Owner: Deglazed URL:http://deglazed.finarelli.com Join Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 09:13:53 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Have you ever dreamed of giving up your job to become a professional chef? That is what I did, and this is my blog that chronicles my misadventures as I follow my lifelong dream. Site statistics:Click here
Summer Soup Trio 2007-07-16 09:31:14 When people ask me what I do these days, it is hard for me to explain in a simple “elevator description” since I seem to be doing so much at Rustico. (An “elevator description” is what you use as a prepared speech to describe something to someone in the time it takes to make an average elevator ride. It was an important for us to have one at the ready when I was working at WWF. We wanted to be able to give someone a quick, informative answer if anyone asked us “Oh, what does WWF do?” The fact that nobody ever did is beside the point…)
“Well since it seems we have a little more time in here, allow me to read you all my latest inventory spreadsheets. Butter: $76 per case, Eggs…”
But as I think more on it, the two main things that seem to jump out at me are: purchasing/receiving/food cost control making soupI’ve described that first part of my job, and I have to say I am making good progress in getting the food costs to Read more:Summer
What a Difference a Year Makes… 2007-07-19 23:05:35 Tomorrow is my one year anniversary of being a chef!
I won’t be able to post tomorrow on the actual anniversary due to a friend being in town for a funeral and what not, so I figured I would use today as the actual anniversary.
Clip art or not, this is about how I felt my first day. Only I was not a baker. And we had no robotic arms. But you get the point&hellip
;
It was interesting to look at today in the light of what is was like walking into to Tirolo that first day a year ago. I remember walking in not knowing what I was in for - only knowing that I knew how to cook - or at least that I thought I did. Looking back on it, I really knew nothing of how to compose myself in a professional kitchen; I spent most of the day trying not to get in the way of those who knew what they were doing. And of course, there is the infamous incident of how I cut myself with the back of a knife that day.
And yet today, I came in to work running the show in the morning, and making all the
Becoming “Institutionalized” 2007-07-24 10:41:47 Some of you out there I’m sure have seen The Shawshank Redemption. There are many memorable scenes in there, but I’m not here to recap them all with you since that isn’t really the point of this blog. There is one line in the movie though that came to me this morning that I think describes how the kitchen life is starting to take hold of me.
If you’ve not seen the movie, you really should.
Red (Morgan Freeman) is describing how life in prison takes hold of you:
&ldquo
;These [prison] walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ‘em. That’s ‘institutionalized.’&rdquo
;
It’s funny how my kitchen career seems to have followed this pattern. When I first started out, it was really nothing more than just another job - and a rough one at that. I couldn’t do anything right on any given day, and all my instincts were for shit. I wouldn’t go so far Read more:Becoming
The Review I Had to Write 2007-07-27 20:56:22
A great film with loveable characters. Aren’t they just so cute?
Of course I have seen Ratatouille. As a lover of cooking, movies and cartoons, there is no way I was not going to see this movie. On my way home from work last week, I dropped a call to my wife and asked her if she wanted to go see the movie. She was down for a movie date with her husband, so we trotted off to the late showing (9-something) at our local theater.
We were the only ones watching the movie in there with the exception of one other lady who sat in the back and yelled out the answers to all the movie trivia questions that showed on the screen before the previews started. That is, she yelled out the answers to the ones she knew - which was only about half of them. Was she trying to impress us, or did she think that she was going to win a million dollars if she got the “secret question” right? Pathetic. Another reminder of why I usually wait for videos to come out before I see movie Read more:Write
Looking Into a Mirror 2007-07-31 08:56:10 A kitchen is a place - as I’m sure you all can guess by now - where there is a lot of work to be done. We need to bring in more staff all the time to cover for those who have gone along their merry way as well as just to cover the expanding amount of work that comes with more business coming in through our door.
Another type of help that is common to kitchens are culinary students performing their externships. I’m familiar with this practice, as I used my first job at Tirolo as an externship for culinary school. And so it came to pass that we brought in a stage to help us out with the prep at Rustico on Saturday for what was sure to be a busy night.
Ahhh, culinary school students. So young, full of dreams and ideas, and such CLEAN uniforms!
A stage (pronounced “stahj”) is a culinary student who is going around to different restaurants to work for a day to see in which restaurant s/he wants to perform his/her externship. It is basically a trial period fo
A Short Weekend, or “Pulling a Six” 2007-08-06 16:10:38 Summer is upon us, and that means that staff members want to take vacations. This of course means that there are holes in the kitchen where there are supposed to be cooks. This is where the responsibility of being a sous chef rears its ugly head as it is the other sous chefs and I who are required to fill said holes.
All my cooks get to experience this for the week while I get to fill in for them. I hope they enjoy it!
And this week is an especially rough one, as two of my nighttime line cooks are away. I was able to cajole one of my line cooks to work an extra day this week, which was not too hard since it means extra hours and therefore extra money for her. But for those of us who are salaried, it just means more work to make sure everyone gets their break.
Now let’s be fair here - chefs are not a group of people that get extensive amounts of vacation. Usually one week per year is about all they are afforded. So this is hardly a case of all my cooks gallivanting off Read more:Short
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Back to Teaching 2007-08-09 21:52:28 A long time ago - back when I was still working at Tirolo in fact - I was wondering if I should go back to becoming a cooking instructor, or maybe pick up some extra catering hours to help earn some more money for myself. The Tirolo job - being my first cooking job was one that did not pay enough for me to stay afloat by itself, and the fact that Sarah was trying to keep labor costs as low as possible meant that I was earning a very paltry paycheck.
Well the times soon changed as I moved on to Vero, and was earning enough there - thanks to a larger hourly wage and more hours - that I didn’t have to work hard to find outside employment. Though in a weird twist of fate, I was actually doing quite a bit of catering work while I was at Vero simply because that was such a major focus of the business.
Now, as a chef at Rustico, and a salaried one at that, I make enough money that I only need to do these jobs when I feel like doing them. The urgent need to find other sources of inc
Making Root Beer 2007-08-13 12:07:34 Sorry I have been away for so long, but this past week - the “six” I had to pull - was more like an “eight” as I had two double shifts in there as well. It was an incredibly long week, and my reward for it is that I now get to pull together and teach my class tonight. I hope I can stay awake through the whole thing!
So enough whining, on with the story.
A few weeks back I received my latest issue of Saveur magazine, and as always I ran through it cover to cover as soon as it arrived. One of the articles that seized my rapt attention was an article on root beer - it’s history and recent resurgence in America. I have always been a huge fan of root beer since I love the flavor, and since I gave up drinking caffeine, it is one of the few soft drinks I can still enjoy. Therefore, learning more about the drink, and perhaps learning how to make it as well, was naturally a subject I took great interest in.
For the record, Lost Trail Root Beer is the best in
Been Caught Stealing 2007-08-21 15:13:25 As a huge fan of Jane’s Addiction, I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to use this as a title for one of my posts.
One of the all-time greatest albums.
I sense a vague feeling of unrest out there due to the title of this post, so let me once again put your collective minds at ease, I was not the one who was caught stealing. They have yet to catch me.
Yes, I’m kidding. Rather, twice this past week I was confronted with issues of theft from the restaurant that I had to deal with, and it is just another element of the learning process in how to manage restaurant workers.
The first instance had to deal with paychecks. The paychecks came out this past Thursday (whoo hoo!) and chef pointed out two of them as being excessively high in overtime. I couldn’t explain this anomaly, but as the keeper of the schedule, I was able to confirm that they should not have had that much overtime since they simply didn’t work that many days. So of course the next e Read more:Caught
, Stealing
The Root Beer Taste Test 2007-09-20 19:50:35 I wrote before about how I was lucky enough to have been tapped (no pun intended) to make root beer for the restaurant. It has been an exciting series of tests so far, and I had come up with two options for how to get bubbles into the final product.
The first was bottle fermenting. It is a lengthy process that takes about 2 weeks to achieve the right consistency, and after about 2.5 weeks, the product starts going downhill.
A skill from a bygone era. Was I about to revive it at Rustico?…
My second idea was making the syrup, and then like a soda jerk, combining it with the syrup right there on the spot. The problem here was making sure the dilution ratio was right on the money.
I was refining both methods and yielding some great results. I would randomly give people samples of my latest tests, and I could see people getting more and more excited about the prospect that we were really going to be making homemade root beer in house. In short, it was becoming good enough
The Real Use for the Pig Heads… 2007-09-18 12:34:27 So other than just scaring co-workers, we did actually have a reason for bringing pig heads into our restaurant. Indeed one of the other sous chefs, Andrew, wanted to make a pork terrine from them. (That is our more palatable way of saying “head cheese”.)
I actually sold head cheese back in high school when I was working at the Heidelberg Pastry Shoppe in Arlington. In fact, we sold two kinds, regular and spicy. Didn’t much matter which you chose, they were both nasty. So with those troubling childhood memories in my mind, I had to admit I was mildly trepidacious before venturing down this road of boiling pigs’ heads in our kitchen.
Warning: The following story goes into some details involving pigs’ heads, saws, brains and other dissecting things you may find kinda gross. If that’s not your bag, stop reading now, and instead watch something seriously funny instead.
Oh good, the warning didn’t scare you off. So apparently the first step w Read more:Heads
, hellip
Yet More Kitchen Humor 2007-09-13 22:14:51 I guess I could be writing about all the cool recipes I’m working on, or how I see myself advancing in the kitchen, or how we are seeing a great increase in business with the onslaught of football season, but really, I know what my readers want. You want to hear about even more stupid jokes and pranks that are pulled in the kitchen. Some of the previous stories I have shared can be found here and here.
And as luck would have it, stupid jokes seem to happen around me all the time. Especially because I like to pull them.
So some of our recent special menus have had us bringing in a collection of seemingly odd - I guess I could say “less conventional” - ingredients. Lamb tongues, pig ears and quail eggs are all items I have had to place orders for as of late. I am not saying these are bad things - they all can be made into really neat food items actually, it’s just that most people will sort of take a step back for a second when they first hear that the salad Read more:Kitchen
, Humor
One Out, One In 2007-09-05 21:33:48 Wow, it has been a hell of a long time since I last wrote. It has been a busy time to say the least, so first, some quick updates:
Mmmm… root beer.
1. The root beer recipe I originally worked with was no good. I have come up with one of my own, and have had my first successful bottle fermentation test as well. I am also working on some tests for carbonating a syrup on the spot with club soda, so there are a lot of tests and so forth I am working on. When I have it all together, and a final recipe, I will share my knowledge with you all.
2. The cooking class in Bedford went amazingly well. So much so, that I was invited back to do it all over again since they had so many people on the waiting list. I just enjoy the time in my parents’ cabin alone. That is the real reward for me.
3. The reasons for my being away involve a crappy network here in my house, my working on a website (yes, I still do some web design and building for extra cash) and the fact that I was i
The More Things Change… 2007-10-02 09:05:14 The other night, after I had finished my kitchen work, and had entered all the invoices into our QuickBooks system, Chef came by to ask me if I could help him with a new layout design he was thinking about for the recipes we have in house. You see, most restaurants write down the recipes they are using in house so that if one chef is out for some reason, and more gremolata (for instance) needs to be made, then another chef can quickly take over for the absence of that item.
It just makes good sense.
“Dammit, the recipe for our mushroom sauce has got to be in here somewhere!”
The problem at Rustico - and we all agree it is a problem - is that our “menu book” has only about 60% of the recipes in it, and the ones that are in there are placed in no discernable order, and with no consistent style/layout. Any time I want a recipe for a salad dressing, I have to scan the whole notebook, and even if I do find it, I may or may not understand what the recipe is tell Read more:Change
, hellip
, Things Change
The Root Beer is For Sale! 2007-10-09 09:13:40 After almost two months of testing and refining and subjecting my fellow chefs to varying degrees of palatable bottle-fermented concoctions, my root beer has made it to the production block! Seven bottles of Rustico’s finest homemade root beer (I need a name for it, don’t I? I’m thinking “Fin Root Beer” - “Furb” for short…) were officially deemed worthy of serving to our customers (by Chef and myself) and so we put together the dessert for our servers to sell.
Root beer and vanilla ice cream. The best dessert flavor combination since… well… ever.
We decided the root beer would go out as a dessert item with a scoop of high quality vanilla gelato for a “build your own root beer float”. Homemade root beer, awesome ice cream - what’s not to love about this?
Well apparently in the first night, there was a lot that was not to love, as exactly zero were sold. But on the second night, I was still hanging a
An Offer I Had to Refuse… 2007-10-05 19:54:19 About two weeks ago now, I had the second of my cooking classes up in Bedford, PA. The first class had a waiting list that was almost long enough to fill the second class, so we just decided to run my first class over again for those who couldn’t fit in the first time around. Apparently my first class received such rave reviews though; this class had a waiting list of its own! Ahh, the cost of fame&hellip
;
Scolding my class for not using enough wine in their food. I am firm, but fair…
Photo by Ken Sepeda
I wanted to give this second class a little something different, so I was going to make a different risotto recipe - risotto with pancetta and asparagus - but asparagus was just too far out of season to find anywhere. So I had to stick with my original recipe of saffron risotto with shrimp and marinated artichoke hearts. (Oh darn…)
Like my first class, the group really involved themselves in the class, laughed at my jokes, and asked questions about things Read more:Offer
, Refuse
Starting Advice 2007-10-16 15:10:19 Again I have received a question in the comment field of another one of my posts that is just too big for me to reply to in the comment field. Back on my post about how we had a culinary student working in our kitchen, Angelica posed me the following question:
“I have just enrolled in culinary school. Do you have any advice you can give me?”
Well first off let me say that I’m honored Angelica that you’d think that I’d have advice worth listening to on the subject. But seeing as how I’ve been down this road, and to date have had a pretty successful career of it all, maybe I do have a few pointers that can help get you, or any other students starting down this road, on the right path.
For example: Why is it that every culture from Eastern Europe through Asia has some form of dumpling in their culinary history?
The first thing I would say, and this is the most important point I feel, is to stay curious about food and cooking. And not just in scho
A New Pizza for Autumn 2007-10-31 21:12:59 Autumn has arrived, and our new autumn menu is in full swing. Sure, it continues to change day to day as we refine it into something that works for our kitchen as well as our customers. But there was one addition I was able to make to this menu that is working out really well so far.
The empty pizza crust. An empty canvass for my personal invention.
Image from pinchmysalt.com
One day chef comes up to me and says, “Matt, we need to change the summer pie (pizza) into the fall pie. I want you to come up with what that pie will be, so you can have some ownership on a menu item… you know, feel invested in the food…”
This was really exciting to me, as I had an idea for what the fall pizza should be. I had thought it up from some previous pizzas I had made on my own with my family with some refined ideas based on what foods are in season (which is important for something that would sell itself as a “fall pie”.
I was opening my mouth with my idea Read more:Pizza
, Autumn
A Thanksgiving Story 2007-11-21 21:07:59 So I am sorry I have not written in so long. It’s not for lack of stories, but the muse has not been hitting me as of late. I just haven’t felt in a “writing mood”, and I don’t think I should be bloviating for the sake of staying current if I think the posts would be mediocre. You, my loyal readers, deserve better.
In that same vein, I still don’t have much of a muse striking me right now with respect to my recent occurrences at the restaurant. There have been lots of exciting events, and I can’t wait to bring you all up to speed. I’m just not feeling it as of yet.
So allow me to keep you all satiated in the meantime with this great story of being a chef on Thanksgiving
:
Two chefs are working late on Thanksgiving night. Their restaurant, being one of the very few open that night is actually quite busy - full of families that either didn’t feel like cooking themselves on the big night, or those who had kitchen disasters and nee
Catching Up 2007-12-04 11:57:21 Wow, so little writing as of late. I know my fans are disappointed - all 12 of you - so allow me to bring you up to speed on some of the things that have been going on, and perhaps this will lead me back into the world of regular posting once again.
Disney World. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a place I would less like to be.
So the week that I started to slack off was really a “hell week” for me. The reason? Chef and one of the sous chefs took off for a special event at Disney World. I have now forgotten what the event was, but it went well for them, so that was great. But for myself and the one other sous chef who were left at the restaurant, we ended up with some seriously long shifts. I ended up pulling 5 double shifts in a row over the course of the week, while the other sous chef ended up working eight straight days. It was an experiment in both endurance and competency. And I would like to say that the two of us passed with flying colors.
While on
The Definition of Frustrating 2007-12-15 19:40:15 All of the sous chefs in a kitchen are in constant competition to prove themselves to the head chef. It’s like a bunch of children competing for their parents’ love, and in that way it is admittedly kinda dysfunctional. It almost seems that each one of us wants to appear to be the brightest, or have the best skills or ideas so we can be the main #2 guy in the kitchen. It’s not like such a position would really mean much of anything in the long run, but it is a way we can all compete I guess to make ourselves better at what we do.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about baby!
With the upcoming holiday party at our restaurant, chef had me bring in a whole pig so he could cook it for the crowd that’ll be on hand tomorrow night. He took the meat off the bones, holding the body of the pig all in one piece so he could stuff it with rice and olives and so forth. He then had Andrew (one of the other sous chefs) cook the stuffing, but Andrew over-cooked Read more:Definition
The Venison Dinner 2007-12-14 21:07:26 Sure, I cook a lot in my kitchen at work, but people are always wondering if I still cook at home. I have answered before, that indeed I do, and I feel like this might be an example of what I do on my “own time” in my kitchen.
It all began with some friends of mine watching a Duke basketball game (for those of you who forget, I am indeed a Blue Devil) when one of my friends, Michelle, mentioned she was going home over Thanksgiving, and would be getting some venison from her dad. She asked me if I had any ideas what she should do with it. My response was immediate:
So majestic. So beautiful.
So delicious.
“Give it to me, and let me cook it for you!”
I love venison, but I get so few chances to work with it. It is so lean that it is actually quite hard to work with, but when it is done right, it is succulent, full of flavor and just downright heavenly. Michelle agreed, and soon she was back with some steaks and a piece of saddle meat.
So I put together a Read more:Dinner
Finishing Up a Saturday 2007-12-11 10:32:33 I had dinner reservations this past Saturday
with some good friends from college, and I knew that since Saturday nights usually get started fast and furious, I would have to make the reservations for later in the evening. I booked us a table at Corduroy for 8:30 which I figured would be plenty of time to knock off work, come home, get changed and so forth.
Ahhh paperwork… the sexiest part of any kitchen career.
With the Saturday night prep work almost complete, I went into the office to finish off my paperwork. It went much more quickly than usual as there were no scheduling irregularities, and the check lists we use in the restaurant needed only the most minor of modifications. In short, it was 6:30, and I was looking like I could head on out the door.
I walked up to chef who was working the pizza ovens and asked him if there was anything he needed. He asked me to prep a few ingredients, which took no time at all. When I came back to him with the prep work done, he ask
Found Money 2007-12-24 10:08:50 This is one of those oddly true stories that makes no sense to me, but all the same results in an unique opportunity for you, my loyal readers.
So my wife and I were going through piles of old papers and so forth that had collected over the past few months when my wife said to me, “Honey, is this a paycheck you forgot to deposit?…” At first, I didn’t even think that was possible. I had set up direct deposit with Rustico as early as I could so as to avoid mistakes like that. By my reckoning, I had only ever received one actual paycheck from Rustico, the rest had gone straight to my bank.
With great skepticism I took the paper from my wife, and much to my chagrin, there in my hand was my first paycheck from Rustico. It was for the first half-pay-period I worked for, and amounted to almost exactly $500. I had lost it in the shuffle, and forgotten all about it.
For those of you who are keepeing score at home, I started working at Rustico back in May of 2007 Read more:Money
My Very Own “Big Night” Moment 2008-03-10 10:28:55 A fabulous film, and of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s about Italians…
For those of you who don’t understand, “Big Night
” is simply the best film ever made about what it is to be a chef. (Yes, even better than “Ratatouille”) Perhaps I am slightly biased in that it has to deal with Italian chefs, [...] Read more:Moment
A Surprise Field Trip 2008-02-26 13:48:40 Coming in on Wednesday mornings is always tough since it is my version of a Monday morning. Last Wednesday though I was greeted to an unfamiliar sight, as there was a long table set up in the middle of the dining room complete with little aprons tied to each of the chairs - all [...] Read more:Surprise
, Field
My Wife Wins It! 2008-02-15 20:16:39 Thanks to all of you who voted to see what I should do with the $500 of “found money” I came across a little while back. You all voted, and my wife was the big winner. Here are the results:
What should Chef Matt do with the $500?
Votes
Save it! This is money to help [...]
A Brief Smile on My Day Off 2008-02-15 20:06:05 My days off are usually something I treasure for the fact that I can actually spend more than 20 minutes sitting down at a stretch. That, and I can watch shows like The Price is Right and Maury, and not worry that there is a soup somewhere that we are running out of. [...] Read more:Brief
, Smile
The Big Game 2008-02-05 10:47:22 Enjoy the game people?…
So, did you all enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday? Have a nice relaxing time watching all the pre-game hoopla? Maybe you made a run to the store for more chips and dip or called up for a pizza to be delivered while you sat on your comfy couch watching the [...]
Death in the Kitchen 2008-01-28 09:23:15 No, please rest assured dear readers that all of my kitchen staff is alive and well. Nor is this title in reference to the many animals that are killed in order to bring about the delicious food we serve. If you want that type of propaganda, please go visit some other silly site. [...] Read more:Kitchen
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