The Girl in the Kitchen

crab cakes

Crab cakes on the flat top

Our industry has changed a lot in the last twenty years.  With the popularity of chefs increasing and the public’s demand for better food growing as a result of the advent of primetime food television, restaurants and other foodservice providers have been require to step up our game.  But while the number of women in the kitchen is on the rise, we are still, in many cases, considered “that girl”, rather than as a member of the team.  Now I am the first to say I am not a traditional feminist, and I don’t want any sort of special treatment or consideration based on my gender.  I do, however, want to be on the team, rather than just some sort of mascot relegated to the sidelines.

I started cooking professionally (for money) when I was still in high school.  My mother owned a diner in a small northern California town, and the entire family, with the exception of my five-year-old baby sister, worked in the business.  My middle sister loved working the counter and the dining room, visiting with the customers, while I preferred the kitchen.  I started in the back room, on early morning prep, and quickly moved to the grill/griddle.  My parents were liberal Californians, and so I was raised to believe that gender didn’t matter, as long as you could do the job as expected.  I spent my weekends and evenings after school cranking out burgers, sandwiches and a weekly special family dinner menu.  Dancing between the big flat top and the deep fryer, I developed a love of the adrenaline high of a busy service, allowing my mother to manager the all-important cash register.

When I went off to college, it was understood that I would pursue an academic degree, and get a “real” job, but I knew the best way to earn extra money was to work in a restaurant.  I was just seventeen, and hit my first “wall”.  “…I’m sorry honey, we can’t have you in the kitchen until after you are eighteen…wouldn’t you rather be a waitress?”  This was especially frustrating since I saw boys my age doing vegetable prep and in the dish room.  I waited impatiently until my eighteenth birthday, and much to my surprise, it made little difference.  I was still lectured on how the kitchen was a hot and dangerous place, and girls were too delicate for the work.  I finally managed to talk the manager of a local sandwich shop into hiring me for morning prep, since no one else seemed to be interested in that job, preferring the more visible sandwich maker positions.  I showed up every morning at 6:00AM, cranked up the stove and the stereo and settled into six hours of slicing meats and vegetables, preparing the chili, steaming the roast beef and pastrami and setting up the twelve sandwich stations for the lunch shift.  Afternoons, I went to classes, pursuing a degree in Business.  I’d board the bus at 1:00P to ride downtown to campus, reeking of pastrami and clutching my free sandwich, which would become my dinner between afternoon and night classes.  I worked that job for two years, until one day, I came in to find that they had hired a “chef” that would take over the prep duties.  Of course he was a guy, barely older than I was, but wore a white cotton floppy hat and a dirty white chef coat, instead of my red cotton apron and baseball cap.  After that, I stayed out of the kitchen, instead working as a waitress and eventually cocktail waitress as I tried to finish school.  The money was better, and I was working nights and weekends instead of weekday mornings, so my social life improved greatly, but I still missed the kitchen.

I returned to the kitchen many years later, after twenty years of working as a sales and marketing manager in the high tech industry.  I was burned out on the high stress world of being on call 24/7, when your beeper (and later your cell phone) would ring at 4:00AM with that all important call from a client in Asia.  I started working for a catering company, first as a sales manager, then as operations manager.  Part of our training was to work in all of the departments of the company, and I found myself clocking in at 4:00AM with the baker to work my first shift of my kitchen training.  I fell right back into it like I had never left.  I eventually opened my own catering company, and decided to pursue some traditional culinary education at a local community college and eventually at the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley.

In almost every one of my classes, I was one of two or three women.  My age and gender meant that most of the young men, who were line cooks and junior sous chefs decided that I was a “housewife” and did not belong in the class.  Either that or I should be what they called a “pastry bunny”, a derisive term for the pony-tailed female pastry program students on the other side of the huge kitchen hall.  I remember going to my Skills II instructor, well-known chef instructor that trained in the Swiss and German hotel system.  I lamented that my kitchen lab partner treated me like his personal prep cook, relegating me to slicing vegetables while he worked the hot line.  I didn’t want to be the complainer, just wanting to be treated as a team member and peer, but I was paying good money to learn, and I refused to be denied the opportunity to cook.  Chef Dieter advised me to ignore what my partner was doing and choose which recipes I wanted to prepare; to come to class with my prep lists written, showing up before breakfast so as to get a head start and be deep in my work by the time my so-called partner showed up to class.  I did, and on the last day of the class, when my partner ended up in the weeds, I stepped in and finished his saute work while he struggled to plate his dishes in time for service.

Even online, we seem to be the butt of all the jokes.  In one forum recently, I disagreed with a male chef’s viewpoint on a situation, and found myself berated in a most graphic manner in a rant that went on to discuss bodily fluids and my relative value as a breeding sow.  Thankfully, the group administrators (all men, by the way) stepped up and booted the troll out of the group.  I am grateful for the level playing field of many of the online groups that I am a member of, as the sharing of inspiration and our work is a valuable tool in developing as a chef and culinary professional.  Give us a chance to contribute, and the experience is richer for everyone.

It seems like every kitchen I show up to work in, the first assumption is that I should really be on pastry, or on the salad line.  “Girls” aren’t strong enough, aren’t tough enough, take teasing too seriously, won’t stand up to the rigors of working the line.  “Girls” aren’t fast enough, can’t take a joke, get their feelings hurt or will let you down.  Let me tell you something, “boys”, girls are tougher than you think.  “Girls” don’t quit, show up when we are expected to, aren’t afraid to ask questions, tell dirtier jokes than some of you do.  Hell, many of us even understand and speak Spanish.  It’s always a moment when I am working away, listening to the chatter around me, and inadvertently laugh at the punch line of some particularly vile joke, without even realizing everyone is speaking  Spanish.  The first time it happened, everyone just stopped dead in their tracks, the kitchen was silent, and every eye was on the “girl”.  I have to admit, I loved the shock value.  I also loved beating the guys at their own game.

Women in the kitchen don’t have to make themselves into men in order to fit in.  I am not saying that the image of the tough “grill bitch” female chef is wrong.  It’s just that like male chefs, female chefs come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions.  As an executive chef today, with a largely female kitchen, I run a tough shift, but yet there is little shouting, and little or no abuse commonly found in male dominated kitchens.  We crank out some amazing food under challenging circumstances, as many of our kitchens are in the field, literally in a field.  There is still nothing like the rush of a challenging service, a plate up of multiple courses for 100+ guests, and when we are done, there is still a lot of butt-slapping, high-fiving, and a few well deserved “f’ yes’s!”  As more women rise up the ranks, the dynamic of the kitchens will shift.  No, we won’t make everyone stop swearing, we won’t make all of you wear pink aprons.  Instead, we will hold the entire team equally accountable to the success or failure of service, just like our male peers.  Like I said earlier, we don’t want to be special, we just want to be on the team, to suit up, show up, and kill it at service every time.  So next time you are tempted to segregate the “girl” in your kitchen to the back room, give her a chance to show you what she’s made of.  I suspect you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

 

Post by Julia Conway on April 18th, 2018

Did you miss the Condiment Circus?

Chef Julia

Chef Julia at the Tasting Bar

I had the opportunity last week to teach a seminar on the trade show floor of the largest specialized catering and events conference in the United States, held at Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, and at the Las Vegas Convention Center.  Another chef was designated to teach this class, but was not available due to prior commitments, so I got the call.  It was a great opportunity to summarize some of the flavor profile trends we have been seeing out here in California, and how they can be applied to catering menus for large and small caterers across the country.

The first step in preparation was to Google this year’s food trends, though I was pretty confident that I knew what I would find.  Many “new” ideas for the rest of the country have been on our menus in California for a couple of years, due to our vibrant and innovative restaurant scene and a heavy focus on diversity and local and sustainable foods.  The usual things popped up, “farm-to-table”, small artisan producers, all the buzzwords.  But how to translate this to a seminar entitled “The Condiment Circus:  Three Rings of Flavor”?  I set down the laptop and headed to our pantry to see what was on the shelf.

In the pantry, I found Gochujang (Korean fermented chili paste), Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce, gluten-free hoisin sauce from Wok Mei, a large bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce, salted Japanese dried plums (umeboshi), and a quart jar of preserved Meyer lemons that we use in preparing our vegetable tagine.  Digging further, I found all-natural liquid smoke and blackstrap molasses, which we use to approximate the flavor of bacon in vegan preparations, and an assortment of finishing salts.  On the counter were a full slate of Stella Cadente Olive Oil’s crushed flavored California oils, and more salts and salt blends.  A trip to the reach-in yielded our Korean BBQ sauce, house-made Romesco and a couple of jars of fruit mostarda that we prepared to accompany roast pork.  Now I had a basis for a seminar on condiments.

A list was assembled for the event organizers (all the condiments had to be readily available, either through foodservice distribution or via the internet, mostly from Amazon Prime).  Many of the caterers at this conference were rural and small market, like myself, and did not have access to the well-stocked ethnic grocers found in larger urban areas.  I dug through my recipe files, and came up with half a dozen recipes, complete with photos, of ways to integrate these condiments and flavor profiles without scaring our clients into the woods.  I included the recipe for the Korean BBQ sauce, plus a couple of recipes for appetizers using it.  A recipe for a baby chicory and beet salad with a robust vinaigrette pulled in the Blood orange olive oil and the sweet chili sauce.  Of course, the crowning glory would be our vegan eggplant “bacon”, a recipe inspired by a Pinterest find when researching vegan brunch ideas.  I added our recipe for Romesco, even though we would be tasting a retail version, and a couple more photos of dishes using some of the other items such as the finishing salts.

The main focus of the seminar was to have the attendees taste each of the condiments, then taste some of the foods derived from them.  This meant tons of little dishes and spoons that had to be laid out in order in the back of the house, set for 30-50 attendees.  Setup took me most of an hour and a half, but we were finally ready.  Up to the mike, assistants all set to pass out the tasting portions and off we go.

The first taste was the Gochujang, a fermented bean and chili paste from Korean that is as ubiquitous as catsup is in the United States.  It has a nice heat, balanced with the complexity of fermentation, and strong notes of umami.  It was accompanied by a taste of the Korean BBQ sauce, made based on the Gochujang.  The sauce also included brown sugar, tamari, toasted sesame oil and rice vinegar.  Everyone loved how the other sauce components tempered the heat and the resultant sauce could be used in a variety of ways.

The second taste was the Thai Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce.  This was an easy one for most of the attendees, as it has a nice balance of sweetness, heat and acidity.  This was followed by the Vietnamese fish sauce, which can be used as a shelf stable substitute for anchovy in many recipes.  Next up was the Japanese salt-dried plum, which we use to flavor steamed sticky rice as a side dish for Asian inspired pork dishes.  While the plum itself is salty and astringent, the finished rice reflects the subtle fruitiness and aromatics of the plum.  The last Asian inspired taste was the hoisin, noted as a great way to bring Asian flavors to BBQ sauces.

On the same spoon as the hoisin, the attendees tasted blackstrap molasses, as a segue into the north American market basket.  They noted the similarities in the flavors, bitter plus sweet plus umami, and how each culture used these flavors in certain ways.  They then were given a tiny spoon of the liquid smoke.  We discussed the recognizable flavors in bacon and other preserved pork product (salty, sweet, bitter, smoky) and we presented a taste of the vegan “bacon”, thinly sliced eggplant painted with a mixture of the molasses, liquid smoke, maple syrup and tamari, then baked in a low oven until crisp.

We followed the bacon with the flavored olive oils, both the Blood orange and the basil, and discussed how these could not only be incorporated into dressings, but used as sauce replacements and in marinades.

We then moved to the old-world market basket, with hot harissa and the preserved lemons from Morocco, discussing the use of these condiments across the southern and eastern Mediterranean.  Everyone was struck by the influence of the Arabic world in even new world cuisines.  The next taste was traditional Mostarda di Frutta; whole baby fruit preserved in sugar syrup and hot mustard from northern Italy.  Noticing the likeness to chutney, the attendees were quick to grasp how this could be flexible enough to move from the cheese and charcuterie plate to the entrée, especially with roast meats such as chicken and pork.

The last tastes we enjoyed were the finishing salts.  We presented two Hawaiian salts, the dusty pink Ali’i and the black lava salt.  Both are great for garnishing, both with color and their earthy mineral flavors.  We love using the pink salt on a big basket tray of steamed edamame, and use the black salt in many of our passed appetizer where the color is a counterpoint to the ingredients presented.  The next salts tasted were our house-made duck salt and porcini mushroom salt, and we discussed using our spice grinder to prepare these from on-hand ingredients.  A very effective method to use when layering flavors.  Our example was a recipe for duck confit risotto; made with duck stock, shredded confit duck meat, sautéed in duck fat, and topped with a quenelle of duck foie gras.  The finishing touch was a sprinkling with duck salt (the rendered skin pulverized in the food processor then mixed with kosher salt).  The last salt tasted was SaltWork’s Salish alder-smoked sea salt.  We use this salt frequently to finish plates of roasted or grilled meats, especially beef, as it brings out the flavor of the cooking method in a subtle way.

Discussion ensued during the question and answer period about the differences and commonalities in the various cultures and their condiments.  Everyone left with new ideas and inspirations to take back to their own kitchens.  For presentation materials, see below.  Contact us via email at info@assaggiare.com for recipes.  For information about Catersource/Event Solutions conference and trade show, click here.

 

Condiment Circus

 

Gochujang:  Korean fermented hot pepper sauce (hot, fermented)

Thai Sweet Chili Sauce (Mae Ploy):  Southeast Asian chili pepper jam (hot, sweet)

Natural Liquid Smoke: (bitter, smokiness)

Blackstrap Molasses: (bitter, sweet)

Flavored Olive Oils (www.stellacadente.com): (umami, fruit notes, herb notes)

Romesco:  Spanish sauce of almonds, bread, tomato, paprika, peppers (umami)

Harissa (Mustapha’s):  Moroccan chili paste (heat)

Preserved Lemon (Mustapha’s):  Moroccan salt pickled whole sweet lemons (acid, salt fermented)

Fish Sauce:  Southeast Asian, made from fermented small fish (umami, fermented)

Umeboshi:  Japanese salt dried “pickled” plums (sour, sweet, salt)

Hoisin (Wok Mei is gluten free):  Chinese “BBQ” sauce, fermented beans with soy, rock sugar (umami, sweet)

Mostarda:  Northern Italian fruit preserved in syrup with mustard seed (sweet, hot)

Finishing Salts (www.seasalt.com):  smoked, meat flavored (duck), mushroom, herb (salt, various flavors)

All of these condiments can be used to layer flavors in a dish, bring out specific notes in the flavor profiles, replicate flavors from other types of foods, enhance specific elements of flavor such as umami, sweetness, astringency and acidity.

Condiments available on Amazon Prime unless otherwise noted.

 

Post by Julia Conway on March 22nd, 2016