Austin Cantina

Recipe for Sustainable Ballard Demo

I'll try to get some photo's posted of the demo itself, but for now I want to be sure the recipe is online for anyone who wants to try at home;

 

Camarones Mojo de Ajo is Shrimp in Garlic Sauce, my recipe is inspired by the version made at Fonda San Miguel, an interior Mexican restaurant on North Loop, in Austin. It is kinda pricey, the sort of place that students ask their parents to take them for a fancy meal when they come into town.

 

This is a BIG recipe, it works well if you are cooking for a dinner party, maybe 10 people;

Take 5 chipotle peppers, if you get them dried like I do, rehydrate them in hot water for about 15 minutes, if you buy them canned, in adobo that isn't necessary. Slice each into thin strips. Hold aside 'till later

 

Crush or chop about 1 1/2 cups fresh, local garlic. You can use a food processor on "pulse" so that the garlic is evenly diced.

Put the garlic into a small saucepan with enough olive oil to cover all the garlic and set over a low heat. Let it simmer for about 25 minutes (depending on how hot the pan gets) until the garlic turns a gentle, golden brown and the aroma of garlic tickles your nose.

Remove pan from the heat, add sliced chipotles, juice from 5 limes, and about 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mix all together gently and then strain the oil from the solids. Strain gently without crushing the soft, cooked garlic. Keep the solids and the oil separate.

All of the above can be done days in advance. At time of service heat a sauté pan and add a splash of the garlic oil, a handful of prawns (I like to use fresh, local prawns, especially from Taylor Shellfish) and after the prawns are done on one side, add a spoon of the garlic/chipotle mix. Flip the prawns and splash with some stock (I use vegetable stock in the restaurant, we make it in-house with roasted vegetables, but you can make shellfish stock, or use chicken stock if that's what is available).

Continue cooking till prawns are cooked through but not all the stock is evaporated. Pour prawns and yummy garlic broth onto a plate, I like to serve it with mashed potatoes and vegetables, but anything you like with prawns would be fine

Cooking Demo

I may try to find time to post the recipe, but not just yet.

The Sustainable Ballard festival is this weekend. I will be doing a cooking demo at 3:00 on Sunday. My current plan is to demo our Camarones Mojo de Ajo. Please join us there.

Camarones mojo de ajo—a dish that normally translates as "overcooked prawns overwhelmed by garlic"—clearly benefited from a chef with some French training. The juicy shrimp popped like ripe grapes in the mouth, and the garlic-chipotle sauce was perfectly made

Jonathan Kauffman 

Seattle Weekly

Effective distribution of resources

I work between 60 and 70 hours a week. I'm not always the most efficient I could be with my time. Often when I'm supervising staff and available to answer questions or provide guidance I'm not being as productive as I could be with my administrative work.It is difficult for me to stay on top of all the record keeping that I do to track sales, inventory and finance. I'm fortunate that my POS system tracks a lot for me, including employee hours. Still, I need to make a schedule every week to reflect the needs of an ever shifting work-force and the shifting demands of the market.

The staff person who works consistently over 35 hours a week, often over 40, is our dishwasher Missy, who has stepped up to doing prep and setting up for service several days a week. I'm so impressed with how much she has learned and how much responsibility she's accepted since the big kitchen turnover started happening over the past few weeks. I've got 3 new guys in the kitchen now who seem poised to stay a while. Mike and Sean aren't looking for more than 20 hours a week, and Kevin looks to be a new full-time prep and line cook.

I'm going to run a short tangent from my "resources" story to talk about how Kevin came into Austin Cantina, and what it means to me. I tend to develop. maintain and keep fairly positive relationships with quality staff, even after they move on. Being a boss who is "loved" has never been a particular goal of mine, but I continue to be surprised by the impact I have on folks who work for me. Kevin was referred by Jay, who worked for me before working for Clark (another alum) at the Balmar. When things fell apart in the Balmar kitchen Jay sent Kevin to the Cantina for a job. He's been great! Within the past few weeks I've also seen 2 other past employees, from when I managed technology in San Francisco, came into the restaurant for dinner. Each was traveling to Seattle for a different reason, but each made the effort to come out and be supportive of my business and to make contact with me socially. I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but I'm feeling very lucky to have made a positive impact on so many good people.

Training new staff is difficult, it is time consuming, and it keeps me from much of the administrative work that I need to do. It also keeps me behind looking at trends and managing the business (as opposed to managing the staff). Our dinner business has been slow on weeknights lately, so we don't need to bring any of the line-cooking staff in before 2:00 a couple days a week. I no longer need to be in the restaurant much before then myself a couple days a week.  Of course if we serve lunch on weekdays, I need both a kitchen person and a server in by 11:00. I can be one of those people, but I'd need to pay someone else.

Now I need to determine what needs to happen in order for serving lunch to be worthwhile, how much volume we need to do to justify having staff in a couple hours early, to keep me from doing my administrative and accounting work. My modest goal was to average about $100.00 a day at lunchtime. That would allow for a 30% labor cost if I pay one person minimum wage ($8.07/hr in WA)for just under 4 hours work (3 hours of service plus about 45 minutes of set-up/breakdown). Now that accounts for zero pay for me, and it does take me away from work that is far more valuable to the company than minimum wage.

Last week we didn't serve lunch while I was training new staff. I discovered that I got a lot more done than I did when we served lunch. I also reviewed sales over the past month. In the last 4 weeks that we served lunch there wasn't even one week that averaged $100 in sales Monday through Friday at lunch, so until evening business picks up, and I need to have staff in earlier, lunch will continue to be on hiatus.

I need to evaluate how much my 60 hours a week is worth, and how long I will continue to commit that time to this business without any meaningful compensation. The restaurant is doing "OK" business-wise, but not enough pay me what I need to fulfil my financial commitments  to my home and family. I'm feeling burnt out a lot of the time. I expect that will pass when I have well trained kitchen staff, but it won't pay my home mortgage. There are no 2 ways around the fact that we need more business Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings in order to survive the winter.  If you want to make a positive impact and help keep a locally owned business that treats employees fairly and respects the environment afloat, please come spend money on a weeknight.

If you are a regular, what can we do to bring you in more often on weeknights? Comments are open

Crab & Jalapeno, the final chapter;

New menu is live, and online, this is how we are running the Crab-Jalapeno Mac & Cheese;

With a blend of bread crumbs and sharp cheddar in the topping, sold very well through the week, got very positive feedback from guests who tried it. Here is the recipe as it is going into the Cantina recipe book;

1 # macaroni simmer in hot water till tender

Reserve, toss lightly w/olive oil to prevent sticking

DON’T over-do it, or sauce won’t stick to noodles,

reserve until instructed specifically to mix with other items

1.5 oz butter

3 tbl flour

1 tbl dry mustard whisk together over medium heat to make a light roux

3 cups milk

1 ea chopped medium white onion

6 ea fine-chopped jalapeno

1 ea bay leaf

1 tbl New Mexico Chile Flake

mix ingredients together, add to roux, mix well

this is effectively a béchamel sauce, which becomes a mornay when cheese is added. Bring to a simmer for 5 minutes

1 ea egg temper  into milk/roux mixture

9 oz Cantina cheese blend (half mozzarella, half queso fresco)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper fold into above mix well

Mix all together with reserved macaroni noodles

Spread ½ of the mac & cheese mix evenly into 7 single-portion ceramic platters. Spread a generous handful of crab meat across the top of the mac & cheese, then top the crab with the rest of mac & cheese.

1 cup breadcrumbs

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Mix well together

Spread cheese/crumb mixture evenly on top of all

Assembled Mac/Cheese plates

May be prepared up to a day in advance up to this point, covered in plastic wrap and refrigerated.

For service place assembled mac/cheese platter with cheese/crumb topping into pre-heated convection oven at 425 degrees for 6 minutes, garnish with an herb sprig (cilantro/parsley) serve while very hot, at the Cantina we put the hot plate onto another plate to prevent burning the table, or guest fingers.

Zero…

I am sitting in a small room sampling new blogging software. My assignment was to create a blog entry, so I’ve though about this for a couple days.

 

Zero…

That is the number of guests we had in the dining room for supper last Tuesday night.

 

Zero…

That is the number of cooks on staff 4 weeks ago that are still working at the restaurant

 

Zero…

That is the sum total of hours of experience that ALL of my line cooks/prep cooks have, working at Austin Cantina before we star cooking this week.

 

Zero…

That is the number of days we have working a new menu, that we’ll implement tomorrow. (look for the new menu on the “menu” page for dinner in a few days.) I have a LOT to catch up on.

 

Interestingly, another task that I’m supposed to do for this blog sampling is post a photo. Here is a pic that Jennifer took of me sitting outside the Cantina in the sun a few weeks back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may follow up later with more details about how my kitchen staff has sort of crumbled, but one really great thing has been for me to re-gain the confidence that I CAN run the kitchen myself if I need to. With no functional kitchen staff I ran both lunch and dinner on Wednesday and Thursday on my own, had a helper for a few hours for dinner Fri/Sat, and ran Sunday on my own.

I’m exhausted, the kitchen needs a serious cleaning, my administrative work is WAY behind, but I’m feeling exhilarated to know that if I need to, I can do it myself.