Tag Archives: Cook

April 5, 2013 · 11:04 am

Crowding The Pan

Foodie Friday Fun time.  Today I want to talk about the Maillard reaction.  No, it has nothing to do with ducks – those are Mallards.  This is something that goes on in cooking when heat causes the natural sugar in food to change.  You can think of it as browning although it’s a lot more complex than that.  The process creates lots of flavors and why we sear off meats before roasting or we will cook vegetables in a recipe to bring out flavors before adding other ingredients.

 

Quails browning

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The thing about bringing out this reaction is that you can’t crowd things in the pan.  It’s why we’re often told to brown meat in batches.  You’ve probably tried to brown some ground meat and noticed that rather than browning it sort of steams in its own liquid.  It’s not brown – it’s kind of grey.  The same problem occurs in baking – too many cookies on the sheet and they don’t cook properly.

 

The fix is pretty simple:  give everything a little space and take a bit more time as you plan out your cooking time. Give your food plenty of room to move around in the pan, and let it cook in a single layer.  Which is, of course, the business point as well.

 

We often crowd people with too many tasks and a multitude of instructions   As businesses we often put too many things into our figurative pan.  Rather than getting the reactions we want (nice even browning with a lovely fond on the bottom of the pan) we get a soggy grey mess or soggy, limp vegetables that don’t have a lot of flavor.  We need to take a few things out of people’s’ pans or focus or business on fewer things. Give everything a little more space and allow time for things to develop properly.  Of course, there are those cooks who think they can skip the searing altogether.  That’s a big mistake which you recognize once you’ve done that and tasted the results.  Business takes time and there are certain steps that you can’t omit if you want a great product.

 

We’re all under a lot of pressure for results, both in the office and in the kitchen.  Overcrowding the pan in either place might get us where we want to go more rapidly but the results are inferior.  No one wants “OK” as a response, not when “WOW” is sitting there waiting.

 

How full is your pan?

 

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March 15, 2013 · 8:32 am

The Charcoal Experience

Foodie Friday Fun time! With the start of daylight saving time last weekend, my thoughts turn to a food-related topic: grilling. It’s hard to go outside in the winter to fire up the grill when it’s dark by the time you need to cook dinner. While I own a little miner’s lamp I can wear to see the grill surface in the dim light, it’s certainly not as easy as when the sun is till shining. Then there is the fact that it’s 35 degrees…

English: Preparing grill for grilling, grill w...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have an indoor gas grill and we put it to use over the winter, but there’s nothing like grilling over hot coals. Which spurred a thought about technology, of course.

Lots of people I know own gas grills they use outdoors. There’s no question that this little bit of technology has made their lives easier, just as the high-powered vents that allow us to use our indoor gas grill do. But the technology hasn’t made the food any better. In fact, I think most things cooked on a gas grill taste flat – they lack the grilled flavor that charcoal imparts. Or worse – they have an artificial taste that comes from the gas.  Better technology but a worse experience.

Think about how that same principle translates into other things. There’s no question email has made communication easier in business but I think the “flavor” of the communication is worse. It lacks nuance and a personal touch.  Like the gas grill it’s faster, easier, and more convenient.  But better?  I don’t think so.

Getting lost in the “newness” of something can blind us to the fact that it’s delivering a lesser experience.   There’s new technology every day, it seems, and I worry that a good deal of it will just pull us further apart from reality even as it enhances our ability to communicate what’s going on around us.  The next time you’re at a concert or a school play, take note of how many people are “experiencing” the moment through a video screen instead of paying attention to the reality that’s in front of them.   They’re keeping a better record of the experience thanks to the technology but do they have a better memory?

Give me charcoal – a technology that’s been around for centuries – any time.  You?

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January 25, 2013 · 11:37 am

Garlic And Customers

Friday means time for our Foodie Fun screed.  Today, I want to talk about garlic.

An Ikea garlic press, with pressed garlic.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You’ve probably cooked with it and I’m dead certain you’ve eaten it.  One thing you’ve probably noticed as you’ve done either is that raw garlic can have an unpleasant, sharp, hotness about it.  If you turn up the heat and try to cook that out and aren’t careful you can burn it, which makes it incredibly bitter.  Even when you cook it carefully, if you do your prep work on the garlic too early and it sits, the flavor can be off.  Who thought something so small could be so difficult!

The root of the problem is something called allicin, which is a compound that forms when you cut into the cells and continues to build as it sits.  The way to handle the build-up is either not to let this happen in the first place, giving it immediate attention by cooking it or to put the chopped garlic into something acidic such as lemon juice to convert the allicin into a few more mellow compounds with long, hard to spell names that also form when the garlic is cooked (they’re sulfides for you chemists out there).  You’d do that for a salad dressing, for example, where you’re using raw garlic.

I realize this is a business blog so you’re probably wondering what the heck garlic has to do with your business.  What came to my mind was how we deal with other people – customers, clients, co-workers, and bosses.  Once something injures them – as when we cut garlic – the defense mechanisms spring into action – just as garlic forms allicin.  The longer we delay dealing with the situation, the more of what we don’t want builds up – allicin or anger, in the case of the humans.  We need to handle problems quickly, either by resolving them or by putting them into a context that allows us the time we need to formulate the solution.  Reacting with intense heat – burning the garlic – usually doesn’t work too well.  In the case of the aforementioned groups, letting them know you hear and understand their situation and that you are working to resolve it is the equivalent of the gentle heat needed to turn raw garlic into something fragrant and delicious.

I don’t advise mixing my metaphors here –  dealing with a teed-off person face to face after eating garlic isn’t going to help matters.  However, the lesson we can learn from the plant just might!

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