You can’t. The whole point of the “stickiness” is that it helps carry the sauce. This is also why you shouldn’t wash pasta.
Stranger
Answers coming soon.
I am gonna answer these one post at a time in case I have to go or pass out. I lost several answers earlier this morning.
First of all do not fear pre-baking pie shells. It is called blind baking and will serve you very well for certain pies and dishes. Make sure you use a cold crust plenty of parchment paper and loads of beans as much as will fit in the shell mound them up and press them down. I use black eyed peas because they smell good coming out of the oven but any will work. The beans are useless for anything else aside form this after going in the oven.
OK as for the apple pie dilemma. You did not actually describe you pie fail but Iam gonna go ahead and assume your failure is the hollow gap in the apple crust zone. It is a common failure and can be remedied using several techniques.
[ol]
[li]Use cold crust[/li][li]Use crisp firm baking type apples[/li][li]Macerate the apples for no less than 20 min.[/li][li]Use a crumb crust instead.[/li][/ol]
As for 1. The crust should always be cold at every stage until it goes in the oven. If need be keep returning it to the fridge or freezer.
As for 2. You probably already know good baking type apples if not look them up and use them
As for 3. Once you have sliced the apples, macerate them in sugar and the rest of the ingredients except the flour or thickening agent for at least 25 min and probably an hour or so. This is vital as the raw apples straight in to the shell will shrink and cause the gap. The macerating causes the water to be released and thus less to no shrinkage. You can drain the juices and cook them down a bit and add them back to the apples. This is not necessary but adds an interesting flavor.Otherwise toss the juice in with the apples.
As for 4. Crumb crusts are great and are almost completely no fail. Still macerate your apples it a proper technique.
Pro tip:
Using several varieties of apples and an interesting complexity and flavor.
Bonus tip: Sailor Jerrie’s rum add a great flavor to almost every baked good and you can use it in place of vanilla or just an add in.
Added pie tip: For those berries pies that almost always seem to collapse and turn into pie soup. Cook the pie to at least 160 internally. This will cause the starch, tapioca or flour to set and activate. I learned this form 100’s of pies.
That is a hard one. Because of my years of experience in The Health food stores I know what it is and how important it is to not have even a trace. Only a handful of cooks and servers have a clue as to that celiac’s or chrones disease is. less know what the fuck gluten is.
I will take a second to say this. IF YOU HAVE AN ALLERGY STATE IT. I do not care if you are allergic to mangoes and are ordering and anchovy pizza. Always state it. You don’t know what the fool kind of garnish they may give or what the hell is going on back there. Most cooks want to please some are bitches and a-holes but they want to please and not make someone sick.
Back to the question? Just state the importance and severity of the allergy. In my experience that is taken seriously.
Fantastically fun and interesting for the cook doing it…
Have you tried selling at farmers markets? Farmers markets usually have very laxed requirements. It would be a great place to start. Cooks tend to frequent them and you may meet one that likes your product. Then a discussion and trade could happen. The other issue is canning and depending on your state may require additional licensing in a restaurant setting. Funny thing markets almost never require it. You also mentioned that you are in a small town. Is there not a place that you are a recognized regular? Try them. They will say yes.
Just read about the Church. Try that.
Just remember. If you hate yourself, money have a large ego to feed and boundless energy and a dream then do it.
Consider take out only to start. This goes for all you home cooks wanting to branch out into owning your own restaurant.
That seems like a good move.
Avant garde represents a pushing of the boundaries. Standard sizing just wont do.
I don’t know who Gordon Ramsey is.
Wash pasta? Blasphemous. I’d like the folks to be able to get strands of pasta instead of chunks.
I don’t have enough product developed yet to try the farmers markets. That’s the goal for spring – there’s tons of 'em around here, and it seems like an easy way to get started. This is garden-season driven you know; I’m growing the peppers, collecting fruits at u-pick-em farms and then making the jams in summer.
There are a few restaurants where I am a recognized regular and I’m even friends with a couple of chefs in town. At a tapas place I go to a lot, I’ve made friends with the soux chef and have promised to bring him a jar of my jam. I’ll bring a second one for the exec. chef while I’m at it because I figure he’s probably the guy with the keys, right? I’m working everyone I know, but right now, it’s winter, so not much produce to work with.
I just wondered if some chefs might be kinda uptight about letting someone they don’t know very well into their kitchen and what sort of issues would concern you if someone approached you with, “Hey, can I rent your kitchen some time?” I was thinking of liability concerns or “don’t touch XYZ equipment unless you know how to use it.” All I need is a burner and a big-ass pot for the water bath.
Three more questions:
• If I gave you a jar of my now-world-famous Blueberry-Habañero jam, what would you do with it? (I made the menu at one of my chef friends’ shop with my Mango-Cayenne jam – he put it in a sauce for a fish.)
• I always make homemade pie crust because I think it tastes better. I’m pretty good at it, but my crust tends to be more powdery than flaky. It tastes great and holds together well, and it’s not tough at all… But it crumbles rather than flakes. What am I doing wrong?
• Recently I tried a new jam recipe: Jalapeño-Orange Marmalade (I’m trying to use only Florida produce in my jams). It didn’t set properly. I understand orange marmalade can take up to two weeks to set. I’m thinking about busting all the jars open and re-making it with a little more pectin this time. Whaddya think? Be patient or remake the jam?
A farmer’s market isn’t just a big space where anybody can just show up with anything and try to sell it, you at least need a permit for a booth or a space, and as for cooked food? The hell? Of course it has to pass some kind of inspection! Some Cambodian people sell eggrolls and such from a booth at our farmer’s market, and there’s seldom a month that goes by that their name doesn’t show up under health inspections in the newspaper. So at least someone is looking out for the public’s health.
My question to the chef: every chef wants to run his own restaurant, of course, but doesn’t the planning, the ordering, the paperwork, the non-cooking aspect take up too much time- do you rely on your cooks to do all the cooking? Do you just look in on them once in a while or do you have the time to go in there and start slinging pots and pans? Do you have a manager and if so, how do you find one? Because it seems to me being a chef / running a restaurant are two different occupations.
Actually I was thinking of starting an in-home, small special event, in home private chef business to get my feet wet. Set price + cost of ingredients as a special treat for your anniversary, impress a client, etc. kind of a thing.
That is correct. If you make something onsite, you don’t have to have labels with a list of ingredients, but if you make something offsite and sell it, you are legally required to have the FDA nutrition label and all ingredients listed on the label. The law in Florida is clear: if you sell it, it must be made in a commercial, FL Dept. of Ag. inspected kitchen.
I can give away my home-kitchen jams all day, no problem. It’s taking money for the product where I run into the red tape thingy.
And yes, to sell at my local farmer’s markets, I would, at the very least, need to apply for a permit with the farmer’s market. They don’t want just any freak showing up selling pies outta the trunk of the car, you know?
Why do you say gloves don’t do anything about food safety? (I get squicked out to the max watching people mauling food without gloves, and I could share a story or two about why gloves are deemed necessary here. )
When cooking, you should wash your hands frequently, especially if handling meat, so as to prevent the transmission of bacteria from raw to cooked food. Wearing gloves actually tends to interfere with this; basically, every time you take off gloves you need to dispose of them and pull on a new pair, which takes more time than just washing, so people tend not to replace gloves. Gloves also don’t protect against airborne transmission (you’ll notice that experienced cooks tend to sneeze into the crook of the elbow). Unless the cook has an open wound on his hands, gloves really serve no function, and are actually less safe than bare hands as they offer a less secure grip on food and cutlery.
Stranger
I dont want to offend (I seem to remember this may be an issue close to home for you, and if so, ignore this question) but do you see a disproportional number of restaurant workers with drug or alcohol issues?
I have known many servers, bartenders and cooks, and it seems that there is a pretty high number of them who are heavy duty substance users, much more so than what is the norm for this area or age demographic.
I have always thought between the late nights, the close proximity to alcohol and heavy-drinking customers, and then often walking out of a shift with maybe a couple hundred dollars cash (tips) in pocket, it is a perfect job for those who are inclined to enjoy a fast, hard living way of life.
What has your experience been like?
Its mostly like that. Work hard, play hard. Plus a large majority of servers are college-age or nearly so (except for country clubs…whole different animal).
I got severely caught up in that lifestyle. Bust your ass from 4:00pm until midnight, make $300, drink up half of it from 12:30am until 7:00am, sleep until 2:00pm, do it all over again, 5-6 days a week, closed on either Sundays or Mondays.
Its a positively vampiric lifestyle, but I must say that some of the best servers/restaurant workers I ever met were mostly alcoholics (including myself), and they never let their drinking interfere with doing a good job. Most of us can hold it together for a long while before stress triggers binge drinking.
I’ve worked in a lot of awesome restaurants (although not anymore, wife and children forced the lifestyle change years ago) but a part of me will always love it, and as my brother is the executive chef at the most prestigious country club in the greater tristate Cincinnati area and my SIL is the best pastry chef on the planet, I get to live vicariously through them.
Its an interesting, if blurred, life to live.
Trying to keep up the best I can.
Well I live in Alaska and I am proud of our bounty. It is was an aristocrat or some ort of high society figure I would down home it. I think it would make a better show rather than the formalities that they are use to.
Prince William Sound side stripe shrimp sauteed in shell with local spring garlic.
Katchemak Bay Oysters served several ways. Some of the best in the world.
King Crab from The Time Bandit that I got from them.
Some Kenai Red Salmon or Cook inlet white king. Or some Copper River King.
A bit of local beef from the Kiltchers. (Jewles Family.)
And Some moose or local Hog. Spit roasted on a water wheel.
Loads of local vegetables roasted and grilled.
Out Doors with plenty of Local beer and mead form the local meadery and brewerey.
With all the eclectic mix of farmers fisherman and ranchers that raised and harvested it and or brewed it.
The Tiglax. Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge boat based here in Homer, Alaska.
Scientists are great to cook for. That is why I would love to take a stint in Antarctica. I worked on the North Slope Oil Fields cooking for roughnecks at a work camp and it was the most miserable job ever. Probably Identical conditions in Antarctica but scientists are much more my type.
I would try not to piss anyone off on a boat. You are kinda stuck with them.