Food Demo Part 1: Prep-work

I recently stumbled upon an opportunity to run a full two-hour cooking demonstration as a project for my Hunger and Abundance class at UTSA. The terms were simple: I would be provided a fully equipped demo kitchen, a budget for ingredients, and an audience, and all I had to do in return was cook a few simple dishes. 

I was thrilled! If I could pull the thing off, I would have a great grade and great experience. If this demo went well, it would be a small affirmation of my ability to cook food professionally. A bit of proof that I’m not in over my head with this “foodie” business. Either way, this opportunity to run a cooking demo on my own terms was one that few aspiring chefs are afforded, and I set out with the deepest intentions of not screwing this up. 

I started by conceptualizing my menu. I needed to think of a theme. I don’t know what possessed me, but I decided to build my first cooking demo around vegetarian comfort food. I spent hours thumbing through every cookbook or food magazine that I owned, looking for dishes that adhered to my seemingly oxymoronic theme. 

My goal was to develop a menu of three or four items which could be cooked in about two hours altogether. I figured that a soup would be the perfect dish to begin the demo with, as it could be started and then left to simmer while another dish was started. I settled on a potato cream soup with roasted red peppers from the Culinary Institute of America’s vegetarian cookbook. I’d never prepared the recipe before, but the thought of warm potatoes, peppers, and parmesan. 

I figured that I could make an appetizer last, as it would most likely take the least time, so I decided to leave that decision for last and focus on my entree. I obsessed over that entree for days, scouring every vegetarian cooking book, blog, or website I could find, looking for some vegetarian dish that looked hearty and/or comforting. I was at a disadvantage, it seemed, as I was completely lacking personal experience in the realm of vegetarian cuisine. But after much vigorous reminiscing, I recalled a particularly comforting dish that I would always order when my mother used to take me and my sister to La Madeleine,  a cozy french cafe chain, during the winter. The Spinach Pochette at La Madeleine was one of my favorite meals as a child, my grandmother having instilled in me a serious love for leafy greens at a very young age. The earthy spinach, paired with a savory cheese mixture, and folded into a flaky pastry resonates with me as the epitome of simple french comfort food. I decided to take the best things about this recipe and incorporate them into an entree. I found a recipe for spinach and goat cheese quiche with sun-dried tomatoes. It looked perfect: earthy spinach and tomatoes, savory and creamy goat cheese and parmesan, and a nice, flaky pie crust. 

I figured that for the demo, I could make the crust and filling while the soup finished and let the quiche bake while I made the appetizer, which by this time I’d decided would be elegantly simple zucchini pancakes: little fried zucchini fritters that I’d serve with creamy tzatziki sauce. So my menu was set--assuming I could learn to successfully make all of these dishes in the week-and-a-half I had before the demo. Once I learned the recipes I’d have to figure out how to time the demo, check to make sure that the demo kitchen we were using (at the UTSA rec. center) had all of the supplies we needed, round up any unaccounted for supplies, buy ingredients, and finally, cook the entire meal under the watch of dozens of hungry eyes. Yikes!

Just as I began experiencing the early stages of a nervous breakdown, two other students from the class approached me, asking if I needed help cooking during the demo. Though I had initially envisioned myself running the entire demo, the prospect of having three chefs, each one preparing a different meal, seemed like a great way to alleviate some of the stress I’d been accumulating over the project.  Needless to say, I accepted their help with open arms. 

The first sous-chef to approach me was Randall, a tall, skinny military man with a surprising passion for food. He was a cook at The Cheesecake Factory--which, lets face it, is essentially just Olive Garden for the slightly more affluent--but his cooking skills and knowledge were impressive nevertheless. I’d also noticed that Randall was a rather talkative guy, and I was relieved to have someone else in the kitchen who could fill my awkward pauses. 

My second sous-chef was Shane Jones, a young man whose natural curiosity more than made up for his relative lack of knowledge in the kitchen. Though I had my doubts initially, he learned quickly and would eventually gave a great performance at the demo. 

I held a practice session, for which I had great expectations, at my apartment one week before the demo. I wanted to run it like a rehearsal, practicing the order in which we would perform different steps and keeping time to ensure that we would be orderly and precise on the day of the demo.  I thought that we could practice speaking aloud as we cooked and find a little chemistry between us to keep our audience entertained. I was greatly disappointed.        

I have myself to blame for the failure of our practice session. With two chefs and a mound of ingredients sitting before me, I realized exactly how much more effort I would need to put into this demo to make it run smoothly.  I hadn’t given Randall or Shane copies of the recipes they were preparing, so they both had to learn how to make them. Also, I hadn’t yet developed a concrete plan for how to order the preparation of the three menu items. Furthermore, there were several things that needed to be prepped in advance, and since I hadn’t done that, we had to spend a lot of time on prep work. 

The resulting rehearsal was a lot messier than I’d hoped. We all ended up working on our separate dishes simultaneously, and it was impossible to convince either of my sous-chefs to treat the practice like a real demo. The food came out well, with the exception of my dish. I’d given Randall the task of making the soup and had Shane make the zucchini pancakes. I was going to make the quiche... for the first time. I’d never made my own pie crust before, and it is just as difficult as everyone says. To make a light, flaky pie crust requires finesse, agility, and most importantly, practice. I don’t think I need to tell you that my pie crust came out thick and as hard as stone. I would have to put in a lot of time with the rolling pin before I could make crust worthy of being served. 

Though not what I expected, the practice had taught me some valuable lessons, the most important of which is that if you want to be respected in any kitchen, even your own, you have to be prepared. You have to know exactly what you’re doing and be prepared to delegate, these things are essential.  I knew that I couldn’t let the demo look anything like our practice run, so I had to get control of things quickly.

My first concern was figuring out how I could arrange these three menu items, each of which with very different cooking times, into a cohesive demo without leaving any gaps. I didn’t want us twiddling our thumbs while we waited for the quiche to cook, and I didn’t want to confuse people by constantly jumping around from one recipe to another. I developed and itinerary which explicitly listed the order in which every step of each recipe would be performed. I wanted my sous-chefs to be able to refer to it during the demo and know exactly what they needed to do next. Since the quiche had a rather long baking time, I decided that I would make two quiches the night before and reheat them at the demo. Also, any items that needed to be peeled or chopped in bulk were done ahead of time to eliminate down-time during the demo.

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Food Demo Itinerary:
Prep at home:

• quiche filling (fully prepped) or full quiche to be reheated
• pie dough

Prep in Kitchen:

• potatoes (peeled)
• zuchinni (grated and dried)
• peppers (blanched)

Step One: Start soup/ Knife Demo

1. Randall- Soup  Roast peppers (cut, put in oven)
2. Pillow- Leeks (cut and water bath), start melting butter, peel chop and add garlic.
3. Randall- Steam show peppers, peel and chop pre-blanched peppers
4. Randall-  Add peppers and leeks
5. Randall- Demo peeling and dicing 1 or 2 potatoes, ask for volunteers to dice pre-peeled potatoes
6. Randall- Add potatoes, add vegetable broth, add thyme. Start simmer (Timer: 30 min)

Step Two: Mixing Dough, Rolling Dough, Start Blind Bake

1. Making Dough

1. Pillow- Take pre-mixed dough out of fridge.  Mix dough in processor. Ice water, sift flour and salt, add butter, add water slowly)
2. Pillow- Knead and roll show-dough, put in fridge.

2. Rolling Pre-made Dough

1. Pillow- Roll out dough
2. Pillow- Cut dough. Roll onto pie tin.
3. Pillow- Crimp Edges Preheat Oven 375

3. Blind-baking

1. Pillow- Prick bottoms with fork. Shape foil and add dry beans
2. Pillow- Bake crusts (Timer: 10)

Step Three: Quiche Filling, Finish Soup

1. Quiche Filling (Make double recipe ahead of time)
1. Pillow- Heat oil
2. Pillow- (Onion Dicing demo) Add garlic and onions
3. Pillow- add spinach and saute. season and let drain in colander.
4. Pillow- whisk together cream and eggs.
5. Pillow- Add goat cheese, parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach.
6. Pillow- Pour into crusts and bake at 350 (Set timer 40 min)

   2.     Finish Soup

1. Randall- Heat cream for soup
2. Randall- Puree soup with immersion blender.
3. Randall- Add heated cream and season
4. Randall- chop chives, grate parmesan for garnish, set aside for later. Keep soup warm.

Step Four: Tzatziki Sauce and Zucchini Pancakes

1. Tzatziki Sauce (Double this Recipe)
1. Pillow- Grate zucchini and squeeze dry.
2. Pillow- add yogurt, sour cream, oil, dill, and cucumber in processor. blend.
3. Pillow- pour sauce into bowl and add lemon zest and juice.

1. Zucchini Pancakes (Double this recipe and make very small cakes)
1. Shane- Grate show zucchini, salt, and set aside to dry.
2. Shane- Whisk eggs in bowl and add flour. Mix.
3. Shane- Chop herbs and crumble feta. Add to egg mixture.
4. Shane- Heat oil in pan.
5. Shane- Add walnuts and pre-grated zucchini.
6. Shane- fry small spoonfuls to make enough cakes for everyone
7. Shane- Salt finished pancakes.

Step 5: Taste and serve.

• Slice quiche and display on platter
• Arrange pancakes neatly around bowl of tzatziki.
• Serve out of dutch oven. Garnish with chives and parmesan.
• Set out disposable cutlery and dishes
• Help serve guests and relax.

____________________________________________________________________________

My next big task was to master the pie crust. I tried several different recipes over several days, most often coming up with pie crusts that were either too doughy or too crumbly. Eventually, I came across a recipe that worked, and I stuck to it. The recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of flour, two sticks of butter (one cold and one frozen), cubed, salt, to taste, and just enough ice-cold water to form a cohesive dough. As you can see, this recipe requires a bit of guess-work, and it took me several long nights to get it down. I had to be able to make this recipe without any hitches on the day of the demo, and eventually I mastered the pernicious pastry, though I’ll never look at a pie the same way again. Now I only had to cook the dang thing at the demo, and I'd be done.

Part 2: The Show Coming soon!

San Antonio's First Mobile Food Court on the Way!

A local businessman and former UTSA student has recently broken ground in the construction of “The Block,” San Antonio’s first mobile food court. The owner of “The Block,” Jon Onstead, said that as a student he noticed a lack of interesting eating options near the UTSA main campus, and he hopes that his mobile food court will introduce some variety into the diets of UTSA students.

According to Onstead, “The Block” is projected to open early in March of 2013 and it will be located on the corner of UTSA Blvd. and Roadrunner Way. It will feature a bar/patio area, seven hubs for local food-trucks, and a permanent kitchen space which is meant to house Chela’s Tacos, a popular taco truck which has been serving UTSA students for years. Onstead also says that he plans to host a variety of events at his food court, including movie screenings, eating competitions, and live music.

“Once a week, we’ll do a movie night where students or anyone who is interested will be able to go to the website or Facebook page and vote on movies that they want to see,” says Onstead. “We want the student’s involvement, as far as telling us what they want to watch there, what they want to listen to music-wise and what they want to eat there.”

As far as which food-trucks will be featured at “The Block,” Onstead says that nothing is set in stone. Although no food-trucks have been signed leases yet, Onstead is confident that when “The Block” opens in 2013, it will have a strong lineup of vendors. 

“Some of the top food-trucks in the state are going to be a part of it,” says Onstead. “We’re not just selecting from San Antonio, we’re selecting from food trucks out of Austin that want to branch off into the San Antonio market. We’re looking for quality and variety. We don’t want to have three Korean barbecue joints there. Because our concept has generated a lot of interest, we can be selective with the trucks we want to have there.”

It seems fairly certain that one notorious San Antonio food truck, Chela’s Tacos, will be moving to “The Block.” Chela’s Owner Martin Davis expressed his intentions to become a permanent resident at the city’s first mobile food court.

 

“I’ve got a contract with the guy [Onstead] to build me a kitchen in there,” says Davis. “It’s gonna be a small kitchen, but big by my trailer’s standards, so we’re gonna be able to be open earlier for breakfast and stay open later.”

 

Moving from a food-truck to a brick-and-mortar kitchen should give Davis’ already successful business an opportunity to flourish. When operating out of his truck, he is limited by a low storage capacity and an obligation to report to a commissary every day, where he dumps dirty water and grease and refills with fresh water. At “The Block,” Davis will have plumbing and storage space so that he can continue service uninterrupted and even increase his menu.

“Because I’ll have more cooking facilities, we’ll be able to expand on the basic menu,” says Davis. “We do really good pozole and menudos, we’re probably gonna do some different types of chili. We’re gonna be able to expand and do a little bit more of a full mexican menu.”
 

All of the trucks that lease with “The Block” will have access to a plethora of benefits. According to Onstead, these trucks will have access to potable water and a place to dump sewage on-site, they will no longer have to report to a commissary or transport their trucks back and forth every day, and they will all have the option to rent additional storage space.

“Basically, it’s the closest thing to a brick-and-mortar for a food truck,” says Onstead.

When Onstead first had the idea for “The Block,” the city of San Antonio had no laws in place to regulate mobile food courts. In order to bring his concept to fruition, Onstead had to push for changes in the City Code which would accommodate the establishment of mobile food courts.

“Basically I discovered that there weren’t any laws for private property owners who wanted food trucks on their property, “says Onstead, “...we started writing letters to the city and to the health department saying, ‘this is what we’d like to do.’”

After much litigation, the City Council passed the necessary amendments to the City Code. Now, any individual who wishes to open a mobile food court in San Antonio has laws in place which make that possible. Onstead says that he wanted make this happen for the students of UTSA.

“I know what the student body wants,” says Onstead, “because that’s what I wanted. We want a cool place to hang out and either study or get entertained, and eat great food. And not just food from chains, but local food made with fresh ingredients. I know that when I was in school at UTSA I would have loved to have a place like this to go to.”

According to Onstead, growing schools like UTSA need nearby places where students can have fun as a community. This is what he hopes “The Block,” will be for UTSA.

“It’s creating a great environment for students to relax or chill in, to dine in, or to be entertained,” says Onstead. “I’m trying to bring a little bit of that culture to UTSA.”

Anthony Bourdain coming to San Antonio

Anthony Bourdain, chef, writer and host of the Emmy winning show, No Reservations, is coming to San Antonio’s Trinity University on at 7:30 pm on Nov. 8th as part of his Guts & Glory tour.

Bourdain is perhaps best known for traveling the world and testing his daring palate against all types of exotic cuisine on his two Travel Channel shows, No Reservations and The Layover. He is the author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, a witty and often shocking expose of the professional kitchen and a memoir of his own culinary career. Following the success of his first novel, Bourdain wrote three more non-fiction books as well as three crime novels and a graphic novel, all of which revolve around the world of food.

Bourdain is an experienced chef. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978 and went on to work in several professional kitchens New York, eventually landing a position as executive chef for New York’s Brasserie Les Halles.

Bourdain is a black sheep among celebrity chefs, and is known for his unapologetic frankness. His sardonic and often crude comments leave some audiences reeling with laughter while others change the the channel on their television sets. Bourdain has openly expressed his disdain for the marked commercialism of some of television’s most popular chefs, and is also open about his drinking and past drug use.

The tour’s promoters have been vague about the content of the Guts & Glory tour, but Bourdain will be presenting uncensored material and stories which are sure to leave some audience members blushing.

The tour will be hosted at Trinity University’s Laurie Auditorium. Tickets are on sale, ranging from $32 to $52, and can be bought through Ticketmaster or at the Laurie Auditorium. A limited number of VIP tickets will be sold for $147. VIP tickets will include premium seating, an exclusive tour poster, and a post-show meet-and-greet and signing opportunity. For more information visit <http://www.anthonybourdainontour.com/index.html>.

Legume of Doom

I’d like to take a moment to talk about my relationship with my greatest culinary nemesis--the peanut. This diabolical little legume is a one of the “Big 8” food allergens which, combined, account for roughly 90% of all food reactions in the U.S.  The possibility of stumbling upon this deadly ingredient hovers like an angry cloud over most of my culinary experiences, the
evil peanuts threatening to rain down upon me at any moment and send me into the throes of anaphylaxis.

    As a lover of all things edible, this dietary restriction weighs me down like a true physical handicap.  It’s like my tongue has a lame leg and as a result there is a huge range of experiences that it can’t share with the world.  For instance, Thai restaurants are virtually off-limits to me.  I remember my first (and only) Thai spring roll: it was delicious. The crunchy vegetables and soft wrapper were delightful--that is, until my body began to reject the subtle poison that was cleverly laced throughout the dish and I proceeded to regurgitate my dinner right back onto the plate.

    I wrote about aversions in my last blog, but I failed to mention how food allergies may factor into one’s aversions. I can think of only two instances in which my natural instinct of self-preservation would affect my dinner order. I can think of only two foods which literally put the fear of death in me: blowfish and peanuts.

    The fear of food is a strange and unfamiliar emotion for most. Imagine that you’ve just ingested a Japanese blowfish and a young amatuer chef comes to your table and congratulates you on eating the first blowfish he’s ever prepared. How do you feel about what you’ve just eaten? Do you feel the panic creeping up on you? Do you feel the poison stewing in your belly, begging to diffuse throughout your bloodstream? Do you feel the certainty of life fading away? I get the same feeling every time I’m offered a home-baked cookie.

    I realize that there are worse afflictions than a food allergy. However, given the response that most people have when I pass on an offering of peanut M&M’s, one would think that I’m in great suffering. “How do you live,” people ask me. I’d like to take this moment to assure the world that I do, indeed, survive without peanuts. In fact, I survive better without them.

    For some reason, when I tell the average person that I can’t eat peanuts, they follow up with the question, “Does that mean you can’t eat peanut butter?” Then, after I’ve explained that peanut butter is, in fact, made almost entirely of peanuts and that no, I can’t eat it either, the generic response is, “Peanut butter is so delicious! You have no idea what you’re missing.” I have yet to understand why the average person feels compelled to rub dirt in my wounds. Do they ask a blind man how he lives without seeing the sunset?

    Contrary to common belief, I’ve tasted peanuts, peanut butter, peanut flour, and peanut oil. Contrary to popular opinion, I hate peanuts--the look, the taste, the smell. You’d be surprised, when a particular food is associated with swift death, how quickly you develop a distaste for that food. Even the stench of peanuts makes me feel sick. It reminds me of sitting in the cafeteria at Scobee Elementary, trying my best to shield myself from flying peanut butter cracker particles.  I was assigned to sit next to a buck-tooth girl named Meghan. Every day she ate her damned peanut butter crackers, exclaiming at how delicious they were, spewing the sickly-sweet scent of poison into the air, smiling to reveal the peanut butter and cracker particles clinging to her big protruding teeth.

    Back then I used to hope that I would grow out of my peanut allergy--that I would bite into a PB&J one day, on a whim, and nothing horrific would happen (of course, I also hoped that I would grow up to be a velociraptor). I suppose that both would still be nice, but I really don’t need to be reconciled with that fiendish food, the peanut.  I’ve been living with the allergy for my entire life, and it’s a part of my identity. I read the ingredients label of suspicious foods, I carry a shot of epinephrine in the glovebox of my car, and I steer clear of bake sales. My name is Jon and my problem with peanuts is really no problem at all.

I Wouldn't Eat that...

Out of the great multitude of food television personalities present today, my undisputed favorite is Andrew Zimmern, host of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Food. It’s not just because of his charm and his warm personality, its because the man loves food enough to eat anything (and he’s kind enough to let the whole world watch). In case you’re not familiar with the show, Zimmern travels all over the world, partaking in strange and often revolting local “delicacies.” Viewers can see Zimmern eat all types of aversive foods, from cockroaches to rats to various animal penises.

Why is Zimmern’s show so well received? Why do we love to see him eat the foods that make us cringe?

I think that it has to do with our natural aversions to certain foods and the shock value that challenging those aversions brings to television. The old television show Fear Factor was quite popular for its tendency to unapologetically churn people’s stomachs. The show would usually contain a challenge round in which contestants were faced with the task of consuming large plates of vile foods (i.e. animal testicles and live bugs).

When we compare the two shows side-by-side, an interesting contrast becomes apparent: while the latter show treats the consumption of bizarre foods as a disgusting spectacle, the former treats it as a celebration of culinary culture and tradition. This comparison poses an interesting question about the nature of food-aversion: how is it that fear factor contestants are spitting up deer testicles while Zimmern is asking for seconds? Is our apprehension of certain foods hardwired into our brains, evoking some sort of instinctive fight-or-flight response, or are food-aversions a cultural manifestation, products of societal trends and taboos?

I attempted to understand this phenomenon by testing my own food-aversions. Though I’ve always been curious about it, I never had the gastronomical courage to sample head cheese (until last week, that is.) For those who are unfamiliar with the traditional European cold-cut, it is essentially a loaf composed of a chopped mixture of flesh from the head of a calf or a pig, which is simmered to produce a stock, and then poured into a dish where the fat and natural gelatins found in the head congeal, suspending the flesh in a savory meat jelly.

While the thought of eating the head of an animal may be especially discouraging to some, the cut of meat was not my qualm. In San Antonio, we eat a lot of barbacoa, a dish that is usually composed of slow cooked meat from the head of a cow. I learned long ago that it isn’t uncommon for restaurants to include the tongue and the eyeballs of the cow in their barbacoa tacos.  Of course, barbacoa tacos were, by this time, already a staple of my diet; I’d always been aware that I was eating the head of an animal, but the newly discovered possibility of finding a big, gelatinous chunk of eyeball in my taco phased me for some time.

However, this story is proof that if the food tastes good, aversions can be overcome.  It was not long before I shook off my fear of mashed eyeballs and picked up another barbacoa taco. Eventually, the shock of eating something unfamiliar fades away, and formerly aversive foods become integrated into our individual culinary cultures.

Andrew Zimmern regards his bizarre culinary encounters as an intimate form of enculturation. As he said in a Travel Channel interview, “Food is the simplest way for me to learn about another culture. Share a meal with folks and it will change your life as you see what real people are thinking and feeling.”

Food-aversions are at least partially influenced by social trends, as is evidenced by the vast differences in food preferences throughout different cultural groups. The foods one considers “normal” depend on the environment in which they were raised and the food sources available to them. Cultural groups share a relatively fixed diet, and unfamiliar foods are often the recipients of social stigmas.

However, I feel that no preconceived notion alone could have been responsible the visceral response I had to my first taste of head cheese. A feeling of dread fell over me even as I entered the grocery store and made my way to the deli counter. For me, the hardest part of eating head cheese was seeing the strange loaf of meat sitting on display. It looks like somebody replaced the fruit in your jello salad with chunks of mystery meat.  Even though I was comfortable with the ingredients in the head cheese, something about it’s presentation made my stomach flip over at the sight of it.  

At home, I had to close my eyes as I cut a sliver of the head cheese and popped it into my mouth. It had an intensely meaty flavor, like SPAM (one of my childhood favorites). It’s like eating the concentrated essence of beefy flavor. However, the textural sensation of the gelatinous stock made me gag instantaneously. I had to fight to keep the piece of meat down.

I was surprised at the force with which my body rejected the head cheese--a strange food which I’ve always been relatively optimistic about trying. Something about the sight and texture of the

After my experiment with head cheese, it was apparent to me that some aversions are simply products of our our own personal tastes. My aversion to the texture of gelatin, especially in the form of cold, congealed animal stock, is most likely the reason for my fear of head cheese.  Just as my disdain for the taste of licorice is the reason for my aversion to Twizzlers.

Although some aversions may be rooted in cultural traditions, others are more difficult to explain. Sometimes, our instincts seem to tell us what foods to avoid, and we must decide whether to fight our aversions or to submit to them. It is important, I think, for us to try the foods we fear at least once, if only to avoid missing out on the hidden treasures of the culinary universe. As for me, I think I’ll listen to my body and avoid eating more head cheese for the time being.