Top 5 Tools to Have in Your Knife Kit

Besides the basics that should already be in your knife kit such as a Chef's Knife, Steel, Pearing Knife, etc. Some of us decided what about a few others things that are overlooked and something you should really, honestly have. So here's the Top 5:

1 - Y Peeler
Now, peelers come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes but Y Peelers are pretty efficient, have a great shape for peeling and though you might go through them quite fast, they cost all of two dollars so to have a stash of 4 peelers laying around your apartment, locker, dorm room, kitchen, etc, isn't all that bad of an idea.

2 - Fish Spatula
They are super useful especially for FISH! If there is one thing I've learned its don't manhandle a beautiful thing such as fish. So go out, by yourself a nice fish spat for 18 or so bucks and you'll be set for quite sometime.

3 - Plating Spoons
I'm a fan of spoons, I love cooking with spoons, it just makes alot of sense (I've got to give alot of street credit to the Europeans for coming up with such a fine idea) It makes sense to have at least a good sized regular spoon and a larger one. You can do this by going to GoodWill and buying spoons to buying yourself a nice set of Gray Kunz Spoons from J.B. Prince.

4 - Mini Off-Set Spatula OR 6 inch Palette Knife
Great for flipping small delicate items, spreading, plating, scraping items out of 9th pans (especially the mini off-set spatula) just make sure the handles are wooden so they don't melt on you while on the line.

5 - A Can Opener or The Standard Military Issued P-38 Can Opener
Now something my Dad gave me that made so much sense. On all those competition shows, the one thing no one has is a can opener, so they end up jacking up their knives opening a can. Or those industrial #10 openers just destroy your can instead of opening it or theres only one of those in house and its always lost. So the P-38 can opener fits nicely on a key ring for use.

-Garrett

Day Trip: NYC

Sitting last Saturday night, my friends Jesse, Matt and I were talking about what we would the next day. It was a Sunday, we kinda wanted to get out and we hadn't gone out much because most of our time had been spent sleeping, relaxing, studying for class. Jesse and I were in Back of House St. Andrew's and Matt was in Back of House Caterina. We all needed a break, so we said why don't we go to New York City for the day. Waking up the next morning, the weather was nice, we were feeling good so we hopped in the car and drove an hour and forty five into the big apple. Armed with 30 dollars in my pocket, it was going to be a day of fantastic eating. Ten dollars went towards the much needed Metro card to get around the city with some ease.

Now to our 1st stop - 72nd and Columbia Ave.

For a Tasty Hamburger and some delicious Thin Mint Custard....

Also Faces of Tasty Approval

We went to one of five Shake Shack Locations, we had a 15 minute wait, this was an amazing hamburger that hit the spot. A side note, we spent a great deal of the day discussing food cost and how all the places we ate at were literally making bank off of their restaurants. This also brought up discussions of restaurant types an food we like to cook and so on and so forth.

Look at that crepe....this brings us to our next stop right outside of NYU and Washington Square Park

Crepeaway, a place to pick up a warming crepe (either savory or sweet) and for a great price. It took the edge off the cold weather with a hot crepe filled with nutella.

Look....Steamed and Fried Pork Dumplings with Cool Monster Sauce (A yogurt and wasabi based sauce). Legit those were amazing dough filled bundles of heven.

Our last stop of the day was Dumpling Man in East Village, for 80 cents a dumpling, I highly recommend you go. They make the dumplings right in front of you so you see the process from start to finish.

We spent like 5 or 6 hours in Manhattan and were also able to get in a trip to Chelsea Market, hit up the lower West Side an swing by Morandi's where Matt externed at, walk around Chinatown and Little Italy and check out a restaurant supply store walking in Bowery. Overall it was a great and much needed day off full of food and great times.

-Garrett

Weekend Eatings

So every once in awhile we take the time on campus my group of friends and I to make dinner on the weekend. It is really nice to make a meal and get to enjoy something we all help make. Its that sense of being home an being part of my school family.

So last Saturday we went out to lunch at one of our favorite local eateries. Rossi and Sons is an Italian Deli full of so many good things. If your up in the area, go and thats it, just go and grab a sandwich, I normally get a roast pork sandwich but I switched it up last time.

The was the sandwich special of the day, it was porchetta with arugala, roasted peppers, pecorino toscana and I got basil pesto all pressed on a focaccia.

This soda was super it, it was a bitter and sweet lemon soda.

After eating a lunch we took a trip across the river to by far the coolest butcher shop in the world. Fleischer's in Kingston, NY.

Where we proceeded to get a house made guancoile (cured pork jowl) for free...

And this beautiful Tri-Tip Chuck Roast....

Which after two hours of roasting, came out looking like one sexy roast....

And was then eaten with braised cabbage and spatzle. I'll say that was quite a delicious meal enjoyed with great friends. 

Now something that got done two weekends ago was Jesse, Matt and I were really wanting pizza. So we did exactly that, we made pizza an it turned out to be really, really good.

So that is all for this tasty blog post!

-Garrett

The Super Late Holiday Special!

Welcome to The Culinarian's Super Late Holiday Special!

Where I'll talk about all the food made and eaten and all the wine enjoyed while I was home for winter break. I understand that this post is a month late so....on with the post!

First I have a meal I made a couple days after I got back home.

Braised Rabbit and Chicken Spanish Style, Winter Root Vegetables, Pearl Onions with Sauteed Swiss Chard and Pan y Tomato (Bread and Tomato)

Wine: Lan Rioja, Crianza, Bodegas Lan S.A. Fuenmayor, Espana 2006 - Had a nice full body, long finish, balance of acidity and tannins, translucent black cherry color, nose had black and red fruits. This went really well with the braise, would probably go really well with fattier cuts of red meat. Retail price was $14.99.

Now I was lucky enough to be able to come home with some Hudson Valley Grade A Foie Gras. This is what was awesome, retail this Foie Gras cost 85 to 95 dollars a pound. I got the foie through the school for 37 dollars for alittle over a pound and a half. So when I spent my day doing lots of prep I made some delicious accompaniments for my foie gras. I made some onion marmalade, just caramelized onions deglaze with Grand Mariner, also some balsamic and port soaked black mission figs, and orange glazed apricots. Along with that I did some nice toast and a co-worker of my dad's has raised some bees and we had some of his late harvest honey along with the plate.

 Roasted Prime Rib, Brown Butter Roasted Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts, Pommes Puree and Jus Lie (Which I bridged with the wine we were drinking with the meal)

Wine: Zinfandel, Pezzi King Vineyards, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County 2009
A good wine, very fruit forward, mild tannins but very high acidity which was somewhat of a turnoff of the wine so to speak. It paired well with the prime rib and was great when bridged with the sauce but it just had an unpleasant acidity. I was trying to find the Old Vine Zinfandel from Dry Creek Vineyards that we had in class.
I really enjoyed making Christmas Dinner, I got to spend a nice solid day prepping for this really great meal. I got to make a very nice batch of brown stock to make a beautiful sauce. My friend Jesse likes to comment on how French I am in my cooking and its very much the truth.

Dessert was made by mom, she made cherry cobbler and we got to enjoy it with some Jeni's Ice Cream that my sister got me for Christmas, its was the Bourbon Pecan Ice Cream which really made the cherry cobbler better than just eating it with vanilla ice cream.

The day after Christmas we took a lovely trip down to Cincy and got to get some favorites I don't get often at all. Pictured above is a plate of cheese coneys from the one and only Gold Star Chili. I can't forget the picture just above of the beautiful, most tasty Steak Sandwich from Richard's in Hamilton, Ohio and it would have been better with root beer from Jolly's but they are closed for the season. Other than eating some of my favorites, we also got to make a stop at Jungle Jims where we picked up a bottle of Francis Ford Copplas Director's Cut Chardonnay which is currently unopened in Ohio but will be enjoyed in time.

This bottle of Macon - Village is a unoaked Chardonnay that was enjoyed with a nice bowl of my Dad's New England Clam Chowder.

On New Year's Day I went traditional for our meal and made a Pork Roast with pommes puree, sauerkraut with green beans. I'm really drawling a blank on the green vegetable unless I made glazed carrots. Pardon me on that.

Something I do feel bad about is how I think I didn't take photos of the food I made on New Year's Eve. We ended up going to Whole Foods and I created a nice seafood tasting for dinner. We had shrimp cocktail followed by lobster poached in court bullion with garlic butter, pan roasted Coho Salmon with lemon brown butter and pan roasted sea scallops with linguine, spinach and Parmesan Reggiano.

Overall, I was super happy that I spent alot of time cooking at home. It made me happy getting to take it easy and have a break, spending time with my family and letting me get to cook for them.

But that concludes the Culinarian's Super Late Holiday Special!

-Garrett

Let's Play the Catch Up Game

Hello Everyone,

The title does alot to sum it up, I'm going to play the catch up game with my blog. I just finished my three week stint in Back of House in my first restaurant on campus. The first set of restaurants we are in is more geared towards Contemporary Restaurant Cuisine. I ended up working in St. Andrew's for my first round of restaurants and at St. Andrew's the are more geared towards staying local to the Hudson Valley and trying to be sustainable. On top of that all because the school has changed around the AOS program, all the cuisines classes are getting moved to post externship. So the school has had a major loss in meals and the school needed to find a way to provide more meals to the student body. Part of that plan was to open up St. Andrew's to do more student covers. So our average cover count for the past 14 days has been between 120 and 140 covers. Currently St. Andrew's is doing the highest amount of covers than any other restaurant  on campus (most likely with the except of Apple Pie). So last block I spent ten hours in class working my butt off with my group and we pulled it off with success. This current block the PM block opened up and so we had a triple work load to prep our class, the next AM and PM class. It was quite the ride but we did it, pulled it off and Chef was very very pleased with our hard work that we put it.

Now my class and I have moved into AM Front of House at St. Andrew's and honestly its such a huge change. The front is a totally different world than the back, its quite the adjustment but our day one went really smooth and we were able to have worked it all out with a success though we only did 103 covers that day.

As to catching up, I'll include several posts in the next few days about everything that has happened, food thats been cooked, adventures that have been made, topics that have been discussed, concepts that have been though of. So much to catch up on. Which leads me to say that I plan on writing more and hopefully getting to do more photography. I haven't had much time for it and its something I need to plan out some more time for. So I'm off to start on another post!

-Garrett