Fr1ends of the ch1dren!

Knife drills 101

Easy and fun ways to improve your knife work.

In school I struggled with my knife work enormously, I would always stay after class, come in before class do whatever I could so I could improve just the smallest amount, and you know what? it payed off! I still wasn't good as half the people in my class but the next time we had a knife skills test I had definitely improved and here what I did.

Draw lines, and squares

After our first terms class had consistently not meet our instructors goals that he had wanted us too he had us draw. Draw lines, that were 1/4", 1/2", and 3/4" these are all the sizes of different cuts that we were supposed to do for the class in order to pass the test. I didn't do this a lot, as matter of fact just a few times, but even doing it that little bit I saw myself improving or gaining a little bit of confidence in my knife work, now if I had only stuck with this a little bit longer who knows how much better I could have become and faster.

Cut up a few dozen potatoes 

And by a few dozen I mean a few HUNDRED dozen! Thinking back to my first two months in culinary school is a little bit of a trip, I'm thinking back to just how much I used to struggle with even the simplest of task astounds me. I say basic but really I should say fundamental, at the time these skills were so hard, so new to me I didn't know what to do, but keeping with them, and practicing them and asking as many questions as I could get away with helped me soo much, so cutting potatoes might not be that much fun after the first 20 or so, but keep up with it, you'll be glad you did in the end.

Time yourself

This I did a lot of, and it wasn't by choice believe me hahahaha, but again it's one of the things that I'm really glad for looking back on it, because of this I got so much faster it was hard for me to believe at the time and even now it is, my knife worked has slip A LOT since I've left the culinary program and doing management now, pretty soon I'll be doing my externship so I'm thinking I'm going to revisit these myself and see how much I can improve. 

Breaking thru

So, you've hit a bit of a standstill, you just can't any ideas or your plating arrangement just isn't working for you, what do you do?

Start over. 

This might seem a little "basic" but in my opinion it's the best fix there is. for some reason your sauce just isn't cooperating with you, the broccoli got over cooked so now it's a pale lifeless green color or any other number of problems occurred. START OVER or 86 it (remove it). Like I said in an earlier post, hold yourself to a standard and never let your standards slip.
  

Take a break 

Again, a super easy suggestion, but both of these ideas work when you are plating your food, take a break, just take 5. Go have a smoke, if you're also having to start over because something is not working on the plate start on whatever it is you have to re-do. Maybe throw away your idea that you had started with and just "feel" it out, look at the plate the way the person is going to see it sitting down, imagine the sauce on the plate, where is it going to fit in best, do you want to use it as your negative space, how about the protein how are you going to draw there eye to it?

Copy 

There is nothing wrong with simply copying someone eases idea, after all imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Who knows as your going about the process of copying this idea, you might think of something else that fits what you're trying to do just a little bit more, or even add your own unique twist on it as well.

All of these can and probably will at some point be used in conjunction with each other at some point in time, some of my best work has come from using these ideas. Of course you may not be able to take a break if you're plating up food to serve as everyone is sitting down at your dinner table but you can start over, and then if you remember the idea you can just copy it, or while you're washing the dish if you're going to be re-using the same plate just look up an idea on your phone. 

A little bit about me

How did I get into plating food? How did I get into culinary in the first place?

Well, lets start with how did I get into culinary in the first place.

I've always been into food, and I've always liked cooking, it may or may not be for everyone my thoughts when I write a statement like that are: No duh who doesn't like cooking or who's not in to food. It's just such a huge part of who I am, that idea of there being people out there that do not share the same passion as I do for food is completely alien to me.











This is one of the earliest photos of I've ever 
plated 8/29/11. Like it says in the header at 
the top of the page "Have an artist eye" 
I always have, at least as far back as I 
can remember, before I got into culinary 
my first ever labor of love was photography. 

Below: 7/28/12

So, how did I get into culinary from photography?

 That's actually very easy. I've come to call it my quarter life crises. One day last year (I was 25, 26 now) I was freaking out, I didn't know where my life was going, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I honestly felt like I should really have all this shit figured out by now, all my friends are starting out on new careers and having kids and getting married, but what the hell am I doing? So, I thought "Hey! I like food, and I like cooking I'll go to school for it" Simple as that honestly, luckily for me it's all worked out so far.

Have things changed since I've started school? 

below 9/26/13

Absolutely! At least in terms of cooking, and eating. I've come to terms with my BC life (Before Culinary)  I always THOUGHT I liked food, and THOUGHT I knew what was good, but it turns out I was horribly mistaken. Every once in awhile in class we'll talk about great restaurants in and around Portland, and a lot of the places that are mentioned I've been to. I have a lot of foodie friends so they would always drag me to there new favorite places, at the time I thought they were pretty good, never really understood the hype behind it. After going thru some of my classes and learning different tasting profiles I now am too raving about these places.

How do I feel about these changes?

3/13/14 below

For the most part, it's as you would imagine mostly good. At first I thought the changes would be more drastic then what they ended up being. I was so sure I would become a food snob, and to a degree I have. Just not as bad as I first believed.

                             1/26/15

Inspiration?

Inspiration

Where do we get it? Where does it come from? that's a hard question to answer, because there is no one answer for it, we always look for it expected, and unexpected places, but how often do we really ever find it? Rarely if ever I am going to wager. So, let's talk Inspiration, and where I personally draw it from.

Pictures

What kind of inspiration can you get from a photo? 

I feel like this one is a "No, duh" kind of thing, but never the less I have it down, it really is a great way to get really great idea's for plating. Not just any kind of pics will do, well I guess you can use any kind of photo to draw inspiration from. What I usually do is search for whatever the protein is I am going to be using as the center piece of my plate. For example... scallops!

 I chose this photo because it actually gave me a really great idea for a new dish I want to make, the title of the photo is "As cherries blossom, a taste of summer" I read as just cherries and from that I now want to make scallops with cherries!

Blogs

all kind of blogs, not just cooking.

There isn't really one particular blog that I follow, but rather I'll just google "bla, bla blog" and read, or sometimes just skim ideas. let's keep with this cherries and scallops idea I have now and want to follow thru with.  Alright here we go. This blog post here is really great it's totally great, all about just doing the bare minimum to the scallops and getting an amazing result out of it. 

Recipes 

Sometimes a recipe can a great source.

Alright, so now that we have the theme of our plate pretty well set, seared Sea Scallop with some use of cherry use in it. Maybe its going to come from a reduced cherry sauce, maybe a cherry glaze of some kind, or maybe even a cherry Beurre blanc we'll have to decide here in this step. The two ways I go about this are: using my favorite book, The Flavor Bible, or the Internet. I'll probably use a bit of both here. First I'll look up scallops and cherry's and see what the have in common  that will work as a sauce base,  veg, and finally some kind of starch to have a complete plate. 

Something random 

Some of my favorite ideas have come from random and unexpected sources.

Now, that I hopefully have a pretty solid idea and vision of my plate this is where I'm going to find that something that's missing from the plate, even I don't know what it is but this part I'm going to realize something is missing. So, in-between now and the time I go pick up the indigents I need, and start the cooking process, something will likely pop in to my mind, and I know it'll be from somewhere random, something I spot out of the corner of my eye as I'm walking around, something that's playing on Pandora or maybe a conversation I'm having with my Boyfriend, the last piece of the puzzle will come from the most unlikely of sources, as it always does.

Theory Vs Practical

What's it all mean? How am going to use all of this?

So, so far we have talked a lot about why to plate, when to plate, and and the elements that go into a decent looking plate, however what we have yet to do is actually discuss is: plating, the act of doing it, and how to approach it.

Sketching

Really? I can't draw!

Don't worry I can't draw to save my life, unless you want me to draw disproportional, lopsided stick figures in that case I'm your man!! 

But it doesn't matter if you can draw or not, the purpose of this exercise is get your thoughts on paper, so you have instruction on how you want it to look, so you visualize more clearly what it will look like when it's finished, so you work out anything that may or may not work, I used this a lot and I've always been pleased with my results.

Your Canvass (IE. the plate or what have you)

So you have your plate in front you, now what?

Now, you want to choose your plate, or whatever it is that you are going to use to put your food onto! For this one, I envisioned a rectangle plate would make things look the best, a circle just didn't seem to cut it.

Getting the food to the plate

Uhh... My hands duh!

Well...Yes you can use your hands, but I wouldn't recommend that, remember our blog post from earlier this month where we were talking about the right tools for the job? For this job I choose to use my hands, (moving the meat to the plate, with that bone sticking out I had a place to grab onto without damaging anything) than I choose a ladle, to spoon the chickpea puree onto the plate, thinking back I should have used something else, I didn't get the result I was looking for, maybe should have watered down the puree but no matter it needed up looking very dense. and tongs to move the broccoli Raab 

Fixing up a screw up

Oh F&*$ that go their!! Oh S^%* now there's sauce everywhere!

Honestly, the best way to fix up a screw up is just to start over, take everything off the plate and grab a new one, but if it's something that's small like a drop of sauce got somewhere it shouldn't have. Using that clean rag that you have on you would be a great way to fix it! if something is not where it should be, I would start over or try to clear the smudge which can be rather hard depending on what was placed.

To plate or not to plate.

When to plate:

A question that has be posed to me quite a bit since I have started this blog is: when should I plate? My answer to that is always! There isn't a time that you shouldn't be plating, there are time when it might be difficult to plate, or when you don't think you're able to plate, but plating should always be done! Like I said in a earlier blog "you eat with your eyes first" so in that regard everything should always look appealing to the eye, least you spent all that time in vain because you just tossed everything onto a plate and now it looks like garbage and suddenly lost your apatite.

Even on a Train? even on a Plane? even in the Rain?

It's not like they have a choice of anywhere else to go tho there stuck here!! *Muhahahahha!!!!*

All the more reason to do it! Yeah sure they ARE NOW stuck on the train, or on a plain in the rain with you, but what about next time? That's right there stuck there NOW, but they do have the chance to go with another company the next time they travel. 

But... but my food was so tasty everyone loved it.

Yea, sure that might be true. At the same time it could have been really bad as well, or just mediocre, and it's even more true that the plating of your food has little to no effect on the overall satisfaction of the people who are riding with you, but it's the little things that counts, "Oh man, do you remember  that steak we had on the plane to Japan last year? It was soo good" Tho in realty that steak was mediocre because the chef was in a really prissy mood that day, but is a stickler for the quality of the plate, but little things like the arrangement  of a plate can leave a lasting impression of good or bad in a diners mind. Yea, everything else might have been shit, but at least do what LITTLE you can to make your guest come back again, and again.

Snacks?

Why the hell should I plate my snacks? There just for me!! ONLY ME!!!! But, I might share...

Even if there snack, even if they are just for you, you have the chance here to improve on your technique, to explore new ways of doing things to find an easier way to do something. You would be missing a valuable opportunity to improve and there is never a point in your life that you can't improve a little further on something. 

Does it really need to look 5 star?   

I don't know is that the standard you hold yourself to professionally? If so I would say yes, with whatever you do always strive for perfection in it no matter what you do or how you do it, make sure it meets YOUR standards set them and ALWAYS adhere to them. with that said, don't be to harsh on yourself if it doesn't but try too.

Even at my in-laws?!

But I loathe them... sooo muchhh!!! ( I secretly love them, I just want to fit in with the cool kids so I say I hate them like everyone else)

Weather you hate them or not, the answer again is: YES!! And the why is surprisingly simple to understand and also shows them that weather or not they like you "look what I can do, bet you didn't know I could do that could you?!" Is this going to make them like you? Probably not, but who cares what they think, you're already married to their child! This just gives them a chance to see another side of you that may not have seen before and like I said will it make them like you? Who knows.