Are you looking for some inside information on chef? Here's an up-to-date report from chef experts who should know.
There are a number of specializations you can go into as a chef. There are no rules that say you have to be the executive or sous chef, chronically loaded down with an incredible amount of responsibility. If you are one of those creative cooks who'd rather be a little lower down the ladder but deal with a lot less stress, you can still keep your finger in the pie (so to speak) with one of the following culinary cooking specialties:
Saucier As might be expected, the saucier is the sauce specialist. As a saucier, you create all the sauces and those dishes that are cooked in sauces. Making from scratch stocks, soups, classic and contemporary sauces, accompaniments, and foods paired with all these are all considered part of your job. Sauces are an essential component in much cooking, so sauciers must be very well educated when it comes to the possible mixtures and combinations of ingredients that compose a fine sauce.
Garde Manger The garde manger creates all the cold food presentations: fruit and vegetable salads, pates, canap้s, and hors d'ouevres anything cold for the table. The garde manger chef makes all vinaigrettes and dressings in addition to molded aspics, pickled vegetables, chutneys, and relishes. In some settings, the garde manger chef plays sculptor, as well, by creating ice sculptures ranging from the simple to the elaborate to decorate party or buffet occasions.
Entremetier The entremetier prepares, cooks, and presents all types of vegetables, pasta, rice, and egg dishes. As an entremetier your rice must never stick to the pot and your spaghetti must be cooked perfectly al dente. Vegetable side dishes perfectly prepared and impeccably presented to accompany entr้es make you an important link in the "food chain" of culinary arts.
Patissier As a patissier, you are the creator of all baked desserts and other confections: cakes, pies, tortes, tarts, cookies, and candies. Creativity must be expressed not only in the taste, but also in the decoration of all types of dessert and pastry dishes. The perfect piecrust is your forte, and fudge, for you, never fails.
Most of this information comes straight from the chef pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you'll know what they know.
These are a just a few of many other culinary positions out there in the world of food, but all professional cooking positions require the following traits:
stamina
excellent sense of smell and taste
creativity
math skill
good with details
patience
good teamwork abilities
organizational skills
So if you love to cook and possess all these characteristics, there awaits for you many excellent opportunities as a specialized chef. These positions don't carry quite the prestige as does the head or executive chef, yet the final (and most critical) responsibilities of wherever you work do not lie at feet of these positions, either. But make no mistake: although specialty chefs may not be held ultimately responsible for any major faux pas, they are still expected to create and produce at the top of their expertise. Otherwise, as they say in the business, "Your goose will be cooked."
Take time to consider the points presented above. What you learn may help you overcome your hesitation to take action.
In the meantime you can find out more by visiting the web site listed below.
Keith Londrie II has worked as and researched the subject of chefs. To learn more information, please visit the new site for culinary information at http://define-culinary-arts-program-schools-restaurant-management.info/
To learn more, please visit http://define-culinary-arts-program-schools-restaurant-management.info/
Keith Londrie II
klondrie @ yahoo.com
http://define-culinary-arts-program-schools-restaurant-management.info/
7-Color Cuisine: Enjoying Your Meal
Think about how wonderful each bite tastes and how it will nourish your body. You'll rediscover that one of life's greatest pleasures is enjoying good food. By eating slowly and thoughtfully you'll feel full eating smaller portions. Keep out as much distraction as possible and carry on a pleasant conversation with those you love. A meal is not the proper time to settle arguments or rebuke family members for misdeeds. It's better to listen to music than to watch television during dinner because television is too distracting and often deeply disturbing.
People who dine alone often like to read while they eat. And that's fine as long as you make sure to enjoy every bite and stop frequently to savor the sweetness of good food. And do read something pleasant, uplifting. If your work involves travel, you'll have to devise some special strategies to eat 7 colors each day on the road and enjoy what you eat. Al, for example, travels 50 percent of his time, and he finds that reading something inspirational during breakfast helps him focus later on his high-tech presentations. He selects fresh fruit and either a vegetable omelet or old-fashioned oatmeal with yogurt, depending on his plans for the day. If he's taking clients to lunch, then breakfast and dinner will be lighter meals. Al keeps mealtime with his clients low-key, focusing on enjoying their company and exploring common interests rather than promoting his products and services.
Most of us eat too much food and never feel quite satisfied. On a trip to Dallas I booked a room in a hotel that was hosting a convention for a group called "Take off Pounds Sensibly" or "TOPS." While visiting with a woman at the breakfast counter one morning, I pushed my half-full plate away. She was amazed that I could be full and told that she had never known what that felt like. Later you'll read about some of my clients and how they overcame the feeling of never being full when they followed the 7-Color system. You
will eat less yet feel more satisfied. The trick is to choose the right foods and keep portion size under control.
The Importance of Presentation
Adults age fifty and older and those who wish to lose weight should serve their main courses on nine-inch salad plates. To enhance the meal's presentation and make it more visually appealing, place the food in the middle of the plate and garnish it with a sprig of fresh herbs or colorful strips of raw vegetables. A plate heaping with food and spilling over the sides is really unappealing, except maybe at Thanksgiving, a holiday that celebrates food with great conviviality.
It's best to serve main course accompaniments like salads on seven-inch bread-and-butter plates. Use small bowls to hold dipping sauce, brown rice, or vegetables. Serving various courses on separate plates heightens the intrigue and encourages mindfulness as you choose which plate to sample from next. Children know this innately. They hate when the gravy runs all over the vegetables and many find it disgusting if different types of food even touch one another.
The recipes in this book are planned for two people who are either on a weight-loss regimen or in their middle or later years, but they can be scaled easily to feed a bigger crowd at the table.
Excerpted from 7-Color Cuisine: Making healthy, colorful foods a lifestyle for nutrition and good eating by Marcia Zimmerman, M.D. (Penmarin Books, February 2006).
7-Color Cuisine: Guiding Principles
Learning from Nature
Today's fast-paced lifestyle has robbed us of the time we need to care for the most basic human need: sustaining life by feeding ourselves well. We eat more than enough calories, but the quality of what we eat is so poor that it doesn't sustain optimum health. The grab-and-feed mentality of the twenty-first century has obliterated the once-important practice of providing healthy family meals, and we are paying a heavy price. More than half the adult population and a growing number of children are classified as "obese" and poor diet is implicated in all chronic diseases. As a culture, we're desperately searching for ways to combat the trend, but we most often look in the wrong places and toward extreme diets and pills.
The plan presented in this book is really simple: Just consider that everything you put into your mouth becomes part of you.
If you are not energized by the color of the food you're eating, that's a clue that it will wind up as fat around your abdomen, waist, thighs, and buttocks. And you may not have the right stuff to think clearly and to combat stress. Do you make a habit of eating on the run? If so, you may be plagued with digestive problems and be less able to access food nutrients. It's also extremely likely that you will not have the quality of life you hope for in older age.
My choice, and I hope yours, is to travel along a different path to eating better with the fresh and colorful foods provided by nature.
7-Color Cuisine: Healing the Mind and Body
In the mid-1970s Dr. Stephen DeFelice first used the term nutraceutical to describe a broad class of nutrients with disease-fighting properties. Since that time this category has been further defined to highlight important disease-fighting chemicals found in plant and animal foods.
Phytonutrients give plants their bright colors, and we access their healing powers when we eat those brightly colored foods. Animals that eat phytonutrient-rich foods transform them into zoonutrients that color egg yolks and make butter appear yellow and make salmon and trout pink. Range-fed animals and wild game eat phytonutrient grasses and, as a result, their meat contains higher levels of healthy omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid than does that of their grain-fed counterparts. Range animals are also leaner and, if organically raised, their meet doesn't contain hormones or antibiotic residues.
Over the last century, changes in the way animals are fed, shifting from range-fed to feed, has led to substantial change in meat quality. If you're a big meat-eater, it's even more important that you get your daily servings of vegetables and fruits to balance the potential health challenges presented by a diet rich in meat. Eating the right colors every day is the basis of my new system, but other factors play into it for a full and satisfying culinary experience, including mindfulness, shopping without distraction, and preparing meals with intention.
The Need for Mindfulness
The 7-Color system emphasizes the need to be fully engaged in what you're doing, whether you're shopping, cooking, or eating. Set aside multitasking and enjoy cooking to its fullest. Get to know the deep satisfaction in shopping for the most colorful foods and planning menus around them to nourish your whole person as one of our greatest weapons against stress.
As we grow older, mindfulness becomes more important. One definition of aging includes a decline in our being's ability to cope with environmental,
psychological, and physiological stresses. As our adaptive ability decreases, our immune systems are less able to respond appropriately to challenges, leading to an increased tendency toward illness. By keeping your mind fully engaged in the current moment, you may be able to reduce stress and mitigate the chance of developing chronic conditions.
Shopping Without Distraction
When you shop, do so with as little distraction as possible so that you have time to read labels and think about what you're buying. Plan two or three shopping times per week, including during the weekend and midweek. These trips can be short stops to the produce, fish, and dairy sections, because you will have already established and maintained your dry pantry of staple goods. Make shopping times a priority by scheduling them as weekly events. And be sure to take a shopping list and avoid browsing in supermarkets, because if you don't, you're much more likely to buy items with clever marketing and packaging that hide less healthful qualities.
Before heading to the store, review your menu plans and list the items you'll need for the menus needed for the suggested menus. (Worksheets are included in Appendix C to help you figure that out as an on-going task). As you become more adept at working with the 7-Color system, you'll get used to selecting the choicest fruits and vegetables and be able to pair them quickly with grains, legumes, and animal source foods to build your own color-based menus. Using the menu plans, you'll also have an endless array of combinations to choose from.
To keep your pantry well stocked, you'll maintain a running list of needed items in a convenient location, perhaps on the refrigerator. If you've noted specifics, you'll see when particular shelf pantry items are running low, as you will with staples freezer that you always want to have on hand in the refrigerator. You'll want to update your list as you prepare meals to replenish any ingredients used. (Complete lists of wet and dry staples can be found in the book).
Preparing Meals with Intention
You'll find daily menu plans with recipes and list of ingredients to buy in Part Two. With a purposeful plan for meal preparation, the first step is to establish your food preparation area and remove all nonessential items. That's important whether your kitchen is small or large. Arrange the items you use most in a drawer adjacent to the food preparation area. Make sure that the area is clean and, as you work, use a damp bar towel to wipe your hands and clean spills fast.
Rinse the bar towel frequently and change it daily. If you make clean-up a part of food preparation, you'll eliminate the unpleasant task of returning to a disaster after a great meal when everyone is relaxed.
Reserve one chopping board for raw fish, poultry, and meat and scrub it thoroughly with detergent after each use. Other boards used for vegetables need only to be cleaned with water.
Assemble all of the ingredients, cookware, and utensils you need to prepare a recipe. Small items like fresh herbs, onions, and garlic can be chopped and set aside in small bowls until you're ready to use them. (There's a list of essential equipment and gadgets in the book).
While you're preparing the meal, someone who's going to eat it might well help you by setting an attractive table. Many working couples use the tag-team idea, and that's much more fun than working alone, plus it allows you to release the workday mind-set.
If you eat your meals alone it's even more important for you to "stage" your dining area with an attractive place setting and soft music or whatever helps you relax. Candlelight sets a wonderful mood for dining anytime. A candle flame's intense energy can serve to remind you of the renewed energy your food will provide and help you focus on what you are eating.
Parents can get children involved with meal preparation and make it a time for informal conversation and discussion about proper nutrition. Traditionally the kitchen has been the hub of the home where family and friends gather during meal preparation. People are drawn to the sight and smell of good food being well prepared, and that warm feeling also helps stimulate
good digestion. When the mind is fully engaged in food preparation, signals are sent from the brain to the digestive organs, allowing them to produce the right blend of acids and enzymes to digest the meal's contents.
Excerpted from 7-Color Cuisine: Making healthy, colorful foods a lifestyle for nutrition and good eating by Marcia Zimmerman, M.D. (Penmarin Books, February 2006).
