What's your most TEDIOUS prep?

Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I see my job as turning phenomenal ingredients into something edible for paying customers.
So, I shuck peas and beans, but there's some serious compensating going on if those peas need to be turned into spheres.
I work in a two star restaurant, and have only worked in restaurants, where the ingredient is king.
The hoop jumping some chefs do to claw themselves into some kind of ranking or awards systems is crazy.
Work alongside a Lebanese chef making mezze or an Italian grandmother and suddenly those brunoised pinenuts seem a little ridiculous no?
I'm just playing devil's advocate really, but cheffy food really is about erotic as a blow up doll

If the technique takes center stage over the ingredients, then yes I'd agree. Part of being an accomplished chef, is knowing how and when to edit one's self. When I was younger I would try to cram every type of different technique possible onto every plate I designed. Lots of overwrought and difficult to eat food was produced as a result. That being said- I think there's a place for all styles, be it uber modern or medieval era (side by side even). It just takes the deftness of hand and experience to execute it properly.
Also- **** the Michelin Guide.
 
If the technique takes center stage over the ingredients, then yes I'd agree. Part of being an accomplished chef, is knowing how and when to edit one's self. When I was younger I would try to cram every type of different technique possible onto every plate I designed. Lots of overwrought and difficult to eat food was produced as a result. That being said- I think there's a place for all styles, be it uber modern or medieval era (side by side even). It just takes the deftness of hand and experience to execute it properly.
Also- **** the Michelin Guide.

Yes, exactly. There's room in the world for many different approaches. I have great admiration for chefs like Adria and Achatz and Dufresne who create new experiences and sensations. And of course there's unlimited room for things to wrong when less talented people use their approaches. Powers of transformation plus bad taste equals trouble.

But none of this is really new. Some cooking has always been about celebrating the ingredient, and some cooking has always been about transformation. Almost everything that goes on in the pastry kitchen is the latter. Do you want me to celebrate raw flour on your dessert plate?

I'm a big fan of simple cooking that does as little as possible to beautiful piece of fish or produce. I also recognize that this can be a highly privileged position to take. Not everyone lives in Southern France or Central California. Not everyone can afford sushi-grade tuna. We need ways to take the less obviously appealing pieces of food and to transform them into something delicious. The Italian grandmas know something about this.

As far as transformations that are purely esthetic ... turning round things square ... that's just a matter of taste and of extravagance. Some chefs get into the visual aspect of plating and want to do things that are fun (or surprising, or pretentious, depending on your point of view). If they're willing to pay someone hourly to carve dodecahedron-shaped celeriac dungeons-and-dragons dice ... let's hope the diners love the result. Spherizing isn't surprising anymore, but then, neither is julienning. It's just a technique that can be used well or poorly, like any other.

I think the implicit understanding in most of the restaurants that use insanely labor intensive, transformational techniques, is that these places are for special occasions. People dine there once a year, if that. They're looking for something specifically unlike what they get at grandma's table.
 
When I was younger I would try to cram every type of different technique possible onto every plate I designed. Lots of overwrought and difficult to eat food was produced as a result.

And now...piles of meat on trays.
 
Amateur opinion:

I would say centerstaging an edited set of techniques on a plate sounds great.

So does turning good-enough or even not-defective ingredients into a great result by means of technique - whether its the cook "bringing out their taste/texture" or bringing IN the taste/texture, it's good.

Throwing ALL the techniques on a plate is like throwing the whole pantry, shelves and all, on it :)


....

"Almost everything that goes on in the pastry kitchen is the latter"

Vegetarian cooking too, unless someone is foregoing dense proteins or using ready-made-and-seasoned substitutes (I hate to, *unless* it is in the spirit of the dish - I think (good quality) storebought vegetarian sausage has its charm in a Budae-Jjigae because it is supposed to be a dish born out of improvisation involving some fresh and some highly processed ingredients that happened to be available. In most other cases, I think in making a mock meat dish mocking the meat is the cook's job).

Also, many kinds of sauce making are all about transformation....
 
It took about an hour to do 45 of these, each flour hand cut then threaded on pine needles
image.jpg
 
making half-chicken roulades is a pain in the ass
 
prepping ebi for nigirizushi every day. though jklip looks like he works for a real sadist. :) I would love to join.
 
It took about an hour to do 45 of these, each flour hand cut then threaded on pine needles
image.jpg

You work at Kajitsu? Had a wonderful meal there about a month ago (really loved the gobo with this dish). Thanks for your work!

(or maybe staging there, based on your location?)
 
Really glad you enjoyed it! I'm in NYC now , I should really change my location
 
any old style cold canapes... nothing 5#1Ts me more than making hundreds of something that has multiple components (like 3 toppings and a garnish on melba toast), for a pretentious black and white affair, then watching them get scoffed down in one mouthful followed by champagne chasers... like *** did you even taste what you just ate, dont forget to send a thank you bottle of anything that will surprise me back to the kitchen as a thank you for the party in your mouth.
 
On the regular, broad beans, peas, and canapes
Past lengthy prep includes Jerusalem artichokes, round croutons, tomato string
Two things that are fun but also pains in the arse are pheasant butchery, and handcut tartare (particularly if the cut is shite)
 
Too often agreeing as a last minute fill in when the cook/chef died, crashed, sick, had a baby, you know the drill and showing up to an unfamiliar kitchen trying to figure out how the hell they EVER worked in such a freakin' disaster zone. Now That is what I call "tedious prep." Daaaaaamn.
 
Always wonder how you pros get around the "garlic doesn't scale" problem (chop up a clove, all dandy ... chop up ten heads and your hands are sticking even to the teflon pans once you unburied them from all the peels that are just going everywhere) without spending more time washing hands and cleaning away debris than prepping garlic :)
 
I'd say some of the more tedious stuff I do at home is breaking down/deboning and removing the tendons from wild turkey thighs and drums
 
Life - Gal of peeled cloves into the robocoup. Easy day.

Funny side note.
When I first moved to Sweden and at my first gig, a cook said to me that he is "going to be RoboCop." A combination of language and accent mixup, but I will never think of it as anything other than RoboCop and that is how they pronounce it at every joint I've worked at since. From then on it has always been me shouting "get me RoboCop."
 
For me it was peeling peas but for another unfortunate cook it was standing at the cutting board for 2 hours mincing a 12 quart of parsley with a mezzaluna lol
 
I'd say some of the more tedious stuff I do at home is breaking down/deboning and removing the tendons from wild turkey thighs and drums

Absolutely miserable kitchen task. I think each leg has 11 F_____g tendons. No easy way to remove them either.
 
Absolutely miserable kitchen task. I think each leg has 11 F_____g tendons. No easy way to remove them either.
Bit OT. Turkey is not a common protein in Australia other than cooked breast meat at the deli counter. Quite a few years ago one of the local butchers had turkey drums going for some ridiculously cheap price so I bought a few. Didn't have a clue how to prepare them and had no idea about the tendons so I just roasted them like chicken drumsticks. Totally inedible. It was like trying to eat a drumstick through a tennis racquet.
 
Absolutely miserable kitchen task. I think each leg has 11 F_____g tendons. No easy way to remove them either.
We have a pair of heavy duty needle nosed pliers which are reserved only for this task. They work very well at giving you a solid grip to pull those suckers out.

Mmmmm...smoked turkey legs.
 
Absolutely miserable kitchen task. I think each leg has 11 F_____g tendons. No easy way to remove them either.
Yup!! Better to do it with a few cold ones as to mitigate the frustration haha but hey, any excuse to pull out the honesuki is a good excuse!

Wild turkey tendons seem to be a much bigger PITA to remove than the farmed/store bought variety...I'm assuming it's because their wild counterparts never stop moving those delicious legs of theirs. In any case, as time goes by I'm getting fairly quick at it although I rarely escape without poking myself with the point of the knife haha
 
We have a pair of heavy duty needle nosed pliers which are reserved only for this task. They work very well at giving you a solid grip to pull those suckers out.

Mmmmm...smoked turkey legs.
Ohhhhh.....thats actually a really good idea.
 
Back
Top