Austin Cantina

Mac & Cheese (pt 2)

Ran the recipe and discovered that the recipe makes enough sauce for a pound of noodles, and that all mixed together it is easily 7 large portions. The other change is to mix the cheese and bread-crumbs for the topping so there is a bubbly/crunchy topping, and possibly use a different variety of cheese.  As I’ve been thinking about this recipe a show came on PBS that reminded me of the very best Mac & Cheese I’ve ever eaten. When I lived in San Francisco Jennifer and I went out for a birthday dinner with our friends Steve & Vicky to Flyr de Lys  and ate a Lobster Mac & Cheese which was among the best lobster I’ve ever eaten, with a blend of tasty melted cheese that lives in my sense memory. The Tivo guide showed a program “Hubert Keller, Secrets of a Chef” which I recorded and watched mistakenly expecting that it was about Thomas Keller, the chef from The French Laundry, in Napa (another of the most memorable meals of my life, what is it about chefs named Keller?), anyway, the episode happened to be It's The Cheese (Episode #111)

 In which Hubert makes THAT Mac & Cheese with Lobster dish  , now while Texans rightfully are proud of the cheese they produce, as Texans tend to be proud of much produced by fellow Texans, Texas isn’t one of the first places that I think of for great cheese, and great cheese isn’t one of the first things that come to mind when I think of great things that come from Texas. Anyway, this whole episode has me rethinking the Crab Mac & Cheese along the lines of selecting some perfect cheese, let’s see what I can find tomorrow…

Menu Development (Mac & Cheese, part 1)

This is a long post, and it is in current development, so I expect to post in 3 parts over the next few days.

Last February we ran a Valentines Day Special dinner and some of the guests have been requesting some of those items on our regular menu.

This post will be an outline of a recipe revision process the turn Alton Brown’s Baked Macaroni and Cheese  into Austin Cantina’s Jalapeno & Crab Mac and Cheese, which we’ll have on our next menu update.

The first step is to transform it into the familiar, consistent recipe format that we use in the Cantina Kitchen.  I usually do this in excel, with 3 or 4 columns. There is often 1, or 2 columns of quantity, depending on if we scale the recipe differently, sometimes one sheet will include small batch & large batch quantities. The next column is the units (pounds, tablespoons, each, etc…), next is the product, and finally the procedure. Often the procedure will refer to several items, so if there is a gap in the last column, that is because blend/mix, or whatever is done to the last several items. It sounds confusing but is easier to just look at;

½         pound                         macaroni                                  cook to al dente (reserve)
3          tbl                                butter                                       melt in pan
3          tbl                                flour
1          tbl                                powdered mustard                  whisk together w/butter
3          cups                             milk                                        
1/2       cup                              yellow onion, finely diced
1          ea                                 bay leaf
1/2       tsp                               paprika                                    Add To Above (ATA)

Simmer 10 min, remove bay leaf

1          ea                                 egg                                          temper, then ATA
9 (of 12) oz                             sharp cheddar, shredded         ATA
1          tsp                               kosher salt
1          tsp                               Fresh black pepper                  season
                                                                        Add reserved macaroni and fold all together

                                                                        pour into a 2-quart casserole dish.

4          oz                                sharp cheddar, shredded         spread on top of mac

Topping:
3          tbl                                butter                                       melt in sauté pan
1          cup                              panko bread crumbs                toss to coat

                                                                        Top the mac/cheese w/buttered crumbs

Bake for 30 minutes at 350f

Remove from oven and rest for five minutes before serving.

OK, so that is Alton’s recipe, reformatted to our kitchen style. I’m a big fan of Alton’s shows and have enjoyed success using his recipes in the past. I enjoy the way that he explains and demonstrates techniques and the reason behind why he does things. 

 

So, the first things I’m going to change will be to revise some of the ingredients to use product that we already keep on-hand. I prefer to use white onions to yellow, they have a shorter shelf life but I find they have a “cleaner” onion flavor. I love the Texas Sweet onions like the 1015 (similar to the Vidalia, or Walla Walla sweets), but use a straight white onion year round and have been quite pleased with the results.

 

We use several varieties of chile flake and powders here, but paprika isn’t one of them, so in place of the paprika powder, I’m throwing is a similar quantity of New Mexico Chile Flake, and at that point I’ll also add 4 each fine chopped jalapeno’s. I’m going to replace the cheddar with the cheese blend we use for topping enchiladas, it is a blend of Queso Fresco which has a tangy flavor, with some mozzarella that melts real well.

 

Instead of placing all in a big casserole dish and baking at 350 for a half hour, we keep our oven at 425 during service, so we’ll plate individual portions of mac & cheese in our oven proof ceramic, a little bit of mac & cheese, a generous handful of crab, then top w/mac & cheese, and finally the bread crumb topping.

 

I’ll need to do some testing for how much time it gets in the oven, if you try this at home, you’ll need to do the same as each oven has it’s own peculiarities. Feel free to stop in this weekend and give me some feedback on the current version, before the next set of changes.

Month of the flakes…

No one ever said that running a business would be easy, especially a restaurant. I was well warned that staffing would always be a challenge, though I’d had experience managing staff that went back a decade+ in both food service and technology. In the nearly one year that we’ve been open I’ve had some great employees, I’ve had employees that were very good but hated what they were doing, and I’ve had people simply stop showing up for work, despite living less than 2 blocks away. In the past month I’ve had 2 of my kitchen staff give fair and reasonable notice that they were moving on and I began the process of replacing valued, trained staff. This is some of my experience.

 

First I placed a couple ads on Craigslist each one listed an e-mail address with instructions to put specific words in the subject line of the e-mail, in part to weed through spam filters, but also to determine how well people follow simple, direct instructions. If someone can’t make a first impression that demonstrates the ability to follow written directions I have doubts about their ability to follow a written recipe with many lines of instructions that must be done in order.

I also have a dishwasher on staff who has been unavailable much of the summer, he returned to work after miscommunicating  his availability and  sat down for a chat. When I pointed out his frequent lateness, (more than half of his shifts, though rarely more than 15 minutes late) including one morning where I went to his home because I couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone, along with some of his unimpressive work habits, his reply was “gosh, none of that stuff seems so bad, but when you put it all together like that, I don’t look very good” right… but at least he came in, and has self-awareness, and an interest in improving. I think he’s a real good guy and will work with him toward developing better work-habits that he can carry with him for the rest of his life.

Another dishwasher was referred to me by friends; on Saturday 8/16 he was an hour late for work. He misread/misunderstood the schedule. OK, I can give a pass on that, don’t let it happen again. The next day he came in and explained that he’d been at Hempfest  all day. I can’t prove that he was wasted, but another employee and I watched him chop the same small piece of onion a couple dozen times, and then attempt and fail to make the same recipe 3 times because he couldn’t seem to follow the recipe in order.(Note, he wasn’t recruited from Craigslist, so he didn’t have to pass the “subject line” test.)  He just seemed to be in another world for most of the day. Well, even if his mind was elsewhere, at least his body was at work. Well, the following Saturday he showed up around 45 minutes late, at which point I told him to go home, and if he wanted to keep his job, he should return the following day, on time, for his shift. I’ve never seen him again. The friends who recommended him let me know that they dropped him off on time for his shift, and they haven’t seen him since then either.

 

When I interview people for kitchen positions I spend a LOT of time explaining that working in kitchens is hard, doesn’t pay well, etc… as I have blogged about before. I hired a young woman with industry experience who expressed significant interest in this restaurant, our style of cooking, and many other elements of the business. We had the “you’ll never make enough money” talk, but she remained interested and worked a few test shifts. Toward the end of her first week as a regular employee she told me about her financial needs, and though they were beyond what I ordinarily can meet, I promised her that I’d try to work something out and to try and find a way to help meet her needs. I followed up the following day with an e-mail confirming her availability to work the next week’s schedule, and looked forward to meeting her for work on her next shift. A couple hours before she came in, I got an e-mail confirming her availability to work the following week. When she arrived I was ready to sit with her and talk about how we could, together, meet her financial needs. She had other ideas. She told me that in the interim she had found another job, which she was going to start there before the week was out, and that she didn’t expect to work the shifts she had agreed to. The inconvenience to me, this business, and her co-workers just wasn’t enough of a factor to figure in her decision.  I sent her an e-mail explaining that I’d mail her final paycheck to the address I had on file, and that I’d subtract a uniform fee for the Cantina shirts she took with her. The following day I got a phone call from her mother. Yes, HER MOTHER called to ask why I wasn’t going to pay her daughter for the work she’d done. I was so astonished, first because I’d never said any such thing, second because when someone craps on me and my team the way she had, I’m surprised that they would have the audacity to make demands on me, and third, it was HER MOTHER! In 14+ years of managing people ranging in age from about 17 to over 50, with compensation packages from barely above minimum wage to over $80k/year, I’ve never had a call from someone’s mother about a labor/payroll dispute. Does it show that I’m just stunned by this? When Mom told me that her main concern was that her daughter gets paid for the work she did, I let her know that a bigger concern might be what type of employment habits her kid was developing, and what sort of references she might get in this small industry. I’ve already had one of my flake/no-show employees apply for a job in a kitchen run by another former employee of mine and get turned down cold because his less than savory work habits are no secret. Why don’t people understand that this is a small, small industry and that maybe years down the line, someone from this business could be in a position to impact their prospects in a significant way, and that it doesn’t take a lot to be polite, to tell a new employer “hey, I have another position where I have already committed to a schedule, can I start the following week?”, but that NOT doing so can (and sometimes does) follow a person for years, especially if that is a habit and they do it to several successive employers.

 

I have a few other stories along the same lines, but this is turning into a fairly long rant. I just wanted to point out 2 articles that I found while reading Frantic Foodie

WHEN Linda Lipsky taught a course called “So You Want to Open a Restaurant” at Temple University in Philadelphia, she deliberately made the business sound like a minefield. She warned her students that it is possible to lose their homes, their life savings, and even the rights to their own names. Her goal, she said, was “to get two-thirds of them to quit.”

 

Restaurants: If you bow out, do so gracefully

 

The Omnivore's Hundred

The Omnivore's Hundred is an eclectic and entirely subjective list of 100 items that Andrew Wheeler, co-author of the British food blog Very Good Taste, thinks every omnivore should try at least once in his life.

He offered this list as the starting point for a game, along the following rules:
1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: post a comment on Very Good Taste, linking to your results.

 1. Venison
 2. Nettle tea (Nettles, yes, in Tea, no)
 3. Huevos rancheros
 4. Steak tartare
 5. Crocodile (Alligator, Yes, croc, no)
 6. Black pudding
 7. Cheese fondue
 8. Carp
 9. Borscht
 10. Baba ghanoush
 11. Calamari
 12. Pho
 13. PB&J sandwich
 14. Aloo gobi (had to google this to find out what it was)
 15. Hot dog from a street cart
 16. Epoisses (had to google this to find out what it was)
 17. Black truffle
 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
 19. Steamed pork buns
 20. Pistachio ice cream
 21. Heirloom tomatoes
 22. Fresh wild berries (they grow all over around here)
 23. Foie gras
 24. Rice and beans
 25. Brawn, or head cheese
 26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
 27. Dulce de leche
 28. Oysters
 29. Baklava
 30. Bagna cauda
 31. Wasabi peas
 32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (I sold a LOT of those in San Francisco)
 33. Salted lassi (Had sweet Lassi, not salted though)
 34. Sauerkraut
 35. Root beer float
 36. Cognac with a fat cigar
 37. Clotted cream tea
 38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
 39. Gumbo
 40. Oxtail
 41. Curried goat
 42. Whole insects
 43. Phaal
 44. Goat’s milk
 45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/€80/$120 or more
 46. Fugu
 47. Chicken tikka masala
 48. Eel
 49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
 50. Sea urchin
 51. Prickly pear
 52. Umeboshi (possibly, but not certain)
 53. Abalone
 54. Paneer
 55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
 56. Spaetzle
 57. Dirty gin martini
 58. Beer above 8% ABV
 59. Poutine (NO, but I worked with a Montreal native and we've tried to replicate the real thing)
 60. Carob chips
 61. S’mores
 62. Sweetbreads
 63. Kaolin (an industrial mineral, from Georgia?)
 64. Currywurst
 65. Durian
 66. Frogs’ legs
 67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
 68. Haggis
 69. Fried plantain
 70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
 71. Gazpacho
 72. Caviar and blini
 73. Louche absinthe
 74. Gjetost, or brunost (there must be places in this neighborhood, but it sounds nasty)
 75. Roadkill
 76. Baijiu
 77. Hostess Fruit Pie
 78. Snail
 79. Lapsang souchong
 80. Bellini
 81. Tom yum
 82. Eggs Benedict
 83. Pocky
 84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (I've worked and eaten at 2 Michelin stars, and had tasting menus at French Laundry and Charlie Trotters, but alas, no tasting menu at 3 star place)
 85. Kobe beef
 86. Hare (rabbit, many times)
 87. Goulash
 88. Flowers
 89. Horse
 90. Criollo chocolate
 91. Spam
 92. Soft shell crab
 93. Rose harissa
 94. Catfish
 95. Mole poblano
 96. Bagel and lox
 97. Lobster Thermidor (had similar stuffed lobster, but it wasn't strictly Thermidor)
 98. Polenta
 99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
 100. Snake

Artwork is hung..

After service last night we blocked off the windows for about an hour while we hung several paintings by Clark Cromwell for the weekend's Ballard ARTWalk. It is wonderful how his work features colors that work well with the interior of the room. I'm VERY nervous about storing the Tom Russel paintings for a few days, but equally excited to be able to showcase the work of a local Ballard painter and attract new faces as they wander the neighborhood looking at work by new and emerging artists.

I'll try to grab a few snapshots of the work while it is on the walls, before we go back to the Agave triptych that usually hangs on the east wall.

Four friends over brunch...

Interesting how worlds come together...

From left to right, Allena Gabosch, advisor to the city of Seattle on LGBT issues and executive director of the Center for Sex Positive Culture, Scott Paul, artist, craftsman and neighbor, his work was recently requested by a museum on 5th avenue in New York for part of their featured showcase, Robyn Friedman (my attorney), and Jay Wiseman, a friend from San Francisco who is a former EMT, now also an attorney. Jay taught my family infant CPR when Jennifer was pregnant with our youngest child, Jerome.
Every time I say, or write, "my attorney" I can't help but think of Oscar Acosta, who went missing well before I was in high school and I dream of one day having a storied attorney just like him. I imagine "my attorney" saying things like "As your attorney, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you'll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts. Get the hell out of L.A. for at least 48 hours." None-the-less, Robyn, who speaks on legal issues at events throughout the country is just the kind of bull-dog I want on my side in times of need, and with the right chronicler she could become legend.

ARTWalk

Business here tends to slow down during Ballard ARTWalk every month, so we figured, if you can't beat 'em, etc.....

This month we're featuring paintings and mixed-media work by Clark Cromwell. Clark has become something of an artist in residence at Austin Cantina, cooking, developing recipes, spinning vinyl and so much more.

To encourage ARTWalkers to stop in, we're also offering a wine special and h'ors d'oevres.

Cooking schools

I have lots of degrees. My masters degree is signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, I went to a California State University, so my degree is signed by the Governor. If Arnold says I'm a Master, who's gonna argue? I also have a BA in Political Science. In between those 2 I went to the California Culinary Academy (CCA) where I had an AA and a great education, worked with wonderful chef/instructors, and peer students. While I was a student I had lots of gripes about how the school was administered, I felt that it was something of a diploma factory, in that you didn't really need to learn much in order to get through school, but if you were motivated it could be a tremendous resource. The institution raised their prices during my program, and I heard from others that they experienced the same thing. (you'd get quoted one price before you started, then 1/2 way through were told that in order to complete the program and get a diploma, you'd have to pay more) Despite their common claim that their customers were the restaurant industry and the employers in the industry, and the product they developed was culinary graduates, I felt that since I was paying 10's of thousands of dollars to be there, the customers were the students, and the product was a well developed skill set that we could sell in the job market. I rarely felt that I was treated as a valuable customer so much as a replaceable raw material. I always had a sense that the chef/instructors were a skilled, hard working bunch of folks with a lot to offer and they they often felt taken advantage of and pressed to accept sub-standard work from students so that they'd keep paying their bills.

Several years after I left the CCA it was purchased by the Career Education Corporation (CEC) and from what I have heard and read it went from being a place that would accept anyone who could pay the tuition (it was about $18k when I started, around $22k when I finished) to a place that actually misled students who couldn't afford to pay about the job market in order to get them to sign student loans that they'd have trouble servicing with the entry level positions that are available to new culinary grads.

This morning on the Seattle Weekly Blog I read a post about Career Education Corporation opening a branch in the Seattle area. While the concept of a kitchen trade school is a good one I'm afraid that CEC isn't an organization that I'd applaud as "serving our community".

Whenever I interview new kitchen staff, which I've been doing quite a bit this last week or two, I try my best to impress on them how difficult the work is, how low paid it is, how the service staff tends to be better paid, work shorter hours and how difficult it is to get out of this industry once you've spent a few years with nothing but kitchen work on your resume. It's pretty rare for me to be successful at talking someone out of wanting the job. Too many people can't get any work at all, so anything is better than nothing. Many people, like me, dream of this type of work, refuse to work at retail, or feel that the idea of spending hours a day in a cubicle is little better than spending a weekend at Oz rooming with Vern Schillinger.

This is my response that I posted on the Seattle Weekly blog today. It extensively quotes an SF Weekly article about CEC. I hope that people who really want to learn about the industry get a decent job working with a fair boss who will teach them, or enroll in a community college program, like Seattle Central. I also hope that I can be that type of boss...

I graduated from the California Culinary Academy (CCA) before it was acquired by Career Education Corporation. This tendency already existed, but apparently intensified dramatically one Career Education Corporation took over;
http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-06-06/news/burnt-chefs/
CCA once had a distinguished reputation for turning out passionate and creative chefs. Many of San Francisco's restaurants are populated with its graduates, and beyond the Bay Area, people still know its name. But the academic atmosphere has changed since Career Education Corporation bought the school in 1999. In the first two years of the company's ownership, the number of culinary students increased from 442 to 1,868. By the time former student Alan Livingston enrolled in May 2005, "it had a factory feel to it...it seemed that it was more about money — it was more a body factory, and not as much about education"
Two former admissions representatives who worked at CCA confirm that students were misled. The former employees say admissions reps preyed on students' dreams of becoming celebrity chefs, and glossed over the painful economic realities of the industry.