EPIC Spring 2013 Dessert Menu

-Jerek

My honest signature dish and how I turned my childhood obsession with fire into a positive!

Ontario Burrata

Roasted Baby Pear, Rooftop Honey, White Truffle 

Fleur De Sel, Cinnamon Smoke

MEPS

Ontario Burrata - 1oz.

Roasted Baby Pear (Honey, Bay Leaf) - 1

Rooftop Honey - Drizzle

White Truffle - TT

Fleur De Sel - Pinch

Cinnamon Sticks - 2

Blow Torch

Bordeaux Wine Glasses

Fancy Plates

Method

1) Pat Buratta dry of excess liquid, place on centre of a very dry plate.  Squeeze your eyelids shut, calmly tell apprentice to always wipe his plates dry before plating...

2) Garnish the pear attractively. This will be the height of the dish so handle with care...the pear, with flair...I dare...so stare, and share on chairs etc... be weird around the apprentice. Make sure to give off a sense of unpredictability.

3) Drizzle the honey over the cheese. Impress the apprentice by steeping the honey bottle in warm water for 2 minutes to loosen just enough to pour smoothly. Verbally mention this.

4) Slice one decent piece of truffle onto the honey.  Tell apprentice it came from Alba, Italy.  Talk up Alba, Italy while preparing this dish.  Coolly explain why only the best white truffles come from Alba, Italy. Do not mention you suspect what you're currently using is likely chinese truffles.

5) Season with Fleur De Sel.  Look very concentrated and hunched over the plate while doing so.  Keep silent and immediately upon finishing, criticize the apprentice for not being ready with step 6 which you have yet to mention.

6) Blow torch two cinnamon sticks until the two ends are amber-red.  Using two inverted Bordeaux wine glasses, hotbox them with cinnamon smoke and quickly place them over the cheese.  Make sure you get the apprentice to do this in front of the pass - right closely to where the guests you wish to impress are seated so you can truly impress everyone -yourself included.

7) Allow the apprentice to urgently call-out for servers, stare at him until a runner picks them up.

Good man.

 

-Jerek

Never compete against a Benihana Chef with 40 years experience.

BETTING ENDS!

Meet Tomio Harikawa. 
Yesterday was his last day before retiring after cooking for forty years with Benihana at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.

Tomio is literally the poster boy for this 1988 Benihana advert.

Out of curiosity and the need to preserve extraordinary skills for the archives, Sous Chef Tom "I know most people" Phuong and I set up a challenge to see just how fast Tomio was at one of the most core skills needed in teppanyaki -shelling shrimp.

To make it interesting, we gave him one minute against Sous Chef Tom as he too can peel a mean shrimp (any other kitchen he would be the fastest).
HA!  The pressure was on good sir.
.

Just to note, shelling shrimp for Benihana means leaving the splayed tails on, but shelling the annoying stabby top-part.

Total naked shrimps;

Tomio "Sayonara!" Harikawa - 15

Tom "Stop laughing at me..." Phuong - 7

My favorite part is how he just cooly walks away...
I am glad we were able to let Tomio feel good about himself over the expense of us.
 

Skill like that only comes from experience. Congrats Tomio!

-Jerek

Mountain Dew has a new breakfast soda and on an unrelated topic, this week I started digging a bomb shelter in my backyard...

This is the wrong direction. Perhaps if it were more local...

This is a very bad idea.  No words will further enhance my position more so then the actual nutritional and ingredient content of this drink laid out below.

To all of you who think this is a good thing, while I am certified as a first-aid responder, no, I cannot administer the insulin for you.

Mtn Dew Kickstart - Fruit Punch 

Type: Bottles, Cans and Cartons Size: 16 fl oz


5 % Juice

Nutrition Info:
Serving size 1 container Per Container
16 fl oz %DV*

Calories 80 -
Total Fat (g) 0 0
Sodium (mg) 170 7
Total Carbs (g) 20 7
Sugars (g) 19 -
Protein (g) 0 0
Vitamin A - 0
Vitamin C - 100
Calcium - 0
Iron - 0
Niacin - 80
Vitamin B6 - 80
Pantothenic Acid - 60

Not a significant source of other nutrients.

*Percent Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
Calorie and nutrient values are rounded as required by the Food & Drug Administration.
This can produce irregularities among sizes. Product may not be available in all areas.

Ingredients:

CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WHITE GRAPE JUICE
CONCENTRATE, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SODIUM
HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE (TO PROTECT FLAVOR), POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVES
FRESHNESS), ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), GUM ARABIC, CAFFEINE, ACESULFAME
POTASSIUM, SUCRALOSE, RED 40, NIACINAMIDE (VITAMIN B3), GLYCEROL ESTER OF
ROSIN, YELLOW 5, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (TO PROTECT FLAVOR), CALCIUM
PANTOTHENATE (VITAMIN B5), SUCROSE ACETATE ISOBUTYRATE, PYRIDOXINE
HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6)

Source
http://www.pepsicobeveragefacts.com/print_infobyproduct.php?bf=1372&b=1051&pf=1814&pu=1026&s=16

Related Articles

Mountain Dew Kickstart Breakfast Drink
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/mountain-dew-kickstart-breakfast-drink_n_2661188.html

Is it time to ban junk food?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/is-it-time-to-ban-junk-food/article9049909/

-Jerek

A Chef’s Diet - 10 rules on how to eat healthy while maintaining your substance addiction.

You’d think cooks are the best foodies ever.  Look at them at work, obsessing over details, putting finesse in everything, and expressing tender feelings through violent outbursts.  They are the John McClanes of the foodie universe. 

Hans Gruber would have a gluten intolerance.

With passion like that, one could be forgiven to assume a cook would use those traits with their own dietary habits. 

 Well, as the saying goes, the shoemaker’s children tend to eat like crap.

Get back in the kitchen!

I remember asking the first chef I worked for what he ate on his days off. 

I was prepared to hear a velvety string of words describing something passionate and cozy. 

You know;

*a window into his heart oozing with affection…

*a tale of a certain dish or ingredient he could not wait to go home too…

*a sensual secret he longed for at the end of hard week… 

I suspected it would be the kind of intimate answer said in the same close knit tone which a good buddy would use if he were secretly showing you photos of his nude girlfriend.

The answer I got was "I dunno, usually Taco Bell..."

I had to raise my standards of where I chose to work.

 Cooks in general are terrible eaters and for a simple reason, they have no time. 

For someone slinging pans for twelve hours, it’s easy to fall into some pretty gnarly habits.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/girlcook/why-cooks-are-the-hungriest-people-at-restaurants

By the time they get off their shift, a cook tends to seek the most direct route to the highest amount of calories possible.  Leftovers from a sauté pan, fryer bowl refuge, red bull, cigarettes, coffee, cheap beer, and Spadina Street grub are all AAA sources. 

It all ends up tasting like sriracha.

While nothing beats Soju and Samgyeopsal Gui at 1am after a winterlicious service, this style of approach makes it tough not getting cremated earlier then assumed.

As someone who is legally responsible for the well-being of a daughter for the next fifteen years (well, thirty if her Italian roots have any weight), it was important to make adjustments to my diet to see my Chicky flourish past the developmental years.  In fact, as a father, it’s my goal to be around long enough to discreetly and seriously threaten my granddaughter’s boyfriends.

Future CMC.

My diet is definitely far from perfect (With my chocolate addiction I am supporting a least one Peruvian cocoa bean farmer's family), but I am asked all the time what I eat on my days off.

  

So here now is my soapbox, holier-than-thou, preachy list of guidelines I use as a chef, at home.

 Rule #1. Buy whole products, and avoid impulse shopping.  Eat first.  

Rule #2. Beef & Pork - Just once a week and like, 4oz. servings.  You may feel a bit less of a man, but your heart and prostate will be happier.

Rule #3. Live off sustainable small fish, bivalves, mollusks, and shellfish. And if you are wondering how to deep fry stuff like mussels, you are dead to me.

Rule #4. Eggs. Sous Vide in the shell at 146.5 for 45 minutes to be trendy. Eat in moderation.

Rule #5. Buy a whole chicken weekly.  Kill it, pluck it, roast it, and make a great dish the first night. Reserve the remaining meat for lunch and turn the bones into stock. 

Rule #6. Take acid.  A lot of sauces, starches, green vegetables, and lettuce do not always need salt to liven up. Buy lemons and good vinegar and use these to heighten flavour.

Rule #7. Have an unreasonably large repertoire of starches in the pantry. Actually, have a pantry too.

Rule #8. Vegetables and fruit are underrated.  For once, I agree with PETA.  Avocado and champagne mangoes are the foie gras of the plant world.

Staying on the good side of the these people.

Rule #9. Invest in breakfast.  A bound-mix of yogurt, berries, bananas, flax seed and whole oats provides huge amounts of energy for the day and also gives your war-torn colon the consistent schedule it needs.

Rule #10.  Learn to love cooking at home while listening to music.  Is anyone else really feeling that new Justin Bieber song? Because I am shredding it up! 

  

Not embarrassed. 

-Jerek

The tipping point...

Why, when the subject of tipping comes up with FOH friends, I get the following arguments;

A) Servers are generally single mothers working to support their kids.

B) If you don't like it, don't cook!

...

While I too, can picture the exhaustive looking waitress in a sketchy deli, the underlying tone it implies is that generally, servers are barely making ends meet on their wages.  This is far from truth. In Ontario, the average serving rate including tips range from $20 - $40 an hour. From a cook's view, isn't it safe to assume there are BOH single parents too?

The latter statement is a cop-out. I love what I do, if I don't like something about it and can see a solution, I am prone to stick around and attempt changes.

When you think about it, what possesses everyone to be so placid on their reasoning to give up to 20% of a bill (regardless of mark-up) towards tipping?

As a professional cook (and someone who is admittedly on the biased end of this argument), it's hard to see the logic for tipping on anything other then outstanding service.

So lets be clear where I stand. In restaurants*, it's easy to see the imbalance in earnings between FOH and BOH.

(*By this, I mean stand alone restaurants. Hotels, banquet halls and other large production kitchens tend to pay cooks much better comparatively. Though, servers at some of these places reach six figures.).

This is an active source of animosity that creates a division between the two and results in many cooks to walk away from the industry.

Sure. Why go to school for two years, do a three-year apprenticeship and end up at $13 an hour (or the flat $140 rate for 12 hours at decent kitchens)?
Its frustrating to watch under-educated staff put in equal value of work, yet walk away with 100% more salary then the poverty line hugging cook.

I have always thought if I ever had my own restaurant I would need to change the pay scale. 

Rather then only do an apprenticeship for cooks, I would run an apprenticeship of restauranteurs.  Formal hospitality education and an extrovert personality would be prerequisite. Training would be all encompassing.  Both BOH and FOH would be taught to everyone and all would do equal time throughout the restaurant to become well rounded hospitality specialists. 

 Solid base salaries and gratuities would be evenly distributed according to rank.

 The reasoning is pragmatic. The staff would be better paid, better educated, work in a professional environment with higher standards, and FOH/BOH unity would be solid.

Finally, why not offer serving staff formal education and apprenticeships?
Make them a proper profession.
Pushing enhanced quality and increased sales aside, it would blow away the stigma of their chosen career and offer a level of respectability the great ones already deserve.

 All cooks have stories about the sad hilarity of under-prepared staff, and the sad thing is, this is totally accepted and we are complacent to it.  

We could be so much better.

Tipping in North America is more of an assumed duty expected on the guest under all circumstances, save but for the very worst of experiences.
Like cooks, great servers happen to be the exception, not the norm, so why is the tipping assumed?

I recently came accross a great TedX presentation dealing all about gratuities in Ontario.  It's a poignant watch that nails the correlation and causality of having a tipping culture in hospitality.

The video is worth the watch and something to mull over next time you blindly shell out 20% because you don't want to seem cheap.

-Jerek

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Sweet, 37 999 999 to go...

On the surface, there should be nothing that bothers me about shark fin soup.

  Like most things I love, it contains a rich chicken stock.  In fact, the recipes I looked at for this even include pork stock, which obviously makes me want to become violent with happiness.  Fundamentally, these are two factors that will make anything taste frickin' tops.  

 So what's not to like, negative Jerek, 2013 version?

The fin part of shark fin soup is what bothers me.

I suppose as a Chef I shouldn't be so bothered by the soup because they use shark and I have a personal love for them, and I'm not. 

I also do not oppose it because it offers no flavor, or that its an overrated product which comes from a prehistoric beast were the meat should be marinated in milk before cooking to extract the piss out of it (really!). I don't.

As a Chef, I am offended by the same reasons everyone else is;

5% yield makes you a douche.

National Geographic conservatively estimates 38 million sharks are killed each year globally just for their fins.  As a side, often the meat is worth less then 10% by weight compared to the fins, so, not being worth its space on the boat, the fin-less shark, still alive, is cast overboard. Not only is this the dickiest thing you can do on a boat, but keep in mind, this is done for a soup used exclusively as a status symbol. 

That is, this is not something used for the greater good like, to cure cancer or do something about my receding hairline... This isn't even eaten because the taste is nip-slip awesome.

No.  

The soup's purpose is to tell people they have lots of money. 

That is a lame reason for 38 million sharks to fatally twitch towards the bottom of the sea yearly. 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061012-shark-fin.html

Wanna see gore? Watch 15 minutes of Gordon Ramsay trying not to loose it on a fishing boat with dudes hacking away at sharks.

-Jerek