Cuisine

“The horror. The horror.” The famous last words from Apocalypse Now repeated themselves in my head for two days; lifeless and soon-to-be headless bodies looking at me with great disdain, ironically with their eyes having already been removed making the entire episode even more reminiscent of a bad Tim Burton movie. The rabbit was fine. I’ve worked with that plenty of times. Breaking down the walleye, brining the filets and smoking them was old hat. Breaking down the saddle of antelope was great and as I was working with a talented young apprentice, it was a pleasure to be given the opportunity to work with such a variety of proteins. No, it was those muskrats, those gnarly toothed, furry paw-still attached creatures that haunted me last weekend as we prepared a game dinner for some guests at the country club. Those damn muskrats. I will apologize as I know that I will offend some local readers, but while I am happy to have worked with them, I will be just as ha...

Kerfuffle – n informal chiefly  ( Brit ) commotion; disorder; agitation Thus was the general mood as the club kicked into full swing this past weekend. All went smoothly, but tempers were flaring just a touch as cooks realized that the season stood the chance of getting tense. Adding to this degree of anticipation was the annual event of the ventilation coming to a screeching crawl on Friday night.  As such the average temperature in the kitchen was a brisk 95 degrees. By industry standard, 95 degrees is cold, but as summer has yet to begin and our bodies have yet to acclimate to the balmy clime of the mid-Atlantic, it was a tad toasty; and it did not take much for a couple of the cooks to get snappy. Hence the kerfuffle of cooks angry at no one but mad at everything; akin to a testy dog who realizes that he’s at the vet’s office looking for the nearest exit. Yet, despite the general sense of agitation, all went well. The members were fed and happy, the...

For six weeks the Decatur High School Robotics Team, the Beach Bots, built a robot as part of the Chesapeake Regional Robotics competition which culminated in Baltimore two weeks ago. The teams came from as far away as California, and they were part of the First Robotics series which boasts sponsors such as SIAC, BAE Systems, JC Penney, Army ROTC, Johns Hopkins University Robotics Lab, Northrop Grumman, NASA, MIT et al. With such an impressive list of sponsors, the students ultimately are rewarded, should they so choose to apply, with college scholarship opportunities.  With only 25 percent of the students applying for scholarships, the group still awarded out $12 million in scholarship funds last year.   At the competition, The Beach Bots came in first place for all of the rookie teams and fared well against many of the veteran teams. It was an impressive showing and noting the small size of the Decatur team versus some of the massive teams, it was all the more impressi...

Consommé is beyond the shadow of a doubt the nectar of the soup gods. Unbeknownst to many people and misconstrued by others, consommé is simply a carefully clarified and fortified stock, making it laborious and luxurious, not to mention a bit expensive to craft. The end result is a clear and succulent essence, perhaps dotted with a small garnish, which lends its rich mouth-feel and potency to the guest without all of the fat. It is pure flavor. Chefs simply don’t make consommé on a regular basis anymore. These soups are time consuming, uber-expensive and are in many ways misunderstood by most diners, so the effort may very well be lost on many. As such, these factors are relegating consommé to the history books as if to say that they are not worth making anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth and when talking with a friend about it recently, he gave away a telltale sign and a normal mistake by saying “I tried it once and I ended up with egg...

Consommé is beyond the shadow of a doubt the nectar of the soup gods. Unbeknownst to many people and misconstrued by others, consommé is simply a carefully clarified and fortified stock, making it laborious and luxurious, not to mention a bit expensive to craft. The end result is a clear and succulent essence, perhaps dotted with a small garnish, which lends its rich mouth-feel and potency to the guest without all of the fat. It is pure flavor. Chefs simply don’t make consommé on a regular basis anymore. These soups are time consuming, uber-expensive and are in many ways misunderstood by most diners, so the effort may very well be lost on many. As such, these factors are relegating consommé to the history books as if to say that they are not worth making anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth and when talking with a friend about it recently, he gave away a telltale sign and a normal mistake by saying “I tried it once and I ended up with e...

 I can remember many a night in Baltimore when we would find ourselves celebrating our youth, ending up at Jimmy’s Restaurant in Fell’s Point at 6:00 in the morning to enjoy a big burger and a beer. There was something about a rich meal, and mayhap rich isn’t the word that does it much justice, on mornings such as these. The high fat levels would satiate every craving for calories and you would be ready to pass into a deep slumber, bordering on hibernation. Having put more than a few years between me and those Jimmy’s mornings, I sometimes still like a plate of rich and delicious breakfast foods. Recently, as I plundered my cupboards, I ran across an old standby; our waffle iron. I don’t make waffles often enough, although every time that I do eat them they are the perfect self-contained standalone meal.   Crispy on the outside, soft and steamy on the inside, the fresh waffle has so many applications that it shames me to think of how dismiss...

It has been a long week.   Who am I kidding? The week just started today, and I’m already done. It was a long week before it even got here, but fair effort or not, the week will end one way or the other. So, fair effort I shall give. I must admit that I am procrastinating. I simply can’t think of a damn thing to cook, but I know it will come to me eventually. It reminds me of studying history at Loyola, even with the support of my amazing bride eons ago. I would have a report due on a particular book, and would wait until 6 p.m. the night before to crack the cover, sometimes even waiting for that crucial moment to tear the cellophane off of the volume. I would find myself in the basement of our house in Parkville reading, writing and formulating (aka academically regurgitating) an idea and would inevitably watch the sun come up; but the paper would be done. And so would I. Not much has changed in the past fifteen years except that this doesn’t happen too of...

 Oh, what a weekend. Under the weather for most of it, I still had to get to the high school for quite a spell to ‘assist’ my son Tyler’s robotics club. Me? Assist a robotics club? I chortle at the idea; I was more of a cheerleader and pizza provider, and while I’m on that, many thanks to Bob Beck at DeNovo’s for helping us with those. They were a much needed boost for the kids’ morale by Monday. Saturday was an eleven hour day and Sunday was long as well. The kids, mentors and a few parents worked night and day on the robot, getting it ready for the regional competition in Baltimore, and it is a cool piece of hardware. I am a proud Papa, especially when I conjure up the images of our six-year old being dragged on his belly by the beast with a grin from ear to ear. But the weekend is over and it is time to start thinking about food again. With my mind on robots and truth be told guitars (a side habit along with the piano), sometimes it is di...

Oh sweet commercials, how I love thee. Advertising at its finest abounds in our society and today is little different from days of yore. What has changed is the sheer volume of goods, as well as the size of the warehouses from which we purchase them; all under the guise of a retail storefront. And the amount of energy it takes to complete a shopping marathon in one of these behemoths makes me glad that I make my own snack bars. As you may know, they can get tremendously expensive. Recently as we navigated our way through the mass-consumption store that is rapidly taking over our country, we ran across the cheap movie bin.  You know the one of which I write. You don’t want to go near it, but the marketing geniuses have made it nigh impossible to pass up the bounty of B-movies and raunchy rejects that no longer find their way to the high ticket shelves; they’re not even good enough for the end caps anymore. Sold for $5 each, the lonely and rejected films range from...

And so I sit here with Mr. T’s gravelly voice ringing in my head shouting “write that dang article, fool!”  I loved The A-Team when I was a kid; one of the most blatantly sham-action shows of all time, funny only in its ability to bring together such a ragtag group of good guys. Sometimes I feel like I’m running an A-Team of sorts both in my house and at school. We always manage to get the job done, but along the way I’m typically called a fool and there’s always a Murdock to throw some spice into the mix. Today is stock day, a wonderful production day for all of my classes in that it brings us back down to the very basics of cooking; remouillage, stock, mirepoix and the understanding of extracting the essence of the chicken and veal into an unctuous and mouth-coating delight. One of the most basic practices in our field, it is one that is lost with most commercial facilities, as is evidenced by many chefs using bases (another word for comme...