Cooking Tips from a Writer- Caveat Emptor

June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I asked Carol to search reddit and find the top 10 questions people have about becoming a cook for a chef. Before we even get started, let’s make one thing very clear. Chef (male) and Cheffe (female) mean the same thing- boss. Chefs are your best friend and your worst nightmare on the same fucking day. This is because they’re the liaison between you, the staff, and the owners…. who may or may not know anything about running a restaurant. I told Mel I was feeling Bourdain-ish today. We’ll see what comes out. I don’t think I’m more direct than he is, but I don’t think I’m less………..

“Is being a chef worth it?”
- In all things, it depends. Are you the kind of person who likes to cook, or are you the type of person who likes to manage cooks? It is a very stressful job, because sometimes you’re on the brigade with the rest of us, sweating your ass off….. and sometimes you’re being raked over the coals by the owners, who may or may not have valid points because it depends on how much experience they have. Not every cook is built to be a chef, because not every cook is built to be an executive. Most know that early by watching chefs sweat what job they want very early. As a general rule, yes. But only if you really, really, really love it. You dream about it. You can’t think about anything else but cooking and how the restaurant is doing without you. Otherwise, there will be no joy in your life. The job itself really sucks in terms of how you run your body ragged. But the whole experience is about walking out at the end of the night with a win and feel good tired. It’s a different sense of accomplishment than office workers have at the end of the day.
“Does being a chef pay well?”
- Again, it depends. Have you gone to culinary school? How much experience do you have since then? Have you had any successes in other restaurants? Where have you trained after culinary school? For instance, if you want a job as a chef at a Mexican restaurant, have you ever actually been there? It also matters what kind of job you have. Are you the chef at a small place or a large one? At an institution like Old Ebbett Grill and take a chance on changing *anything?* Being a chef pays well, but it involves a lot of time, dedication, and effort on your part to rise above working in restaurants who won’t pay you what you’re worth if you’re that talented. You also really have to want it. Really. You have to want a life where you work when everyone else plays, and you may never get a holiday with your family ever again. It just depends on the restaurant, and also how quickly you go from being a chef de cuisine into the ranks of executive chef, where you’re not in the kitchen all the time. You’re planning menus, doing inventory, tracking food cost and labor, all of it. That’s why you have to balance why it’s worth becoming a chef, which leads directly into the next question.
“Is it fun being a chef?”
- “Is it fun?” Sometimes. Sometimes it’s a drag because you’re caught up in paperwork. But when you’re actually in the kitchen and vibing with your team, there’s nothing like it. Reminds you of the old days, when you were the one constantly in the shit. You absolutely get high on life and you think you need caffeine to make it through. You don’t. Your body makes adrenaline like water under that much pressure. Our addiction to caffeine is at keeping up that breakneck pace, not that it’s impossible with enough time and sleep to let your muscles heal from all the ways you’re currently abusing them. Now, let’s talk about working in a kitchen when you’re not a chef. It is the biggest fucking ride of your life and you will never forget it. You’ll never live a life like it, and even if you leave relatively quickly, you’ll remember the kitchen fondly because you were being taught how to do something well that serves you every day of your life. We get to the kitchen early to prepare the mise, the containers and backups of prepared food like you see at a fast casual restaurant. Even fine dining has all their stations laid out like that, because “gotta move fast, gotta perform miracles.”
“Do I need special education to be a chef?”
- Yes, and here’s how I think an education would best serve you. Get a job in a restaurant and see if you can hack it for a year without missing a day. See how many times you can impress your chef so that when they look at your food, they don’t find something you did wrong. If, at the end of that year, you still feel like you want to be the ringmaster, then go to culinary school. Learning on the job first is half the battle, because there are so many kids with no restaurant experience that go to culinary school They get in debt, and then they graduate with a huge flaw in their plans…………… they don’t actually like working in a restaurant.
“What can I do now to become a chef in the future?”
- Watch every instructional video you possibly can on knife skills- not only the cut, but how to sharpen a knife as well. Because there are cheap chef’s knives that you can try out before you commit to a Japanese thousand fold, take the time to find your knife. It needs to fit perfectly in your hand, and the YouTube videos will tell you the difference between European and Asian cutting techniques. I prefer a handle that’s molded to me using French style, a basic octagonal handle when I’m using Japanese-style (more efficient in some ways. Depends on what I’m doing). However, I mean a Japanese chef’s knife with an octagonal handle. I would want a French-style handle on a santoku knife as well. The main thing is that the longer you use it, the more it feels like an extension of your hand. You start with knife skills because that’s the first thing Chef/the kitchen manager will notice. Can you handle yourself on prep? “I want this box of onions julienned.” You have half an hour. They don’t have to say it. That’s literally all the time you have left before service. Anything you don’t finish may or may not get done during the shift depending on how busy the restaurant is, but I’ll be back at it as soon as things calm down. I cannot leave without my prep list done at the end of the night, and doing pars for what I need to prep the next day. If I forget, I will go back to the restaurant, even if the next day is my day off.
“How do I improve my knife skills for cooking?”
- People assume that dull knives are better because obviously, they’re not as sharp. However, it’s counterintuitive as a dull knife will slip, making it more likely than less that you’ll have an accident. I do not recommend electric sharpeners at all. Either learn how to use the stones or take it to someone if you value your knife. Even a good electric sharpener comes with no guarantee it won’t eat a chef’s knife for breakfast.
- Again, instructional videos on YouTube so that you can hold your hands just like they do. So that you can see the cuts up close. Joshua Weissman is my favorite YouTube chef, but I don’t know if he has a video on basic knife skills. I can’t imagine that he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, Anthony Bourdain does. I can’t watch it anymore unless I’m really in the mood for it. It’s hard to see him be happy on camera because it just makes me miss the light that he was.
- Expensive does not mean better when it comes to a knife. The care and maintenance on a Japanese thousand fold is not the same. The reason those knives exist is that they are heirlooms, the kind of present you get when you become a chef. They’re not just knives, they’re the knives you hope your great grandchildren use with pleasure. Just like with wine, buy what you like.
“What’s the best way to learn about different cuisines?”
- You, and I can’t stress this enough, go there. And you won’t always learn the most from having a stage in a foreign restaurant. It may come from working locally and meeting people’s grandmothers. Restaurants cannot hold a candle to grandmothers. If you are in the US, you are blessed beyond all measure. Most of our cooking is built on ancestors from somewhere else. Therefore, you have access to a lot of culinary education just because a friend of a friend has a Georgian or Brazilian or South African grandmother. Miracles happen every day, you just have to know where to find them. Research is shit when it comes to food because you can’t Google it. You have to go there and taste the way the dish is made in the context in which it is generally prepared. I am not talking about the general public. I’m talking about chefs who want to specialize, like if I wanted to become a Mexican chef rather than an American chef, I’d have to live in Mexico a long time before I was ready to commit to working professionally. I need to prove to abuelita that I have my shit together.
“How do I handle the pressure in a busy kitchen?”
- By having a two second out of body experience while you synthesize the information coming back at you. If you say “heard,” the next words will be “call back,” and if you didn’t slow down enough to hear, you will not be able to tell the chef what they just told you. Congratulations, you’re an idiot. The biggest hurdle to overcome is all the negativity that comes at you, because you have to shake things off immediately and move on. If you need to cry in the walk-in, it better be quick. We’ve all had those days when it’s all coming at us at once. But there’s more than just crying in the walk-in because you’re frustrated. Working long hours on grill when it’s open flame makes sitting in the freezer for a few minutes every couple of hours invaluable. The hardest break to take is having to go to the bathroom. The easiest break to take is having a smoke. No one gives a shit if you need to pee or if you just need a break. However, too many chefs have seen what happens when their cooks have nic fits in the middle of a shift. It’s how they get a break, and how non-smokers do a lot of work when people are feeling lazy. Loooooot more nic fits when there’s “nothing to do.”
“What are the essential tools every chef should have?”
- A set of pots and pans that heat evenly and everything has a lid. You should do your own research, but I have All-Clad.
- Spending the most you can afford on equipment for the restaurant and thus, me, and leaving the dishes and glassware to be picked up in the resale bin. You cannot afford to replace anything at $50 a wine glass when a customer or the dishwasher has an oopsie and destroys a whole case in the machine because they’re too delicate. That particular idea is from “Kitchen Confidential,” but it’s not like I don’t have the experience. I just didn’t write about it before he did.
- A chef’s knife fit to height, and you need to experiment with which length is right for you. I am only 5’2. A 12-in chef’s knife is like seeing me in an XXL t-shirt.
- A really, really good bread knife. Not only do you need the serrated edge for the crust, they’re handy when you have to break the skin on something, like a tomato or a bell pepper.
- A set of spatulas that are silicon and won’t get hot if you accidentally leave them in the pan.
- Cambros (storage containers of different sizes, same lids)
- Scoops of varying sizes to ensure portion control/food cost.
- There are a whole lot of things that fall under “etc.” here, but I promise you that 99% of the job is done with two knives and a spatula…. unless you have a flat top, and then I prefer dough cutters in both hands.
- Comfortable shoes, because you need something that makes it where your feet don’t hurt after being on them for 12-14 hours a day up to seven days a week.
“What’s the role of creativity in cooking?”
- Being able to adjust to anything on the fly. You never know what’s coming. If you get yourself into a mess, you better know how to get out of it. Luckily, the cooking fundamentals work across the ethnicity of the food. Acid neutralizes salt to some degree and starch will soak up the rest. Fat will support a lot of heat and spice. The more fat, the more Scovilles. Having anything sugary on the side is what makes riding the line between pain and pleasure so much fun- like habanero fudge ice cream at Pix Patisserie in Portland, OR….. which also falls under the “more fat” category. I don’t use heat to excess just for the hell of it. Whatever I’m cooking must have enough flavor to support that level of heat. For instance, acid, heat, and sugar mixing immediately in a fruit salsa. The way I shop never has to change. I don’t plan for what to cook, I work with what I have. Necessity is the mother of invention, and it creates flavor combinations that you wouldn’t have thought of before. If you don’t learn to step out on a limb to cook on principles and only follow recipes, then you are not a creative home cook- and that’s okay. Knowing how to execute a recipe is a skill Julia Child taught millions of people how to do that, even me before I married a chef and became French-trained by proxy. I’m not even sure I can follow a recipe because by the time I’ve gotten to the second paragraph, I’m like, “mmmmmm that’s not how we do that.” Creativity comes from tasting. Always. Rise above the recipe, and just feel it out. You can look up the technical details on YouTube, but only you know what spice levels you’ll tolerate. If something is bordering on inedible, sometimes full fat plain yogurt will kill the burn. Good luck. God bless.
- But again, the most important role creativity plays in the kitchen is recovering from mistakes. I cannot stress this enough.

Laughing So Hard You Must Send Help

November 17, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I made pasta with pesto. It was an entire box of spaghetti, so I just ate as much as I wanted and put the rest away. Pasta acts as a sponge and gets dry overnight in the fridge, so rather than eating too-dry pasta, I just made a second sauce. You can do that with pasta, and it tastes better than reheating the same thing. Tomorrow, I might add diced tomatoes.

Today, it was Alfredo. I browned some pumpkin seeds in salted butter, adding garlic powder and black pepper. Then, I added flour. The flour sauteed for a few seconds as I got out my whisk and milk (it’s important to have the heat very low for roux. Gives you more time to catch a mistake). I do not know how much flour. I whisk in milk slowly. I don’t know how much of that, either. If I add too much, it will take longer because I will have to wait for the sauce to reduce before I can add the Parmesan-Romano.

I am a professional cook and do everything by feel and palate. It’s not “being a snob,” it’s 10 years of experience at work, my entire adult life at home. A roux just a 1:1 Tbsp. ratio flour/butter and a half cup of milk being exact, but you can break the rules if you know how to follow them. If I know what the sauce is supposed to look like, I can change gears on the fly, where butter is clutch and flour is accelerator. Some people measure. I guesstimate accurately, and there are very few mistakes in flavor I cannot fix; I really only throw things away if they’re burnt, or, God forbid there’s blood on it now (accidents happen).

I am telling you what to do because I know what I’m doing, not because this is some kind of food magic only I possess… and that’s actually the point of this entry. When I was cooking, I was thinking about one of my last entries in which I talked about running a kitchen at home, and today I was thinking that relationships are so telling by how you work in one. If you are in a relationship, dinner is always a two-man job. I know that this is impossible every single night, I just think that whoever is home should participate. Both “stations” suck, so trade off.

One person is mostly the cook, one person is mostly on dish. There is a chef and a sous, because it’s easier for one person to manage the recipe and assign parts out. The most essential thing that a sous can do is be available. Chop the onions. Grate the cheese. Most importantly, wash every pot and pan as they’re done using it. There are some things where you can cook and clean at the same time, like if I have a rice cooker going and I want sausage to go on top or whatever. Those things are going to be done at such different times that I can handle it.

But having a pot washer is invaluable with pasta because the pasta goes into the collander, then back into the pot. You pour the sauce from the saute pan into the pasta pot so you can mix/reheat. The other person washes the saute pan and the collander, because the person mixing pasta has gone on to plating. Once the food is plated, one person can carry everything out while the other washes the pasta pot.

When the pasta pot is clean, the only thing left is putting plates and silverware into the dishwasher.

It takes teamwork to run a kitchen that smoothly, but it will change your life on days where you eat all three meals at home. Plus, it’s easier for me to social mask around all that stuff. Being in a partnership reminds me to do things like eat.

I look forward to cooking with Zac one day, because he does like it. He buys all kinds of interesting things for me to discover when I’m housesitting, like blocks of haloumi cheese that I seared with za’atar (that was so good I ate most of it right out of the pan). That being said, when we’ve gotten together we’ve either gone out or to Trader Joe’s, where inevitably there will be something new and different we must buy immediately.

My favorite meal we’ve eaten together is Korean fried chicken. I do like the flavor of southern fried chicken, but not like I love this. I could eat soy garlic or spicy chicken every day for the rest of my life (just not exclusively). Most people eat chicken, veggies, and rice in some combination most days. If you have a close, deep, personal relationship with Popeyes, Korean fried chicken will be up there on your list, too. It’s also almost as good to take off the skin if you have to avoid high-fat, because the marinade is just as good as the sauce. Plus, cooking it on the bone will yield better results than taking out the skin and bones beforehand (morbid, yet true). There’s a reason drums and flats are more popular than boneless. Not the same playing field.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I do like chicken nuggets. I just don’t like McNuggets. I think they taste fake. I do like grocery store chicken, like Dino Nuggets. They’re great with a little salt, pepper, and garlic before you put them in the oven. Season them just like you would patties for a chicken sandwich- ditto for vegetarian or vegan Quorn. Quorn nuggets and patties are my go-to at home.

This is because I also like to buy my own wing sauce rather than buying nuggets that are just “Buffalo flavored.” :::stares in Morningstar Farms::: Right now my favorite wing sauce is ghost pepper and tastes more on the Sriracha end of the spectrum than Buffalo. I pair it with Daiya bleu cheese most of the time. If I have time, I’ll make it. Cream dressings are one of the few things that it’s easier for me to make than buy because the ingredients are so cheap. Even if I was a millionaire, it would not make sense to me to pay for mayo I was going to use in a dressing. I would only use the dressing for one night. I would need the preservatives in pre-made mayo.

Thinking about the jobs you have in the kitchen requires both understanding what they want to eat. The thing that my ex-wife and I learned in a restaurant was how to divide up a recipe without thinking, at home or at work (she was my first chef… which is cute to the point of nausea). If she was grilling, I was making sides. If people were coming over and it was a bigger operation, we were both making sides and rotating who went out to flip the bird in front of the neighbors. 😉

The thing that made our relationship work in the kitchen is that I liked making sides and Dana liked grilling, but if she didn’t feel like it, I could grill and she could make sides. Both jobs were important, and we were both outstanding cooks. It was nice to both be competent so we didn’t have to do anything, we chose which jobs we wanted.

In our professional kitchen, I liked making things like eggs, pancakes, and oatmeal. She also liked eggs, but liked being on the meat side of the griddle- I can only assume because she was a butcher (butcher than what?).

When my father got the job in the Heights, my mother met another piano player and they used to do four handed duets together. I loved how all four parts fit together, and there’s not a better description in my mind now that Dana and I were always a two-handed duet and oh, dear God I just heard it.

I can’t top that. I’m dead.

A Mel of An Entry

September 30, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Mel is a chef in England who loves my food posts, so I keep thinking of writing them, especially as the food entries climb to the top of the leaderboard. I got this writing prompt from a web page called “19 Creative Writing Prompts About Food for Kids.” This seems to be in my natural age bracket. I’m 46, but I identify as a nine-year-old, I just say “fuck” a lot more. 😉

Describe a trip to the supermarket. What kind of food do you find there? What would you buy? How much would you buy and why?

I follow the Michael Pollan rule at the grocery store. Don’t shop in the middle. Everything you need is on the outer rim. To add to that, the aisles are a trap of advertising the new and most convenient thing, but it’s not always food. As Pollan also says, “don’t eat anything your great grandparents wouldn’t recognize as food.” I also adhere to this last piece of advice: “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.”

I only eat meat when I go out because I don’t like preparing it at home. So, I will tell you what I think in terms of an omnivore’s diet, which for me is mostly vegan with all bets being off if I’m outside the house. I feel like I’m showing I take Pollan seriously. I do eat “mostly plants,” even when they taste like Italian sausage.

As an aside, one of the best meals I’ve ever had was ordering a Beyond Italian sausage on a bun in a restaurant, because in a restaurant they’ll drop them into the deep fryer. If you’re a vegan, buying a deep fryer is a lot of fun because there’s not a lot of saturated fat in the food, so you can afford to let loose on preparation. Deep fried sausage would taste good even if the sausage originally didn’t. You can cover up a lot of shit with fat, more if the protein is breaded. A good example would be that you may not like Beyond Beef or Impossible Burgers, but you’d have a foodgasm if I served vegan “chicken fried steak.” But people get touchy about that stuff. The idea is off-putting, so they won’t touch it. I’m never going to get people to try vegan food by telling them it’s good. We don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it. (oh, and even the most hardened vegan can relax about deep fried foods. The temperature is high enough to destroy ALL biologicals. This is not true of a flat top. Beef *will* get on your Impossible Burger at Burger King if you don’t tell them to microwave it instead……… but that little bit of beef fat is really fucking good.)

I’m also not the person that likes to fool people for fun.

I don’t categorize my diet at all. I’ll just tell you what I eat, because I’ve already told you the rules.

“Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.”

I swear to you, this advice is better than you think it is. You are better off counting calories than counting fat grams and carbs. Just make sure you stay under 2,000 calories a day. You could have a healthy heart and eat a stick of butter that way. Fat in and of itself is not bad. Calories are simple math, don’t force them into calculus. You will naturally slim down by eating more plants because you won’t be eating all saturated fat and you can eat way more of things that have very few calories and plenty of vitamins. You’ll also stop craving so much sugar by eating fruit. It’s not that your body doesn’t crave sugar, it just needs complex carbohydrates and Hot Tamales won’t cut it (I am bad about taking my own advice. Hot Tamales are life.)

I cook with concepts, so I’d start with a couple of ideas.

When buying staples, you want to duplicate salts and sugars. For instance, a dish will taste better with soy sauce AND salt, or brown AND white sugar. It adds complexity, more notes in the chord. I also like to double up on fats, because olive oil can withstand higher temperatures and butter has a completely different flavor profile. You can go on baking your turkey with butter alone, but mine is better and I haven’t even tasted yours. 😉

A NOTE ABOUT STAPLES

You’re going to think laying out serious cash for staples is a mistake. Let me tell you why it’s not. Good salts, sugars, vinegars, and oils will obviously last a lot longer than the proteins you’re cooking with them. $200 spent on those things will last six months to a year depending on what you’re making, whereas you’re buying protein and veggies every week.

With expensive staples, you can afford to buy everything else on the cheap. Cooking isn’t down and dirty when I’m making a Filet Mignon. I’ve started with the best ingredient, so it’s automatically going to be worth three stars. Give me a meal that’s three stars when you started with chicken backs and necks. That’s when you’ll lose the audience because the idea of a desperately cheap ingredient that tastes bad is stuck in their minds when they think of peasant food. In my world, they don’t matter. I’m not here to impress you, I’m here to impress David Chang, who would know implicitly that I started with garbage and made him a feast. Because that’s how he cooks, and Bourdain before him.

Editor’s Note:

Here’s the dirty secret to peasant food.

Food is beholden to gentrification. If I made a flatiron for someone 30 years ago, it would have cost about the same as picking it out of the garbage. Rich white people found out what you could do with a flatiron, and now it’s an expensive steakhouse item and five to ten times what it used to cost before it was valuable to Karen and Chad. How did it get valuable so fast? There’s only two flatirons per cow.

If you’re going to make the next trend, peasant food also requires the best in spices. I would prefer to buy it all fresh, but I can’t find that and neither can you. I can always find basil, oregano, rosemary, mint, and cilantro. Harder to find more than that, but I do recommend buying them when you’re actually going to cook something within a few days, and just buy a small amount, otherwise, it will be as rotted as the salad you bought with the best of intentions.

In my own kitchen, whether it’s vegan or dairy, I like to have plain yogurt on hand. It is useful for everything breakfast and everything that needs an emergency dollop of sour cream, like putting too much ghost pepper sauce in your eggs. Also, yogurt is the best at cooling Indian dishes. You don’t have to make raita. Vindaloo is just as good with plain Greek yogurt.

Moving on, sauces are easy to make if you have containers to store them. They just won’t have preservatives in them, and there’s no shame in buying them because of it. I like Grey Poupon just as much as the next person. I also have never attempted ghost pepper wing sauce, but I eat a hell of a lot of it.

However, I’ll tell you how to make the sauces I use most frequently, even though I’ve explained some of them before. Fresh salad dressing is so much better, especially with fresh herbs. You just don’t need as much fresh vs. dry.

Top of my list is mayonnaise, but I hardly ever leave it plain. I could live on vegan Hellman’s for the rest of my life….. I make my own mayonnaise when I’m branching out into salad dressings or burger toppings…. pasta salad is also a hit around here.

You need a large bowl and whisk or a blender. I recommend a blender because mayonnaise is so much easier with both hands free.With a bowl and whisk, get ready for a workout because you’ll be holding the bottle above the eggs and whisking them simultaneously and it’s a bitch if you haven’t done it a thousand times with a chef watching to make sure it’s perfect.

You need three egg yolks, a bottle of good oil (canola, grapeseed, and avocado are all very good), and some acid. Lemon juice is classic, but other vinegars are just as good or better. I do white vinegar the most often because it tastes like the “tangy zip of Miracle Whip.” However, I have made creamy ginger salad dressing with lemon juice and sesame oil.

How thick or thin it is depends on ratio, but you can thin it out with a small amount of water (an excellent fix if you feel it start to break, and you will definitely feel it….. it’s like watching a bowl of spaghetti sauce balanced precariously on a table knowing you’re the klutzy five-year-old.)

The easiest way to get egg yolks (for me) is to crack all of them into a soup bowl and carefully pick up the yolks, placing them into the blender or mixing bowl. Please for the love of God do not tell me you have an egg separator. In cooking, your best allies are your hands. You can learn to separate eggs with a gadget, but you know implicitly when all the eggs whites have left your hand. Just don’t pick up more than one at a time. They’ll break, and you’ll have to start over.

Editor’s Note:

Always put a cutting board down if you’re going to crack eggs. Egg whites on your countertops are an invitation to food sickness. After you’ve cooked with eggs, it’s very important to scrub down all your surfaces, because egg whites are invisible. Also, much easier to use a cutting board if you dampen a tea towel and put it under. It will keep the board from moving as you chop if you’re working with plastic (or wooden and not as heavy as a butcher block). My recommendation for how to clean the kitchen no matter what is a few drops of Dawn in a bucket of warm water. It will strip the oils and biologicals off of anything, superior to something like 409 in my opinion because I’ve never worked in a kitchen where we used multipurpose cleaner instead of Dawn. If it bubbles too much, just wipe with a towel and use less soap next time. 😉

Once you get the eggs yolks in the mixing bowl/blender, add your acid- one tablespoon of whatever. Whether you’re mixing or using a blender, the acid will make the egg yolks turn white. In French, that’s called the sabayon stage, and it’s the signal you can start pouring in the oil.

I don’t have any set amount of oil to add, because I just add it until I have what I need. Three egg yolks, I’ve found, will support a large amount of oil. So, whether I’m making one meal or several, I just keep whisking until the gods whisper to stop.

At this point, you can add anything you want. I will always add a pinch of salt, but anything else is a no-go unless the mayonnaise is a compound, like, say, blue cheese dressing. Salad dressing is not fancy. It’s just mayonnaise with stuff in it. So, you can literally throw anything you want at mayonnaise and it will adjust. Throw in some garlic powder or roasted garlic, it’s an aioli. Ranch dressing is probably the most complicated on the list, and not because it’s technically more difficult. You have to shop for more herbs and spices (I also add fresh tarragon- it’s not for everyone, but I love it). For burgers, I just throw in a little ketchup and sweet relish. A good pesto sauce will rock your face with mayonnaise. You can make a killer blue cheese dressing by buying all the ingredients for ranch and just adding blue cheese crumbles to it. Either of these dressings taste much better after the flavors marry, so leaving it in the fridge overnight is advisable before you serve.

For dressings, I really like sesame oil. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Mixing it with any kind of vinegar or citrus is just amazing. Put your oil and acid in a jar with fresh herbs and shake. You’ll have to shake it every time you use it, but it will still taste better than anything you could buy.

Peasant food is also things like lunch meat. For instance, shaved ham that you bought at Dollar Tree can be transformed with eggs, jalapenos, and butter….. even better if you have nopales as well.

I can also cook the hell out of Spam.

The trick is to get it so thin it looks like it’s been shaved, but not quite. Then, respect first contact and put it on medium-low heat (a three on electric). Walk away. Don’t touch it. Call an adult. No, seriously. It will take about 10 minutes per side (I think…. I’d just look at it and decide if it had enough color on it rather than setting a timer. Instructions are for um…. civilians.) What you’re looking for with Spam is the same carmelization that you’d get on plain ham or bacon. It’s red, then brown, then black. I like cooking Spam until it turns the color of the caramel on a creme brulee. What you end up with is something that’s crispy and perfect on the outside, a little mealy inside. Perfect for breakfast or diced for a hell of a fried rice, though I’d also saute pineapple in butter and carmelize it before adding it.

(Mel, shut it. This is Hawaiian friend rice. ;))

The staples you can skimp on are things like rice and beans. The no-name is going to taste exactly the same as brand, including buying them raw in nondescript bags and preparing them yourself.

I would explain to you how to make rice, except that making rice over the stove is hard to me when rice cookers are as low as $14, the only specialty item I have in my kitchen because it also does grains like oatmeal, brown rice, millet, quinoa, etc. You can learn to make rice over the stove from someplace else. I have $14. Why spend time explaining something that will actively make you stop reading? 😉

I don’t use water when I make rice, though. I use vegetable stock. I also don’t generally make rice plain, so I keep lots of dried cherries, cranberries, nuts, and seeds around. This is also useful for breads and pancakes, so dried fruit and flax seeds are a minimum for me. I also have hemp hearts, chia seeds, cashews, walnuts, almonds, sesame seeds, and pumpkin seeds. Putting these things into bread/carbs gets me the protein I need in addition to Beyond sausage dropped in a deep fryer (praise to you, Lord Christ).

Let’s wrap up by talking about drink staples.

I will not buy skim anything.It is devoid of everything about milk that is good for you, including taste. Plus, if you are not putting full-fat milk in your coffee, you are allowing the acid to have free reign. Let the acid bind to fat and your stomach might have a fighting chance. I use soy milk since it’s the thickest of the plant milks, but only because I can get it shipped by the case from Amazon. If I was buying from the grocery store, I’d probably buy Ripple, which my dad will be pleased to find out is not, in fact, a 40. It’s milk derived from pea plants. I call it “Gregor Mendilk.” I like it in coffee because it’s a little sweeter, like lactose free.

Always buy decent coffee. It’s like a gift to future you. However, what many people don’t do is buy a pack of Folgers and mix the expensive coffee with it. I prefer a very, very dark roast, so you won’t notice the difference and you’ll only have to buy coffee once a month or two (the time savings alone make it worth it). I also recommend having a backup Folgers, because it will keep forever. You know what’s worse than having cheap coffee? Getting up at 0500 and realizing you don’t have any coffee.

I also buy Stash teabags in obnoxious quantities. I’m going to have to buy some loose leave at some point, because I think it would be cheaper than using two or three bags at a time in the Keurig. I use that much tea in the Keurig because what you lose with it is steeping time. If you are using a kettle and pot (microwave water and you are dead to me), I recommend steeping for a lot longer than the British do. I’ll leave my teabags in for 11 minutes if that’s what it takes. I want my tea to be as full-bodied as coffee, which generally means letting it sit longer.

My mind has just been wandering regarding food. Like, what is it I really know? What advice do I have to pass on?

I don’t. I am passing on everything I have ever learned. Just follow the rules.

Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.

Writing a Letter, Part II

September 29, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Mel,

I thought you might enjoy a food post since you’re in “learning a new kitchen” hell right now. I hope you’ll think of me when it’s time for your shiftie. If you don’t get this, I completely understand. See you in three years.

Love,

Leslie

When I think of food, I think of Mel, because she has jumped on the bandwagon of telling me to write more about it.

Because I am not up on current trends, I pick her brain looking for inspiration. I ask her food questions, she sends me pictures of Bletchley Park. It’s an even exchange. This is because asking her questions about food gives her energy. Getting the pictures is just a bonus. I don’t remember what food we were talking about at last interaction, I just think of her in general, the chef who can tell me about food culture in England and yet we’re tracking together like white on rice due to Escoffier’s meticulous detail.

If you have worked in a professional kitchen, you are beholden to him. The entire system was made by him. That’s why Julia Child was a tough motherfucker, and my language skills aren’t good enough to tell you how much of an understatement it is when you go through a program like that while female now. She was the first.

Working for OSS in Technical Services carrying around highly classified information is way less dangerous, but she did that, too. The reality is that there’s probably more sexual harassment and rape in kitchens/culinary schools than there is at OSS. I could be wrong. Those things are everywhere. Men do not like competition, and when their words fail, their fists come out- with other men. There’s a special hell for smart women, because few men truly recognize female brilliance when they see it. They’re programmed to be annoyed.

This is not any less true in the kitchen. It’s harder for women to speak up in all fields, but the kitchen is its own kind of hell because when you’re working that closely, you can’t help but touch each other. Assault happens every day of your life if some guy decides you deserve it, and some guy will. It hasn’t happened to me in every job consistently, but it has happened to me in every job. Every male line cook who has ever stood next to me saw me as his assistant. Every goddamn one.

We were paid the same, we had the same rights and responsibilities, and every day Daddy Knows Best. Nothing changes, whether they’re shit or fantastic. Male line cooks won’t ask women for advice unless they’re so young we have a matronly vibe to us- because they know they’re both screwed and scared and they can’t talk to anyone else. Men will not ask women anything until they’re afraid they’re going to lose their jobs and they have no choice but to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable to another male line cook is deadly for all kinds of personal and professional reasons….. one of them being that they’ll start treating the vulnerable kid like they treat women. Sexual harassment is real for men at work, because the amount of towel snapping and ass grabbing is highly regulated….. amongst each other.

Food isn’t worth it if you’re female. It’s just not. Those misogynistic French bastards took the thing women had been doing for millions of years unsung and decided it was valid when they learned. Just one of the many things women regret teaching men because thinking that women are the way they are (intellectually more stumped yet emotionally intelligent to the prehistoric) has so often come from theft. I can’t even imagine the numbers on an intellectual property lawsuit covering all women everywhere.

I am not saying women should quit (go on strike, really). I am saying that if you are female, you pursue this job because you can’t fucking do anything else. This is your passion, your drive, your coffee, your cocaine….. when you are high as hell on adrenaline after a rush, it becomes as primal a thrill as can be had legally. You dream pars and food cost. You have no idea what to do with yourself before 5:00PM. Days off are a story they tell little kids. Your family is a distant memory.

You didn’t come here to win. You came here to own the whole fucking thing.

And that’s what I’m thinking about when I think about Mel taking on a new kitchen. She can handle herself just fine. But I hope she has a me on the line, because there comes a time in every young man’s life where he will not accept female authority and needs to be disabused of the notion. This is probably best done by a chef barking down. But when they don’t, there’s safety in numbers and laughter in revenge.

I hope it’s going well for her. At least well enough to get a “heard.”

The Smell of Failure

September 21, 2023September 21, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

Anthony Bourdain hit rock bottom, and afterward he got a gig as a brunch cook. Therefore, in “Kitchen Confidential,” one of my favorite lines was that “hollandaise was the smell of failure.”

I believe that for entirely different reasons.

I had to clean the egg pans with lemon dish soap for a while at my own brunch gig. It ruined the taste of Hollandaise for me permanently. Not enough Old Bay in the world. Jesus could come back, bless it himself and I’d still be all like, “nahhhhh, fam….. you go ahead.” But I would have made him the best Hollandaise he’d ever had even if it was just the first. I can cook the things I don’t like, too. I’ve never done liver and onions in my own house, though my dad and stepmom have served me fois gras at theirs. It’s not that I can’t put up with the taste so much as the smell of it while it’s cooking. Smell is primal with me. Bad ones make me throw up at their memory. I know that I would have eventually learn to cope if I’d been a doctor, but I would have thrown up at a lot of things first and second year.

I will try something even if I don’t like it, so the fois gras had its excellent points, especially the raspberry jam against the perfect crispness of the liver. I just can’t get over the taste and smell of iron no matter whether it’s Luby’s or Le Pigeon.

It would be great if my greatest epic fail was throwing up into a stock pot and having to start something over because of the smell. It’d really tie the room together. But no. I was talking about how cooking informs the rest of your life before I get down to the nitty gritty. Plus, I’m ADHD, and every thought comes with bonus content.

I want you to know that I know what I’m talking about even when I’ve come across as a dumbass to chefs. I can describe it better than I can do it, just like Bourdain. He was a journeyman in the kitchen, a chef in the New York Times. His logical mind was in the kitchen while his heart poured onto the page, just like me….. unique on the page and mundane in my technique. But my creativity in writing comes across in new ideas rather than how many covers I cook for that night. I read recipe books like novels because I am not going to follow them. I’m going to look at spice combinations and see if it works in some dishes, or reference how to braise something because I can look at what part of a recipe matters and what doesn’t. What concepts will translate and what has to be specific. For instance, the instructions in how to get a medium rare on a steak with a cast iron skillet is useful in braising, period. You cannot take a Japanese palate and mix it with a Russian’s without studying its components and adjusting. For instance, I think Russians/Finns/Ukrainians et al would love salted licorice mixed with fruit, but at what ratio? I would imagine it would be a lot of fruit and a tiny bit of Aquavit and a whole lot of fruit.

In cooking, you have to know which flavor is going to be dominant ahead of time to save it when you’re cooking. I already know that peach works with licorice because I had a frozen drink called a Greekarita that fulfilled my life’s dream, the apex of mixology. And for the Russians, it was vodka. I do it because I love you despite your dickhead of a ruler. I am sure that during the Trump years, you thought the same about us. That’s how cooks dressed as spies can change the world. People telling others to stories who can actually do something if they’ll open up vs. the fear of getting caught and tortured. Very few people in Russia are that courageous, and those Russians absolutely saved our lives. I think about that a lot. I have the same relationship with the Russian people that I do with my chef. I’m friends with the other people on the brigade because even my worst enemies wouldn’t let me fail on purpose. We are not united in brotherhood all the time, but we’re united in trying to be the best at our jobs. It’s good we compete. You get better food.

The thing about “even your worst enemy won’t let you fail” is bullshit when someone actively wants to get rid of you. The bond comes from how you treat each other outside work. If someone fucks up and you can’t get over it to the point we can all have a beer later, it takes a lot to get that trust back. Getting on another cook’s shit list isn’t good because it spirals. They take a negative inventory and it affects how they talk to the people who actually can hire and fire you. They prove your incompetence out of revenge, because the kitchen is a meritocracy and you let someoone fail. It’s not out of malice. It’s that you let them down. In some cases, you’ll never be able to save their ass in a way they can see it. That shit happens, and it’s not personal. It’s how people survive chefs like Ramsey. Even when he’s as angry as he pretends to be on TV, I have no doubt that he’s beloved because he’s not angry when he’s not under pressure.

This is what leads to my most epic fail. We were busy and I had to work with the person that sexually harassed me and the owner of the restaurant, who had no cooking experience at all. She didn’t pick up that I was nervous because of the sexual harassment, and criticized me at every chance she got because she didn’t know shit about timing and would blame me for being slow on a ticket that came in 30 seconds ago and needed 10 minutes to cook. The sexual harassment guy and I got into a rhythm where he’d drop things into the fryer and I’d pick them up. Because the owner thought I was lazy anyway, the one time he didn’t was the last straw for her, even though she was the least experienced at being a cook and the most at being a horrible boss. She couldn’t keep a chef more than 15 minutes, contracted out the food, and still managed to tank that before closing the food side altogether. She didn’t know me, didn’t see me when I was on my game. She judged me on the one night she had to pitch in after not firing the person who sexually harassed me because we didn’t communicate something we’d been doing like clockwork and dropped the ball once.

No one made allowances for me on dish, either. I was called slow because I couldn’t lug 80 pounds of water up three flights of stairs without it taking longer because all of my muscles aren’t as strong as everyone else’s.

But that wasn’t my most epic cooking fail, and it’s a miracle no one got hurt. The person who sexually harassed me left a hotel pan of raw chicken on top of the freezer, and when asked, told management it was me. This is after telling me I’d be running my own kitchen within six months and how I could always be counted on and I’d do great things.

I didn’t realize the lovebomb/discard pattern because I didn’t realize that he was slowly moving all our shits together so that when we were both closing, he’d leave early and I’d be stuck cleaning for both of us. He thought he had that right even though he wasn’t my boss. The only way you get respect in the kitchen is to earn it, and he had no authority. I just took it because the lovebombing was complete. By the time he sexually harassed me, the betrayal hurt me the most.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but never once have I put people’s safety in danger……. even when people say I did.

While it is true that I do not have the physical strength to be in a kitchen, it is also true that I have come into my own and wouldn’t think twice about ripping another cook a new asshole for focusing on me and not the mission. It’s not that women can’t be the best chefs in the world. We’ve been the chefs for all of history, yet unrecognized until men did it. Escoffier didn’t make anything at The Plaza that his mother didn’t teach him first. Le Guide Culinaire is based on personal experience. Your mother generally teachers you how to cook because your father’s not interested. This is slowly changing as society has made it cool to cook. We all love dad favorites like steak and French fries, we just do it in a cast iron skillet rather than grilling because steak tastes better from the crust that develops from confit, which means cooked in its own fat. When you grill, the fat drops into the coals. Steak tastes even better when you put a little bit of butter on that crust right before you serve it. Make sure the butter is melted because once the steak has had time to rest, it probably won’t make the butter melt naturally. I also like to add fresh herbs to the butter, like rosemary. If I only have dry, I don’t make it fancy. Salt, pepper, and garlic is all a steak really needs. Just make sure the salt and pepper are of good quality. I prefer Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to the table version of either, though ground pepper is okay if it’s fresh.

If you accidentally oversalt the meat, you can fix it one of three ways. If it’s steak intended for fajitas, throw a margarita on it using fresh lime juice. The acid will neutralize the salt. With American, increase the herbs without more salt and add lemon juice. If lemon juice is not part of the palate, make a balsamic reduction by putting vinegar in a pan and letting it sit on low heat for like a year. No, seriously. Until it gets to “coat a spoon” stage. I put dried cherries and (also dried) mushrooms in mine and let them plump up. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on volume. This is a sauce you can double and triple to save the syrup for later. Leaving out the mushrooms and making it really thick would be good on vanilla ice cream.

The day I reached for a spoon out of an egg pan and didn’t realize it was boiling hot wasn’t all that great, either. It fused to my hand and I had to just put some burn cream on it and keep going. My worst enemy wouldn’t have let me fail, and I didn’t have them in the kitchen. I had my wife. She could have empathy without coddling me and I knew we were both doing what we needed to cope. It led to some of my successes, including the biggest. I got my name on the menu for my chili.

Despite all my fails, if you like food you’re missing out on being my friend. It is your epic fail, not mine. 😉

Lady Bits

August 14, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 12 Comments

There aren’t many professions in which men and women are treated differently anymore. That’s because most businesses have an HR department. In the kitchen, you’ve got five people on shift who don’t give a shit about anything except finishing the night intact. Words are said. It’s always awful. You still don’t tell anyone anything, because it’s not that they’re gross, you’re uptight. If you don’t act like one of the guys, you can’t really survive in the kitchen, because there’s no respect for women except mothers. Not you, of course, but their own. The one who stood over them and taught them how to cook. Men treating women with respect in the kitchen has never been a thing. Julia Child was not a trailblazer because she worked for OSS. She’s a trailblazer because she made it through culinary school at all.

I have had the idea for an SNL skit for years (take it if you write for them) because of Julia. I read in the newspaper that Julia kept her phone number public long after her books were published and her television show was airing. The idea for the skit is that someone calls and she thinks it’s a home cook, but it’s CIA needing help on an old op or something. The entire conversation could be had because the information CIA needs is actually in cooking jargon.

She did make a shark repellent recipe. It’s a start.

The fun part is thinking about what “cassoulet,” “bechamel,” and “eclair” might have to do with spy jargon.

The writing prompt came from someone in my lady line cooks group who asked how to get men off her ass when she’s on her period, because she didn’t have enough to tolerate their bs today.

I said, “I compensate by being a complete bitch all the time so they can’t tell.”

It’s funny ’cause it’s true. I’m just not loud about it. Kinkaid can tell what I need with a look.

One of the reasons it’s so easy to get in the weeds is that so much of communication does become rote that you don’t talk about it, so you can’t recover from a mistake as fast. If you forget to drop a burger first and they want well done, there is no possible way it’s going to be on time. That’s throwing your waitstaff to the wolves, something I try very hard not to do. I will say that for all the waitstaff I’ve worked with, I’ve never dated any of them so they all remember me fondly.

This is generally the case in kitchens. Waitstaff jobs attract pretty actresses. The kitchen draws queer people to a moth like a flame, mostly women and men who won’t admit it because the homophobia is just that bad. Or there’s the alternative, the honey badger don’t care sexual assault. That dude does not care whether you like women or not. Whatever they’re packing is better than anything you’ve ever had and they believe it like Pete Davidson.

Chefs are known for thinking that they’re God’s gift to dick, and they lord it over female employees in the most subtle of ways as not to get caught. It’s bad for the women who reject them because there’s 20. It’s worse for the ones that think he’s serious and actually likes them.

People break up the mojo of the team all the time by sleeping together. Basically everyone pretends not to care, but they do. It’s not that our coworkers are boning, it’s that they do the job differently. They’re not as careful because they’re tired and they know fuckboy will excuse them, but he’ll beat hell down on us.

So, people are bitter and talk shit. If you can keep your relationship under wraps, it’s fine until you break up. Then all hell goes with it.

Dana and I could work together because we were both line cooks, but I gave her the authority of a chef because she had her stripes and I didn’t. That’s not true of most couples, and a few times it wasn’t even true of us. But we did a hell of a lot better than most couples. It didn’t get messy at work until after we left the kitchen.

Most of the time, two line cooks dating each other doesn’t happen because queer men aren’t on the line very often and neither are lesbians (we make up a disproportionate percentage, but still very small). It’s not that straight couples on the line don’t exist, it’s just not as prevalent for a straight woman and a straight man to cook together. Most of the time, when cooks are together, they work at different restaurants. When Dana and I had different jobs, I hated it. Absolutely hated it. This is because if we weren’t at work together, I didn’t see her.

My kitchen life doesn’t have room for anyone else, and everyone feels the same way. We all lead two lives. The one on the line, and the one where we’re helpless against the tide of people asking why we haven’t been to X or Y in a hundred years. God forbid someone actually takes in in that we’re sorry and we mean it, but you meet at 6:00 PM.

Mothers hate every holiday ever, because you’re not going to see us without three years’ notice. Moms do not understand when yes, they’re important, but so is having your ass on grill by five. It affects your future to a much larger degree. It shouldn’t, but it will. It’s a meritocracy.

Also, no one talks to anyone. So if you miss a shift and the manager isn’t there to tell everyone you died or someone close to you did, we will bitch the whole time about your absence and how you probably had brown bottle flu, but when we find out what really happened, you have never seen a team motivate faster in your life.

Being agile as a female cook is harder than being male once you have children. You can put up with all the shit until then. But no restaurant in the world is going to like it if you have a hard out, no matter what time it is. If you’re on day shift, you might be done by three, you might not. Roll with it. If you’re night crew, you might be done at 8:00, you might be done at midnight. Roll with it. That’s because restaurants have a system. If we’re not busy, no owner wants to pay labor. So, you might get three hours of work that day. You might get 12. You need to be prepared for either eventuality. People who show up for morning shift prepared to bust ass all day are worth their weight in gold because a hundred things could conspire to ruin dinner, and having a day crew that can cover prep while we chase down a problem saves everything. Because waitstaff makes tips and we make salary, I prefer being on day shift because it’s the easiest way to get paid more…. not in terms of salary. In terms of the number of hours you can get. It adds up.

I remember once I was worried that Supergrover didn’t have a job and I told her I could set her up with a sweet dishwashing gig in Columbia Heights. That’s funny on two levels. The first is that she’s buttoned up tight like Lindsay. Not because that’s who she is, that’s who she plays on TV. Just like Lindsay.

Therefore, the image of her washing dishes in Brooks Brothers was priceless, as was the thought of her washing dishes at all because I know her quite well. She doesn’t like cooking. She likes to have cooked.

What I do know is that her executive style rubbed off on me. I learned to stand up for myself easier. To notice when I had seniority and order people around like they did to me, because they didn’t have any more reason to tell me what to do than I did them. When chef isn’t there, you have to be loud and assertive, otherwise people will run right over you.

There’s never a way to be a “good” woman in a kitchen. You’re either going to get run over or seen as the biggest twatwaffle known to God and man when you try to flex. The hard part when you’re intimidated (if you’re me) is being 5’2 and arguing with someone is bigger, stronger, and generally angry at me because I’m a woman and my opinion means nothing.

I am lucky in that I have only had one job like that, the one in Silver Spring. It was no small consolation to learn that the owners had run the restaurant into the ground, just like I knew they would, seconded by my chef.

The rest of the time, it’s just been random comments and not constantly.

Most of the time, no one has noticed my lady bits.

The sad part is that it’s not because I wouldn’t want people to see me that way. It’s that in order to stand out, I have to blend in.

If you want to throw down in a kitchen because you think you’re being treated unfairly, focus on the food you make for yourself. Let everyone see what you’re doing. Let them have a bite. Cooks don’t listen with their ears. Respect will come from “how did you do that?”

The motto of the international brotherhood of line cooks is “we don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it.”

If you study hard, at least one of those times you’ll walk away feeling like God’s gift to something…… probably Pete Davidson.

Let’s Think About Breakfast

July 21, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What foods would you like to make?

Because Dana and I had a brunch gig for years, we made a lot of breakfast at home. It’s the thing we knew how to cook the most quickly and efficiently. We were also auditioning recipes for the restaurant. The most fun I ever had off the clock was picking my own chesterberries, because it made me feel like a real chef. They weren’t even for the restaurant, but they were by the time we got back from our little “pick your own” road trip. I still have a cute picture from that day, but I don’t want to post it without asking and I don’t want to ask. So, know that chesterberries are a cross between a berry and a grape, and in some applications (I know this is Oregon heresy), better than marionberries. I look forward to your letters.

I started out with simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water) and added the berries. I let everything cook for a while so that it became a thick, smooth compote. I must have added at least a pinch of cinnamon, but I don’t remember putting in anything else because even cinnamon is too much for some berries. You literally have to know their personalities as well as you know your coworkers. The point was to make the chesterberries sweet without adding anything that would cover up their natural undertones.

I know I used it for stuffed French Toast. If I had it to do over, I would have made chesterberry Croque Monsieurs. That’s because I already know it’s traditionally served with raspberry jelly and making anything more “Oregonian” is a big hit.

If you cannot see how much I love food, I spent half a day picking berries for myself and donated them to the restaurant at the end. I didn’t even ask to be reimbursed for them, and it’s not even because it would have been a whole other thing. It’s because I was thinking about work when I wasn’t there to an ENORMOUS degree. What I found is that I could cook every dish a thousand times without blinking, which gave me the confidence to have an opinion. There was no executive chef. If I want to make hazelnut pancakes, go for it.

I think the most adventurous I ever got was pineapple thyme stuffed French toast, but not because that’s the most adventurous thing I can do. It’s that in a restaurant, you can try whatever you want. That doesn’t mean someone else is going to agree and pay money for it. The pineapple thyme worked, but I did not have the luxury of making just anything avant garde.

For instance, my chili in Oregon is never as hot as I make it here.

Also, anything can become breakfast if you put eggs on it:

The aforementioned chili
Cheese pizza
veggies and kale/spring mix/spinach/etc. sauted with sesame oil and hit with rice wine vinegar to finish.
Rice, beans, salsa, and cheese
Cheese pizza
- Tthere are more, but this one will blow your mind so I have to say it twice. It tastes the best putting them raw on a frozen pizza and letting them bake together. It just mellows the egg out because caramelization is key.)

Therefore, I do not go out of my way to make breakfast, because I don’t really do anything to make it special. I don’t separate out what I will and will not eat into times of day. What makes me a pro to everyone else is coming downstairs in the morning and seeing me flip my eggs like a boss. Everyone can tell the difference between a home cook and a pro by how much fear they have that veggies will go everywhere.

That’s partially because it will go everywhere when you miss and most people are too scared to make a mess. They’re too scared to suck until they don’t. If I miss, it’s a two minute cleanup job because I’ve done it so many times on the line and had my ass beaten for not working clean that I could give a shit who’s watching at home. I can do all the things I used to do in a pro kitchen and actually enjoy it because no one is telling me I’m terrible at it.

By the way, this is no indication of how good I am. Some people think I’m great. Some people think I’m terrible. It’s just that the people who think I’m great know nothing and the people who think I’m terrible were kind enough to make me as much better as I could handle. No one was trying to make me feel bad. It was like private lessons in voice or trumpet. It’s isolating to a sandbox so when you get on stage, everything is perfect.

If you want to get good at flipping eggs, you’ll need way more butter than you think. Flipping eggs is not for people who think butter is the devil. Even margarine doesn’t have the same properties. Hell, even olive oil sucks at this particular application.

If you want to get really good, take out your egg pan and try to flip a piece of bread. Getting really good sometimes requires buying multiple pounds of veggies you won’t use, either. You cannot learn how to cut a carrot in a day. In a pro kitchen, you can’t learn to cut any veggie in a day. It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just that it won’t look natural until you can make an entire pan of something and it all looks the same.

Carrots and apples are my favorite, because as Chef taught me, always find an edge. Turn the vegetable so that the most mass is always touching the cutting board. It makes julienne and batonet so much easier. If you’re wondering, learning to julienne/batonet an apple and carrot were for spicy cole slaw. It was a particularly unsweet Granny Smith. I had to practice that shit for weeks, because of my lack of 3D vision. It affects the way my knife comes down.

Therefore, I’m a speed demon at home because I don’t have to perfect anything. It’s only me. I still treat myself like I’m in the kitchen, just not like I’m constantly going to get fired, because I’m the boss and fuck her, she’s a bitch.

By the way, when I stopped thinking all my opinions were like that, my life got better *FAST.*

I am well and truly fucked in terms of technique, and if I married another chef/pro cook, that’ll be why. Together, we have a complete education and I’ll miss that part of being married to Dana forever.

It’s something I’ll seek out in a partner, because if I don’t have it, I know enough to teach it. I don’t care if someone’s interest is cooking or not. They’ll know how to feed us by themselves if it kills me, because my worst nightmare is feeding someone until I die because “I’m the pro.”

I don’t care if my husband has made his past wives eat shit because they thought they were so important. Remember who I am in the kitchen and submit, or you will not last very long. If being with me is important to you, you will learn to cook. It’s that simple.

You can treat me like a know-nothing asshole or you can treat it as lessons from a truly great chef who taught me every day, and that isn’t limited to one person. Dana is not more important than the Johns, Drew, or Knives. It’s just that Dana was with me for the most meals both served at at home. We started making brunch based on the very idea that because we worked well at home, we’d work well at work. This was absolutely true except when Mommy and Daddy were fighting, and you can take a guess as to who was whom on those days, because it was never a one way street. However, if the conversation was only about the food and didn’t move goalposts, I was wrong. Period. End of story. I didn’t spend time and money at culinary school. She did. She earned those fucking blue stripes and I heard about it to the point that I cannot watch Julie & Julia anymore without sobbing through the scene where Julia is cutting onions.

When we’re talking about “Mommy and Daddy fighting,” we’re talking about less than 4% of the time. And who cares about the other 97%….. 😉

And if Dana had been honest with herself, she would have realized that we needed to pack up and move to DC for all sorts of reasons, because she didn’t think about who I am and what I do, either. She thought working and playing on the Internet was invalid, and I’m a fucking blogger. She was never going to see me as valid, and she was never going to truly see what I’d gotten myself into, or she did and didn’t want to play. Either way, she knows and it’s just as bad as she thought it would play out because the Internet relationship didn’t listen to me and what I do.

I hope she feels relief that I actually said, “Dana wasn’t right, but she wasn’t wrong, either.” I hope for two things. The first is eventually feeling peace that I did the right thing. The second is that my beautiful girl didn’t get screwed over by me (for that particular issue) and I wish I could take away that pain. Not being able to is a massive regret, and now I am either so far down the list that I’m not worth addressing, or I fell off. I won’t know it for years, and I might not know it, ever. She has truly gone into the wind at my own invitation, which was warranted. She cannot come back until she gets herself together, because she couldn’t learn to sous. She’s a boss. She couldn’t generate her own light to compensate for the lack of light from above (God, Ani is brilliant). She couldn’t learn how to bend and sway like all same-sex relationships no matter who they are to each other. She flat out learned to love me, worried for me, protected me, all the things. What she could not do is let me do those things for her and didn’t see that as a problem. It showed me exactly who she thought I was.

I also, if I could have a third thing, I wish she would realize that it’s not just me that gave up someone fantastic. She truly fucked up, because we could have had something. It wasn’t what I thought it could or would be, but it’s so solid you could build a house on it. I watch videos on DIY, and I know what it takes to make a foundation. The concrete is now cured.

Now I’m overexplaining why I don’t have private lessons anymore and why I feel bad about it. DC might have changed both our lives in concrete ways, but we’ll never know that, either.

I didn’t choose the wrong relationship, we chose to move to the wrong ass city.

And that’s why I started doubting all my decisions. I lost True North and I paid for it.

I just never got change.

Your Blog Makes You Sound Like a Dick: Kitchen Edition

July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 41 Comments

Here’s how to run a kitchen, even at home. It’s what I would have taught my friends if they’d ever asked me to cook with them. Maybe Zac and Bryn are all I need in that arena, because they both actually like it.

Start with the basics. Those aren’t sugar, salt, acid, fat. It’s never stopping movement. Wash a dish while something else is cooking. Never wait for one thing to finish when you could be doing something else. Don’t lean when you can clean, and you’ll enjoy cooking much more. People who don’t enjoy cooking don’t have time to think about it, so they don’t think about ways to make it easier, either.

If you have time to lean, you have time to clean. Everything else is procrastination, and the dread of having to do dishes after dinner is miserable. Do all the kitchen dishes while you’re working so you only have to load plates into the dishwasher. You cannot soak a pan. Period. You can leave the stuff soft until you get back, but it will still be as hard to clean it later as it would have been had you not let it soak. If stuff sticks all the time, you’re not using enough oil and/or butter. The reason food is so caloric at a restaurant is that we don’t have time to cook and clean if we don’t have enough pans. If a sponge doesn’t work, get some steel wool. If you say you have nonstick pans, that’s on you. The problem with non-stick is that there’s no real way to get everything off without sucking the life out of the pan. I also need pans built for my height and weight. I am not going to flip a full paella, but I’ve done it and that’s why I don’t do it anymore.

You cannot replace the undertones of anything. Butter flavored Pam will not taste like putting butter in something, and not because the melody isn’t there. You’ve taken out all the chords. With beverages, sometimes you need to let them heat up or cool down, because the extreme temperature makes it where you can’t taste the full measure of the dish.

When you taste something, ask the dish what it needs. If you have added too much salt, add vinegar. If you have added too much salt, add starch. If you have added too much of anything, you can fix it by adding more volume. If I oversalt my mac and cheese, I’ll add veggies that have no seasoning at all. If a dish is too hot, add sugar and fat. If I want to eat hot peppers because my nose is stuffed up, I make the base with tomatoes, avocados, purple onions, and honey. That works with mango and pineapple, the most likely culprits in a habanero salsa. That’s because even different peppers are for different applications.

You might as well be interested, because you’re not going to feed yourself any other way without destroying your cost of living. Not paying attention to food matters. You know how we know you’re not paying attention? You are blind to what goes on in a professional kitchen and don’t have any compunction about telling us that. It’s never you, the customer, that has ever done anything wrong in the history of any dining experience. We are stupid, lazy, angry bastards who have no right to feel what we feel. Who the fuck are you to tell us that?

If you don’t acknowledge your humanity, you have made it known that you think you’re a deity. And we’ve noticed.

I can make all the mother sauces, but only two matter at home. You won’t really touch the rest (Yes, chef. I’ve made all of them.)

Bechamel is the base for all cheese sauces. You can make it any way you like, because it all starts the same. Heat up butter in the pan, and add your vegetables. For mac and cheese, I’ll use anything. Onions, garlic, celery, spring mix, etc. After the veggies are cooked, add some flour. I think it’s a one to one ratio, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll be able to tell when the food is getting more thick and you need to add milk. DO NOT add too much at once. Making the mother sauces the way I do it is like driving a stick shift car. Everything in balance. The sauce should thin out slightly. As it thickens, add more. You can substitute boxed cheese mix for flour if you need to, just add extra butter and keep the heat low so the cheese doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Here’s also where you add your spices. Montreal Chicken Seasoning is good, so are Old Bay and Tony Chachere’s.

Once you’ve gotten the sauce to coat a spoon, add your cheese and stir. You don’t want to add the cheese until last because when it melts, it will make everything stick. Take it on and off the heat if you need to, because you want it to be hot enough to melt, but not hot enough to stick.

When in doubt, finish every dish with butter. Sauce will redeem anything. In short, relax.

Hollandaise and mayonnaise are exactly the same. Put three egg yolks in a bowl or blender and whisk. Add a tablespoon of acid. For Hollandaise, it’s always lemon. For mayonnaise, I’ll use anything just to try it, but I like olive oil and plain white vinegar (I would use apple cider vinegar if I was making a dressing for something sweet, and sesame oil for anything Asian. You can take any of these combinations and emulsify them. Plain, oil and vinegar is mayonnaise, lemon and butter are Hollandaise. If you say that you can’t do it, you haven’t done it 30 times while so hung over you couldn’t breathe. Anthony Bourdain and I have a deeply intimate relationship with Hollandaise being the smell of failure.

Bechamel is the white sauce used in Alfredo. Alfredo is just butter, flour, milk (whatever kind you want- I can make vegan bechamel just as easily). Just add parmesan. A good bechamel requires excellent ingredients. If your parm doesn’t cost $8-10, you’re going to think it’s kiddie food. See Olive Garden for details.

Most people get frustrated with cooking because they don’t have a professional palate and don’t know how to catch a mistake and correct it before service. That doesn’t come through anything but time. The way we get better so fast is making every dish a thousand times so that our ability to tweak is incredibly refined. It also allows us to understand what we haven’t tasted.

Really developing palate came through my sense of smell. I was a dishwasher. I smelled all the food once it was already mixed together. Ideas came to me that didn’t come to other people. I can taste food without having to eat it because I can analyze it like sheet music, no lie.

Nothing makes a cook boil like being at a party and someone saying the food is so good someone could cook professionally. I do not want to see their bullshit on my line fucking ever. Get out of my house unless you’re willing to do the work.

You absolutely do not want to start as a dishwasher. You absolutely do not know what it feels like on the brigade. You don’t want to know what it feels like to have to carry out the trash after your adrenaline has come down. You don’t see how fast we clean because we’re racing against our energy.

So, you cook at home and disrespect us. We could teach home cooks a thing or two, but there’s two good reasons why we don’t, and there’s a great big fuck you behind it because you’re making us walk a fine line.

When we offer to help, you say no. When you say yes, you criticize us because being a home cook and being a professional is like, the same. Bitch I earned this.

I earned it with blood, sweat, tears, and searing flesh and I don’t give a flying fuck if you think I’m a dick for saying so.

In terms of caring whether you respect me or not, I wrote this all in one shot and it took 15 minutes. Bite me. There’s your fucking resume and recipes.