Mens sana in corpore sano

That phrase (mens sana in corpore sano) has got to be the first foreign language words I learned since it's stuck in my head all thru the years. You know what they say, "teach them when they're young, and they'll never forget."

Well, that's the approach William Byrd Community House (WBCH) took when we discussed offering "family cooking class" this summer. We decided to focus the cooking classes in the early childhood education part of the summer program, working with kids ages 3 to 5. Young children are impressionable. Their palate is still pure, they know when food tastes good, they like it. Before they get accustomed to (admittedly, taste good) fast and processed food, we want them to like wholesome food first.

Back track a little bit, on June 4, Chef Sally Schmidt and I were invited to the White House' South Lawn, as representatives of the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs (WCR), to attend Mrs. Obama's kick-off of the Chefs Move to Schools initiative. The First Lady set out to inspire chefs all over the nation to get into schools, work with teachers, parents, students and staff to improve the school nutrition program. With obesity afflicting 30% of our youths (that's one obese kid for every three children), school is a critical component in educating the youngsters about the importance of eating healthily. For most of the inner city students, the meals they eat at schools are the only "nutritious" meal they have. Chefs are called upon to help ensure the schools are indeed providing nutritious meals.

Inspired, we were. Alone, we were not. As soon as we came back to Richmond and told other RichmondWCR members and other chefs, we now have a collective force behind our steps to improve school nutrition programs in Metro Richmond schools. We are eager to start, but schools are on summer vacation right now.

When Patty Parks, the WBCH Librarian, heard about our initiative, she asked me if I would consider adopting WBCH for the summer. Immediately I said yes. I figured I can get my feet wet before we go into public schools in the Fall. Chef Sally Schmidt and I appointed ourselves as the main chefs for this summer, although we have an enthusiastic group of chefs and volunteers who already committed themselves to help us during the 7-week kitchen sessions. There are 30 youngsters in the program, so we will have 5 to 6 kids and their parents/guardians in each cooking class. We had our first class on Thursday. Five kids, four parents, and a few volunteers. The produce were harvested that morning, by the kids, from the WBCH Farmlet and produce donation from Shalom Farms. UR kitchen and private citizens have been generous in donating dry goods (still needed on on-going basis) and cooking utensils. This is a Community project. Enjoy some of the photos below. More are posted on Byrd House Market page on Facebook.

Each kid and parent/guardian teamed up to prepare a dish. Here, cleaning up the Swiss chard.

Chef Sally preparing balsamic vinaigrette for the tomato, pepper, cucumber and basil salad.

We want the parents and kids to cook and eat together. Here and at home.

I love watching kids concentrating on the task at hand. One girl actually showed one boy how to hold the knife properly so he didn't cut himself.

Note to self: kids love the tactile handling of food. Here, we were shaping the potato-onion cakes. I had a captive audience when I showed them how to shape the cakes. They couldn't wait to form the potato cakes with their hands!

How do we get kids to eat their veggies? We got them involved in every level: harvesting (grocery shopping), cooking, cleaning, setting up the tables, serving, eating, and then more cleaning. They were so happy doing everything when we asked them to help out.

On the menu:
Salad of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers; Garlic sauteed Swiss chard, Potato-onion cake with yogurt, and melon - watermelon with mint.  Switch Beverage Company donated their 100% carbonated fruit juice for the kids - a much better alternative to sodas.

This was the reward: full tummy, happy kids. Mens sana en corpore sano.
Can't wait for next week's class.

Fond memories at The Southern Inn restaurant, Lexington, VA

I read today that The Southern Inn Restaurant suffered a total loss from an early morning fire. I am so sad. We read Rockbridge Weekly article and told the staff The Southern Inn was my first cooking job; the kitchen where I learned most of my skills, where I discovered my passion for cooking, where I thrived under the guidance of terrific chefs and cooks I worked with. The Southern Inn Restaurant always feels like the home in which my professional self grew up and nurtured. Paraphrasing They Might Be Giants, it is "the little bird house in my (chef) soul". Since we moved to Richmond in 2001, we've been back a few times to visit Lexington and to eat there. I can't wait for George and Sue Ann Huger to rebuild and reopen the Southern Inn Restaurant. My heart goes out to them and the current staff.  My mind, meanwhile, races back to these fond memories from June 1999 to July 2001. 
http://southerninn.com/ *btw, the photos below are not from my time at the Southern Inn Restaurant. I was busy working and did not have a digital camera, either.

While everyone partied like it was 1999 (it was '99), I was in the basement of The Southern Inn restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, preparing hors d'oeuvre for the Y2K New Year's Eve party going on upstairs.

I was cursing myself over a hotel pan of white chocolate cheesecake that wasn't pretty at all. I had forgotten the cheesecake in the oven half an hour too long the previous day and, in a hurry to go home, I put the cheesecake straight into the walk-in fridge where, overnight, it punished my abuse by cracking itself open in several places, crater deep. I tried repairing the open wounds by smoothing a hot knife blade over the surface. No luck. The cracks mocked me for my day-old carelessness. I drizzled raspberry coulis to make it pretty, but it looked like blood had spewed out of those craters. Dang it! I was on my 14 or 15th hour and all I had to do was set up the desserts on trays so the wait staff could pass them a little after midnight while guests were toasting the year 2000. I was screwed.

In the kitchen above, I heard the distinctive, boisterous laugh of my boss, mentor, executive Chef George Huger, the owner of the restaurant. I heard him calling my name as he walked across the kitchen above my head and soon he ran down the stairs saying, "Hey Ellie, you're still here? How are the sweets coming along?"

I must have looked so guilty, being caught red-handed (literally) standing over a cheesecake massacre. Not missing a beat, George walked over to the cake, cut a little piece off the edge, tasted it, grinned and said, "Mmm, taste good. Let's get some filo shells and pipe these babies in them! C'mon, chop, chop!"

Just like that: problem solved. Half hour later, hundreds of tiny filo shells filled with the "now-raspberry-swirl" white chocolate cheesecake, topped with fresh raspberry or shavings of white chocolate (we didn't have enough fresh raspberries for all of them) arranged themselves so sweetly on silver trays and were a hit with the guests. Lessons learned: 1) don't mess with physics/cooking principle just to rush home, 2) when I do mess up, better come up with a creative solution than trying to force the mess into the original intention.

That was my first large catering job experience in the US. I had helped my Mom catered weddings for hundreds of people in Java, where my Mom still operates her catering company. I had been working for only 6 months at the Southern Inn restaurant, my first real cooking job (meaning I got paid!). 

Hubby was going to W&L Law School, he was away in CO for a summer internship when I applied for the cook position that June. I had been waiting tables at a neighboring restaurant, The Sheridan Livery Inn, the previous school year, but decided it was time to start a career. As I said to George during the job interview, I knew how to cook some Asian food and simple spaghetti dishes (with red sauce or with vegetable primavera), but I want to learn how to cook the "western" way.  To his credit, George hired me anyway, starting as a prep cook during the day and making salad, cold sandwiches and plating desserts during service.

I could not have chosen a better restaurant to learn the rope: we made everything in house, from salad dressings to table breads. It was a perfect learning environment for me, I got to try my hands at everything we make at the restaurant. From day one, everyone in the kitchen were helpful and the wait staff were friendly. George took me under his wings for the first few weeks, making sure I learned the fundamental techniques, such as knife skills. After 3 or 4 times he caught me retiring the big 8-inch chef's knife in favor of the 2-inch paring knives (I had never hold a chef's knife before in my life), George collected all the paring knives and bellowed to the kitchen, "If anyone sees Ellie using a paring knife, take it away from her." He put away the paring knives into the tool boxes we use as knives storage case and handed me an 8-inch chef's knife. I managed to keep all my digits and my knife skills actually improved. Who knew?

George then instructed me to watch and learn from the guys working the line at dinner service. The long galley kitchen was perfect for spectating. My cold station was just 2 feet away from the 12-burner stove "saute station", then the shared flat top, full size gas grill and double oven comprised the "grill station".

In between plating cold apps, salads, or sandwiches I would hover over the saute station, watching Jimmy or Dave deftly portion penne pasta into the boiling water, sear a chicken breast, saute a rockfish, warm up some creamy polenta, pan saute 3 portions of veggies, and finish 2 sauces for the steaks being plated by Mike the grill cook, said "thank you" to the waitress putting in an order, tell me to "fire" a salad (I hopped back over to my domain), call out a fried apps order to Mike, put another saute pan on a burner and start cooking some mussel apps, got the veggies pan off the stove, turn off the flame under the polenta pan, grab 3 plates and portioned the veggies on them, Mike took two plates and put potatoes and lamb racks on them, Jimmy/Dave put the polenta and rockfish on the third plate, drizzle some sauce and sprinkle chopped fresh basil, wipe the plate rim, put it up on the window and pleasantly called out a wait staff "order up!", turn around to pull the penne basket out of water, poke the chicken breast and hum, put it in the oven to finish cooking, turn off the flame under the mussels, plate - garnish - wipe rim, put it up on the window about the same time Mike put up the fried apps and me finish the salad. "Order up!"

We danced like that all night, all week long. It was a well oiled kitchen team. I wasn't running then, I got "cooking high" instead. 3 months later, when Mike moved down to Florida for the winter, I got to train and work the saute and grill stations.

Then, true to the food business nature, there were periods when we were short-staffed. The baker went back to school, something like that, so I volunteered to come in on one of my days off to bake the table breads while the sous-chef took on the dessert making duties. Once a week, I'd arrive at 5 or 6 a.m. and made ten dozens of hamburger buns, 6 -8 different kinds of breads shaped into dozens baguettes for the table bread, and sheet pans of focaccia. At firsts, I would miss my timing and 3 hours into mixing the next dough, the other doughs proofing in 5-gallon buckets would puff up so great they spilled out of the buckets. I'd run to the buckets punching down the doughs. I loved the bread baking day, I'd come out of the restaurant smelling like cinnamon raisin bread.

Months later, after we got another baker, the newly appointed sous-chef quit on me two hours before service on a Friday night. We had something like 70 people on the reservation book that fateful night, the fish delivery was late from Maryland, the sous chef was late as well - surprised! I was breaking down some beef filet or racks of lamb when he strolled in after 3 pm. We were supposed to be there at two. I had come in at 1, knowing there was a truckload of meat and fish to clean (I didn't know the fish was gonna be late, so coming in an hour early was a moot point).

Anyway, the Quitter Sous looked over the to do list I wrote, went downstairs to start working on the fish. He carried up a whole tuna and a couple sides of salmon, and (I kid you not) about 15 minutes later he took a deep sigh, put down his knife on the fishy board, threw away the gloves, and said, "I can't do this. Tell George I've got to go. Family stuff."  He went downstairs, got his stuff and walked out the door.

Penny had worked the lunch and was getting ready to leave. She looked at me and after the initial shock, we both said, "What the hell?!"  Bless her heart, Penny stayed for a couple more hours to help me get ready for dinner. I never gutted fish so quickly in my life!
 
When George came back at 5 (he opened the restaurant and worked lunch in the dining room, because of course, the dining  room managers had quit the weeks before, so George went home for a few hours after lunch). So, when he came back at 5 and found out the situation, he assigned one of the waitresses to take charge out front. As we stood behind the line waiting for the dinner guests to arrive, I said to him, "Whatever happen tonight, if I mess up anything, please wait until we're done with service. If you yell at me during service, I may just break down. I'm soooo pissed off at Quitter Sous right now."
Thankfully everything went smoothly that night. I'd say it was one of the best and smoothest service we ever did together. Phew!

Btw, I gave the Quitter Sous a cold shoulder when he came in for his paycheck the following week. I was sure if I were to open my mouth to talk to him, I would spit fire.

Ah... the Southern Inn Restaurant, I'll miss your old self. I look forward to visit your new self!

Stuff I eat at home, pt 3 - Javanese "pecel" salad

Today was a boring and busy day at the same time, which meant it was "office work" day. No kitchen session at the restaurant for me. I came in, conferred with the staff about today's menu, walked into my office/storage and buried myself under a pile of emails, bills, snail mails, phone calls, and other non-delicious stuff.

Fresh off of a few days of vacation, my stomach started rumbling at noon. Not a good habit for a chef to develop: we do not eat at normal times. We must eat lunch either at 10:30 am or at 2:30 pm. Never during breakfast crawl, lunch rush, nor dinner jam. I gulped down a glass of water and punched the calculator keys harder; focusing on work and teaching my belly a lesson.

At three, the second wave of hunger pangs refused to be ignored, so I sipped some clam chowder soup (the kitchen was cleaned by then, the heat killed business today) and back on some bills.

On my way home at 5:30, I started fantasizing about dinner. What to eat, what to cook? Hubby was working late, solo dinner for me tonight. If it were not so sweltering outside, I would have ordered a take-out from Mekong restaurant, but I did not want to get out of the car until I got home. Plus, after eating out four nights in a row in NYC and being cooped up in the office all day, I itched to cook. I knew I still had some veggies from Amy's Garden share last week, a small head of cabbage, cucumber, squash, and 6 eggs from Faith Farm. A raw chopped veggie salad with Indonesian peanut sauce sounded perfect in 99 degree weather!

Biscuit the dog was happy to see me home early. I got the veggies out of the fridge and soak them in water while I took off my clogs and waited for Biscuit to be done chasing squirrels in the backyard. The veggies are 9 days old by now. Without the grocery store wax coating, these organic beauties looked a little tired. A few minutes in cool water revived them just right (from left: carrots, garlic clove, turnips, onion, cabbage, cucumbers, zephyr squash).

I put four eggs in a small pot to hard boil:
- For perfect hard boiled eggs (without the gray ring of sulphur around the cooked yolks): put eggs in a pot of cool water, bring to a boil for 2 minutes (only 1 minute if eggs not from fridge, but at room temp)
-  Remove the pot from the heat. Leave the eggs in the hot water for 10 minutes.
- Dump out the hot water and cover eggs in cool/cold water until eggs are cool and ready to peel (you may have to change the water once if the pot is thick and retains heat well).

While the eggs were cooking, I found some tempeh in the fridge. Perfect!
Tempeh is fermented soy bean cake. The tempeh culture is from Indonesia, so I grew up eating this stuff. It's one of my favorite foods. I love that it is now popular in the US; when I first arrived 14 years ago, the only food coop I found carrying tempeh could order me a whole case of 36, but wouldn't sell me just one patty. Nobody would buy tempeh way back when.
So anyway, back to today, I cut up the tempeh into strips and pan fried them in a little oil and salted them after cooking, while they're still hot.

I sliced and chopped the vegetables, tossing some odd ends and pieces to Biscuit the dog (he loves eating, including vegetables. Here he was a few weeks ago at Byrd House Market, eating cucumber).

The veggies were ready, eggs were peeled, fried tempeh strips were draining oil on paper towels.
Time to make a simple peanut sauce:
- over low heat, in a small sauce pan, heat a little oil and saute a couple tablespoons of chopped onion for about 5 minutes. Add a minced garlic clove, stir for a minute, then add about 1/2 cup of water. Bring to simmer for a few minutes until the onions are soft.
- whisk in 2 tablespoons of peanut butter to thick salad dressing consistency, add a dash of salt and pepper and brown sugar. It should be sweet and salty. You can add coconut milk instead of water, but I didn't want the extra fat during this marathon training season. Gotta watch my boyish figure.
(Traditionally, Indonesian peanut sauce will have more spices such as galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, chili peppers, "kencur", lime zest - this one is a very simple version, feel free to add your choice of spices).

Tossed, chopped veggies.

Pecel salad (a Javanese raw veggies salad with peanut sauce, tempeh and eggs optional).
Dinner was served.

Kind of... honestly, though, that salad above looked pretty for the picture, but wouldn't taste as good until I dumped a couple more tablespoons of peanut sauce and tossed them all up until it looked like this:  YUM!

What happened in NYC stayed in NYC (coz I forgot my camera)

My lovely hubby took me to Manhattan over July Fourth for a mini vacay. He had business meeting on Tuesday, and since Savor closed on Monday for the holiday, I arm-wrestled the staff to cover my shift on Tuesday and off we Jetblue-d to NYC for a few days.

As soon as we parked the car at RIC, I realized I forgot my camera. D'oh!
As it turns out, with the heat wave on 3 of our 4 days in NYC, camera wouldn't capture anything pretty. After the first cool afternoon on Sunday, our New York galavanting was walking a few blocks in the heat, then dodged into a building to cool off, walked around - if we're lucky - an indoor mall, then out into the heat again for a few more blocks and dodged into another building again, repeated until we reached our destinations.

We managed to do plenty, though: hang out at Bryant Park eating delicious 'wichCraft pastrami sandwich and gulping down cream soda, watched a couple Broadway shows (more on that below), watched the fireworks, rang the closing bell at Nasdaq with hubby's clients, and explored a few NYC's public buildings for cooling down purposes.

On Broadway, we lined up at TKTS for a Sunday matinee. We had wanted to see Stomp, but was told the theater was in the Greenwich Village and we only had 30 minutes to get there. We asked the next show we could think of (South Pacific) and was told that one played at the Lincoln Center (Upper West Side) - also tight on schedule. The impatient ticket seller was obviously pissed off by a row of tourists not knowing this kind of stuff before going up to his window. Four people ahead of us had asked for tickets not offered for discount sale that day, and here we were testing his patience. So I rattled off the next one I remembered: Lend me a Tenor. We got our tickets and the ticket guy didn't blow up. All was good.

The farce was really funny, but I was expecting more than cheap jokes from Stanley Tucci (directing) and Tony Shalhoub (starring). I've always enjoyed their works and collaboration, and they impressed me as smart and complex actors. Maybe they do their job too well in a farce, too, that I think the play was merely amusing and predictable.

The other show we managed to see was American Idiot. Highly recommend it. I am not really familiar with Green Day songs, but I thought the whole musical was amazing. I was at the edge of my seat for the 90 non-stop minutes. The rhythm, stage setting, performers - they literally ROCKED!

Another highlight of the trip was accompanying hubby's client from China ringing the closing bell at Nasdaq. There we were, sweltering in suit and tie (blouse, for me), got our faces plastered on Nasdaq's giant LCD panels overlooking Times Square. If you happened to flip channel past MSNBC and thought you saw me clapping and grinning next to a bunch of Chinese businessmen, you were not hallucinating. This was my second time in Nasdaq studio, a pretty cool experience, indeed.

As much fun a vacation is, home is always the most welcoming. We had hoped to leave the heat wave in NY, but who did we kid? Richmond greeted us with her hot, humid open arms last night.

Well, at least we have central a/c in the South.

Stuff I eat at home, part 2

What an over-achiever I am. Two posts on my first day ever. 
Nah, it's just I have been taking these photos of dinners I cooked at home for the past weeks but only today that I got my act together to start a blog. Gimme a month and I'll slack off. Maybe. 

Okay, so, on the second week, our CSA share from Amy's Garden had some Zephyr squash (the best squash ever - I swear), fresh garlic (so fresh, the papery skin was still glossy and juicy). Another farm, Agriberry, had asparagus at their market stand, so I bought a bundle of them. Stir fry immediately came to mind. 
I pulled a couple chicken breasts from the freezer, picked some basil leaves from the herb pot on the patio, chopped some garlic, drizzle olive oil and let the chicken marinate while I cut up the squash and asparagus. 
When the veggies were ready, I sear the chicken breasts in a cast-iron skillet, then finish cooking them in the oven. In the same skillet, the asparagus and squash got quick saute over high heat, garlic slices added, sprinkled a pinch of salt and pepper, and it's done.


After resting for about 5 minutes, the chicken was ready to slice. I pulled a bag of mesclun mix from Amy's Garden, put the veggies and chicken slices on top and sprinkle some toasted pine nuts for a good measure. 
Darn, I didn't have any bread in the house for my carb source. Oh well, it's still a filling and satisfying meal. 

Stuff I eat at home, part 1

Summer time in Virginia means bountiful gorgeous produce from local farms. My husband and I have been a CSA member of Amy's Garden since 2003, so every summer we get a bagful of fresh produce to play with.

As a chef, people think I cook gourmet meals at home ("So, I bet your husband eat well"). Honestly, after 8-10 hours in the kitchen, the last thing I want to do when I get home is cooking a complicated dinner. Most of the time, my rules for home cooking dinners are:

1. no more than 1 hour from start to finish

2. no more than 2 pans or pots involved

This time, I decided to document what I cook at home (well, when I remember, anyway). Just for the heck of it. By the time I started this blog, we're already on week 4, lots of stuff to catch up on.

When I cook, I rarely follow recipes, more of a-pinch-of-this, a-dash-of-that type of cooking. Sure I cook for a living, but I hope this blog shows you how fun and easy it is to cook something yummy and (often) healthy. Here we go...

The first couple weeks of harvest were full of Spring favorites: Swiss Chards, bok choi, (peppery) radishes and lots of turnips. These little white Japanese turnips were quite spicy/peppery and sweet. Usually, the Asian in me demanded quick pickle slices of them in a mixture of white vinegar, minced garlic, sugar, salt and pepper. This time I decided to saute them in butter (mellowing the peppery-ness), with some shallots, added the turnip green tops, a splash of leftover white wine (I think it was a Sauv Blanc) and plopped them atop a fluffy mound of steamed millet. Quite tasty and a good fuel for the next day's 5-mile run, thanks to the millet.