Being a chef for 15 years does not mean you know everything there is to know about cooking. Far from it, the longer you work in this industry the more you need to learn. Aside from this, it is always a good idea to look around for fresh inspiration. To that end, no chef worth his salt would go without brousing the cook book section of Barnes & Noble or Borders on a regular basis. So this week I picked up a couple of said books. Needless to say, I have hardly read them properly at his point, but I came across something in one of them that got my blood boiling.
This book is a collection of Fish recipes (the recipes look quite good so far) written by an American Chef, haven't yet read his Biography so I don't know where he was trained. All I can say for sure is this, he sure as hell didn't learn his trade in Europe or the UK! At one point in this book, he is explaining how Sushi restaurants will freeze their Sashimi grade fish to keep it's freshness (I would dispute this as frozen raw fish tastes very different and has a slightly different texture, trust me, I tried it!) This is not my problem with him so far, everything is reasonable, even if I don't agree. It's the additional comment that got me; "Freezing fish is also reccomended as the freezing kills most of the bacteria"
WTF!? How many people out there have read this in his book and thought they could freeze their fish that is on the turn, thinking that the bacteria would be killed? Is this guy nuts! Don't they teach health and safety in the USA? (looking at the state of the kitchens, possibly not, but that's for another blog) Freezing does not kill the bacteria, it puts them to sleep, makes them lie dormant, until you defrost the fish and the little buggers themselves. COOKING kills the bacteria, and even that is not definite as some of them are able to coccon themselves from the extreme heat, and break the coccoon when the heat drops back down. This is more likely to occur during gradual rises in temperature rather than flash cooking, any way, I digress.
What the hell is this guy on, anyway? I have never heard such rubbish (trash) in all of my life, and I would hate to eat anything that he creates, because who knows what other wierd health and safety ideas he has.
That is my rant of the day. I intend to get a recipe up within the next few days, once I work out how to downsize them to home use, which is after I work out the actual quantities I use in the first place. One draw back to asking a chef for a recipe, unless it is pastry based, we do not measure, everything is by eye, smell and taste. I will do my best though. Any specific requests? No promises though!