Throwing a Dinner Party

In my experience, I have attended and thrown quite a few dinner parties. Of course you want to impress your guests if you are cooking, and on the flip side you don’t want to feel uncomfortable as the host or hostess runs around trying to do everything at once. First let’s talk about the style of the dinner that is the most easy to execute. 

Family style is a great way to present and eat food if you are entertaining 4-10 people. This kind of dinner does not require plating of food but rather assembling each dish on a platter or large plate. People can help themselves to what they want and no one is forced to eat something if they don’t want to. Restaurants even use this style from Chinese multi-course meals to Craft, by Tom Colicchio, in New York. If you’re having trouble picturing what I mean, take a look at the food and the menu:

Notice that menu choices and presentation are very simple and that they are not necessarily whole dishes but parts of dishes. If you were making this, you could cook the potatoes and slice mushrooms before the guests arrived. Then when you're ready to serve, saute potatoes and mushrooms while the meat is resting, how easy is that? Who wouldn’t want beautiful food at their fingertips which they can pick and choose from while having a liquor or wine filled get together? The act of simply sitting down together around choices of great food creates a more social get together and allows everyone at the table, host included, to have a good time. This is my preferred style of entertaining at home because of the versatility and extra time I get to spend with my guests. 

I know, this is great and seems so simple that it is too good to be true. So you may ask, what makes a dinner like this difficult for the host if they can simply put platters together and sit back and get tipsy with the guests? Or you may even ask, why has this not worked for me when I have done it in the past? I am not going to lie, my experience cooking full time in professional kitchens definitely makes this task a little less daunting, but I do have some tricks up my sleeve to help anyone entertain with ease.

1)      Do a roast or a braise! Because roasting meats requires a fair amount of resting time (time needed for the meat to stop cooking), it allows the cook to take time (15-20 min) to reheat or cook side dishes that are going with the meal. As for a braise, the process of braising is basically cooking meats that are tough for a long period of time until it is tender. This is an awesome entrée for parties because it actually tastes better if made a day before and can be reheated quickly without worrying about if the meat is done or not. I can also be reheated first, held on the stove top at a temperature of 145-165 degrees, without worrying about it being over cooked. Don’t do this more than an hour in advance.

2)      If doing a roast, use an instant read digital thermometer that has an extension (probe) which can be in the oven and meat at all times. This thermometer can be set to a specific temperature which will sound an alarm once it has reached it. It seems counter intuitive to leave a thermometer in a roast and lead a wire outside an oven but have no worries, it is heat safe! Forget using a timer and opening the oven multiple times to check the internal temperature, this is superior! Take a look at what I am talking about:

$20.00-30.00

3)      Serve starches that can be held such as polenta or mashed potatoes. These can be held in a pot set inside another pot with simmering water that comes halfway up the pot with the contents.  This is called a double boiler.

4)      Lastly, if not doing a starch that can be held, blanch potatoes and vegetables prior to the party so that you’re just seasoning and reheating when it comes time to serve. For vegetables you will need to shock them in ice water to maintain the bright colors, potatoes you can simply remove from water and place on a plate or sheet pan.

5)      Other ways of dealing with side dishes are using vegetables that can be served room temperature as salads.

I am sure by now you’re wondering, what if I want to make fish or pasta? I would recommend trying roasts or braises before fish because it allows you time to focus on side dishes while it is resting rather than doing everything at once. As for pasta, choose a sauce that can be premade and have your oven set at 200 degrees. Put your pasta in water and cook, meanwhile finishing your vegetables and side dishes. Hold sides and vegetables in oven safe dishes in the oven while straining and finishing your pasta in a premade sauce. Then serve!

Now let’s get inebriated and do the dishes together!

You Got Schooled

While discussing life in the kitchen the other day I had a person ask me if it really makes a difference to go to culinary school or not? I am going to start off by saying that I am partial to no culinary school because I didn’t go myself.  I also want to say that the life of a cook can be short once they meet the pressures and time demands of cooking, possibly throwing their investment in culinary education away while still being left with the bill. I mean, what sense does it make to go to a culinary school (normally private) that costs from 30-100k when a typical line cook starts at $10-12/hour? It doesn’t.

I started off my career when I was 17, still in high school, and with dreams of culinary school in my future. The school I had my sights on was The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY, one of the most prestigious in the U.S. My position was for a catering company as a dishwasher/prep, and just being able to be in the kitchen was exciting. The first catering experience I had with them was a wedding that took place outdoors. We rolled up to the site with all of our food lined up on speed racks which were tied down in a moving truck. Quickly, I was thrown into setting up chairs and also organizing food with the Sous Chef, Jose, so that we could begin grilling meats and setting up appetizers. Jose stepped away for a moment, leaving myself at the helm of a huge outdoor grill with nearly 60 lbs. of meat cooking. Heart pumping, I attempted to mimic my Sous Chef as my hands and fingertips felt like they were on fire over the searing hot grill. He soon came back appalled at how little I had done, kicked me off and finished out the party with little help. As I ate staff lunch, the Head Chef drove up in his car exclaiming that “We’re f*****, the other cook that is supposed to help me with the second wedding bailed!” A more explicit conversation ensued between the Head and Sous Chef as I naively chimed in and said, “I’ll go with you!” With a questionable look, my Head Chef approved and we went on over the other site. 

Culinary Institute of America Hyde Park, NY

Approaching the next wedding the owner of the catering company, coincidentally a CIA grad, ran up to us saying that the speed racks had tipped over in the moving truck , our platters were completely wrecked, and we needed to reassemble them immediately. (These platters were cater wrapped so everything was completely covered in plastic and didn’t touch anything unsanitary) With only 30 minutes to bounce back, I began reassembling the platters as the owner came into the kitchen and asked me to go even faster. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest as I finished off the last platter; I took a sip of water and began to breathe again. This calm lasted only a few minutes before my Chef came into the kitchen and told me I now needed to make sushi on a station in the dining room. Like a deer in the headlights, shoulder to shoulder with my Chef, I began to make Nigiri sushi shaking as I cupped the rice in my hand and placed sliced pieces of fish on top. At the end of the day, after 14 hours, I rode home with the owners’ husband who said only one thing “Not too bad.” Excited, I said to myself “This shit is f****** crazy! And I love it!”

This is the kind of experience you don’t get in culinary school. In fact, the hunger for action that I had during my first catering experience is what most culinary grads lack when first stepping into a restaurant kitchen. David Lebovitz, author of several cookbooks and food blogs, has a similar view. Sure, the CIA and other institutes have their fine dining restaurants which try to simulate this kind of pressure, but the kitchen is saturated with hands reaffirming the saying ‘many hands make light work.’ Imagine my experience cut into 30 different pieces so that everyone gets a piece of the action. The picture below explains it all. It is not realistic, and it does not set the student up for success. In fact, most students out of culinary school get put on the easiest station, and least lucrative, of garde manger or salad station. If they can take the pressure, then they can touch a sauté pan or begin their training on the hot line. However in my experiences, I have seen fresh culinary students quit or be fired never to come back to the kitchen again. 

Brigade at CIA

There is also a mental game when it comes to cooking because it is a craft which only grows with experience. Sometimes it is even enough to offset a cook’s passion for food. A lot of culinary kids feel that school was the hurdle they had to get over to be accepted, but in reality, they’ve only just begun. Self-entitlement does not go over well in the kitchen and most students often come out this way. The reality is that when everything is boiled down, making salads and cutting pate isn’t that specialized of a job.  Food is endless in terms of techniques and styles which vary region to region. What they have seen in culinary school is only a peek which can sometimes be hard to grasp. I can empathize with these students because going to college for bachelors in hospitality, I sometimes feel like I am set and have cleared a hurdle. However, my experiences in the kitchen have taught me to always be humble and know that there is more to learn. 

To sum it all up, culinary school can be seen as more of a financial burden than a key into the industry. I have focused a lot on the negatives of culinary school but the truth is there are a lot of people who do make it, or even become famous after going to culinary school. What lead them to their success are their hunger, stamina, and spirit which are always attributed before their experience in school. They think of it as a starting point rather than the single thing that got them there, and often say they could have done without it. For me, culinary school is unnecessary when you can get the same training in a real world situation while getting paid for it. 

Keep it Simple!

Walking into the kitchen at the tail end of lunch service, I watch beautiful food being plated and expedited out of a clean, highly organized kitchen. The sound of food sizzling in sauté pans, the roar of the ventilation hood, and voices shouting and communicating with one another plays like a soundtrack that has been performed many times before. The sight of copper pans on French flat tops and bright lighting fills the kitchen. Steam from hot food caresses the face of the cook who prepared it as he wipes the plate, and sparks float upwards behind him from hot coals being moved about on a wood fire grill.  The Sous Chef stands at the center of the line, pencil in hand, marking tickets and communicating not only with the cooks on the line, but with the whole front of the house. All of this, to create a beautiful yet simple plate of food which allows the ingredients to speak for themselves. The kitchen is in full swing. 

One thing that I love in food is clean simplicity. Take “Into the Garden” by David Kinch of Manresa. The sheer beauty of a plate made from vegetables that the restaurant has grown is stunning. Although it is plated very nicely, the beauty is drawn from the vegetables themselves.

The reason this is important is because I believe that customers are beginning to take a journey back to simplicity in dining. Also related to my old post on locavores, people are demanding local ingredients presented in a way that they can really taste and enjoy them without the flavors being muddled by excess. For myself, I can say that I enjoy this trend because it allows the palate to taste the multiple, sometimes complex, flavors of a few ingredients rather than an overbearing symphony. Chefs are playing with different styles of cooking, for example charring vs. blanching, to bring out flavors that could not be singled out if served with too many other ingredients. Chefs also serve a vegetable or protein three different ways, or use three different parts of a whole animal, to showcase its diverse range. Both styles aim to let the natural flavors shine.

At Michael Mina’s restaurant American Fish in Las Vegas, he uses sea water to poach fish in. When I first saw this I felt like it had a huge ‘duh’ factor, because we always season anything we cook, including poaching liquids.  However, how cool is that? Purified sea water being used as poaching liquid is as simple as it gets, but it really grabs you when you look at the menu. Of course you have tasted halibut with a brioche crust or romesco sauce, etc., but have you really tasted the halibut? The concept of unedited pure taste is what interests diners in their renewed desire for simple food. Sure, really complex sauces and techniques taste very good as well, and I don’t mean to discredit that. However, I would compare this to a jazz solo versus a big band. Both have their place, but listening to a pianist flutter around in tempo with a bare bones rhythm section shows off the unique qualities of a few instruments. This bond between a few instruments can make a wide range of sounds similar to the wide range of tastes that can come from a few ingredients.

Here are a couple other restaurants taking the simple approach. Pizzaiolo in Oakland:

Adesso in Oakland. A gastropub/charcuterie bar. Basically, an all hand crafted cured meats, city cocktails, and wine kind of place.

Click here to see more delicious food. Isn’t simple beautiful?

OpenTable or Closed Restaurant?

If there is one thing that bothers an owner of a restaurant, it is a middle man in their cash flow. For those who do not understand how Opentable works for a restaurant, think about a cell phone plan that has a flat rate per month and a fee for every minute you use. It keeps all your data consolidated in a database and has a map of your restaurant so you can plan reservations accordingly. To be honest, the database management portion of Opentable is pretty friggin’ sweet, but wtf? Here comes Opentable to give me a shoulder tap and ask for its money. Imagine a large Italian gangster coming to your restaurant and saying “Psst, want protection in the neighborhood? Want customers to know you are here? It’s easy, we will supply you with everything, and you just have to give us your customer data, flat fee, and extra money per customer who uses us. Trust us, we’re on your side.” Not quite coercion, but smaller restaurants I have worked for have felt this pressure. You don’t have to use Opentable, but the fear of not being found by your customers without it is what they prey on.

In a blog by Mark Pastor, General Manager of Incanto, he explains that the restaurant refuses to use Opentable because of the cost. I like the way he breaks it down and it really touches on the center of the controversy on Opentables cost structure:

“Let me start by stating the obvious: the convenience and immediacy of booking a table online anytime day or night is beneficial to both diners and to restaurants… (but) OpenTable’s fees (comprised of startup fees, fixed monthly fees, and per-person reservation fees) translate to a cost of approximately $10.40 for each “incremental” 4-top booked through OpenTable.com. To put that in perspective, consider that the average profit margin, before taxes, for a U.S. restaurant is roughly 5%. This means that a table of 4 spending $200 on dinner would generate a $10 profit. In this example, all of that profit would then go to OpenTable fees for having delivered the reservation, leaving the restaurant with nothing other than the hope that that customer would come back (and hopefully book by telephone the next time).”

Well, looking at this example I am glad that Opentable has succeeded in the American Dream, but good luck to the restaurants. I think the term is S.O.L. So with everyone using their  I phones and computers to make a reservation, is this where dining is headed? If it is, that means Opentable will now be the conglomerate who basically owns the most important part of a restaurant’s business, their customers. Anyone who thinks that this is a false statement, think about casinos in Las Vegas and their player cards. To Vegas, customer information and spending habits are so important that they literally reward you for using it. The trick is that they own the system rather than a third party. The Vegas moguls have enough money to basically become their own software company to achieve this.

Going back to restaurants, I know I am happy not to have to talk to the frigid b**** of a hostess and be put on hold anymore if I choose, but when I do use Opentable, I book through the restaurants website rather than through Opentable itself. That way the restaurant only has to pay $.25 per customer as opposed to a dollar, alleviating some of the pain. Or, go the route of being completely spontaneous and just walk up to a restaurant that looks good, you know, the old fashioned way. The upside is that there is no cost to the restaurant and the hosts and hostesses are much nicer in person.

Related Articles:

http://incanto.biz/2010/10/22/is-opentable-worth-it/

http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2011/04/27/is-opentable-becoming-too-expensive-for-restaurants/

Let's Get Loca-Vore!

It is hard to replicate the euphoria that occurs when eating a dish that includes produce a friend or yourself have grown , or simply a gem from your local farmer’s market. I love all food, but it is hard to replace the sensation knowing the produce I am using is local. One of my most influential moments realizing this sensation occurred on a farm with which a restaurant I worked for had a partnership.  Weeks after weeks I would see large amounts of produce come in but it was not until that pivotal moment on the farm that I had my wow moment. That is when I realized, this is the way to eat. 

This feeling is hard to replace but upon further research, I realized that a spectrum exists from the cult-like preachers of locavorism that do not just include produce, but meats and dairy as well, to people who simply buy and eat locally sourced food whenever possible. As I began thinking in an extremist state of mind what I can grow myself or purchase locally, including all food groups, the possibilities started shrinking. Even in California where we have microclimates and farms ranging from commercial to local, it seems that this appearance of variety is still too constrictive. Beyond California, what do we say to the people in the Midwest who grow only a few staple crops to trade with or have poor soil for much else? Is it really possible to eat everything from local purveyors and farmers? These are the barriers to the macro view of locavorism. Perhaps Californians can make it feasible for themselves, but it is still hard to imagine a person sustaining themselves off of purely local food without stripping out choices like farro, for example, that are healthy and make sense. 

I have come to a conclusion that the idea of locavorism is moving in the direction of awareness and action within the constraints of one’s own home. Let’s be honest, any food grown at home or bought at a farmer’s market has an impact on what we buy in the grocery store. Those small changes will have a greater impact on the environment than a large change in a few people’s lives.  Let’s eat seasonal local food, be aware of things we can produce ourselves at home, and let the experts of other produce, meats, and dairy do the rest. 

Related Articles:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/locavore-movement-052411

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/