Remembering my first day at work

Time goes by, things change, we change.

2010 was a year of challenges, of success, and really few failures. Really!

I'll share the best moments of 2010, which represented the greatest challenge for me and my team working at Puro Corazon.

I have to start telling you that my first day as Executive Chef couldn't more challenging. I got in the kitchen on 07/12/09, 8:00 am.

The first person I met was the General Manager. After a talk with the other staff and managers, i was taken to my workplace: the kitchen.

If I could say one word describing what i was thinking at that moment...um probably would be censored. But the second word I'd choose is shocked.

Shocked because of course, I was educated in a very strict Culinary School in Cuernavaca, and then in Paris.... where I learnt from my teachers and also the Executive Chef Phillippe Daigneaux from the Hilton Arc de Triomphe Hotel, and the Executive Chef Damian Delgado from the Courtyard Marriott Hotel, needless to say the hygiene, organisation, training and quality was present at all times. Come on, its France, home to the best culinary creations, chefs and restaurants.

So of course I was shocked when I first took a look to the kitchen.

If I can be proud of one thing (And im proud of many...) that I achieved at Puro Corazon's kitchen is organisation.

After cleaning up the kitchen, the fridges, freezers, throwing sabotaged things away (like flour with salt, coffee with pepper, etc), and giving an ultimatum to my new kitchen brigade, I was almost ready to work.

And I say almost, because it took me more than 3 weeks to clean up the kitchen , considering my bosses didn't want to close the restaurant ANY day. (yes we were open 8.00 - 20.00, 7/7).

However, I didnt have time for taking a break, why? it was 7th December. The upcoming Christmas Dinners for the next two weeks were almost fully booked everyday, sometimes having breakfasts, complete meals, dinners and coffee breaks at once.

And considering my brigade was of 9 and I didn't have a Sous Chef, or someone helping me with the recipes (Because the pseudo-chef who worked there before me, took all the recipes with her, after deleting all the files from the computer.)

So my main concerns were:

1.- Order and organisation: the staff was singing out loud to country music all time! No control of any kind about storage, cleaning, orders, purchasing, etc processes! No organigram, who was the boss, whos the steward?

2.- Hygiene: both waiters and cooks were messy, dirty, careless....

3.- Purchases: i didn't know any suppliers, only a few list of emergency suppliers , bad quality at a high cost...

4.-Recipes: even though I know about mexican food, we needed to have a cardex or standard recipe for all our items, and someone would need to do it

5.- Accounting: how much I was spending, in what, why, and how would we pay it?

This was my main concern during my first month at work, however everything worked out good, we served to large parties, the senators, politicians, syndicates, etc.. and we finished the year exhausted.

How was your first day/month? Please share!

MEXICO 1810 -2010

Of all the celebrations in Mexico....

The Independence Day is the biggest

Of all the places to celebrate it..

The Zocalo of Mexico City is the the best and most important

Of all the years, past or upcoming to celebrate it....

The most special was 2010: the bicentennial of the Independence

Of all the restaurants to see the celebration or actually LIVE the celebration....

Puro Corazon Restaurant has the best view overlooking the Zocalo

And of all the Chefs capable of making over 6,000 snacks and mexican antojitos...

I am the one who did it, along with my brigade.

Easter, or Semana Santa was one of the most stressful and busiest periods at the restaurant, but nothing compared to the Bicentennial of the Independence.

We started planning everything since May, and instead of making a fancy 4-course meal for over 500 pax, we decided I'd rather make an assortment of traditional mexican antojitos or snacks; shredded chicken tacos with chipotle and tamarind sauce, duck in wildberry sauce, all kinds of tamales, empanadas, pambazos, hojaldras, coconut panned shirmps with mango sauce...

We made from 200 to 400 servings of each one; you do the math.

Duck with wildberry sauce:

Wheat tacos with shredded chicken, with tamarind and chipotle sauce:

Here we can see: the dark chocolate & tequila tart, sweet empanadas (top left), cochinita, mole and pipian hojaldras, (middle right) and tamales, both sweet and salty:

This was our preliminar menu tryout, we improved some dishes afterwards

Fortunately, my brigade was complete months after the big day, and also got my old sous chef to be in charge of the desserts.

Prepping and mise en place started 3 weeks before 15th september.

First of all, we needed the list of items to prepare, the ingredients, the cost, reliable suppliers, equipment, training, and of course, knowing the final number of guests attending.

Executive Chef - Me (middle)

Sous Chef - Marlene (left)

Chef Patîssier - Alfonso (right)

Once everyone, and i mean everyone from the Maître D' to the Stewards, knew how would it be organised, the standard recipes were prepared, authorised and scheduled, we started the mise en place.

First challenge: prepare in advance what can be prepared in advance (puff pastry empanadas, coconut panned shrimps, chicken tacos) and find a place in the kitchen to freeze them until the service.

Where can you store 600 empanadas? Easy. Make them, deep freeze them on trays, once frozen, vacuum them, and voila, back in the freezer. The morning before service, thaw them and bake @100 C for 10 mins, add eggwash and then finish them @185 until they are done.

Once we prepared more than 20k of puff pastry for the empanadas, and they were nice and packed in the freezer, we moved on with the next challenge. How would we serve everything?

I rushed to the store, and bought 60 white square dishes, now...how do you serve 20 different items with only 60 dishes? considering we had 50 tables with 3 to 8 people each? and considering the food service would start at 19:30 hrs and finish around 3:00 hrs?

I stole a huge whiteboard from the meetings room and hung it on the kitchen wall.

this was the deal:

Each table would get 9 different dishes per round until 3 am. Ca veut dire:

#1 Salt empanadas

#2 Pambazos and Hojaldras

#3 Chicken tacos and Shrimps

#4 Small tostadas with cheese & corn truffle and with cochinita (pibil-style pulled pork)

#5 Salt tamales

#6 Duck breast with wildberry sauce

#7 Sweet empanadas

#8 Sweet tamales

#9 Small tostadas with figue confiture and cream cheese and chocolate&tequila and citron tart

and back to #1, #2, etc.. with a lapse between each dish of 15 minutes.

Sept 15, 2010.

8:00 a.m - I arrive to the Restaurant before they close the streets.

9:00 a.m - The brigade arrives, everyone starts working on the tasks assigned.

10:00 a.m. - I dont know where is our supplier...he should have gotten here at 7:00 am

11:00 a.m. - All the furniture, decoration, tables etc are on place. Service staff starts cleaning every station.

12:00 - Everyone in the kitchen is working non-stop, mise en place is done, and all the fresh items like sauces are prepared and stored.

1:00 p.m - The supplier finally arrives, the team rushes to finish what was missing.

2:00 p.m. - The whole brigade chills out for a bit, time for a snack, a coffee and back to work.

3:00 p.m. - All access to the downtown is almost restricted; staff and suppliers that made it to the restaurant, good. The ones who didn't, they wont make it.

3:30 p.m.- Pre heating the oven, final cleaning of the kitchen before the service.

4:00 p.m. - Guests are arriving, however they are asked to wait on the lobby, we are not opening until 6:00 p.m

5:00 p.m. The outsorced Service Staff...aka waiters aren't here yet, they're going to be late....

5:30 p.m. This is how the Zocalo looks like. We give access to the guests now


.

5:40 p.m. - Rock n' Roll, pastries are being baked, we start prepping everything else.

6:00 p.m - One hour for the service, I had a brefing with the brigade, tested CCTV to check on the different floors and also the communication (all of us had 2-way-radios)

6:30 p.m - Kitchen is ready to go, however, we dont have enough waiters. We all decide to start as planned.

7:00 p.m. - Service starts and first #1 dishes are sent to the guests.

7:15 p.m. - We stop sending #1 dishes and start sending #2.

7:30 p.m. - Stop sending #2 dishes and start sending #3

7:45 p.m. - The rest of the waiters arrive, and I quickly give them instructions. As expected, they didnt understand a damn thing and screwed up the service for #4 dishes

8:00 p.m. - After my Gordon Ramsay lapsus, and yelling and telling the waiters to fuck off, the service is normalised again and continue firing dishes until 10 pm.

I'm back

Here we go again; Im sorry i forgot this blog for a while, but i ve been busy with other matters. However, im preparing new stuff for you, and this blog will be updated soon! Keep an eye on it!
Greetings
Guillermo

The Mexican Way vs the French Way

Well, I think most of you already know Im back home -sigh- in this beautiful country, delicious food, warm people and good weather. You also may know I'm back in the business, having the chance to run a kitchen like the big ones ( remember the Hilton Arc de Triomphe in Paris?).
Oh yeah, probably the second most important chef's dream (the first one got to be run and own a restaurant), I got to be the executive chef at a mid-sized mexican restaurant.

Its not an easy job, actually chefs will never, ever have an 8-hour shift. But oh well, its a good experience anyways.

Heres a small summary of what I've been doing.

Day 1: Arriving to the Restaurant:

I could say I know this restaurant well, at least from the outside; because I've been there many times with my friend as a guest, but I never expected or imagined I would become part of the business running the kitchen.

After a rushed welcome, I'm presented to the kitchen staff. I clearly see they are not happy about having me as their new boss.
My first impression? dirty, dirty, dirty, I cant start cooking a damn thing until things are cleaned up! And whats that noise I hear in the background? it isnt reggaeton, is it? and why are the cooks singing their lungs out? What the hell is that mess in the freezers? Why is meat rotting in the fridge? Why are the staff's lockers right in the entrance of the kitchen, wasn't this area meant to recieve supplies?

Ok. Clearly something's gone wrong! Let's see, who could be the second in charge? I dont know them and I clearly see no one is really competitive.... I approach to the prep cooks, three aged women who seem to know what going on.
But then, surprise..there are no recipes! The other "chef" took everything away, deleted all files in the computer and spoiled things..like adding salt deliberatly to the flour, turning off the freezers, etc..
What a rough start!

The king of the skies

After my successful but short tour inside the Sandnes ship, my first encounter with a king crab and a cold beer, I couldn't resist my passion for flying machines, and decided to fly over the festival area and the surroundings.

Its a bit crazy to see houses built by the sea, just a meter or two above the ocean, to feel absolutely fragile in that small flying egg, hundred meters high.

But what I also felt was freedom, a huge endless freedom.

The freedom that I have felt only in a rapid boat sailing trough the norwegian fjords, or sitting on the top of a snowy valley in west Austria...or walking over one of the biggest glaciers in Iceland, or biking at midnight in Paris, sitting under the Londons Bridge and overlooking at the Big Ben, or walking to a dead volcano and climbing to the top in central Mexico.

This freedom that can only be compared to a chef's mind, picking the right produce, choosing the best way to make a recipe, being able to dress it as he wants, and present it just as his mind told him to.

The freedom to transform the basic into the most complex and amazing meal.

It was really nice to feel the freedom again.

The king of the seas

Its not a ship, its not a Captain; it's a crab, the King Crab.

Remember the sad food festival?

Well, I think I found some happiness after all, and it was at the right place, the Sandnes, a ship from the Rogaland District in Norway which docked in the harbour during the food festival, with the doors open to the public to admire it.

After three days of seeing it docked in the harbour, with a big cardboard saying "taste the king crab", and after three days of sad food, I decided to jump in and take a look, hoping for something more than the paella or the overpriced samples of norwegian food.

So more or less, this is what I found.

The red king crab was introduced into the artic coasts of Norway and Russia, but it became a plague. Despite that, there are very strict regulations that protects them, allowing only a certain number of tons. to be caught by a limited number of fishermen.
Now it's an expensive delicacy in most restaurants around the world, but here, where the salmon is cheaper than poultry, the king crab is not as expensive.

So here I got the chance to taste it for the first time, in a light butter sauce and asparagus, ah and of course, don't forget the bread and the butter. The taste? mild and sweet, that complemented perfectly with the sauce. To take it out of the shell of legs was extremely easy, and unlike other crabs, the actual meat was firm and with a delicate taste.
Of course, I was still hungry, but the experience was good, and spending a sunny afternoon on the deck of a huge ship, eating king crab and drinking a cold beer was priceless.

Sad food

Gladmat Festival, translated "happy food" was, from a chef's point of view..a sad food festival

As most of you can guess, Norway has very little -or none- knowledge about foreign food. Why? Because quite honestly, there are few Chefs who dare to come and settle down in this country to share their native food with the locals.
And those few ones who dared, like me, aren't being accepted by the government to settle down here and work, just as everyone else.

The result? A culinary oblivion, where norwegian or polish chefs, pseudo-chefs and wannabe foodies feel like making spanish or mexican food, serve it at a restaurant, charge you 300 nok (30 euros or 600 mexican pesos) and even claim its authentic!

Just because the norwegian Chefs Bent Stiansen and Geir Skeie won the 93' and 09' versions the Bocuse d'Or, doesnt mean that there is no place in this Country for other Chefs. Or that the Norwegian Cuisine is the best in the world, or even less, that norwegians can make ALL kind of foods!
I've heard many times that there are Mexican, French, Italian, Spanish restaurants. But have you been there and tried the pseudo-ethnic food they serve?
Its absolutely ridiculous.

I assisted to the Gladmat Festival, recommended by everyone, to be the culinary heaven, but sadly, It was nothing like that.

This cr---p, a pseudo "chile con carne" with corn bread and out-of-the-can corn was sold by some wannabe mexican restaurant during the festival, and they claimed it was authentic mexican food "from everywhere in Mexico"-as I was told by someone working there.

-Excuse me, but what is this?

-We have a tortilla wrap, ribs and this is chile con carne, all mexican specialties.

-Im sorry but, specialties from where, from which state?

-Everywhere in Mexico, really, all mexicans eat this.

-Oh dear...I see... And you got your recipes from?

-A chef from Maine, she came and gave us this amazing recipes.

-Yeah, with canned corn as topping, right?

But hey, it doesn't end here, lets see what else happened in other stands, because during the 3 days i attended, i found enough material to make my own version of kitchen nigthmares.

Actually at one spanish stand, I felt a bit like Gordon Ramsay, facing disgusting food sold as authentic goodies to all these poor people.

I have nothing about other people selling the food they like the most, I do it myself, considering my experience and education in France. But hey, I have a big respect for the food, and despite the facts we Chefs are allowed to make some minor changes to the food, I wouldn't fuck up a coq au vin and then sell it as traditional french food.

Said that, i approached the spanish chef, you know, chef jacket with the Spain flag, his and his restaurant's name all in spanish.

-hola, que tal? me puede dar dos platos de paella, por favor? (hi, can i have 2 paellas please)

-snakker kun på englesk! (speak english!)

-My apologies, I just thought you are in love with spain and its food, so you would speak some spanish, hein?

-I dont understand

-Yeah, you have a spanish restaurant, you serve spanish food, you have the Spain flag in your jacket, i would expect you to speak spanish

-Ja, ja....what do you want?(pissed off)

-I wanted paella but, why is it so mushy, and It looks overcooked from here.... you put saffron in it, didn't you?

Enough said, local restaurants participate in this festival wanting to make money before making food. What a wicked idea.
And hey it's not only my opinion. Its well known that the local newspapers gave a poor rating to many of the stands in the festival, and many other stands were shut down for failures to stick to food hygiene and food safety regulations. Damn but we all chefs have learnt that at school haven't we? Or wait are they real chefs or just a dude with a chef jacket and a hat?... or actually no chef jacket and no hat, and sometimes not even an apron. Just a random dude there that has no idea of what's going on, like at this oriental stand, where they couldn't tell me the ingredients inside the not amazing spring rolls. Or be clever enough to notice the rice is undercooked and cold.

Even at the cheapest nastiest chinese they would give you decent rice (a fool-proof dish), and know the basic ingredients of a vegetarian spring roll. And as a spanish friend, who also attended this festival said, we would have cooked, even for free, to make a real authentic food, but the norwegians are so proud that they wont ask for, or accept any help.
Just like him, I would have liked to be there next to their stand, with my own traditional mexican food, and see what would have happened. Next year, maybe, if norwegians realise that making food is first an art, and then a business.