Vacuum Food Sealers Review

One of the top brands of vacuum food sealer is FoodSaver. Tilia (FoodSaver) requires ‘Channel Bags’. These are custom manufactured for Tilia by ‘Sorbent Systems’. They are multilayer bags specially formulated to hold a vacuum. My Foodsaver is too old to even have a model number. It works as well as the day I bought it. It is heavier then an anvil, but it works as advertised and it has a vacuum port for accessories. The only ones I have are adapters to evacuate ‘Mason jars’. Food bacterias do not live in a high vacuum. I don’t use my... Read more »

A Unique Chefs Spice Reference

This guide is a quick look-up table for the commonly-used spices. Fenugreek - This is native to India and southern Europe. The part used is the hard, yellow-brown seeds that come from the plant’s pods. Widely used in Indian and Mediterranean cooking, this plant has a confusing array of characteristics. By itself, it has a bitter taste, but ground and diluted it is found in everything from curry powders to Bengali five-spice mixture. The toasted seeds taste like a nut. The oil is touted by alternative medicine practitioners as a treatment for various ailments, and doctors have discovered some medical applications as a supplement. Galangal - Is it a spice, or is it a drug? Galangal is known as “blue ginger” and is in fact a member of the ginger family, but has a taste differing from that of ginger, with a flavor closer to pine and... Read more »

A Chef’s Spice Reference

This guide is a quick look-up table for the commonly-used spices. Allspice - Comes from the unripe berry of the Pimienta dioica tree. It has a flavor that is similar to cinnamon, pepper, cloves, and nutmeg, and so it gets its name from the effect of combining those flavors. Mainly used in the “Jamaican Jerk” seasoning blend. Also used in everything from curry to sausage recipes. You can′t get spicier that allspice! Anise - The dried seeds are the seasoning component. Has an aroma close to that of star anise, fennel and liquorice, but with... Read more »

A Pondering About Absinthe for Bartenders

Absinthe is one of those historic fascinations that never quite go away. We were just on the verge of letting absinthe settle into the dustbin of history when two events happened. One, the Goth kids heard about it, especially that (whoever the 19th century poet they pretend to have read) drank it, which means they must have a glass immediately so everybody knows how cool they are. Two, the cult classic (and tragically short-lived) HBO series “Carnival” featured a character who drank absinthe the way the Small Lebowski drank White... Read more »

A Chefs Guide to Sweeteners

The Industrialized world is obsessed with diets, and yet has the raging sweet tooth of a child. Everybody wants non-fattening food that tastes fat. And so here we are in the industrial age, working our laboratories round-the-clock to come up with a way to have the taste without the calories. This has given us a host of sort-of, one-off-from, and flat-out substitute sugars. The bewildering variety of them needn’t drive you to shudders - here we present you with a sanity guide: First, to dispel a myth, while sugars do indeed lead to a wide waistline, there is no conclusive evidence that actual sugars cause hyperactivity in children or diabetes. These are chronic diseases that you′re either prone since birth to get or aren’t - no matter if you eat nothing but sugar or eschew it zealously. And all sugars... Read more »

A Restauranteur’s Eye View of Vodka

To get one thing straight off the top, there should be two ingredients in vodka: water and alcohol. Barring any flavoring ingredients, of course. And the two kinds of ingredients you can get the alcohol from are either potatoes or grain. Potatoes were used first, in part because potatoes are almost the only crop they can get to grow in the far northern end of Russia. But using potatoes led to cases of alcohol poisoning, so grains were introduced. These days, potatoes can be used about as safely. And to make no doubt about it, vodka is best served as cold as humanly possible. One of the best ways you can keep vodka is to take a 2-liter soda... Read more »

A Chef’s Guide to Vegans

A “vegan” and a “vegetarian” are two different things. That’s one thing you have to get straight. While most vegetarians simply refrain from eating anything that had a heartbeat, but still allow eggs and dairy products, vegans go one further and exclude anything related to animals in any way, shape or form. This means that even though chickens are perfectly happy to lay eggs and bees are glad to make honey, most vegans won’t touch either, based upon the concept that to do so would be to... Read more »

Why Local Produce is Better

Today’s food buyer has choices which previous generations never dreamed of. At any given time of the year, they can go to the wholesaler and buy produce that was once only seasonally available. You can have strawberries in November and corn on the cob in February. One is tempted to throw restraint to the wind, offering a year-round menu of unlimited potential. The problem with this, is your offering will be homogenized, mediocre, and bland. To say nothing of not being as healthy as it could be. With produce more than anything, you can taste a very pronounced difference between an item fresh off the tree and something that’s... Read more »

The Ten Pet Peeve Customers of Restauranteurs

OK, we may be smiling chefs, well-mannered waiters, magnificent managers and suave sommeliers, but under our professional guise we’re human beings. Things get under our skin, too. Particularly these ten habits of highly annoying customers, culled from an industry-wide survey. See how these stack up to your own experience, when difficult customers make you want to dash the dishes to the floor and walk out and forget it all… Non-tippers. - Let’s get the predictable one out of the way first. Actually, it’s that people still tend to be awkward about tipping; not quite sure what to do. They generally follow instinct and tip pretty much automatically, albeit at 10 %, but plenty don’t tip at all.... Read more »

Chef Career - A Chefs Guide to Exotic Fruits

Ah, the everyday fruits at the English-speaking table: apple, orange, banana. Tangerine, peach, strawberry. Maybe a bunch of grapes or the occasional kiwi. As anyone can see, the fruit table at the typical banquet is stuck in a rut. We haven’t seen nearly enough exotic offerings to invigorate our taste buds with a new experience… and sometimes challenge our notion of fruit entirely! Here, we present a guide to some up-and-coming fruits whose time for recognition is long overdue: Atemoya - Atemoyas are popular in Taiwan, though they are native to the South Pacific in general. Atemoyas are round in shape, with green, bumpy skin. They are juicy and smooth, tasting slightly sweet... Read more »