Tag Archives: Food

January 11, 2013 · 9:48 am

Seeds

For our Foodie Friday Fun today, let’s spend a moment on seeds.

Sunflower seeds

Sunflower seeds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I realize that seeds probably aren’t the first thing on your radar screen when you’re contemplating snack foods.  Too bad.  Seeds are nutrient-dense and are filled with phytosterols, these things in plants that are as effective as many of the prescription drugs a lot of folks are taking to lower cholesterol.   I’m a fan – pumpkin seeds are the best thing in my book about carving those gourds around Halloween, and no baseball player has gone through their career without chomping in a bunch of sunflower seeds at some point.  I’m not sure many of them think about how they’re full of antioxidants to protect against UV damage from playing ball in the sun, however.  I also don’t think many of us consider hummus as ground sesame seeds (well, the tahini used to make hummus is exactly that) and we tend to throw seeds from fruits such as papaya away when in actuality they’re really good for us.

Here’s the thing about eating seeds – they can, in some cases, be a lot of work.  After all, pumpkin seeds (if you’re making them yourself) need to be extracted, cleaned off, roasted and seasoned.  Sunflower seeds have to be extracted from their hard, inedible shell.  Maybe that extra bit of business to get them ready is why I find them so satisfying to eat.

The business point is pretty straightforward.  As managers we tend to focus on the fully developed plants when in fact the seeds might be better for us.  I focus a lot on potential when I’m hiring or promoting, and that’s not just on junior people.  I’m looking to see if there’s a seed somewhere that might even be better than the plant I’m seeing.  It’s not jut solving the immediate need (hunger) but looking to the future as well (health).

What seeds are you eating?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 14, 2012 · 10:10 am

Simple Isn’t

For our Foodie Friday Fun this week, let me ask you to put on your food critic hat.

English: Roasted chicken Español: Pollo asado

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you try out a new restaurant, and assuming it’s not an unusual cuisine, what dish do you look for on the menu to test the kitchen’s cooking skills?  For me the answer is always a roasted chicken.  That’s right – plain, roasted chicken, the simpler the better.  My thinking is this:  nothing simple is ever easy.  If you’ve ever done roasted chicken, it’s tremendously difficult to present a perfect dish.  The breast meat moist, the thigh properly cooked, the skin crisp.  There are different densities and cooking times for all of them.  Overcooking the bird can ruin it; undercooking it can ruin you for several days.

One of the most simple foods in terms of preparation has to be sushi.  It’s just sliced fish and rice.  Why, then, does it take years to train a sushi chef?  Candidates will do nothing but make rice for years to start their training.  Simple – not easy. Yakitori is grilled meat on a stick but perfection is elusive.  Try to turn out perfect soft-boiled eggs.  The yolk cooks before the white yet we want the opposite to occur to get them perfectly soft-boiled.  Simple, not easy.  Which is the business point as well.

It’s incredibly difficult to do some of the most simple tasks well.  Deliver a succinct talk that leaves the audience feeling as if they’ve really learned something completely.  Explain your business in under a minute – a great elevator pitch.  Run an efficient meeting with exactly the right people in the room, no more, no less.  When hiring, many great chefs ask the candidate to make them something very simple – an omelet or scrambled eggs – that is often very difficult to get just right.  We should steal that notion – ask candidates to do something “simple” like having them explain their current job to you completely, and briefly.

Thoreau challenged us to simplify because we’re too caught up in detail.  As we do, just as with the roasted chicken, there are no places littered with detail in which to hide (read that a fancy sauces, seasonings, stuffings, etc. for the chicken!).   Simple isn’t simple.  It’s often complicated, and more often than not that complexity is hard.  The great cooks – and business  people – just make it seem simple and great at the same time.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 30, 2012 · 11:21 am

Substitute

Foodie Friday!  Today the topic is substitutes.  No, not the early song by The Who.

Butter and a butter knife

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had a thought about the use of different ingredients when the things called for in the recipe aren’t available.  This is a little different from changing up the seasonings – using oregano for basil, for example.  Cooks often do that to vary flavors and that’s an integral part of one’s own cooking style and food profile.  In this case I mean the times when you go to get the unsalted butter and realize all you have is salted or when you decide to use skim milk to lower a dish‘s fat content instead of the whole milk (or heaven forbid CREAM!) the recipe requires.

Substitutions are tricky things. Take the salted butter example.  There is no standard amount of salt in salted butter and the amount of salt can vary quite a bit.  If you’re aware of that and don’t automatically salt your dish as usual you might be OK.  Another thing about it is that the water content in salted butter is higher which, depending on the amount of liquid in the dish can make a difference.  Not a big deal for most dishes but critical in baking.  By the way, this is why I’m not a baker – it’s way too specific!

I could explain the reasons why cream vs. whole milk vs. half and half in recipes will or won’t work but you’re probably wondering at this point what the business point is.  Well, it’s that people are very much like ingredients.  Many managers see tiny differences in staff members – salted vs. unsalted – but fail to consider the broader implications those differences bring.  An unanticipated resignation from a staff member forces a substitution, but thinking that all individuals are replaceable because substitutes with the same basic skill set are available is a fallacy.  Just as an improper substitution can ruin a sauce or a custard, failing to acknowledge and adjust for the differences in the human ingredients can spell disaster.

As managers, we need to be acutely aware of how each small change in our team can precipitate much larger issues.  People are our most important ingredients, and just as great cooks consider every nuance of what goes into a dish we need to examine our people and blend them appropriately.  Feeling as if we can substitute at will is short-sighted and can ruin our business.  Then again, a smart change can make it many times better.  Your choice!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,