When chastised a column or so ago for divulging the “secret” of how restaurant fish surplus becomes fish stew, it caused me pause to consider how many times I may have “over divulged” throughout my years.
There is, perhaps, no such thing as knowing too much. But saying too much? Guilty.
While still learning to control myself, I could furnish a list of people who would attest to the “slow roasted” pace at which the process has occurred! To wit: Mom, my fourth-grade basketball coach (Dad), seventh-grade teacher, high school football coach, a long-ago Massachusetts state trooper, my first employer, last employer and the big-shot guest with the $8,000 mink coat who “yelped” after I may have suggested he was pompous and mean. You get the picture!
The truth in my oft spilling of the truth isn’t so much that I can’t “keep still” (my Nan’s insistent alternative to “shut up”), but rather how I find it all so challenging and interesting and worthy of wordplay. My revealing tendencies would not have served me so well, of course, had I chosen magic as a career, but in the restaurant business “the tricks” are not so much about sleight of hand as they are a response to slight of profit!
“Cross-utilizing” food is one of many valuable tricks of the trade we practice daily. We choose to serve our product in varied applications by design, insuring that it will “move” as fast as possible, leading to the sought after next day delivery. Fresh catch, fish ’n’ chips, fish stew.
There is no shortage of hidden secrets in our cupboards, things many folks perhaps would rather not know (or my wife, anyway), including how 80:20 chopped beef actually is 90:10 chopped beef with extra fat actually “added in,” or that “white truffles,” the subterranean delicacy, are fungi rooted out by female pigs because the chemical scent resembles the male hog’s sex attractant. Mmm. Miraculous stuff, right?
On a recent outing to a churrascaria, a Brazilian steakhouse at which a posse of “gauchos” carve a seemingly never ending array of rotisserie roasted meats tableside, it was asked: How do they make money? I pointed out, and it was soon painfully clear, that the flurry of carnivorous endeavors, which coincide with a system of green cards (“I want more”) and red cards (“please stop”), is preceded by a salad bar overflowing with color … and variety … and starches, and followed by hot rolls and platters of mashed potato and fried plantain, all satisfying the appetite 20 minutes (the time that digestion really kicks in!) before the meats are presented.
“For the love of Pete, please STOP before I pop.” Those red cards are a bursting-at-the-seams method of cost control, minimizing the consumption of expensive meat that’s already been paid for. Abracadabra!
In yet another scenario of over indulgence, it was pondered how a cruise ship accomplishes some 600 meals per seating as efficiently as it does. My wife, yet another witness to my candid nature, marveled many vacations ago at how 15 of us — in the immense floating ballroom of a restaurant — ordered from a fancy enough dinner menu selections that included filet of tenderloin with roasted pepper and a mushroom fricassee, and stuffed chicken cordon bleu. All arrived hot and delicious within 15 minutes. Voilà! “How did they cook our food so fast?” our co-cruisers marveled.
The answer was exposed the following day (guess by whom?) as we picked over a lunch buffet that consisted of such items as chicken roulade with ham and cheese (picture a chicken cordon bleu sliced in discs, fanned across a platter) and stir fried beef (filet mignon) with peppers and … mushrooms! The gimmick: When you are guaranteed to be serving 1,200 lunches the following day, the PRE-cooking of hundreds of chicken cordon
bleu dinners “ready for pickup” poses no risk of leftovers going to waste. This knowledge, I was told, explained dinner while ruining lunch.
Can you imagine being hungry in the middle of the night and shuffling in your pajamas to pull open the refrigerator door on a cruise ship? You want to talk leftovers? Eureka!
And now, for my next trick …
Scott Plath, along with his wife Kathleen, own Cobblestones of Lowell and moonstones, in Chelmsford, MA. Scott possesses a deep well of humorous and insightful stories that he will share with us regularly.
A View From the Kitchen – Nothing Up My Sleeves
There is, perhaps, no such thing as knowing too much. But saying too much? Guilty.
While still learning to control myself, I could furnish a list of people who would attest to the “slow roasted” pace at which the process has occurred! To wit: Mom, my fourth-grade basketball coach (Dad), seventh-grade teacher, high school football coach, a long-ago Massachusetts state trooper, my first employer, last employer and the big-shot guest with the $8,000 mink coat who “yelped” after I may have suggested he was pompous and mean. You get the picture!
The truth in my oft spilling of the truth isn’t so much that I can’t “keep still” (my Nan’s insistent alternative to “shut up”), but rather how I find it all so challenging and interesting and worthy of wordplay. My revealing tendencies would not have served me so well, of course, had I chosen magic as a career, but in the restaurant business “the tricks” are not so much about sleight of hand as they are a response to slight of profit!
“Cross-utilizing” food is one of many valuable tricks of the trade we practice daily. We choose to serve our product in varied applications by design, insuring that it will “move” as fast as possible, leading to the sought after next day delivery. Fresh catch, fish ’n’ chips, fish stew.
There is no shortage of hidden secrets in our cupboards, things many folks perhaps would rather not know (or my wife, anyway), including how 80:20 chopped beef actually is 90:10 chopped beef with extra fat actually “added in,” or that “white truffles,” the subterranean delicacy, are fungi rooted out by female pigs because the chemical scent resembles the male hog’s sex attractant. Mmm. Miraculous stuff, right?
On a recent outing to a churrascaria, a Brazilian steakhouse at which a posse of “gauchos” carve a seemingly never ending array of rotisserie roasted meats tableside, it was asked: How do they make money? I pointed out, and it was soon painfully clear, that the flurry of carnivorous endeavors, which coincide with a system of green cards (“I want more”) and red cards (“please stop”), is preceded by a salad bar overflowing with color … and variety … and starches, and followed by hot rolls and platters of mashed potato and fried plantain, all satisfying the appetite 20 minutes (the time that digestion really kicks in!) before the meats are presented.
“For the love of Pete, please STOP before I pop.” Those red cards are a bursting-at-the-seams method of cost control, minimizing the consumption of expensive meat that’s already been paid for. Abracadabra!
In yet another scenario of over indulgence, it was pondered how a cruise ship accomplishes some 600 meals per seating as efficiently as it does. My wife, yet another witness to my candid nature, marveled many vacations ago at how 15 of us — in the immense floating ballroom of a restaurant — ordered from a fancy enough dinner menu selections that included filet of tenderloin with roasted pepper and a mushroom fricassee, and stuffed chicken cordon bleu. All arrived hot and delicious within 15 minutes. Voilà! “How did they cook our food so fast?” our co-cruisers marveled.
The answer was exposed the following day (guess by whom?) as we picked over a lunch buffet that consisted of such items as chicken roulade with ham and cheese (picture a chicken cordon bleu sliced in discs, fanned across a platter) and stir fried beef (filet mignon) with peppers and … mushrooms! The gimmick: When you are guaranteed to be serving 1,200 lunches the following day, the PRE-cooking of hundreds of chicken cordon
bleu dinners “ready for pickup” poses no risk of leftovers going to waste. This knowledge, I was told, explained dinner while ruining lunch.
Can you imagine being hungry in the middle of the night and shuffling in your pajamas to pull open the refrigerator door on a cruise ship? You want to talk leftovers? Eureka!
And now, for my next trick …
Scott Plath, along with his wife Kathleen, own Cobblestones of Lowell and moonstones, in Chelmsford, MA. Scott possesses a deep well of humorous and insightful stories that he will share with us regularly.