Who said you need 10 fingers?

If I told you that your knife was shit and you should throw it away or cut off a finger and save yourself some pain in the future, would you believe me?

I had a "culinoob" (culinary school kid that doesn't know shit and only works to buy things, not pay bills) at my last job that was in love with his Henkel knife.  The tip was gone, the blade was bowed because he put it in the dishwasher. (Note:  Unless you bought your knife at the checkout counter at a No Frills supermarket, don't ever fucking wash your chef knife in a dishwasher, it destroys the blade.)  When cutting with it, you could feel it pull you in different directions, and cutting a pepper was as dangerous as running through Afghanistan wearing only an American flag.

This culinoob, we will call him Rick, had everything, his family was loaded, and when he finishes school, his family will throw money at him for his own restaurant, which will fail in 9 months and leave his family broke.  Rick was a know it all 22 year old without a care in the world other than cooking boring French food and telling lies about the women he had been with.  

On Thursday nights, we would prep all of breakfast mirepoix for the next two days, and he always worked that night, so I would sit and watch as he slowly prepped peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and different fruits.  Slowly was a nice way of putting it.

I almost needed to chew my fingernails in a nervous fit due to his cutting abilities, or the lack there of.  He would cut the peppers skin side up, which is kitchen rule # stupid, never cut a pepper skin side up.  I would watch the knife struggle to cut through a tomato, and peel the skin off an onion, instead of cutting through it.  

Every Thursday, I would watch him do this, and then I would tell him when he was done to throw that awful knife away before he looses a finger, and he would laugh and say he was a pro.....

"Rick, what the fuck!  Are you alright?"

"Sorry Chef, the knife slipped."

"No shit, donkey fucker, I told you that was going to happen, but no, you wanted to be a brave badger and now you are missing the top of your finger."

"Will you take me to the ER, this really hurts?"

"Will I take you to the ER and fix something that I told your rocket scientist ass would happen every Thursday for a month?"

"Please?  It really hurts."

"Not as much as your pride will hurt once you realize that you could have avoided this.  Now grab your finger tip, put it on some ice in a bag, wrap your finger in a towel, clock out, and get your noob ass to the fucking ER before I decide mend this situation with some salt, and a nice sear on the flat top."

"You're an asshole."

"I'm not the one who looks like they need a tampon for their finger tip, fuck stick, now get."

Rick came back later and apologized, and I told him he was an idiot, and that I threw his knife in the fryer, and then in a bucket of ice, and it snapped in half.  By the way, that is a really fun way to destroy something, just in case you ever feel like it.  Rick lasted a couple of weeks after that, but eventually quit.  Shame, maybe.  Pride, very likely.  Me making fun of his situation and the tampon on his finger, most definitely. 

Brulee torches for all!

So I have a new friend, her name is bruleé torch, and she is amazing.  I have found so many uses for her that it's almost sad I found her so late in life.

If you don't know what a bruleé torch is, check out the Bonjour 53336 Chefs bruleé torch. 

One of the best uses for the torch isn't for cremé bruleé at all.  I have been toying with the torch at home and have came up with some very happy results on many types of dishes, from searing fruit for cocktails, perfectly melting cheese on burgers, lightly roasting almonds, and glazing sugar on a strawberry.  You can also put the perfect finishing sear on a piece of salmon or add a peppery crust to a nice rib-eye.  So many possibilities.  Never enough time.

New Strange World of Unemployed Food

It's been a while: It's been a long while, and a lot has happened and a lot has changed, but we will get to that.  

First off, I no longer work at Granite City.  The inevitable happened.  They fired me.  I knew long before it happened that it would happen, but lets not skip over it; let's get to bullet points on this.

Strike 1.  I had an argument with my director and VP in October.  Things were going very poorly and they wanted someone to blame, so did I.  So they decided they would yell at me, but I didn't back down.  They wanted someone to kiss up to them and tell them that it was everyones fault, and I told them it was the two people in charge of the buildings fault for never being there.  They didn't like that.

Strike 2:  I hate paperwork.  Granite City had a lot of meaningless paper work they liked to have filed and have lots of notes taken on said paperwork for every shift.  They pay someone to create paperwork like this just to justify having a job.  Guess what, if you come in to your job and are immediately behind because the person who ran the first shift of the day doesn't do their job, why the fuck would I waste time filling out paperwork that doesn't matter.  Granite City's paperwork was all about routines and how you should work your shift.  It was a suggestion, but it never worked out and was written by someone who worked in a larger store where you could do your job and not have to worry about cutting hours or not having enough staff on hand.  Presumptuous corporate America, writing rules they themselves cannot follow but expect others to do so.

Strike 3:  Valentines Day 2011... It was on a Monday this year.  I closed the night before and wrote what was a large prep list of what we needed and didn't do over the weekend because other people decided that it wasn't necessary and would rather work 15 hour days instead of doing what was right... Anyhoo, when I came in at 3, they had removed most of the list saying it's a Monday Valentines Day and wouldn't be as busy.  They were very, very, very wrong.  We went on a wait at 4:30 and by the time that I was able to get off the line and start doing my job, we were out of everything that was on list.  I went back to the office and screamed at the people who make more money than me and are supposed to know what they are doing.  I told them to get the fuck in the kitchen and dig out of this mess before we have to comp the entire night due to their poor judgement.  It didn't matter, it was to late.  We were fucked.  The night finally ended, I threw all of my paperwork away, and went to bed.  The next day was slow, I got my paperwork done, and did some reorganizing throughout the kitchen.  It looked great.  The following day, I came in to work, and they tried to sit me down and fire me, but I laughed at them, told them they have no idea what is about to happen, and walked out with my check.  

Since I have been fired from Granite City:  13 cooks of 25 have quit, 27 0f 37 servers have quit, lowest performing Granite City in the company (27 stores), worst P&L, worst cost metrics, worst turnover, and dropped over $20,000 in sales in just 5 months.  The entire corporate support team is there on a weekly basis trying to figure out what's wrong, but they don't see the two pairs of eyes staring back at them that is the real problem.  It's not all me, but my parting statement to my managers and to the director who didn't have the balls to come fire me himself, was this:  "I was the glue of this restaurant, you guys are fucked, and you have no idea what is about to happen."

Mise En Place

What a week!!!  Valentine's Day on a Saturday, after getting 6-8" of snow the day before was a blessing in disguise.  Had that not been for the snow we would have been f-'d for the entire weekend.  Let me break it down to you in my terms:

I came in at 6 on Friday and immediately started getting phone calls from people saying that they couldn't come in because the schools were closed.  What the hell!!?  It's 6 a.m. and about 45F. outside, why would they close school?  So I got onto NOAA.com and checked the weather and there it was, a huge storm approaching that should start by 7:30.  Well, this is Nebraska, so fuck you weather guys for me not trusting anything you say, but I didn't.  Then, as I was putting a 500 piece truck away for a huge weekend, I was getting calls from Corporate, advising me to cut prep production and limit hours so that we didn't run into issues as far as shelf life for produced food items and over production of prepped items we could do without.  They also wanted me to cut my labor percentage by 35% for the morning shift.  Now, raise your hand if you understood all of that...  Go ahead, I will wait....

So, put the truck away, decide to listen to Corporate, break down boxes, review the prep list, review scheduled labor hours, how much in sales I need to do keep my sales per labor hour at 39%, and make sure that everyone is working on their Mise en Place (meez en plaz), which is what we will get into later.  As I was breaking down boxes and adjusting the prep list, the first flakes began to fall around 8:15 a.m.  Big, fat, snow flakes, in large sheets of white came from the sky and immediately started accumulating.  Whoop-dee-doo!, I thought, it is still February, it's allowed to snow, no biggie.  Continue to break down boxes, count proteins and product mix for the big weekend, make sure there are no discrepancies.  I opened up the door to take a load of boxes out and realized that was a mistake, as the wind had come up, a lot, and nearly took me with it.  My apologies to anyone in the parking lot who ended up with a box stuck in the side of their car.

The wind was so strong and the snow so thick that I couldn't see the mall from the back door.  From our back door to the mall is about a football field, but I could have been anywhere at this moment and not known any better.  So now it's hurry up time, break down boxes, break down the prep lists, call off the volume support I had scheduled, call my boss, his boss, his bosses boss, and so forth, and get ready cut down to the bare minimum of staff to get by.  Did I mention that in an hour we accumulated 2-3" of snow?  

So, I cut down 35% of production for the day shift to save labor dollars and product life, and cut off all bulk prep items we would normally do on a Friday morning and re-wrote the prep list to produce enough food for today.  Then I went on line and started reviewing each stations Mise en Place, which is where we are going next.

Mise en Place, in the culinary world, has a different meaning for every cook, but it basically means, "Everything in it's place."  That consists of stocking, labeling, prepping, rearranging, getting the proper utensils and instruments ready, and cleaning and sanitizing your station in preparation for the proper business volumes of that shift.  It's the first thing you study in culinary school, and you spend a lot of time working on it.  Now, for those of you who know me well, I have a little bit of O.C.D. at home, but in a kitchen, it's pretty bad, and it needs to be that way.  You see, having "Everything in it's place" is the first step to becoming a successful cook, but it's the basic design for success in any field.  The important part of Mise en Place is not just having the product in place and utensils ready for your shift, it's important for muscle memory.  You can't be a successful cook if you don't have the ability to do the same thing over and over again the same way.  There is no perfection to cooking, but you can always improve your efficiencies, and you never stop improving your skills, or you fall behind and the next thing you know, you are having a polite conversation with you Sous Chef or manager about how you are sorry for your performance and hope they will still give you a good reference at your next job.  Seriously.

I have had to fire, or as the p.c. dicks would say, "terminate on, or due to a violation of employment contract", many seasoned cooks who just lost their edge and couldn't get back the muscle memory due to their personal lives being a wreck, or just becoming comfortable with their jobs.  It happens to everyone, but it's my job to challenge it every day, squeezing every dime of your shift out of you.  Speaking of firing people, what ever happened to the good old days when you could chew someone up, spit them out, leave them in a crying ball of talentless guilt, and not get sued over it?  Is everyone that big of a pussy that you can't take an ass chewing without wondering whether Johnny Cochrane should get involved in a lawsuit?  It's scary sometimes when you want to throw someone off line, take them outside and beat them with a rubber hose, and then tell them to find another job, and you can't, because that would be verbal harassment, and if you get fired for that, it sticks too your record like being a child molester or a AWOL soldier who was dishonorably discharged.  Seriously.

Sorry about the rant, but old school is losing to new school very quickly, and the ideals of the people that taught me to cook, and threw knives at me when I made mistakes (Dave Harrison) are fading away to corporate laws and sensitivity training to make you staff feel more valuable.  Boo to that, grow a fucking back bone.

Back to the snow.

After evaluating everyone's station I called off the volume support, and went out into the snow to my car to grab my cold weather gear.  I have cold weather boots, and Gortex Army gear from when I was in the military, and it has served me well over the years.  It is now 10 a.m. and I am ready to go out and clean the sidewalks with the snow blower.  So I go out, and it takes me about an hour to clear the area out, and by the time I am done we are open and ready for business, or a lack there of...

After being open for and hour and a quarter I kicked everyone out of the building and ran the kitchen by myself.  We had $600 in sales at 12:15 and when I got off the line at 3:00 we had $1900, most of which I did by myself.  I then went back out and retraced my steps with the snow blower as you couldn't tell I had been there in the first place.  I then finished up my day, went back outside around 5:30, and it had warmed up quite a bit and already started melting.  Fuck Nebraska weather!  I just busted my ass all day, and now it's thawing?  Boo!

I thought that maybe it would get busy that night as it did warm up a touch, but it didn't.  We ended up doing $6300 in sales for the whole day, $9000 short of budget.

Now, let's talk numbers and Valentine's Day:  This should be fun.

We were budgeted for $18500 on Valentine's Day.  It was nice out, and the mall was full when I came in to close at 3:00.  When I walked in we were on a wait, at 3:00 on a Saturday, and had already pushed out $7900 in sales in four hours.  I had the following product levels available for the night:  18 N.Y. Strips, 24 Angus Sirloins, 126 Salmon Filets, 119 Honey Rosemary Filets, and 17 Boneless Pork Chops.  After pre-shift, I went on line immediately to help dig out as we were just getting off the wait.  I never left.  At 5:00 we had put up $10,000 in sales, and this is how the rest of the next 5 hours went:  Call a ticket, sell a couple of steaks or salmons or pork chops, go two minutes on a ticket, sell more of the same.  We did that for 5 straight hours and when it was all said and done I had 15 Honey Rosemary Filets, 21 Salmon Filets, and "A" Boneless Pork Chop.  That's it.  When it was over, the numbers entered in, we had put up $24,750 in sales for the day.  Now, if you haven't worked in a restaurant, that seems like a lot, and if you have only worked in smaller restaurants, that doesn't seem possible, but trust me, it can be done.  Last Mother's Day Brunch we did $31,250 in sales, $27,000 of that was from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., which brings me back to the beginning of this whole episode, the snow blessing in disguise.

Had there not been a snow storm and a significant loss of sales due to that, we would have ran out of Steaks and Signature items at 6, maybe 6:30 when we did $4100 in sales that hour.  You heard me right, that hour.  Had there not been a snow storm we would have pissed off half of Omaha that night and lowered the trust in our business effectiveness in the city and lost continued business flow following that.  So for those weather men who called it right for a change, I thank you, just this once, for saving my ass and my job and not having to get off of work and drink myself to death due to not being prepared.

I don't have one Mise en Place anymore, the whole building is my work station, and I care deeply for it and the guests that come in the doors.  Since we have an "open" kitchen that the guests can see right into, you have to hide your emotions as best as you can, and had it not snowed and we not cut our business levels down correctly, we would have had a lot of explaining to do, because it doesn't matter whether the servers or the kitchen made a mistake, it's always the kitchens fault, and I can't spit and swear like I used too, because I don't want to have to go somewhere else and start my Mise en Place all over again.  So for now, I will trust the weather peeps for a while, until the next time they say something nasty is going to happen and doesn't, or does happen and we are unprepared for the levels of business that follow.  That's the world we live in, and we let a radar, a computer, and a holiday built around sex, chocolate, and pink shit decide what comes next.  It's kind of sad, but the economy is still good in Omaha and I will continue to take advantage of it for as long as the radar will let me.

The Panda Ass Culinary Project

Greetings,

For the first installment of the Panda Ass Culinary Project I am going to lay down the Panda rules: (1)  I created this blog to inform the outside world about the culinary field, and to vent my successes and frustrations to everyone and anyone that will listen. (2)  I am also using this site as a online test kitchen for my recipes which I plan to use some day in the future in my own restaurant concept.  

That being said, I think that I should explain a little bit about myself, my career, and mostly, where the Panda Ass comes into play.

I started off in the restaurant world 15 years ago as a busboy and dishwasher at Yin Ching's Chinese Restaurant in Grand Island, NE.  I worked for an absolutely terrible woman who's only concern was keeping the guests happy and the money flowing.  She never had a kind thing to say to anyone even if they did a good job, which is why I stole tips from her daughter.  The only friends I had at the restaurant were the Mexican cooks in the back, who were amazing to watch considering the amount of space they had.  I was always in the back eating food with them and trying to share in the conversation with my limited amount of spanish language that I had at the time.  I became an expert dishwasher as well, and even to this day I don't mind getting in the pits and throwing down some plates and pans.  It reminds me of where I started and how far I have come.  That, and even though I am almost 30, I can still roll most dishwashers under the table.

Now, I don't know how many of you have worked for restaurants, but for those of you who have, you know which areas suck the most; dishpit, fryside, busboy, bar back.  Those are the worst at any institution, as they are the most monotonous and mundane, but are the most critical to restaurant operations.  You can't have plates to sell food on if you don't have a good dishwasher, you can't sell sides for the entré's with out a fry cook that can kick out the same four items all night, you can't keep the seats moving without good busboys, and you can't keep the guests buzzed without good bar backs keeping the glasses clean and ready for refills.  I am proud to say I have done all of the nasty and most of the prestigious jobs you can have at a restaurant and I would like to think that I did them all very well considering what I do now.

The big difference between me and the next guy is that I didn't go to some culinary academy and get a degree to prove that I am a chef.  I know my seven mother sauces, I know what temperature sugar melts and what order the ingredients go together for a cremé bruleé, and I really don't care.  French Classic food can suck both sides of my big sack of balls.  Sure, it's a great foundation, but it's boring, pretentious wealthy person food.  Sure, people pay a lot of money for a properly made 7 course dinner, but I would rather take the money you would spend on something like that and take my friends to a BBQ joint and mow down trash can lids of food and buckets of beer for the same price as a small portioned course dinner where the food looks like it would better serve leprechaun than a human.  Plus, it's French, and those people are assholes, especially the ones from Aspen.

What I know is what I learned by sweating, swearing, punching boxes, smoking cigarettes, drinking into madness, sleeping with the staff, coming in hung over as fuck and doing it all over again the next day.  It took a long time to really find my mark in this world, but I decided after my career in the military was completed that I would continue my progress in the culinary world.  I have been called a fake, that I don't deserve the title because I am not a certified chef, even though I belong to the American Culinary Association, and have had to fight my way out of many a bar because I don't see eye to eye with these "culinary experts."  To anyone who reads this and doesn't agree with me, you are a paper chef, so take your clip board, your degree, and your parents money stick it up your ass, I don't give a fuck.  And if you don't know what a paper chef is, look it up.

Which is what brings me to the Panda Ass Culinary Project.  I am reaching out to all servers, bartenders, cooks, and chefs that need a outlet to vent their frustrations led on by the executive staff level personnel in the restaurant field that make decisions based on what they think will work and not what works in the field.  It's kind of like the government, they think they know, but they never really understand when it doesn't work.

I am the Panda Ass because of an instance that happened to me last year.  During a big push I was running the window, selling tickets and setting food like crazy, all while working around one of my cooks, Jeff, who is 6'-4", 300 lbs. and looks like a defensive lineman.  We call him Skinny Pete.  So Skinny reaches into one of the low boys to get out a steak and I reach in at the same time on the opposite side of the line to get out big buns for all of the burgers we are selling.  The problem is that when Skinny bends over to get anything he looks like a miniature horse, and his girth caught the door my arm was in and crushed my hand, breaking my third metacarpal.  When he did this I fell down, not from the pain, but because I felt like I got blindsided from a run away boar.  As I got up Skinny said that I was to big of a bear to working in the same station as he was, which I agreed with, and added that I was more like a Panda then anything else.  We all laughed and got back to work.  Later, some one came up and antiqued my ass with a glove full of flour, and when I turned around to look at it, it was very reminiscent of a panda, especially since I was wearing all black pants.  The Panda Ass was born.  

If you really think about it, all cooks are Panda Ass's, because of the checkered pants we all wear, but I am the original. 

Now, here is your homework.  I created this recipe while typing out our Christmas dinner menu and had my dad make it.  I had no idea how it was going to turn out, but the final product was incredible, and I think that because it is easy to make and takes a day to properly set up and balance the flavors, you will enjoy it as much as I do.

 

Citrus Coleslaw

2 cans of pineapples (diced and drained)

1 red onion (diced)

1 jalapeno (diced)(seeded) USE GLOVES!!!!

1/4 C. shredded carrots

1 bag coleslaw mix (If you see it, Asian coleslaw mix is better)

1/4 C. Coconut oil

1 T. Sea Salt/Kosher Salt (whatever you use)

2 C. Yogurt

3 T. cilantro (mince and then measure)

4 T. sugar

1 T. Chili Powder

1 tsp. Cumin

1 tsp. Black Pepper

1 tsp. Paprika

1 T. Garlic Powder

Here we go:

1. Prepare all of the vegetables and put them in one large mixing bowl.  Then add the coconut oil and the salt and mix well.  You would be better off having some gloves around for this.  After mixing, set out for 30 minutes uncovered to allow the air to infuse the flavors.  In the mean time....

2. Place the yogurt and sugar in another mixing bowl and combine with a whip.  Then add the rest of the spices and whip until it looks like mayo.  Place in the cooler, or fridge in your case, and wait until the vegetable bouquet is ready. 

3. After the vegetables have had time to breathe, add the yogurt mixture to the veggies and mix thoroughly, (USE GLOVES!!) and then allow the mixture to rest uncovered for 10 more minutes before covering and cooling.  If you make it the day before the ingredients will have time to infuse each other.  You may want to put this in the garage fridge as it will be quite strong by the next day.  Any questions, re-read the recipe and figure it out.

I am leaving you with this:  T= tablespoon, tsp/t= teaspoon, C= cup, #=lbs=pounds.

Now enjoy.

Panda Ass