Whenever I meet someone new and tell them I’m a chef, they usually get all excited and ask something along the lines of, “Ooo, what did you make for dinner last night?,” or “You must eat so well!”  The truth is, most chefs I know eat quite poorly.  Think about the lifestyle of a cook: you’re either getting up at 4 a.m. to go bake bread all day, or getting back home at 3 a.m. after standing and roasting meat all night.  You eat at weird times of the day, sometimes spend hours tasting minor variations of the same sauce, will occasionally stuff your face with leftover pasta, and many times your only meal is the wings & beer you have after work.  Pretty much the least healthy lifestyle ever, and it hardly leaves any time for home cooking.

About a year ago, I realized the toll that making $10/hour, not having health insurance, and sleeping at strange times of the day was having on my health.  I was cranky, not sleeping well, and completely antisocial due to my strange work schedule.  Thankfully, I found a job with some great women where I earn a living wage, have health insurance, and have Saturday and Sunday off.  Sure, I still work a lot, but it’s on a much more reasonable scale.

Now that I’ve finished steamrolling myself with restaurant jobs, I’ve realized how sad it is that this is an acceptable way of life for cooks and chefs.  Even where I work now, most of my co-workers (and those of the companies we share our kitchen space with) don’t take time to eat healthy meals, or will work through the whole day without taking time to eat.  Sometimes there will be scraps of cake, marshmallows, or whatever someone is making that we’ll all descend upon, but spending the day eating cake makes most of us less than pleasant to be around.

Personally, after working in pastry kitchens for a few years, I was prone to this syndrome as well.  I don’t have the willpower of many chefs, and would taste test ice cream and eat cupcake scraps ALL DAY.  This lead to severe sugar crashes and an uptick in my anxiety.  Now, I’ve realized that this is an absurd way to live, especially for a chef.  Aren’t we supposed to be setting the example for our society, emphasizing the importance of cooking to a healthy lifestyle?  Yet none of us eat breakfast or cook our own meals?

So now I’m on a crusade, attempting to convert my co-workers and friends to the world of healthy eating.  I mean, how easy is it to make a healthy breakfast?  SO EASY, you guys.  Grab a yogurt.  Pour some milk over cereal.  Spread some peanut butter on a piece of bread.  This is not about perfecting your omelet technique at 7:30 in the morning.  This is stuff you can do before you’ve had the benefit of coffee.  As for me, I’m making homemade salads and snacking on Siggi’s yogurt, but I don’t expect to convert everyone overnight.  All I ask is that the first thing you eat be something that’s good for you.  Is that such a lofty goal?

I’d nearly forgotten the art of brunch: delicious food with a couple of strong (yet appropriate) drinks to help facilitate the transition between Saturday night, Sunday afternoon, and the eventual return of the workweek. Coffee is usually a welcome addition. French fries are practically mandatory.

A few weeks ago, I went to Bell Book and Candle with my friend Lyssa, one of their hosts, and had quite the brunch. The space, a quietly marked basement on West 10th Street, formerly a laundromat, feels cozy and detached from the rest of the city. Each of the three main rooms have a different feel, from the spacious bar, to the long grey banquettes in the main room and the plush blue booths before the kitchen. Adding to the seating options, there is a rough-hewn 12-top chef’s table in the kitchen, and a cozy (cramped) 4-person secret room.

It was a early on a quiet, grey Sunday, and daylight savings time had just sprung into effect and I had BBC mostly to myself. Cat, the brunch bartender, started me off with one of the house specials: The Hanging Basil. It had been a rough Saturday night, so instead of chile-infused vodka, she used kaffir lime-infused Hangar One.

I lingered over the drink while and let myself get completely torn between the lobster taco and a half-dozen $1 Beau Soleil oysters, the crowd-pleaser or a personal favorite. As per usual, oysters won. When I go back, I’ll fight the oyster urge and try the taco. No promises, though. I love being near the sea, and oysters taste just like the sea.

It was an unexpectedly warm day and after the Hanging Basil was empty and the shells were turned over, I asked Kat for a Pimm’s Cup and she happily obliged, throwing in a few dashes of cherry bitters (from an impressive collection) for good measure.

The Patty Melt, medium-rare and beautifully cooked, won out over “gin and tonic” organic salmon. I am a simple guy, I guess, and tend to find salmon unflappably boring. I am a fan of the gin and tonic, but that wasn’t enough. Yawn, though I am sure it would have been well-cooked. The combination of rich, rare beef and “vintage” cheddar was exactly what my healing body wanted.

Bell Book and Candle was talked about a bit last fall on Eater, The New York Times, and Grub Street, to name a few. That story at Eater has a great video from ABC Nightline that includes the restaurant’s extensive hydroponic rooftop garden. I can’t wait to go back.

Skip produces The Gourmetro. While he finds french fries an essential part of a good brunch, he sometimes substitutes them for raw oysters. Check out his published works on Aisle 9, and talk with him on Twitter.

New York: Blue Bottle Coffee New Orleans Iced Coffee. Photo by Dan Schumacher

My relationship with coffee began, as many do, as a casual friendship. I had been working overnight at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store and after a year of nocturnal living found myself wanting its warm, comforting buzz. It wasn’t the energizing chemicals so much as the atmosphere of Mud, a slightly-small, dark East Village coffee shop that really got me hooked. Manhattan felt more crowded and hostile all the time and I knew I could always wrap myself in the warm blanket of good music, hot espresso macchiatos and friendly faces.

Birmingham: Urban Standard Cappuccino. Photo by Dan Schumacher

It was a treat, a preemptive reward for being productive. I didn’t drink it daily or prepare it for myself–I didn’t own any of the necessary equipment. Months later I started a mostly-new life in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that from the start I could tell wouldn’t be as innately challenging as New York. That was a relief, but the feeling wore off as the reality of starting over set in. There was no nearby Mud to serve as my hideout, and there weren’t many people I could have shared it with even if there were. Urban Standard opened a few months later and provided Downtown Birmingham with just the kind of expertly-made coffee and social space I needed.

New York: Mud Coffee with Almond-Crusted French Toast. Photo by Dan Schumacher

After that [necessary? useful?] preamble, we fast-forward from mid-2007 to this past weekend, when I met up with longtime friend and fellow coffee lover Carla Jean. We brunched at Mud, whose food I’d never eaten. Once the sturdy orange mug was in my hand, it was like I’d never left. Their coffee, which I took black (like my heart), was surprisingly full-bodied and silky for drip. Our server explained their method (using more ground coffee, simply enough) as we finished our almond-crusted french toast.

Canon Ball Presents: Prints Gone Wild Bunny Graffiti. Photo by Dan Schumacher

From Mud, we headed to Williamsburg’s Secret Project Robot Art Space for the Cannonball Press print show. One of my favorite letterpress houses–Yee-Haw Industries of Knoxville Tenn.–was on hand with their beautiful prints and will be back in NYC this December for the Chelsea Market Christmas thing. Carla Jean had to head back to Midtown in a rush, so she missed out on Blue Bottle. Oh did she miss out on some sweet, sweet coffee.

Blue Bottle Coffee. Photo by Dan Schumacher

After randomly running into a former suitemate who turned out to be periodic percussionist for the Richmond, VA band The Diamond Center, I met up with an old friend at Blue Bottle. They are perhaps best known for their niche brewing techniques, which include nel drip and siphon, and they are certainly worth a inter-borough trip. The weather was brisk but I was overdressed and overheating so I opted for a New Orleans iced coffee (pictured, top). It was, as the menu suggests, slightly sweet and just milky enough. The experience would have been perfect if stroller-toting hipster parents had kept their monstrous baby carts from impeding traffic at every turn. But that’s what you get in Brooklyn. I can’t wait to go back and try some hot coffee.

I’m always taking suggestions, so if you have a favorite coffee spot in the city (or anywhere. I’ll travel), please hit me up with a comment.

Skip is the producer of The Gourmetro. He can’t find his French press and it kills him, absolutely, every day. Check out his published works on Aisle 9, and talk with him on Twitter.

]]> http://www.thegourmetro.net/2010/11/nyc-fully-caffeinated/feed/ 5 http://www.thegourmetro.net/2008/01/personal-discoveries-lead-to-splendid-hotdogs/ http://www.thegourmetro.net/2008/01/personal-discoveries-lead-to-splendid-hotdogs/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:02:00 +0000 Mallard Man http://www.thegourmetro.net/?p=136

There is such a thing as a magnificent hot dog. Strangely enough, finding it at Liebman’s Deli in Riverdale has outweighed every other personal insight I’ve had lately. In the months since my girlfriend broke up with me, I’ve learned a couple things about how I deal with what I don’t like, and even more importantly, about what I like to eat. The breakup sent me on a journey of discovery, and I woke up living in Riverdale. Don’t believe me? Come on up to Liebman’s and see for yourself.

Liebman’s comes off as an inauspicious place at first. It’s a glatt kosher deli tucked onto 236th street off Johnson Avenue, right between Mother’s Bakery and an Italian restaurant I’ve not yet braved. There are two categories of things at Liebman’s: things you have to try, and things you just really should.

First off, focus for a second on Kasha. Not “Kashi”, mind you. Kasha is a grain that old Jewish people eat. It’s sort of like rice, but a little grainier, and a bit nuttier. That brings us to the first thing you have to try: Kasha Varnishkas. Basically, they take a big bowl of boiled Kasha and noodles and serve it with brown gravy. It sounds simple. It is simple. It is simply amazing.

Now let’s talk about the focus of this piece: hotdogs. These guys have revived the fine art of spinning hotdogs on a really hot surface for an entire day. They use plain old Hebrew National beef franks, but there’s something about how they cook them all day that just makes them awesome. The hotdogs are a little tough on the outside, so when you bite into them, you know you’ve just bitten through the skin. I know that I just made it sound gross, but it’s fantastic. I like to order them with onions and mustard. They have these onions, and they sauté them also for like, the entire day. Once they get on that hotdog, they’re god damn perfect. They’re some of the sweetest, most flavorful damn onions I’ve ever had, and when you put a dash of mustard on it, it’s like God came down and put junk food on your plate.

They’ve made me change the way I make hotdogs at home. I can’t simulate the all day spinning, so when I’m at home, the hotdogs are boiled, but the onions are a go. Half a medium onion is enough for two hotdogs. They don’t have to be diced, they’ll probably be better if they’re not. Cut the onions long and thin, sauté them in some olive oil until they’re nice and transparent. You can then have them sit for probably ten minutes or so, so there’s no need to get nervous or do everything at once, making sure that you ruin the whole dish.

There’s such a thing as a regular hotdog, there’s such a thing as a Grey’s Papaya hotdog, and there’s such a thing as an awesome hotdog. You’ll be amazed to see what the difference is.

For those of you who don’t know, I recently moved to New York – not only to get away from my dull corporate job, but to finally realize my dream of going to pastry school and becoming a real pastry chef! (cue triumphant music) And because I know all of you are checking this blog not just because you love food, but in order to procrastinate from working for the man or studying, I’m going to blog about my experience as a pastry student!

I have a full-time job working as an administrator/office manager at a small artisanal bakery in SoHo. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings I hop on over to the French Culinary Institute for 5 hours of class. The FCI is an intense program aimed mainly at those who do not have a lot of restaurant experience. Most people in my class have worked in bakeries or in food service and are avid home bakers, which is my experience as well.

Wednesday my classmates and I all arrived super-early to get our ID cards & get dressed. Our uniforms consist of houndstooth MC Hammer pants (complete with elastic waistband…tres chic) a neckerchief, chef’s jacket, long apron, and side towel. Class starts quickly, with Chef Rebecca & Chef Kir introducing themselves and all of us eager students doing the same.

Day 1 is apple tart day, so appropriately, we start off with apples for an apple compote. Chef Rebecca does a quick demo and then we’re off! The demo is informative, but very basic – she doesn’t spend time going over every minute detail. My table partner and I grab some apples, get our mis en place ready, and start peeling. The peeler we are given is abominable, so I resort the ubersharp paring knife. Unfortunately, I don’t peel apples that often – I’m lazy and like peels – so I was rather slow and ugly in my peeling. My knife skills also left much to be desired, but that could have been the slightly squishy Golden Delicious apples I had to work with. Then again, it wasn’t like my entire class was schooling me in perfect dicing – you just feel pressure to be totally awesome in a class environment where there’s a professional chef eyeing your knife technique.

After the dicing part, we concocted a simple apple compote with our diced apples, sugar, lemon juice, & vanilla paste (more concentrated than vanilla extract, not quite as good – or as expensive – as vanilla beans). It cooked til it was a chunky applesaucey consistency and then was spread out on a sheet pan to cool.

Next was pate sucree. Francophiles and foodies will know that this means “sugared pastry” and is a very simple dough to make. We creamed butter & powdered sugar together and gradually added eggs to make an emulsification. Then cake flour was slowly added to make the dough. Pate sucree is similar to a shortbread dough, and not nearly as temperamental as pate brisee or a traditional pie crust.

For our own tart shells, we used pate sucree made by a previous class, because dough needs time to chill and rest before shaping. We started by hammering out our dough circles with rolling pins. With 18 students on stainless steel tables, it was a bit loud. We brushed off all the extra flour from the crust (more flour = more gluten = tough dough) and rolled it into a prepared tart ring.

Post-dinner, the tart shells came back out and were filled with the cooled apple compote – which looked kind of like canned crushed pineapple, oddly enough. We had to peel more apples and slice them ever-so-thinly to spiral around the top. Never have I appreciated granny smith apples more – they are so nice and firm, so perfect for cutting into thin fancy slices! Golden delicious apples, not so much. Many of my thin little apple slices came apart, but I managed to salvage enough so that they appeared pretty. I spiraled my apples and then we sprinkled them with vanilla sugar, then into the ovens!

While we were finishing our tarts, Chef Rebecca told us a little about the philosophy of French pastry. For apple tarts, cinnamon is a major faux-pas. The French believe that the pastry to be about showcasing the fruit, with only a limited number of other ingredients just added to enhance the natural flavor. So for the apple tart, only some lemon juice, vanilla & sugar, et voila! another class.

One apple tart may not sound like a huge undertaking for a 4-hour class, but it went quickly and we were rushing around using every moment. Even having made pies and tarts before, it was a bit stressful. None of us quite know where everything is yet, but are all trying to impress and make our tarts as beautiful and as tasty as possible.

Once I stumbled home late at night, my roommates peeped out of their rooms for some apple tart enjoyment. It was still warm and quite tasty, with a thick crispy crust and sweet filling.

Stay tuned for more adventures in tart-making….

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