Protein cookery can be divided into two categories: dry-heat and moist-heat. Moist-heat cookery encompasses poaching, braising, boiling, steaming, and the like, as well as sous vide techniques where a water-based solution is added to the protein before vacuum packing. These are usually done at lower temperatures–obviously these processes cannot exceed 212 Fahrenheit, except for steaming, which is actually gentler than boiling (because of the lessened density of the cooking medium).
Archive for July, 2010
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everybody’s dancing at the local winery
Or so (almost) goes “One More Saturday Night”. Far Niente threw their a 125th birthday bash last Saturday night and invited me, along with 14 other chefs, to cook for their 800 guests. The crowd was hip and excited, the music was festive, the Cirque du Soleil dancers were out there. You can see a better picture of, and read about, the soiree here.
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the chef has turned on the smoking sign
On Wednesday and Thursday past, I opened–6am–because Zach had a few well-deserved days off (though at 945 Thursday morning, as I returned to the kitchen from a meeting, he had come in to do his dry-goods order and got stuck in the middle of the breakfast line, plating pancakes and hash browns in his flip-flops to dig out the new breakfast cooks). My prep list on Thursday started out:
smoke andouille
smoke eggplant
smoke shortribs
smoke pork ribs
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the lizard king
I’ll skip right over the brilliant lamb entree (leg of pozzi farms lamb, wrapped in our house-made lavash bread with babaghanoush and summer squash, and served over tomato chutney with red wine-lamb sausage, tabbouleh, and pickled eggplant) that Ryder added to the dinner menu tonight–so I can speak to the PORK CHOP that I composed with cornbread, rapini, white corn, our cajun andouille, and roasted fig-sherry jus.
