A couple months ago, I realized that my culinary skills had a major hole in it. It dawned on me that I didn't know how to make any sort of impressive dessert from scratch. I figure in the event of a special occasion such as a date night, I would have to field a a proper multi-course meal with dessert. After much soul searching, I decided attempted to make Creme Brulee from scratch. I imported some Madagascar vanilla beans, bought a kitchen torch, borrowed some ramekins, and away I went. It wasn't too difficult to make, just time consuming.
Delicious results. I passed this out to my food tasting guinea pigs, and they seemed to respond positively to it.
Last November, I was tasked to cook for a dinner party for 15 guests at a friend's house. I set aside about six hours to prep and cook six different dishes. One of the fun things about cooking in someone else's kitchen is checking out their kitchen equipment. That's when I encountered something that changed everything. I grabbed one of her knives to start preparing vegetables, and the knives cut through everything like butter. My food preparation time was drastically reduced because of these awesome knives. I asked her about the knives and she told me she got them as a wedding gift; it was a $700 set of Zwilling J.A. Heckel knives. These were high-end German knives.
As someone who has been wielding a $30 IKEA chef knife for over two years, I was in awe of these Heckel knives. Those knives just seemed to glide through vegetables, and the amount of force you had to apply was extremely minimal. The knives were also perfectly balanced and the grip was very comfortable.
As a result, I picked up a Zwilling J.A. Henckels TWIN® Four Star II 8" Chef's Knife, and I'm very happy about it. When you run the knife through water, the blade makes a distinct resonating sound. Water runs off the blade as if the blade's surface had wax on it.
I didn't bother splurging on an entire knife set since I primarily use a chef's knife and pairing knife anyways.
I've been talking a lot about this wonderful knife at work, and I seem to have sparked an arms race amongst my peers. I know of at two people who have upgraded their primary knives recently. One co-worker picked up a Heckel cleaver. Another friend picked up a Heckel santoku knife.
In either case, this is the beginning of a kitchen upgrade cycle for me. More culinary delights to come.
Well, today was my first attempt at cooking a full-blown Thanksgiving with most things made from scratch. With the help of my sous-chef Todd, we roasted off a full bird, and made a pan gravy with turkey drippings. This year we did stuffing from scratch, and lets just say, once you make it and taste it, you'll never go back to the Stove Top stuffing.
I started cooking at 10:30am, and finished at 4:00pm. I skipped lunch, so I was pretty hungry by the end of the kitchen battle. Lets just say, everything tastes a lot better when you're hungry.
Last month, Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean was visiting Nunavut (a northern territory of Canada) to celebrate its 10th anniversary. The native Inuit people did a traditional seal hunt while the Governor General was there. As part of the community feast, the Inuit offered a piece of the seal's heart, and it has apparently sparked outrage amongst PETA and other animal rights groups. The article today is from CBC entitled, "Governor General's seal snack sparks controversy."
Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean snacking on a slain seal's raw heart has sparked criticism from the European Union and animal rights groups.
Barbara Slee, an anti-seal hunt campaigner at the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Brussels, said she was disgusted by Jean's actions.
"The fact that the Governor General in public is slashing and eating a seal, I don't think that really helps the cause, and I'm convinced that this will not change the mind of European citizens and politicians," Slee told The Associated Press.
"It amazes us that a Canadian official would indulge in such bloodlust," Dan Mathews, senior vice-president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told the Toronto Star.
"It sounds like she's trying to give Canadians an even more Neanderthal image around the world than they already have." [...]
Canadian Inuit leaders praised Jean's gesture, saying it sends a strong message to the world about the traditional "country food" that Inuit rely on.
"Not everybody would do that, especially when they know that the seal hunt ... is a controversial issue because of the animal rights people," Mary Simon, head of the national Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, told CBC News on Tuesday.
"I just want to thank her for her support of our people and our culture."
Both Simon and Paul Kaludjak, president of the land claims group Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., said the seal hunt is not a controversial issue among Inuit.
"We don't really care about how the outside world thinks about how we eat our country food," Kaludjak said.
"Let them be disgusted, whatever they want to pursue, and that's their choice."
I think it's kind of insane for the groups who claim to embrace diversity to be condemning the Inuit culture for hunting and eating seal. These native peoples live in the arctic which is one of the harshest environments to survive in, and they have to live off the land and the land happens to have delicious seals. In my mind, it's kind of insane that people are trying to get the European Union to impose bans on the seal trade because seals are adorable. Meat is meat! Could you imagine if another country started boycotting your country because your country hunts fish and, *gasp*, eats them?
I think PETA is definitely out of touch with reality here if they think these are the actions of neanderthals. From where I come from, it's not cool to be putting down the culture and tradition of these native peoples.
It's "disgusting," cried some - including the PETA brigade, who enroll such luminaries as Pamela Anderson among their house philosophers, and who have made such "tasteful" comparisons as animal farming to the Holocaust. They actually ran a "Holocaust on your Plate" campaign. Disgusting is a word PETA and Pamela have lost the right to use.
Actually the Governor General was a model of deep courtesy in her actions and visit. How much we talk the talk of "diversity," "respect for traditions," and regard for aboriginal peoples. Yet here we have the head of state of Canada - not just flitting by, but staying over, participating, mixing in depth with the people of the far north. The response? We have all sorts of superior people calling her "too bizarre," citing her actions as "bloodlust," "Neanderthal," "offensive" and insulting her as stupid and immoral.
I enjoyed how Rex took pot shots at Hollywood as well.
The tomato comes from Peru and spaghetti was probably a gift from China.
It is, though, the “foreign” kebab that is being kicked out of Italian cities as it becomes the target of a campaign against ethnic food, backed by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi.
The drive to make Italians eat Italian, which was described by the Left and leading chefs as gastronomic racism, began in the town of Lucca this week, where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the ancient city walls.
Yesterday it spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, which is also run by the centre Right. The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialties from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.
Luca Zaia, the Minister of Agriculture and a member of the Northern League from the Veneto region, applauded the authorities in Lucca and Milan for cracking down on non-Italian food. “We stand for tradition and the safeguarding of our culture,” he said.
Mr Zaia said that those ethnic restaurants allowed to operate “whether they serve kebabs, sushi or Chinese food” should “stop importing container loads of meat and fish from who knows where” and use only Italian ingredients.
Asked if he had ever eaten a kebab, Mr Zaia said: “No – and I defy anyone to prove the contrary. I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto. I even refuse to eat pineapple.”
Mehmet Karatut, who owns one of four kebab shops in Lucca, said that he used Italian meat only.
Davide Boni, a councillor in Milan for the Northern League, which also opposes the building of mosques in Italian cities, said that kebab shop owners were prepared to work long hours, which was unfair competition.
If this move is intended as a move against immigrants, then that's kind of sad. In my opinion, one of the best ways to build bridges between ethnic communities is by sharing each other's culture through food. There's just something very unifying about sharing a meal, and discovering new ethnic dishes.
And yes, my plan for world peace would probably involve some sort of delicious international all-you-can-eat buffet.
Yesterday was the five year anniversary for Yahoo! Search. To celebrate, the Food Network came by to film an episode of Dinner Impossible with Chef Robert Irvine. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend because I'm in Victoria, but I have plenty of information and pictures from co-workers.
As usual, I believe the chef shows up, and gets 6 hours to whip up a menu to feed a lot of hungry people. In this case, he had to feed 450+ hungry Yahoos. My divisional manager was in charge of buying food. Two of the search executives (Tuoc and Raj) got to work as sous chefs, as seen here.
The official Yahoo Corporate flickr account has a bunch of photos of the event as well.
In attendance were also the Yahoo founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, as well as Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz.
This Yahoo Edition of Dinner Impossible will be aired in March sometime, so keep your eyes peeled for it. You'll see a lot of the people that I work with, and all the awesome people that work at Yahoo Search.
So one of my final "projects" for Q4 at Yahoo was to organize a potluck. My initial reaction was to cringe because potlucks at my last job was usually a venue for petty bickering and politics. Myron also foretold of bad work potlucks because most people just ended up buying stuff instead of making stuff. Thankfully, my worst nightmares were never realized, and we managed to pull it off. Our team has a lot of good cooks, and the majority of people cooked. Here's the photos of it, you can try to guess what I cooked. Although, you can't assume I cooked asian food because the majority of the team is asian.
Note: This photo feed comes from ptr, the team's official photographer.
As an added bonus, we voted on what the best dishes were. First prize got a $50 Starbucks gift certificate. Second prize got $25 for Starbucks, and a hug from our chairman Nam. Third place got $25 for Starbucks.
The winners were
Dolly and her home-made spring rolls.
Yimin and his shanghai ribs.
Weilin and her chicken green curry.
Thanks to all the cooks who participated. You saved my job! Thankfully, none of these wonderful people in the photos were laid off either. I think we ended up with a total of 25 different dishes.
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