I'm thinking about adding another "interlude" to my collection, inspired by ADD without a doubt. It's the cookerlude, baby, aimed at collecting thoughts and notes on cooking in order not to forget and to better understand the world that a cook goes through. While I cook nearly every day, I don't consider myself a good cook. I simply don't have the taste-buds for it; but I do love the good food, which, luckily, my gut no longer shows!
I recently discovered a podcast, called/by The Restaurant Guys, which, apart from the insanely long commercials, actually seems quite interesting and is funny enough to keep my attention. Some notes.
Salt: So, we seem to have this internal taste-meter for the stuff, which in some ways is tied to the percentage of salt in salt-water. At the same time, our saliva actually dilutes salt in food, reducing it, meaning there should be a higher percentage in food than salt-water, for us to enjoy it.
Sugar: apparently there's no set limit for that, people love sugar (I must be the exception).
Salt + Sugar: whenever you make a sugary desert, adding a little(!) salt helps the taste; apparently they do funny stuff to each-other in your mouth, a party in your mouth, so to speak.
Taste-enhancers: apart from the above, olive oil, mushrooms, garlic, tomato-paste, alcohol (and much more) enhances the taste in your mouth.
Pretty basic, no? You can listen to the whole episode on what (American) people like in their food, here.
My own world
(This is where I talk a little about what I discovered myself in regard to cooking. Pretty basic too, so I'll try not to embarrass myself.)
I'm a big fan of salads, I make and eat one nearly every day as a meal. I often use canned tuna, but I recently discovered salmon in a can, which tastes better, is less salty, healthier, and costs about the same here in the Netherlands.
But steamed salmon is the best. You can get an expensive steamer, but a cheap solution is a microwave-steamer. I found one in a Chinese store for about €10, you can steam whatever you want in 5-10 mins and it magnifies the taste. Add some green beans and carrots, and you got a great salad for a meal! Add some potatoes or rice, and you won't need the salad.
Last, but not least, sometimes, not always,Ketchup actually makes for an interesting dressing (together with some oil and spices). It often contains vinegar, which salads like, and the tomato mixes well with the salmon-taste.
That's about it for today, I'm not sure how often I'll repeat these cookerludes, but I hope you enjoyed it! The picture is of course of Chef!, the show.
I just discovered a new podcast called "Big Ideas" (iTunes-link), a series of lectures on anything from the impact of urbanisation on musical tastes, to designing menus for restaurants. Oh, and it's Canadian. Not that that's bad, but some parts of the lecture covered local conditions.
John Schneeberger starts his lecture (dated March 1, 2008) off with the basics of menu-design, namely that they should reflect three things:
- What you stand for? Aka. what kind of food do you like to work with?
- What demographics are you targeting? Income, religious issues, etc.
- What are the current trends? And are they for real or just a fad?
- Customer-decisions are always a trade-off between price and quality
- Traditionally, dishes consist of three components: protein, starch, and vegetables.
- What we understand as taste, actually comes from three sources: fat, salt, and sugar.
Schneeberger discussed three booming trends, vegetarianism, organic food, and local produce, and mentioned a number of challenges related to these.
Vegetarian cookingThe thing to understand about this, is that it's generally cheaper. Schneeberger mentioned a 1:10 ratio when you compare the cost of producing vegetables to the cost of growing a cow. And while it's a booming trend, the industry, somewhat mis-guidedly, still often focusses on trying to replicate the taste of meat, which is impossible (think veggie-burgers, etc.).
Instead, they should be thinking about nutritional value— vegetarian food has been correlated with lower health-problems and is for that reason often recommended by doctors. The problem with these types of diets is of course that they are low in those qualities we would traditionally associate with taste: fat, salt, and sugar.
To create dishes that people actually enjoy, restaurants have to look globally, e.g. Asia, where more exotic vegetable components can bring some needed flavour to these dishes. I think he mentioned seaweed, but also stinky tofu (see pic), which is a type of fermented tofu and one of the few ways to naturally bring flavour to that type of protein.
The implication is that vegetarian food requires a significant amount of specialisation and is often hard to combine with meat-cooking.
Another complication arises from vegan (no dairy, honey, animal-derived products) versus lacto-ovo (incl. dairy, honey, animal-derived) cooking. The first makes it very hard to create a (traditionally) tasty dish. The second, lacto-ovo, allows for more flexibility, through the use of ingredients like eggs, which not only provide extra protein, but also bring a lot of flexibility to the kitchen. You can, for instance, make foam out if it, which would enable the creation of deserts & soups, etc.
Organic cooking
First of all (and I'm not sure if this is just restricted to Canada), an organic food label refers to the production method, not necessarily the quality and taste. Since organic food is more expensive, and taste is not guaranteed, you have to wonder if your clientele is willing to pay extra for that service (remember the trade-off between price & quality!).
The big selling-point here is the information about the product. People like to know how their food was produced; it has a certain value to know that there are no chemicals or genetically modified components in what you are eating. But again, that must be a value that is clearly advertised and which may not be important to every type of demographic.
Local produce
The advantage for the restaurant is that they can form better relationships with their suppliers, it's also cleaner in terms of carbon footprint (less transport), and it also has some marketing value to a certain demographic.
The disadvantage is that supply cannot be guaranteed during all seasons. Schneeberger mentioned something called a "100 mile diet" for instance, but restaurants catering to that need will probably have problems in the winter.
Thoughts
Overall, a pretty insightful lecture of the more exotic (and trendy) type of cooking and its trade-offs.
These types of specialisation are still pretty niche, require significant resources in terms of tools, know-how, and supplier-relations. But, if executed well, a niche can be extremely profitable.
I thought that it was interesting that all the traditional means of cooking, the ingredients and the taste-makers, were pretty incompatible with these newer trends. As such, you are essentially climbing up a hill, trying to educate the mass-market. At the same time, good execution, together with differentiation from the norm, seems like a formula for success.
The reasons to love bookstore-cafés is that you get a chance to discover new stuff to read. The reason to hate my particular café is that, every week, even when I ask for a *normal* coffee, the waitress continues to regurgitate the same phrase: "will that be a large of a small?" Anyway…
I read a nice article in the New Yorker today, about a stressed out restaurant-entrepreneur called David Chang, who runs several noodle-bar-styled restaurants in New York City. The Yorker's articles are always so long, but it was a captivating article. I took some notes, which I'll share with you now.
- Waiters make way more money than chefs, simply because of the tips; the figure mentioned was $1700 per 32 hours vs. $350 that chefs make. Turning chefs into waiters, which seems like a logical decision in a noodle-bar, comes with the challenge that these types are not always that domesticated (can't help thinking about Chef! here).
- The front-end of a restaurant—servers(?), the set-up, beverages—is relatively simple (compared to the work that goes into cooking) and can be consolidated across multiple restaurants.
- Personal integrity in cooking—e.g. cutting fish-cakes properly, even though the customer won't notice them in a bowl of ramen—is the difference between a quality-restaurant and a McDonalds or Uno.
- Standards: A piece of chicken can taste wonderful to a customer, he won't know why, but it's actually because it's been prepared (marinated, dried, etc.) for more than 24 hours.
- Quote: "The great thing about fast-food is that you could sell out without worrying about it, because fast-food isn't pretentious and selling out is in the nature of the business."
- Quote: "Cooking is honest work; gives you a way to measure yourself."
The thing about restaurants is that I'm painfully ignorant about so many things going on in that world. Cuisine is like art—it's dynamic and filled with critics. For instance, there's the "foam" trend, mentioned in the article, hot in the 90s, but which I never heard off.
For me, I'm always interested to find out more about this industry, because I want to be part of something that produces culture. But I'm constantly thinking about whether it's wise to enter such an industry without a basic familiarity. It would be like me entering the tech-industry, without being aware of open-source, how to write code, or do project-management; it's just not done.
Food for (mostly, my own) thoughts.
Cooking is ingredients!… it's timing!… it's cleanliness!… it's… … …restraint!
These are just a few of the tips that Gareth Blackstock, chef at Le Chateaux Anglais, and lead character of the British comedy-series "Chef!," delivers to his staff in a kind and gentle manner… not. Even after re-watching this show 10+ years later, I'm still not sure whether Lenny Henry's portrayal of the angry chef is meant to be a realistic, or rather a satiric look at what goes on in these kitchens. The effect it's had on me, in any case, is one of silent terror when I think of kitchens in 2-star restaurants.There's no denying that, generally, the world of HoReCa consists of flat hierarchies; there's the boss, either the head-manager and/or the head-chef, followed by some type of administrative class of underlings, and finally those that Gareth Blackstock likes to call
"There's the aristocracy, the upper class, the middle class, working class, dumb animals, waiters, creeping things, head lice, people who eat packet soup, then you.."
If you're thinking of high-tech start-ups in the IT-world, multi-star restaurants are their equivalent in the HoReCa-world. Competitive advantage in technology comes from both products that are differentiated enough from the competition and processes that enable a business to produce these products at a sufficiently low cost and high scale to reap a profit.
In restaurants, this is embodied by the chef, whose training, experience, personality, and, I guess, raw talent, inspire fear in all of those around him, especially the ones that feel his wrath. It is an innovation machine difficult to replicate, comes at a high price and is not for the faint of heart.
Everything else: coming up with a business-plan, talking to investors, setting up the site, buying the materials, hiring the people, getting customers to visit, etc.… seems easy, compared to finding, keeping, and managing a good chef. Because as soon as the chef finds out that he is the one that keeps the ball rolling, he is the vital cog in the machine, he will likely fire you as a boss and replace you with one of those people, generally found under head lice and packet soup.
So there you have it; I don't write about cuisine, same as people generally don't think about starting a business in space-flight. They are both sciences reserved for an elite pioneering-class, one that is fearless and willing to risk the laws of nature in order to succeed.
The 
