food blog – Sam’s Food Blog

Back in Black

Two years ago I stepped away from working in the culinary industry due to some medical issues that I was dealing with. The job I moved to was in retail with full insurance benefits. It was the first time that I had any amount of sick leave, paid time off, national holidays off with pay. It was easy and detail oriented, and though a major departure from what I was used to, it was a blessing as I was treated for and recovered from my illness.

I saw an opportunity to work at a prestigious and popular restaurant in Manhattan. A new adventure was waiting and I was the one that had to make the decision: keep living a relatively easy, but unfulfilling life? Or dive off the deep end back into a world that I had long since said goodbye to. I chose the latter, with hope and fear tangled around each other in my head like a Russian wrestling a bear to the death.

Two weeks in it’s like how I remembered. Constant until the end, especially at a popular place like this one. In Garde Manger (or garmo for short), it’s s lot of the same things with the occasional outlier dish. Both cold appetizers and desserts populate my side of the menu. The alpha and omega of the meal, our position is prep heavy with more to be done during service.

The main difference this time around comes from within myself. Before, I had undiagnosed ADHD and general anxiety disorder (not that it’s excusable), and I was a nervous wreck. Getting stoned on my lunch break kept my mind even hazier than it would’ve been otherwise, combined with being the lone hot line cook, garde manger and somehow the main dishwasher. It was a lot of pressure and u fortunately I crumpled like a RAW rolling paper.

Since then, I’ve been through a considerable amount of shit and learned a similarly considerable amount of shit about people, jobs, cooking and life in general. Right now I’m ambitious and proud, excited to put my head down and finally hone my craft through action, rather than my mind. The goal remains the same, to get to a point that I can write recipes for a living, write a cookbook and start a family. My pathway to those places is a but different than I expected, but I’ve found out that that doesn’t really matter by the end of your life.

I’m back in black pants, nonslip shoes, apron and a white button down cooks’ shirt, equipped with my knife roll and a few sharpies. I miss the ones that helped me get to this point, that I don’t get to see as often anymore. But it does still feels good to be where I should be. The universe feels more satisfied with me, like I don’t have as much of an urge to fight against it.

I’m tired, but I’m happier too.

Salt is Not the Enemy

Today I came across an article by NYMag on whether or not the salt added to restaurant food is killing us.

The answer, despite what their weird salt hit piece says, is no.

With political norms being shaken up around the country, old media publications are doing everything they can to distract you from the ever changing status quo.

Eating at restaurants for most Americans has become more of a luxury than ever. To think peoples’ health as being at risk from eating salty restaurant food is fear mongering at its finest. We’ve got enough to worry about as it is here in the US, what with our government all but selling us off to the highest bidder and food being more expensive than ever just to save boardroom hermits’ pocket cash. The same way we need an overwhelming overhaul to our political system, we also need a re-aligning of our media outlets. Instead of adding something superfluous to our list of deadly factors of life, give us something to hope for.

Focus on the love that we can share with food. The comfort we can conjure among our favorite people, eating food made with love.

To reiterate, salt is not your enemy. The enemies are those that are trying to convince you that the special reservation you made for the once-in-a-month treat should be underlined by anxiety. Over consumption is definitely a problem for a lot of people, but it stems more from heavily processed convenience foods like chips, soda, fast food and the like.

If you’re truly worried about your salt levels, and a doctor hasn’t told you to, drink more water and I guarantee it will help.

Summer Cheddar and Veg Sandwich

your favorite soft sandwich bread

1/4 green bell pepper

1/4 red bell pepper

2 leaves butter lettuce

3-4 cherry tomatoes, cut in half and lightly seasoned with salt

9-12 thin slices of cucumber

1 tbsp chopped roasted pistachios

2-3 oz sharp yellow cheddar

2 tbsp mayo

salt and fresh pepper

Spread a generous layer of mayo on both slices, about 1 tbsp per slice.
Add a good pinch of pepper to the sauced bread and place the halved tomatoes on top, cut side down
Add the slices of cheddar on top of the tomatoes and pistachios, and the sliced bell peppers on the other slice of bread (the mayo helps the loose ingredients stay in the sandwich).
Lastly, layer your cucumber on top of the cheese, then your lettuce. Combine both halves of your sandwich and slice into equal halves. Enjoy with your favorite summer beverage and a bag of chips!

Toasted Couscous Rice Pilaf

1/2 cup pearl couscous

1 scallion, finely chopped

3 tbsp olive oil

1/4 of a yellow onion, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1/2″ knob of ginger, peeled and finely chopped

3 cups long grain rice, rinsed 3 times

2.5 cups water

1.5 cup full-fat unsweetened coconut milk

2 tsp hondashi stock powder (can be omitted if vegetarian)

2 tbsp butter

1.5 tsp salt

1 tsp white pepper

Equipment: Sauté pan with lid, slotted spoon, heatproof bowl, chef knife

Put the olive oil in the pot and turn your burner to medium. Once the oil is loose and shimmering, add the couscous and toast until golden brown.
Remove the couscous to your heatproof bowl, leaving as much oil in the pot as possible. Turn the heat to medium-low and add your scallion, onion, garlic and ginger. Cook until softened, but not browned.
Add the rest of your ingredients, stir well and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
Once fully boiling, stir one more time and scrape any sticking rice off of the bottom to prevent clumping and burning. Turn the heat to as low as possible and cover with the lid. Simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat and let it sit covered for 15 more minutes. After the time has elapsed, fluff the rice with your slotted spoon until all the grains are separated as much as possible and serve!

Seasoning Mastery, pt 2

Welcome to the next part of my series Seasoning Mastery!

Part 1 explored my recommended best practice in terms of getting used to properly seasoning your food. You learned how to season a chicken leg to lip smacking perfection.

This time, we focus on seasoning water-based foods(broths, soups and stocks). There’s not so much direct instruction in terms of actually seasoning, the key here is to ready internalize seasoning, bit by bit.

Cooking with this medium is somewhat simple, but specific rules tend to be found across the world to allow for a duplicatable end result with potentially inconsistent ingredients. At the beginning, you want to keep seasoning with straight salt to a minimum. A pinch here or there, but most definitely avoid adding too much salt to start. It is important to note that you don’t have to avoid salt altogether, but too much salt early on can lead to a salty end product, especially after reducing the liquid by a measurable amount.

Also take into consideration salty ingredients like salted fish (fish sauce, anchovy paste), concentrates (bullion), preserved fruit (lemons, limes) or any other thing that is very strongly flavored and meant to lay a base of flavor for the rest of the dish. This seasons in the beginning, perfume,ing all other ingredients and allowing room for more salt to perfectly balance the flavors at the end of cooking.

A good method to getting your broths and soups to a perfect salt level is to go a little at a time. Taste constantly, adjusting levels of acid, salt, sweetness, fat to hone in on the best end result. My preferred method in terms of going a little at a time is to have a spoon, scoop up some broth and salt it lightly. Taste what’s on the spoon and think about the taste. If it tastes good, add some salt or other balancing flavor to the lot without adding too much. When in doubt, remember that you can’t take away once you add, and you can always add more if need be.

Once the liquid is delicious and balanced, you can enjoy on the spot, or you can pack it up into the fridge to cool and it will be even better the next day. This extra step can be the difference between good and great food.

But keep in mind, it’s your food and you can do with it what you want at the end of the day, I’m just here to help.

How I fed 15ish people

The Occasion: I was hired by a repeat customer to cook for a dinner to feed 15 people. I don’t know if it ended up being that many or more, but the food was a hit and there was plenty of it!

The Menu included bread, 4 dishes for the meal plus dessert and I was told to keep things somewhat light, highlighting the spring season.

Salad: Arugula, Purple leaf lettuce, watercress, mesclun, pickled red onion with a scallion oil and white balsamic vinaigrette and shaved aged cheese.

For the salad option, I like to blend greens for flavor, color and texture. Pickled red onion was actually my dad’s idea, and it ended up being the perfect pop of color dotted throughout the salad. Instead of the slivered pickled onion you normally see, I diced mine and added a small handful of rhubarb to add some depth and help keep the color a deeply rosy pink color. As for the aged cheese, I used grana padana and galmasano, the spanish equivalent to Parmesan, just to keep things a little more interesting yet cost effective.

Bread: My tried and true no-knead focaccia, with a generous layer of chopped spring onions and fresh white pepper cracked over the top just before serving.

I worked on this recipe for years before finally getting it down to an easily repeatable process, and it hasn’t failed me yet! I’ve been using a Spanish blend of Picual and Hojiblanca olive oil from a brand called Zoe and it’s been giving me delicious results.

Main: Spatchcocked Roast Chicken with lemon curd piped under the skin after curing in the fridge for 2 days.

I used scissors to cut out the backbones of 4 large air chilled chickens from a supermarket near me. The choice of air chilled means there is less water surrounding the chicken and thus will season itself a little quicker in the curing process. I used a piping bag once the skin was seasoned and nicely firm to get the salted lemon curd under the skin all the way to the hard-to-reach parts. After roasting, there was nice caramelization across the skin due to the sugar and eggs in the curd. The meat came out perfectly cooked and the skin was nicely caramelized.

Starchy Side: turnips and sweet potatoes roasted in chunks under the chicken with nutritional yeast, salt and white pepper.

I cut the root veg into roughly 1″ chunks and tossed with a little salt and nutritional yeast before placing the chickens on top and roasting.

Veggie Side: Carrots and Edamame on top of Golden Herb yogurt

To help with ease of prep, I took 1 and a half bags of baby carrots and quartered them, along with 2 bags of shelled frozen edamame. I cooked them in butter, nutritional yeast, white balsamic vinegar, a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt and a pint of richly reduced chicken stock that I made from the backs of the chickens. For the base of golden yogurt I mixed turmeric, umeboshi vinegar, chopped tarragon and dill, salt and nutritional yeast for a deeply flavorful and bright yogurt sauce. Guests were scraping the plate to make sure every bit of it got eaten!

Sauce: Caper Beurre Blanc

I reduced white balsamic, caper juice, chopped shallots and a couple stems of tarragon until the vinegar was nicely thickened and slightly syrupy. For service, I added a half cup or so of heavy cream, a few tablespoons of capers and I mounted in a half stick of butter, adjusting seasoning for taste with salt and white pepper.

Dessert: Cherry Rhubarb Compote with Cornmeal Crumble and Burnt White Chocolate Chantilly

The compote was simple, just chopped rhubarb, a frozen mix of sweet and sour cherries, sugar, agave, salt and white balsamic. I cooked it down until everything was well broken down and tender.

The cornmeal crumble really came out more like a giant soft cornmeal shortbread, which I’m not mad about. Melted butter with Jiffy corn muffin mix, spread across a glass baking dish and baked until golden brown.

For the final component, the cream, I caramelized some white chocolate in a saucepan and then cooled and beat it into some softly whipped cream with crème fraiche until everything was stiff and rich. This whipped cream balanced the whole dessert perfectly with its richness, tanginess and toasted marshmallow-esque bitterness.

All in all, the meal turned out very well. There was plenty of leftover chicken, turnips, sweet potatoes, beurre blanc and focaccia, which is how I like it. Plenty of food for everyone to have enough of. I’m glad I was given the opportunity to cook for a return client.

The Best Turkey Meatloaf Ever

1.5 lbs ground Turkey

2 slices white bread, crusts removed

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup milk

1 onion

1/2 of a green bell pepper

1/2 of a red bell pepper

1 tsp neutral cooking oil

1 whole egg

1/2 tbsp garlic powder

1/2 tbsp smoked paprika

1/2 tbsp dried thyme

1/2 tbsp ground ginger

3/4 tbsp salt, plus 1 pinch for sauteing

1/2 tbsp pepper

1/4 cup of ketchup, plus more for serving

1/4 cup grated parmigiano reggiano or grana padana cheese

hot sauce

Equipment: 1 small mixing bowl, 1 medium mixing bowls, cheese grater, chef knife, rimmed sheet pan, saute pan, silicon or wooden spoon

1. Tear the crustless bread into small pieces and soak in a mixture of the cream and milk until its completely mushy (15-20 minutes) in the small mixing bowl.

2. Peel and grate the onion into the medium bowl and preheat your saute pan with the oil over medium heat.

3. Chop the bell peppers into small pieces and add to the hot pan with a pinch of salt and cook until they are softened but not browned. Add to the bowl of grated onion.

4. Drain the excess liquid from the soaked bread and add the bread and the ground turkey to the bowl of grated onion and cooked peppers.

5. Beat the egg with a fork and add to the bowl along with the spices, cheese and ketchup. Mix until fully combined.

6. Form into a loaf shape on a sheet pan and bake at 400F until a meat thermometer inserted into the middle reads 155 F.

7. Let the meatloaf rest for 15 minutes, slice and serve with ketchup, hot sauce and preferred sides.

Brown Butter Egg Whites

Have you ever made a recipe that calls for egg yolks, leaving you with multiple eggs’ worth of whites to waste?

Don’t fret, I’ve come up with a perfect use for those lone whites that is delicious enough to make keeping up with them worthwhile.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp butter

4 egg whites/ 1/2 cup liquid egg whites

1 slice white american cheese (broken up into small pieces)

salt and pepper to taste

Something carby to accompany your eggs (crusty bread, toast, rice, etc)

Equipment

small nonstick pan (you can use a well seasoned carbon steel/ cast iron of you’d prefer), rubber spatula

Heat your tbsp of butter over medium-high heat until the bubbling subsides and the milk solids have darkened. Season your egg whites with a pinch of salt, 2-3 cranks of freshly ground black pepper and your broken up slice of cheese.
Immediately turn the heat down to medium-low, and add your egg whites.
Stir it quickly with your rubber spatula, incorporating the butter into the eggs and breaking up any large curds that form.
Once the whites are no longer watery and are almost completely firmed up, remove them to a plate and enjoy with your preferred carb!

Simplicity

I can’t stand when a chef says that the recipe they use for something is “simple” but then use an ultra specific piece of equipment only really available in restaurants or the kitchens of wealthy people that can afford it.

Great, simple recipes are not made so based on the amount of ingredients. The method to get to the other side of raw components

The clip that comes to mind is of a European chef claiming that his “simple dessert” is perfectly delicious, despite his effort. He isn’t lying, because it is simple to him. He takes créme englaise (most likely supplied by one of his lackeys) and adds it to chocolate. Super simple!

The problem is that he dumps this shit into a $2200 Thermomix that can also be used to heat cook the mixture.

Most chefs of a certain level are so sickeningly disconnected from reality that “simplicity” in their presence is only really found after digging through layers and layers of technique and currency. Of course it’s possible to recreate his method and dish in more common home equipment, but the effort and thought required to convert his technique to the real world make the recipe inherently not simple anymore.

It’s hard to say why so many chefs fall into this fallacious habit of over simplifying description and approach, but I would bet money that it’s simply due to them being a bit too disconnected from reality. They’ve been in their realms for so long surrounded by vacuum sealers, Pacojets and Hobarts to realize that the ground that they’re looking down upon is actually just clouds.

De-Elitizing High Quality Food

The year is 2024.

Consumers are scrutinizing what they put into their bodies more than ever. Regular, middle class people are actually caring about how they eat, going so far as to label certain ingredients as “toxic” based on advice from non-experts on social media, and further blacklisting a ton of seemingly inconspicuous products because they can’t pronounce a handful of the listed ingredients. These people needlessly fear mongering over “seed oils” and other superfluous buzz words only do so because they can afford to. Meanwhile, the rest of us have become practice dummies for the greedy corporations to crank prices up to see just how much stress they can put on the working class beneath them. The real issue isn’t antibiotics in your chicken, it’s the fact that a lot of people can’t afford anything but the cheapest option in the meat section.

I’m all for caring about this side of processed food, and holding a magnifying glass up against greedy companies pushing “health food” to people desperate for nourishment. More than ever has it become clear that a lot of the mass-produced foodstuff that we see advertised as wholesome and healthy are really just a branding exercise on how deeply misinformed so many of us are about food. In terms of fresh produce, prices are unsettling to say the least. We can tout “eat organic” all day, but when the organic onions are almost 50% more expensive than their non-organic counterpart ($1.69 for non-organic vs. $2.49 for organic), it feels like less of a “rule of thumb” and more like a luxury most available to those who are ahead financially.

I understand the concept of making more money and rightfully being able to provide yourself with a better quality of life. Love it or hate it, that is the reality of the capitalist society we live in. I would be pissed if my raise in pay ended up not showing in how well I can live for myself. However, it should affect things like your brand of sneakers, the size of your TV, or the maker of your car, not the quality of your necessary provisions. After all, from early childhood onward we are told that god himself wants us to have access to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Obviously that “life” isn’t guaranteed, the “liberty” has become a shrinking list of shit choices, and the “pursuit of happiness” has been reduced to a desire to achieve what others have, rather than an actual path upward in life.

I’m not saying that everyone needs organic everything all the time. I’m not even saying the organic issue is the most pressing part of our food system here in the USA. What I am saying is that eating healthily shouldn’t be a luxury. Having access to clean, well processed meat and poultry should be expected in the “richest country of the western world,” without exception. Our cultural obsession with always getting bigger and faster and more profitable has officially undermined our ability to properly provide for ourselves, and even when a company comes along to provide that service, it’s typical, sooner or later, for that small business to sell-out to the highest bidder and rid themselves of the headache of operating a business like that as a non-corporation. And the cycle begins again and again. “We want our high quality product on she shelves of every grocery store in America,” is what we hear time and again from local mom-and-pop brands on the come-up. The American Dream was never about creating a better America, it’s been about winning at life. And now it’s not even about that, it’s become more about just getting to the finish line of line with you and yours intact and nothing more. Don’t worry about your neighbors getting screwed, just keep your head down and make it to the end and you’ll be just fine.

I don’t know about you, but I want better for my fellow American no matter how differently they look, think, or vote than me. Better starts at the bottom with strong integrity of individuals, and I fear that we may never return to that type of strength. Yes, an 80¢ difference in onion prices seems insignificant. It’s a minute difference that a lot of people won’t notice, but it is a sign of something that’s wrong with the priorities of our leadership.

Yes, I think everyone at some point in their lives should experience the taste of a perfectly ripe, in-season tomato. Yes I think that sort of experience can convert seasonal produce detractors to agreeing that local, seasonal produce might be good for our communities, even if a little more expensive. But that’s the difference in that sort of thing. Produce like that is a luxury right now for a disturbingly large majority of our populous, not an expectation.

My goal is not necessarily to make the absolute best version of every single dish or idea. My goal is to make the best version of things that can be made just as well for a family who eats produce exclusively from Walmart-Mart or any other large-scale chain grocery store with mediocre produce. I used to easily get caught up on specifics like particular ingredients and brands. I used to get very frustrated when people didn’t take specifics like that as seriously as me. Now I know that technique, intuition, and the ability to adapt are the most important aspects of cooking, and the world would be a better place if everyone had that capacity.