Monster Mega-Post: Beware!

I want to apologize in advance of this long post. But enjoy, nevertheless.

Monday and Tuesday of this week were not all that busy at TR. However, due to the down time and the slow post-Thanksgiving weekend, I was pretty productive. This weekend I rolled around 150 springrolls and nearly 200 potstickers. I also got to try my hand at making the Marionberry Crostadas. D. made the filling, but I made the crust and formed the crostadas, which Chef. J. said were "beautiful". Then the owner A. said the "look good and small even better!" This was after I had pulled them from the oven, the Marionberry filling bubbling slightly and the edges of the crust a nice golden hue. So that made me feel pretty good, to be sure.

In other food news, I tried my hand at cooking with the wok Tuesday night. I made myself Mongolian Scallion Beef. Delicious! I mean, it's not ready to be served to paying guests, but it's far from awful. I didn't quite get all the sauce distributed properly, but that's okay for the first time. I learned that it is a lot harder to flip food in a wok than in a saute pan. Here's a quick step-by-step on how we make this dish:
1) Heat 3 spoonfulls of oil in wok (btw, the spoons probably measure a cup each). While heating, get 10 oz. of pre-dredged beef and a large handful of scallions, cut 1" long.
2) Oil velvet (i.e. fry in the wok) beef. Use the wok spoon (maybe more of a shovel) to keep beef separated while cooking.
3) Drain wok, keeping beef on the side. Saute garlic, dried chilis, and chili flakes.
4) Add in about half a spoon of Dark Sauce (our house sauce which I make), and 3 T sugar. Stir until caramelized.
5) Toss in beef and scallions. Toss to coat beef in sauce.
6) Serve over or beside rice.

This dish doesn't have a lot of complexity to it; rather, it's the speed at which all this occurs that makes this a tough dish to cook. I think I did okay for my first time though. And I'm getting better at cleaning the wok too. Baby steps.

Something else I learned this week, not TR menu related, is about snakes in China. Chef M. (who pronounces snake "snaket") was telling me that the majority of snakes in China prefer the southern (more tropical) regions of China, especially cobras. Yikes! Did you know that snakes HATE the smell of mint?! They will not slither through mint plants, they would rather go around. Also, for non-venomous snake bites Chinese medicine dictates making a dressing out of mint leaves to apply to the bite. Supposed to be very helpful and curative. Also, cobra soup is supposed to be extremely healthy in Chinese medicine, even to the point of healing osteoporosis (sp?) and arthritis. Chef M. said that's why cobra soup is so expensive...

When there is a lot of down time in the kitchen and there isn't a whole lot of prep to do, I clean. Tuesday I cleaned the freezer, walk-in refrigerator, butcher table, front line, pantry area, and then some. But I would like to remind you that I don't do windows. Or dogs. Sorry.

And a final not, we got a new beer on tap this week, for those that are interested. It is Mac & Jack's African Amber. This is one of my personal favorite beers. So I'm excited about that...

Hope you enjoyed and/or learned something from this rather large post. Happy December!

-K.

TR Catering

Last night we had our first catering gig in our reception area upstairs. It was for a wedding reception with around 130 guests. We made linguine with roasted chicken and pesto, pork spring rolls, our house salad, and braised chicken with roasted parsnips. All the food went really quickly and there weren't any complaints that I heard. The wedding party was very grateful. It was pretty hectic and crazy for a while (they wanted the food to be served right around the dinner rush in the main dining area of the restaurant). Crazy busy! But we made it through with relatively few setbacks. I now have a small sense of how catering an event may work. I think next time we cater an event, we'll do better because we'll have more details and methods worked out. I'm kind of excited to do it again!

And a group of my friends came in for dinner last night. It was fun to see them, though I didn't get to chat too much because of how busy we were. But it was still nice to see them. Kind of made my day.

Peace.

-K.

Kinda gross...

This week I learned how to clean out the deep fryer. Wow, gross.

First I drained all the old oil into a huge stockpot, then had to push and scrape all the sunken bits through the drain too. I had to use a bent-up clothes hanger to reach all the way down into the bottom of the fryer.

After emptying the stockpot into a HUGE oil drum outside (with help from my boss because the stockpot was way too heavy for one person), next came the buckets of hot soapy water, metal scrubber, and long Homer-Simpson-ish gloves. Scrubbing all the little bits off the sides of the fryer was gross, especially when one particularly stubborn piece came up and hit me in the face. Jerk of a tidbit!

After washing all the soapy water out and emptying the stockpot again, it was time to fill the fryer back up with fresh oil. The jugs of oil probably weigh around 25 lbs each, and it takes two full jugs to fill the fryer. Hooray!

But on the bright side, Chef J said that's the cleanest he's ever seen the deep fryer since we opened almost four months ago. On the other hand, he's been so impressed with my cleaning that sometimes I fear I'll become more of the cleaner/dish washer and less of the prep cook. Nah, I don't really think that'll happen...or at least I hope not...

And just in case you're wondering, I don't clean windows or bathrooms.

Have a happy holiday season!

-K.

TR has a website!

www.terracottaredbistro.com

My cousin found this before I did! Thanks!

Just letting you know.

K.

Woah Lamb Shank

That's what I had for dinner tonight. A curry spiced lamb shank, with cannelini (sp?) beans and sauted kale. It was super good. It is one of the new items on our menu that came out yesterday. It's also one of the more expensive items... Still delicious, though.

Some of the other items looked really interesting as well. We have some items I've never worked with before, like swordfish, mahi mahi, scallops, muscles (insert no-muscles-for-me joke here), lamb, kale, swiss chard, tempora batter, marionberry compote, and other things that I can't think of right now.

Today I made the new crostada dessert (little pastries with a marionberry and apple topping) from start to finish. I also made the deep fried ice cream (tempora ice cream). Showing some faith in me, Chef J told me to make the springroll filling and the peanut sauce (for the chicken skewers); he never even came back to check up on me, and then he said "nice." That's a winner in my book. Oh, and I made the bread pudding yet again, and today's was probably the best one I've made. It looked soooooo good. Yum.

Anywho, I just wanted to share a few things, especially about our new menu items. Come on in and check it out!

K.

Just Real Quick

This weekend was super busy. We're in the process of changing our menu to keep it fresh and interesting. Goodbye are the chocolate espresso tarts, the pan roasted chicken, and the pork tenderloin; say hello to the marionberry and roasted apple tartlettes, a new breaded chicken dish (I haven't seen this one yet), and a lamb shank. I got to try the tartlette tonight, and it was so good! We've got a few disagreements on the presentation, but it was so tasty! Oh, and we've changed our house salad dressing from a coconut-anise vinegrette to a new Japanese-style miso dressing. Very tasty. I'm a fan.

Quick recap of the last couple week or so:

On Monday Chef J was in a great mood, which makes working with him a LOT easier. He was in such a good mood that we played a bit of frisbee with a prep plate (smallish metal pans similar to pie plates)! So funny. He's not too good at throwing, but he's passable at catching. It was a good time.

Tuesday, election day, my parents and some close family friends came in for dinner. Chef J of course sent them an extra appetizer, just because he knew it was my mom's favorite. And later, to help celebrate my dad's upcoming birthday, Chef J sent out a little treat he's been thinking about adding to the menu. It was a kind of deep-fried ice cream, wrapped in leftover bread pudding crust and served with a fresh strawberry puree. Absolutely fantastic. I'm not sure if it'll be part of the menu, but I sure hope it is!

Thursday was supposed to be an off day for me, but I got called in to prep for the new menu. I didn't learn much about the new menu, but that's okay. It was also really busy for dinner, so it was good that I was there to help support the other three cooks.

Friday was insanely busy! Lunch, happy hour(s), and dinner were all really crazy. We seemed to be running out of things right and left, and I felt as slow as a sloth, barely able to keep up with the others. In some cases, one of the cooks had to come back, muscle me out of the way, and finish my project because I wasn't getting it done fast enough. Yikes! But later Chef J said that I cleaned up really well after the dinner rush(es). So bring on the grains of salt!

Today (Saturday) was not quite as busy as the previous night, but still constant. And this time, though I felt more tired than Friday, I was able to keep up much better with the demands and requests of the others, from the dishwasher to the head chef. The sous chef, D, even told me that I did great tonight. That certainly felt good. As did one of Chef J's former coworkers, also owner of his own restaurant, who stopped by for dinner. He said that he didn't want to eat anywhere but at TR with Chef J cooking. And knowing that I helped prep Chef J for his success was encouraging.

Today also marked the three month mark of TR being open and my employment at my first job after college. Good times.

Peace and healthy appetites,

K.

Took me long enough, eh?

Below are a few pictures of the restaurant and my workspace. Some of my readers have been requesting these for quite a while, and so finally, here they are.

The first is the prep and storage area of the kitchen. You can see the huge butcher (and really all-purpose) table that I work at most often, the huge freezer, and in the way back is the pantry area. To the right is our walk-in refrigerator; I try to stay out of there because, well, it's cold.

Next is the actual cooking area. My station is the grill, stove, and deep fryer area, along with the cooler looking thing on the near-right side. The wok stations are farther down. Usually there are only three of us in that small space, though on busy nights, there are often all four of us cooks in there.

The final two are the dining rooms: the Chef Room and the main Dining Room. Those are bamboo tables which are very sturdy and very easy to clean. Great combo!

Okay, enough words, on the the pictures:

There you have it, a quick snapshot of my workplace (well, four snapshots I suppose...).

Thanks again for reading. Hope to see you at one of those tables soon!

K.