There are certain things which are just not done in the culinary world. For example, the Italians, as I have often been told, do not combine seafood and cheese. It is something of a foodie law on the peninsula. Any self-respecting diner, therefore, wouldn't dare to ask for a sprinkle of parmesan for their spaghetti con le vongole. The same attitude prevents any chef worth his whites from offering such a pasta on his menu. Every waiter I know scoffs a bit when a customers asks for a side of grated cheese to go with their sardine and fennel pasta. Trust me, it's a no-no.
Bending Rules
The Library
There are so many, many known flavor combinations out there. Thousands of years of paring ingredients, experimenting, rejecting, refining, repeating, has yielded a vast library of possible culinary alliances. A great deal of becoming a chef is familiarizing yourself with this library and learning the cross-referencing system, that is, how to determine what foods will taste good together. The knowledge-base is not limited to just flavors, but includes aromas, temperatures, and textures as well. The best chefs can navigate this reference so well that they don't even need to taste a combination to know that it will work. In The Soul of a Chef Michael Ruhlman tells of a conversation he had with the chef Thomas Keller about a dish on his menu – oysters and pearls (tapioca pearls). When queried on what Keller himself though of the dish he replied: “I've never tasted it.... I know it tastes good. You don't have to stick your hands in a fire to know it's hot.”
Catastrophuffle
About three seconds before I unleashed the twenty-litre tidal wave of foam and beer and broken glass, I remember thinking: “This is not going to go well.” Things, in truth, had not been going well for about an hour. My already saturated pants and sodden shoes attested to that. If you want to get technical, things started to go sour a month or two previously, when I put together a new batch of home brew. Perhaps I should back up and explain. This is a story about my deep love for beer.
Keeping 'em Happy
I've spoken before about the intricacies of preparing staff meal in restaurants. Mostly I've focused on the challenge it presents a chef; how transforming offcuts and trimmings and discarded bits into a delicious meal for twenty or more people is a deeply satisfying experience, when you pull it off. What I have not, in the past, focused on is the reason restaurants bother with staff meal at all. Why make the effort to give away free food to people you are already paying? The reason is simple: you have to keep your staff happy.
This is not always easy.
Little Racks
Years ago, when working in the kitchen of an insanely busy restaurant, where the workload was exactly what every chef could only barely handle, one, tiny extra job broke me and sent me, just at the start of service, crashing, screams and all, face first, into the ground. The screams, for the record, were not mine; my teeth were quite clenched throughout. Rather, the yelling came directly from the head chef/owner and his sous chef, and generally alluded to my complete lack of skills as a cook, and my parentage. The tiny job responsible? The front-ends of a few rabbits.
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