Can anyone roast meat anymore?

For the past two months I’ve been seeking a restaurant that knows how to roast meat properly. I’ve been to all the major so-called steakhouses and not one of them proven to me they know how to roast meat. I believe it’s because they slow roast their lip on ribeye slow roasters probably cooking them overnight.  There is no carmelization on the beef and because of the slow cooking the connective tissue melts away leaving the meat tough. In reality, most meats that are going to be roasted should remain on the bone. During my career we always used 109 rib roasts with the deckle attached.  By cooking at this way you would have a perfectly cooked whole prime rib with the well-done pieces on the outside and the very rare in the center. I have always order them 18 to 21s and up so I could get 18 good 10 ounce pieces of beef per rib roast. Using the deckle made my roast beef hash for my brunch or breakfast menu item. Adding the bones to an enriched stock and then making the roast gravy utilize the whole cut of meat. Serving the beef with the great horseradish sauce, roast gravy, and old-fashioned English roasted potatoes you will create one of the finest dinners you find in the world.

Even when the roast leg of Lamb which should be served in season spring and fall we get the most flavor out of that roast. Just removing the pelvic bone trimming off the shin meat and roasting it to a perfect 40° and having the skills to carve the leg around the bone and getting 12 nice lunch or dinner portions from a 7 pound leg. Taking the shin meat and roasting it with the leg to ensure a great gravy. Today the average weight of a leg of lamb is around 12 to 15 pounds which is really mutton and has that awful strong flavor which turns our diners off from selecting it from the menu. Beef and lamb are best cooked for 15 minutes for each pound. Starting at 350° caramelize and then reducing the temperature to 325° and cook for the rest of the weight time. Most of us were trained to add an extra 15 minutes at the end of the cooking process and then rest the lease after removal from the oven for another 15 minutes prior to serving. Again the meat will be beautifully cooked and juicy with a great flavor. Serving the lamb with the great mint sauce and baby new potatoes and fresh garden peas is a delightful dinner

Pork is quite different and I again believe that’s a great pork roast must come from the leg with the pevlic bone removed where the skin or rind is scored the pelvic bone removed and cook for 20 minutes the pound and an extra 20 minutes for the total weight. In Europe the skin becomes very crisp and crunchy and it is served with the roast and in England it is called crackling allowing that extra 20 minutes for the whole piece and serving fresh applesauce, beautifully matched in cream potatoes, my favorite broccoli Mornay. Again when we think of pork we see on the menu boneless pork chops which there is nothing in the world that meets that description. The chop refers to meet on the bone which is normally grilled.

When it comes to cooking veal is a roast traditionally in Europe the whole leg was roasted and served with smoked ham and a rich reduced veal glaze. This was the original steamship round which was served to the royal families in Europe and when it came to the United States and the whole beef round became steamship round which was served on the steamboats traveled rivers in the past century. I don’t see many restaurants and hotels offering this dish anymore but is nice to remember that these with the skills that the chefs my era learnt because our guests demanded them.

Finally, I believe that everything needs to be tied that is going to be roasted so that as the cooking process moves forward and assist the connective tissue to breakdown and combine the meat together.  This Sunday for my birthday I’m going to buy a primal rib and butcher and tie it and have it from my great Sunday dinner. And as I carved the meat I showed trap all the juices and added to the gravy to enhance even greater flavor and pleasure for my guests. To take your long-term process cookers they don’t work because they don’t really roast meat to just slow cook it so that there is less loss during the roasting process but there is no flavor when it is done. This old-timer believes that getting back to basics would give me many diners a real dining pleasure truly properly roasted meats.

Apprentship Notes

Last night has sat down and read some of my apprenticeship notes which brought back a flood of memories of in the era of fine dining and classical cooking.  Reading them made me think of repetitive memory skills training that were taught in those days by the chefs in the kitchen. Daily we were questioned on different skills are recipes or cooking methods by the chef or the chef de parte who you reported to directly in the corner where we worked. I distinctly remember and I really didn’t cook for the first 16 months but learned all the basic skills such as by week off vegetables in a certain way after breakdown animal carcasses and understand which the tender parts of the animal were and what cooking methods you would apply to them. It made it much easier for me as it went on to the sauce kitchen and understood well even cut large bones into 3 inch lengths so that we could cook them evenly in a stock. Why we always had what is called in this country the mother sauces available at all times in the small sauces were made to order on the sauté station.

Frankly, this continual repetitive teaching gave me a great start to my culinary career where I was required to know basic formulas, basic ratios, and basic skills and be able to reiterate them verbally to the first-year apprentices. Looking back the teacher taught me how to teach so as I went further into my apprenticeship I brought along the first-year apprentices so that they would carry on the tradition of learning in the kitchen. Sadly today everybody has to look at either recipe a cookbook and because of that the reflex memory skills of cooks in most kitchens are very limited. I’m always to this day in the learning mode and tomorrow I shall be the lead examiner at the MCI for chefs taking their certification exams. Sometimes when I proctor exams I see the lack of thinking through basic principles of cooking which causes the dish or the skill not is exact and appropriate. Some people try to take exams as if they were in competition. A very wrong strategy and exam is a testing of one’s skills and the ability to perform at a certain certification level. There are no gold silver and bronze medals at the end of the exam except one either passes or fails and most of all has a great learning experience. So back to the apprenticeship thinking, and learning because it all starts with somebody showing another person the skill or a cooking method and by doing so they turn their learning lights on and enables them in the future career to become a teacher. So back to chef’s great saying “the world’s greatest chefs are the world’s greatest cooks “no more no less but just that simple statement reminds me with humility of the great teachers who told me that I’m in a lifestyle learning system to the day I die. Now I’m going to cook dinner

Chef

Great news and great cooking at the CMC test

I am pleased to tell you that four candidates passed the classical cooking componenton Tuesday and today they passed the freestyle element of the test. We move on tomorrow to global cuisine   with dishes from Greece , Argentina, and China. I must commend the Culinary Institute of America for the stellar work they have done to host and run the test.  I personal note it is great to meet in my colleagues and my peers and discuss the great ways the food culture is changing in America and the world. Many of my friends who I have not seen for years are part of the examination team and the conversations are enlightening and a great learning experience for both the candidates and the students and most of all my colleagues. Tomorrow night I will give you an update on the global cuisine
so on till then keep on cooking
Chef

Culinary education can we afford this?

This is a question was given to me by a concerned parent last night. Their daughter is looking forward to going to culinary school so in her junior year they are researching the different schools both public and private both not-for-profit and propriety schools. I never thought of this when I saw the variance in costs including all feeding housing and general expenses in some cases the cost of a two-year associate degree is over $60,000, and in the not-for-profit school. Has risen to 12,800 and that school was a commuter school so the student lives off-campus. I understand the cost of food going up, and the cost of hiring highly qualified faculty are one of the major things causing the bottom line to rise.  After I researched these costs, it is the administration costs that are out of control, for example just in my college the administration costs have gone up by nearly 15% last year. On the other side of the coin that has been a major reduction in hiring full-time faculty and the public institutions are seeking to reduce full-time faculty to just the department head and maybe one other faculty member for each department.

 I understand some of the private schools are some the finest in the world have to charge a lot more to be able to survive but now the Department of Education is asking both private and public schools to be able to prove and the student repay their student loans.

One of the biggest marketing ploys that some schools use is that tell the student they’ll be earning 35 to 45,000 a year after a two-year degree and in reality of the lucky be earning between 14 and $16 hour after being awarded their degree. So what can we do about it we need to get into that in stronger partnerships with industry and developed strong apprenticeship programs for the incoming students? I think it was properly planned it would create another path for students and their family to be able to afford the cost of going to school. As you all well know I am a former apprentice and I did not pursue my upper-level diplomas until I had completed the apprenticeship and worked in industry two years. If the plan was really in place the three years will be developed to just building the skills of the student become a journeyman cook. Then on to college to learn the priorities of management and good financial controls for their operations. Most of these courses could be taught online and could be approved by all the accrediting boards nationwide.

So this is something to think about, because parent who spoke to me obviously has limited income and has saved for his daughter’s education but they are being priced out of it by the exorbitant cost to go to culinary school. The total cost of my sons Dr. Degree was about $30,000, 50 percent of the highest most expensive school in the United States granting a two-year degree. Anyway let’s  talk about good subject is being driven home every day when parents get their first price shock and try to place their children into culinary school. Chef once said to me that nobody needs to dine in our restaurants they have their dollars and can go anywhere and spend them; he reiterated that the true value in anything we cooked was not the cost but the quality of the dish and the customers dining pleasure. Today some of these dishes we serve in education are becoming too expensive

So let's talk about it

Chef.

Where have our standards gone?

Here we go again another perfect example of why Edward Deming called higher education administrations the ultimate example of anarchy in high places. Sadly in my past college  are not attempting to replace me with another certified master chef for the near future but they can retain the chef in residence that does not contribute or assist the academic standards that have been set by faculty members both past and present. If we look around the country especially in our field of professional activities we have seen standards been eroded away and accepted by the general public.
When we allow the so-called chefs to come to a national convention who doesn't even dress properly blue jeans and then demeans the apprentices trying to assist him during his demonstration and we call him chef. I call him showbiz clown that should stay in that area of entertainment. We venerate these people who use foul language, verbally abuse other professionals and call him chef . Where is our voice in preventing this aberrant behavior and why arnt we saying this is enough and this is not what we are.  Unfortunately even today the thinking in this country is that I've you can do nothing else to go into food service either as a cook or a waiter. I interviewed a student one day with her father who quite honestly told me that he hoped that she would get over becoming a chef and get a real job. After I threw him out of my office, I told the young lady that if she really has the passion she would become very successful. Today she is a restaurant owner, has a wonderful life and contributes a lot back to our community.
So we have to now open our windows and yell I'm tired of this and we've had enough of this demeaning behavior. We need to move forward and believe we are the professionals who spend our lives learning and perfecting our craft. We as chefs and cooks need to set the professional standards that we respect and encourage every new young person who comes in and looks at us for leadership. Chef once said to me that I needed God in my everyday life as a cook and he added to that that God's stood for good orderly direction. So finally where are the clowns I hope they're no longer in our kitchens only if we accept them as those who are not worthy to be in our profession

Culinary disasters

Here we go again of people who want to open restaurants without any prior experience and expect to be successful. The fact is that if 100 new restaurants open today 60 would have failed in the first year and only three will have the original ownerships after five years. It's a sad chronicle of events when we think that people have a couple good recipes and then dress up in a chefs coat on and become the culinary genius. As we all know our profession is one of the most demanding of any career in the professional arena. My chef once said to me that this was a young man's business today its young man and woman's business and it has many casualties from the extensive amount of hours that we work and the lack of time we have with their families.

We all know that we work hard and play hard and we see an awful lot of our colleagues succumbing to drugs and alcohol and broken marriages. What can we do to improve our image is quite simple to be totally devoted to our craft but learn good time management so that we can have quality time with our families and friends. I have lost many friends to alcohol and drugs I have also seen some of the most loving marriages break up due to the loneliness that our spouses feel. My wife in the past used to call herself a kitchen widow and quite rightly so. As I am retiring soon it's her time do what she wants to do where we travel, and what her aspirations are for the rest of her life. I would not have been so successful in my career have been for her supporting encouraging and cheering me on be successful. I would not be a master chef today without her I would not own my own business today without her so when you decide to become a culinary genius and only business my advice is to have a great team player supporting you is if you don't you cannot succeed without a great family great friends and dedicated colleagues.

Braising and Stewing

Stewing

Definition

Stewing is the slow cooking of food cut into pieces and cooked in the minimum amount of liquid (water, stock or sauce); the food and liquid are served together.

Purpose

Because stewing is both economical and nutritional, cheaper cuts of meat and poultry, which would be unsuitable for roasting and grilling, can be made tender and palatable.

Stewing also produces an acceptable flavour, texture and eating quality.

Methods of Stewing

All stews have a thickened consistency achieved by:

a.)   The unpassed ingredients in the stew, e.g. Irish stew;

b.)   Thickening of the cooking liquor, e.g. blanquette (white stew);

c.)   Cooking in the sauce, e.g. brown stew.

Stewed foods can be cooked in a covered pan on the stove or in a moderate oven.

Foods cooked by stewing

Fish – bouillabaisse (French soup/stew).

Meat – goulash, minced beef, haricot mutton, Irish stew, brown stew of veal, white stew       of veal

Poultry – chicken fricassee, curried chicken, tripe and onions, jugged hare

Vegetables – marrow provencale, rataouille

Braising

Definition

Braising is the method of cooking in the oven; unlike roasting or baking the food is cooked in liquid in a covered pan, casserole or cocotte.  It is a combination of stewing and pot roasting.

Purpose

a.)   To give variety to the menu and the diet.

b.)   To make food tender, digestible, palatable, and safe to eat

c.)   To produce and enhance flavour, texture and eating quality.

Methods of braising

There are two methods:  brown braising, used for joints and portion-sized cuts of meat; white braising, used for vegetables and sweetbreads.

1       Brown braising:

a.)   Joints, e.g. beef, venison, are marinaded and may be larded then sealed quickly by browning on all sides in a hot oven or in a pan on the stove.  Sealing the joints helps retain flavour, nutritive value and gives a good brown colour.  Joints are then placed on a bed of roots in a braising pan, with the liquid and other flavourings, covered with a lid and cooked slowly in the oven.

b.)   Cuts, e.g. steaks, chops, liver.  The brown braising of cuts of meat is similar to that of joints.

2       White braising: e.g. celery, cabbage and sweetbreads.  These are blanched, refreshed, cooked on a bed of roots with white stock in a covered container in the oven.

Examples of foods which are braised

Farinaceous – rice

Meat: lamb – hearts, chops

            beef – olives, joints, liver

            veal – shoulder

Poultry – duck

Vegetables – celery, onions

Poached Fish

Although recipes 50-60 are given for fillets of sole, any white fish may be prepared and served in the following manner.  Always place a little sauce under the fish before masking; this is to keep the fish moist, to prevent it overcooking and sticking to the dish, thus facilitating the service.  Shallots must be finely chopped and may need to be sweated in a little butter before use.

Fillets of sole Duglere  

INGREDIENTS:                                                                                                                  

500-600g         1-1 ¼ lb          2 soles

10g                  ½ oz                finely chopped shallot

200g                8 oz                 tomatoes concassee

                                                pinch chopped parsley

                                                salt, pepper

60 ml               1/8 pt               fish stock

60 ml               1/8 pt               dry white wine

                                                juice of ¼ lemon

250 ml             ½ pt                 fish veloute

50 g                 2 oz                 butter

METHOD:                                                                                                                            

q  Remove the black and white skins and fillet the soles.

q  Wash and drain well.

q  Butter and season an earthenware dish or sauté pan.

q  Sprinkle in the sweated chopped shallots.

q  Add the fillets, which may be folded in two, add the tomatoes and chopped parsley.

q  Season with salt and pepper.

q  Add the fish stock, wine and the lemon juice.

q  Cover with a buttered greaseproof paper.

Irish Stew- 4 portions

INGREDIENTS:                                                                                                                  

500g    1lb 4 oz           stewing lamb

                                    bouqet garni

400g    1 lb                  potatoes

100g    4 oz                 onions

100g    4 oz                 celery

100g    4 oz                 Savoy cabbage

100g    4 oz                 leeks

100g    4 oz                 button onions

                                    chopped parsley

METHOD:                                                                                                                            

q  Trim the meat and cut into even pieces.  Blanch and refresh.

q  Place in a sauteuse or shallow saucepan, cover with water, bring to the boil, season with salt and skim.  If tough meat is being used, allow ½ - 1 hr stewing before adding any vegetables.

q  Add the bouquet garni.  Turn the potatoes into barrel shapes.

q  Cut the potato trimmings, onions, celery, cabbage and leeks into small neat pieces, and add to the meat, simmer for 30 min.

q  Add the button onions, and simmer for a further 30 min.

q  Add the potatoes and simmer gently, with a lid on the pan until cooked.

q  Correct the seasoning and skim off all fat.

q  Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley.

q  Optional accompaniments: Worcester sauce or pickled red cabbage.

Boiled Silverside, Carrots and Dumplings – 4 portions

INGREDIENTS:                                                                                                                  

400g    1lb       silverside

200g    8oz      onions

200g    8oz      carrots

100g    4oz      suet paste

METHOD:                                                                                                                            

q  Soak the meat in cold water to remove excess brine for 1 – 2 hr.

q  Place in a saucepan and cover with cold water, bring to the boil, skim and simmer 45 min.

q  Add whole prepared onions and carrots and simmer until cooked

q  Divide the suet paste into 8 even pieces, lightly mould into balls.

q  Add the dumplings and simmer for a further 15 – 20 min.

q  Serve by carving the meat across the grain, garnish with carrots, onions, and dumplings and moisten with a little of the cooking liquor.

Note:   It is usual to cook a large joint of silverside (approx. 6kg (12 lb)), in which case it is necessary to soak it overnight and to allow 25 min per ½ kg (1 lb) plus 25 min.

Braised Steaks

INGREDIENTS:                                                                                                                  

400g                1 lb                  stewing beef

25g                  1 oz                 fat or oil

75g                  3 oz                 onions

75g                  3 oz                 carrots

25g                  1 oz                 flour, browned in the oven

25g                  1 oz                 tomato puree

750ml              1 ½ pt              brown stock

                                                bouquet garni

                                                clove of garlic (if desired)

                                                seasoning

METHOD:                                                                                                                            

q  Remove excess sinew and fat form the beef.

q  Cut into ½ - 1 cm (1/4 – 1/2 in) thick steaks.

q  Fry quickly in hot fat till lightly browned.

q  Add the mirepox (roughly cut onions and carrot) and continue frying to a golden colour.  Mix in the flour.

q  Add the tomato puree and stir in with a wooden spoon

q  Mix in the stock, bring to the boil and skim.

q  Add the bouquet garni and garlic, season and cover with a lid and simmer gently till cooked, preferably in the oven, approx. 1 1/2  - 2 hr.

q  When cooked place the meat into a clean pan.

q  Correct the sauce and pass on to the meat.

q  Serve in an entrée dish with chopped parsley.

q  Braised steaks may be garnished with vegetables cut in macedoine or jardinière, or turned or cut in neat, even pieces.