The history of the host is pretty fancy.
The present life of a restaurant host is pretty ... unfancy.
Hosts and servers in America are looked down upon even more than the grocery store cashier/food clerk (I know, I worked as one for three years). They are poorly trainned (if at all) and paid low wages to do a few very important tasks. The least of which is to bring you food. Both servers and grocery clerks handle your food. Logic dictates that you ought not mess with these sorts of people. But logic is apparently something we Americans are short on. I blame Capitalism. And a lack of literature. And eating meat.
Anyway.
I have been discussing with my general manager for a few weeks now a transfer from serving to hosting, and I have various reasons for doing so which include the stress upon my body, my time constraints, a desire for the experience, and a slight discord between myself and the server's manager. In some restaurants, this is a demontion. In ours, it is simply a shifting of titles with no promotion/demotion attached to it. In the past, to be a host (or matre'd) was THE premier job. These individuals had the best experience, the most training, and were VERY nicely paid. And for good reason. The host is the first and last person a guest sees in your restaurant. The host is the person who sets the tone for the guests and ensures their proper and expedient seating. The host should have more experience under their belt than the standard 'here's your podium, you'll figure it out'. Should, but often does not. Since America brought over the restaurnt business from Europe, servers and hosts have gone from the top of the barrel to that sixteen year old kid who needs cash for his high label sneakers.
That builds your confidence, doesn't it?
I have spent a lot of my time as a server, when finding a lull in my duties, standing at the hosts' stand talking to them. I am probably closer to the hosts than I am the servers. During this, I picked up the generalities and basic duties of a host. At the same time, when I walked into work last night and suddenly found myself in the position of host I was unprepared. While I knew the general idea and had even performed a few tasks when the host was away from the podium, I was still untrainned. Last night was yet another exercise in learning on my feet. I took names for the first half and sat guests for the second, once the busy period had slowed down and there was a better opportunity for me to get a hold of the practice. I think I am serving tonight and hosting again Saturday morning. Should be fun.
And it will look really good on a resume for a back of house position. How many chefs do you know that also know how to work the front of house?
Vedgehead
Friday, March 5
Friday, February 19
Fancy Smancy (but you're in a bloody chain restaurant)
What is with the sudden influx of people refering to water with lemon as 'lemon water'? In some strange attempt to sound sophisticated, my guests at the restaurant I serve at have been recently asking for 'lemon water' in place of simply asking for water or water with a lemon. Don't get me wrong, it is a cute way and pretty darned effective, but I'm not lying with I say more than one person has been confused about what people were refering to when they made the request.
I work in a middle-class type of restaurant. Sadly, there is probably only one other restaurant in the entire town (although the state calls it a city) I live in that is fancier than ours, but it is none the less a middle-class restaurant. It is also a chained restaurant. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of these things all over the country. We are a casual, family type restaurant.
You are not fooling anybody by asking for Lemon Water. If you want to sound fancy, ask for Pelligrino Lemon Water instead.
I work in a middle-class type of restaurant. Sadly, there is probably only one other restaurant in the entire town (although the state calls it a city) I live in that is fancier than ours, but it is none the less a middle-class restaurant. It is also a chained restaurant. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of these things all over the country. We are a casual, family type restaurant.
You are not fooling anybody by asking for Lemon Water. If you want to sound fancy, ask for Pelligrino Lemon Water instead.
Tuesday, February 16
Accidentally the Same
Every September my college holds a celebration called the Gourmet Gala, wherein restaurants from all over the state gather in our converence room to show off their food and talk to foodies and rich people from... all over the state. Our Culinary department provides dessert and a chocolate fountain, which for the past two years I've been in charge of operating and I've not been happy about either time.
I love working the Gala and quite happily twelve to thirteen hours of my Saturday at school working and carrying on and generally having a good time. As the resident student VedgeHead my chefs are really good about making sure there is something for me to eat whenever we do functions or when we have lab classes. This is fueled by the fact that two very important members of the college faculty are also vegetarian. And one in particular loves me, to be sure, because he associates with our vegetarian journey of locating good nonmeat foods in a state that is very pro-meat.
In any case, around about lunchtime while working the Gala, Chef told me we had tofu floating about and said I was free to use it to make myself something to eat and to make sure I had enough for Dr. L, the not so high ranked vedge among our faculty, who was wandering around the conference room making sure everything was set up properly for the night's festivities.
At this point I ought to mention that I love Siracha. If you have ever eaten at a suishi bar, you'll recognize it as that red bottle with the green cap and a rooster on it. It is very, very potant pureed chiles and the poster child for 'a little goes a long way'. I love this stuff but never get it at home. When I found out that I was making something to share with Dr. L, I was thrilled because she likes spicy food. I was set!
I started with cutting the tofu into quarter-inch slabs and setting them up to press for a good half hour or so to pull out excess moisture and improve the texture. After I had that set I took about a pint to a pint in a half of heavy cream and put it in a saute pan (I was too lazy to go get a sauce pan from the dishroom) to simmer and reduce until thick. This took a good fifteen to twenty minutes because I had the thing on fairly low since I was doing several other tasks at the time and did not want to walk away and let it potentially burn on high. Once it was about to my desired consistancy, I added the Siracha. And remember, a little bit goes a long way so I did not add a lot. I just continued to gradually add it until I got the kick that I liked. But it was missing something. After some musing, salt, pepper, and getting a classmate to try it, I had a little lightbulb- duh, an acid! So I hurried off and found myself a couple lemons to juice into my sauce; tried it again, adjusted the Siracha, salt and pepper, and put it on a backburner so I could take out my tofu.
I like my tofu crispy. Since I'm weird about texture, I press (and sometimes freeze) my tofu in order to remove enough moisture to get rid of what can be a mushy, gummy texture in bean curd and then cook it so that the outside is crispy and that crispness actually goes a little deeper than one would normally have a meat. This gives it an illusion of a skin. I found myself a nonstick saute pan and a fish spat (those long, thin spatulas with long vents in them and it flexes easily) and put a bit of vegetable oil into it to heat. While waiting on that, I coated the pieces of tofu, which I had cut into two-bite triangles, in cornstarch. While flour works well to create that crispy layer, cornstarch does so just as well but it does not get soggy when it sits. It also literally, when you dip tofu in it and toss it into a deep fryer, creates the exact color and texture of a Chicken McNugget. I kid you not. This was discovered when I was assigned in Food Prep II to make a Hawaiian dish using tofu. I needed to figure out the best way to fry up the tofu, tossed them in several coatings, fried them, and then my chef and I went over them. She and I were amazed by the cornstarch's McNuggetness and used that in our dish. Since I grew up eating McNuggets, this held a certain fondness for me.
After lightly coating my tofu in cornstarch, I set it into the pan on a medium to low heat that allowed it to cook without burning. The tofu took longer to cook, but the result is that crispy skin I mentioned above. Once that was finished, I grabbed our underclassman dishwasher and gave him a piece and told him to tell me what he thinks. He liked it. My favorite thing to do at school (and in general) is hand people vegetarian food and tell them to try it without telling them what it is first. It's only AFTER they admit that they like it that I crush their illusions and tell them there was no meat involved. Hey, Mikey, the dishwasher liked it! So I explained to him what it was and how I did it and then set aside my lunch, Dr. L's lunch, and put out the rest for everyone to try. My head Chef came along and tasted it and told me it tasted like buffalo sauce.
This is my accidental coincidence. Before then, I had never HAD buffalo sauce before. Buffalo wings became popular AFTER I had given up meat consumption so I had never before had the opportunity to taste it and, in all actually, had no idea what it was (although now I know it's butter and hot sauce) aside spicy. I thought that was pretty cool.
While my classmates and I ate without flourish, I garnished Dr. L's portion over a small bed of spinach leaves topped with some crumbled blue cheese to help take the edge off, keeping the sauce on the side to let her dip as desired. I then spent twenty minutes hunting her down to give her her lunch. She loved it and hunted me down later to tell me.
All in all, the by product of two accidental discoveries made for a very good lunch. Incidently, did you know that tofu was made on accident? True story. Historians believe that a Chinese cook was flavoring a soup made from soy milk (a popular concept at the time, the soy milk soup) with an acid that curdled the milk on accident. Tofu, boys and girls, is nothing more than Soy-Cheese, made in a process similar to the making of cheese. An acid is added to milk (or soy milk in our case) to cause it to curdle. The solids are collected and processed as various cheeses (or tofu). Depending on the milk (cow, sheep, goat, etc), acid, process, and storing, the cheese will have its own distinct flavor and, yes, blue cheese is moldy cheese, however the process used to make it these days is completely clean and it is perfectly harmless (and delicious).
I love working the Gala and quite happily twelve to thirteen hours of my Saturday at school working and carrying on and generally having a good time. As the resident student VedgeHead my chefs are really good about making sure there is something for me to eat whenever we do functions or when we have lab classes. This is fueled by the fact that two very important members of the college faculty are also vegetarian. And one in particular loves me, to be sure, because he associates with our vegetarian journey of locating good nonmeat foods in a state that is very pro-meat.
In any case, around about lunchtime while working the Gala, Chef told me we had tofu floating about and said I was free to use it to make myself something to eat and to make sure I had enough for Dr. L, the not so high ranked vedge among our faculty, who was wandering around the conference room making sure everything was set up properly for the night's festivities.
At this point I ought to mention that I love Siracha. If you have ever eaten at a suishi bar, you'll recognize it as that red bottle with the green cap and a rooster on it. It is very, very potant pureed chiles and the poster child for 'a little goes a long way'. I love this stuff but never get it at home. When I found out that I was making something to share with Dr. L, I was thrilled because she likes spicy food. I was set!
I started with cutting the tofu into quarter-inch slabs and setting them up to press for a good half hour or so to pull out excess moisture and improve the texture. After I had that set I took about a pint to a pint in a half of heavy cream and put it in a saute pan (I was too lazy to go get a sauce pan from the dishroom) to simmer and reduce until thick. This took a good fifteen to twenty minutes because I had the thing on fairly low since I was doing several other tasks at the time and did not want to walk away and let it potentially burn on high. Once it was about to my desired consistancy, I added the Siracha. And remember, a little bit goes a long way so I did not add a lot. I just continued to gradually add it until I got the kick that I liked. But it was missing something. After some musing, salt, pepper, and getting a classmate to try it, I had a little lightbulb- duh, an acid! So I hurried off and found myself a couple lemons to juice into my sauce; tried it again, adjusted the Siracha, salt and pepper, and put it on a backburner so I could take out my tofu.
I like my tofu crispy. Since I'm weird about texture, I press (and sometimes freeze) my tofu in order to remove enough moisture to get rid of what can be a mushy, gummy texture in bean curd and then cook it so that the outside is crispy and that crispness actually goes a little deeper than one would normally have a meat. This gives it an illusion of a skin. I found myself a nonstick saute pan and a fish spat (those long, thin spatulas with long vents in them and it flexes easily) and put a bit of vegetable oil into it to heat. While waiting on that, I coated the pieces of tofu, which I had cut into two-bite triangles, in cornstarch. While flour works well to create that crispy layer, cornstarch does so just as well but it does not get soggy when it sits. It also literally, when you dip tofu in it and toss it into a deep fryer, creates the exact color and texture of a Chicken McNugget. I kid you not. This was discovered when I was assigned in Food Prep II to make a Hawaiian dish using tofu. I needed to figure out the best way to fry up the tofu, tossed them in several coatings, fried them, and then my chef and I went over them. She and I were amazed by the cornstarch's McNuggetness and used that in our dish. Since I grew up eating McNuggets, this held a certain fondness for me.
After lightly coating my tofu in cornstarch, I set it into the pan on a medium to low heat that allowed it to cook without burning. The tofu took longer to cook, but the result is that crispy skin I mentioned above. Once that was finished, I grabbed our underclassman dishwasher and gave him a piece and told him to tell me what he thinks. He liked it. My favorite thing to do at school (and in general) is hand people vegetarian food and tell them to try it without telling them what it is first. It's only AFTER they admit that they like it that I crush their illusions and tell them there was no meat involved. Hey, Mikey, the dishwasher liked it! So I explained to him what it was and how I did it and then set aside my lunch, Dr. L's lunch, and put out the rest for everyone to try. My head Chef came along and tasted it and told me it tasted like buffalo sauce.
This is my accidental coincidence. Before then, I had never HAD buffalo sauce before. Buffalo wings became popular AFTER I had given up meat consumption so I had never before had the opportunity to taste it and, in all actually, had no idea what it was (although now I know it's butter and hot sauce) aside spicy. I thought that was pretty cool.
While my classmates and I ate without flourish, I garnished Dr. L's portion over a small bed of spinach leaves topped with some crumbled blue cheese to help take the edge off, keeping the sauce on the side to let her dip as desired. I then spent twenty minutes hunting her down to give her her lunch. She loved it and hunted me down later to tell me.
All in all, the by product of two accidental discoveries made for a very good lunch. Incidently, did you know that tofu was made on accident? True story. Historians believe that a Chinese cook was flavoring a soup made from soy milk (a popular concept at the time, the soy milk soup) with an acid that curdled the milk on accident. Tofu, boys and girls, is nothing more than Soy-Cheese, made in a process similar to the making of cheese. An acid is added to milk (or soy milk in our case) to cause it to curdle. The solids are collected and processed as various cheeses (or tofu). Depending on the milk (cow, sheep, goat, etc), acid, process, and storing, the cheese will have its own distinct flavor and, yes, blue cheese is moldy cheese, however the process used to make it these days is completely clean and it is perfectly harmless (and delicious).
Booking
My two best friends and I share a love for books that to some degree is mildly unhealthy. Not that we care. Since we recently aquired a Barnes and Noble that was not outside of state lines, we celebrate by visiting it as often as possible. It's about an hour's drive from where we live, but since the bookstores nearest us do not provide suitable literary stimulation, we're all thrilled to take the ride.
Today being no exception since my two best friends (who, note, happen to be librarians, one of whom has a Masters in English and Education and the other about to finish up her Masters of English) had the day off due to holiday and I simply because I don't work on Mondays for school (which is no longer the case as of this semester but I'm not going to tell them that).
We spent our entire trip in the BN, even though we were in a pretty large mall with lots of other places to go. This is the level of nerd we are. And proud, no less.
I bought a new book called 'The Girl Who Played Go' by Shan Sa. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes period works and/or novels based in Asia. It is set in 1930s Japan, China, and Manchuria (depending) and is actually a romance. Although I have to note my dismay in discovering, after sitting to read it for two hours this afternoon, that I had already gotten to the halfway mark. Sa's book 'Empress' took much longer and I find a lower reading level to be to blame, although 'Go' is by far no less engaging. In fact I'm actually finding myself enjoying it more. Her characters have an interesting amount of depth despite the selfish nature of her female leads. Of the two out of three of her books I have read, her female leads tend to be independent on the verge of being snooty and while I praise, celebrate, and practice the independent woman lifestyle, even I can't deny the snoot attitudes.
While it may sound like I'm trying to persuade one away from the book, my intent is actually the complete opposite. This book is engaging, informative (complete with footnotes explaining any reference made to period Asia), and well translated (the original version is in French, according to my inside cover) and written. I love books set in other cultures, especially Asia, and have read quite a few of them. This one is quickly working its way up the ranks of my favorite books in the genre and I really hope to see more from Shan Sa in the future.
Today being no exception since my two best friends (who, note, happen to be librarians, one of whom has a Masters in English and Education and the other about to finish up her Masters of English) had the day off due to holiday and I simply because I don't work on Mondays for school (which is no longer the case as of this semester but I'm not going to tell them that).
We spent our entire trip in the BN, even though we were in a pretty large mall with lots of other places to go. This is the level of nerd we are. And proud, no less.
I bought a new book called 'The Girl Who Played Go' by Shan Sa. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes period works and/or novels based in Asia. It is set in 1930s Japan, China, and Manchuria (depending) and is actually a romance. Although I have to note my dismay in discovering, after sitting to read it for two hours this afternoon, that I had already gotten to the halfway mark. Sa's book 'Empress' took much longer and I find a lower reading level to be to blame, although 'Go' is by far no less engaging. In fact I'm actually finding myself enjoying it more. Her characters have an interesting amount of depth despite the selfish nature of her female leads. Of the two out of three of her books I have read, her female leads tend to be independent on the verge of being snooty and while I praise, celebrate, and practice the independent woman lifestyle, even I can't deny the snoot attitudes.
While it may sound like I'm trying to persuade one away from the book, my intent is actually the complete opposite. This book is engaging, informative (complete with footnotes explaining any reference made to period Asia), and well translated (the original version is in French, according to my inside cover) and written. I love books set in other cultures, especially Asia, and have read quite a few of them. This one is quickly working its way up the ranks of my favorite books in the genre and I really hope to see more from Shan Sa in the future.
Sunday, February 14
Squidgy the Turtle
Meet Squidgy. He's my writing buddy. He was found at the Baltimore Aquarium almost two weeks ago when my boyfriend and I took a whole day to ourselves to just go have some fun. We suffered in a car for two hours, we bickered (a normal thing, trust me), we couldn't find our way in, we saw turtles (I made girly happy noises), we saw sharks and rays (he took lots of pictures), we went into the gift shop where I did not even see this adorable little guy, but he did. He held it up, called my name... and it was over. Love at first sight. It's the eyes, I tell you. The eyes!
The Exposition
Although this blog will be primarily food-based, there is just so much more that goes into food than a list of ingredients. How and why the food is prepared is twice as important as the food itself. It is these 'how's and 'why's that make food taste so good. So, while I will offer up my culinary tidbits, recipes, and know-hows, I will also enlighten you to my inspirations, my musings, and the little things that keep me going from day to day.
I am 5ft, 4in and 102lbs and food is my passion. Don't believe me? Nobody ever does. I'm too tiny, they say, to love food... then they get mad when I go to the supermarket to buy tofu. Where I live, loving food and eating tofu just don't belong in the same sentence. Very few outside the culinary world understand how this tiny little sprite of a woman could possibly make it in the restaurant business. My intent is to show them.
So, in essence, this will be the written example of my attempts to show the world I am in that being small is not a weakness, vegetarian food is not cardboard, and that being normal is not exactly the soundest state of mind to be in.
Bring it, World.
I am 5ft, 4in and 102lbs and food is my passion. Don't believe me? Nobody ever does. I'm too tiny, they say, to love food... then they get mad when I go to the supermarket to buy tofu. Where I live, loving food and eating tofu just don't belong in the same sentence. Very few outside the culinary world understand how this tiny little sprite of a woman could possibly make it in the restaurant business. My intent is to show them.
So, in essence, this will be the written example of my attempts to show the world I am in that being small is not a weakness, vegetarian food is not cardboard, and that being normal is not exactly the soundest state of mind to be in.
Bring it, World.
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