Birthday party at Starry Nights

January 15, 2012 Blog postings No comments

Last night Starry Nights hosted another birthday party, this time for a young woman who turned 30. Her boyfriend had put so much energy into this event, it was impressive. The theme was pink, black, and white, and the event coordinator he hired did a great job customizing the room. The dessert table was quite impressive, centered on (of course) a delicious cake by Starry Nights!

The menu was Chicken Satay with my famous (yes, famous) Peanut sauce, Crudite with Hummus, Sliders, Crab Cakes with red bell pepper aioli, and Gougeres (Matt!! The gougeres!!)

The whole party was a success, and the guests really seemed to have a great time. I know this because the bar tab was one of the highest per capita we’ve ever done. The only hitch was that the birthday girl forgot her ID, so my client had to go get it. But he did, and it all turned out ok.

Rebekah was one of the floor staff last night. I love having her on the team, she’ll eat anything! She mentioned that she loved my hummus, so I’ve decided to make that the first official recipe of Kung Fu Chef 2.0.

Recipe disclaimer

January 15, 2012 Recipes, Soapbox rants 4 comments

Cooking is not a science (and neither is baking for that matter, but that’s a topic for another day, I’m sure), and cooking is not an art (Definitely a topic for another day!). Cooking is a craft. This means that it can be learned and perfected.

The easiest way to succeed at cooking is practice. And one of the parts of this practice is to read the recipe, several times through before you start anything. For god’s sake, do not start making a souffle and THEN realize the oven has to be on at 450F. Your souffle will die well before the oven gets hot enough. So if you read the recipe through before you start, you’ll be able to avoid many pitfalls, even if the recipe is poorly written.

All recipes are only a guideline. Don’t take ANY recipe as gospel, not even baking recipes. You can always change things, and depending on who wrote the recipe, your results may vary.

Recipes can be written to any skill level. Professional/kitchen/production recipes have a completely different format than the ones you’d find online (at say, AllRecipes), or the ones you’d find at Cook’s Illustrated (which are RIDICULOUSLY long and detailed. Just try actually using one of these things in a production environment. You’ll get your ass handed to you by the chef.)

Some constants do exist, though, or at least, there are some conventions that should be observed. All of the recipes on this blog will follow these conventions.

  1. Ingredients should be listed in order of their incorporation, meaning sequentially. This makes the recipe much easier to keep track of where you are in the process.
  2. Descriptions of ingredients in the ingredient list matter. “Onion, minced; 32 oz” is not the same as “Onion; 32oz”. The first means to mince a bunch of onions, weigh it out until you have 32 oz. The second means take whole onions and weigh out 32 oz. The first option is much easier and accurate in a production environment; the second is much easier when you’re in the store shopping.
  3. “Oz” or “Ounces” ought to ALWAYS be weight. If the recipe writer intends volume measurement he or she damn well better be using “Fl oz” or “Fluid ounces”. Chalk this one up to being on the avoirdupois system instead of the metric system (not that I particularly love the metric system, it’s absolute shit for measuring temperature. The gradients aren’t as finely divided as Farenheit).
  4. If the writer means volume, the recipe should use “fl oz”. Yes, I realize this is the same as #3, just said differently, but I feel pretty strongly about this one. Part of me is a pastry chef and this indiscriminate use of “ounces” really kills me.

Oh, and just for shits and grins, here are two simple recipes written to extremely different audiences. Mostly tongue-in-cheek, but there is some truth here. Obviously, most recipes will fall somewhere in the middle on this spectrum.

Mayonnaise, Detailed version
aka the Microsoft PM
1 Large AA chicken egg
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon white refined sugar (cane or beet)
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard (Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?)
1 cup Canola oil

1. Separate egg yolk from white by carefully breaking the shell in half, and pouring the egg back and forth until the white falls away and you just have the yolk remaining. Place yolk in the work bowl of a food processor.
2. Pour vinegar into food processor with the yolk and add the salt, sugar, and Dijon. Put the lid on the food processor and pulse four times for 1 second each pulse.
3. Take off the lid and scrape down the sides of the work bowl. Replace the lid.
4. Turn on the food processor and slowly drizzle in the Canola oil through the little hole in the lid of the work bowl. This should be a thin, steady stream, at a rate of about .25 fluid ounces per second.
5. Remove the lid of the work bowl and scrape down the sides. Replace lid and pulse 4-6 times (sorry for the lack of specificity here) until everything is completely homogenous.
6. Remove the lid of the work bowl and dip a tasting spoon into the mayonnaise and taste. Evaluate for acid, saltiness, and sweetness. Adjust each seasoning as necessary, since flavor may vary, based in large part to the variance between the size of any given egg yolk.
7. Scrape mayonnaise out of work bowl into an airtight container and seal tightly. This will keep in the refrigerator for at least one month.

Mayonnaise, Professional version
aka Who the fuck can’t make mayo?
Make mayonnaise. Season to taste.

Suicidal fly

January 4, 2012 Blog postings No comments

So this is freaky-weird: a fly just flew into the heavy cream I was pouring into a bowl.

I almost didn’t believe it, but there it was, the drowning fly in the cream. WTF. This has got to be one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in the kitchen.

Flys are a common problem from time to time, and eradicating them takes a little effort. Unless, apparently, you’re trying to make whipped cream.

And yes, I dumped the cream and cleaned the bowl.

Six years later…

January 2, 2012 Blog postings One comment

This is it. Today marks six full years I’ve owned Starry Nights. What a ride.

I’m fairly conflicted about what I’ve accomplished here since there are some pretty big failings I wish had gone differently, while at the same time I know my team and I made a lot of people happy and we did good work over the last six years.

I think my disappointments fall mostly into the “business” category. I’m not a business school graduate (I learned this all on the fly) so just like walking around with toilet paper stuck to your shoe, I’m afraid these little failings show.

I wish I could grow the company to be a major player in the local catering scene, but I just don’t know how. I’ve banged my head against that wall for years, but no success; I don’t even know how to break down the problem, so how can I possibly attempt to solve it?

I look at some of the other successful large-ish catering companies in the area and wonder how they got to where they are now. I try to figure out what they’ve got that I don’t. Money and networking is what it comes down to, I think. Funding, loans, angel-investors all provide capital to grow. I made a decision to not go down that road with Starry Nights, and I realize now that’s artificially limited my potential here. Had I to do it over again, I like to think I’d go the other way and get investors to put up the cash instead of being self-financed.

And the other issue, networking, is less about networking and more about fashion, or being the cool kid in the room; not something I’ve ever been good at. I tried, but just couldn’t figure out how to get venues to list us as the preferred caterer. I think some of this is the crowd mentality of “being cool” meaning that if Venue A lists me as the caterer, then Venue B will need to do the same to stay on par. And if I’m not listed with Venue A, then why should Venue B? It’s a hard ceiling to crack and I just never made it work.

On the upside, though, I think I’ve had a lot of success as a chef. I’ve learned quite a bit about cooking and catering and I feel very accomplished with what I’ve done with my team. Our biggest job to-date was 750+ for a company in Tacoma and we nailed it with military precision. No screw-ups at all. We’ve catered several jobs simultaneously, too, which truly show how far I’ve come from my apprenticeship days when I would freak out about making lunch for 4!

And my cakes. What can I say about my cakes? While I’m proud (but humble) about our catering efforts, I’m downright arrogant about our cakes. They are the best available, no exceptions. Our execution and quality of ingredients makes them a steal, even though we’re on the high side of pricing. I’m very happy to say that most of the clients we don’t sign only do so because of price, never quality. I’d put my cakes up against any other cake maker in town in a blind taste-test and I’d bet that we’d win.

To the future: Changes are on the horizon for Starry Nights. I’ve got lots of ideas, but nothing I want to really dwell on or plan for at this point. When I’m feeling positive-minded, I can look at my accomplishments here at Starry Nights as a very solid learning experience that has prepped me for the next big leap in my career.

Onward and upward.

Updating and “cleaning house”

January 1, 2012 Blog postings No comments

I had forgotten how much I enjoy this. When I started this blog back in 2004, I was doing all the HTML by hand (I was a control-freaky graphic designer, what can I say?) but now I’m using WordPress and it’s SO MUCH EASIER! I can manage all the content, cross-link, archive, hide, etc to any content I want. And I still have designer-level control over the layout and design.

So far today, I’ve updated the “Resources” page with some listings, check ‘em out.

I’ll also slowly work through re-posting all my original content from the first incarnation of Kung Fu Chef, including kitchen notes, recipes, and general blog posts. Stay tuned.

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