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Blog Details for "Deglazed"
Deglazed Deglazed Have you ever dreamed of giving up your job to become a professional chef? That is what I did, and this is my blog that chronicles my misadventures as I follow my lifelong dream. Articles
My Hands - Part 2
2007-02-17 16:43:02 Back when I started this blog, I wrote a post about the starting condition of my hands. A “ground zero” position to begin at, so we could all track the progress of the damage I was doing to my hands over time. Since then, I have shared with you the time when I burned my wrist badly as well as sliced into my thumb and thumbnail with incredible precision. But I have yet to give an overall photo of my hands for the sake of comparison. I figured today was as good a day as any since I have a few injuries to show off, but it is a pretty “normal state” for how my hands look these days. Let’s all take a look shall we? Right Hand Left Hand From these photos we can take away a few lessons.1. The standing injuries to my hands are not as bad as I expected them to be. But all the same, injuries to hands are a constant occurrence. 2. Knife tips are sharp. 3. My hand modeling career is now over. (Before it even had a chance to get started…) SO muc... More About: Hands , Part
The Real End for the Beet Salad.
2007-02-17 16:43:02 So what happens when you discontinue a menu item, but you still have some of the key ingredient in stock? As I mentioned a little while back, we discontinued the beet salad from our menu - a decision that I was totally in favor of seeing as how I think beets smell, and taste, like dirt. But we noticed a short while later that we still had about 5-6 pounds of beets sitting around. In one of the great moments of collective realization we all suddenly came to the conclusion that one of two things could happen with these leftover beets:1. We let the beets rot and then throw them out. 2. We cook the beets, and then make a special with them to use them up.We of course chose the second option since throwing the beets away is the same as throwing money away, and that just never seems to make any sense. So I had to come up with an idea for the final use of the beets. Our pastry chef, Amy, had made a wonderful beet terrine with some roasted beets before, but she has been busy as of late -... More About: Salad , Sala , Real
Don?t Just Take My Word For It?
2007-02-10 04:41:03 Kicthen Confidential. If you haven’t read it yet - go read it now. Anthony Bourdain, obviously in a desire to copy my lead to write about what is wrong with Food Network, has written a blog post about (surprise surprise!) what is wrong with Food Network. The main target of his wrath is Sandra Lee, though he does concur that Rachael Ray is pretty unwatchable, and it is true - she really can’t cook. The comments there are very clever as well. It is good to see so many people who have a sense of what good cooking really is. So many more than swing by my site to comment. Why must I be so cursed?… Anyway, go check it out - and read the comments as well. It is a fabulously accurate posting by someone who knows more about the business than me - and heck, he just might even be a better writer as well! Bravo Anthony Bourdain! It needed saying, and I am glad we have both said it. Even if our take on Bobby Flay’s latest show is different… Matt P.S. Oh, ... More About: Word , Just , Take
Getting Organized
2007-02-09 04:40:01 Cupping my hands up to my mouth and exhaling into them so as to return the flow of blood, I asked myself, “How did I get into this again?…” Ahh, the DC winter. Cold, gray, but pretty much no snow. God this season sucks. Here it is, finally winter in the Washington, DC area (damn you global warming!) and it is abjectly freezing outside. This is the time of year when it is supposed to be GREAT to be a chef. Unlike the summer when you are baking yourself in a 115 degree kitchen on a 98 degree day, this is when you get to come in out of the cold, and warm yourself by the fires of the stove. It is warm and cozy in the kitchen - so why in God’s name was I spending my whole night in the walk-in refrigerator? Allow me to go back a bit. I mentioned a few posts back about how I had a major development that I needed to write to you all about - but then I didn’t do it, mainly because of a pan of cranberry juice that caught fire and other adventures that got... More About: Organize , Organ
Vote for Deglazed!
2007-02-09 04:40:01 window.document.getElementById('post-302' ).parentNode.className += ' adhesive_post';Deglazed is up for site of the month over at HoneyCakes.Nu blog. Go there now and vote in the left side bar for “Matt”. (That’s me…) Please note that the template can possibly be considered NSFW. (Notice I did not say “NSFW - Not Safe for Work” - only Rachael Ray talks like that…) Vote Now!
What Makes a Rough Day at the Office?
2007-02-05 16:38:01 It’s because too many of my days felt like this that I left the world of the cubicles… When I had an office job, I knew the factors involved that would make for a “rough” day. Unexpected emergencies cropping up, constant interruptions from coworkers and/or vendors, endless meetings to discuss why nothing is getting done, and an email inbox that would just refuse to shrink in size. My God, I can almost feel my blood pressure rising by describing that scenario. But what about the kitchen? I have no email there, and I can only rarely hear my phone ringing in my pocket over perpetual background noise of the fans in the hood and the jets of the dishwasher. Sure, there is constant hard work, and if you look at new orders coming in as “interruptions” then you could say there are a lot of those as well. But then again, if you feel that filling orders is an “interruption” as supposed to “your job”, then perhaps a career in the... More About: Office , The Office , What , Hat , Make
Why I Hate Rachael Ray
2007-02-05 16:38:01 Another series of questions that people often ask me are, “What do you think of TV Chefs?” or “Do you watch Top Chef/Hell’s Kitchen/Iron Chef?” or “What do you think of Emeril/Alton Brown/Bobby Flay/etc.?” In short, people seem to think I am an expert on what is happening on TV since I am now a professional chef. And you know what? To some degree, they are right. Warning: what follows is a very long blog post that is full of unproductive criticism of TV shows and/or celebrities that you might like. If you don’t think you’ll like it, please don’t bother reading, and for God’s sake, don’t write me telling me how much you love them and their shows. I promise you that the only thing I care about less than who is going to win Top Chef, is what you think of the show. But seeing as how this is my blog, I will therefore proceed. First things first. I do NOT watch Top Chef or Hell’s Kitchen, or any of that oth... More About: Hate , Hat , Rachael , Acha , Rachael Ray
So Long to the Beet Salad?
2007-02-05 16:38:01 Yesterday was one of the best days I have had yet at Vero. It is sometimes hard to tell a good day from a regular one - though the bad ones really stick out - since so many days are exactly the same. Restaurant work is about repetition. You have to create the same meals day after day, and that means doing all the same prep work before every shift, and getting into a rhythm so as to be able to do the same work quickly and efficiently. I think I touched on this sometime back, referring to the whole rhythm in a kitchen being like a carefully choreographed dance. With all this repetition and performing tasks in out of the sheer force of non-focused habit, the days can tend to bleed together in your mind. Ask me when the last time I worked on an 8-top was, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was last Wednesday, or last month. Those kinds of things - while hard at the time - are all blended together in my head as part of the whole “Vero experience”. “... More About: Salad , Sala , Long
Foie Gras, My Way
2007-02-05 16:38:01 “So wait, what are you doing with the foie gras?…” Foie Gras - another dish that I have to ask: “Who is the first person who thought eating THIS would be a good idea?…” I must have heard this a dozen times while making this dish, but I held by what I was thinking from the start. Word came in that we were getting some foie gras, and we wanted to run it as an appetizer. Our pasty chef, Amy, had just poached some pears, and she suggested I use the liquid to make a sauce for the foie gras with it. Using my bible of the kitchen - Culinary Artistry - I figured I should accompany the foie gras with toast and grapes, which would go well with the pear sauce. But while this book is helpful in giving some sense of the flavor ideas that will make the final product taste great, it is a whole different game trying to put the actual dish together. So first the sauce. I was reducing the pear liquid, and I wanted to give it a nice herb flavor. But at the s... More About: My way
Our Wine Dinner
2007-02-05 16:38:01 Tonight I actually had to work. I know what you are thinking - “Matt, you already work so hard for so many days of the week, how can you possibly stand to go in on what would otherwise be your day off to work some more?” Well, simply put, because I want to keep my job. Wine and food - some call it dinner, I call it heaven. This is an extra dinner that we host about once a month, maybe every six weeks, where we have a special all-inclusive dinner for about 50 people and there is wine pairing for each course. It is a prix fixe menu that fits a theme matched by the wines. For example, tonight was Spanish wines (lots of Riojas) and therefore we had a Spanish menu to match. While I know nothing about the wines we featured tonight (since I was not out in the dining room to hear the presentations of them) all I can comment on is the food we served. The menu was as follows:Crostini with white bean puree and a vinegar-cured anchovy A Salsa Verde “Shot” with ... More About: Dinner
Changing the Menu
2007-02-05 16:38:01 A new year has dawned on us, and now is as good a time as any to make some changes to the menu. We aren’t going to overhaul it, but why not try out some new things that we know would work? Usually the specials menu is where we have our ability to do new and creative things. Like the duck with apples I mentioned in the last post. Yeah, we don’t use many recipes for our daily specials. We just use our creativity and our desire to do new things and let that guide our choices on the direction we take the menu. And the results are always great. (If they weren’t, we wouldn’t sell them to the public…) Lean back, let go, trust us. We’ll catch you, and serve you a fabulous consommé as well. And let me just take this moment to throw in a little aside. Last night we had an order where the people made their orders, but made TONS of changes to the menu so they could get the food with all the things they wanted. While I can appreciate the importanc... More About: Men , Changing , Menu , Chang , Chan
Cover Pool
2007-02-05 16:38:01 Tonight was Saturday night, and that means one thing - time to get shakin’. We usually have a full house on Saturday nights, and this was no exception. For a gauge of how busy it was, the record number of covers (customers) we’ve ever had is 127 (give or take). Tonight, we had 96 covers just in reservations! We knew it was going to be a madhouse, and so we spent our time before opening in frantic preparation for just such an onslaught. Place your bets people - lots of good numbers left! While preparing for the sure-to-be-hectic night ahead of us, we were batting around guesses of how many covers we would actually have when all was said and done tonight. Being no stranger to gambling myself, I decided we should create a pool out of these guesses. Everyone was game to throw in a buck, so we had the following predictions as to how many people would actually walk in and be served:Amy: 104 Edwin: 130 Jay: 111 Dave: 125 Me: 120So with a whopping $5 at stake, we buckle... More About: Cover , Over , Pool
My First Place - Almost?
2007-02-05 16:38:01 Everyone always asks me what my ultimate goal of all this cooking is. This question always comes in the form of, “So, do you want to have your own place someday?” Really, it is that question almost verbatim from everyone. Please, somebody mix it up once in a while! Ask me, “So, you want to be a line cook the rest of your life you worthless sack?” The answer would still be roughly the same: For fun, I did a Google Image Search for “Matt’s Place ” and this came up. Not quite what I had in mind for my first restaurant.Image from greenhomebuilding.com “Of course my goal is to someday have my own place.” I mean, really, there has to be a goal to all this, and having my own place - where I can call the shots, and make up them menu and pretend I know what I am doing - seems to be the best resolution to all this effort. But as I learn how much there is to running a place, I can’t help but think about the time I almost boug... More About: First , Most , Lace
Fire in the Kitchen!
2007-02-05 16:38:01 I am as guilty as anyone else in the kitchen of letting things go on cooking until they are burned. Even Vic, the chef at Cafe Tirolo (my first chef job), would frequently become sidetracked with various tasks in the kitchen to the point where we would all suddenly notice heavy smoke coming from one of his pans where there once was a happy sauté of garlic and onions working away. And he had over 50 years of experience in the kitchen - so it can happen to anybody. But today’s debacle in the kitchen far exceeded anything I had ever imagined was even possible. I actually managed to burn… well, let me go into the story more before I reveal what I was able to “accomplish” today. “I have got to get Matt’s recipe for this…” The problem of burning things happens to me frequently. In the job of setting up for my shifts, I often have a lot of pots working their magic, and I am carefully trying to keep track of them all so as to not rui... More About: Kitchen , Fire , Chen
Bacon, Cheese, Chocolate or Olive Oil
More articles from this author:2007-02-05 16:38:01 This is my 100th post, so let me get it out of the way and say thank you to all my readers and fans. I appreciate the feedback and encouragement and ad clicks you have provided for me in the past, and I am as eager as you are to see where this adventure goes in the next 100 posts! So to “celebrate” this occasion, rather than write about my latest kitchen development (and there is a good one I have to write about - I will cover it tomorrow I guess…) I figured I would share a neat game with you all that was presented to me with some friends of mine when I was in Bedford, PA over the holiday weekend. This is a fun game for all people who love food, and love to think up their own food combinations. For me, this game is just a blast, and I find myself playing it all the time. Simple enough, all you have to do is think up a food (no beverages) that can’t be improved with any of the following: Bacon… …Cheese (any kind of cheese)… …C... More About: Olive Oil , Chocolate , Live , Cola 1, 2, 3, 4 |
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