A Good....No, a Great Week

I keep meaning to write more through the week but last week was a busy one....but it was a great week!

I started the week fairly normal and then for the rest of the week I was going in early to do things. Wednesday I was in early because there was alot of prep for the day that needed to be done. Thursday I was in early to do externship stuff with Chef and to finally go over the ordering process at work. Friday I was in early to do a lunch for a Food Editor/Writer and her group that was with her. Then on Saturday and Sunday I was in at a normal time. But through the week, everyday was great, we had good services, food looked amazing, and there was a surprise thrown in the mix.

But to start with some photos, I'll show what we made for the Food Editor (I was so angry I didn't have my Nikon with me to take some awesome photos, just my cell phone)

We ended up doing the sea urchin flan again with spring garlic veloute again, to be honest, I like it, its got a great taste.

Here we have pan roasted scallops, the white quenelle is parsnip puree, then there are roasted baby carrots and glazed baby carrots that have been glazed in there own juice along with some black currant puree and just carrot puree.

This is a piece of almond milk poached halibut with shaved green asparagus, braised green asparagus and also some pickled spring garlic and tomato water.

This is a take on our braised short rib, in front is smoked potato puree, charred spring onion, glazed pearl onion and red wine braised salsfy.

Zack and I had an idea for a dessert but time wasn't quite on our side so we didn't get to quite execute it. But we were going to do a blueberry ice cream with some shortbread and a vanilla creme anglaise and alittle blueberry compote. She loved all the food we made and that made for a great afternoon!

Which while on the topic of blueberries (I'm sorry if I'm jumping around) but if you want something really good. Just blueberries, sugar and lime zest makes a good dessert.

Now, take a guess as to what this might be:

If you guessed these objects were beets, you win! We had a guy on Wednesday trying out for the sous chef position at work....and lets just say, yeah....moving on!

After a few late nights, on Friday morning as I was trying to wake up and cleaning my chef whites I came across a package for me. I continued to open the package and inside was a surprise so amazing. I want to thank my parents and my sister so much for making me smile and making my birthday one step better!

I got a Masahiro 240, 9 1/2 inch chef's knife and left handed of course. Once again thank you Mom, Dad and Nikki!

But I'm off and hopefully I can write more this week!

-Garrett

Good Morning, I've Got Alot for You All

As I sit in the kitchen this morning, drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying some toast, I thought I better write to update everyone. I've got lots and lots of photos this time around.

To start off this blog, I'll explain why Thursday at work is like Christmas. Thursday is the day we get in our local farm order. Therefore when it comes in, we oogle for a good 30 min before we put it away, but the stuff we got was amazing. Fresh asparagus, spring garlic, baby green mix, baby arugula, some fresh herbs, beets, and we got this stuff in call baby braising mix which is full of baby swiss chard, kale, tatsoi, etc.

Look at those beets! They are so tiny and beautiful!

Here's the baby braising mix with some fresh chives on top with the flowers.



The week has slowed down alot after the past three weeks of total craziness so we got to do some good specials this week.

This isn't so much a special but a re plating of our buttermilk chicken on our dinner menu. We take an airline chicken breast and make a buttermilk brine and soak the chicken in it. Then we pop the chicken in the steamer to cook in the buttermilk (would be so much better if we had a circulator) Off to the left is potatoes sarladaise, its potatoes that are confit, then fried and tossed in fresh herbs, salt and alittle white truffle oil. To the right is some braised rhubarb and ontop is some braised and roasted spring garlic.

This was a warm asparagus salad with a poached egg and some prosciutto. Theres some roasted asparagus, sauteed, braised, and raw on the plate. We made a myer lemon vinaigrette to go with it and on top of the poached egg is some dehydrated vegetables we did last week.



This was an appetizer we ran. We made our own salt cod in house (the brine I made was awesome, I don't want to give it out). But the base is a spring garlic veloute and we roasted some morels, we candied some spring garlic and theres some garlic confit on the plate as well.

So many photos this blog post! My next two photos will describe the epic awesome-ness of diner food at its finest. Yesterday before I left for my trip to Denver, Mark and I went to King Chef's Diner in downtown Colorado Springs. Let me say, that is by far the best diner food I have ever had in my life! There is no in between for diner food, its either good or really bad but this was beyond good, it was amazing.

A snippet of their menu.

My breakfast, a breakfast burrito with three eggs inside, hashbrowns, sausage, covered in your choice of country gravy (as above) or really, really, really, really hot green chili (stuff not for gringo's).



This place was great, the service was good and we learned the rules of King Chef's Diner. Theres nothing fancy there, so no lemon wedges, no honey, and no spoons in that diner. And if you think about it, if you took all those items out, you'd be saving quite the amount every year. So I don't blame them for not having those things.

But the last part of this post I'll make about my trip to the city of Denver. I drove out to the great city (about an hour away from Colorado Springs) saw some sights (it was terribly gloomy day yesterday) and I got to see some more family, my cousin Sean and his wife and kids. Sean made chicken marsala and roasted garlic mashed potatoes and I will say it was pretty dang good. It was nice to take a drive, see somewhere new and visit, but to the city of Denver, I'll be back to visit again.

Thats it for this blog post, I'm off to finish my to do list for the day, maybe I'll write later if not you'll catch me later in the week!

-Garrett

A Concept

Well, of course its night time in Colorado Springs and the further out East you go, its already Wednesday. But back to writing, its the time to update and inform everyone and my thoughts on a few things.

But Mother's Day is over (Whew!) I've been on track to recovering, got out yesterday and today, got to enjoy some great hiking, take some amazing photos, and spent some time at the library reading of course. Some fresh air was in call for and also some rest. Now that that's over, its a brand new week, I'm rested and all is good.

Before I go on to continue with what the title of this blog is about, I want to discuss what I made for dinner. Tonight I had the pleasure of cooking dinner for Mark and Mary and it was quite an event. Nothing blew up I promise, but I was given the challenge to prepare wild goose breast. Now I've never cooked goose in my life, never eaten goose except for goose liver pate but I knew this was going to be interesting. So the menu was roasted goose breast, with fingerling potatoes, asparagus and a Merlot reduction with dried cherries. Now everything turned out great! except the goose breast. Now it was wild and it had quite the gamey taste and not only that it was tough and there wasn't much fat so t was very lean (and we all know fat = flavor to be quite honest, just don't lie to yourself and admit that yes bacon does taste so good and partially because of all the fat!). So it was an interesting experience but that was really all to report to dinner, I guess more experimenting to come....maybe....or maybe not.

Though dinner was partially a let down but a great learning experience on the other hand, my package from J.B. Prince did come in today and I GOT MY SPOONS and a set of plating tweezers!

I'm waiting for one more to come in, its on backorder so it should be here in a couple of weeks.

But as for my concept, I'm thinking about researching a chef every week or two and then writing a piece on their outlook on food, how its impacting our industry and then who knows what else is to follow. So I'll do some more research this week and we'll see how it turns out I guess. Feel free to provide some input, any suggestions on who I should write about, etc. I really enjoy writing this blog and I feel it would allow me to expand more as to what I write about.

Other than that, the whole career, thinking about life thing still stays in the back of my mind and gets me thinking some nights but I try not to get too caught up in it all, but I think I might be on the right track with what I'm thinking about doing but then again, things can always change.

A friend of mine Lisa (a fellow student on extern from the CIA) has a blog and she wrote a great post about where home is and it really got me thinking more about my future and where everything will be at in my life. I recommend everyone checks it out, here's the link:
http://lisaappleton.wordpress.com/

That's all I have for this evening so I'm going to sign off.

-Garrett

The Simple Things

Well, normally I do all my blogging either at night or on my days off so this is a change, I'm blogging on a Friday morning! This week so far has turned out pretty well, just doing prep at night for Mother's Day. We do a brunch buffet but unlike for Easter (final count was 660 covers) I think we have 485 on the books so far. But we've been on track all week so I don't think we are behind at all on prep.

Besides the little update on life, what I'm really writing about this blog post are just thoughts on the simple things. Now on Wednesday I had to peel down a case of potatoes, it really wasn't anything big but when I picked my peeler, it felt so relaxing. Mind you I peeled down that case of potatoes in alittle under 20 minutes but the whole process of peeling potatoes it felt stress relieving. I got to talking to my friend Jon about it and if you think about it, sometimes its the simple tasks that feel really good and maybe we should make sure we do every once in awhile. Don't get me wrong, some tasks such as traying up 8 cases of bacon can seem mindless but I'm talking about peeling potatoes, making bread, making stocks and sauces, etc. Things like that, or I guess deep prep you could say, just doing the basics. Sometimes it really is the little things that can benefit us so greatly in our careers. Maybe the case should be, you need to relieve some stress, peel a potato, make some stock or  bake some bread. Like I said, the simple things.

In addition to this post, I just finished reading Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica and I would put it most definitely as a recommended read for everyone. I would compare it to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain except for front of house. Its a great book and really shows the other side of our industry that would help give us a much better understanding of the inner workings of a restaurant.

And last but not least,  have a whole bunch of swiss chard stalks at work to play around with so that's exactly what I'm going to play around with. I'm going to candy it, pickle it, may even try to make a jam or jelly of sorts, who knows! The real question is, does anyone have a cryovac I can borrow?

Everyone have a great day!

-Garrett

R&R Part Duex

It's been yet another week since I've written and boy was it a long week.

We all have our ups and downs, our good nights and our bad nights, and quite honestly the best thing you can do is learn from it and take from it. I treat everyday as a learning experience and it just helps me gain a better understanding in our industry and help me grow stronger in my career. All and all, through the good and the bad, my executive sous chef said, its all part of learning and that's what you can do.

I can say I am the proud owner of a gnarly grease burn on my right arm. We stopped it and I learned how powerful burn spray and gel can be.

There hasn't been much to report in food wise...quite honestly we've been that busy lately and now we have round three of busy, the week of mother's day. We put on another brunch buffet but not as large in caliber as Easter  but still large.

It's been quite hard lately to get outdoors and enjoy some hiking because the weather has been off and on between cold and snowy and I find it best not to drive in the mountains when theres a large amount of cloud cover just to take photos. So the photography will have to wait another day. But I have found myself going to the library and spending my time there, reading up on places to travel too, restaurants to stage at and of course the everlasting search for scholarships.

Amongst more thoughts, are the great pondering of the future. I know I've brought this up many times before in conversations with friends, family, mentors, coworkers, and even in the blog. It is crazy to think about that next March I'll be graduating school and yes I do have some time to think and figure it out, I guess part of me wants to know now and the other part wants to know later. Thats why I have my list of goals and I'm going to start from there and just keep refining, learning and understanding my likes and dislikes.

But I'm off for the evening, hopefully soon later this week I'll be able to check out this diner that serves late nights on Thursday - Saturday and eat what is to be a pretty awesome breakfast.

-Garrett