Happy Holidays, Where's the Bathroom?

For those of you who think that you’ve eaten a lot this Thanksgiving, start thinking a little bit more relatively because I don’t think you could possibly compete with the marathon of self-gorging that I’ve just gone through.

No, seriously.

I ate like a horse.

Lately, I’ve been hanging out at my friend Jennifer Ko’s house a lot, inbetween her ridiculous amount of sports and A.P. classes, and my ridiculous amount of….. other stuff. (Cooking/Video Games) This is great, because I love eating foods that I don’t get at home, and her mom is like, the greatest cook of Korean food that I know. After we got past the initial sitting on the floor, chopstick coordination, and sharing plates entrance exam, Korean food is practically my favorite kind of cuisine by now. It turns out chopsticks just takes practice, my less-coordinated friends. I was talking with her awhile ago, and she says that a couple weeks ago, her mom said that they were going to Atlanta, and would I like to come, and then she asked why I was looking at her like that because I was so excited I was going a bit cross eyed, and I said, “Yes! Heck yes! My mom? No, of course she won’t care!” And my trip was planned.

So, spanks to Thanksgiving, I opted out in favor of a once-in-lifetime Korean Thanksgiving, and let me tell you, I really regret missing the time with my family. They’re the best, and I’m not used to holidays away from my family, because we’re pretty close and we have a bit of a tradition, American families being creatures of routine and all that. But I definitely do not regret going, sorry mom. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn, and I wanted to show you guys just how nice this place is:

 

Do you see that bed, on the top right? Comfiest known to man since Zeus laid his Greek butt on a pillowy cloud. There was a gym that I got a lot of use out of, thanks to Jennifer, and a heated pool, which was a god-sent when the weather got down to 32 degrees and I felt like throwing myself in front of the traffic outside. The restaurant in the hotel has a buffet all the time, and I know, I know, I’m in culinary and that’s where I should have been concentrating, but to tell the truth, I don’t really like eating food that I eat at home when I’m on vacation, and the buffet was all-American, so definitely a no-go. The first day we were here, I got to have Korean Kalbi for my thanksgiving meal, (pronounced KAI-BEE) and it was amazing. To understand what the best part of Korean food is, you have to know the mechanics. When you eat at any Korean restaurant, they give you whatever you order, plus tons of side dishes. (Banchan) These are usually stuff like bean sprouts, daikon radish, rice, seaweed salad, vegetables, squid, or my favorite, kimchi. So, you have all of these delicious side dishes, and then, at the Kalbi restaurant, they put these yummy marbled slabs of beef on the heated grill in front of you, along with onions and mushrooms. At this time, I got a big bowl of Buckwheat noodles too, but I’m not sure if this was because they usually give you soup or because Jennifer’s mom ordered it, or they just liked my face, but it’s cold and vinegary and it has all kinds of stuff like pear, cucumber, and other pickled unidentifiable things that tasted awesome.

Anyway, the beef cooks in front of you, the waitress coming by to cut it when it’s done, and you just pick it off the grill, wrap it in lettuce, rice, and a sauce, and then you cram it in your mouth like some crazed starved person, because oh god, you can’t stop eating, it’s so good. I had some kind of mutant distended stomach by the time we left, and I think I might have been waddling like a pregnant lady.

Somebody, quick, get the wheelchair.

I ate at other places too so far, a tofu house when it got too cold, where the soup in my bowl was still at a rolling boil for 2 minutes after it hit my table, until I put a raw egg in it that promptly cooked and cooled it down. I went to a bakery, where all the pastries weren’t sweet at all, but all the better for it, one tasted like peanuts, another like green tea, and another like almonds. And I even went to a market where I stuffed my face with bubble tea (A smoothie with tapioca balls in it that taste like sweet bread or something)  and more buckwheat noodles, because I was just eating for the challenge of it at this point, because it started to actually cause me pain. I know. I’m such a lady.

The food was great, and it was definitely a cool and eye opening experience to be in a place where I can’t even read the store signs or understand what anybody is saying. They just put food in front of me, and I matched my facial expression appropriately, usually by expressing unadulterated contentment. It’s really great though, to just go someplace with the whole expressed purpose being to eat food and nothing but. We went to a market, for food, we went to different restaurants, for food, and I ran 3 miles, so I could eat more food tomorrow. (I think that’s what bulimics do…) I’m in heaven, and Korean barbecue was probably the best thanksgiving meal I’ve ever had, don’t you dare tell my mother.

A Word About an Evening

Do you ever feel extremely content and satisfied? Things happen that are just perfect, and you feel like telling the world about what could happen to them, at any moment, unplanned, events that unfold to result in the perfect shape of the perfect day and the perfect meal and the perfect company.
I don't know if there's anything better than sitting down on a cloudy, humid evening in a nice, air conditioned room. There might be, but a winning lottery ticket and getting superpowers probably number among them, not nearly as achievable.
People look their whole lives for something that makes them satasfied, excited and passionate, something that leaves you wishing for a repeat of unique and transient moments. I spent the eveining in that nice airconditioned room I was talking about earlier, and the sequence of events leading up to it were about what made it one of the best nights of the season, on the smallest scale imaginable to a person of my age.
I got off work, and I glide along the road, feeling pretty awesome after a relatively busy night of making salads and bread and staring unblinkingly at the line cooks so I can osmosis some practical skill through my now-dry eyeballs. Before I even left the plaza of restaraunts and novelty shops that house my two works and a couple of my favorite restaraunts, the bakery at the end of the plaza has an open door, and a phosphorescent, doctor's office/cubicle glow washes the street, and I do a 180, almost killing myself so I can stay to talk to the pastry chef who runs the place, Micheal Ostrander.
A word about Micheal Ostrander. He's one of the most generous, people-loving, idealistic and enthusiastic person I have ever met. He loves alot of things, but the thing he loves that says the most about him is that after probably 40+ years of working in the culinary field, he still loves food the most and he still loves the people you meet dealing with it. I've become very, very attached to him, as a friend and as family. He lets me hang out, glaze things, make pies, cheesecake, scoop cookies, whatever he or his assistant needs me to do, or that I want to do. It's fun, and it's nice, and I learn lots.
Anyways, I come in, and he's working late with Casey, the dishwasher who is also one of the nicer adults that I've met in the last year, and they're making pies and glazing things that need to be finished off. It's 9 o clock at night, just showing you how busy it is at this time of year; Bakeries pulling themselves forward, cracking their knuckles, and getting things out to orders and stores for the holiday season, when diets, inhibitions, and price tags are all forgotten in favor of the holiday spirit. They're talking amiably, and as soon as I walk in, I'm welcome, which is the best feeling you can have. I get a slice of cheesecake, because Chef is always generous with friends and people in general, and copy recipes that I missed when I was in, talking to him first about life in general, and then chatting about everything else with Casey after he had to take off.
And traffic slid by out the window, and the streetlights were humming. People were partying a yard over behind the stores, singing loudly, playing rap music, and eating some kind of food with some kind of friends of their own, no doubt. It kind of makes your heart and mind feel globalized when everything's quiet, and you're peaceful, and you have a nice plate of food and a good book or friend to keep you company. You're in touch with everybody who does or has felt that way, and you feel exclusive, and happy, and ready to face the next day or the last day with whatever kind of attitude you feel fit to deem it with. And this all happens when the rest of the world is sleeping, everybody except for those select few who stay up, cleaning stations, steaming glasses, scrubbing floors, and getting ready for the next day of making a place for friends to come together.

Competitive Cooking

I don’t really know of any types of human beings that are more competitive than high schoolers.

High school, basically, could best be described as Darwinism at it’s finest, a great big melting pot of cultural diversity, survival of the fittest, surviving mutations, and cystic acne. Give teenagers a school assignment, and the person who gets a perfect score will always get glares of resentment. Get a room full of teenagers talking about gnarliest stunt they ever did, and you won’t be blessed with silence until puberty is gone and done. To summarize, competitions in high school are ten times more fun thanks to the people competing in them, and when culinary kids get going with their knife skills and the sear on their venison and the tourne cut on their potato, get ready to see tears and sweat.

The ProStart Culinary Competition is coming up for year 2011, and after getting a good face full of the competition last year, I’m pretty eager for this year’s go around, if only to see grown men cry and my fellow peers cut and burn their way to eternal (high school long) glory. The team is made up of 5 exceptional students, people who got shanghaied into practicing three days out of a week perfecting a julienne they might not have to use. The students are all junior age or above, dedicated to culinary and trying to give themselves a jumpstart on college applications and their culinary careers by dolling up their high school transcripts with a victorious state competition. They’re not taken seriously in normal high school life, if I said their names in typical high school foot traffic not a particularly large demographic would know what or who I was talking about. And that’s the best part.

You’ll probably hear a lot of stuff about this competition from me coming up in the later days this year. Competition’s in spring, and that’s not a lot of time for me to lose my competitive spirit, so the novelty probably will not wear off. Smack talk, pictures, and newsflashes will abound, because seeing people competing at something that they all love and talk about all the time is really cool, and maybe I can get digitally sentimental enough to get you guys excited too.

Here’s the team members:

            Jordan Guevera

            Robby Tanner

            Kara Zopfi

            Sara Meador

            Becky Staring

Keep an ear out for their names.

Heart, Sugar, and Crying Men

Over last weekend, I did something I didn't think I'd ever do. I went on like, this mini road trip with one of teachers to see a documentary.Excuse me?
Yeah, I know.
The film was called "Kings of Pastry," and it was so indie, that we had to drive all the way to freaking Sarasota or Seminole or whatever to see it. I think we drove through a wormhole or I'm a moron, because I still can't remember where the hell it was. Most likely the latter, don't get excited. The movie detailed the trips of 3 different french pastry chefs, attempting to show the president of france that they were the best in their field. It was all told in beautifully detailed french subtitles. Don't worry, I felt like I missed half the humour that way, too. But besides me being american, the movie was totally great.
The M.O.F. was what this documentary was all about, and I know that most students my age don't really care for that kind of film, but what the heck, I'm addicted to National Geographic and Indepent Film Channel, so I'm not the majority of the demographic. Meullier Ouvrier de France. It is, apparently, "a unique award in France according to category of trades in a contest between professionals." Of course, I didn't think of metalwork, or architecture or art, I thought of cooking. And the most similar culinary skill to all of these would be the rarely lauded Pastry field.
Things that stood out to me? The fact that the winner, (spoiler) well one of them anyway, was the only person who pretty much bulldozed his sugar centerpiece. I almost cried, this guy's piece was so beautiful, definitely me favorite, and seeing it swept into the garbage was akin to seeing the sistine chapel covered in grafitti. Well, maybe not that bad, but pretty heartwrenching. Something else that stood out? When the president awarded the highly esteemed collars, red, white, blue, and full of promise, he had tears in his eyes, and he kept choking up. What was up with that? If Obama cried at the inaugural address, I don't think we'd hear the end of it. But here's Sarkozy, dripping snot probably because a few people didn't get what they aimed for.
Weird? Not really. See, I thought about it afterwards.
Before I saw this movie, I don't think I'd ever really seen a grown man cry, and sure, there was a lot of other things that went into this particular production I saw besides emotion, but did anything stand out as well? What really makes somebody an admirable chef? I met a few chefs lately, and you know what the richest and most popular chef made me think? What a loser. What a show off, and what a totally jank way of making money. Because he was taking something that people in France were practically killing themselves over, which is something along the lines of glory, recognition and pride, and bastardizing it for the sake of television. Nice guy.
Digression through.
Back to the movie and my subject.
Sarkozy cried, not because he was french and automatically a girl, no. Sarkozy and all the judges got so damn upset because cooking matters to them. It's not reality TV, it's not the latest blog or best entrepreneurial step to take in this economy. It's something they all care about, and when their peers and countrymen are inadequate after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours and spending family time elswhere, it's felt, right there.It really made me think about wanting to be in the culinary field. Am I even good enough after seeing these guys? What makes me different from chain restaraunt line cooks or foodies who spend all their money on the next big thing? What makes me worthy while I sit here writing a stinking blog about the fundamentals of heart and authenticity of something inherently rustic?
Whatever, I'm probably not, but that's what is going to make me try harder I guess. See more movies, maybe take notes next time.