Salt

I believe in salt, and so does Scientific America.

Read up.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt

meat and more meat Part one.

I introduce you to the benevolent, and astounding Bovine!

Now What is bovine you may ask? simply put it is cow. Delicious, un-adulterated cow. Broght from the heavens by

Lets start on meat, Meat is very, very cool.

Meat is composed of 72% water, 20% protein, 7% fat, and 1% minerals and vitamins.
The muscle itself is actually myofibrillar, which is pretty much long cords of tissue

Sorry about all of the science stuff, I just thought this was a great picture.

As you can see fro the picture, the myofibrillar  is both long and stringy, but also it is clumped up, the stuff that wraps around it is called perimyssium. This is very important, believe it or not, in cooking. Chefs always tell you to cut across the grain when cutting meat, well this is why! If you don't cut the meat in a certain way, you get these long super chewy ropes dangling around in your mouth, and that , my friends, is anti-good. 

The myofibrillar is also what makes tender pieces of meat, well, tender. The less used the muscle is the thinner the myofibrillar is, and therefore the meat is more "tender" and tends to be more sought out, and therefore more expensive.

There is much more to meat then the muscle. You see the muscle is a small part of what makes meat so beautiful and delicious. you have to think of more then just the protein structure, you have to think bones, you have to think sinew, and oh yes you have to think FAT.

Now that we have the actual protein down, lets get a little harder and slightly more porous, that's right, i'm talking about bones!

Hah. Mario. Awesome.

I mean we should have almost started with bones first! they are a beautiful, beautiful thing. Without bones we wouldn't have delicious rich and thick stocks and without stock, which i'm sure you are all aware is the foundation to cookery we are lost! (not to mention bone marrow, smothered on some lightly toasted bread.)

You may see bones as some kind of hard, lifeless thing, but you would be oh so, so,so, sososososo wrong. They are alive, and even better, They are full of stuff! They are crammed with fat, minerals and water, and ,possibly more importantly, they make things taste good. On top of that, they add richness because of the collagen, this also thickens stocks and soups or whatnot. The collagen, when heated, does its voodoo and breaks down into gelatin. So if you are making some home made stock and you throw it in the fidge, you should have jello in the morning.

So I was just looking it up, and collagen is used put into peoples faces to fix their ageing. That's kinda weird.

I give you collagen.

I had to swim through like 400 pictures for this little gem. Collagen is the silver stuff we find on our different cuts of meat. Depending on what you are going to do with the meat you may want to remove it, because when it is cooked hot and fast it tends to shrivel up and get really chewy. Although if you decide you want to take it gently by the hand and romance it, like you would with any fine lady, and cook it slow in some liquid at a lower heat, it will pretty much dissolve and become tender. Collagen also gives you flavor, so sometimes it's ok to leave some on.

Collagen does something else for us. It divides the meat. Collagen is what holds all of the things to the other things, if you will. It makes up 25%-30% of the entire body protein content.  Most of that is used as connective tissue.

Now, get ready for me to blow your mind. Collagen makes natural lines in the muscles, from those lines we get our cuts of meat. (it's ok to take a second before continuing, i'm sure that blew your mind.)

Oh yes, collagen rules.

Just for everyone's general knowledge. Collagen does not connect muscle to bone, that is a much tougher membrane called periostium. This stuff should be removed along with any bright red meat along the bones, you'll see it.

ONWARD! And back to fats! In and on these delicious little hunkets waiting to happen there are two kinds of delicious fats.subcatanious (outward) and Lumbar, or adipose (inward) fats. Let me show you the way.

                                         \\

Yeah. I went there.

So Subcutanious, or should I say subnotinthemeatarious is outside of the meat, that's all the fat on the outer part of the meat. This external fat is used for cushioning and fat storage. I have read of butchers who can read the subcutanious fat like a book. pointing out where the feed changed or when it was stressed, kind of like a tree.. Then there is the adipose fat. That's marbling. I call it delicious. This is one of the major things you should look for when buying a steak.

Meat my friend Wagyu Kobe, He's delicious.

When buying a steak you should also notice the color of the fat. You want bright white smiling on you, if it's yellow that's a sign that the meat has gone rancid or is from an older cow and that the quality is not what you, as a knowledgeable cook, want. 

But meat, as we know it, comes from the cow is Divided into a couple of different parts. Usually you can get your butcher to do it, but, because this is my blog and I don't really care what you people want, i'm going to give you the entire break down. Now that you understand how meat and sinew and bones work, i'm going to show you how to break it down! 

I told you this was going to be awesome!

Serving.

Oh sweet jesus. serving.

I'll tell you one thing I learned this weekend. I loath serving.

I served for a catering company this weekend. I didn't want too, I actually brought my knives and whites because I figured they must have made a mistake. No such luck.

It's not just the fact that people you are serving are dull or that servers tend to be... less then fun. My biggest complaint is that I have to run around a room refiling coffee over and over and over and over. I'm not practicing. I'm not honing a skill, i'm just running around with a dumb smile on my face trying to do as little work as possible.

It's pathetic.

Also I have this hate for all things unorganized. The way we served was less then thought out. Instead of starting at a place and working our way around a room, instead we did a sort of zig-zag pattern to all of the tables, It was less then fluid.  People got lost in the chaos during serving and people were missed. Another thing that I do not like about serving is that unless you really mess up, no one cares.

The function was a large wedding that took place in a bar, there was no room to move around and the dance floor was also in the bar. Most of the time we were just running around trying to stay out of the way.  During dinner I heard a lot of "This food is delicious!" understandably I missed the kitchen.

I have worked with many, many servers in my short career. I have to say, I did gain some respect for what they do. Never again.

Not yet, but almost.

Hey gang,

I am working on my all meat extraviganza, I promise you. I'm almost five percent done and it may end up becoming a couple of blog segments, just so you are aware.

But in Lew of my laziness i bring you this, from Eater!

http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/15/michael-laiskonis-asks-dave-arnold-part-one.php

If you do not already follow eater, its a great website with solid food articles on it.

This particular article is Laiskonis talking to Dave Arnold about eggs and fun nerdy food stuffs.

Also these dishes are beautiful
http://forkncork.blogspot.com/2011/07/june-chefs-table.html

I'm sure i'm not tagging these correctly, but hey.

Random musings, Chaplin being a boss, and almost a discussion of two great American Chefs.

I realize everything in this is going to be new. I have decided to make some changes to further my education and such.  I was lurching around on the interwebs today and found this.

This is very touching, It's amazing that it still rings true today after a slight seventy years. Oh Chaplin, you old bean.

Anyways, sorry I didn't get to posting the beef breakdown stuff last night, I have all night tonight to do it. So be excited.

Anyways, I have made some changes, first off is this blog that I don't believe anyone's going to find that interesting. I have horrible grammar and even worse spelling. I hope someone finds it interesting though.

 I am almost complete with School. Which is slightly scary. I'm very excited about it, but finding a new and hopefully very rewarding job is going to be tough. I'm very demanding from jobs, I tend to give everything I have to them. All of my time, my patience and all of the little control I have over myself goes exclusively into my work. So I'm going to be keeping track of this process.  I will post video's and menus of restaurants i'm applying to or staging to. I'm going to keep track of things that I already know (I like to revisit, it's good for the memory), and things i'm learning.

Also i'm keeping a journal of all the things I learn, and the names of restaurants I want to work at. My goal is to learn one new thing about cooking a day, and to write it in my new little moleskin journal. I'm going to take this from things I read, or from talking to people or whatever. My other goal for this journal is to keep track of the many places in the world I would love to work at, and then make a list so I can start working on staging and applying. Anything to keep myself busy I guess.

My biggest problem is that I get distracted very easily.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.
Charlie Trotter 


Charlie trotter is a hero. A funny coincidence I've been aching to work at his restaurant for around a year now. I hear these horror stories of him being a monster and such. I don't believe it, Mr. Trotter sounds more like a godsend to me. A true perfectionist. A man who treats food how it should be treated. His restaurant is located in Chicago, and I am both in New York and poor, so maybe in a few years I can work with this great Chef.

I have no Idea what this is, But trotter did it.

One word Chef Trotter, Unfair.

I wanted to learn everything I could about what it takes to be a great chef. It was a turning point for me.
Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller is a god in this business. He is the Alpha and Omega. His food is always perfect, and he is a highly successful Chef and restaurateur, He owns a multitude of restaurants on both coasts. His style is perfect french.

This is foi.

anyways, I digress. I have started updating my resume, which is actually much more of a hassle then I intended it to be. But I believe i'm starting on the right foot.

Alright you crazy cats, i'm outi, I'll be back later.

Oh my.

Alright, so, first things first.
Books that I am currently reading. you know, because I like books.I like to read books like 12 at a time, I'm very A.D.D. and I tend to get very bored, very quickly. OH! also i'm sure you guys love pretty pictures!

YAY CTHULHU!

So my top books that i'm reading as of now would be:

1. On food and cooking, By Harold McGee

•      I only have good things to say about this book and at school it is the bible. Harold McGee takes food and he holds your hand and just says, look at this, do you see this? this is why everything works. It's great, a must have book for anyone that enjoys food.

    2. I, Lucifer, By Glen Duncan

• This is a little different. I was told to read this book from a dear friend of mine while I was staying in New Orleans and working on my Externship. This book is hilarious, but, it also is not for the faint of heart. It is a book written by Lucifer himself  which in itself is kind of odd, but he is a human because God wants him back. I have to say one thing, this book is very well written and although it may be slightly offensive it is deviously delicious at the same time.

   3.  Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and drink,
        by David Remnick

• This is another book I freaking adore. It's pretty much a bunch of articles stemming from the very early nineteen hundreds. It tickles my fancy in ways I never knew it could be tickled. Some of the stories are a little dull but a lot of them are just so amazing, It's like a big book of things you should be doing as a cook, and all of the things scream at you just go have fun and treat people well. There are articles about MR. Point, A god of restaurant history. This man weighed a slim 350 pounds, and as one of his most famous quotes states
  "I like to start my day off with a glass of Champagne. I like to wind it up with Champagne, too. To be frank, I also like a glass or two in between. It may not be the universal medicine for every disease...but it does you less harm than any other liquid." Like I said, Class Act.
  
  
  
  
  Right I"m off point, Anyways, this book has articles from a man who went to le pyrmanid, to a man who went scavaging with Euell Theophilus Gibbons in November in Pennsylvania. Anyways, Book is awesome. Check it.
  
  Alright Well those are three books I'm really enjoying right now. For the rest of the day i'll probably read and Reddit. I'll be back tonight with some super awesome and slightly amazing (mostly amazing) Culinary definitions. Ooooh maybe we'll go over beef cuts! Yeah i'm thinking that's gonna happen.
  
  Cheers non existent readers :D

First Post

Hello blogging world. So I guess this is going to be my first post.

So a little about myself.

I am 24, I live in Hyde Park, New York. I attend the worlds premier culinary college, The Culinary Institute of America. I live in the dorms and I have a love affair with food.

So this blog is just going to be something I do in my off time. It will also be a way for me to catalog things that I have learned, or what I've done. I've decided to master one crazy french word that I don't understand every day. So this is going to be a basis for that, mostly. I read a lot, so maybe I'll discuss some plots in various books i'm reading, I'm not sure yet, we'll see how it goes.

We'll alright, lets see how this whole thing plays out. I'm stoked.