Hello everyone!
This week won’t be as heady or heavy as my previous posts have been. “It can’t rain all the time,” after all. Besides that, some version of whatever had Emily laid up for the last week or so has moved on to me. I don’t want to skip another week though, so instead I’m gonna pump myself full of DayQuil, chug broth, step back from the shitshow the world is being, and tell you about a project I’ve been working on and how you can get involved!
Coming into a new restaurant to take control of an existing menu and program is an interesting experience if just because of the line that gets walked between tradition and innovation. Telling a new cook who keeps talking about “the way it was done at their old place” that it doesn’t matter- they’re here now, we do it this way, you will too- gets a twist when you step in at a level of creative control. “Make it new…” but not too new.
The house bread at my winery cannot be radically changed- too many people love it, it’s too embedded in the menu. Well and good. The cookie recipes, however, and especially a Canele recipe that only one person could ever make work well? Those required the addition of creativity and craft to make them work better and BE better.
No fancy new ingredients. No strange chemical or additions. The best “secret ingredients” are techniques- and the very best ones aren’t even that.
That Saturday had already put me in a funk, and it was no one’s doing but my own. Starting a new job comes with a lot of expectations- mine AND others- and it also comes with a lot to learn. A lot of that learning happens when you mess up… and it shows you where and who you really are.
I’ve been walking a good chunk of the afternoon. I walked down from my home on Mount Tabor a nearly-straight shot on a blessedly warm March afternoon because I was a man on a mission. Only part of it was to get a good walk in on a sunny day and absorb as much vitamin D as possible. Another solid chunk was to go out among the populace on St. Patricks Day and find some friendly souls to get blitzed with.
Truth be told though, I walked over fifty blocks downhill in the sun through suburbs, commercial districts, industrial zones, and homeless camps alike because I wanted to try some friggin whiskey.
I did, it was delicious, and I have some thoughts about alcohol.
The idea came simply and quietly at the usual time- when I was working on something entirely different.
One of our customers asked if we made any Handpies that could meet their lower-than-usual price point. They loved our pies- as did their customers- but the rising costs of ingredients meant that for a lot of our flavors they would have to charge more than they thought their customers would tolerate.
So rather than cut off the pies completely, they asked my owner- who in turn asked me- if we had any recipes that would 1. Be delicious, 2. Be popular with customers at a cafe, and 3. Wouldn’t use too much of our more expensive ingredients so they could be sold at the desired low point.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but economics and desperation make fantastic midwives. As I went through our recipe books, checked with suppliers to see what ingredients cost what, and started spitballing ideas on our whiteboard (“Pineapple is cheap right now… a pineapple pie? What’s more expensive right now, berries or nuts? What can one person make quickly to reduce labor?”) three ideas from my past and present slammed into each other.
The father of invention had shown up, and it’s name was “Why Not?”
The Black Hat Baker 