An "exciting change". We charge, you leave.

Part of the culinary arts program is advertising and management. This is logical, since the goal is a Hospitality Management Certificate (or AA).

So, when I see something that's so obviously twisted, I laugh. Don't they know they're being twisted and insincere?

This wonderfully upbeat message is from a paper with a great culinary section to which I soon will no longer be a former subscriber. (Wow. Future anterior tense?). Un journal dont je n'aurai plus être abonné en très peu de temps, quoi. See? Everything does sound better in French.

I received this tidbit in an e-mail:

Dear Readers,
We are making an exciting change to [newspaper web site], and we want you to be the first to know how we're evolving.

NEW [newspaper] MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM

On March 5, we're launching a membership program. If you're an avid [newspaper web site] reader, but not currently a home delivery customer, we hope you'll consider joining for a nominal fee to get:     

•     Unlimited digital access to all of the newspaper's award-winning news and information
•     Unique storytelling
•     Investigative reports
•     In-depth local news
•     Signature blogs
•     Compelling photo galleries
•     Original video content
•     Revealing data projects and analysis
     
Membership privileges also include:    
     
•     Special opportunities at select Newspaper events
•     Exclusive discounts and deals
•     Giveaways and contests
   
      If you are already a subscriber, you simply need to follow a few registration steps to
activate your membership at no additional cost. Non-members can continue to browse
The Newspaper online for limited reading and breaking news.

That's what the text was like, except that their real name was inserted all over the place instead of "newspaper".

Here is what I read:

Dear Readers,

      We are making an exciting change to [newspaper web site], where we'll charge you for everything you get free now, but we'll keep all the advertisements in place just to annoy you.

NEW [newspaper] MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM

On March 5, we're launching a membership program. If you're an avid [newspaper web site] reader, but not currently a home delivery customer - even though there is no home delivery of our paper in your area - we hope you'll consider joining for a nominal fee that will never end, and be very difficult to cancel. You'll get pretty much exactly what you get now, except you'll have to pay for it and log in with yet another username and password:
     
•   Unlimited digital access to everything that you get for free now
•   Unique storytelling that you get free now
•   Investigative reports that you get free now
•   In-depth local news that you get free now
•   Signature blogs that you get free now
•   Compelling photo galleries that you get free now
•   Original video content that you get free now
•   Revealing data projects and analysis that you get free now
     
Membership privileges also include ways of marketing more stuff targeted using information we get from tracking everything you do on our web site and possibly others: 

Special opportunities at select Newspaper events where we will try to take even more of your money by selling tickets or selling goods and services.

• Exclusive discounts and deals that we'll push on you even though we'll be making money whether you visit our site or not. These deals will be at least 400 miles from where you live, but don't worry. For the duration of the deal, it will be exclusive. After that, maybe not so much.
• Giveaways and contests where we convince you it's in your best interest to give your e-mail to every company we do business with so we can collect more fees and you can collect more Spam.
• If you are already a subscriber, you simply need to follow a few registration steps to activate your membership at no additional cost. Non-members can continue to browse The Newspaper online for limited reading and breaking news just so we can continue to get lots of hits and keep our advertising rates high.

They don't even mention what their "nominal fee" would be, typical of today's typical marketing effort. When I buy a toaster, I want to know the price - but for anything on the Net, especially intangibles like this, the price seems to be buried at least three pages down. Sometimes they won't even tell you until you give up your personal e-mail. That's when I leave their site, hoping that they're not tracking me.

I'm not going to sign up, and their hit count will go down. They won't get as much money for their advertisements. I won't read their stuff any more. So who wins? The guy in management who came up with this idea? Certainly not the readers, and probably not the advertisers.

No fame for dish washers

There are lots of celebrity chefs, stars, women with cleavage who make food, loud people with equally wild hair, fancy chefs and other glitterati of the foodie world. They're in the limelight, hamming it up for the camera, bestowing grins on their admirers and sometimes excoriating their detractors. In all those hours of watching these people perform on television, did you ever see the dishwasher?

Imagine these shining stars trying to impress with no clean dishes at hand. Ah, truffled venison with sauce grand veneur on an grimy plate coated with last night's bisque? Ick! Their Michelin stars would disappear like hot beurre blanc through their fingers.

There's no celebrity dishwasher. No televised dish washing competition.

I washed dishes this week, a zen experience of dishes in, dishes out. Everyone is chef on rotation, and one week's chef is always the next week's dishwasher.

Washing dishes at this level is quite different than the chore given by the typical parent to their children. Everything arrives: giant mixing bowls, full size baking sheets, tiny pastry tips, bowls coated in fluorescent buttercream, fondant, pastry bags, cutting boards and the occasional sharp object like a knife or a food processor blade.

It's kind of like playing Tetris. You have to try sorting everything so that you can create a smooth flow between the trash can, the counter on the left (dirty), the detergent sink, rinse sink, sanitizer sink and the counter on the right (clean). There's a bit of grouping for things stored together, too. Nest the bowls, place the measuring spoons inside, carry them to their rack. Back to the sink. Cutting boards next. Then baking sheets. On it goes.

The goal is to smoothly, dynamically and cleanly juggle everything so that you can create a smooth flow between the trash can, the counter on the left (dirty), the detergent sink, rinse sink, sanitizer sink and the counter on the right (clean).

There's a bit of grouping for things stored together, too. Nest the bowls, place the measuring spoons inside, carry them to their rack. Back to the sink. Cutting boards next. Then baking sheets. On it goes.

We're not even a restaurant. We're a classroom. Still, twenty people working frantically to create their masterpieces go through a lot of dishes. Since the number of dishes is limited, this means speed is of the essence. One huge mixer bowl came through the sink at least five times, along with its assorted paddle and dough hook, all covered in various species of sticky food. Someone is waiting for that mixer, you're holding them up! Bowl first, cutting boards later! Accelerate! Wash, scrub, rinse sanitize, dry - out go the mixer parts. The suds are gone! Refill the sink with clean detergent, check the sanitizer, warp speed!

Perhaps someday there will be an Iron Dishwasher program, where we can watch the best of the best compete. I imagine it like watching a pit crew service a Formula 1 race car. Quick, coordinated movements that waste no effort, transforming grunge into shine faster than the eye can follow.

Big Cakes!

Aztec cake

Special occasion cake

Big. Like confection-covered ziggurats, they rise from the table, announcing that the Party is Here.

The special occasion cake is not edible, since it's finely crafted fondant wrapped around Styrofoam forms. Only the Styrofoam forms were given- all the shapes, colors glazes, flowers and piping were created in class. Veronica, our chef for the week, was in charge of designing the decoration and coordinating the teamwork needed to bring these fantasies to light.

The Aztec cake was baked last week, a mix of chocolate, roasted almonds and pepitas, a bit of cinnamon and some mild chili powder, kind of like Mexican hot chocolate turned into a cake. It was then frozen until this week's decorating work.

It took about five hours to color, shape, attach, pipe, adjust and finally present the cakes. Now we can admire one of them for weeks. The other will be sold and consumed somewhere. Hopefully we'll hear if they enjoyed the flavor.

Chili verdirojo burrito, old school tortillas

What do you call it when you replace the tomatillos in a chili verde with red tomatoes, but leave the green chilies? It's not really chili verde, since in addition to be sin tomatillos, the other spices are different - no cilantro, for example. Nor is it chili colorado since no dried peppers are used. Whatever it is, it tastes good.

My idea came from a restaurant that makes this stuff, but they call it chili verde. Theirs is more chili anaranjado than verde, thanks to the tomatoes. 

The nice thing is that I didn't have to sneak into their kitchen disguised as a giant piñata to pilfer their secret recipe. They pretty much gave away their process on a food show, right in front of the camera. Then I thought of some tweaks. Cook the meat differently. Use frozen Hatch chilis instead of canned, play with the seasonings...

Now, if I'm ever tempted to open a Mexican restaurant I've got a good, scalable recipe that will work for any color of chili.

Since I'd fussed around making the meat, I decided to go whole hog and make a burrito from scratch. That meant tortillas, too. Old school tortillas, the kind they used to make before people became more afraid of rendered fat than chemical additives*.

Yes, old school. Unbleached enriched wheat flour, salt, baking powder, pork fat.

I don't really get the hypocrisy about tortillas and pork fat. Somehow, it's healthy if there's no pork fat in the tortilla, even if it's wrapped around fatty morsels of carnitas. So, the pork fat is OK when it's in the meat, but put it in the tortilla and it's taboo?

These are my tortillas, from scratch, my way. No canola oil here! I just took the fat that rendered out of the meat during cooking and set it aside. When it was time to make the tortillas, it was cooled down and ready to go. Mix salt and baking powder with flour, cut in the fat, add enough water to create some non-sticky dough, give it a rest, and it's ready to go.

So, the verdict? Was there a flavor payoff? Yes. There really is nothing like slow-cooked pork wrapped in a porky tortilla accented with savory avocado slices. The white rice was there to soak up the sauce, and because I wanted to highlight the flavor of the meat with something neutral.

* commercial flour tortilla ingredient lists can be long and difficult to pronounce: enriched bleached wheat flour, water, salt, palm oil and fractions with BHT, BHA and TBHQ (preservatives), rice flour, mono & diglycerides, fumaric acid, calcium propionate, potassium sorbet (preservatives again), methyl and propyl paraben (preservatives again), sodium meta bisulfite. Oops, that's potassium sorbate. Good. That would have made a horrible dessert.

Sourdough two ways

All of these started from the same dough. The two boules were steamed in a Dutch oven, then baked. The darker one was left in the Dutch oven, but with the lid removed during the last 20 minutes of baking. The other was removed after fifteen minutes of baking and finished on a pizza stone. I think the second method worked better. The two baguettes were done on a (what else?) baguette pan, with a bit of steam at the beginning of the baking process.

This dough uses unbleached white bread flour mixed with whole wheat flour and a bit of sprouted wheat flour - plus salt, sourdough starter and a bit of SAF yeast to give it a bit of a kick in the butt for a faster rise. Still, the sponge proofed for about five hours, the combined dough another three, and still more during benching and after shaping.