I have seized this day.

So, after a much-needed vacation, I'm back to the daily grind at the restaurant. I'm figuring out the wok, but slowly--maybe if PCI's Chef Bailey had taught us to stir-fry authentically and not in a large rondeau, my learning curve wouldn't be quite so skewed, but that's neither here nor there. Work is very, very gratifying.

Also with regards to my job, my six-month review was today. I won't go into heavy details, but let's say that I'm a very valued member of the team, I'm a cook's cook no matter my age or experience level, and I no longer live in terrible, indentured servitude-like poverty. Today made me align myself more consciously with what I have thus far stood behind: I have a responsibility to this kitchen and the food that comes out of it, and nothing can stop me.

But moving on, my time in Austin was very, very well-spent. I think I cooked every night, affirming either my committment to my craft or my total insanity. The company, as well as the food, was wonderful. It won't be so long before I'm back down South again, of that we can be sure of.

Austin, kept weird.

Every night's a party (venison burgers).

In Texas, we do our French cuisine outdoors.

Just a lovely bite: sauteèd Sockeye salmon and swordfish with Sauce Bercy, turnip rissolè, sauteèd asparagus with homegrown basil, heirloom tomato.

it is what it is.

Mise for my hobby. The diced up meat of a chuck cross cut (no one buys this because they don't know what the hell to do with it), heirloom tomatoes, etc.

Bread dough, rising off the humidity and heat made by my soup.

Roasting bones, to develop a richer flavor.

Yes, that pan is as wide as my stove. Sometimes you need twice as much heat.

I didn't finish photographing all that, but what I ended up doing is a veloutè based soup. I'll tell you how! Hooray.

Roast your beef bones in a cranked up oven--you want a nice browning, which will give you a rich, full flavor as opposed to a boiled meat essence. While that's going on, get plenty of olive oil almost smoking hot in a saucepan, stockpot, whatever will hold your soup. Add your meat, and move it around to get some nice caramelization on the outside. It's really important not to just dump all your meat in at once--even using a commercial gas range, all that mass hitting the pan will leech out all the heat you built up and cause the meat to release all its moisture, thus boiling rather than browning. Yes, cooking is just stupid highschool physics, except in a very high-stress environment.

Once you've got your meat a nice color, you've come to a choice. An important decision. The way I did this tonight was to brown the meat, then brown the vegetables and tomato paste (I did homemade tomato paste with the heirlooms for this), then add water, bones, and aromatics--much like the process you'd go through if you were making a big batch of stock. It's essentially the same method, but simmering those veggies for as long as it takes to tenderize the meat and release flavor from the bones makes for vegetable puree, overcooked indistinguishable pieces of carrot and celery that are mushy even by American family standards. When this had simmered enough for me, I picked the pieces of meat out and added them back into the liquid, after I had strained it. It sounds ridiculous, but I've actually done it before at the school and it's not as tedious at you might think.. Your other option is to tie up your vegetables in a cheesecloth bag and let that simmer in with your liquid, which will still release flavor, but prevent you from caramelizing the veggies first. It depends on what you're going for, I suppose. Maybe you could brown mirepoix and then put that in a cheesecloth bag; it seems like a bigger pain in the ass than picking out the meat.

Anyway, the soup has simmered with bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme, other dry herbs if you want, and meanwhile I've made a blonde roux--equal parts flour and oil, cooked together until evenly golden (and don't get that shit on you)--in a seperate pot. The liquid and the diced beef is strained into this hot roux. You have now made a veloutè. At this point, you can add the vegetables you actually want to eat. I'll be taking the pot of veloutè to work tomorrow and adding carrot, celery, onion, probably potatoes as well. Cook those to the desired doneness (anything with roux in it must simmer for at least 20 minutes in it anyway, to cook out the raw flour taste), season, finish with a pat of butter, and you're good to go. It should be thick, in my opinion, a nice nappè (to coat the back of a spoon)--anything less and it just doesn't have the same hearty, stick-to-your-ribs effect. Besides, a thin soup makes good bread useless.

So aside from my latenight cooking adventures, life is going on rather well. In fact, there is big news--Soba has decided to train me on the wok station! While not my original goal, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I started really doing some Asian cooking, and in any case, I will be a master of this restaurant's entire line once I get the hang of cooking with 90,000 BTUs.

gas is back on

Pot of beans. Or should I say, 6-quart mirrored stainless steel Cuisinart sautoise of beans. I started these off by browning the diced scraps of the pork spareribs with onion, carrot, and celery. Using bay, chili powder, cumin, paprika, and various herbs (as well as all the excess drippings from the ribs during roasting), I simmered the beans for about three hours.

Pork spareribs and my own rub (containing, among assorted herbs and spices, ground espresso beans). Contrary to popular belief you don't need a big iron barbeque grill to do barbeque--you can do it in a tiny studio apartment, as long as the meat fits in your oven (this almost did not). Roasted these for two hours, mopped some sauce on 'em, and finished them in the broiler. The tenderness of this product was amazing especially considering how easy it was to prepare--I never in my life imagined that this could be accomplished with some spices and aluminum foil.

It's hard to make out, but you can see my little buddy, Renoir, in this picture (he does not like the flash). Here, he's eating a carrot. Currently he is inside my toaster, eating crumbs. He and I are very alike--adventurous, passionate about food, Led Zeppelin fans.


Today is not a great day for bread. The dry, cool weather made this thing proof outward and not up at all--in the end it collapsed a little bit. If I'd made baguettes it would've worked out better. I'll call it a foccacia--it doesn't matter what the hell it looks like, it's going to keep me extremely popular at work.

"you're always killin somethin just by livin on this earth."

I'm sorry, but occasionally, vegetarians make me a little angry at humanity. It was suggested to me recently that we can end war on this planet forever if everyone started by not eating animals. "It's all the same, Junior. Killing people is just the same as killing cattle, chickens, pigs. It's all murder." I honestly don't know if the low amount of vitamin B12 in these peoples' systems makes them delirious, or what, but to think that stopping the inhumanity involved in foie gras production is more important than the war in Iraq or alternative fuel sources or global warming points to a very, very distorted sense of priority. In other words, quit dicking around spreading PETA pamphlets in trendy neighborhoods and stop the real bullshit that's going on in the world!