth-feel to that? when is crunchy necessary? can a dessert be all about texture without mention of flavor? how far can one take "poetic license?" who notices details? is scent flavor?

Three new desserts in the wings. One about caramel, another on the subject of pistachio-rose and the last an altar to the mighty lemon.

Will I feed you soon?

Opening A Restaurant: The Chef As Manager.

Where we're at:
Week 10 for me, week 4 for the restaurant being open to the public. This whole series can be found here.

Everyone asks how I am. Happy is what I say. Happy and inspired and giddy with excitement. Nervous and anxious, a little, too (until we get reviewed I fear I might not sleep a dead sleep.) happy to have a team again, after long last.

I am very well. How are you?

Last night I tossed and turned. I was thinking about a particular problematic cook and the fruit in the walk-in and my sous chef and my sore right hand and my 2 new desserts and my heartstrings and problem solving and my next day off (I am here to report I now have a weekend = 2 days off in a row) and changing leaves and the cat I am caring for this week. But I slept in and that's what matters.

Sleeping is a place where I work stuff out. Messages come which I already know or clearer pictures of murky ideas untangle. In my dreams I get a kiss I have longed for since last Spring and I wake with a new lease on life.

This past Friday I did something very nerdy. I called friends after I'd worked out a special dessert and got the green light to run it as a special. I was as excited as a kid on the last day of school.

                It is a wondrous feeling when an idea becomes an edible, when a plate becomes a reality, when flavours dance on a plate beautifully, when a plated dessert, zoop!, comes together.

And by Saturday, 2 specials had become reality. {Thank you, those who could make it into Sens at the last minute to savor and swallow my newest creations!}

My team is coming together. Some take a bit more massaging and pushing than others, but this is what makes being a chef different from being a cook. I have to see the whole picture. I have to beat bad habits out of people and replace with good ones. I have to infuse cooks with humility and judge their sensitivities even when they act as macho as a warrior.

        When your opinion means something, I'll ask for it

Managing is not for everyone. Most people think anyone who cooks well is a chef. Most cooks think this too. And nowadays the average cook is bored even before they know anything. Culinary schools, and a growing class gap, teach that all one need to be a chef is a diploma. All one need is a title to be the title. Cooks who have any intuitive cooking skill are few and far between. So we try and teach it. We kick people into gear to help cooks to understand the concept of imperative. We shut them down to know hierarchy. We do not mince words to help them to grasp what authority means. We compliment little so as not to spoil and coddle them.

       this is professional cooking, not a dinner party

Years ago, when Thomas placed me at Bouchon (as Pastry Chef) after The French Laundry (as Pastry Sous Chef), I went to Eric Ziebold to find out about how to manage. His piece of advice is one that has stayed with me and I have passed on to many others.

"You have to manage in such a way as to be able to sleep at night. My way would not work for you. I'm an asshole. But at least I'm an equal opportunity asshole!"

I knew how I did not want to manage. I have worked for chefs violent, intimidating, terrifying, triangulating, bullying, underhanded, mean, harassing, tightly wound, bratty, and silent but ferocious. In some of these chefs I found how they were inspiring, because I do not work for those I don't respect, but I know I could sleep at night if I treated others how many of these people treated me and the rest of their kitchen.

At Citizen Cake, unbeknownst to me, I had the nickname of Drill Sergeant. I think it bothered me for a minute. And then I smiled. Good, I thought, let them be a little afraid. Heh.

If you know me you know that I do not have the body type of a Military Official. But I got a lot done there. I was in charge of a lot of people all at very different levels, and they were always leaving, being replaced by various cooking schools intern/externs who were different ages, had numerous lengths of stays and may or may not have ever lived away from home. These were my children and I was both Mama and Papa, and sometimes underpaid Dominatrix.

Managing is an art. One of the best bosses I ever had was a gentleman named Khaleeq who was my supervisor at The Apple Store when I was there a few years ago. {I was taking an anonymous vacation from my industry.} He knew how to push me and reign me in. He know how to manage each person as an individual and he was an expert at herding us all to get the job done. He was friendly and charismatic and smart and patient. he could call me out, call me on my shit and I knew he appreciated me through his tone. He could be playful and down-to-earth and also serious.

The way I see it, anyone who can take someone like me, who had never understood the first thing about computers, and educate me in such a way as to empower me, is a demi g-d in his own right. I had a connection to Khaleeq which went beyond the job but I knew we wouldn't "hang-out" like friends.

When I manage I conjure my favorite leaders, my most respected teachers, the bosses who made me better, even when it hurt, even when I thought I knew better, even when I was excruciatingly stubborn. And Oy, Have I been Stubborn.

       It's better to be humble than humiliated

I sometimes forget that everyone learns at a different pace. I want them to hurry up and meet their potential. I want those I know to push all their own envelopes and take risks and get out of their fucking comfort zones and feel a little pain, feel some fright, take unknown journeys, feel growing pains, break the chains which they bind themselves in, stop trying to look cool and get on with their dreams, open their hearts to possibilities beyond their constrictive imaginations,

sometimes I forget that

some people move slower because it's how they do it. It's not slow to them. And I have to remember patience. Patience in the face of someones impatience. Patience because until they leave my charge they won't know what they should have appreciated. Think I'm being conceited? I deserve a little, it's been a long time coming. And I know. Because I have worked for those who would rather die than share, rather humiliate than  teach, rather hit than push, rather keep me down than empower.

A few years ago I found myself mentoring a few people. Cooks wanted to know good kitchens to start in. They didn't want to be yelled at or work for screaming chefs. Although I have worked in all sorts of kitchens I would not go back and re-write my history, editing out the violence or the humiliation. Not because I am a masochist, or a sadist in training, but because I believe I am who I am, as chef and human, because of all of my experiences. Each kitchen, each chef, each cook, each pastry chef, each cuisine shaped me. Whether they were 4 or 1 star kitchens, I learned something in each one. Sometimes I learned about ingredients/ shortcuts I hoped to never see again, sometimes I met foods I fell in love with.

Although I worked for people who treated me in ways I neither have, nor do I ever want to treat others like that, I do not regret my time with those people, in those restaurants.

So although I would not place a cook in a kitchen she or he could not handle, it saddens me that we have become so privileged, (soft?), that we cannot be uncomfortable if it means to learn through our un-comfort. I am not abdicating responsibility, I am not giving the ok to horrific management techniques, but I am offering another side in an argument made up of more than one or two sides.

Life is not safe. It's not easy or easy to explain. Like love, passion is torturous. Cooking is emotional. We wear our hearts on our white sleeves and after a night of service we feel beaten up. De-compressing from the line usually involves alcohol, drugs, forgettable sex, incomprehensible emotion, adjective repelling head space.

No lesson I have learned I have learned without incident. The average person needs to crash the same car into the same wall over and over until one figures out their own personal insanity.

I take managing people in the kitchen seriously. If my charges fail, I fail. I am responsible for seeing what they do not see, herding them in a direction which suits them best, figuring out what tone to use which will help them get there, coddling the babies and giving an arm punch to the proud. I am the overseer and the MC. The conductor and the lighting engineer. The yellow lines in the highway and the engine in the car that drives on an on into the distance. I am the cowboy and a shepherd. The moon and then the tide.

And I am invisible. The best teaching happens without our knowledge, we merely graduate smarter. With more self initiative.

I think great teachers possess a certain amount of je ne sais quois. My favorite chefs and pastry chefs defy explanation. Just like my favorite writers or those I have loved fiercely. Everyday I am learning.

As are the people I am taking the time to teach.