Prix Fixe

Last night at Carlyle

Friday night was my last night of my externship, meaning I had completed six weeks and the required 150 hours (actually went over by a half hour, but who's counting right?). About 9p Jake came up to me and asked me just how hungry I was on a scale of one to five, and without hesitation the fat kid in me responded with 5. He looked at me nodded his head "Good, that's what I like to hear..".

I was then told to clean up my station, as they had set a place at the bar for me. The night I did my stage Jake basically told me to pack it up and then proceeded to send out 5 amazing courses. This time around, I was pretty sure he could top what he had one the last time around. Come to think of it, this time it was more than five because going over the dishes, I missed three of them. So in total, I'm pretty sure he sent out a total of 7 dishes.

Up first was Tuna Tartar with watermelon and champagne gelee`. Now I'll be honest before working at Carlyle I wasn't much for raw preparations, but having to work the pantry station I had to make beef tartar and you have to taste everything to make sure it's seasoned properly - and I quite enjoyed the tartar.

As far as the tuna tartar it was excellent, I wasn't sure just how the watermelon was going to match with it but it was great, soft texture from the tuna and a little bit of a crunch and sweetness was great. Up next was the asparagus and watercress soup with crab and tempura asparagus tips. The soup was poured table side around a small mound of the crab. This was a cold soup, which at first I wasn't expecting - but it all worked well and I could have easily had another bowl or 5.

The other dish I forgot to take a pic of was a bit later, it was angel hair pasta with really really good parm, morel mushrooms and rabbit. I love rabbit, but after spending roughly 4 months eating rabbit once a week or more during my time with the competition team I thought I may have been tired of it, but it worked really well in this dish. Below are pic's of the rest of the meal, and if you go to my flikr page it has descriptions of each dish.

My experience in the kitchen was amazing and the things I've learned in a short amount of time I will take with me for the rest of my career. Jake Martin is one talented Chef, and that's not any sort of bias from working with him. I hope I get the chance to work with him again at some point in my career.

Six weeks already?

It seems like just like yesterday that I did my stage at Carlyle and started my externship the following week. But here it is, final day week six. It wasn't until I got home last night after work that I realized that I've flipped the page on a segment of my life, and look towards the next chapter. This was a hard decision to begin with, I had been in radio for 13 years - kind of rare to switch careers midstream so to speak. Yet, there I was last November settling down into Skills I at Western Culinary Institute.

Now it's eight months later and ready to head out into the new career. Carlyle wasn't looking for anyone, so I wont be staying on with them after tonight. That's OK I'm going to be picking up some part time and on-call hours with Celebrate Catering based out of Lake Oswego. And who said twitter was worthless? I met the Executive Chef through twitter and the love for food. So I was able to pick up some hours from him, which keeps me in the kitchen no doubt.

School was an amazing experience, everything from the Chef Instructors to my pals on the ACF Jr. Hot Food competition team. I'm not sure how school would've gone had I not been able to be part of the team. I did more to further my education, and getting more than my moneys worth of tuition by being a part of that team. There were so many things I learned that I wouldn't have otherwise. So I owe a lot to Patches for take a chance on a guy who had never done anything like it before, and a complete newbie to Chef Franz for doing the same thing. He is a Chef that will be burned into my memory.

So at the end of service tonight, I will have closed one door and opened another. I asked Chef and I'll be documenting my final evening with some pictures.

Publishing Schedule

It's been a long road in Culinary School that is about to come to an end this week. But because I juggle multiple writing gigs, the only way I was going to stay on top of things was to create a schedule to insure that I'm spreading the love around so to speak.

So on to the Schedule:

Monday:  Prix Fixe
Tuesday: Rain Delay (Braves content)
Wednesday: Baseball Daily Digest
Thursday: Rain Delay (Mariners content) / Heater Update
Friday: Prix Fixe
Saturday: Baseball Daily Digest
Sunday: Baseball Daily Digest / Heater

Now of course I should put the disclaimer: Schedule is subject to change.

Joe and Brian have been very patient with me since November (when I started Culinary School) and that's why they're getting a bit more love at Baseball Daily Digest.

Pickled Ramps or a confession of a rampoholic...

Yup, just admitted it in the title, figured I'd get full disclosure out of the way. This is a new obsession for me, but a tasty one for sure. Two weeks ago purchased a couple flats of ramps, huge ones - bigger than the ones I scored at the beginning of the season. It seems like as the ramp/morel season comes to a end, the morels are getting smaller and the ramps are getting bigger.

I put them in one of those green bags that are supposed to slow down the gasses and therefore slow the aging of the product, still I'd had them for two weeks and I really wasn't sure when I was going to get around to using them and of course it would've been a shame (not to mention a loss of $$) if they'd gone to waste.

So that's when I decided to pickle them (full disclosure: we pickled some ramps at work a few days before I got these, and so it wasn't hard to figure out what I was going to do with them.) So I combined a few things, I had done some quick pickling before at school, mostly during Intro to Garde Manger and Advanced Garde. This would be the first time doing so for long(ish) term storage.

I never really weighted them out, but it was just enough to fill 4 8oz jars.

Pickled Ramps
2 C Red Wine Vinegar
2 C Water
1/2 C Sugar
1 1/4 TBPS Salt
1 TBPS Black Peppercorn
1/2 TBPS Coriander Seed
Pinch Red Pepper Flake

Combine all the ingredients in a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil, so as to dissolve the sugar and salt. Once comes to a boil, add your ramps. Return the little suckers to a boil, until tender then take them off the heat and allow them to cool. Once they're cool, put them into jars of your choice. Now you can go my route and actually 'can' them with a hot water bath or just put lids on them and throw them in your fridge.

It's a pretty simple process, and yields great results. Again, feel free to mess around with ingredients and out what flavors work for you. I tasted it a few times while it was coming up to a boil, and really didn't make any adjustments to it - though I might have added a bit more pepper flake.

Now when ramps are long out of season, I will still be able to get my fix.

Garlic-Chile Mayo

I really need to remember to take my camera into the kitchen when I doing things. Though this wouldn't be a very exciting set of pictures anyways.

Ok, so yesterday for Fathers Day we had a hamburger feast, will all the trimmings. Including red onion that I caramelized and then deglazed with a little bit of Merlot that I had handing out in the kitchen for such a purpose. While I'm not a huge wine drinker I keep a bottle of red and white on hand for deglazing and cooking purposes. Anyways back to our story.. ..I wanted something thing other than the usual mayo, mustard, ketchup combo that usually a company such a meal along with tomato, onion, pickle and lettuce.

So I opened the fridge looking for something different, I grabbed the mayo, some sour cream and sambal olek that I had in the fridge. And set about to work, I combined what ended up to be a 1:1 ratio of sour cream to mayo. I was only making a small batch so you can expand on that depending on the size of your crowd. Garlic-Chile Mayo Mayo Sour Cream Sambal Olek Sriracha Salt Sugar Like mentioned above I used about a 1:1 ratio with regards to the mayo and sour cream. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, except the sugar. I used a bit more sriracha than I had planned on, so I used a pinch or two of sugar to balance things out. Though you could add a bit more sour cream, as the cream will also help tone down the heat a notch or two. I mixed it until it took on a almost thousand island dressing color, tasted and added a bit of salt - re-mixed and it was ready to go. It worked great on my burger and paired well with the caramelized onions - the sweet and heat. We also grilled sliced pieces of Yukon Gold potatoes and it worked great as a dipping sauce.

You could also thin this sauce out with a little butter milk and have a spicy Asian leaning 'slaw dressing. But for sure, works absolutely wonderful on burgers off the grill.

Way's to irritate a chef...

This post comes from an experiance last night, and over my the last 4 weeks of my externship. There a lot a way to piss off a chef, and here are but just a few of them to get started - I'm sure more will arise.  First off, what ever you do though I know there are some out there (I'm looking at you Dad) that swear if it's not cremated, it's not done. This is a quick way to really getting under a chef's skin. Look at it this way, we have this beautiful piece of meat - that is perfect if cooked med-rare - cooking the crap out of it sucks away flavor and turns it into shoe leather. And you might even get the crappier cut of meat. They wont go out of their way, but you might get a less cut of the same meat, something towards the end of butchering.

Next, if you have issues with salt, tell your server ahead of time. Don't eat several dishes, and then when a beautiful grilled piece of Moi as part of a tasting menu. The people in question even had a Charcuterie plate, that as many know is full of salty meaty goodness. Anyways, like all dishes at the end Chef puts a pinch of pink river salt or fluer de sel as a finisher just enough to make the flavors pop. No sooner had the dish gone out, that it was returned to the pass for being "to salty". Chef just stared in a amazment at the poor server and the partially consumed plate of grilled moi. He picked up a piece that hadn't been eaten. He then tore off piece's and gave everyone one on the line - and the server a bite. It was a perfectly seasoned, and grilled piece of fish.

He fired halibut on the fly, but was visably irritated. He loves doing the tasting menus, and to have something come back to him that was to him (and well the rest of us as perfectly seasoned). Salt is used to bring out flavors and like I said above if you have problems with salt, or it's a health thing please let your server know. Don't wait until you've consumed several courses, which all have had salt on them and then have a problem with something that is supposedly 'to salty'.

It'll save you and me a lot trouble, nothing like having to deal with a cranky chef the rest of the night.

PDX Farmers Market Bounty

Over the weekend I headed out to the Portland State University's Portland Farmers Market, and behold the bounty of goods I picked up!

Garlic Scapes, Green Garlic, Ramps, Morels and Artichokes

These Ramp bulbs are bigger than the ones I picked up about a month back.

This is about a half pound of Morels

I plan to head back to the market on Saturday to pick up some things for Sundays Fathers Day dinner. We're going to be doing burgers (as per my fathers request). But I plan to pick up some things to go with the burgers and what not. As for the ramps I got, they're going to be pickled - most likely tomorrow. Though I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the garlic scapes yet...

BBQ Sauce v2.0

I can't remember the last time I actually bought bbq sauce at the store, no wait I take that back. It was about two years ago on the Oregon Coast at Misty Meadow's - it was the height of huckleberry season and they had just made a new batch of huckleberry bbq sauce.

I started doing my own sauce the summer before I started culinary school. I had this grilling cookbook, to which really nothing was worth while - except for their spicey bbq sauce recipe. Like most recipes when I started out, I would follow to the letter. Only after doing it once or twice, I would add, subtract and basically turned it into my own creation.The sauce I have for you today is v2.0, it's a slow evolving sauce though, I was very happy with the outcome and this might just be it - no need (on my end anyways) to improve on it.

The picture at the right, is my "Bible", every cook should have one, but that's a post for a different time. As you can see it's my notes for my v2.0 sauce, somethings are crossed out - some not crossed out but not in the final product. This is just a glimpse of how my brain works in the kitchen. 


BBQ v2.0

• 2 Jalapeno's, seeded and diced (or if you want it spicy, just dice the buggers..(
• 1/2 Red Onion, small dice
• 4 Garlic Cloves, diced
• 1/2 cup apple juice or apple cider
• 1 TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar
  
• 1 1/2 TBSP White Balsalmic Vinegar
• 1/2 TSP Chipotle Tabasco
• 1/2 cup Ketchup
• 1 cup Veal Stock (I'll explain in a miute)
• 8 oz Tomato Puree
• 1 TSP Franks Red Hot Sauce (I had some on hand and figured why not!)
• 1 TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 TBSP Molasses
  
• 1 Dash of Scotch
• 1 Dash Liquid Smoke
• Pinch of Truffle Salt

Looks like a whole hell of a lot huh? It may look like a lot but it all works out in the end for a great sauce. You'll want a medium sized sauce pan for this, and a tad bit of olive oil. Get the pan hot, add the olive oil and sweat all the vegetable matter. Once everything has gotten nice and translucent, it's time add the rest of the ingredients. Now if you don't have veal stock on hand, have no fear. The reason I used the veal stock was for the mouth feel, and the fact that veal stock is neutral in flavor so it wont give the sauce a veal or beefy type taste to it.


You can in a pinch use a bit less beef stock with a half of a gelatin sheet dissolved in it to somewhat replicate the mouth feel. You could even whip up a quick batch of veggy stock and use the gelatin trick with that as well. Stir to combine, set on med-low to low and let simmer anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.

After it's done run it through a chinois or fine mesh strainer for a smooth sauce. Now you can, if you're so incline to is run it through the blender or use a imersion blender for a thicker or more 'chunky' sauce. Either way your going to be happy with the end result.

Cooking with Christopher Walken

Knife Skills, a rant

A lot of times, I'll turn over to the Food Network while I'm working at the computer or sometimes even when I'm in the kitchen for just mostly background noise - something might catch my attention.


There was about 15 minutes remaining in "Semi-Homemade", I figured I could stomach hearing Sandra "Crazy Eye's" Lee. I mean really have you looked at her eye's, it's got batshit crazy written all over them. At the time she was Julienneing a jalapeno. It's a damn wonder she didn't lop a finger off, so it lead me to post to twitter, I'm sure you can find it in the sidebar but I'm going to provide a more than 140 character explanation of my comments.

Dear Food Network,

For the love of all that is holy, please someone teach Sandra Lee some frakkin' knife skills before she lops off a finger. I mean really, I know that you have trained Chef's not only as hosts of the show's, but all of the Chefs and cooks in the test kitchens - and those that work behind the scenes of each show. Listen, I'm not fantastic with a knife, but after 8 months of having knife skills drilling into your head on a daily basis even I improved ten fold from when I started school. EIGHT MONTHS! So you'd think, that maybe - just maybe  you could teach some of your hosts (looking at you Sandra Lee and RR), and yes I can't even bare to type out the latter name.

I tore through pounds and pounds of potatoes and carrots during my first three weeks of culinary school. The first class you take is Skills I - you learn proper sanitation and knife skills and it keeps going from there. Also being a part of my school's competition team also improved my skills with a knife. My point is, with all the chefs they have running around - you'd think they could teach them knife skills.

RR even admitted that she has horrible knife skills, why not improve them? It boggles my mind really, these shows as well as being infotainment - shouldn't showing that you know your way around a knife would go towards teaching as well - not just the recipe?

Maybe it's just me because knife skills were drilled into my melon every waking hour of school, there wasn't a class (well besides intro to baking) that didn't have some sort of knife skill proficiency that you needed to complete as part of the class. Anything from a large dice, to brunoisette's, julienne to fine julienne and really the list goes on. When I was part of the competition team, we drilled on knife cuts every morning before school, and a lot of times after it.

So Food Network, with all the chef's and cooks you have running around your halls, wouldn't it be about time to teach some of your "stars" the propper way to use a knife?