My Award Winning Hubby

Shane was awarded Salut Au Restaurateur by the AR Hospitality Association last Thursday.  Chefs are nominated by previous winners, then the nominees are voted on by your peers within the industry.  Shane was thrilled to be nominated and even happier to actually win the award!

I'm so proud of you Shane!

The next couple photos are from last weekend at the park.

Just a swingin' with my girl

Chloe loves her daddy

This was Friday (a couple days ago)!  Chloe playing with Laney in the snow.

Snow Bunny

I love Chloe's 2 front teeth in this picture!

Still my happy baby girl!

 

I think Mom summed up this picture best, "worth a million words & one you'll want to keep for the graduation/wedding video!"

Food Is Powerful

Food is powerful, no two ways around it.  But why?  What is it about food that makes it so important?  Defining events in our lives seem to involve or revolve around food.  For birthdays we go out to dinner; at holidays, we gather with family and friends around the kitchen table. Super Bowl Sunday is around the corner and is definitely associated with food. I may not be able to tell you who attended my wedding reception, but I can rattle off a good portion of the menu. I even remember what I ate the night my wife proposed to me in one of our favorite restaurants! (Yes, you read that correctly!) Valentine’s Day will be here in a couple weeks, and its time for us to look at what Chefs will serve in their restaurants. Valentine’s Day is a time where people try new restaurants. One great meal can turn a new customer into a lifelong regular customer. That’s a powerful concept and very stressful for restaurateurs; which makes it a great time to help our customers out with some new ideas. As a chef, I’m often asked of my favorite meal. Parts of my answer may change, but one thing remains constant – they were very simple but well executed dishes. There are fewer things more enjoyable than a braised meat done well.  A tough (and usually cheap) cut of meat cooked in liquid until tender.  With the seasons soon changing, this will be one of the last times you can pull off a braised meat and have customers clamoring for it. More favorites include a simple risotto with fresh mushrooms, mashed parsnips, creamed potatoes, well poached shrimp or a simple salad topped with a poached egg.  A great sauce can lift a mediocre dish to such greatness, it is really amazing! Set your customers up for success – keep it easy!  Pulling out new ideas and applications on a busy night like Valentine’s Day is not only foolish, but could ultimately lead them to fail. Feel free to call or email if you need help with ideas, recipes or availability questions. Remember, great talent doesn’t always make you the best. It’s simply those who maximize their potential than can get the most out of themselves & be the most effective. By doing this with your customers, they begin to see you a valued part of their organization - not just an outsider who happens to have the food they need to operate.

If We Listen

“There are 86,400 seconds in a day. It's up to you to decide what to do with them.”-Jim Valvano

A few years ago my wife and I visited Chicago.  What a great city! I’m not really into architecture, which is what the city is really known for, but I am into food. Chicago is easily second only to New York when it comes to great restaurants.  I’m sure you could live in Chicago for years and never eat at the same place twice or have a bad meal.  One of the best chefs in the nation, Charlie Trotter, owns one of the best restaurants in Chicago along with several Trotter To Go markets. 

Coincidently, when we visited Trotter To Go, it was a very special day.  Norm Van Aken, a chef that Trotter trained under, was doing a book signing. I was so excited!  Van Aken does fun food, fusing American cuisine with some Latin, Caribbean, and Asian flair.  I have to admit, I was a little star struck at first.  I had followed Van Aken’s “World Cuisine” for a few years. His knowledge of products and how to use them seemed overwhelming. I didn’t think he would be too thrilled to meet a chef from Arkansas, so I was a little nervous to approach him. 

Eventually Van Aken ended up walking up to me!  He asked how long I had been a chef. Now, keep in mind, I was on vacation in Chicago.  I wasn’t wearing the signature chef coat with my name & title printed loud and clear.  I was pretty blown away by how Van Aken figured out I was a chef.  After asking, he gave me the Yodi like wisdom of “sometimes you just know.”  

We began discussing what I did, which at the time was the executive chef at a catering company.  As we talked, Van Aken truly listened to what I had to say.  Sure I was a chef, but not with as much knowledge or experience this man certainly has! He discussed with me the differenced in catering companies and restaurants.  Sure, they both have food, but that’s where the similarities end.  Van Aken explained to me that he was interested in starting a catering division.  At that moment I realized he was really interested in my option, taking mental notes and gaining knowledge from our discussion.  Later that year, Van Aken did indeed open up a catering company.

Looking back I am left with a valuable lesson. No matter how much you think you might know about a subject, taking the time to listen to others can be a priceless tool.  Way too often we think we know more than we really do about a subject.  Norm Van Aken taking the time to listen to a younger, less experienced chef really impressed upon me how much we can learn from others if we choose to listen.

Catch Up 1-13-11

Weekly Recipes

Steak Cobb Salad

Traditionally a cobb salad is made with grilled chicken, but this is a really great way to use some scraps of beef tenderloin, or other trimming you may have lying around.  If you keep your trimmings from beef tenderloin, which hopefully you have already priced worked into your food cost you can charge again for your trimmings into this salad and it is pure profit.  This salad is great in the winter months since none of these ingredients are better summer ingredients.  Classically this salad is served lined up in impressive rows, but certainly it can be tossed so that every ingredient can get into every bite.

Makes 4 servings

2 tablespoons fresh chives or green onions

1/2 cup olive oil

1 T lemon juice

Salt and pepper

6 each diced hot house grown grape tomatoes

6 hard boiled eggs, diced

12 ounces Beef Tenderloin

2 Avocado, diced

1 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese

1 minced red onion

8 strips bacon, cooked crispy

12 cups lettuce, classically this salad is served with iceberg, but I would use whatever you have available.

1 cup Blue Cheese Dressing, a couple of weeks ago I sent out a recipe for a homemade version

After preparing all of the ingredients lightly salt the avocados and toss with ½ of the lemon juice.  Toss the diced tomatoes with the other ½ lemon juice, ¼ cup of the oil, chives, and a small pinch of salt.  Toss the tenderloin with the remaining olive oil with salt and pepper, and then either grill or sauté the beef tenderloin to medium rare, it will continue to cook while you are plating the dish and end up being more of a medium. 

Assembly:

Toss the dressing and the lettuce together.  Equally arrange the greens in the center of four plates.  Arrange the blue cheese in a vertical line to the right hand side of the plates.  Working right to left continue making the vertical lines with the bacon, eggs, beef tenderloin, avocado, red onion, and lastly the tomatoes, grind a small amount of fresh black pepper on top, 

Nicoise Salad

Well done Nicoise salad is truly a thing of beauty, in this recipe I have taken the canned tuna and replaced it with fresh tuna, but feel free to use a canned version if that’s what is available.  I like to present this as either a salad or an entrée, slightly deconstructed it has a great eye appeal and with great ingredients something so simple can be elevated to a memorable meal, customers will come back for time and again.

Serves 4

2 heads Bibb lettuce

6 ounces green beans-fresh or frozen, blanched in salty water, stems trimmed

1 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and sliced into ½ inch thick strips

6 ounces red potatoes, boiled until just done, drained, then browned in a hot skillet

12 each cherry tomatoes, cut in halves, and salted

½ cup kalamata olives

4 each hard-boiled egg

1 Ripe Avocado, cut into ¼ inch strips

Croutons-optional, the potatoes give a nice crunch, but a few of these can put it over the top

Salt and Pepper

12 ounces tuna steak-Recipe Follows

1 ½ cup Nicoise Salad Dressing-Recipe Follows

Tuna:

This is enough seasoning to do several tuna steaks.

1 T Corainder Seed, toasted then ground

1 T Sesame Seed, toasted then ground

1 T Kosher Salt

2 t Smoked Paprika

11/2 t fresh black pepper

½ t ground white pepper

½ t ground red pepper

Tuna-preferable cut into a rectangle

Mix together all the seasonings and roll the tuna loin in the mix, sear in hot pan no longer than 20 seconds on any side. 

Nicoise Salad Dressing

2 ounces Lemon Juice

3 ounces  Red Wine Vinegar

1 T Dijon Mustard

3 each canned anchovy with oil

2 T Chopped fresh herb-like parsley or chervil

8 ounces Canola Oil

Tt Salt and pepper

Place all ingredients except oil in the body of a blender, turn on low speed and slowly add in the oil to make an emulsification.  Season with salt and pepper and reserve to the side, or make it ahead and store in the refrigerator up to a week. 

Assembly:

Slice tuna into equal squares.  Put the lettuce in a large bowl and drizzle with a little of the dressing and toss.  Cut the beans in quarters and place in a bowl with the tomatoes, add the olives, and the pepper, and toss with a small amount of the dressing.  Cut the eggs into quarters and season with a little salt and pepper.  Arrange a layer of lettuce on plate, top with an equal amount of the tomato, green bean, olive, pepper mixture.  Arrange the tuna, eggs, potatoes, and avocado around the salad, top with a few croutons.  Serve extra dressing on the side if necessary.  Garnish with some fresh herbs, top with a little fresh cracked pepper, and serve.

Catch Up 1-12-11

There are lots of great myths as to where food came from, and they are all great.  One of my favorite ones ever reminds us to always look around for inspiration.  The story goes that there was this horrible chef from Italy that had been banished to a small tavern in the middle of this great forest on a road connecting many small towns to Paris from France.  One evening a French acting troupe came through his small tavern and inn he was employed in need of a blacksmith to fix a busted wagon wheel.  As luck would have it for this chef, and his masterful creation the blacksmith was quit a drunk and was already far from being able to do any work on the wagon wheel, so the troupe was forced to stay at the Inn for the night.  As the troupe came into the inn, the chef noticed they had a woman with them, the lead in the troupe; she was the most strikingly attractive woman he had ever seen.  After the group of travelers had checked in, the chef crept up stairs to the woman’s room and peered through the key hole into her room.  All the chef could see was the most stunning navel he had ever seen.  This chef, so horrible he was banished to afar away isolated community to toil away, so bad at his craft he spent far more time with the blacksmith in the tavern than in the kitchen perfecting his craft, but yet so inspired he ran downstairs and started making pasta.  Upon completion he called for the actress, who he had fallen full into lust with by now, he served her the first dish ever of tortellini, she of course fell in love, and based on the success of this dish he became re-inspired and eventually became one of the best chefs in Italy. 

Catch Up 1-4-11

At the end of a football season teams generally look back at the year and evaluate success and failure.  We see this happening from players all the way up to owners.  Often college players are making the tough decision whether or not to try to make it in the pro ranks.  Veteran players are looking back at the year and things can improve on.  Coaches are looking back at ways to get inside their players and motivate them.  Owners/Athletic Directors are looking back at the job the coach has done and deciding if he has the right person for the job, or if they are going to have to increase pay to keep the person they have in place.  The great coach Bear Bryant said, “When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: 1. Admit it.   2. Learn from it, and  3. Don't repeat it.”  When you look back on failures it is not so much to beat yourself up on a mistake, it is about learning so you can see mistakes coming in the future and change your direction before running head long into it.  As we start a new year and look back on our mistakes, plan our goals for the next year, and try to become more proactive than we were the last year.

Catch Up 12-29-10

I started in this industry exactly the same as a lot of you, washing dishes in a Mom and Pop restaurant waiting for the cook to no show, or mouth off to the owner so I could get my shot at the big time cooking on the line.  When my shot happened I was ready to move in and be the new guy cooking the hamburgers and dropping frys during a slow Monday night dinner service.  I knew enough to get the job done and was too dumb to realize how much I didn’t know about the wonderful world of culinary arts.  As time went by and I continued cooking I kept learning and adding to my skills as a cook.  Eventually I moved to Rhode Island to attend culinary school, here I began to understand something very important about our industry and learning.  Once I started going to classes I realized that there was far more information about cooking than my instructors were going to possibly be able to cover.  I started reading everything I could find to make myself a better chef, and that has been a habit I have carried with me.  I started telling myself that any day without learning something that makes me a better chef was not worth waking up for.  I still make sure that I learn something new in the industry every day. 

If you are going to invest at least 40 hours a week into something why not try to be the best you can at it.  Reading is a great place to start.  When I talk to young culinarians that is one of the first things I talk about is constantly reading and gaining knowledge.  I always tried to be the most knowledgeable person in the kitchen, when you go in as a sales person why not have that drive and desire to be the most knowledgeable person in that kitchen every time.  From  knowing the difference in a Norkotah and Burbanks, or where a hanger steak comes from be knowledgeable about your products and your sales will increase, I would rather deal with a rep that knows and understands his product than one than constantly has to, “check on it”.  The great thing about it is no one can force you to do it, you control it, your drive, your pace, and no one else can do it for you.  If you have the desire to be the best you have to work at it.