Taste,Taste,Taste and Taste Again

In this post I want to emphasise the importance of tasting your food!!

It might sound strange to have me say that but you wont believe how often I have to say it. Maybe I like the sound of my own voice, yeah right, you better F.R.O now before I kick your arse too. Why do chefs forget to season or worse forget to taste. Is it down to lack of concentration, to repetitive cooking of the same dish, don't give a toss attitude, it'll be alright chef, or what is it.


I put it down to a couple of reasons. First the chef has to enjoy what they do. By this I mean they have to like to cook!! and not just the odd fish dish or cake now and then, a full-time profession, day in day out. Also the chefs need to be made aware of the importance of taste, you grow to learn taste and flavours, we were not born with the taste of oysters in the mouth or the distinct flavour of ginger. So we have to learn them. How can we learn if we don't taste.

Just the other day I was able to take the night off, well I did just work from 8am to 5pm so I thought I would come in for dinner. We had started a new menu a couple of weeks back and I thought it would be a good idea to see and read and taste it from the other side, the dark side.

All dressed up and smelling nice, wifey and I head out for dinner. We were sat at a table next to friends of mine who just happened to be dinning out. They commented on the menu and food throughout the evening. It was just for that reason that the following took place.


Main meals were being consumed, or should I say not consumed!!!

The waitress asked if all was fine with the meals, and the response was great apart from one dish.

Now just imagine this. The chef of the restaurant is sat in his dinning room eating from his menu having his chefs prepare and cook those dishes. All sounds great, something to be proud of. Well somebody forgot to tell those fucking chefs in the kitchen to have their wits about them and buck the fuck up or you will get your arse roasted.

Back at the table the young lady replies 'I think its a bit salty'.
All shy and embarrassed to say anything, not just because she felt it salty or because I was sat at the next table, but generally she would not be one to complain.

I overheard the conversation, as I do, I try not to miss a thing. I turn and enquire, salty she said, can I try, and so I was given the bowl of pasta.
Holy cow, it was not salty it was bloody salty. You could stand your fork up in the salt. Only after one spoon-full I could feel the inside of my mouth on fire with salt, a real aggressive attack.

It was at this point that I was beginning to rage and with the manager who had just joined us for a drink present that didn't improve the situation.

The waitress took the pasta back to the kitchen, and within seconds the evidence was in the bin. This was not known to me at the time. I proceed to the kitchen, to find a little clarity on this awful situation. Only to see the lost looks on the kitchen team faces.

Did you taste the pasta I shout, where is the plate? In the bin chef. What the fuck. So you didn't try it? Where is the pan, that's got nothing left in it.
Now I find the smallest pot in the kitchen with some pasta left in it. I immediately know what's happened. I taste the water. I am not kidding you when I say that you could float anything on it. You could kill somebody with that saltiness.

The worse thing is not that the water was salty, it is that the food was not tasted at any time during the production of this pasta dish. How fucking stupid is that, nevertheless I did get back to my table and enjoy the rest of my one opportunity out.

I can understand that things get missed now and then, after all we are not cooking for Michelin stars or any accolades, we are just trying to produce good food using the best produce that we can get, for normal people in a small town.
But not to TASTE, TASTE, TASTE, is not fucking acceptable......

P.S I don't expect it to happen again in the near future........

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Looks that decieve

I have cut many a wedding cake in my time, the majority have been made with good craftsmanship. However you do get the odd home made job that lacks the finesse of a professional cake.


The past wedding cake was just one that has to be mentioned. A cake made by professionals, not home made I add.





The cake looked very impressive and was thick with chocolate. That was all fine until it came to the actual cutting and serving. Tonight the cake was to be bagged and given to the guests to take home with them.

The three tiers were all mud cakes of different flavours. One dry and over baked, the other raw and soggy inside. Top kept for better days...It took about a hour to get what was best from the cake and bag it up. All I can say is it was absolute carnage of a cake. I hope not to have another like that.


Please put some thought into choosing your wedding cake and especially how you want it served. Bag it, that's fine but not a creamy soft iced gooey sponge, stick to the traditional fruit cake.

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I Hate Doing Breakfast, Especialy When......

Sunday morning @7.30 the phone rings. I am fast asleep in another world. The voice on the line screams "chef we need more sausages, can't find the fruit platter, the waitress is not here yet, HELP."

*********PAUSE & REWIND***********

Now after a big Saturday service, restaurant big tables a high profile wedding special customers to have cakes ready for, the last thing on my mind is work and definitely not breakfast.

Our breakfasts are set up so that the chef or a chef doesn't have to do them. Lets face it, it's not rocket science to scramble eggs cook bacon or sausages is it.

Now the deal is

The kitchen staff prepare the breakfast, and the ladies come and cook it. Nice and simple, and any chef with his head screwed on would be very grateful to the help they receive from the breakfast crew.
Also when there is excess room service, we set the trays with all that we can, prior to cooking and serving. This is a huge benefit to the breaky person as they don't need to run around chasing things like jams and cereals etc

So now that you can understand the set up we have, it should be plane sailing eh!!

The breakfast prep is usually done after the service as we require the trays and space for other items, also we don't get much chance either with the ala carte prep of high importance first.

Breakfast Prep

So the order from Chef goes out to the Apprentice get the breakfast prep done and the trays plus make sure the pancake mix is there. How many for chef? Do plenty as we can use whats left for Tuesday breakfast so make enough (fatal error *1) Yes chef comes the response.

The thing now to remember is that the prep is always the same only depending on numbers to does the quantity change.

It's 11.30 pm and chef is having a beer and dinner. He asks the apprentice if the prep is done, yes chef, are the hash browns up? yes 2 bags chef, trays and pancake mix done? yes chef. (fatal error*2)

Around midnight the apprentice goes home, chef checks with the wedding staff to find out how things went, says goodnight to some guests that he recognizes and so on. The wash up is now finished and after all is checked and turned off he gets to go home.

*************PLAY******************

It's 7.55am and I get to work the breaky lady is frantically getting fruit for the fruit platter. I take over and get it done. Then I search for some more sausages.
I ask is everything o.k. the response is not good. Apart from the obvious, the breaky lady reals off a few things, like i had to go and get the bloody hash browns, whats with only a few sausages, how come there is so much furniture n the restaurant and so on.

Now I like my breakfast ladies and really appreciate what they do, what I hate is fucking apprentices that don't get the job done properly, especially one that you should know by now, and after the crock of shit fruit platter you attempted last time, what the fuck are you up to? Maybe if you paid more attention to the career you have chosen instead of knowing all the fucking words to god knows how many Lilly Allen songs you would become a better chef and not a fucking pain in the ass on Sunday Morning.

Things to remember

Fatal error*1 don't give an job of prep without the exact amount.
Fatal error*2 don't rely on the apprentice to do the job properly.
Fatal error*3 CHECK every thing and then CHECK again.

Now my message to my apprentice, and any other for that matter.
Firstly; Pay Fucking Attention
Second; do the job properly and not a half ass effort
Third; always do more than you have to 110%
Forth; if you take or use the last firstly inform someone, second replenish it if available.
there is probably loads more but will save them for another time

Message to self, Don't rely on your apprentice even if you think you may have a hopeful one. It will bite you on the ass.
Question to self, Why do you still do what you do?

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You Name It, I Fucked It

On Tuesday the 28th April, for a function, i was required to make two quiches. Not a problem i thought. Lol i thought very wrong.

Short Crust Pastry

The first thing that went wrong was my pastry base. A simple short pastry was made on the Friday before. The plan was to then roll out the bases and blind bake them on the Saturday so i wouldn't have to when i came in on Tuesday. Unfortunately, preparing the bases slipped my mind until after service on Saturday night when i found the short pastry wrapped up under my bench. (It was put there mid-afternoon that day to bring up to room temperature to make it a bit more maliable.) By this time it was too late to blind bake them, so i left it until the Tuesday morning.

How Not to Make a Quiche

Now, back to Tuesday. Once the short pastry was bought up to room temperature, i began to roll it out. It was, as i found, too short to work with. So asking my Chef what i could do, we decided on transferring it all into a bowl and adding a little more liquid to it. That was all fine. So with my new and improved short pastry, i pressed it into the greased bases and blind baked it for 20mins. All good i thought. WRONG! As i pulled out the par-baked bases i noticed cracks. "No problem" i thought, "ill just patch this up with my leftover short pastry. Oh fuck they're in the bin!"
So making up a very quick new batch of short pastry i finally had something to patch the cracks up with.

The Bloody Egg Mixture

As the bases sat to cool lightly. i made the egg mixture. Heres something no one can fuck up. Oh but i did. I was aware of the ratio of egg to milk, unfortunately, somewhere i miscalculated immensely. 2 egg to 200ml of milk. Right. So how the fuck did i end up with 4 eggs to 1 litre of milk? No wonder i failed maths.
Luckily Super Chef was here to save the day. He had asked me how many eggs i had put into this egg mixture. As i told him, he just looked at me funny and told me to add in four more. Now i had 8 eggs to 1 litre. Still not enough. Super Chef scratched his head and asked me once again if i had enough eggs. I told him what formula i was working from. (Once i had told him, i realized that i was meant to have 10 to a litre not 4 or 8.)With that, i was shot the weirdest look followed by a loud chuckle and an "Oh Cass".

How to Bake a Quiche in Under 10 Minutes

So another problem fixed with the help of Super Chef. The bases were filled and covered with the now perfected egg mix. What else could go wrong? WELL... by the time we had fixed all my little fuck ups, i was running out of time. Thankfully Super Chef once again saved this 'Damsel in Distress' with his trusty microwave. Due to the fact that we had 10 minutes to produce the Quiches (fully cooked) and in the oven they would have taken at least 40 minutes, we had to use the microwaves to get these bloody things cooked in time.
7 Minutes later the quiches where finished. Just in time to plate them and serve. It was not a good start to the day, and the rest of the day wasn't much better.

SUPER CHEF SAVES THE DAY!

Four Things i learnt from this day

1) Never throw out supplies until completely finished with.

2) Know the formula/recipe to work with

3) Never under estimate the power of the microwave

4)I need to screw my head on when i get out of bed =)

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