Too much bacon can be bad for your lungs?!

So during my second trail, the chef and sous chef were telling me how I did better at my first trail then two Culinary Institute of America graduates, who had also trailed last week. Not so much as taking it as a complement, I was more dumbfounded. The sous chef asked me if I knew the internal cooking temperature of chicken. I replied, “Um. Like 165, right?” He shook his head and said one of the CIA kids told him 135. I don’t understand how one of the best cooking schools in the world could turn out someone like that with their seal of approval. I mean, the internal cooking temperature of chicken is something a lot of avid home cooks know. Especially someone who wants to do it for a living. Obviously, that CIA kid doesn’t really love to cook. Then why the hell did he go to a prestigious cooking school?

I’ve had two people tell me, that in terms of culinary school, you only get out what you put into it. But why would you half-ass it? I mean, it’s not like business school, where you can coast by with a 2.0 then get a job with one of your dad’s companies. Cooking is a skill and you can’t fake that. I really don’t understand most people. I thought I would escape those spare parts in the kitchen, I but guess I’m wrong. Again.

After trailing at restaurant only twice, I had quickly come to realize the importance of knowing Spanish. Because, as you probably already know, almost all restaurants employ a high number of Spanish speaking immigrants to do the grunt work. And if you want them to do something for you, they will more likely get it done if you ask for it in their language. And those guys can get shit done. Only if they can understand what your gringo ass is saying, though. Unfortunately, I don’t know any Spanish. I took a few years in high school and what I knew was pushed out by being forced to take Italian in college and then attempting to relearn French recently. Pretty much what I remember is “no habla Español”, “gracias”, “chulo”, “pinga”, “burracho” and “Sabado Gigante”. Pretty much useless in a kitchen. Well, useless for now, anyway - some of those words may come in handy one day.

I want to learn French cooking. I know that a very large portion of New York’s high end restaurants are run by French executive chefs. And almost all culinary terms are French. So I was recently thinking that taking an intensive French class might be a smart move. Now I think I’m gonna scrap that idea and instead go download some Spanish lessons off of the information superhighway.

I dug up this old article I remember reading in Village Voice over a year and a half ago. It’s about different fats and mentions how now lard is the way to go for your added fat because it has half the amount of saturated fat of butter.

“Grease is Good!: Are lard, eggs, and fish tacos the new health foods?”

I went to check out Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in Union Square on Friday after getting my hair did. Instead of me ranting and bitching to you at length, I’ll just say that both experiences were very unpleasant and I didn’t even buy anything at either store. Whole Foods in Manhattan is a total rip-off compared to their Long Island locations (the Union Square olive bar was $9.99 / lb compared to $6.99 / lb at their Jericho location). I highly advise against going to both Union Square supermarkets unless you like dealing with crowds and long lines. Which, surprisingly, a lot of people don’t seem to mind.

I went back to Fairway today and bought that goose fat.

An update on the Fairway olive bar: Correcting my earlier post, their olive selection is more like 25-30 different kinds of olives. The best part is that you get to sample them! No one yells at you! You don’t even have to ask! Just pick away! You can stand there all day and just eat olives! This is a smart idea on their part because unlimited, unsupervised sampling led me to spontaneously buy some atlas olives, which are massive and yield copious amounts of meat.

(Side story: There was this kid at the supermarket, probably around nine or ten years old, fucking around with his dad’s shopping cart. His dad was ignoring him and trying to pick out hams. The kid kept saying, “Dad! Dad! I have a farting car!” and then proceeded to make fart noises with his mouth as he pushed the cart around the meat department. I burst out laughing.)

For dinner I made fresh store bought pumpkin gnocchi and made my own sauce (garlic, button mushrooms, thyme, chicken stock, heavy cream). It would have been a perfect dish had I added bacon. It wasn’t a very Springtime dish (the gnocchi tasted like pumpkin pie), but it was delicious nonetheless. Especially considering I have extremely limited experience cooking Italian.

The restaurant called me (despite them being closed today) and want me to trail again tomorrow, so I’m really psyched about that.

And regarding the Food Network Awards, I have nothing to say. Maybe you do.

I had the oppurtunity to trail at a well-established restaurant in Carroll Gardens last week. They are famous for their beet salad with goat cheese ravioli (which I got to prepare and plate a few times) and slow rendered duck.

They should be famous for their quad pork dish: Pork stuffed with pork sausage, wrapped in caul (technical term for the fat netting they used all the time on the OG Iron Chef) and served with bacon fried rice. Bam!

I was on the terlit, reading “Techniques of Healthy Cooking ” by The Culinary Institute of America and it had a page on MSG.

Apparently MSG (which has 1/3 the amount of sodium of salt and is more delicious - falling into the umami category of taste) is perfectly safe to eat in moderation. There have been dozens of studies and they found no link between moderate intake levels of MSG and any problems in normal, healthy individuals. But MSG never shook off the bad rep it got in the late 60’s. The book says that people who think they have an adverse reaction to it may have a food allergy to something else or some other medical condition (or maybe the chef did something awful to your food).

Lots of junk food products contain MSG, just look at the ingredient list on the back of a sack of Doritos for “monosodium glutamate”.

Bring on the delicious seasoning!

Japanese television: Frying-pan contest.

(Thanks, Franz!)

I wasn’t always a snotty foodie. I wasn’t always as anal I am now about caring for my kitchen gear. I’m not above admitting my ignorance about things, like I used to put my Wusthof in the dishwasher and when I was ten years old I put a finished wood bowl in the microwave. So I have stayed away from wood gear for years -the stuff kept splitting on me and no one ever told me it was because you had to oil it and couldn’t soak it in water. (This was in the days before the wealth of knowledge on the information superhighway.)

Matt and I purchased a butcher block from Ikea for our new apartment. It’s made out of solid birch and metal, the GROLAND ($199). Here’s a photo of it (unoiled). Ikea says you should ONLY use their oil blend, BEHANDLA, on your Ikea gear. First of all, I usually call shenanigans when a company says to only use their products. Secondly, the vague ingredients listed on the website is different from what the actual container says: Linseed oil, tung oil, mineral oil, and lot of things that start with “benzo-” and end in cancer. Plus, it’s an Ikea product and that in itself doesn’t gain my confidence in their quality.

I took a chance and purchased John Boo’s Mystery Oil ($6-8 for 16 oz) based on John Boo’s reputation. The “mystery” is that it doesn’t tell you what the ingredients are. Various websites say it’s made of pure mineral oil, raw linseed oil, tung oil and natural citrus extracts. I couldn’t dig up anything else with my world class detective skills (read: Google searches). The bottle does say safe for any food preparation surface. I’ll let you know if I develop a toxic shock syndrome or something.

I read online that you are supposed to oil your new wood products once a week for the first month and once a month for the first year. And sand it down with fine sand paper once in awhile. I guess it’s a good thing I have a lot of time on my hands.

I don’t know what the hell a lingonberry is, but it’s mighty delicious.

Cost: $1 premixed from Ikea, no assembly required
ChewFood rating: A- (a little too sweet)