Done with classes, searching for an externship

Rambly post with a little bit of whining thrown in warning. Dutifully warned.

I finished classes, and my final chef instructor was amazing. She was one of the NYC "slow food" chefs, and I totally adore her tattoos. She's got the british sailor bluebird of happiness duo and some amazing other ones. And we started our classes with a pregnant chef, and ended our classes with a pregnant chef. I'm not sure if that means anything, but it's at least vaguely interesting.

So the dilemma I'm having now revolves around ethics in the kitchen. I found what I thought was an ideal externship. Fancy restaurant, simple bread (only one type, modification of the traditional parkerhouse roll, easy enough, just involved boiling 50 pounds of potatoes every day and carting huge heavy doughballs up and down stairs - can we say buns of titanium?), three simple desserts (literally from the back of the package - how hard is that?) and the potential for some cool chef specials.

Except the sous chef was a jerk who told me to my face that he could do the executive chef's job much better, that the point of the restaurant was as a place to be seen (implying in my mind that the food was second to the hipster bar scene, and since they got their food from one of the mediocre food suppliers that hires criminals because they can pay them less, I could tell they were more on the cost-efficiency 'I shop at Walmart' side of the fence (I don't, btw, shop at walmart.)), and finally, as they've been in business "almost a year", they didn't need any suggestions for improving their flow.

I'm a consultant. It's how I made my money for a while. I'm really good at looking at big-picture and saying "this isn't so efficient - this can be improved". It's what consultants, for the most part, do. And he blew me off. Whatever. But he did it in a mean, nasty way.

And then told me that, despite the fact I was told my schedule was my own to set, it wasn't true. And apparently I agreed to only get paid for the hours I was posted to work, not the hours I put in, according to the notice on the schedule shown to me a week after I had been working there. And it looked like they wanted me to work Saturdays for the rest of my stay. I already have a Saturday gig. I love Lisa and Bark for Peace and if I can keep baking for her and her fabulous wonderfulness, I am going to keep baking for her. (I tried to make a chewy little drop yesterday as a test run for a good treat for training (basic profiterole recipe with rice flour and banana instead of wheat flour and egg) and it was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever made - although the dogs LOVED it. But they love cat poop, so who am I to judge? But I'll keep trying. I think rice flour is going to be the answer, just maybe in combination with potato starch instead of just rice flour. Too gooey.

So in the ridiculousness that is my day to day existence, I don't have an externship lined up, and I've got about a week to find one. It's only a twelve-week gig, but experience has shown me that I can't work at a place without respect - apparently even for a week. I sent my resignation in using the only contact methods I had and they didn't seem to go through, so I got a call from the executive chef yelling - yes, yelling - at me at how I was unprofessional for not wanting to work in a kitchen with people I didn't respect and then accusing me that if I was so desperate (I admit I did use that word during the interview), why did I quit? In my defense, I didn't say I was a crack whore, just that I needed an externship and I was worried about getting one. And the whole "if you're going to break up with me, I'm going to break up with you first!" mentality thing seriously reaffirmed my feeling that fancy hipster-scene restaurant was not a good place for me to be.

So yes, I took the lame way out and walked away from the situation rather than sticking around and asserting my rights. Maybe it wasn't right of me to not care enough to make it my battle, but there was just so much to overcome and I'm still too fragile from all the wounds of last year (I still dream about Taki and Tsuki, although never Nuncle, which makes me cry thinking about it). So now I'm just now trying to figure out if all restaurants are filled with chip-on-their shoulder confrontations or if there is a commercial kitchen or bakeshop with "ISA", and what I can do to get in it.

Bitter, Dark, Milk and White Dilemma

This last pastry block really kills.

No, seriously.

We were working with gelatin, which in itself is disgusting enough on multiple levels, but I finally got around to trying to find the parent company for Cacao Noel (not so easy - they're French).

Through the distributor site, I was able to at least determine the country of origin of the beans. Cacao Noel proudly states they have a factory in equatorial Cote d'Ivoire. A previous roommate did her peace-corp service there, and aside from the stories of men being turned into chickens, the idea that the boxes of chocolate that we're blasting through are all the result of a likely chance of child slave labor (a 10-year old sold for $30?) hurts my very soul:

Following international media reports in 2000 and 2001 of widespread child labor abuses in West African cocoa farms, which produce 70 percent of the world's cocoa, the international human rights community investigated the problem. A 2002 joint study published by the ILO and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture found that an estimated 284,000 children on cocoa farms in West Africa were "either involved in hazardous work, unprotected or unfree, or have been trafficked." Most of the children were on cocoa farms in Cote d'Ivoire, the world's largest cocoa producer. The remaining children labored on farms in Ghana, the world's second-largest producer, and in Cameroon and Nigeria. (Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report 2007, US State Department, http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2007/)

The industry stepped up rather quickly and forged an allegiance stating they would make the farms slave-labor free by 2005 (Harkin-Engel Protocol). Right. I can't find any follow-up report on statistics (although the one linked above is from 2007) stating what the current child labor statistics are, there is still no ban on child-slave-labor produced chocolate to the US, and knowing industry, this product we use hasn't suffered any harm from the aforementioned slap-on-the-hand industry self-regulated policy, if in fact they were using slave labor, which is probably the case since I can't find anything that says they aren't.

So what do I do? (Other than crosspost, of course)

Lovely Vacation

The last few weeks have been spent stressing out about all the things that are going on this month. Ironically, two days after the N&D and I had the cops called on us for being on a public park during a public fireworks presentation (it was a construction zone, but there were no "no trespassing" or "no admittance" signs to be seen), I blathered on about how we really didn't want to have a huge police force in our neighborhood to a city representative. I hope it came across more as "if they'd just treat us like we're humans and we'll respect what they do" than "they do such a sucky job, keep them out." Granted, this was on top of the city's incredibly slow response to a beating that caused a man's death just a mile or so south of our neighborhood.

Great.

Anyway. Back to the routine of taking evening baking classes, trying to keep up with editing, researching my ARG (yay, ARG!), and stressing about not making enough money to keep the N&D from complaining about not having any money. Granted, every time I turn around he wants a drill press, a welding set, a new controller for the Ghia, a new multi-media computer, a trip to Maine, a blah blah blah (smile).

And if you're reading this, DON'T FEEL GUILTY! And don't start justifying all of your wants. I know, I know. You NEED them. You've got grandparents who are getting old and you promised. I'm complaining about the clunkiness of the current one. I know ... I know. I just find it funny that we're both feeling guilt about the same thing from different ends, okay?

But on a lighter note, I found the absolutely best carrot cake recipe I've made in a long, long time. And it was on the Wilton site. It's not as light as the carrot torte I tried first, but for a wedding cake, it's fabulous. And I'm having fun playing with different white chocolates. So far, Callebaut is still my favorite.

Grilled Pork Tenderloin and Polenta

We're really lucky that we're on the mailing list for Central Market. Periodically we'll get coupons for things I would never buy. Yesterday, we pulled out the grill and charred a lovely pork tenderloin, marinated in lemon & herbs, four minutes each side and then five minutes of rest (internal temperature up to about 150, although 160 is recommended as minimal. Me, I'm an advocate of letting fresh flesh be slightly rare). It was sadly gone before I could take a picture (those are leftovers). I made baked polenta to go with it, modified from the Herbfarm Cookbook, and easy enough to throw together while waiting for the grill to get hot!

In a pot on the stove bring to boil 4 1/2 cup water (or broth and water, low salt recommended) and 1 tsp salt (I used sea-salt)

then whisk in 1 c coarse cornmeal (classic polenta) that can be bought in bulk from CM.

Whisk constantly for about five minutes (or until cream-of-wheaty - whatever that means) and add in 3/4 cup shredded cheese - I used comte, but gruyere is recommended and herbs - I used an herbs de province mix I put together from the garden, but sage, thyme, rosemary, all of that is good. And 1 tablespoon fresh is recommended as a start, unless you're like me, then you add in as much is needed, plus a dash of cayenne and nutmeg and dried mustard powder, and some ground black pepper, and maybe a pinch of something something because you can.

Add in anything else you feel like adding in now, too - because you're next pouring it into a buttered 1.5 quart dish and putting into a preheated 350 degree oven, with another 3/4 cup shredded cheese on top, and cooking for about 1 hr, more or less, depending on how dry you like your polenta.

The longer you let it sit before serving, the better it sets up (like lasagna). Even mushy it ends up being quite tasty.

Daring Bakers and cookbook challenges

New blog that's more food related than my other blog, and hopefully will reflect my culinary obsessions instead of just musing on my life and stuff.

Buying an electric car from someone and the daring bakers challenge came up. I'd never heard of it, and was immediately intrigued. What a fabulous idea! And then, after visiting one of their sites, I discovered the weekend cookbook challenge. Even better!

So I'm challenging myself (since I don't want to have to commit to anything) to work through my own cookbooks, one random page at a time. First random page brought up something that takes a couple of days to set up, so I'm conveniently excited, since I've already started the pizza dough proofing for tonight, and am looking forward to the marghareta pizza I'd already planned.