Narz
keeping it real
Do you put love into your food? Do you think the fact that you prepared the food (as opposed to someone else with the exact same technique) makes a difference in terms of taste and nutritional value on some subtle level?
Ask a Cook
- Thread starter punkbass2000
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Drewcifer
Agent of Karma
I think all good cooks respect the food. The challenge as a chef is to staff your kitchen with only those people. You can tell you have won when some cool obscure ingredient comes in and everyone in the kitchen stops what they are doing and admires it like a work of art.
Much of the stuff I do is scratch cooking without recipes so the food does tend to have an individualistic and hand crafted feel to it but I am not so vain as to think that other people can't do it just as well.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Absolutely. There are few things that irritate me more than someone who doesn't care about their job. I always strive to make the food the right way, down to the most subtle details. I doubt it has any impact on the nutritional level, though. But, it is a work of art in its own way, and I take pride in being able to look at the finished product and say: "yea, I made that.
"
Jawz II
Oh Dear
how come everything i make that is more complicated than boiling rice tastes like crap? i cant even boil pasta right... 
i might have to get married/move in with my mom to eat right again.
maybe you can share some of your best simple recipes? by simple i mean:
1. made up of stuff everyone has/can get easily, so no roasted snail penises from southern france etc
2.really hard to screw up.
i might have to get married/move in with my mom to eat right again.
maybe you can share some of your best simple recipes? by simple i mean:
1. made up of stuff everyone has/can get easily, so no roasted snail penises from southern france etc
2.really hard to screw up.
For me, I mostly learned from trial and error. Screw up once, remember what you did and try not to do it again.
Most cooks I know do take pride in their food, I currently work in just a sports bar/lounge and I take pride even though its just brugers, steak, wings and pizzas. In the end though I hate the job. Not cause of what they do but more cause of the environment. I personally hate it due to the heat(typically 30-40C in my kitchen) stress(can't screw up, if the morning staff didn't do the prep work right I get the blame, plus customers are very impatient) theres a lot of other little things that tend to annoy me. Some having to do with the waitress staff.
Most cooks I know do take pride in their food, I currently work in just a sports bar/lounge and I take pride even though its just brugers, steak, wings and pizzas. In the end though I hate the job. Not cause of what they do but more cause of the environment. I personally hate it due to the heat(typically 30-40C in my kitchen) stress(can't screw up, if the morning staff didn't do the prep work right I get the blame, plus customers are very impatient) theres a lot of other little things that tend to annoy me. Some having to do with the waitress staff.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
Yes, it's important. That being said, I admit that when one order comes up and you need 15 pans on five burners, any given dish is probably not going to be as good as it would be if I had only that dish to focus on.
Me? No. I'm not very good.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
how come everything i make that is more complicated than boiling rice tastes like crap? i cant even boil pasta right...
i might have to get married/move in with my mom to eat right again.
maybe you can share some of your best simple recipes? by simple i mean:
1. made up of stuff everyone has/can get easily, so no roasted snail penises from southern france etc
2.really hard to screw up.
Here's one I like:
Get some chicken. As much as you want: doesn't matter. Slice it up; not really thin, but not too thick, maybe 1/4". In fact, this doesn't really matter either, but it's easiest to cook this way. Heat some oil in a pan. You do not need a lot of oil, ever. Put in the chicken. Cook until it's a light brown. If you do it thin as I suggest, you shouldn't need to cut it up to check if it's cooked, though you may want to the first few times until you're comfortable. After that, add a bit of water to your pan (this is called "deglazing" and is usally done with a stock [chicken stock, in this case], but water is fine). The water should steam more or less instantly; you do not want water hanging around in your pan. Throw in some diced tomato and sliced garlic. I would use one or two tomatoes, depending on size and a whole head of garlic (yes, the whole head, not just a clove). These should cook quite quickly. You might want to deglaze again, but I couldn't easily explain to you via this medium whether or not you would. It shouldn't be a disaster either way. At this point, add in some 35% cream. A fair bit. Maybe 1/4 litre, depending on how much you've made. What you're about to do is called "reducing". This is a general term, and basically means you're boiling out the water of your sauce, increasing the flavour. For a cream sauce, like this, you're primarily making it sweeter. Add in some paprika. Not too much, just enough to make the sauce a light pink. It can get grainy if you add too much paprika. As you're reducing the sauce, you can turn up the heat, if you like. Be sure to keep the sauce moving. Once the sauce gets fairly thick, it's done. You can use this with any pasta, but I would be inclined towards long pastas. Fettuccine, more specifically. Hmm, that seem as easy written as it is to make
Ask questions.
Drewcifer
Agent of Karma
I haven't, and I've never seen anyone do it. I don't think it happens very often.
The only places I have heard of it happening is in fast food restaurants that hire suburban teenagers to make the food.
ShannonCT
Deity
1. What has your culinary career path been so far?
2. What are your career aspirations?
3. What kind of knives does your kitchen use?
4. To anyone: How can I find a place to have my knives properly sharpened? Has anyone ever tried shipping knives to a sharpening service?
2. What are your career aspirations?
3. What kind of knives does your kitchen use?
4. To anyone: How can I find a place to have my knives properly sharpened? Has anyone ever tried shipping knives to a sharpening service?
Good question and I'd add can you tell us proper cutting techniques?
Right. What happened to the guy who walked down the street in his cart sharpening knives? We use a knife sharpening stone.ShannonCT said:
I learned some by reading this. I'm not sure it's what our chefs would recommend though.
http://users.ameritech.net/knives/knives1a.htm
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Other than learning to cook from my parents, just Ruby Tuesday.
To be a fighter pilot in the US Navy.
I've heard them called simply 'kitchen knives' before. It's kind of heavy, like a cleaver, with a long straight and unserrated edge.
Or did you mean the brand name? I've no idea.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
No, never. Never seen it, either.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
Nearly every job I've had has been in a kitchen or otherwise food-related, starting with McDonald's back in 2000. It's only been in the past year that I've clued into the fact that this is what I like doing.
Nothing too specific. I would like to get my Red Seal. I don't know that I want to actually run a kitchen, though.
A couple different brands. Plus some people have their own personal knives. I'm probably going to invest some Christmas money in a few good knives, though I'm going to see how finances are looking after I've paid all my bills for January first.
Well, you can always get a steel and do it yourself. Aside from that, the YellowPages should suffice unless you're in a remote area.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
Very important: Grip the item you're cutting as if you were clawing it. Both fingers joints should be more or less fully bent. If you cut too close, the knife will just slide down the part of your finger between the two joints. This is as opposed to what people typically do, which is pinch what they're chopping between their finger and thumb tips. A new guy at work cut the tip off his thumb last Friday doing that.
I would say that guy knows a hell of a lot more about sharpening than I do.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
Oh, from that perspective, I mostly use a chef's knife. I don't do prep work much though, mind you. We also have paring knives, bread knives, carving knives and a couple others.
Swedishguy
Deity
Do you like your own food?
MamboJoel
Cool.
Do you have any tip bake poached eggs properly ?
Drewcifer
Agent of Karma
1. I started out delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut, after a month my car died so I needed a new job. There was a pizza and burger joint near my house so I lied my way into a job there as a pizza cook.
After a year I did well enough that they let me cook the grill and saute. While I was working there I realized I enjoyed it more than anything I was studying in college. I often had problems with procrastination in college and it caused me a lot of anxiety, procrastination is impossible in a kitchen.
For the first eight years I changed jobs every year and a half or so. My goal was to learn everything a particular restaurant could teach me about cooking and then move on when I could get a job in a better place. I turned down a few offers to be a manager because I wanted to develop high end cooking skills rather than manage mediocre kitchens.
Finally after eight years I was lead saute in a fine dining restaurant. I parleyed that into a job as a sous chef (assistant manager) in another place, after a year of that I was approached by a restaurant owner to be his head chef. I wasn't really qualified to be a head chef at the beginning but it was a great experience, I learned how to think strategically about organizing a kitchen and motivating a staff but I came to realize that there were still holes in my cooking knowledge and I needed to learn more to become the chef I wanted to be. So I quit that job and went back to being a line cook - this time for one of the top chefs in the state. We opened a small restaurant that changed it's menu every day and was organized like a Michelin starred French restaurant, we got rave reviews and some national press. The year I spent there was sort of my finishing school. When I left to go be a head chef again I found my skills were in high demand.
2. As far as aspirations go I would like to own my own restaurant, I think that is the next step. Beyond that though and more importantly I want to serve good food every day and teach young cooks the skills I was taught when I was an up and comming cook. Food is a major and basic component of culture, as a chef you are a link in a chain that goes back to Roman times (at least) and it is your obligation to make sure that chain continues on past your own life. If you can come up with a few new tricks and add to the body of cooking knowledge that is a bonus - but it is not the main thing.
3. I use Wustof Trident knives - the Avant Garde line. Specifcally I have an 8 inch chef knife, a boning knife and a kick ass serated knife called a Superslicer. That is pretty much all you need. I know a lot less about sharpening knives than the people on the website Whomp linked to.
Drewcifer
Agent of Karma
Mostly yes, though I am sick to death of the food on my restaurant's menu. Usually I eat one of the specials or some spur of the moment creation. I like my sous chef's food better than mine. He is from Brazil and knows a lot of tricks I don't so it is more of an adventure.
