My mom and dad left this morning after an enjoyable five day stay. Well… I enjoyed it; I hope they did too! We managed to do a few tourist-type things as well as just hang out and visit with each other and relax. We toured the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Central Park, the NYC Transit Museum, and the Greenpoint neighborhood (for Polish food). Here are some photos from their stay, as well as a video of a bag piper practicing in Central Park –
I’m having an “I Hate New York” day. You would think that a city of 8 million people would have everything under the sun. You would think that there would be so many people with such broad interests that it would create enough demand, even in niche areas, so you could easily find whatever your heart desires. You would think. I’m here to tell you that it just isn’t true. As diverse as NYC seems, most people here are really the same. New Yorkers are much more “middle America” than they would ever admit.
Why is there not a butcher in all of NYC that carries locally-produced, pasture-raised meat? I have done some extensive searching and I found one, and all they carry is pork chops and pork spare ribs that are priced twice as much as what I can buy at the farmer’s market. And don’t tell me it is economically sustainable, that there isn’t enough demand. See here for proof that it can work.
So instead of heading off to the butcher shop any day of the week, I have to wait for Wednesday or Saturday to go to the farmer’s market to buy from the two producers who bring their product into the city (Flying Pigs Farm and Hawethorne Valley Farm). Thank God for the farmer’s market. Of course, if I really want to plan ahead, I can always order online, but that’s not the point.
P.S. If you want more info on pasture-raised meat, check out this great website. And if you want to read a great book that talks about pasture-raised meat and other meat-eating issues, then read The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
When Lisa and I moved to NYC a year and a half ago, we had a hell of a time finding a good cup of coffee. I mean, we could find decent coffee and, believe me, there was plenty of crap coffee we suffered through as well. To get a really good cup of coffee, we have to travel well out of our neighborhood, unfortunately.
Here’s another one that is, again, not easily accessible for us. Though I may have to make the trek up to Williamsburg just so I can check out the Clover.
As for me, I finished up my stage at Del Posto. I have been spending these past couple of weeks working on a consulting project with my former culinary management instructor. A major national restaurant group contacted him to do a market analysis of a potential site in downtown Manhattan. We have been doing lots of site visits, research, and writing in preperation for our presentation this Thursday. He and I are going down to D.C. to meet with the company executives and to present our findings. It has been a very interesting experience and will very much come in handy when Lisa and I are working towards opening our own place.
After Thanksgiving I am going to start my next stage at Gotham Bar & Grill with the very talented Pastry Chef Deborah Racicot. I am still doing catering a couple days a week as well as making desserts for Lisa’s company once a month. I don’t really make much money on that one, but it is a nice thing to do for everyone at her company. The CEO is a huge foodie and just loves the desserts that I bring in. This month I plan on making a Caramel Apple Tart, Fran’s Gold Bar Brownies, and Creme Fraiche Ice Cream. I love Fall!
You would be surprised just how much this phrase can throw off a NYC store clerk or grocery bagger. We have had a plethora of responses, the most common is a cursory acknowledgment of our statement (“Uh huh”) and then they proceed to put the items into a plastic bag anyway. There is also the very annoying response of moving the bag aside (which we’ve placed on top of the goods to be purchased with the express purpose of forcing them to acknowledge our bag), ringing up the goods, and then putting them in a plastic bag anyway. All the while our bag languishes to the side amidst our protests of “We have our own bag!” Then there is the test of wills in which the clerk rings up our goods and then leaves them on the counter, waiting for us to bag them ourselves. I guess just because we’ve brought our own bag they feel this relieves them of the responsibility of putting the items in the bag. Have I mentioned how much I’m looking forward to getting back to Seattle?
Maybe I should carry around copies of this article from the Washington Post that talks about the environmental impacts of paper and plastic bags. The moral of the story – bring your own bags, people! I carry around a collapsible bag with me. It doesn’t take up much room in my shoulder bag and has prevented a lot of plastic bags from winding up in landfills or being burned in China or being swallowed by a sea turtle.
If you remember from a month or so ago, I left Jean-Georges and decided to pursue stagiaire positions at several restaurants before Lisa and I head back to Seattle. I started my first stage last week at Del Posto with their very talented pastry chef, Nicole Kaplan. I feel like this kitchen is good fit for me and I’m looking forward to spending six weeks with them. As for my next stage… I’m not sure yet. I need to go out and trail at some more restaurants to figure out where I might want to spend some more time.
Speaking of time, I have had a bit more of that on my hands this past month. Some of that extra time has been funneled into cooking at home more often. One dinner in particular was a very big success. Lisa just couldn’t stop talking about it (and I’m pretty pleased with the results as well). I stopped by the butcher shop, one of the few left in the city, and picked up a mixture of ground beef and pork to use for hamburgers. This is something I’ve discovered recently and I really never plan to go back to just plain beef burgers. The addition of the pork really makes a difference.
Since Lisa will only eat burgers on actual buns (not sliced bread), I either had to go to the grocery store and buy the buns or make them myself. Since I had the time, I decided to make my own buttermilk buns. The buns turned out a little smaller than I anticipated, not quite full-size but not quite “slider” size either. This is why I decided to call them Burgerlets instead of burgers or sliders.
The toppings for the burgers were goat cheese, carmalized onions, tomato “jam”, fig jam, mayo, and lettuce. I slowly carmelized the onions and then finished them off with some red wine. We didn’t have any slicing tomatoes, just little assorted cherry tomatoes. I decided to make a jam out of them, however I didn’t want to have to cook the tomatoes down and lose that fresh tomato taste. So instead I chopped up the tomatoes, put them in a strainer, salted them, and let the juices drain off. I then thickened the tomato juice using xanthan gum and added it back to the tomato solids. This created a tomato “jam” that was thick enough to stay put in the burger but still had the fresh tomato flavor. The fig jam I had made a few days earlier as a way to save some black mission figs that were almost expired. Actually, they had just started to mold but the great part about making a jam is that you boil it and kill off the little bit of mold that started to grow. I learned that trick at JG where we would save all the mushy and slightly moldy berries to be boiled down and made into sorbet. Here’s a picture of the final product.
And a shot of the sweet potato fries as they cooled after the initial blanching.
I tendered my resignation today at Jean-Georges. Wednesday will be my last day.
Maybe you noticed that I haven’t been posting much about my job. Well, that’s because I really didn’t have a lot of good things to post. I have struggled to meet my employer’s expectations, unfortunately. I have learned so much from this job and I know that I have improved quite a bit but unfortunately it hasn’t been enough for my chef and I have run out of chances. The final straw was an incident that happened two Saturdays ago. A ticket came in for two dessert tastings but with a note that there could be no alcohol in the dessert. I immediately thought of Jean-Georges’ Famous Cherry Berry Soup, which is fully loaded with alcohol. I ran back to the kitchen and asked me sous, Emily, what I should do in place of the soup. She told me to use the Strawberry Soda from one of the Jean-Georges desserts. Great! I ran back to the station, called upstairs for the strawberry soda, finished plating the dessert, and sent it out with the runner with instructions to pick up the soda on the way to the table (they have to pass by the JG pastry station on their way upstairs). Not too long later the server stopped by my station and told me that I had screwed up. I had forgotten to substitute out the chartreuse ice cream. Chartreuse is a liqueur. DAMN!! I was so upset with myself.
The ice cream was part of a new dessert and it was the first night that it was included on the tasting menu. It didn’t even cross my mind when the ticket said “no alcohol.” The guest is a Muslim and abstains from alcohol. Of course, he’s a regular customer and supposedly “spends a lot of money with us.” I later found out that he was accidentally served alcohol in something the last time he was in the restaurant. He was quite upset that it had happened again and apparently stormed out vowing never to return. I also later found out that there is now a note on his account that, should he miraculously return sometime in the future, that all of his food must be given to him by his server, not a runner. Presumably, the waiter would be in a better position to stop any alcohol from being given. This served as a very good lesson for me. From now on I will thoroughly consider every component of a dessert whenever there is some sort of restriction on what can be served. I mean, what if it was something he was allergic to? I could have put somebody in the hospital because I wasn’t careful. Well, never again.
Never again at Jean-Georges because I won’t be there anymore. Like I said, I had been having some difficulty meeting expectations and this seemed to be the last straw. There is a weekly “corporate” meeting on Tuesdays (last week’s didn’t happen) where they were supposedly going to discuss my future with the company. I decided it was better not to wait for that to happen and so I tendered my resignation today. Johnny, my chef, has been understandably upset with me, but he is also being supportive in my decision to leave. He has offered to help find me a new position somewhere else. The way we both see it is that I tried to jump to the top too fast. I’m just not quite ready for the demands of a four-star restaurant. Granted, I was working the cafe/bar, Nougatine, but Johnny still demands very high performance levels. Everyone else in the kitchen has at least a year or more experience working somewhere else before they came to Jean-Georges. So all of those “just out of school” mistakes were already out of the way. For me, I needed to make those mistakes and learn from them, but there just wasn’t a lot of room for that. Don’t get me wrong, Johnny gave me a lot of support, but I just ran out of rope. Even if they would have decided to keep me after this last incident, I knew that I would be skating on razor thin ice from then on and I just did not want to try to perform where there was no more room left for error.
So now what? Good question. Johnny and I discussed some options today and he made some suggestions. What I’m leaning towards is using the remaining nine months we have left in NYC (before we move back to Seattle) to work as a stagiere in as many of the top restaurants as I can. A stagiere, or stage, is a person who works for free just for the opportunity and experience. It usually lasts a few months at most and it doesn’t have the same commitment as being employed by the restaurant. It is a great opportunity to absorb a lot of ideas and inspirations in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, it is unpaid work. So I might try to pick up some catering work a couple times a week to at least provide some income. Thankfully, Lisa’s salary is enough for us to live on and anything I make has been going to paying down my culinary school loan as quickly as possible.
My theory is that everything happens for a reason. I’ll make the best out of this situation and I’m sure I’ll be better off in the end.
