Culinary Connection

Reading Rachael Ray

Bruce Cole | March 27, 2006

Rach, I bought your new mag, Everyday with Rachael Ray this weekend. I needed something to read apres-snowboarding, while sucking down some advils, wine and recouping by the fire.

Now I have to admit, I'm not quite up on your lingo. Just what is EVOO, 1 turn of the pan, in your recipe for Hot Dog Pizza-Dillas (pg 50)?

Ohmigod, I think I get it!

Maybe.

EVOO stands for Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and one turn of the pan is pouring the oil all the while turning the pan one time until it coats the cooking surface?

Rachael, Rachael, Rachael...I'm not gonna give you grief for sauteeing hot dogs, but don't you know that cooking with a delicate and aromatic oil essentially destroys all the properties that make it extra virgin in the first place? Lemme explain. Those flowery, peppery, grassy qualities that makes EVOO so distinctive instantly go up in smoke when you subject the oil to heat. Try this one time, heat a couple tablespoons of your EVOO in a pan, and then carefully drain some into a soup spoon. Blow on it until it cools. Now taste it. Compare it to a taste of EVOO just out of the bottle. Ugh, huh? A perfectly good waste of a perfectly good oil isn't it? Best to keep some organic canola oil in your cupboard for all those browning/sauteeing tasks and to reserve the EVOO for drizzling. Geez, how many time have I used EVOO in this paragraph? I'm starting to sound just like you...

I don't really mean to get on your case by the way. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who can convince the average American to give up their fast food ways and turn to the kitchen to prepare their food gets props in my book.

On second thought.

While you are converting fast food diners to fast food cooks, 30 Minute Meals and all, maybe you could guide them down a slightly different path?

See, I was happily thumbing through the latest issue until I got to page 33, which is just before you turn the page to see Sheryl Crow in really tight jeans and a milk moustache. Anyways, page 33 is the Hormel Fully Cooked Bacon ad. Right, fully cooked, as in pre-cooked so you don't have to. Yes, I know part of your spiehl is ripping open packages of processed foods which serve as a shortcut to getting the meal in under the 30 minute mark. Now besides the fact that one of the best things about frying bacon is that it fills your entire house with the enticing smell of smoked pork fat (what do you like to say - "your nose will know"?), so why the heck would you ever buy it precooked, is that Hormel bacon comes from a place that I'm sure you'd never write about in your magazine. Not to get all high and mighty here, but you know, don't you, that factory farmed pork (Hormel, Smithfield, Tyson, etc.) comes from pigs that are essentially raised in conditions that we would never subject our best friends, the dogs and cats of the world to? Maybe that's why the Humane Society, which is what we usually associate the safety of housepets with, has started a campaign to end animal cruelty on factory farms (You can read about it here). I only bring this up this because you mention your dog "Isaboo" on page 32, which is right across the page from the bacon ad, and I'm guessing that having a pet in the house means you are an animal lover, pigs being animals too, and rather intelligent ones at that.

There I go again, ruining a nice little rant with the ugly spectre of factory farming.

Sorry.

Yes, I know from first hand experience that the magazine biz is especially tough when it comes to ad revenue. And I'm sure your advertising department let out a big whoop! when they scored all those Hormel full page ads. And I'm sure, you being Editor in Chief and all, let out a big Yum-o as well! See, I'm catching on with the lingo...And yours isn't the only magazine to take ads from the processed food industry. But Rachel, Rachael, Rachael...oh no...now I'm to page 85 and here you are sauteeing hot dogs in EVOO, again! With Jeff Daniels no less (Chili'n' Dawg Nachos)! What is the world coming to?
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Posted by Bruce at March 27, 2006 05:53 PM

So You Want to be a Chef

So You Want to be a Chef?

   Chefs often question, warn, or even outright discourage individuals from seeking to join their ranks. I believe this emanates from the people frustrated with their dead-end, cubicle-trapped jobs, plopped on their Sunday couches watching Emeril “bam” his way through a couple dishes, and saying to themselves: “I could do that.” These amateur cooks naively believe that there is a correlation between preparing homemade or TV meals and the professional kitchen. Worse yet, they may have stars in their eyes. My friend Claudia who teaches culinary journalism, often comments about how the pupils in her class “all think they’re gonna be the next Ruth Reichl.”
   I don’t think it’s these individuals’ dreams per se that ruffle the feathers of culinary professionals. Rather, I believe it is their lack of appreciation for the incredible amount of difficulty that lies ahead to even come within sight, if ever, of such aspirations. Even people with no goals of stardom, who just wish to cook professionally, may lack an appreciation for the disparity between their home kitchen and the real world. 
   I am not here to discourage anybody. I am simply going to give you the naked truth. You decide what to do with it. Forget being a celebrity chef for the moment. If you just simply aspire to be a professional chef, expect years of working 50+ hours a week, nights, weekends and holidays, for limited pay, in high stress situations.
   Still not discouraged? OK, let’s start at the beginning. Should you attend culinary school? Well, it’s not absolutely necessary. Experience is the ultimate teacher. But education coupled with experience is even better. But here’s another point of contention with professional chefs. They abhor people fresh out of school who think they know it all. Learning about a dish and making it once or twice in school is nothing compared to the person who’s done it 400 times. Although there’s a cerebral component, learning how to cook requires the acquisition of numerous physical skills. These skills can only be successfully achieved from repeatedly performing them. Schooling will give you a good platform from which to begin, and make you more hirable. But it is only the start.
   Next, you won’t go from school to behind the line making entrees. Oh no. You will do more than your share of “scut work” first. Forget your homemade meatloaf and potatoes. Think standing on your feet for hours on end filling raviolis, cleaning artichokes, peeling boxes of asparagus, gutting 50 lobsters, etc., and being expected to perform these monotonous, mechanistic chores with assembly line speed and accuracy.
   Next you’ll probably move up to the garde manger, (gahrd mahn-ZHAY), i.e., composing appetizers, soups, salads, shrimp cocktails and other cold preparations. How long you remain here depends on the restaurant and your skills. Eventually, if all goes well, you will be groomed for working the line, i.e., cooking the main items. Some restaurants divvy up the line positions by the type of cooking, (the sauté cook, the grill cook, etc.), or by the type of food, (the meat cook, the fish cook, etc.) Even though being a line cook is more prestigious, the hours remain grueling and you are under even more pressure to get the food out. Line cooks can work non-stop for hours during the height of service with no chance for even a bathroom break.
   If you’re good you’ll eventually become a sous chef. This is the second in command, right under the executive chef. The hours are still long, you’ll still sweat your you-know-what off working the line, and now you have the added responsibility of policing everyone else in the kitchen. Of course this position brings more prestige and money.
   A sous chef’s ultimate goal is to become an executive chef. Hard work, better than average ability, and sometimes a little bit of luck are all needed to reach that plateau. Sometimes the executive chef is also the owner, the ultimate goal in chefdom: owning your own restaurant. But always remember, no matter where you are on the totem pole in the restaurant business, it is never a nine to five proposition. It is your life.
   Of course there are other culinary occupations. There are cooking school teachers, food stylists, caterers, and restaurant consultants to name a few. But inevitably, these people have spent years paying their dues in front of hot stoves when everybody else was out having fun or being with their family. Or you could become, HA, a food writer. You probably have a better chance of ending up on the Food Network than being able to support yourself, (let alone a family), by food writing alone. At the risk of sounding discouraging, the stars in people’s eyes are ultimately the result of being beat over the head with reality.

By Mark R. Vogel Epicure1@optonline.net

Mother Teressa Of Wings

Blessed Art Thou Who Eat Buffalo Wings (FoodArticles)

Posted 2 March, 2006 by PAF-News

By Eric Vinje, Cosmic Chile
http://www.cosmicchile.com/

We can thank Mother Teressa for Buffalo chicken wings. No, no, no. Not that Mother Theresa, the nun known for helping the poor and dying in India.

This Mother Teressa hailed from Buffalo. She is the patron saint of those who crave a hot, flavorful snack also known as Buffalo Wings - those spicy chicken wings that come with celery sticks and Bleu Cheese dressing.

While most people agree on when Buffalo Wings were created - 1964 - and where - The Anchor Bar, then owned by Teressa and Frank Bellisimo in Buffalo, NY - there are several different versions on how buffalo wings came into being.

The most popular story has Teressa making Buffalo chicken wings as a late night snack for her son Dominic and his friends. She was just about to make chicken stock with a bunch of wings and instead turned them into a snack by broiling them and then sprinkling them with hot sauce and serving them with some celery sticks off the bar's antipasto plates and using the bar's bleu cheese dressing as a garnish.

Teressa, her husband and her son have since gone on to their final rewards, but Dominic told Calvin Trillin a different version, which Trillin wrote up in the New Yorker magazine in the 1980s. In Dominic's version, he wanted to do something for his patrons on a Friday night. Many of the folks in the bar were Catholic and back in the 1960s couldn't eat meat on Fridays. So Dominic asked his mom, Teressa, to devise a snack, which she did, then served it at midnight when the meat fast was over.

Teressa's husband Frank told yet another version of the tale. In this one, the bar got a delivery of chicken wings instead of the backs and necks needed to make the bar's spaghetti sauce. The chicken wings were cheap - back in 1964 they cost five cents per pound - and Teressa ended up creating buffalo wings because of the wrong delivery.

No matter how they were created, buffalo wings today mean unbreaded chicken wings, deep fried and coated in a cayenne pepper sauce to which butter and vinegar have been added. Many restaurants serve different "heat" levels for buffalo wings including mild, medium, hot and suicidal. The more butter added to the sauce the less spicy it is. Unless they make their own, most restaurants and bars use cayenne hot sauces as the base for their spicy buffalo wing sauce.

According to buffalo wing ordering protocol, a "single" order is 10 wings, a "double" is 20 and a "triple" is 30. They can also be ordered by the "bucket" in quantities of 50 or more.

To this day you can still visit the Anchor Bar in Buffalo and order up some buffalo wings. (Nearby Duff's just outside of the Buffalo City limits is also known to have great Buffalo wings.) Reportedly, many celebrities and politicians including Vice President Mondale, First Lady Hillary Clinton and Los Angeles Dodgers Coach Tommy Lasorda, have all ordered buffalo wings from the Anchor Bar when in the upstate New York birthplace of the Buffalo chicken wings.

Buffalo chicken wings are also a staple at many bars and restaurant chains including Hooters, TGIFs, Bennigans and so on. Many pizzerias including Dominos and Pizza Hut have them on the menu. Even KFC - formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken - has gotten into the game. Many serve traditional Buffalo wings, but there are many derivations, including some with Asian soy sauce or other non-spicy marinades.