Prix Fixe

It takes a nation of Sherpa's to hold us back...

Something that I quickly learned (after getting out of school mind you..) is that you can't waste motion or extra steps. There's no time. From the minute you walk in the door for your shift, the clock is ticking. 

Learn to carry as much as you can in one trip, again the clock is ticking and you can ill afford to go back and get something you forgot or otherwise. I've become pretty adept at carrying a large cutting board, while balancing things like mixing bowls, deli containers - because once I get to my station - the plan is not to move as much as possible and hammer out my prep. 

I learned this quickly during my externship, you see: the Carlyle (R.I.P.) kitchen was the size of a football field (or at least that's what it felt like), as it was built in what was a  now obviously re-purposed warehouse (dining room was tiny, you could park a semi in the kitchen and still move about freely) on the outer rim of the Pearl district. 

To make the trek from the line to dry storage or the dish pit, on had to hire a Sherpa to cross the massive expanse between the two.  Trevor, who worked Pantry most days - was constantly riding my ass about this. Drilling into my brain to start thinking farther a head than I had ever been accustom to. Some days (and I'll be honest here), it grated on my very last nerve. But in the long run and hind sight being all that...I get it now.

The thing is though - it's been so ingrained into what I would guess is a re-coding of my positronic neural net, even at home I'm mapping out in my head where I'm going and do I need more than one thing from that same part of the house?

If we're being real here, (and I love keeping real yo.....are the kids still saying keepin' it real, yo?) I owe a great deal of that to Trevor, who was always telling me to "think" and "don't waste fuckin' steps".

Wasting steps, is wasting time. 

Time you really didn't have in the first place, like in football you need good clock management in the fourth quarter - bend the clock to your will - not the other way around. 

This was going to be a part of Notes From The Line, but decided it warranted it's own post. I'll also give you bonus points if you can guess what song I'm playing off of in the title.

Work In Progress.

While this is the digital world, there are things I do solely analogue - namely things like you see above, I'm a moleskine addict. I currently rock 4 at any given time, and all four have their designations.

1.  mind.dump. : this is my catch all for ideas, things I need to remember and so on.
2. expo. : my to-do lists resided here. 
3. workbook. : This is more or less my culinary brain, recipes I've developed and the like.
4. inventing. room. : ode to Willy Wonka, what doesn't fit in the concept of #3 goes here, biz ideas, menu's, r&d type stuff.

I have to do it this way, or I forget. I'm an information junkie, and like it or not sometimes I get info overload. The new info coming in is pushing out the older stuff, you know like when you've got a ton of shit on your DVR and you keep recording and it's starts to dump all those old shows you hadn't gotten to yet?

It's like that, only going on inside my head.

Cooks Without Knives

Just like every baseball player needs a glove, every cook/chef needs his knives. Recently a fire swept through the kitchen of one of Spain's top restaurants. 

Here's the details from John Sconzo over @ Docsonz:

Early on Monday February 15th, fire severely damaged the kitchens at Mugaritz, the world-famous restaurant in Spain's Basque Country. Luckily, no-one was hurt. For the management and staff of Mugaritz, the destruction of their workplace was a tragedy. But for three other young people, this was also a calamity. 

Stagières are unpaid apprentices, usually young, without whom no top restaurant can function. Driven by a common passion to learn from the world's best chefs, they travel from all corners of the globe to train at world-class restaurants. When the dust settled on Mugaritz after last Monday's inflagration, Mattias from Sweden, Diego from Guatemala and Greg from the US found themselves without their most valued possessions. Their precious knife sets, not covered by the restaurant's insurance, had been incinerated.

John has taken the lead and set up a fund to help the young stages with replacing there knives. More information can be found here about donating to a well worth it cause and help these guys out. I can tell you, I treasure my knives and would be lost without them - I'm betting these guys feel the same way.

You can also click on the widget in the side bar of this here blog to donate as well.

The journey, not the arrival matters.

...todays title brought to you by T.S. Elliot. 

One of the things I learned while making my way up and down the radio dial (WKRP, anyone?), is that you can never not network. If you don't, you're not going to last long. Suffice it to say, this (as I've found out, but really shouldn't have been much of a surprise to me..) is the same in the world of professional cooks. 

The more you connect with others in the industry, the better. 

Over last summer I started writing for the Food & Wine section of ThePortlander.com, my first idea and supposed regular column (it's not that I've been slacking, that's for sure) "Back Of The House" where I would interview a local chef and take the readers 'behind the curtain" - kind of like "Behind the Music" only not.

The first interview I did was with a chef I had been stalking following on Twitter, who at the time went by the handle of @BellyTimberPDX (that has since changed, more on that in a minute.). Chef David Seigl of Belly Timber, with the magic of aforementioned twitter I asked if he'd be my first (get your minds out of the gutter folks..)  he was more than happy to oblige. 

If you're interested in reading the interview click here: "Back Of The House: Chef David Seigl". 

Recently he (read: last week) left his post as executive chef of Belly Timber, and hit the road. He's decided it was time to get out roam, and as my understanding is - headed to Europe. He's charting his travels over at Executive Dishwasher, which I fully urge you to add to your RSS reader of choice. You can also follow him on Twitter under the same name as the blog: @ExecutiveDishwasher.

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving". - Lao-Tzu

The Full Mountain Monty...

Inspiration comes in many forms, as we've discussed before. Snapped this on my way to work Friday afternoon, just up the road from the St. Josef's Winery. It's sights like this that remind me of why I love it here and would never want to move anywhere else.

...OK so that's a semi-lie, there are a couple other places I wouldn't mind . But right now, I'm happy as a clam living and working in Western Oregon.

And if you're wondering, it's Mt. Hood.

Sometimes you just need to step outside the kitchen doors and take a look around. 

FF: In which I fully get my geek on.

(Excuse me whilst I indulge myself for this Foto Friday. )

Me. Wil. Wheaton. 

One and Two in a Google Search.

Talk about rolling a natural 20...

...this kicks frakkin' ass!

Blog For Food

I'll be honest, I'm not one to jump on a lot of causes, but there are a few that are very near and dear to me. Share Our Strength is one that I completely believe in - and as I was trying to wade through the bog of death that is my google reader (I'm now at zero un-read, if you're keeping score at home and following on Twitter). This one is all about keepin' it right here in Oregon, the Oregon Food Bank needs you're help.

In the past year, the Oregon Food Bank has served record numbers this year - I really don't think I need to tell you why they have - with record numbers being served there are still people who are going without. With every dollar you donate to the OFB, it allows them to distribute five plus pounds of food for those in need.

The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project has put this together, and this will be running now through March 15th, and here's what you need to do to donate. First, click the image above (it will take you the OFB page). 

Here's what you do next: On the donation page type in "Blog For Food" in the "In Honor Of" section of the donation page. They're hoping to add the "Blog for Food" in the drop down, but right now typing it in is the best way to go.

Just remember for every dollar you donate, that's 5lbs of food.

Is it March 20th yet?

I'm really starting to get impatient, why you ask? Because the PSU Farmers Market opens on March 20th, which also happens to be the first day of spring. From what I've read the PSU market is expanding in size, which was already pretty big, is going to even allow for more farms and vendors.

Some of the farms I've missed:

1. Misty Mountain Mushrooms: I get all my wild mushrooms, ramps and truffles from Misty Mountain. 
2. Veridian Farms: They've got the hook up with Padron Peppers and the like.
3. Rogue Creamery: If you haven't had the Caveman Blue, you must must try.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but still - I'm soo giddy it's going to be hard to contain myself for the next month or so before the Market gets underway.

Pictured above is flowering kale.

Team Oregon. The Video.

More messing around with Animoto. Now I'm able to do full length videos, so as I'm sure you've guessed there will be a lot more video going on around here.

Endless Possibilities

Found this new site (or at least new to me) Animoto, I checked it out after seeing Micheal Ruhlman mention it in passing about the Food Blogger camp he was apart of down in Mexico this past week. This video (outside of rendering - even though it's fast too) took 5 minutes to put together. 

Just point click, choose some music and off you go. You can even hit remix and no one video will ever be the same, I'm going to upgrade to the $30 a year option so I can produce full length videos with the free membership you can produce a 30 sec vid only though you can upgrade a video for like $3 a video. Here's one I did as a test, it features pictures from our Prix Fixe Menu on Christmas Eve at Scratch.