Striper Cam, How to break down a Striped bass, from the Knife’s point of View

Well this is one of those times when I say my famous line, “It seemed like a god idea.”  I mounted the GoPro camera on the filet knife that I use to break down fish so you all can get a real close view of a fish breakdown.  First off, you can barely hear me, second, there is too much down time between me stepping off the camera to do something, or to adjust the damn camera from sliding off the knife.  Hey that handlebar mount you guys at GoPro make doesn’t fit a knife handle?  Who knew?  The flying Squirrel man can go sixty miles per hour through the air and no problems, I can’t even break down a 15 lb fish.  The kicker is when the camera drops off and starts to beep at me and the view screen cuts out.  I thought I lost the footage, but it was still there, plus me trying to figure out what is wrong, so you get a great shot of my mug as I blindly go about it.  Finally the camera shuts down and you don’t get the last part or the blowfish break downs.  So next time I will wear the camera on my chest so, one you can hear me, two I can hold the knife better, and not be so shakey, and three, so there will me no malfunctions.  So cheers to me being a better fisherman than I am with electronics.

Only God Forgives

Well another May third has come and gone.  One more time in the water for my cousin that passed.  This year was probably the worst one, as the wind was howling from the north east at about 27 mph.  I really think that he is up there laughing his ass off at me trying to get out through that slop and actually catch a wave.  It has to be hilarious.  His style of humor too.  The thing that made this year so tough was not only did I think of all those that have passed last year, Doc, Quint, Doc, and Paul, but yesterday my wife and I laid to rest her mother as well.  That and the fact that I did not have my man Will Tucker to make light of the day.  Will you would have loved my one wave that when caught (shallow as the wind kept pushing me inside) I was pretty much at Gate when I got out, and then had to hump the board back to Prescott.   So up above we see the Rouge, for you Will, the Stones, for me, and Butch’s Miller light, because he loved it in the can.  The Guinness is for Paul C.  I thought if I am going to continue to make a fool out of myself on this day he should get a laugh out of it too.  So welcome to the party Paul.  Oh by the way, no fish either.

Trout Series Vol 2

Today we are going to do something a bit different, while teaching a few lessons about professional cooking.  Since I am on the trout in the Wissahickon right now, we are going to be eating a lot of trout.  The Tandoori was good, normally I would bake that with a bigger and more sturdy fish, such as Turbot or Brill.  Now who cooks a lot of trout?  Well people that live near fresh water, and this does not just mean here in America.  Europe is loaded with tons of regions that are near a body of freshwater.  Normally we think of coastal towns in Spain, France, and the Netherlands and their rich culinary history of fresh fish.  But do not overlook the landlocked chefs who work everyday with fresh catches, just from fresh water, not the sea.  There is even a place in Germany that is known for their catfish, so Blua how do you like that bitch!  And you all thought that was a white trash fish.

So let’s look at bistro cooking here.  Something that is simple, and always, and I mean always, uses the local ingredients.  We are going to clean our fish a bit different today.  First I want you all to get a pair of scissors.  If you have a fancy pair of kitchen shears, get em.  If not, Sewing scissors from Fiskars is the best in my book.  Cut off the dorsal and pectoral fins of your fish.Next, you are going to cut a V into the stomach cavity and remove all the guts and entrails from your fish.  Smart fisherman will sort through the food to see what their fish was eating.  Mine had a ton of bugs in it, explaining why I caught it on a grasshopper lure.Discard all that trash.  Now here is where we will get a bit tricky.  If you feel that this is unnecessary, then by all means, clean your fish the regular way and meet me at the bottom for the recipe.  Now take your filet knife and make a slit against the spine from the head to the tail, without going through the top of the fish.  Do this on both sides.  Your first time will not be perfect, this takes time! (Wait until I show you how to bone it out from the top so you can stuff the whole thing!).  Now get your shears again and cut the spine away from the head, leaving the head attached to the filets.Take your filet knife and butterfly the fish out along the gill line, and with the shears, cut the spine away from the top of the fish and cut the tail off.Clean away any viscera and the belly bones.  Again if you feel this is not for you, just do filets.

Now take some pignoli  nuts, about a tablespoon or more.  Double this for two people.  Roast them over low heat until they start to turn color.  When they start to get brown, drop a tiny bit of butter in your pan, and I mean a tiny bit, like the end of your knife.  Oil woks as well.   When the butter melts (and it will be instantly) sprinkle Cajun spice over the nuts and shake off the heat so as to not burn the spice.  Here is your lesson number one!  Sometimes something like Cajun spice can be too overpowering to your product, in this case a very mild brown trout.  So you want to layer your flavors.  Here you achieve it by not only adding nuts, but the spice to the nuts.    Now trim some string beans or some Haricots Verts, if you really want to do the Bistro thing to the end.  In a saute pan, bring to a boil 1/3 cup of water and a tablespoon of butter.  Add your beans and cook until tender/the liquid is almost absorbed.  Meanwhile in a non stick pan get a tablespoon of oil hot.  Season your fish with salt and pepper and lemon juice,  and drop in the pan skin side down Propping the head up on the side of the pan.  Cook well on the skin side, and flip over briefly to the flesh side to finish.   Remove and get back to your beans.  Now that the liquid is absorbed, salt pepper and add the spiced nuts to your pan and remove from heat.  Top your fish with this and sit down to enjoy.Not my best picture I know, but all the rest looked horrible with the fish head, when in reality it looked quite nice.  Cheers then to being an better fisherman and chef, than a photographer.  Off to the streams then.  Soon……. the beach and stripers!

Once a Runner

What seems like a lifetime ago I was a runner.  Not a jogger, but a runner.  My best friend and his trainer used to compete on a level that was well above me, but it made me proud to be part of their group.  This pride stemmed from many reason, including being told that I would never accomplish anything good in my life, and watching me do just that every time my feet touched blacktop, to being in a group that was fun and healthy.  My reasons for not running are just as many, including a foot injury and a different work schedule.

All of this is besides the point, especially after I saw the news last night on the Boston Marathon bombing.  It is totally unfathomable to me.  Not only for the sheer act of mindless terrorism, but because I still know many runners.  One of which is a former co worker and wife of a good friend of mine, who competes in many marathons, and they are a very important part of her life.

My best time for a marathon was 4:23 ( I was drinking wine every mile, surprise!  Another story for another day) so today I propose a toast to all those that were injured or killed.  All those with family affected. All those that finished the race that ran to the hospital and gave blood.  All those that were there.  Today at 4;23 pm stop and have a shot with me. All that know me and those that don’t.  Randy I am counting on you to bring your group together for this.  All your warriors there in Florida , toast to those who cannot.

Trout Tandoori

Ok, enough bitching and moaning, let’s get back to cooking!  Been on some trout and crappies at the Wiss, both on flies and on spinning gear.  Now what to do with the trout, especially since they are a bit on the small side.  Legal size is seven inches, which ain’t much.  Pictured is a niner, and the filets were still about the same size as the low end of my king fish.Caught this baby on the fly, thank you George Costas (except that I forgot that tricky knot to tie on nymphs, so I had to use a grasshopper pattern, yeah , yeah, I know that is a summer fly, but hey, I cannot see those small ass things.) so let’s see, most people smoke their trout, but I am not a big fan of smoked fish, plus I do not have a smoker.  So I decided to go with a Tandoori.  Now first off, real Indian Tandoori is not just the spice mix, but a procedure as well.  Most of us know chicken Tandoori, but anything can be done this way, as the way to cook in this manner is to have a Tandoori oven, which is a large clay pot with a “chute” if you will, on top.  This oven is buried in the ground, then loaded up with coals that when lit, keep an even heat in the oven.  Food is loaded and removed through the chute sticking out of the ground.  Since my Tandoori oven is with my smoker (non existent)  there is a short cut one can do (as is with smoking as well, but I am not stovetop smoking at the house here).

First, clean the fish, keep the skin on, and debone any pin bones left in.  You will need;

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1/2 tea spoon tandoori powder

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon garlic

dash of salt

one half of a lemon

Well I said no more complaining, but I cannot help myself.  Find the Tandoori powder first.  I was told when I moved to the city that I would be able to find anything I need within walking distance.  BOLLICS !!!! Amazon has become my best friend let me and my credit cards tell you.  I did find the spice at a bulk spice store, but I have used better.  If you like this recipe and want to do other items, do yourself a favor, find one of the tins of the spice, and get that.  But find this before you catch your fish.

Alright now that that is out of the way, mix everything, but the lemon.  Squeeze the lemon on the flesh of the fish, and then paint on the marinade.  Let the fish marinate in the refrigerator for about two hours.  ( I left mine in there all day because I have to work as well nyah nyah.) When it is time to get to cooking, set y0ur oven to 180 degrees.  This is where the short cut comes in.  A Tandoori oven cooks at even temp, so does a lot of things that you would bake with a water pan.  So you need to make one here for your oven.  any shallow pan with a mesh on it to hold the fish and let the water steam up through it will do.  Here I use my roasting pan.You will cook this for a bout thirty minutes.  Oh,I know what you are saying, that is waaaaaaay too long for fish.  Again it isn’t as this is a different cooking method.  I would usually do Turbot this way, as that fish lends itself to baking much better, and that takes longer.  Chicken is real long.  Anyhow, in the meantime, you have plenty of time to think of something to accompany your fish.  I chose to braise Bok Choy in some sauteed onions, rice vinegar, soy, mirin, and siracha. Not middle Eastern, but delicious none the less.  Ok thirty minutes later, you got dinner.Stay tuned for more unconventional trout recipes, as I refuse to just smoke my fish.  Cheers and fish on everyone.

Kicking it Old School

If I came to your house for dinner an hour late, then criticized all your furniture and your wive’s haircut and said all your opinions were stupid, how would your feel?

-Marco Pierre White

Craig Labon?  Fuck him, what does he fucking know?  I work Twenty years before I can be called a chef.  What are the qualifications to be a food critic?  How do they train?

-Georges Perrie

A lot of controversy here in Philly restaurants right now. Horse meat, being in the top five for fish fraud (putting a high end fish on the menu and serving something cheaper), pig’s anus as calamari (I might have to file that one under the skate wing as scallops rumor) and food critics being douchebags.

Me?  I will take a formal food critic (one with a regular job in a magazine) whose opinion I can agree or disagree on over the hoards of online idiots that everyone seems to turn to for a restaurant review.  Now before my fellow chefs start yelling “Traitor”  allow me to explain.  See I have to be a bit biased in this matter.  I work at a place here in the city that is very old school, and has been established.  It has been around for a little under three decades, therefore it doesn’t fall under the radar of food critics, douchebag or otherwise.  Instead we are under only the scrutiny of online critics, douchebag or otherwise.  (You may insert idiot in front of their computer voicing opinions jokes here) I’m sorry, “Yucky” is not a valid criticism to me.  Neither is “The waitress uniforms were really cute.”  These were reviews for a Vetri place I like very much and has been heaped with praise by those whose job it is to criticize.

One of the reasons I have been given for this, is that once the restaurant becomes established and it has been around for awhile, the critics move on to what is new.  All well and good, but what about places that keep up with the times, or get new chefs?   The last time Labon was in the Saloon (a very old school South Philadelphia restaurant), he wrote that the upstairs looked like a ChiChis.  This is because the walls are adored with a collage of old pictures and signs.  There is however a reason for this.  One of the owners is a historical antique dealer, specifically architecture antiques, and also specifically Philadelphia.  everything on those walls comes from an old established Philadelphia building.  That being besides the point, the food there is fantastic!   Most people I know complain that it is “mobbed up” or it is too expensive.  These are people that also admit they haven’t been in there in ten years, or more.  That would explain the mobbed up comment as Joey Merlino used to go there a lot, but it wasn’t the only place in the city he went to, it just seems to be the only place people remember.  Must be the South Philly thing.  As for expense, I have spent just as much at Zahav for the same amount of food.    And guess what?  The food is just as good.  It is just that no one of name has gone to cook there.  I would love it if some one like Sabatino worked there a year before  he got his own place.  That would be a riot.

What about a place like Villa De Roma?  Ok, they aren’t doing anything different than what they have been doing for three or more decades.  Here is the thing, they do it really really well.  I know this, do you?  When I get someone who asks me where to go that is just an old school Italian red sauce joint, that is where I send them.  A lot of times they look at me with that “Oh yeah, I forgot about that place.” look.  Even the above mentioned Marc Vetri loves a good meatball every now and then.  How about a review about that?  Why not?  What is wrong with the city’s culinary heritage?   When I went to culinary school, as students we were told you have to understand the classics and the rules, before you break them.  To all the city’s foodies out there, I issue you the challenge. Know the trailblazers before you walk the path.  Try your neighborhood haunt before you chase the newest and hottest chef.  You may be surprised at what the chefs are doing in the kitchen or whts going on at the bar.  Cheers.

Food Snobs

There is a group of restaurants here in the city called Han Dynasty, which has become quite famous for their contemporary Chinese cuisine. Dan Dan noodles are the most popular, but when you get your order of them, the staff at one of the Three Hans will mix the noodles for you, as chef Chiang does not believe that many westerners can do it properly.

I have waxed eloquently about my first restaurant job that lasted for twenty years in my small hometown Vineland, but I have not told the story of the very first place I worked at.  It was one of the only Chinese places in Vineland at the time, and it was the only one with a dinning room, not just a take out place.  It served the standard fare that we are all used to, plus a few very regional dishes, something that is still not typical in that town.  I only worked there to save the job 0f one of the only people that would talk to me in my high school.  A kid named Bill Barlow, who got sick and knew that, being the only Caucasian working there, he would be replaced by an Asian family member if he did not show up.  Calling out sick is not a big thing in Chinese restaurants.  So I went in and filled in (no pay of course and I was horribly underage)  and got yelled at a lot, as I had no idea how to do Bill’s job.  Now this place was not only rare that it was in Vineland, but it had no silverware either.  That’s right, no forks, knives, or spoons.  Just chopsticks.  And the staff patiently showed everyone how to use them, including me, when staff meal came around.  Again, small town, early eighties, and in the three days that I was there, I heard “I don’t know why I let you drag me to this Chink place honey, you know this shit gives me the runs.” or something like it in the dinning room.  Yet they would give everyone, even the most stubborn chopstick lessons.

Fast forward to Chinese New Years 2013.  I am sitting in Island Shore in Marmora NJ to celebrate with my old Sous Chef, who used to be married to the head chef and owner.  I feel people looking at me in the dinning room, and I realize that I am the only Caucasian using chopsticks.  My first thought is not”Look at all these idiotic na boobs.  I am sooo much cooler for using the appropriate utensils.” It was “Why hasn’t anyone shown them how to?”  Or maybe they have had a lesson , and feel more comfortable using table ware.  They are eating and having a good time and a good meal.  Chef Allen Feng only cares that you like his food, and he, like I, know that as adults, you don’t need someone to stir your noodles properly.  I know where I am from, and he knows where he is at.  My wife recently had her son’s name tattooed on her arm  in a small Sailor Jerry banner.   Some of her friends were making fun of her, saying that she was real South Philly now.  I was like, Yeah, you live here, right?

It is getting harder and harder to see a DJ live that still spins actual records.  The Swedish House Mafia will come live and be drinking Greyhounds on stage waving their arms in the air with the crowd.  They aren’t even playing an Ipod with their music on it, someone else is.  But there are 50, 000 people there having the time of their lives, so what is the problem.   As a chef, I want to see people eat properly.  I want desperately to preserve traditions regarding food and see others preserving those traditions as well.  I want to smack bad sushi rolls out of the hands of the uninitiated.   Yet I have to realize that there are those out there that love their Coors light and well done burgers.  It is all supposed to be fun, right?   Besides, if everyone ate “properly” think how expensive those already expensive meals would be?

So cheers to the lunar year of the Snake (there you go, talking about my pipe again) grab some General Chow and ask your server at Han’s to show you how to stir your own noodles, after all you are an adult who can use chopsticks.

God and Tipping

So Restaurant week has ended and I thought I would weigh in on the whole controversy surrounding the Reddit post from a St Louis server who felt that she got stiffed by a customer.  The basis of the story is that a server at an Applebees had a party of twenty and when said party was given the check, which had an automatic gratuity of 18% added (an Applebees policy,as well as many other restaurants, chain or otherwise) the customer, who is a pastor, crossed out the tip, replaced the number with a zero, and wrote “I give God ten percent, why do you get 18″.  See above for the photo of said check posted on Reddit. Here is where the problem starts.  The pastor signed her name (even using the title of pastor) and that name appears on the Reddit post for all that reads it to see.  At first it was thought that this was a anti religious post, but when checked out, it was a legit complaint about shitty tippers.  The title of the post was “Sorry  Sir, I guess God will pay for my rent and groceries.”   The research done into the post to determine if it was a hoax or not, became an embarrassment to the pastor and got the server fired.

So what do I have to say about all this?

To the server, I say GOOD FOR YOU!

To the pastor, and all others that use religion as a reason for no tipping, or lousy tipping, and to Applebees, I say FUCK YOU ALL!

I do not want to hear the argument that this person was publicly humiliated.  If anyone goes into a restaurant and has a bad meal or bad service, or a perception of bad food and service, that person can go home and get on to many websites designed for the very point of complaining, Reddit being just one of many.  It is about time that we in the foodservice industry does the same.  If no tipping ties into your beliefs and you are proud of those beliefs, then you should not feel publicly humiliated at all.  The pastor later apologized for the snide comment, but claimed to have left a tip, but less than the 18%.  Then why did you write 0 on the dude that is your credit card receipt?  So now you are a shitty tipper, and as far as I am concerned, a liar, and someone who cannot take an ounce of criticism.

One more time with feeling people.  Here is how tipping works in this country.  What you leave the server is what they earn.  Period.  There are some places that have a wage for servers for tax reasons, but it is never over two dollars an hour, and that is the ceiling.  Eighteen to twenty percent is standard if you felt that everything was up to par.  Ten percent is common as a complaint if something was wrong, serving wise.  Two percent is you trying to be insulting,  Zero is you basically stealing time from your server.  Yes theft, because they could be waiting on tables that tip like normal human beings instead of a bunch of cheap freeloaders. Saying you don’t tip because that you are a head of a church (pastor, minister, deacon, whatever your title) is like your congregation telling you they do not tithe. It is that simple.  No tithing no church.  No tipping equals no wage earning for that server.  And yes you were embarrassed, as you should be because you are a cheap thief.  If tipping is not your thing (and don’t leave those annoying cards explaining why you do not tip for religious reasons, as your server does not have any more time to waste reading that drivel) then stay the fuck home, or in the homes of your flock, or have a community meal at your place of worship.  I would not think of going to your “church” naked or drunk (unless that is your thing, then get in touch with me here) so do not come to our places of business is you are not going to behave accordingly.

Oh and Applebees, for not standing behind your server for doing what every other person in the world has the tight to do, fuck you big time.  There are not enough curse words that I have learned in all the languages used in the kitchens that I have worked in to describe how I feel about you.  If the server in question went home, jumped on the laptop and talked smack about her bosses, coworkers, or company policy, then yes, you have every right to terminate her ass post haste.  To rightfully bitch about a cheap fuck of a customer, that by the way, broke one of your company policies, it just shows that you do not stand by your family.  It is a shame that I do not eat a chain restaurants, because it would feel so good to ban your ass for the rest of my life.

I do hope you, the server in question finds a better job, and do not let this detract from standing up for yourself so superbly.  Which is more than can be said for pastor Alles Bell (sp?)  Cheers to you.

The 4 Things I Hate About Restuarants

It’s not about the bike”

Lance Armstrong’s title to his book about beating cancer, and his answer why he was still going to race in the Tour De France.

Maybe it is because Mr Armstrong has put the view of professional cycling back into the dark ages (the seventies and eighties), or maybe it is I am busy with work and cannot focus on a good post to put up here, I am feeling a bit pissy lately. I have not had a time to cook myself and have gotten out of the grove.  I have, however been going out to eat quite a bit.  Call it lazy, call it R&D, call it what you will, I have been eating well none the less.  With restaurant week upon us here in the city of brotherly love I have seen a few things that get under my skin.  My “Don’t eat fish on Monday” list if you will.  I will spare the names of the guilty, as most of us have witnessed one or two of these offenses anywhere.

1)  HAVING OUTSIDE DINNING IF YOU HAVE NO ROOM FOR OUTSIDE DINNING.  You have a patio, or a designated area to put seating, then by all means, go for it.  Putting a few tables and chairs that you recently got at WalMart/the local hardware store/Ikea dose not mean you have outside dinning.  It is worse when you just plop this setup on a busy sidewalk that was never intended for your customers.  Sitting at a wobbly table and having my chair fetch up in the divots in the sidewalk as pedestrians are trying to get by, and having your server try to navigate this is infuriating beyond words.  To make matters worse, I have witnessed places that didn’t even schedule a separate server to do these idiotic acrobatics.   In a word, it is just greedy.  In some cases it is illegal.  I could go on all day about this one, as my wife finds these places charming and I have had to go to many of them.  I would prefer to move on to some other place that is not so crowded that they are now overcrowded.  If the place you want to have brunch at is guilty of this charge, yes you will get a seat, as they have now added more, but your service will be greatly compromised, and your morning beer, mimosa, bloody mary, will be spilling out of it’s glass on your unlevel table.

2) POORLY CONCEIVED CRAFT COCKTAILS. Ten years ago this would have been Poorly conceived beer list, and there are still places on the Jersey Shore that fall into that category still to this day.  For this one I will leave out the name of the guilty party, but give you the example of what they did.  This is by no means the only example, it is just the most glaring that I have witnessed.  I went to a “Nucky ” night, you know the lead character in Boardwalk Empire” , both the book, and the HBO special.  With the Constitution Center having a prohibition exhibit at the same time, it seemed like a good idea.  The drinks were horrible, to say the least.  The first one “The Atlantic City Expressway” was drinkable and that is where the good times ended.  First off the expressway wasn’t built until Nucky was in prison.  The second drink was “the Chicago Typewriter” the nickname of the Thompson machine gun with the drum load that are featured in all the period gangster movies.  It was as bad as it’s name.  These drinks had too much thought put into them.  Whoever came up with them was trying to copy the formula of basement bars, the only thought is that ” they taste like a lot of booze.” Here is the thing.  Most basement bars are trying to copy pre prohibition cocktails that did not use a lot of non alcoholic mixers.  There are tons of  books out there that they could have used instead of trying to invent their own.  If they had made a few of these they would have gotten a little practice before trying their hand at it.  I left before the “Charleston”

3) OFFAL TASTING MENU’S THAT I HAVE TO TAKE OUT A LOAN TO EAT.  Offal used to be what the butchers ate.  What the chefs who did their own butchering ate.  This was peasant food!  Yes the sign of a good chef is the ability to make the leftovers and nasty bits look and taste good, but again, with practice this can be accomplished quite handily.  The French Laundry can get away with charging 200 plus dollars for a 30 course tasting menu that includes offal and organ meat, but when I see places charging 100 or more for a four to five course dinner, I start to question the egos involved here.  Both the customer’s and the chef’s.  Are you saving the organs after you do your own butchering?  Or are you buying buckets of kidneys and brains? Give it to the help. Better yet let the VIPs get it, but charge accordingly.  Not triple digits.

4) SUSHI AT A PLACE THAT HAS NO BUSINESS SERVING SUSHI. I thought this practice went out a few years ago.  It hasn’t .  Quite simply, if you are going to “Joe’s  house of comfort food ” and they have that sad looking sushi bar in the middle of their place and everything is a “roll” run, run fast.

Well hopefully nest time I will have something more positive to write about, until then, here is to surviving restaurant week, cheers.

Let Me Tell you a Story

Many years ago my best friend wanted to learn how to cook.  I had just graduated culinary school, and had dumped my Craftsman toolbox of knives and ring molds, and pastry bags, and all the other tools of the trade that we had to have to get through two years of ACC, in the back of my closet.  I was wholly content to live at the Jersey Shore, working two to three days a week and being incredibly broke.  The skateboard shop that I had tanked with the coming of the nineties and wheels that just about covered your bearings.  Many of my instructors told me that I should never be in a commercial kitchen, despite me graduating with a medal.  I had been involved in a hit and run, where the driver ran a stop street and creamed me and my last bmx bike I owned, thereby killing one form of fuel-less transportation.

It was not a high time in my life.

My best friend Pete had a subscription to Bon Appetite magazine and was teaching himself how to cook.  If anyone remembers Bon Appetite from the late eighties to early nineties, then you remember the recipes being unnecessarily long and choked with extra steps, or poor directions.  This was to help home cooks be a little more diligent.   To a food service employee, it was infuriating.  So with what little knowledge I had from my two years of school, combined with my five years in the industry (one as a dishwasher and one as a busboy, but hey, it was a professional kitchen) I agreed.  We tackled recipes that we did not read past the ingredients, thus killing our times when the recipe said “marinate meat for twenty four hours” and we had two to put the whole thing together for that nights dinner.  (I got a subscription to the magazine so I could cut that out after a few months of that jazz.)  We foolishly tackled recipes from Marco Pierre’s White Heat cookbook, not measuring in grams or substituting the English ingredients for what we thought they were.  (Hey who knew that Noily Pratt was a vermouth?  White wine worked, sort of.) We burned sugary desserts with plumber’s torches because we didn’t have a dessert torch and they were the same anyway, right?  We screwed up, and put out late dinners (try two to three hours late, not a great thing in a suburban family setting during the week.) had things that were over cooked, and undercooked.   But you know what?  It was fun.  A lot of fun.  So much so that I kept doing it with him until he went to college. Oh and another thing we learned?  We learned from our mistakes.  It made us better cooks.  I know it did.  And it gives us a lot of great stories.

So I get a rare weekend day off recently as my restaurant is doing a deep cleaning and repair job to the kitchen.  Pete tells me to come on over and we will cook family meal, just like old times.  He gives me my mission, which is to find something challenging, but fun.  I look in all the new and flashy cookbooks that I have been stroking one out over the last few years.  You know, Alenia, Noma, Fat Duck, all that stuff that takes days and sometimes a science lab to do.  It is a good thing that reality hit me enough to decide that making my best friend spend 50 to 100 bucks on one meal that his two daughters may or may not eat, and age and skills now on our side, we may or may not accomplish, was not in our best interest.  Who said I didn’t learn anything from back then?  So I tell him humbly that mission failed.  Inspiration wasn’t coming.  So he pulls down his version of food porn, the Jacques Pepin cookbook (complete with dvd) and chooses two recipes he has been stroking one out to, but hasn’t dared ask out yet.  Consomme and Chicken Ballontine.

Ok real quick without going into the actual recipes.  Consomme is a clear soup made by filtering stock with vegetables and a protein, usually ground beef or egg whites, or both.  Chicken Ballontine is a whole chicken completely deboned and then stuffed and tied up.  Both of these recipes have fallen out of favor (go back up to my choice of cookbooks) but were not only staples of my culinary school, but in my job in kitchens.  I used to make a pretty mean consomme back when I worked soups in the Maplewood (you could read the date on a dime at the bottom of the stock pot baby) and I have boned out enough chickens in my life to be kinda bored with it.  It, however is a perfect choice and I have done neither of these thins in about a decades time, and Pete has never done them, and like I said, cooking family meal under the gun of time (or lack of) in a time of his life when both he, and his wife work, and they have two children, well you get the point.  Who says he hasn’t learned a thing or two from that time period as well.

So I go over and we watch some of the dvd and in this day and age, I am still amazed when I watch a great, and I mean truly great chef, such as Pepin work.  Even trying to be demonstrative to the home cook, he is moving effortlessly and fast.  I would love to have seen him move back in the day during service.  We get to work.We set out to debone, stuff, and and truss our chicken. Pete even bought a spare in case we screw it up on the first try.  Hey another lesson learned.  Here is the thing.  Back when we did the laundry dinner together last year, I watched him break down the roosters.  This is not even going to make him sweat.  He says ‘Ok let’s get started.” and I tell him “What, two people are going to de bone one chicken?  I’ve done this, this is your date, go for it” And he did.  I lent a hand to help him along, but he had it.  Meanwhile I chopped the veges for the consomme.  Pete cleaned up, made his stuffing, and got to trussing.  All that tree work made him good with the twine.Now it was my turn, I had heated up the stock that I brought over, so now I put my veges in the soup pot, added the egg white, tempered it with water and started to add warm stock.   I stirred and we all watched as the soup started to get “muddy” looking.  Consomme will always look worse before it gets better.  Basically the protein acts like static to attract all the solids in the stock.  Once it came up to a boil I took it partway off the burner and turned it down to a low simmer for forty minutes.

And you know what?  It was FUN!  I mean really fun!  Sure I could do this stuff standing on my head now, but you know what?  I should do it more often for family meal around here.  I should cook some of the classics at work, not just for family meal, but for the menu.   The first time I cooked with Pete, it rekindled the love that I had when I first wanted to be a chef.  something that I will always be thankful for. This time it taught me that maybe I need to remember just what it was like first stepping up to those recipes that gave my profession a history.  So it looks like I have a few more lessons to learn from my dinners with Pete and family.