Hawaii- Where Business & Pleasure Coexist

My boss, Bala Kironde, and I traveled to Hawaii recently to meet with Chefs, taste product, and establish our presence as purveyors of fine breed specific Farm to Table meats. Hey, it was a tough job but somebody had to do it!    READ ABOUT IT HERE

MANTA delivers cuisine worthy of the scenery…

In the Manua Kea Beach Hotel on the Big Island of Hawaii is a restaurant that almost upstages the palm lined lava flows and pristine beaches that end in the blue glassy Pacific waters. That restaurant is MANTA, named after the rays that swim right up to the beach, and the Chef is George Gomes. Chef Gomes cut his culinary teeth in the midst of the emergence of New Hawaiian cuisine pioneered by the likes of Alan Wong and Roy Yamaguchi. The meal we had at MANTA rivaled some of the finest we’d had anywhere with a focus on local seafood and island produce.  You can read about our meal HERE.

 

Homemade Fresh Herb Salt

Well, I have found a new use for my pulse coffee grinder. I will preface this my saing I always keep a seperate grinder for spices. I have found that adding fresh herb, such as parsley to kosher salt and pulsing them in the grinder yields a beautiful fresh herb salt that keeps it’s color and has a wonderful herbacious kick that will add an extra depth to your final seasoning! Enjoy-

1/4 c         kosher salt

1/8c          fresh herb (such as parsley)

1/8 tsp     fresh ground pepper

Put them all in a spice grinder and pulse to desired consistency (salt will absorb

moisture from herb and form an nice mulch.)

Saute'ed shrimp with fresh corn, charred pepper coulis, and herb salt

The KOHO 101.1 FM Interview- Premium Sustainably Raised Meats

Hear excerpts from a radio interview I had while doing a meat education session at The Sleeping Lady mountain retreat in Leavenworth, WA. -these business trips are proving to be quite YUMMY!                                          

   RADIO INTERVIEW

 

If you ever make it to Leavenworth a stay at The Sleeping Lady is a must!

Pork Shoulder 101

 

 

• Where did Boston Butt get its name?
• What is Picnic Shoulder?
• Where does the Cushion come from?
• Why is the Butt so good for sausage?

   

These and other questions answered HERE!

 

Tim Beeler- The Keeper of HELUKA Pork

A fith generation Iowa hog farmer that decided to take it to the next level, Tim Beeler shares his story and views on business, customer service, and raising quailty hogs in manner that exceeds the product itself. (and if you’ve had his pork you’ll know how good this method is!) Here’s his story.

A Michelin Starred Chef Shares His Thoughts

I was excited to get to sit down with Chef Christopher Kostow at the Meadowood Resort and get his story. Here’s the LINK.

Celebrity Chef Facade

Well it has finally happened, the Chef has now climbed the status ladder from blue collar worker to full blown celebrity. Thanks to The Food Network and the likes of Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, etc…, and let’s not forget the pioneers, Julia Childs, and Graham Kerr. The Chef now is this sort of Michael Jordan figure who wows foodies with seared this, emulsified that, and crusted whatever in the breath taking fashion of MJ’s top of the key, airborne, slam dunks. Audiences eat it up. (No pun intended, OK maybe a little pun intended.)

Be that as it may, with the exception of the Emerils, the Flays, and the Pucks, the chef, I mean the hotel or restaurant working chef, for all his/her hard work is making relative ‘peanuts’. For a profession that takes the skill, education, and the long hard hours of very intense concentration you’d think that the wages would be comparable to let’s say an entry level computer analyst, or business consultant. It is in most instances not even close. And let’s not even talk about the lead line cook, who does all the stuff that wows people on TV a hundred times over every night, who may not even be making $15 an hour.

Does the general public understand that all the glitter and glamour of the TV Chef does not translate into real world working situations? No, not in general. Oh, there may be a few that are related to someone who is a chef and get an earful every now and then about the ”real chef’s job”. Or the unfortunate guest of the local ‘Vacation Lodge Hotel’ who makes a wrong turn and walks into the main kitchen during the banquet rush and realizes this is not what he sees on TV. No, in general people see glistening chef coats and chili pepper baggies, top of the line equipment that is spotless, and one dish being prepared at a time by chefs who always have a big Hollywood grin on their face and make lots and lots of money. It is a facade, albeit an appealing one, but still a facade. Then there are shows like ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ where novices are thrown into high pressure situations that really seasoned professionals would be handling in the real world- again, another façade. (I’m getting really tired of ‘unreality’ TV, aren’t you?) There are shows like Next Food Network STAR and Top Chef that I think are a little more realistic although remember these shows run on drama- elimination drives that, if it didn’t the general public would pack their collective knives and go. For example I stepped into the kitchen at the French Laundry one evening and if it were a TV show it would be on PBS right after Charlie Rose- no drama, just precise execution and still the cooks there on that line, except perhaps for the chef de cuisine and sous chefs, are not making enough to dine on the cuisine they prepare, yet they will springboard with TFL on their resume to more lucrative positions for sure.

There are moments in a chef’s life when a bit of that glitz is enjoyed, but in general it is hard ”blue collar” work that requires a ”white collar” education, work that deserves to be acknowledged for how much sweat and sacrifice goes into each dish by talented professionals. Recompense should reflect the work in wages that are fair for the job description. If a kitchen turns out big profits for the establishment then the talent involved needs to be fairly compensated. Unfortunately, sometimes restaurant and hotel owners are living in the same facade as the general public, except when they write out the checks. Unlike the general public, they should know better.

Cravanzina- a New Favorite!

This cheese is in the “paglia” family of cheeses, so named because they are aged on beds of straw (paglia = straw). Covered with a bloomy rind, the voluptuous paste is mild, creamy, buttery, and a little musty. I found this definition accurate and also educational. This cheese was so plesantly creamy and mild that I almost ate the whole wheel and then it would really have gon to waist!

Kristen Dietz, my local Nugget Mkt cheese specialist, suggested Cravanzina when I was looking for a Robiola that they were out of. Good choice Kristen! Although I thought the Robiola I had earlier was a little fuller bodied than this Cravanzina it was none the less excellent!

Here are Kristen’s notes:

Cravanzina hails from the Alta Langa, an agricultural region located near Asti in the southern Piedmont region of Italy. Named after the village of Cravana. The Alta Langa region is most famous for Barolo, Barbaresco and Asti wines, but also produces a wide variety of wonderful cheeses. Cravanzina is a round, soft-ripened brie-like cheese that is produced by hand. Made from blend of cow and sheep’s milk.(80%/20%) Cravanzina’s flavor is described as savory, while its texture is very creamy inside a thin, supple crust. It is important to eat this cheese at room temperature to enjoy it to the fullest.

It’s also important to have a nice glass of wine and crusty bread! Enjoy-

Drowning In The Catch Phrase Sea

Organic, Natural, Sustainable, Artisan, Certified, Local, Animal Cruelty, Antibiotic Free, No Antibiotic Residue– What the what does all this mean really? These terms do have meaning but they are so often flung about that they start to lose their meaning with overuse and misuse.

My favorite character in the movie Princess Bride, Indigo Montoya, said to Vizzini who kept on saying ‘inconceivable’ to every conceivable situation – “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” So the terms ‘artisan’, ‘natural’, ‘sustainable’, etc… are used to paint a certain picture in the consumer’s mind although the consumer may have very little idea of what these terms really mean. On top of that the use of these terms may in fact be misleading unless the
consumer or chef knows what they are looking for.

The term ‘natural’ is perhaps the phrase that is most used, misused, and misunderstood.  According to the US government natural means minimally processed with no added ingredients like phosphates. The animal could come from a very clean environment with excellent animal husbandry or it could have come from a feedlot with 250,000 animals fed sub-therapeutic antibiotics and given hormones. So more questions need to be asked about the raising of the animals.

‘Organic’ is another term that has little to do with quality and more to do with how the animal is raised. If the farmer is doing it right you can have excellent meat and/or poultry, by the same token just because the animal has been given organic feed, given room to roam, and not treated with antibiotics means little if the breeding of the animal is poor and the husbandry is not quality. What happens when an animal gets sick? What is it fed? Is the breed, lets say of cattle,
quality British stock eating beef like Hereford? The consumer needs to ask questions.

High quality meat and poultry are very often found when animals are allowed to function in accord to their natural instincts, but clean shelter is given where in their natural environment there may be none. When the animal gets sick, responsible use of therapeutic antibiotics allows recovery to health when in the natural environment they may die, etc. Again, the asking of questions is imperative rather than just relying on a phrase or statement to make the decision for you.

The company I work for, Preferred Meats, has come up with a source verification method that allows us to know just what breeding, feeding, and raising methods are used in our variety of products. So when you speak with us, we encourage you to ask questions we will have or will get you the answers. That way if you decide to do business with us  your purchasing decisions are based on facts. Any other way is in the words of Vizzini simply, well……”Inconceivable”.