Miscellaneous Wednesday Test Kitchen Stuff

Its a casual test kitchen this week, no 3 or 4 course menus involved. These are basically a couple of fun midweek dinner items that I cooked for myself. I spent a little more time because I was testing some things out, but they're pretty casaul.

On the menu:

Crispy Blue Corn Batter Fried Dover Sole Taco
-caramelized gypsy peppers and onions, saffron sriracha aioli, heirloom tomato

Roasted Chicken Stuffed with Pancetta Risotto
-sweet soy(beef based) and dashi stock, cubanelle Peppers

Blue Corn Batter

Fried Fish...hmm...crispy

Taco Flavored Kisses - it was gooey and good

Hmm... Crispy Roasted Chicken

Don't You Wish All Chickens Had Risotto Instead of Bones?

Bloodhound Steer Party - July 28, 2009

Last night, as part of the now monthly Bloodhound/4505/Fatted Calf meat party series, I was again rocking the corn dog station. This time though, I was presented with a massive load of 20lbs of 4505 Hotdogs on sticks and it took me all night to fry them all off. The crowd for the most part was pretty good, albeit a little douchey at times. For that, I blame the few people who have to fuck it up for all the other generally nice and calm people. The worst was this one guy who was annoyingly vicious. Here's a little note for him.

To the douchebag in glasses:
Please do not yell at the cook who is trying to get a bite for 10 seconds all while continuously pumping out food for the last 4 hours for a rabid crowd. This is not acceptable behavior anywhere. I dare you to do that at a restaurant when a cook is trying to taste the food going out. Not only would you get kicked out, you might get your ass kicked in too. The latter of which, I was pretty willing to do, considering I was already conveniently "outside" and in an alley way. I'm not sure there are little girls who bitched and moaned like this guy. Ass.

To others:
The food is served INSIDE and when it is served, it is fair to grab one or maybe even two pieces of the items. We can't serve it outside because that would cause more people to hover over us endlessly and then it would become an illegal block party. Also, stop screwing your own people over by robbing the trays blind before they get anywhere. There is a lot of food coming over 4 hours of time, don't worry, you'll get to it. It's the meat, it makes people do stupid things. I can attest to that.

Onto a brighter note, the self proclaimed "swinewhores" group obviously made their presence felt - one of them was sporting spikey shiny blue heels that I think I remembered seeing in a Robert Palmer video. She also wore a short skirt. I have no personal judgements on attire as it really has nothing to do with me. Did I appreciate the nice distraction? Yes. Was I looking at her face the whole time? Probably not. Did I hear some gals say that it wasn't so awesome? Yes. Do I really care? Probably not. Nowadays, until you wear lace lingerie and start slapping another girl's ass, I'm relatively laid back about it. Anyways, I would just like people to know that just because I was frying corndogs, I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me blind or gay. I'm honest and relatively non-judgemental. I'm a good man whose perfectly okay with hating people for who they are.

Here's a little shoutout to the familiar faces of the party staff: Angie, Jess, Ryan, Taylor, Bailey, Carlo, Taylor and Josh (who's girlfriend Sarah was playing super-tray-server sidekick for some of the night). Visavis, many people said Josh's buttery buns were fantastic. I agree.

Onto the pics:

Grilling action

At the breakdown table

Mound of peaches, basil and pancetta

Big meat

"Heels, high heels" says Patrick Batemen

Buttery buns baby.

Frying action, blop blop blop

Meat on stick = good

Many meats on sticks = awesome

Big boner.

Shittiest Kitchen Tasks

Shitty Job Indeed: Shrimp De-Pooping

I love cooking and I generally have absolutely no issues with any prep or kitchen task handed down. But, even chefs that possess the most positive of attitudes sometimes can't stand the sight of certain tasks. Case and point, deturding shrimp. God, if I could never do that again, ever, I think I said that people would achieve world peace. I'm still waiting for someone to invent a shrimp laxative or shrimp toilet paper, so they can clean their own shit. If only...

Anyways, I got some responses from my twitter friends and created this little list, enjoy.


The List:

De-turding and peeling shrimp
Peeling/cleaning favas
Pitting cherries
Peeling potatoes
Cleaning mountains of pig skin (thank you Chef Ryan Farr)
Juicing citrus at the end of the week/night when you have fresh little fingercuts/burns
Pitting cherries w/o a cherry pitter
Brunoise/julienne sourdough bread
Cleaning fish
Fluffing the chef/rubbing lotion on the chef's back acne *
Cleaning water chestnuts
Peeling/shaving green papaya
Making masa *
Peeling crawfish
Brunoise/peeling massive quantities of onion/shallots


* - jobs I have personally not done myself...thank goodness

Thanks to twitter followers for contributing: @BarleyPress @JoeScales @OliverLee @fromhils @bellini_belly @cookerguy @mando66 @beckaroo @linecook



Hot Food Porn Awards for Shitties Jobs Ever:

Conscensus Award for Shittiest Kitchen Job: favas by a slim margin over shrimp
Personal Award for Shittiest Kitchen Job: cleaning pig skin by a length over papaya
WTF Award for Shittiest Kitchen Job: fluffing/rubbing chef's back acne with lotion