The Life With... Dan..?

3 years and now this...

2011-10-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

Been having the same problem since the start of my years as a cook, and I never thought it could go further down as it has gone today..

3 years ago, I found out I had a problem with my feet. They just would not seem to be able to keep me upright for 8 hours straight. After I had been standing for 8 hours, I need to take a day break. Because if I resumed standing up, the pain would just come back after an hour.

Just to update on my life.

The season on the hotel has ended and I started working in a hospital instead, helping them out. Where you actually had to stand 90% of the time and have short 10-30min breaks. The pain gradually was so strong, that when my boss called and needed me, I just couldn't.

And to make the long story short:

I am now waiting for the hospital to give me an appointment so that they can figure out what is wrong with me.
Until then, I can't work. My entire career has been a huge waste of time. And I am wondering what I am supposed to do next.

Dan.

Tomorrow and a new fish dish twist.

2011-06-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow will be the day that i will be starting off at work, the people there are mostly Russian, they know little Norwegian but talk mostly English (thank god). They all seem to be taking happy pills since they act so insanely happy.

The dish.

Okay this is a quite epic instruction on how to make a very good fish dinner.

You will be wanting enough potatoes for the amount of people you will be serving. (2 each person minimum).

Then you will be making a mushroom stue, which is pritty easy.

2spoons Oil or butter for the onion.

1 onion

250g champignon

2dl whipping cream

1/2ts salt

1/2ts pepper

2dl whipping cream (don't make cream out of it.)

2-3 spoons of flour.

Find a good casserole

Have the oil or butter (or both) in the casserole.

Cut the onion into 1x1cm squares, and then toss it in.

Cut the Champignon in half, and cut them into "hats" (small mushrooms). Then throw em into the casserole once the onion looks golden.

Do NOT stirr at this point. Just wait untill the mushroom is getting smaller, which at that point you can start stirring. (Makes the mushroom shrink faster).

Now that you have stirred the shrooms, we want to have a binding to our stu. Which will be the flour, have some flour on them and stirr it in. Then we have the whipping cream in.

Let it cook for about 5-10 minutes on low temperature, you want to barely see small bubbles coming up.

In the end, we always add the spices. You can choose at this point what to have in the stu, but most importantly, taste with some salt and pepper.

Timian

Basilikum

The Fish. - Saithe or Cod both should work.

Okay, now thats done. We have the fish.

If you got filé, good. The hard work is done. If you don't, i won't be telling you how in this thread, maybe later.

2 person

100g fish x4

1-2ts salt

1-2ts pepper

Find some transparent plastic (for food). Then a little water.

You also want a small kitchen hammer.

Wash the fish, then have the water on the plastic, then have the fish on the plastic. Take the rest of the other side of the plastic over the fish. Now i want you to lightly hammer the file until it gets thin.

Do this to 4 filés because you will need em for the next thing we are about to do.

Okay, you now have 4 thin filé, I want you to find the mushroom stu, and gently have some ontop of one of the filé, then i want you to wrap the other filé over the shroom stu and have salt and pepper around it. Then have it in the oven for about 8-10min on 170.

I am sorry for the lack of pictures. But this meal is so easy to make, and taste wonderful.

Yours.

Dan.

A tad pissed off.

2011-06-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Today is all well and sweet. Got everything ready for my trip, just need to wait two more days. ._.

Anyway, this is not the reason i am posting.

This however is why.

So, i was sitting here, minding my own business and then got the feeling for some sugary goods. You know that feeling right. You want something sweet, and you want it now.

Anyway, i bought this Maarud Tortilla bag, and i was half way through it. And wouldn't you know, this happened.

a Wild bit of hair appeared

This must be the most disgusting thing after any gore thread i have ever seen.

I am going to send this particular picture to Maarud asap.

Yours.

Dan.

Quick update on how things are going!

2011-06-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I have read that most of you have been wondering what i will be doing at work, and the answer is that i will be helping out the chef, making the food for the á la carte, aswell as being a part time waitor, and i will be cleaning most of the rest rooms when needed to.

I can't wait to get started, but because of the school, they won't let me go before the 20th, that is if i get this application to them. I need to write an application for getting out a bit early because i got to work, or else i won't be able to pay the rent.

However, i have heard that the salary might be around 120 - 200 norwegian kroners. which is about $23 - $37 an hour. I will be working like mad :)

Yours.
Dan:)

Blog Name Change.

2011-06-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, the reason i'm doing this is because it is quite hard to talk about one specific thing all the time. So instead, i thought about making it. The life of...Dan..? Since it gives me a larger field of radius to blog about.

There will be recipes and information, don't you worry:)

ps. i might aswell change the sad background.

Information.

2011-06-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

I will soon be working at a hotel which is located very close to my home.
I just figured i'd show you some photos of the place.

This is the restaurant. Where tourist eat their dinner for a sum of cash.

And this is the hotel from the outside. As you can see, it has a very nice view out to the ocean, and tourists are pouring out from the boats.

On this picture, you can see the harbor where the tourist come in. You can also
see the hotel over there next to the red houses where the tourist will be sleeping.

I just have to say, thats quite a pearl. I can't wait to job there.

Dan.

Summer dessert

2011-06-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

Do you have rabarbra in your back yard? Then pick up three and make something good with it.

300g Rabarbra cut in 2x2cm squares. (DO NOT USE THE LEAVES)
100g sugar
5dl water
optional: 1 whole cinnamon

Cook this up in a casserole until it split from eachother. You will notice.

Taste it, if it's sour then you add more sugar.
If you make it good, you should cool it down in room temperature first, then you can put it in the refrigerator.

Now let's make "Panna Cotta".

It is really easy, believe me. I could make my room mate make it.

So to make this, you want:

(4 persons)
1 vanilla bean (You cut it in half and you use a knife to get the "seeds" out.)
6 dl (cups) of whipping cream
1 dl sugar
3 plates of gelatin (you get this from the store)(Should be added when a faint haze appears in the casserole)
If you want, you could add some a piece lime juice and a little finely grated rind.

Okay, blend everything in a casserole, and keep stirring until the sugar disappears, don't make it boil, but when you see a faint haze forming then you should take it off the plate, it's done.
The gelatin plates should be in water for about 2-3minutes or until they have sucked in some water and become bulky. Then you squeeze the water out of them, and add it while the haze is appearing.
Yes, add the lime juice as well.

Okay, now find a suitable small cup to have the "panna cotta" into. If you want to use a coffee cup, then do so.

Put the panna cotta into the refrigerator, it should stay there for about an hour since it has to go from hot liquid to cold. What happens is, the panna cotta slowly becomes harder thanks to the gelatin. If it is too long inside the refrigerator, then it will become gel.

If the panna cotta is hard, and you can touch it and your finger bounces off. Then it's time to try to get it out of the cup. To do this, gently use a small knife, stab it near the edge and make a circular motion around the edge of the cup. Find a plate, or better, a small soup plate that isn't so deep. Then put the cup upside down on the plate, and try to get it out.

If you successfully got it out, then it is the time to add the cold rabarbra "soup", have it around the panna cotta. Having the panna cotta in the middle of course. Then add some summer fresh strawberries.

This dessert will make the ladies fall in love with you. :-D
Creativity is the key.

You can even make the panna cotta into a heart shape.

Dan.

Alright.

2011-06-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

When i get a bit more followers, i will start this blog up again. It is kind of boring to try to write a serious blog and then get no response.

Also, i passed my exam, just wanted to tell my two followers that. It has been a nice year, can't wait to continue with this profession.

If you have questions for me, i'd love to answer them!

Dan.

Status

2010-11-23T03:59:00.000-08:00

I have been gathering some nice recipes, i will try to translate them and post them. I will also be going through some of the chef's global kitchen expressions.

Waiter competition - oh boy...

2010-09-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today's assignments in our class were to have a "showbord" or what they call a waiter-competition. It consists of decorating a table for 6 or 8 guests. We have a three course menu, and the theme is autumn. Everything down to the simplest detail has to be correct, even though i am not impressed with the amount of work my fellow students did in my group.

I had the responsibility of adding the cutlery, sheets, and the wineglasses. The others did a great job with the menu, but could been better with the decorations.
We did win thanks to our group-work, first place and the reward was dark chocolate and candy.

Our group had all the cutlery in place but was lacking decorations.
The 2nd group had a lot of great decorations and almost won.
The 3rd group had some errors, like choosing a fork for a soup meal and putting the butter knife the wrong way.

Got some pictures aswell.

Results

2010-09-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

So i was at the competition, and we had a lot of things to do. Half of my class were assigned to help the apprentices that were competing for the title.

It took them about 6 hours to complete the 6 different meals, and the judges were impressed. Only one out of the six contestants won. Congratulations to him.

Cook Competition

2010-09-21T22:32:00.001-07:00

I am going to a competition today, gonna help out with various tasks, can't wait!

The Consummé - Damn it's clear!

2010-09-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

First off, i am sorry that i have not been posting as often as i should.
--

Right!

So, i was at school today and learned how to make this clear soup named Consummé. It was actually really easy and i am going to tell you how i did it.

The first thing i did was checking how many we were serving, we were serving around 17 classmates, so it ended up with around 3 liters, heres the recipe.

around 500-600g minced meat.
1 onions
1 celery stick
1 leek
3 carrots
3 liter of broth
"200-300dl potato wine and salt"
eggwhites from 3-4 eggs

This is how we start:

Find a 10 liter or around 5-10 liter sized saucepan.
Everything in the recipe should be cold.
add 3 liters of broth
Cut vegetables - onions, celery, leek, carrots.
add the minced meat then use your clean hands to make it dissolve while adding cutted vegetables. Then add the eggwhite.
When you have no lumbs left from the minced meat, you can put the saucepan on the oven and let it cook towards the boiling point.
Do not stir the soup, it should slowly cook until everything rises to the top.
You should slowly with a wooden ladle hit the bottom of the pan, and slowly pull whatever might be on the bottom towards you.
Let it cook for about 1 hour ( 70oC )
When it's done cooking, take the pan off the oven, and lookup a cloth and a sieve. Find another saucepan and have the content of the first pan go through the cloth and the sieve into the new saucepan.
Put the new saucepan onto the oven and taste, if it has no taste you should add salt and taste. Add some potato wine, stir a bit, taste again.
You should now have a really good consummé which they sell at any restaurant for about 20$.

Atleast thats what my teacher told me it tasted.

Hope it tastes!

Dan~

Vitamin Pill - Pills!

2010-09-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

Vitamin pills have been a really hot topic.

When people need Vitamin D, they usually buy the pills because they won't have to endure the taste of fishliver oil, all cooks would agree with me when i say that taking pills is not very trustworthy. Unless the pill you have has been through the doctor's office, you can't guarantee that the pills you have bought is the real deal.

Pill fraud is becoming very popular these days, and the scammers are getting richer and richer. The main deal with pill fraud is to make a pill but don't have the right stuff in 'em and then sell it. The very pill you have bought might be filled with sugar-water, or even flour water. This makes it a threat towards people with diabetes or gluten. If you have diabetes and take a pill, be sure to check your bloodsugar level often to be sure that the pill you took is safe.

Just to make it safe for you people, i recommend to get the real deal instead of going the cheap way. It might be like comparing burger king to a normal dinner. You eat what you get, but then afterwards, was it worth it?

Vita Vita Vitamins - Life amine!

2010-09-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

I will make a rough text about the vitamins we have and a brief explanation about them.

Vitamin A
Vitamin B
Vitamin B12
Vitamin C
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Vitamin K

By making a list, we can seperate the Fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins like this.

Water-soluble:

Vitamin B
Vitamin C

Fatt-soluble

Vitamin A
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Vitamin K

Their roles:

Vitamin A's purpose is to:
Give us better sight. Normal growth and bone formation.
Smooth skin and mucous membranes.
Hormone formation.
Resistance to infections and cancer.
Vitamin B is important where food turns into energy, vitamin b also got b1 - b9 and b12 as subclasses. but i won't go so much into detail about them as i only have heard about b9 - b12. Good sources of vitamin B are animal products such as fish, eggs, cheese, kidneys, liver, milk and beef, and yeast, coarse cereals, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
Vitamin C is important in the construction and maintenance of the body's connective tissue. The vitamin is also needed to regulate the body's absorption of iron. Vitamin C is also an antioxidant, which together with vitamin E helps to neutralize attacks against the body that can damage cells, proteins and genetic material. You can find Vitamin C most recommended in Potatoes, paprika and oranges.
Vitamin D The main task of vitamin D is to ensure that sufficient calcium is taken up in the intestine, and that you always have enough calcium and phosphate in the blood. This is important because it is these two minerals that make your bones strong and hard. (yes i did use google translate here).
You can get hold of Vitamin D by simply eating fat fish or Fish liver oil or if you are lucky enough to live where the sun always shine, you are able to produce this vitamin yourself by simply letting your skin touch sunlight.
Vitamin E is an antioxidant, which probably acts by stabilizing cell unsaturated lipids against oxidation and to maintain certain Fe-Se-groups decreased. You can find vitamin E in eggs, margarine, butter, and fish.
Vitamin K, the letter K stands for the coagulation (blood drying). Vitamin K is involved in coagulation of blood and K2 involves in uptake of Vitamin D
You can find good resources of vitamin K from green plants such as lettuce, broccoli and spinach contain a lot of vitamin K. Other sources are dairy products, cereals, meat, fruit and chocolate. Vitamin K2 in fermented cheese and natto, a Japanese right made of fermented soy beans.

Well, that is about what i have got about vitamins in food.

I hope you find this helpfull.

Dan~

The Soup!

2010-09-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

Hi again!

Today i will talk about soup.
-
We have two different kinds of soup.

Leveled Soup - Creamed, Veloté and Purre "Dunning" not sure what this is in english.
Clear Soup - Broth, Consumé.

The difference between Creamed, Veloté and Purre "Dunning". is:

Cream: is smoothed with cream
Veloté: you can have cream or plum.
Purre: vegetables evens itself.'

To make a soup, you need water, broth, vegetables, add cream and salt at the very end, or the soup won't taste as good.. This is a easy vegetable soup, you need to chop every vegetable to a very very small size so that you don't need to chew too much.

Remember as i wrote in the last article.

Broth is the basis of a good soup, so feel free to use my list to help yourself. It is accurate, i got a very nice grade on my tests so believe me :)

Is this skeleton edible? ~ Broth

2010-08-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Indeed, so it is Saturday, and what can't be better than talking about broth.. Maybe a trip to the city.. Well maybe later, anyway.
---------

Broth is made by having remnants of the animal or fish that we couldn't eat, example, the bones, fish head, in a casserole filled with water. Broth is the basis of a good soup, so keep this in mind.

We have 9 different broth and cooking time.

Seafood broth - 45min
Fish broth - 40min + 1 hour to the side.
Ox broth - 5 - 6 hours
Calf broth - 3 - 4 hours
Sheep/lamb broth - 3 - 6 hours
Pig broth - 3 - 4 hours
Vegetable broth - 1 hour ( Consist of onions, leek, celery and carrot. )
Wild broth - 2 - 6 hours
Chicken broth - 2 - 4 hours

We got two different broth, and those are.

Brown broth - Ox, calf, wild, sheep/lamb
Light broth - Fish, seafood, vegetable, chicken, ox, calf.

We cook the broth by cooking up bones and moving away the top layer of foam that will be coming up.

To get the brown color in the broth, you simply have to put the bones on a frying pan, and fry them together with vegetables, you could use a casserole for this aswell. When you add water in the casserole it has to be cold to get a better flavor.

The water in the casserole you are having the bones in should be just above the bones, then just sweep off the top layer to get the proteins away so we don't get grounds.

Got Sauce?

2010-08-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

Right!

Today i will be talking about the seven different kinds of sauces we have and what we can use them for!

Brown sauce
Bechamel (White sauce)
Velotésauce
Emulsification sauce
Tomato sauce
Wild sauce
Special sauce

I don't want to go deeply into detail and confuse you with prefixes and stuff like that

Alright, let's start with the Brown sause. You make this by burning flour in butter until it has a nice chocolate color. Then you add water. You stir until it becomes thick and then taste, add some salt, taste and then you have a Brown sauce.

Bechamel is a sauce made by melting butter and adding about 1/2 of the amount of butter you use with flour. Then you stir for around 20 seconds or less, then you add warm milk. The warm milk will help you escape the horrors of lumps that would otherwise occur when you add cold milk. Now you should stir and try not to burn the sauce, it might become thicker, so you can add cold milk to make it less thick. The white sauce (Bechamel) should stay cooking for 10 minutes, just to get the flour taste away. This sauce should cook for around an half an hour before it is done.

Velotésauces are made from basically broth of whatever you are preparing, for fish you can make broth from the fish you are about to make. Thus adding it to for example a Bechamel to give it more flavor. A steak would require brown sauce. Really simple. I will explain broth later in another article.

Egg Emulsion sauce is made by adding cleared butter + egg yolks, you can make mayonnaise, hollandaise and bearnaise from this. The first thing you do to make a hollandaise, is to split the egg white and the egg yolk from eachother, then you get a cooking bucket where you can whip the egg yolk under a saucepan filled with boiling water. Then you add a liquid made from cooking up vinegar, water and pepper. You will want to add the butter last, it should be a little colder than boiling. You will want to add the butter little by little while whisking really fast and hard because the sauce will become thick while you add the butter. If you have done it right, it should look really nice, if you did it wrong, well yeah you will notice. The sauce is hard to make due to the possibility of it to be ruined if done wrong.

Tomato sauce, to be honest, this is so easy that i will provide a short video that i found on videojug.com.

You simply follow the recipe, and voila you have a tomato sauce.

Italian:
How To Make A Basic Italian Tomato Sauce

Wild sauce, the basic wild sauces we have are cream sauce, jegermeister sauce, pepper sauce and salmisauce. Wild sauce are made about in the same way as veloté and then you make a light brown sauce.

Thanks for taking your time to read this article about sauce :)

Website up and running!

2010-08-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

http://zenographinat.webs.com/

This is the website that i will be adding recipes, and really important information regarding the waiter proffesion and general information about food.

In other words, it's an archive.
This page will still be the main source for instant information.

The reason behind it all.

2010-08-26T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today i will talk about the most important thing to do.

If you have guessed correctly, i will be talking a little about bacterias, and how they affect our kitchen.
Bacteria is the brick wall of our food, they are only "good" bacteria when they are treated well, and go "bad" when treated badly.

The bacteria in our world really like things warm, at around the 32-35oC temperature, if you have food out in the open, you probably have seen them rot, this is due to the temperature making the bacteria form (breed) rapidly. But if you lower the temperature, they will start to freeze, thus making them slow and unable to form as quickly as they should. This is why freezing food is making food last longer.

In the kitchen, when you are making food. Everything the food gets contact to will leave behind bacteria, the bacteria then will start to form on that very surface untill you have cleaned it off.

Whatever you do, do not use cloth to "clean" up with and then leave it behind and then re-use it. When you do this, you wont just be transporting the bacteria that had formed already inside the cloth, but you would make a gigantic hub for billions of bacteria.

The best way to dispose of bacteria is to clean it off with soap and a cloth, then use paper to wipe it off.
---

There are a lot to talk about when it comes to bacteria, but i am not going to write an entire article about it.
I am just writing the most important things to know about it, and how to counter it easily.

Website

2010-08-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

Due the limited usage of the blogger "pages", I have made the decision to make a website instead for my recipes and information. But I will always be using blogger to post about the latest updates.

Easy, healthy and tasty.

2010-08-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

So you want something healthy, that taste good and really easy to make?

Why not make a salad?
What you need:

Knife
Trench

Cabbage
2 Paprika (Red and Yellow)
Ham
Cheese
(Add more vegetables if you want to experiment!)

If you buy these from the store, you will have enough portions for about 3-5 meals, depending on how much you put into your plastic bowl. Remember only to eat when you are hungry, and it is not supposed to be a replacement for dinner. This salad is more like a breakfast / launch / evening snack. And it is really healthy.

If you are alergic to cheese or are a vegeterian, you can replace most of them with either more vegetables or fruit. I would assume that apples would fit great instead of cheese in this saladsnack.

Step by Step.

Begin with the Cabbage, take two leafs and cut off the bottom "root" and other "ugly" areas. Wash off most of the earth. Then cutt them vertically with around a centimeter or two distance from each other. Then you cut em horizontal. (Tip, what i use to do is to put the two leaves ontop of eachother before i do this makes it a lot easier).
Then you clean your knife and the trencher you were cutting on, the earth bacteria might give you food poisoning if not done.
You will then head over to the Paprika, cut off the top by making a circle around the stem, pull it up and cut it in half. Clean the insides and remove the light "tissue" that the seeds have been on. Then start cutting the paprica facing horizontal towards you, and make long slices. Only by cutting half a paprika will give you enough for a portion.
Now with clean hands, start mixing both the cabbage and paprika.
Add the Ham, to the left.
Add the Cheese to the right.
Both the Ham and the Cheese got to stay on the top so it looks tasty.
Wash your trench and knife and enjoy your meal = )

This entire meal 4/4 consists of:

Karbohydrates: 21,2g

Proteins: 101,0g

Fat: 27,6g

Fiber: 12,9g

Vitamin A-E-B1-B2-C

There is a little saturated fat in this because of the cheese, but you can easily replace it with apples or whatever you like.

My new project

2010-08-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hello,
I am Dan~ and this will be my new project.

Throughout this year of school, i will attempt to learn and write hints and tips on how you can become somewhat close to being a cook. I am currently going through my second year of high school, and close to going off as an apprentice.

This blog will consist of:

Correct recipes.
Waiter tips.
Facts.

By doing this, i hope that i will achieve my goal faster, and learn even more while helping other people. The reason i am doing this is also because, me myself has once been in the position where recipes weren't correct, and the teacher yelled at me for using the incorrect recipe.

I hope my limited english won't destroy this blog, and i hope i am of help.