Chef Daniel Angerer's Blog

HAVE YOUR DINING HABITS CHANGED SINCE THE RECESSION HIT?

Daily bread
A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from one of my regular customers mentioning the “slow bread service.”  I explained that we have been serving bread with the food and not instead of appetizers. My intent is to serve excellent food accompanied with a piece of bread.  In the current state of the economy, diners’ eating habits have changed noticeably -- no appetizers, triple requests for “more bread” and then most likely no dessert. 
A question comes to my mind: what happend to the days when some guests pushed bread away because of their Atkins or South Beach diet with a disgusted expression. Back in the day (during the Bull market) all dishes with some sort of bread/carb incoporated into the recipe were the slow movers. Now in this Bear market nobody seems to have an issue with bread anymore, in fact they demand it the moment they sit down.

Many restaurants like ours still serve bread complimentary - meaning gratis and let me tell you as a chef/owner I can asure you that we do not incoporate the cost of bread into the per item pricing on the menu.  On the other hand, if people persist in having bread instead of food you might soon find bread listed under the menu items like anything else.
I wonder if some operators will put a  “per cover” charge (a flat sum added onto the bill) as often seen in European establishments during this time of economic carbo-philia.  When the economy bounces back and our guests are again carbo-phobic we can always revert to “free bread.”
 
"Carb salad"
Egg-in-a-whole salad with yellow garden beans chive blossoms and preserved truffle vinaigrette

 

DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOUR STEAK IS MEDIUM-RARE?

A POST ABOUT SOUS VIDE
I overheard a guest asking one of our servers recently. “Sous Vide – what is that?” We refer to it as pouch cooking under modified air conditions. So what does that exactly mean -- we seal steaks in specialized cooking pouches and remove the air from it in a vacuum chamber. A Cryo-vac machine lets you do that, it is a type of kitchen equipment which removes the air from pouches filled with food. You might find cryo-vac'd food in the supermarket such as bacon.  But usually the food items are totally cooked versus raw.  Cryo-vac'd food is naturally preserved by  removing the air, without any chemicals. The pouched food is then cooked in a water bath in a device called an immersion circulator which measures temperature precisely and thereby helps you control the temperature of your food.

As a young cook I was taught to check “doneness” with my bare fingers by pressing gently against the surface of the meat and after doing it hundreds of times I was lucky enough to gain the skill of more or less “guessing” the various temperatures. I “guess” I was lucky that the steaks were not returned?!

Cooking sous vide steak (filet mignon, sirloin)
We set our immersion circulator depending on the needs but usually at a temperature range from 130°F – 135°F or rare, med rare if you’d like in more edible terms. A 1”-1.5” steak will bathe for about 20 minutes or even longer at the set temperature. Once you are ready to serve it take the steak out of the bath (and from the pouch) and pat it dry with a disposable paper towel, then season it with salt and fresh pepper and char it on an open fire grill or in a very hot sauté pan for one minute on each side. The quick charring/sautéing process is referred to as the Maillard reaction and will determinate the flavor of the steak (in addition to the fat content of the meat). At this point your steak will be perfectly cooked to a medium rare temperature and with a nice caramelized/charred outside and a perfectly cooked inside (see picture). If you prefer your meat a little more done just set your immersion circulator to the appropriate temperature, i.e., 140 F for medium, 155 F for medium well.
NOTE the meat was rested for one minute after it came off the grill to distribute the juices.

 

The difference with sous vide
The main difference compared to an old fashioned cooking style in the oven or in a pan is that when using an immersion circulator the meat is cooked throughout in the same temperature and wonderfully moist on the inside and not overcooked on the outside. Also when cooking traditionally there is a large loss of moisture -- up to 20%, because of the dry oven heat which aggressively penetrates the piece of meat. Compare this to the moist pouch method where the weight loss is only about 5% from its raw/beginning weight. All of that moisture remains inside the steak.  Another advantage of cooking meat sous vide lies in the flexibility of timing, meaning you can have the pouched and cooked steak (for up to an hour safely) on stand-by in the water bath until you are ready to finish it in a matter of a few minutes, perfectly cooked, char grilled or sautéed.

For the home cook
Don’t have the equipment? Most of you won’t have the state of the art equipment such as an immersion circulator, vacuum or cryo-vac machine or specialist cooking pouches. No problem. I have had great results with Zip-loc bags “sealing” in the various meat cuts.  I press the air out of it and then cook it with the help of an electric instant thermometer (for measuring the temperature of the water) on the lowest flame setting on my gas stove at home. The heat control needs a little more attention to stay in your desired temperature range but it is an effective and low budget solution. 

Food safety
NOTE: these are not Health Department recommendations.  Most likely the Health Department would advise setting the temperature at 10°F-15°F higher because of food safety.  But if you order your steak in a restaurant medium rare and the chef cooks it to 145°F you most likely will send it back without even touching it!!

ASIDE FROM "SMOKING SESSIONS"

The first time I came about hemp was in culinary school when some of my classmates where bragging about smoking pot. Back then being a young adult we thought it was so cool to smoke tobacco rolled up with nutmeg and saffron – that’s all what we had access to. For sure it had that beautiful fragrant scent but it gave us the biggest headache. Boy where we stupid.

Hemp revisited 
Some time ago I was wandering the aisles of a book store and one title grabbed my attention.  I belive it was a book called “The Marijuna Cook Book.”  I learned then that there were real recipes using cannabis. I thought it was just funny and put it back on the shelf.  But recently I was looking in the grain aisle in a health food store for something new on my spring menu and I came across hemp seeds.  “The world’s most nutritiounal seeds” was written on the little bag. The hard outer shell was removed already and they were more or less ready to consume. Later in the kitchen I played with different flavor combos like hemp & pinenuts with wild cress, mint panna cotta & strawberries sprinkled with toasted hemp seeds.  All these ingredients worked deliciously together.  I decided to spruce up my duck dish using hemp.  Here is how I prepare it:
 
Sous-vide duck finished in the Wood stone oven
Craked wheat berries
Sous-vide cooked bunch carrots, lemon thyme & orange
Toasted hemp seed, to sprinkle
Apricot emulsion

Taste & Facts
The plant was formerly placed  in the Nettle family, but is now considered, along with hops, in the hemp family. The seeds have a fragrant herbal quality with a pinenut note to it and a welcome texture.
Hemp seeds are 33% protein and have omega 3. It’s one of the fastest growing biomasses known (like wheat). Growning hemp requires little to no pesticideds, no herbicides and it controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen.  Hence it runs parallel with the "Green Future".

You want to know more?
(In California, allegedly, 4:20 p.m. marks the end of the exhausting detention period at some American junior high schools. Ganja aficionados and casual stoners alike draw together every year on April 20 to celebrate.

Cannabis sativa L subsp. (0.3 THC) is the varitety grown for food consumption (non drug). Cannabis indica C  subsp. (6% TO 20%) is the kind that produce the “high” one experiences when smoking the leaves. The resinous form is known as hashish.
The major difference between the two types of plants besides appearance is the amount of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) secreted in a resinous mixture by microscopic hair network.
Strains of Cannabis approved for food consumption produce only minute amounts of this psychoactive drug, so give up your hopes -- it’s not enough for any stoned effects.

Check this out: It is estimated that about four percent of the world's adult population (aproximatly 162 million) use cannabis annually and 0.6 percent (22.5 million) daily - not as a food source though!!  No wonder my fellow Countryman Arnold (California governor) is rethinking legalization! 

 

KITCHEN GADGETS

 
Tweezers to take out the fine fish bones, tasting spoon, tweezer style tong (from left to right)

I’m resistent to kitchen tongs in my own kitchen. I disagree with lots of kitchen people out there but frankIy I find them disgusting. I know they are handy but as far as I am concerned they are simply over used, and how could you possibly have any e feel for the food by handling a piece of meat or whatever with a monster claw.  Granted they do a nice job with pasta and protect your hands from burns since you have a longer reach with them. 
 
Spatula with a serrated edge.

My point is what about the good old spatula or the newer tweezer style tools which let you actually put some feel into your work performance.
I can still see the tongs sticking out of the back pocket of some cooks I used to work with. The next moment they were on the kitchen line and had their “pocket tongs” in the food. “Oh I dropped my kitchen mitt to the floor let’s pick it up with those convenient tongs”! The cook extends his arm and picks up that dusty spice box from the upper shelve with the tong and then he or she plates the special salad of the day with those same now-dusty tongs. Repeat this and other scenarios lets say a filthy fifty times and I leave it up to your imagination what “flavors” swirl around in your tonged food.
(Of course I am not talking about the destined tongs in the bread basket on the Las Vegas buffet.)
 
Microplane zester great for taking the skin of lemons etc.
Heat proof plastic spatula ideal for risotto making not to crush the rice corn to puree
 
"The knife is the extention of my hand"