peachtree road farmers market

Saturday morning, before I had to go to work, I decided to check out the Peachtree Road Farmers Market (which Chef Hopkins and his wife helped found) upon Jason and Woody's recommendation. I was not disappointed.

I arrived at the Cathedral of St. Philip, which is a magnificent building in its self, and followed the masses of people until I found the farmers market in the back parking lot of the church.

At first glance, the farmers market looked rather small, but after taking a few laps around the market, there were easily about 50 venders out there.

This market offered everything. They had multiple vegetable stands, H&F Bread Co., multiple creameries, a honey vendor, treats for your dog, crafts for kids, live music, tamalis, chef demos, and even a guy making crepes to order...

... and a traveling wood burning pizza oven

I wanted to try a little something from everywhere, but unfortunately I only had two dollars with me, so I started looking around for how to maximize my $2. While walking around and checking prices, I found Jason who invited me to walk with him and talk to vendors.

Jason had a few vendors that he needed to talk to (Sun Dog Farms, Atlanta Fresh), but we took our time and he pointed out interesting things about different vendors. For example, Jason mentioned that the guy who opened The Spotted Trotter used to be a sous chef at Restaurant Eugene.

Jason would talk with the vendors and tell them that if they have any extra stuff left over after the market, to drop by the restaurant and we'll take what we can.

Eventually, Jason had to go get some things and I had to get ready to go to work, so we went our separate ways. Before leaving the market, though, I spent my $2 (or rather $1.50) on a cookie from The Cookie Studio. The Cookie Studio had all kinds of interesting cookies like the Breakfast Cookie which includes oatmeal, granola, cocoanut, pecans, and other tasty breakfast items, but I decided to go for the Key Lime Sugar Cookie.

Needless to say, this was an excellent cookie. It was soft, but not crumbly and contained just the right amount of lime.

I will definitely be coming back to this farmers market....and with more money

Now, on to work.

I arrived to work to find a note for me on the dry erase board that's on the door of the walk-in that read, "Ben, please make breadcrumbs. Woody"

I was ready to get started on making breadcrumbs, but Jason wanted me to get to work on cleaning morel and chanterelle mushrooms for service. I knew that cleaning the chanterelles would take a long time, but what I didn't know was that cleaning morels would take even longer. To clean the morels, I had to soak them in water and drain them multiple times to wash all the dirt from the crevices.

By the time I was finished with the mushrooms, some of the vendors from the market had already come and gone, so there was plenty of produce for me to put in the walk-in. After a while, I couldn't fit any more stuff in the walk-in, so I made sure that everything that needed to be refrigerated was in the walk-in and the rest I left out on the back work bench.

Next, I started making the pimento cheese fritters to the night. After I finished forming the fritters and was waiting for them to firm up before breading them, Ryan came over to help me get the rest of the produce into the walk-in. Ryan had some extra time because Chris was going to be working on his station and Ryan was there to make sure that he didn't get overwhelmed.

Somehow, we found a place for everything in the walk-in and then it was time for family meal

Today, family meal consisted of the usual salad, some roasted squash, and meatballs. Everything was delicious as usual.

After I finished family meal, I got right back to work on finishing the fritters because I wanted to make sure that I got those finished before service started for the night. Next I was asked to chop some parsley for the line for service.

As I was chopping the parsley, Judith came around the corner, saw me and said, "Stay right there." and left. A short while later she came back with this...

... an official Restaurant Eugene hat. Judith told me that the night before, she came downstairs with a hat for me, but I had already gone home, so they gave the hat to someone else. But, I've got my hat no, so it's all good.

Now I finally had time to address the task issued to me via the dry erase board, breadcrumbs. I sliced up some loaves of bread, processed them, and began scraping them through the tamis. After I had made a good amount of bread crumbs, it was almost time to leave for the evening, but I still had time to do a couple more things for everyone, so I peeled some garlic and cut up some lemons for Gavin.

Till next time,

Ben

195 hours left (officially over half way finished)

fasa

When I showed up to work today, David got me working on trimming, peeling, and slicing watermelon rinds that we would be pickling later.

My dad always talks about pickled watermelon rind, but I've never tried them before, so I was interested to see how they tasted once we finished.

While I was working on the pickled watermelon rinds, David was working on making mulberry jam with some frozen mulberries that he found in the bakery freezer. I never knew, or rather never thought, that mulberries were an actual fruit. But now that we were using them for something, I couldn't get the "Pop Goes the Weasel" nursery rhyme out of my head.

David had to leave to get more jars for us to put the jam and the pickled watermelon rind in, so he left me to attend to the jam and finish slicing the watermelon rind while he was gone.

Note: this is not all of the watermelon rind

It didn't take long to finish the watermelon rind and get the brine together (which had to boil and simmer for 15 minutes before adding the rind). While I was waiting for the brine to boil, I was able to peel, slice, and fry the shallots that we would need for the night's service.

While I was doing all of these things, Chef Hopkins was in the kitchen working on some things of his own when he went up to the chalkboard and wrote, "Fat Acid Salt Aromatics" (FASA) and drew a box around them. Chef Hopkins then preceded to tell me, and anyone else that crossed his path, that those four things are the four elements that every cook should be thinking about before sending food out to a customer. We buy the best ingredients that we can and those four elements should work together to highlight the ingredients. For example, we could take thin slices of carrots add some orange juice (acid), a nice sea salt (salt), and some basil (aromatic) and make an excellent salad. Without the acid, salt, or aromatic, the dish would be bland.

As I was going to get something, I passed by Chef Hopkins who asked, "Ben, what all do you have going on today?" I answered him with, "Well, I have to finish off these pickled watermelon rinds. I'm keeping an eye on this mulberry jam for David and will probably help him with it once he gets back. Then I have to make the pimento cheese fritters, then bread and finish the pimento cheese fritters. Oh, and I have to make breadcrumbs." "Good. Busy day. Breadcrumbs are important. Fasa."

A short while later David showed up with the new jars right as the pickled watermelon rinds were ready to be jarred. So, I jarred the pickled rinds and processed them.

Now that I was finished with the watermelon rind, I could get to the things that I had on my agenda for the day, like making breadcrumbs.

I found some breadcrumbs that someone had cryovaced a few days ago in the walk-in and decided to use them first. Because they breadcrumbs had been vacuum packed, they were pressed into a solid block, so I had to use a food processor to cut them down to a manageable size again. Much to my surprise and delight, these breadcrumbs had already been put through the tamis (I know, I know. I spelled it wrong in previous posts), so they were much easier to force back through the tamis and took no time at all.

Now that I had breadcrumbs, I started on shaping the pimento cheese fritters. Not much to report here other than wile I was working on the fritters, Chef came back to my station to use the cryovac and mentioned that the last time he used that machine, he was cryovacing the same thing (5 different potatoes in 5 different fats with 5 different herbs) and I was working on the pimento cheese fritters. Talk about deja vu.

While waiting on the fritters to firm up so that I could bread them, I peeled some potatoes for david who would be using them to make his German potato salad for the line to use for service. While doing this, Woody asked me to cube butter and cut lemons for the line after I was finished with the potatoes and pimento cheese fritters.

Before I knew it it was time for family meal.

This has got to be one of the best family meals that I have had this summer. Breakfast for dinner. It consisted of grits with bacon and chicken crackling (small pieces of fried chicken fat) and an egg casserole with mushrooms, green beans, onions, and all sorts of other delicious veggies.

After family meal, it was back to the fritters. It didn't take long to finish the fritters (even after having to move to 2 different stations) and I was finished with breading and reshaping them in less than an hour. On to cubing butter and cutting lemons.

I had to cube the butter and cut the lemons on the line because Jackson needed my previous station to break down fish and James was at my usual station breaking down lamb. This wouldn't be a problem except that they had the heating coils on to keep the food hot and I was trying to cut butter. But this just meant that I needed to work fast and in batches which isn't too difficult.

While I was cutting the lemons, Judith (one of the restaurant office ladies) noticed that I didn't have a Restaurant Eugene hat on. She asked me if they had given me a hat and I told her that they hadn't. Judith looked at Woody and said, "I think he deserves a hat." Woody said, "Yeah, a souvenir." So, hopefully I'll be getting an official Restaurant Eugene hat sometime in the near future.

Before I left, Jason asked me what time I was scheduled to come in tomorrow. I told him that I am supposed to come in at noon. Jason told me that I should go to the farmers market that Chef Hopkins and his wife (Gina, who also works in the restaurant office) helped found. I told him that I would try to make it there before work, so maybe I'll have some cool farmers market stuff to talk about in my next post.

Till next time,

Ben

203 hours left

mickey and me

Yesterday, David told me that we would be making jams all day today because we had a lot of berries and fruits that needed to be used. However, when I showed up today, all we had left were 12 pounds of blackberries, so we would only be making black berry jam.

I am pretty familiar with the jamming process by now, so I knew that there was a point where we would have to wait for the mixture to reduce for a while and figured that during this waiting period I could slice and fry the shallots for the day.

Apparently, I was getting pretty close to the end of the shallot I was slicing and sliced a piece of my thumb instead. Fortunately, the blade was on a very thin setting, so I didn't slice off much of my thumb. I immediately put some pressure on my thumb and went to get a bandaid. However, I couldn't any bandaids and neither could anyone else. Right as we were about to give up, Judith (one of the women who works in the restaurant's office) walked by and remembered that she saw some bandades and went to get one for me. As luck would have it, they were Mickey Mouse bandaids.

Now, I don't know if these were really good bandaids or if that thumb has gotten used to getting sliced (I had sliced off the tip of the same thumb about 4 years ago), but it did not bleed as much as fingers usually do when they're cut.

After I was properly bandaged, I resumed slicing and frying the shallots. Next it was time to jar and process the blackberry jam. Right as I finished with processing the jam, David returned from lunch and mentioned that he saw Jane Lynch shopping at the Whole Foods where he was getting his lunch.

I realized that we were getting pretty low on breadcrumbs, so I would have to make some more. I processed the pieces of bread and began pressing them through the tammy (drum sieve). After a good hour of pressing shreds of bread through even smaller mesh holes, I decided that I needed to start shaping the pimento cheese fritters for the night.

Shaping the fritters didn't take long, so I got back to making breadcrumbs. Not long after I cam back to making breadcrumbs, Woody asked if I would help him with making potato chips for the bottle shop. I agreed to help and took over frying the chips so that Woody could get some other things done.

There were a lot of chips that needed to be fried, so I was to get nervous about finishing the chips and still having time to bread the pimento cheese fritters before service. Turns out that I would have nowhere near enough time to finish both of the tasks, but there was a new guy that was training today (Chris), so Ryan asked me if I would show him how to bread the pimento cheese fritters because Chef really likes them when I make them.

I was a little bummed because I know that Chef wants the fritters to be perfect and I have gotten pretty good at making them perfect, but Jason wanted me to keep frying chips, so I taught Chris the breading process for the fritters as quickly as I could, and went back to frying potato chips.

Even with my undivided attention on frying potato chips, there still wasn't enough time to finish them before Woody had to leave for the bottle shop. So, Woody took over frying the chips for me and I went to organize the walk-in (something that Gavin asked me to do).

Everything was pretty crazy because I was scrambling to find containers for everything that was just in boxes in the walk-in, Woody was trying to get everything together for the bottle shop, Ryan was trying to train Chris, and everyone else was just getting into service for the evening. I figured that, at that point, it would be best to have one less body in the kitchen and it was already past time for me to leave. So, right when I finished with the walk-in, I bagged and sealed the breadcrumbs that I wasn't able to finish (that I will have to do tomorrow), cleaned my station, and told everyone goodbye for the night.

Tomorrow, I restart the long process of pushing bread through wire mesh along with everything else that I usually have to do for the day.

Till next time,

Ben

211 hours left

complements from the chef

David was back at work today.

I was wondering how this would work out since I now had my own agenda of things that I needed to do. Turns out that it worked perfectly because now I didn't always have to ask David what I could do next. However, both of us would stop whatever we were working on whenever we got a new shipment of produce in so that it would get put away quicker.

First problem of the day was that I couldn't find enough oil to fill up the fryer for the potatoes, shallots, and parsley. After searching high and low and asking everyone if they knew where more oil was, I decided to wait until Woody or Jason got to work and ask them what to do. I did, however, continue to slice the potatoes and shallots on the mandoline so that I didn't have to do that when we were finally ready to start frying.

Eventually, Woody showed up to work and after checking to make sure that we were indeed out of oil for the frier, he sent me to Holeman and Finch to transfer some of their oil to us.

Next problem of the day was that I could not find the scoop that I had used to portion the pimento cheese fritters. I ended up using one of David's scoops and decided that I would go back and make sure that they were the right size once the official pimento cheese scooper showed up.

The official scooper never did show up, but I found one that was close enough and went back to make sure that all the fritters were the same size and shape. As I was reshaping the fritters, Ryan and multiple other cooks mentioned to me that Chef (Hopkins) was thoroughly pleased with the pimento cheese fritters from last nights service. I just laughed it off, said thanks, and went about my business. Then, as I was putting the fritters in the walk-in to firm up before breading, Chef Hopkins came in looking for something and told me, "Ben, the fritters are perfect. It was a pleasure plating them." I didn't know what to say, so I said, "Thanks Chef." and went on my way.

While I was waiting for the fritters to firm up, I helped David with preparing food for family meal. My gob was to trim the ends off of and cut up pole beans, which are like flat green beans. There was a whole deep cambro of them, so it took me a good while to get through them all.

Once I finished that, I cut up some squash, drizzled them with oil, and seasoned them with salt and pepper before roasting them for family meal. Later, but before they were finished roasting, David sprinkled some herb parmesan cheese on top of the squash and put them back in the oven to finish roasting.

By this time, I figured that the fritters should be firm enough, so I took half (38) of them out for breading. I floured them, dipped them in the egg wash, and floured them again before taking them back to the walk-in. I had decided that I would get all of the fritters to this point in the breading process and then bring them all out for the final step (one last dip into the egg wash and then into the breadcrumbs).

Last problem of the day. Turns out that I decided to set my tray of fritters on something that was slightly unstable and the tray fell onto the floor of the walk-in. More than half of the pimento cheese fritters for the nights service were gone. To add to the devastation of this mishap was the fact that we were about half an hour away from service and because the fritters are the amuse bouche, they would be the first things out to every single table.

I was angry and frustrated, but decided that I needed to make some more fritters and I needed to make them quick, so I got to work. From the time the tray fell on the floor, to the time that I had gotten the new pimento cheese fritters to the stage of the breading process that the fallen fritters had been on, only 20 minutes had passed. Somehow I had managed to get everything together just in time for service.

When I was finished with the pimento cheese fritters, David asked me to help him because he still had a lot of things to do before he could leave for the day. David quickly and masterfully threw together a mixture for squash dumplings which they needed for service. David put the mixture in a piping bag and gave it to me to pipe into molds. It took a while to pipe and bake all of the dumplings, but once they were all baked and put into containers, it was about time for me to leave.

As I was about to leave for the day, Ryan cam up to me and asked me if I had time to do something for him real quick. I said of course I did and Ryan showed me what he needed me to do for him. Remember those 5 different potatoes cooked in 5 different fats with 5 different herbs? Well, Ryan had been plating them and wanted me to cryovac the plates of potatoes and label them as large or small plates. This was easy enough and I was done and headed home in a matter of minutes.

Till next time,

Ben

219 hours left

blur

Well, because of another storm and another tree, I won't have internet access at my house until Sunday at the latest (hopefully). You may be asking, "Ben, if you don't have internet access, then how are you writing this post that I am reading?" Well, I'll tell you.

In order to not fall behind with my blog again and have to catch everyone up with mega posts (which is not fun), I have been going to restaurants that offer free wifi with my laptop. So there's your answer.

Now that we have that all cleared up, on to what you're here to read about, my day at work.


Today flew by for some reason. We weren't very busy or backed up or anything like that, but the day was still over before I knew it. I swear I had just gotten back from getting family meal (which is at 4 everyday) and looked at the clock to see that it was 5:45.

I was looking forward to talking with David about his vacation to Asheville and telling him about the newest misfortunes that had befallen my family and be, but David was nowhere to be found. I didn't ask anyone where David was (though many people asked me) because I figured that he had a good reason for not returning to work and it is none of my business anyways.

So, in the absence of David, I got to work on what had become my usual first task of the morning, slicing and frying potatoes and shallots and crisping parsley. However, the moment i finished gathering everything that I would need, Keron grabbed the mandoline. Surly he wasn't going to use it for the entire morning, so I decided to make some breadcrumbs.

I have already talked about the breadcrumb-making process, so I won't go into that again, but I will remind you that it is a long and time consuming process, which would be perfect because by the time I was done I figured that Keron would be finished with the mandoline as well.

Chef Hopkins was in the kitchen this morning and called me over while I was working on my breadcrumbs. Chef showed me what he was working on, 5 different potatoes cooked in 5 different fats with 5 different herbs. He had the various potatoes, fats, and herbs already vacuum sealed and in the circulator for low temperature cooking. Chef told me that he had to leave in a little but, but wanted me to take out the potatoes when the time came. I told him that I could do that, and off he went.

Now that I had finished making a fresh batch of breadcrumbs, Keron still wasn't finished with the mandoline. Turns out that he would be using it to cut cucumbers to be pickled later for the rest of the day. I figured that this was the case, so I went over to Holeman and Finch to borrow their mandoline.

One of the chefs at Holeman and Finch (Stella) gladly lent me her mandoline, but said that she would need it back in an hour. This would be no problem since all I needed it for was to slice some small potatoes and shallots.

I quickly sliced up all the potatoes and got to the last batch of frying them when Ryan arrived to work and informed me that they were using a different potato cut. The potatoes were supposed to be sliced from side to side instead of from the bottom up (if that makes any sense to yall). So now I had to do all the potatoes over again.

I got about half way through slicing the potatoes when I had to return the mandoline. I didn't know what I was going to do now. Luckily I spotted a small black mandoline, but it had a plastic blade which would make it harder to get a clean cut, but it was better than nothing.

Once I finished with frying everything, I got to work on making the pimento cheese balls for this evenings service. We wouldn't need as many as we did Saturday because we weren't expecting as many guests which was a relief and made it seem like I was done with scooping and shaping the pimento cheese balls in no time.

Over the course of the day to this point, we had been steadily receiving ingredients and people had been steadily placing them on and around my workbench. Eventually I did not have much space to work, but I was finished with shaping the pimento cheese balls and wanted them to firm up in the walk-in before I began the breading process, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to put away all this produce.

I would have made David proud. I was consolidating things into new containers, moving things around to create the most space, and most importantly, got everything into the walk-in with room to spare! It took a long time and a lot of creativity, but it all fit.

Now, I had all the space I needed for the rest of the evening. I breaded the pimento cheese balls, put them back in the walk-in to firm up before the final reshaping, vacuum packed some ginger ale infused peaches for Ryan, swept up around my work station and the inside of the walk-in, and reshaped the pimento cheese balls. By the time I was finished with all of this, it was past time for me to leave, so I said my goodbyes and headed home for the day.

Till next time,

Ben

227 hours left

MEGA post: part 2

TUESDAY

Today was the day that my mom and brother left for Europe to watch my youngest cousin compete in the Special Olympics in Athens, Greece. I was kinda bummed because I was being left behind on what is going to be an amazing trip to Italy and Greece. But the good news is that we got power back at 4am in the morning and that with them gone, I can just use one of their cars to get to and from work instead of having them give me rides every day.

Today, we had to make more pickled green tomatoes, so that is what I immediately got to work on.

As I started doing conversions to scale up the recipe and gathered the ingredients for the brine, David said that he would help out by prepping the green tomatoes which was a big help because prepping the tomatoes is a fairly time consuming task.

While working on the green tomatoes, I noticed that most of the line cooks and Chef Hopkins were already on the line and preparing things. This was unusual as it was still barely noon and the line cooks normally don’t show up until 2:30 or 3. I asked David (who was himself working on a dish) what was going on and he told me that Atlanta Magazine was there for a photo shoot. So, if you subscribe to Atlanta Magazine, keep your eyes peeled for an article about Restaurant Eugene!

Once finished with jarring, processing, labeling, and storing the pickled green tomatoes, I got to work on peeling more beets and potatoes. Peeling the potatoes ended up taking me the rest of the evening because I had a lot of potatoes to get through, but I stayed until I was finished with them and they were cryovaced and stored. Before I left, I made sure to ask if there was anything I could do before I left since I hadn’t had a chance to help prepare for service, but everyone was all set.

When I got home, I was ready to start getting caught up on all the blog posts that I had missed due to not having power. But when I tried, my laptop would not connect to the internet. I asked my dad if there was something wrong with the internet and he gave a short laugh and told me that the tree had knocked out the phone lines too. He called AT&T earlier that day and they said that someone would be there to fix it by next Monday. Great, another week of falling further behind on my blog.

267 hours left


WEDNESDAY

Today was crazy. We had a ton of ingredients delivered today. We received everything from various mushrooms to peaches to six types of potatoes to zucchini to beets to lettuce to radishes to kale to leeks to fennel to tomatoes. Like I said, a ton of deliveries.

Needless to say, consolidating produce, finding containers, and finding storage space took up the better part of my day. And to make matters even more difficult, David was running errands most of the day, so it was up to me to check and find a place for everything. A daunting task, yes, but not impossible.

I did get a bit of personal validation while receiving ingredients because I was able to identify items like crowder peas and purslane without having to ask anyone for help, so I am definitely learning. Also, when David returned from his errands and saw the literal pile of produce we received on our bench he told me that he was impressed because a lot of people would have given up by now given the shear volume of items we had, but I was still finding places and containers for everything. Then David managed to free up even more space when I was almost certain that we couldn’t fit any more in the walk-in. Obviously I still have more to learn.

David informed me that he would be going to Asheville, North Carolina for vacation Thursday through Monday, so he wouldn’t be at work Thursday or Friday. It would be interesting to see how I would handle being at work without David’s guidance in the mornings.

Gavin has developed a routine of coming to me at about 4:30 with things that I can do for him for the night’s service. Today, his task for me was to stem and wash tatsoi (which we just received that day), wash arugula (which we also received that day), and chiffonade and wash collards.

While prepping and washing all the above-mentioned greens for Gavin, my mind started to wander, as is usual whenever I am doing something that will take a while. This time though I was inspired by one of my surroundings to come up with a very very corny joke because I have never heard anything like it before. So, for your amusement, here is my joke:
“Why didn’t the farmer want to sell his tomatoes?”
“Because they were Heirlooms.”

259 hours left


THURSDAY

When I got to work, I realized that I had no idea what to do. I went to the walk-in and tried to organize things, but that didn’t last long. I asked Keron (one of the prep cooks) if I could help him with anything, but he was making pickles all day and there was nothing I could do. However, Keron did tell me that the line always needs lemons cut, butter cubed, shallots peeled, and parsley minced, so that’s what I got to work on.

After I finished with the lemons, butter, and shallots, Woody found me and said “Boy do I have a project for you.” I was relieved because I really needed something to do, I was running out of butter, lemons, shallots, and parsley. “I want you to make the mini BLTs for the bottle shop tonight.”

Sidenote: The H & F Bottle Shop will regularly have wine tastings with food every Thursday and the musical wine tastings every Saturday, so on those days I will likely be working on things for them.

This is not my first experience with the mini BLTs, but it is the first time that I will be making them by myself. You may recall from a few posts ago that I helped Jackson with making the mini BLTs for the banker buyout. All that I did for those, though, was slice all the cherry tomatoes. This time, I will be doing everything. I sliced and baked the bacon, sliced all the cherry tomatoes, and assembled all the sandwiches.

While I was working on the BLTs, we received our shipment of seafood for the day (we receive seafood every single day). Jason took this opportunity to show me what to look for while checking in seafood so that I could do it by myself from then on.

First, check the eyes for clarity. The eyes should be clear and not cloudy. Next check the gills. They should be clean and not slimy or anything like that. Most importantly, smell the fish. Fresh fish should NOT smell like fish, it should smell like the ocean. Lastly, check the firmness of the meat; it should be firm and not mushy.

Admittedly, I had hear all of these checkpoints before, but I had only remembered about the eyes and the smell, so it was good to get a little refresher course in checking the freshness of fish.

Once I finished with all the BLTs, I was asked to portion and cryovac the fish for tonight’s service. I kinda like doing this job because it’s pretty simple and quick. I slide the already portioned fish into the small cryovac bags, squirt some oil into the bag, and finally cryovac the bags and take them to the line. Simple and fun.

Next on the agenda was to clean chanterelle mushrooms. To clean chanterelle mushrooms, I have to take a paring knife and scrape the first layer of skin from the stem of the mushrooms. Then I have to scrape the gills off and any dirt off the cap of the mushrooms. Finally, I simply pull apart the mushroom and put them in a container for the line. Sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of mushrooms and most of them are small, so it can become a time consuming process.

Then, Gavin found me and asked me to prep, wash, and dry collards, arugula, and tat soy. By now I have become pretty good at this job.

251 hours left


FRIDAY

When I got to work, I got started on the butter, shallots, lemons, and parsley since I didn’t know what else I could do. After a short while, though, Jason told me that he had some jobs for me to do.

First job was to make potato chips, fried shallots, and crisp parsley, which will all be used as garnishes for the evening. Jason told me that he wants me to do this every day from now on to make the load easier for Ryan.

I use a mandoline to thinly slice small potatoes and shallots before taking them to the fryer. The fryer is kept at 275 degrees because apparently it is the perfect temperature for frying because it is hot enough to give items that golden brown crisp, yet it takes a long time for items to burn. This was reassuring to know because not I don’t have to worry as much about pulling the potatoes and shallots out at the before they burn.

Next on my list (and what ended up occupying the rest of my day) was making the new amuse boush, pimento cheese fritters.

Now, I am not a fan of pimento cheese, so they could not have picked a better person for the job. I say this because according to my friends (and how often the other chefs come by and take some pimento cheese) the pimento cheese that we make is very very good. But I am not tempted to eat it, so perfect job for me.

For the pimento cheese fritters, I have to use a melon baller to scoop out the right amount of pimento cheese, roll them into balls, then flour and bread them. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong.

I have to keep the pimento cheese cool because it scoops better (not an easy task in a hot kitchen). Also, I have a pint on pimento cheese, which roughly translates to 120 pimento cheese balls. I wish that there some way that I could make the pimento cheese fritters in the walk-in.

Next is the breading process, but before I get to that, I have to tell you about the breadcrumbs. At restaurant Eugene, we make our own breadcrumbs. Under Ryan’s instruction, I sliced the bread into cubes, and put them into the food processer to chop them up into breadcrumbs. Luckily, before I had made breadcrumbs out of all the bread, I took some of them to Ryan to get approval. Ryan said, “Yeah, that’s good. Now just take the tammy (a drum siv) and a bowl scraper and force it through the mesh to get it nice and fine.”

This took forever. I had a mountain of breadcrumbs and I had to force them almost individually through wire mesh. I definitely didn’t expect all of this, but it’s the way they do it, so I’d better get good at it.

Now that I have breadcrumbs, I can start breading the pimento cheese balls that have been chilling in the walk-in. the breading process for the pimento cheese balls goes like this: coat with flour, dip into egg wash, back into the flour, back into the egg wash, and finally coat with breadcrumbs. I had to do this over 100 times.

Initially, I was only breading two or three of the pimento cheese balls at a time, but James came over and gave me some tips on how to streamline the process. James said that usually he’ll coat them all with flour, then take groups of six or eight into the egg wash until they’ve all been coated with their second coat of flour, and then take groups of six or eight into the egg wash until they’re all finished with their coat of breadcrumbs. This made sense, so I started using larger groups of pimento cheese balls, which definitely made the process go faster.

As I was finishing breading my last tray of pimento cheese balls, Jason came over to check on how everything was going. He said that it would probably be a good idea to go back and pack more breadcrumbs and reshape each pimento cheese ball because after sitting at room temperature for a while they sort of melt. So, that’s what I did until I was finished reshaping all the pimento cheese balls and by that time, it was time for me to leave for the day.

243 hours left


SATURDAY

Today was pretty much a carbon copy of Friday.

When I got to work, I got the fryer filled with oil and turned on so it would be ready to fry the potatoes, shallots, and parsley. Then I got to slicing the potatoes and shallots on the mandoline. Once I finished with the potatoes and shallots, Ryan told me that I needed to do twice as many shallots because we had 90 reservations this evening.

To put that in perspective for yall, 70 reservations is a very busy night for Restaurant Eugene. AND we also accept walk-ins, which there is no way to prepare for except to over prepare.

So, I got to slicing more shallots on the mandoline and crisping the parsley, then it was on to the pimento cheese balls.

The pimento cheese balls didn’t take as long as they did last time because I had worked out a few of the kinks in my system. Also, I had leftover breadcrumbs which was a blessing. I was also able to scoop and shape all of the pimento cheese balls in one go, so there was no waiting around for the cheese to get firm. Lastly I worked in larger batches, so the whole process went quicker. We had 161 pimento cheese balls ready for service by the time I was finished.

Next was to make a squash au gratin. I’m sure many of you are familiar with potatoes au gratin and squash is the exact same thing, except with squash instead of potatoes. The most difficult part about this was definitely the layering of the squash, but eventually I got all of the pieces on there and into the oven.

The last thing I did before I had to leave was clean chanterelles for Chris (the newest line cook). I talked about cleaning chanterelles in my last post, so I won’t bore yall with that again.

Like I said, today was like I was reliving Friday, except this time I didn’t need anyone to explain anything to me because I already knew what I needed to do and how to do it.

235 hours left

Till next time,

Ben

MEGA post: part 1

Hello again everyone. Sorry I haven’t been posting as regularly as I used to, but I have a good reason. A tree fell on our house.

Yall may remember that storm we had in Atlanta on Wednesday the 15th. Well, apparently there was a microburst of wind that exceeded 90 miles per hour right on top of our house and it knocked down a tree in our neighbors back yard.

Luckily, there was very minimal damage. Upon seeing the tree in our carport, I thought that it landed right on top of my car. I thought that my car was crushed. But, the only damage suffered was a broken taillight (and apparently there is a fuse or something in the taillight that can pretty much short out the entire car, so it’s proving to be a lot more trouble than we first anticipated). Also, the tree pretty much fell in the best place possible, right on our driveway. It did hit the edge of the carport (the edge where we have the power and cable lines), so we weren’t completely unharmed, but very lucky nonetheless.

Besides not having power (which means on A/C), the worst part was that all four of our family’s cars were trapped in the carport. I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to work the next day, which wouldn’t be good because I had already missed days for being sick, and did not and could not afford to miss any more days of work. However, a family friend lent us on of their cars for the next day and I got a ride to work.

So, long story short, I haven’t posted anything in 9 days because we didn’t have power from that Wednesday (the 15th) until the next Tuesday (the 21st). Then, once we did get power, we didn’t have internet until this past Saturday (the 25th).

Unfortunately, I don’t remember everything as well as I do right when I get home from work (which is usually when I write my posts), so most of these will be shorter posts and highlights of things that I can remember. But I’ve still got LOTS to talk about, so lets get to it!


WEDNESDAY

First thing I did when I got to work was to label and store the jars of pickled green tomatoes from the day before. And that’s all I have to say about that (see, can’t really remember much).

Next, I peeled roasted beets, which is surprisingly easy and very messy to do. All that is required to peel roasted beets is to cut the ends off, and then the skin will practically slide right off the beet. Beets, however, are very juicy and very closely resemble the color of blood. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when Woody walked past and said, “Did you kill someone in that corner?”

David asked me to help him with a dish that he was making for family meal, which was roasted eggplant. My job was to press the excess water from the eggplant, baste the eggplant with olive oil, and place them in the pan so they could be roasted.

Once I was finished, David pulled out a HUGE 5 pound sack of peanuts and told me to shell them. Being from a baseball family, I have shelled many a peanut in my day, so I got right to it. However, it was still a 5 pound bag of peanuts and pretty much kept me occupied until I was supposed to leave and Gavin asked me for some help.

Gavin came to me and asked if what I was doing (shelling peanuts) was really important at the moment. I figured that I had a fairly large amount of peanuts shelled, so I told him that I could probably stop for the day. That’s when Gavin took me too the walk-in and pulled down one of our largest containers which was filled with smaller sacks of peanuts. Then Gavin said, “and you wanna know something? These peanuts are already shelled.”

Now knowing that I had been shelling peanuts for hours while we had tens of pounds of already shelled peanuts, I went to help Gavin with whatever it was that he needed my help with.

302 hours left


THURSDAY

The day after the tree fell.

I got a ride to work from my mom who was using our friend’s car for the day. Right as my mom was dropping me off, David was coming back from taking the compost bin to his truck. So, naturally, I introduced my mom to David and David to my mom. This also gave me an opening to tell David about what happened the night before. I told David that the reason my mom dropped me off was because of the tree. This lead to some conversation and storytelling on my part while we worked on our project for the day.

The project for the day was making blueberry jam. We had almost 8 pounds of blueberries to used for this jam which was pretty simple consisting of the blueberries, apple cider vinegar, sugar, fresh vanilla, lemon zest, and pectin.

The longest part of the procedure was waiting for the jam to concentrate and reduce to about ¼ of the original volume, so while I was waiting I peeled potatoes.

While I was peeling potatoes and checking the jam, Jason called my name and asked, “Would you be able to work an event tonight? Rob was supposed to work it, but he had a family emergency.” I told him, “Well, I haven’t told you this yet, but a tree kinda fell on our house last night, so I have someone coming to pick me up at 6 today.” “Oh, okay. Well, I’ll see if David can do it.”

After about three minutes of peeling potatoes and thinking about it, I went back to Jason and told him that I could work the event. Jason said that he didn’t want to keep me from home since we had a lot going on there, but I told him that there’s not much that I can really do because of the tree and that I would just have to arrange to get picked up later. After finding out that Jason lives about 10 minutes from my house, he offered to give me a ride home after the event, so we were all set.

The event that I was working was a wine tasting at the H & F Bottle Shop (which I didn’t know existed until I was asked to work the event). The whole thing would be pretty simple; all I had to do was plate food to the tasting. Everything was already prepared, so all that was left to do was plate the food and a few last minute touches. There would be two rounds, one at 7:30 and one at 9:30.

I was to leave for the bottle shop after family meal, so I jarred and processed the jam

and peeled the potatoes until David said, “You’d better go get something to eat before it’s just chicken heads left.” I laughed, said okay, and went to get my family meal.

Turns out that David wasn’t joking about the chicken heads. When I got to family meal, almost all that was left were chicken heads and chicken feet. Fortunately, I found some pieces of chicken that didn’t have eyes or talons, which I snatched up before they were gone.

A little while later, David took me, the food (fried chicken, corn bread, and lady pea salad), and utensils that I would need for the event (cutting board, towels, etc.) down to the bottle shop for the event.

For those that don’t know, Holeman and Finch Public House is not only famous for their 10:00 burgers but they’re also famous for their impressive cocktails. This is where the H & F Bottle Shop comes in. The intended purpose for the bottle shop is to sell everything that you would need to make their amazing cocktails at home. However, at the moment, they can only sell wine, so they have wine tastings and feature food from Restaurant Eugene and Holeman and Finch.

When we arrived at the bottle shop, David got me all set up in the back, showed me how everything should look in the basket, and left me to it.

All the people at the H & F Bottle Shop are extremely nice and even more knowledgeable about the wines that they sell. Not knowing much about wine, I was interested to observe and listen to everything they were telling customers. But before long, it was time for the first round for the wine tasting and for me to get to work on plating the food.

It wasn’t until one of the employees asked what the salad was that I realized that “Lady Pea Salad” could easily be misunderstood as something else. I’m sure it gave some people a good laugh though.

Both wine tastings went off without a hitch and we had about half of the food leftover which was perfect because now the bottle shop employees and I got to snack on the delicious food. In appreciation, the bottle shop employees asked if I would like a small glass of wine. Since about all I know about wine is that they can be red or white, but I am interested to learn, I told them that they could pick whatever they wanted. I was a little nervous about what they would choose for me, but I am glad to say that they did not disappoint.

After a while, Woody came to pick me up and take me back to Restaurant Eugene. He asked about the event and I told him that everything went great and that I had a lot of fun. Woody then informed me that they were going to let me have that Saturday off since I worked 12 hours straight. I thanked him, but added that I can still work on Saturday if they wanted me to (trying to make up for my lost sick days).

When we got back to Restaurant Eugene everyone (including the line cooks) was cleaning the kitchen, so I grabbed a squeegee (which I am very familiar with from working in the Clemson creamery) and did my best to help.

289 hours left


FRIDAY

When I got to work after getting dropped off again (this time because my car was in the shop because of the taillight fuse that essentially shut down my car), I got to work on labeling the blueberry jam from the day before. David was eager to hear about last night’s event and about the status of our house. I told him all about both topics throughout the course of the day.

Usually when I take pictures for this blog, I try to be discreet about it (which the flash is not very good about), but David caught me taking a picture of a tasty tomato sandwich that he gave me.

David said, “You are too funny.” I decided to tell him that the reason I take pictures is because of this blog and not for recreation purposes (his guess). So, now David knows about this blog, which will make taking pictures easier since he now knows the reason and won’t think that I’m a weird kid that takes pictures of everything.

While looking for a place to put the jars of blueberry jam, we realized that we did not have much storage space. To remedy this, we decided to take some items that we don’t use very often to the storage unit. This included a lot of heavy lifting on my part and moving items to David’s truck. As we were in route to the storage unit, David told me that after all that, the people up in the office want me to move all their heavy stuff for them too and that “They want your body”. This made me laugh.

Upon our return from the storage unit, Woody told me that he wanted me to make pickled eggs for an event that the bottle shop was hosting on Saturday (a wine tasting with a musical guest). Woody showed me how to use the oven to make perfect hardboiled eggs.

This is probably a good time to describe the magic ovens that we have at Restaurant Eugene. These ovens are amazing. Like most ovens, you can choose the temperature that you want and it comes with a timer. But that and the fact that it has a door that opens and closes are where the similarities end. These ovens are touch screen, and with these ovens you can choose between dry heat and steam heat which is pretty cool, but that’s not all. I haven’t gotten to play with they dry heat as much as with the steam heat, but with the steam heat, you also have the choice of what percent of steam you want. So cool.

All that is pretty cool, but this is where it gets magical. Instead of choosing the dry heat or steam heat, you can press the “chef hat” button. Once pressed, you can choose from many different options on the screen ranging from lamb to chicken to fish. But for me, I wanted the egg button. I pressed the egg on the screen and was presented with more options. Small, medium, or large egg? Soft, medium, or hard-boiled? Then a timer told me when the oven was ready and once the eggs were in, a timer told me when the eggs were done.

Once the timer went off, I took the eggs out and put them right into cold water so that I could peel them easier. Every single egg was perfectly hard-boiled. Magical.

I slipped all the eggs into a jar, poured the brine over them and I was finished.

That’s when Woody found me and asked if I could come in to work a little bit on Saturday. He said that all I would have to do is make candied bacon for the bottle shop and once I was done, I could leave. Excellent, another opportunity to make up for my lost sick days.

280 hours left


SATURDAY

Like I said earlier, my only job for the day was to make candied bacon. I got dropped off a little early because I figured that if I got there earlier, I would have more space and would be finished and out of the way earlier. Woody got me all set up and explained the procedure to me. I had to thinly slice bacon on the industrial slicer,

lay them out on silpats,

sprinkle them with brown sugar, bake them at 320 F for 12 minutes, lightly sprinkle with Creole seasoning, and place them on the cooling rack.

Of course, I had to taste a couple pieces of the candied bacon to make sure they tasted all right and boy did they taste good. You could smell these things from a mile away, which I guess is true of anything with bacon. They tasted smoky from the bacon, but sweet from the caramelized sugar, and slightly spicy from the Creole seasoning. Amazing.

I had to do 140 pieces of candied bacon and quickly got in a groove of preparing the next couple pans of bacon while a couple of pans were baking in the oven. It didn’t take too long, but doing 140 of anything, especially when that anything has multiple steps, is going to take a while.

After all the bacon was baked (bakin’ bacon), I had to put five pieces of the finished candied bacon into small bags and tie them closed with a piece of twine.

These bags of bacon, along with the pickled eggs I made the day before, we going to be sold at the musical wine tasting event at the bottle shop. And that was it for the day.

276 hours left

Till next time,

Ben