If I've been remiss in posting lately, it's because 4th Quarter is no joke. Apparently the first week of class was the honeymoon. Now the marriage is on full-tilt. Couples therapy ahoy. My class has been getting the short end of the stick a lot lately, it seems; the 6-month closure of the Academy back in the spring and summer gave the instructors time to rework the way the whole program is structured and for some reason, my class has ended up being the guinea pig for their new way of doing things. This mainly effects us in workload; as I mentioned in a previous post, our COD notebook (all of the menu work, recipes, costing, inventory, plate design, etc) is now due at the end of 4th quarter and the execution of the project itself is in 5th quarter. Prior to now, it has been entirely encapsulated in 5th quarter. So not only do we have all of the regular 4th quarter tests, assignments and studying to handle, we've got these notebooks to deal with. I feel like if I'm not busting my ass on the line putting out food these days, I'm staring at a computer screen trying to write recipes to the exacting standards of the chefs.
It's stressful, is all I'm saying.
On the brighter side, practicum class is still a learning experience every minute of every day. I'm being introduced to interesting new produce, techniques and foods I've never even heard of before. I'm making fresh pasta. I'm happily grilling, sauteing and pan-frying fish, searing scallops -that was a first for me yesterday and I managed to not screw it up- and steaming clams. I don't know why, but I've always been intimidated by cooking fish. It seems like such a precarious process that could turn disastrous at the drop of a hat, but it's really not. Let's just say the thought of being handed a large fillet of sturgeon and told to cook it and come up with an appropriate sauce to accompany it in half an hour kind of filled me with dread, but there I was grilling that chunk of prehistoric fish flesh to perfection and draping it a few minutes later with a luxurious Sabayon sauce.
Since I last updated, I've worked the entree station (steamed ouzo clams with pancetta and corona beans), the larder (my clotted cream project), sous-vide rotation (apple cider cornish hen with buttered cinnamon apples - oh my God, so good sous-vide), entree 1 (leek and cherry dumplings with baby fennel and 5-spice seared salmon and consumme) and garde manger (blood orange, arugula and mint salad with a warm duck egg and orange vinaigrette). I've also handed in my menu and two of the recipes on it which have all come back with very positive feedback from the chefs. If there's one thing I feel really positive about, it's that despite how much greif putting together this notebook is giving me, I know I have a strong menu that already has a lot going for it by virtue of a clear direction and interesting theme.
We had our first pop quiz on Friday, which I'm totally zen about despite it's unexpected timing. It made me feel good to be able to answer all of the questions confidently, drawing on what I'd learned by doing and putting into practice instead of from studying obsessively to memorize information that may have been abstract and theoretical up til that point. This is our first opportunity to see what kind of grader Chef Karen is, as well, so my class waits with baited breath.
As for the Sunday Market cooking, that took a hiatus last week because I came down with a doozy of a cold, which I'm still sniffling from and which has made it's way to Kris, who is right now feeling how I felt last weekend. Drowning in Vicks-scented tissues and liquid Tylenol Cold to get some semblance of sleep at night.
The weekend previous was a great success, though! We went to the market with the intention of finding rabbit so I could recipe test my tartlets at home, but the butcher we use only had a whole frozen rabbit and at a market cost of $7.99/lb, that would've been impractical. So we changed tack and decided to make chorizo and cherry stuffed chicken. Picked up some absolutely gorgeous organic rainbow carrots, cherries -I know, I know, not in season, but I wanted to try cooking with them ahead of COD testing- some fresh snow peas and and pomegranate.
Once we got home, we discovered the chicken thighs still had ribcage attached, so I got a chance to show Kris how to take out the thigh bone. Instructing someone is a great way to reaffirm to yourself that you actually know how to do something. We chopped up the cherries, mixed them in with the chorizo and stuffed it in the thighs. While that cooked in a little bit of olive oil, we cut up our spectacular rainbow carrots into rondelles and warmed them up with the snow peas and pomgranate seeds in some butter over low heat. Lastly, we make a pan sauce by deglazing the chicken pan, adding some diced tomato and a bit of heavy cream, then straining.
Kris and I were both very satisfied with how this dish turned out. My only complaint was that the flavor, if not the texture, of the cherries got lost in the cooking process. I asked Chef Karen about it the following days and she suggested using sour cherries next time, which hold their flavor much better and would be a nice contrast to the sweetness of the chicken and the mild heat of the chorizo.
But enough of that... here are the pretty pictures!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Chef of the Day Menu - First Draft
Alright guys, here it is. The first draft of my final menu which will culminate in me cooking this for 16 people sometime next quarter. I'm sure this will get changed and tweaked, but I'm really happy with the first blush!
Please give constructive feedback if you can; let me know what looks yummy to you, what you might do...
Please give constructive feedback if you can; let me know what looks yummy to you, what you might do...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sunday Afternoons at Pike Place
Alright. I had the best of intentions to go to bed early tonight after a not-so-restful sleep last night, but PBS is airing old episodes of French Chef and Julia's dedication to the bouillabaisse a la Marseillaise she's demonstrating inspired me to get writing. On a side note, I love that she pronounces basil as bah-sil the way I'm used to hearing it. Everyone here says bay-sil and accuses me of being a heathen Canadian.
So, Kris and I decided as sort of an unofficial New Years resolution that if we ate healthy, home-cooked (or at least home-prepared) meals throughout the week instead of eating fast food and processed crap, we could reward ourselves on the weekend with a trip to Pike Market to buy some fresh ingredients with which to make ourselves a really nice Sunday dinner. Not only does Kris get to try her hand at being my sous chef but I also get to keep the skills I'm learning at school sharp.She doesn't know this yet, but I also intend to use the opportunity to do a bit of recipe testing for my final menu on her. I feel confident doing this because I know she won't attack the food and make gross eating noises like a certain husband in a certain recent movie about a certain chef and a certain woman who blogged about said chef...
This past Sunday, we (well, I) slept in nice at late before heading to the market at about 1:00. I have to be up at 4:45-ish every morning to get ready for class, so even if Kris was up and about much earlier than me, I deeply enjoyed the chance to get some extra quality time in with my pillows. Call me lazy if you want, but I was in the perfect mood to go marketing by the time we left the house.
(Oh Lord... Julia is now hacking away at an enormous cod head with a terrifying-looking medieval torture device-slash-meat cleaver without so much as blinking. I forgot how much she makes me giggle. Americans are finicky about leaving the heads on, you see...)
Kris has a knack for finding fantastic parking spots and our visit to Pike Place was no exception. She squeezed the car into a free parking spot right at the entrance and away we went! Our first stop was specialty food and wine shop, DeLaurenti. They have the shelves and shelves of imported goodies and culinary delights that make foodies giddy. Little jars of duck fat that made me daydream about how delicious anything cooked in it would be. About a jillion different varieties of salt, olive oil and an incredibly expensive bottle of 60-year old Modena balsamico whose presence I had to be coerced away from before I bought it in a fit of "GIMMEGIMMEPLEAAAASE". Cheese, salume, breads, cookies, crackers, preserves, chocolate, wines... I could have spent all day exploring all the curious little gems. We ended up purchasing carbonated white wine in a soda can that came with a straw for the sheer novelty of it, a bottle of curious white coral-like chunks of bicarbonate that you drop in water to make it fizzy that I just had to experiment with -more on that later- and a jar of Nutella as a little splurge.
A visit to the butchers gave us our two pork loin chops along with plenty of other delicious ideas as we looked over their other offerings. Some apples, squash, thyme, oregano, a jar of lavender honey and one of Mt. Rainier Fireweed honey later, we were ready to get cooking...
("This bird is in the height of it's...chickendom. Things like the age and, uh, race, wildly effect a chicken's expensivity.")
We ended up cleaning in the kitchen for about two hours when we got home, simply getting some more of our stuff situated to our liking and getting rid of some of Kris' mom's old stuff. We staved off starvation with some crackers, salami and brie with sage, cinnamon and brown sugar as we cleaned. After we finished, it was mutually decided that we needed a quick rest, so we loafed for an hour or so before we got down to the business of dinner.
On the menu: Pan-Seared Honey Pork Loin Chops with Sauteed Apple and Squash
First, we prepared a quick marinade for the chops; fireweed honey, EVOO, sea salt, cracked peppercorns, sage, oregano and garlic. Then we peeled, rondelled and sliced our apples and squash while our pork got happy in it's marinade. We discovered that Kris doesn't particularly enjoy having to peel things with a paring knife, incidentally, and in the future will likely be using a peeler.
Once all was prepped, the pork chops came out and we got a pan started on high heat. A bit (okay, a lot) more honey got drizzled over the searing chops, which helps lock in the moisture and also gives the pork a delicious golden-brown color all over while it cooks through. While that was working, we sauteed up our apple slices and squash with a little EVOO and pulling in the sage again, then a bit more salt and pepper.
The kitchen smelled absolutely delicious and once the pork was done, I demonstrated a quick pan sauce, plated, drizzled and voila!
So, Kris and I decided as sort of an unofficial New Years resolution that if we ate healthy, home-cooked (or at least home-prepared) meals throughout the week instead of eating fast food and processed crap, we could reward ourselves on the weekend with a trip to Pike Market to buy some fresh ingredients with which to make ourselves a really nice Sunday dinner. Not only does Kris get to try her hand at being my sous chef but I also get to keep the skills I'm learning at school sharp.She doesn't know this yet, but I also intend to use the opportunity to do a bit of recipe testing for my final menu on her. I feel confident doing this because I know she won't attack the food and make gross eating noises like a certain husband in a certain recent movie about a certain chef and a certain woman who blogged about said chef...
This past Sunday, we (well, I) slept in nice at late before heading to the market at about 1:00. I have to be up at 4:45-ish every morning to get ready for class, so even if Kris was up and about much earlier than me, I deeply enjoyed the chance to get some extra quality time in with my pillows. Call me lazy if you want, but I was in the perfect mood to go marketing by the time we left the house.
(Oh Lord... Julia is now hacking away at an enormous cod head with a terrifying-looking medieval torture device-slash-meat cleaver without so much as blinking. I forgot how much she makes me giggle. Americans are finicky about leaving the heads on, you see...)
Kris has a knack for finding fantastic parking spots and our visit to Pike Place was no exception. She squeezed the car into a free parking spot right at the entrance and away we went! Our first stop was specialty food and wine shop, DeLaurenti. They have the shelves and shelves of imported goodies and culinary delights that make foodies giddy. Little jars of duck fat that made me daydream about how delicious anything cooked in it would be. About a jillion different varieties of salt, olive oil and an incredibly expensive bottle of 60-year old Modena balsamico whose presence I had to be coerced away from before I bought it in a fit of "GIMMEGIMMEPLEAAAASE". Cheese, salume, breads, cookies, crackers, preserves, chocolate, wines... I could have spent all day exploring all the curious little gems. We ended up purchasing carbonated white wine in a soda can that came with a straw for the sheer novelty of it, a bottle of curious white coral-like chunks of bicarbonate that you drop in water to make it fizzy that I just had to experiment with -more on that later- and a jar of Nutella as a little splurge.
A visit to the butchers gave us our two pork loin chops along with plenty of other delicious ideas as we looked over their other offerings. Some apples, squash, thyme, oregano, a jar of lavender honey and one of Mt. Rainier Fireweed honey later, we were ready to get cooking...
("This bird is in the height of it's...chickendom. Things like the age and, uh, race, wildly effect a chicken's expensivity.")
We ended up cleaning in the kitchen for about two hours when we got home, simply getting some more of our stuff situated to our liking and getting rid of some of Kris' mom's old stuff. We staved off starvation with some crackers, salami and brie with sage, cinnamon and brown sugar as we cleaned. After we finished, it was mutually decided that we needed a quick rest, so we loafed for an hour or so before we got down to the business of dinner.
On the menu: Pan-Seared Honey Pork Loin Chops with Sauteed Apple and Squash
First, we prepared a quick marinade for the chops; fireweed honey, EVOO, sea salt, cracked peppercorns, sage, oregano and garlic. Then we peeled, rondelled and sliced our apples and squash while our pork got happy in it's marinade. We discovered that Kris doesn't particularly enjoy having to peel things with a paring knife, incidentally, and in the future will likely be using a peeler.
Once all was prepped, the pork chops came out and we got a pan started on high heat. A bit (okay, a lot) more honey got drizzled over the searing chops, which helps lock in the moisture and also gives the pork a delicious golden-brown color all over while it cooks through. While that was working, we sauteed up our apple slices and squash with a little EVOO and pulling in the sage again, then a bit more salt and pepper.
The kitchen smelled absolutely delicious and once the pork was done, I demonstrated a quick pan sauce, plated, drizzled and voila!
I think in retrospect, I'd use a less starchy apply than Red Delicious for sauteeing because it didn't retain as much of the nice snap as I wanted, but the flavor was great. I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm all about letting ingredients taste like themselves and the produce did exactly that. The pork chops looked absolutely gorgeous; the honey had deepend the color even more to almost a red-gold color that would have looked even more delicious on white flatware, but personally I think it looked pretty sexy on our black plates, too. I was very pleased with the taste, especially the pork. The fireweed honey actually added a bit of bite, which was perfect.
I really enjoyed working in the kitchen with Kris and I hope for her sake my occasional instructions were useful as opposed to a pain in the rump roast. I'm already thinking ahead to next week...
Saturday, January 9, 2010
There's a Reason My Hands Smell Like Lamb...
Friday is the shortest school day of my week and I had somehow mistaken that to mean it would also be the least busy. Wrongsies. The day started off with arriving in the kitchen to see a side of lamb laid out on the table over two cutting boards. I knew from the schedule of our week that we were breaking down lamb, but for some reason the idea had been abstract in my mind until I spent a moment staring at basically the entire left side of an animal. It had been slaughtered, skinned, cleaned and frozen Wednesday for us, our Chef said, and it wasn't specifically a lamb. With no lambing actually going on at this time of the year, the carcass in front of us was a one year old female sheep. Still relatively young, but much larger than what I'd been expecting to see.
Chef Karen spent the better part of an hour demonstrating how to break down the lamb and showing us where each cut of meat comes from. Logically I know a flank steak comes from the flank and I know where the tenderloin is located, but actually taking it off the animal was such an enlightening process. It isn't just a black and white outline of a sheep on paper labelling where each cut is located. It was maneuvering my knife through bone, cartilage and fat to carve out what would eventually end up being served to our customers.
After the demo and a quick break to grab lunch, we headed back into the kitchen to do our own cuts on the remaining three sides. We each had a chance to work on extracting a specific primal cut from the sheep which we would then take back to our station, clean and further break down. My cut was the leg, which I removed very cleanly, according to Chef.
Another small revelation: the reason some lamb tastes gamier than others is once again all in the way it has been handled. There are three reasons behind the way lamb smells. The first is the fell. Fell is the thin later underneath the lamb's hide that basically encases everything. If you've ever had salami that still had the casing on it and you had to peel it off, this is exactly how the fell works. The fell smells strongly of whatever odors the animal absorbs into it's skin and consequently if it isn't removed, you're going to have a more "lamb-y" taste which turns many people off from eating it.
The second and third reasons are that sheep have scent glands basically everywhere humans have them. On their "wrists", elbows, armpits, neck, between their legs and so on. These glands are usually encased in a lot of fat and not always exactly in the same location which makes them very easy to cut into. If the person fabricating the lamb cuts into a gland and doesn't realize it, the scent is going to be spread to every piece of meat their knife then cuts into until they wash it. The other way is if they don't hit the gland but it remains entombed in the fat on a cut of meat that is going to be cooked, the gland will basically render down along with the rest of the fat and flavor the meat that it is cooking with.
Let me add that there is absolutely no harm in ingesting it, it simply imparts that distinctly lamb-y scent to the meat. So if you've ever wondered why some lamb smells very strongly and some doesn't, now you (and I!) know!
In other news, I'm reading Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck. He first captured my interest with his show Heston's Feasts and In Search of Perfection on the Beeb where he would recreate historical feasts as accurately as possible on the former and use molecular gastronomy and science to create culinary perfection (or not) on the latter. He is one of the food world's brightest stars and his book is not only a cookbook, but he does us the service of telling a story throughout as well; much more interesting than just a book of recipes, although I'd gladly read one of those written by him as well.
I leave you all with my personal favorite bit of Heston's culinary alchemy... Alice in Wonderland's Drink Me .
Cheers!
Chef Karen spent the better part of an hour demonstrating how to break down the lamb and showing us where each cut of meat comes from. Logically I know a flank steak comes from the flank and I know where the tenderloin is located, but actually taking it off the animal was such an enlightening process. It isn't just a black and white outline of a sheep on paper labelling where each cut is located. It was maneuvering my knife through bone, cartilage and fat to carve out what would eventually end up being served to our customers.
After the demo and a quick break to grab lunch, we headed back into the kitchen to do our own cuts on the remaining three sides. We each had a chance to work on extracting a specific primal cut from the sheep which we would then take back to our station, clean and further break down. My cut was the leg, which I removed very cleanly, according to Chef.
Another small revelation: the reason some lamb tastes gamier than others is once again all in the way it has been handled. There are three reasons behind the way lamb smells. The first is the fell. Fell is the thin later underneath the lamb's hide that basically encases everything. If you've ever had salami that still had the casing on it and you had to peel it off, this is exactly how the fell works. The fell smells strongly of whatever odors the animal absorbs into it's skin and consequently if it isn't removed, you're going to have a more "lamb-y" taste which turns many people off from eating it.
The second and third reasons are that sheep have scent glands basically everywhere humans have them. On their "wrists", elbows, armpits, neck, between their legs and so on. These glands are usually encased in a lot of fat and not always exactly in the same location which makes them very easy to cut into. If the person fabricating the lamb cuts into a gland and doesn't realize it, the scent is going to be spread to every piece of meat their knife then cuts into until they wash it. The other way is if they don't hit the gland but it remains entombed in the fat on a cut of meat that is going to be cooked, the gland will basically render down along with the rest of the fat and flavor the meat that it is cooking with.
Let me add that there is absolutely no harm in ingesting it, it simply imparts that distinctly lamb-y scent to the meat. So if you've ever wondered why some lamb smells very strongly and some doesn't, now you (and I!) know!
In other news, I'm reading Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck. He first captured my interest with his show Heston's Feasts and In Search of Perfection on the Beeb where he would recreate historical feasts as accurately as possible on the former and use molecular gastronomy and science to create culinary perfection (or not) on the latter. He is one of the food world's brightest stars and his book is not only a cookbook, but he does us the service of telling a story throughout as well; much more interesting than just a book of recipes, although I'd gladly read one of those written by him as well.
I leave you all with my personal favorite bit of Heston's culinary alchemy... Alice in Wonderland's Drink Me .
Cheers!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Eating My Words, or 'Shut Up and Try the Salmon, Jess!'
Anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of salmon. There's something about the oil that taints everything you touch when preparing it to the fishy smell of it even when it's cooked that usually just makes me want to run screaming. Everyone from my mother to my chef instructors have told me that it shouldn't smell fishy when it's cooked properly but every time I've tried it it just leaves me cringing. And honestly, it bothers me that I can't get over it because I feel like I need to be able to taste dishes I'm cooking for others objectively and I haven't been able to do that yet regarding salmon.
Today I had a revelation. A salmon eureka. We had a guest speaker today at school; Rick Oltman, the owner of Cape Cleare Fishery came in to speak to us about sustainable fishing practices and he brought with him a 12-ish pound silver salmon for us to break down and work with. He also brought a 5 lb smoked salmon. The difference, I discovered, is all in the way the fish has been handled.
Rick and his crew catch each salmon individually hook-and-line, gut, bleed and take the fish down to -40 Fahrenheit within half an hour to 45 minutes of bringing it over the side of the boat. Once it's frozen, they dip it into extremely cold sea water, which forms a protective glaze over the entire fish which prevents the cold, dry air of the freezer from sucking the moisture out of the fish while at sea. Also, by taking it down to temp so quickly, the cell walls don't rupture, the flavor isn't lost, the gorgeous color is preserved and the end result, in today's case, was a salmon that was frozen two years ago blowing a market-fresh salmon out of the water, pardon the pun.
We broke the salmon down, practiced removing pinbones and then we cooked a couple small pieces, seasoned with just salt and pepper. It was seriously epic. There was no fishy taste, just a really moist, lightly-seasoned bite of what salmon should taste like. Chef Kären explained that it was all because of the way the fish was handled before it was frozen. Fisheries can say their product was "frozen at sea", but that usually means it's been tossed in a boat's hold and frozen on shore.
The smoked salmon was equally delicious; it was also a two year old salmon that Rick had thawed and alderwood-smoked. The only way it would've been better is if I had a bagel and some cream cheese to go with it.
Long story short, it was a revelation and I am merrily going make my way to the Ballard Farmer's Market where Rick bicycles to every weekend with his product in cooler trailers and pick up some of his smoked salmon! In this case, I was happy to be proved wrong, and when I'm in a position to make purchasing decisions in the future, I will definitely be giving Rick Oltman my business.
Today I had a revelation. A salmon eureka. We had a guest speaker today at school; Rick Oltman, the owner of Cape Cleare Fishery came in to speak to us about sustainable fishing practices and he brought with him a 12-ish pound silver salmon for us to break down and work with. He also brought a 5 lb smoked salmon. The difference, I discovered, is all in the way the fish has been handled.
Rick and his crew catch each salmon individually hook-and-line, gut, bleed and take the fish down to -40 Fahrenheit within half an hour to 45 minutes of bringing it over the side of the boat. Once it's frozen, they dip it into extremely cold sea water, which forms a protective glaze over the entire fish which prevents the cold, dry air of the freezer from sucking the moisture out of the fish while at sea. Also, by taking it down to temp so quickly, the cell walls don't rupture, the flavor isn't lost, the gorgeous color is preserved and the end result, in today's case, was a salmon that was frozen two years ago blowing a market-fresh salmon out of the water, pardon the pun.
We broke the salmon down, practiced removing pinbones and then we cooked a couple small pieces, seasoned with just salt and pepper. It was seriously epic. There was no fishy taste, just a really moist, lightly-seasoned bite of what salmon should taste like. Chef Kären explained that it was all because of the way the fish was handled before it was frozen. Fisheries can say their product was "frozen at sea", but that usually means it's been tossed in a boat's hold and frozen on shore.
The smoked salmon was equally delicious; it was also a two year old salmon that Rick had thawed and alderwood-smoked. The only way it would've been better is if I had a bagel and some cream cheese to go with it.
Long story short, it was a revelation and I am merrily going make my way to the Ballard Farmer's Market where Rick bicycles to every weekend with his product in cooler trailers and pick up some of his smoked salmon! In this case, I was happy to be proved wrong, and when I'm in a position to make purchasing decisions in the future, I will definitely be giving Rick Oltman my business.
Culinary World Domination Business Plan - Step One
Obligatory introduction, ahoy. My name is Jessica and after meandering through my post-secondary years with no clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life, I decided to attend the Seattle Culinary Academy @ Seattle Central Community College -oldest culinary school west of the Mississippi, I just recently discovered, and the only culinary school actively including Sustainability in it's curriculum- on the reccomendation of my girlfriend Kris. She's an alum of the college's Film and Video Production program and it was her positive experience that convinced me to dip a toe into the community college world. I've just begun my fourth quarter of five, which is focused on fine dining and I feel like I'm finally starting to hit my stride in the world of professional cooking.
So, I'll admit that I registered this blog because all my friends are doing it and my friends are cool people, so they must be on to something. But I'm also doing this because I realize that maybe not everyone enjoys hearing my long-winded enthusing about topics like molecular gastronomy and my burning dilemma over whether to theme my final Culinary School menu on lavender or apples. If you are, in fact, interested though, I'd love to hear your thoughts, feelings, ideas and interpretations on what I write about.
About that - what I plan to write about here will be anything from what culinary-related books I'm reading, what projects I'm working on for school, and what I'm cooking at home. Recipes, anecdotes and the occasional rant (I'd hate to start off on a false pretense that I don't get up on the apple crate once in a while) and hopefully some breathing room in my brain once I get some of the stuff I'm dying to discuss out there.
All that said... in the words of The Chairman, ALLEZ CUISINE!
So, I'll admit that I registered this blog because all my friends are doing it and my friends are cool people, so they must be on to something. But I'm also doing this because I realize that maybe not everyone enjoys hearing my long-winded enthusing about topics like molecular gastronomy and my burning dilemma over whether to theme my final Culinary School menu on lavender or apples. If you are, in fact, interested though, I'd love to hear your thoughts, feelings, ideas and interpretations on what I write about.
About that - what I plan to write about here will be anything from what culinary-related books I'm reading, what projects I'm working on for school, and what I'm cooking at home. Recipes, anecdotes and the occasional rant (I'd hate to start off on a false pretense that I don't get up on the apple crate once in a while) and hopefully some breathing room in my brain once I get some of the stuff I'm dying to discuss out there.
All that said... in the words of The Chairman, ALLEZ CUISINE!
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