Rick and I were over at the restaurant this morning, sorting thru some of the myriad detail that we need to get our heads around , for the upcoming cookschool trip to France, when Rachel from Flaveur bakery dropt off our Friday delivery of bread. We get a delivery twice a week - on a Wednesday and Friday to coincide with cookschools, and the loaves we don't use in the cookschool we onsell to people who appreciate the difference of naturally produced, artisinal bread.

Normally I'm in the cookschool when the bread arrives, so no time for a chat - but today we were able to have a catchup up on what is happening in our respective worlds. She was saying that they are trying to get a baker from France to come and join the business and help them grow the next step - after 2 years of doing all the baking between the 2 of them, they're realising the necessity of sharing the load a little. Something I can strongly identify with. Interestingly they've had no problems generating lots of interest from bakers keen to shift to NZ - the difficulty now lies with convincing the immigration powers that be, that a baker trained under a master baker for years in France, has a level of skill and expertise, that just isn't found on the local labour market. Because we simply don't have the layers of  heritage in producing bread in the true artisinal fashion.

Flavuer bread delivered this am, and still warm to touch from the ovens.

We make our own bread at the restaurant, and have always done so. In the early days it was becos there simply wasn't any good bread commercially available, so we played around with doughs and starters and learnt all sorts of things along the way. We are now strongly identified with the olive bread that we make and serve at night, that isn't quite a foccacio - more correctly it should be called an olive flat bread. 3 loaves are made every day, and we serve it with olive oil from Ricks Aunt and Uncle in the Hawkes Bay- Ellsgrove Oil- and butter( which from this week on, will be our own homemade butter! - (see previous blog on our butter making endeavours.)

The bread we make.

I have often talked about a desire to open a bakery, and make proper bread - an idea my husband has always pooh hoed, as unrealistic, and I hate to concede that he is probably right. ( I'm never keen on conceding anything really!)

There is a balance to be maintained in a business like ours, between making as much of what we sell ourselves, and in doing so, defining who we are - but in also realising that you can't realistically be totally self sufficent. Taken to a literal extreme it would be impossible really. I guess where individual restaurant operators draw the line depends very much on their personal interests, their perception of costings, and their level of expertise.

It has always been important to us to make as much as we can on premise. For that reason we buy in virtually nothing prepackaged. We make our own stocks, sauces, icecreams, pastries, terrines and pates. Some other charcuterie we've bought in - things like black pudding, simply becos we have no expertise in making it. Cheese we buy from good producers, and naturally wine and other alcoholic beverages we purchase from people expert in that field. We don't roast our own coffee, nor make our own tea - although I do like the idea of getting into some herbal tisanes and using herbs from our garden.

I am very capable of getting fired up about an idea or concept, and rushing around with it for awhile, until the more mundane practicalities of how it is going to  sit with our day to day realities and committments, kind of hits me. Sometimes we are able to work out ways  of fitting it in ( and I'm seriously hoping at this stage that the homemade butter experiments of this week, fall into that category.), or I get one of those looks from my husband which tells me that he is not sharing my enthusiasm. Surprising as it may seem to some people, that is usually enough to knock back the idea, becos I am always very aware that any great ideas need to be followed up by the tedium of being made all the time, over and over again. And if Rick doesn't think that is going to work for the kitchen, its not for me to override him. Not unless I'm prepared to be the one to do the work.

I've also become increasingly aware over the years of the importance of a business like ours to support other food businesses, who are making product of a superior quality, and trying to establish a market for themselves.Small artisinal food producers are a relatively new concept in NZ - and the growth in the oldfashioned idea of food markets, coupled with the very modern accessibility of the internet, is breaking new ground  in terms of the public being able to access these products. But the public has to be made aware of the importance of this type of food, and just why it is worth making that little extra effort to source artisinally made food, rather than grabbing stuff off the supermarket shelve during the weekly shop. In the cookschools that we run, we talk alot about where we get product and why we believe it to be superior, and sometimes we take people with us and sometimes we don't - but when I get told ( as I have done twice this week) that coming to the cookschools has completely opened peoples eyes to a whole new way of looking at food and cooking, then I figure we must be doing something right.

It also sits very comfortably with my business ethos to be able to support other like minded businesses -without there having to be any financial gain in the process for us. If you want to be really hard nosed, you could argue I guess, that the more people become food aware, then the less crap they are going to tolerate, and the better for a quality focused food business like ours. But I prefer to think that I'm doing it simply becos it feels like the right thing to do.

We buy bread on a Sunday from the supermarket for sandwiches for our daughters school lunches during the week. It is not unusual for that bread to still be feeling soft 3/4 days later. Whereas with the Flaveur bread, becos there are absolutely no additives or preservatives in it, it goes stale relatively quickly. I find it infinetly curious that people see that as a negative. We don't. I find the concept of bread that stays unnaturally soft over a protracted time frame to be the scary thought - and I have no problem with the idea of buying bread fresh, freezing it if need be - or toasting it the day after.  Certainly that requires a titch more effort and thought - but so does any good cooking, and it is that notion that we all have to learn to re-embrace. Putting time and effort into the food that we eat, is not a bad thing. We have just been subjected to a concentrated advertising campaign over the last 20-40 years telling us that we're silly to bother, when we can buy a ready made product instead. Maybe there was a time when we were inclined to believe that message, but I know for a fact that a vast number of people have become increasingly sceptical and are more and more willing to invest a little time. And its a trend I feel very comfortable about.

Even Courteney, our youngest, who has a tediously boring palate, which I'm seriously hoping she will grow out of one day, loves that on Wednesdays on Fridays there will be a loaf of fresh Flaveur bread waiting for her on the bread board. Its chewy, flavoursome, substantial bread - absolutely superb,  and she devours it with relish. Giving me pause to hope that  we will one day have a break through with some of the other food stuffs that she turns up her nose at!

We made butter today. Quite deliberately and not an accidental by-product of beating cream for icecream in the large mixer, and forgetting about it until its too late, as does happen periodically. No – this we did from scratch, with David Munro, a friend, who just happens to be a dairy scientist, and a fascinating person to get involved in discussions with, on why things happen when you cook. The type of queries that I manage to come up with quite regularly and usually go delving into Harold McGhee, for an explanation. David is a regular attendee at our cookschools,  and he and I often have aside conversations .Given that chemistry was far from a strong point of mine during college years, I'm intrigued by how interesting I find it all now, that it is relating to a practical application.

He and Rick and I were all fired up by the visit of Juliet Harbutt earlier this year, and there had been much discussion about all things dairy- the upshot of which was the glistening of the idea that it would be rather cool to make the butter that we use in the restaurant from scratch. Why? No special reason, beyond the fact that I happen to believe that in todays world we are too far removed from the basic processes of so much food preparation, and since we’re a restaurant that makes all our own bread and icecreams and stocks, then why not our own butter?

Being me, I’ve mentioned this idea to a few people, and met with one or two raised eyebrows and skeptical looks. Someone did ask when we were going to be getting the cows, which I think was missing the point just a bit. Life is all about continuums I think – and where you choose to position yourself on that scale is all about your personal circumstances. How far back to basics we go is governed by what is practical for us, and logistically viable with the restaurant. Cows no, but making butter from pasturised cream, definitely. Especially after todays exercise, which turned 6 litres of cream into butter and butter milk. I brought home some of the butter milk, intent on making soda bread, in memory of my Irish mother, who made the stuff frequently during our childhood, never without bemoaning the lack of butter milk in the supermarkets.

Stages in the process:

 After beating the cream beyond  the whipped  stage into a very dubious looking curdled appearance, the colour changed from whitish tones to  gradually deepening yellow hues. Rick and I didn’t fully understand at the time, but we were waiting for it to seperate into a type of  curds in essence,  with the butter milk flowing free. David looked anxious for a period – unsure if we were going to effect that separation, but it did eventually, and the top photo shows the butter milk being drained off.

The curds themselves are then re churned (we found the dough hook worked best for this process), and eventually turn into beautiful creamy butter.

Thanks to David’s contacts within the dairy industry we got our hot little hands on some culture, and we now have another 6 litres of cream fermenting, that is souring, overnight – and we will then go thru the same churning process, only this time our cream will have fermented, and the butter that results will be cultured butter. The culture contains bacteria friendly to dairy ( no listeria or salmonella, it specified in the instructions, to my considerable  relief!) and that extra step of souring the cream is all about adding flavour. The butter we made today tastes of sweet cream, for want of a better description, and it will be interesting to compare its flavour to the cultured butter we get tomorrow. A fascinatingly descriptive blog on the subject, which helped me understand the whole process can be found at http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/journal/2007/6/21/getting-some-culture.html.

We go thru between 20-30 kilos of butter a week at the restaurant, and the idea of making our own, definitely appeals to me. We sell rendered duck fat, as a by product of all the ducks that we cook in a week ( potatoes cooked in duck fat are one of lifes little treats, that we all need occasionally!), and I wonder if we’ll be able to get the butter to a production level, that we’ll be able to sell that too. Somehow I don’t think we’ll ever get to the kind of quantities that will cause Fonterra any concern, but it would be rather nice to be able to offer customers who care about these things, an alternative. I still harbour a romantic memory of going to the food markets at Queen Victoria in Melbourne, in the mid 90’s and being stunned by my first sighting of butter in large lumps – so different from the packaged and wrapped and uniform, ubiquitous 500g, packs that is our only option for buying butter.

 All interesting!

The restaurant has been very quiet over the last 2 weeks - to be expected this time of year, but never a fact that I actually embrace, becos the number of bills that require paying never seem to diminish by quite the same proportionate amount as the turnover. Gordon Ramsey said in his autobiography that they closed their up market restaurant in Scotland becos it was only ever busy 2 nites a week, and that wasn't enough to be profitable. And he's quite right - consistency of numbers is crucial to profitability in an operation like ours, so when our numbers drop below 20 for a night, you can be sure that I ain't thrilled about it.My usual mode of coping is to find a book to curl up with, so as to loose myself in someone elses world, and remove myself from too much pontificating about the lack of customers!

So when boxes arrive from Amazon - quite often with something I'd forgotten I'd ordered - the timing is always most fortuitous. Usually I've hopped on the computor to order a book that I've read a review off, or someone I respect has recommended, and then proceeded on with what ever I was doing, and forgotten about it, until the parcel arrives, much to my glee. The second one to arrive in as many weeks was " Heat" by Bill Buford, which I'd ordered on a whim, even though I thought that maybe I'd had a surfeat of the style of book where a journalist goes into a commercial kitchen to get a feel for what its all about and then repeats ad nauseum the process of cooking under intense pressure.  I'm incredibly glad however, that I followed my instincts and ordered the book, becos its made for fascinating reading on a number of levels. The author is a superb writer, which always helps elevate the reading process - and his selfdeprecating personality belies the amount that he achieved in the process of learning to be a chef in one of New Yorks top Italian restaurants, and then going on to Italy to learn to make pasta in a small restaurant  there, and on to do butchers training in Tuscany from the man considered to be the best butcher in Italy.

He has a happy knack of bringing alive the environments within which he works, and the people that he encounters. There is no malice, or need to promote himself - you suspect a genuine fascination with the process of learning and upskilling, but done in a collaborative and respectful way with people he considers to be experts in their fields. One of the reviews I had read about the book, implied that he had decimated Mario Butolli - the owner of Babbo, the Italian restaurant in New York, by depicting him in less then complimentary terms. Isn't it interesting how people interprete things in different ways? - becos I got a sense of deepseated respect and liking for each other, and an honest account of running a busy restaurant in the hot house environment of New York. I've encountered Mario a few times on the Food Network, when I've got on the wind trainer in front of the TV, and he's one of the few network presenters that I can watch without any cringe factor. Him and Rick Stein!  He does have a larger than life personality, and is full of exhurberance  and energy, and describing him as such in the book in no way diminished him in my eyes. If anything reading the book served to help me understand where the knowledge and the skill in the TV presenter came from. ( As a complete bye the bye I've just read an article that Bill Buford wrote for the New Yorker on the Food Network .)

Bill Buford was a writer and and editor before he went off on the cooking tangent - and part of the appeal of this book is his historical perspective, the  research that he does to understands the whys. If people tell him something is done a certain way, becos that is the way it has been done for centuries - he will go off to establish reasons why that should be , and in the process paints a more detailed picture that made for fascinating reading. I was going to use the word ' intellectual' but that makes it sound dry, which his writing is anything but.

Having worked in small rural, artisinal food businesses in Italy, he had got to compare food that was still being farmed and made in centuries old style, small and slow, with the vast modern manufactured and profit driven modern approach, and he was very clear about which he preferred. In fact he states in  the clearest fashion I've yet read what he percieves to be the problem. Let me quote:

'The  metaphor is usually one of speed: fast food has ruined our culture;slow food will save it...But it obscures  a fundamental problem which has little to do with speed and everything to do with size. Fast food did not ruin our culture. The problem was already in place, systemic in fact, and began the moment food was treated like an inanimate object -like any other commodity- that could be manufactured in increasing numbers to satisfy a market. In effect, the two essential players in the food chain ( those who make the food and those who buy it) swapped roles. One moment the producer ( the guy who knew his cows or the woman who prepared culatello only in January or the old young man who picks his olives in September) determined  what was available and how it was made. The next moment it was the consumer. The Maestro blames the supermarkets, but the supermarkets are just a sympton. ( Or, to invoke a familiar piece of retail philosophy: the world changed when the food business agreed that the customer was right, when, as we all know, the customer is actually - well, not always right.) What happened in the food business has occurred in every aspect of modern life, and the change has produced many benefits. I like island holidays and flat-screen telvevisions and have no argument with global economies, except in this respect - in what it has done to food."

He raises issues that are been discussed by many people at the moment - but there is nothing polemic or didactic about his comments. I could read, agree and enjoy the process, becos it dovetailed very comfortably with where my beliefs happen to be positioned. I didn't realise until I'd started the book that he'd bought a whole pig carcass from a local farmer, after his first work experience at the Tuscany butchery, and proceeded to break it down  - butcher it according to the principles he'd learnt. He got 450 servings of food from the one pig! - although he said that the lesson 'wasn't in the pigs economy but in its variety and abundance"

We currently have 2 pig carcasses in our freezer - from our lifestock experiment, of earlier this year. And tonite Rick is firing up the Weber to cook one of the joints. I haven't made too many enquiries as to what to expect, but I noticed he was reading Jane Grigsons ' Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery" this morning, so I await proceedings with interest. Unfortunatley for us, our reality is that we can't disappear off to Tuscany to work for a few months at the feet of a master butcher, and until we can entice an expert to come here to give us some training, we will rely on the written word for inspiration.

There's a lot of pig to go!

I've long been a fan of Gordon Ramsey - an opinion that seems to run counter to the majority of people whenever he comes up in conversation. Peoples aversion seems to be centered on his expletive driven language, and what they percieve to be his bullying tactics. Becos my ear doesn't tend to be offended by swear words, the language has never bothered me, and I always figured there had to be more to his A type personality, then necessarily comes over on TV - otherwise he wouldn't have engendered the formidable staff loyalty that he has. If the guy really was a jerk, then he wouldn't still have a number of staff working with him, who started out in his first restaurant.

The book ' Humble Pie' is his autobiography, and it is written exactly as he speaks, so flows along very easily, even with the graphic language!  Having read it,  I don't actually feel that there is any sarcasm attached to the title either. He comes from a truly horrific background, encountered major setbacks in his soccer career, which he then had to set aside to aim for a new career in cooking. And he didn't just want to be a cook - he aimed to be a chef, and not just a good one, but the best of them all. And that is something that drives him still. Even with all the extraordinary amounts that he has achieved, he is acutely aware that Alain Ducasse and Thomas Keller have more Michelin stars than him, on an international scale - and you sense that that eats at him. He won't actually be satisfied until he can claim N0.1 status.

All of which, needless to say, I find very curious, becos I can't imagine being quite that driven. But then I didn't have the kinds of obstacles placed in my way that he did, from a very young age.

For years I've read books and cookbooks and articles on various chefs and restauranteurs from around the world, and being a natural cynic, have always pondered how much of it to believe. Like most people in the hospitality industry, we were very impressed by the raw new energy of Marco Pierre White back in the late 80s when he burst on the London restaurant scene. He seemed so young and individual , compared to the rigidity and formality of the French restaurant training, but reading Ramsay, who worked with him, shows that he actually ran his kitchen along equally draconian lines, with staff expected to work absurd hours in ridiculous conditions. White's subsequent treatment of people is  heavily criticised by Ramsay, and likewise, anyone else who in any way abused him, gets their comeuppance.  But usually that is done by him simply describing what took place and what was said. As quick as he is to put the boot in, he doesn't appear to shy away from the people to whom he feels gratitude, and its that aspect that  I found almost the most redeeming. People say hes arrogant, and he probably has to have a significant amount of self believe to have achieved what he has done, and I guess in some peoples eyes that amounts to arrogance, but I just don't have a problem with it.

Look at what he's achieved, I say. He doesn't suffer fools to any degree, and I can't say I have a problem with that either. Watching some of the extraodinary scenarios in the TV series where he goes in to try to help  restaurants that are floundering, I thought he almost always invariably came out looking practical and sensible, whereas some of the human beings involved in the projects defied  any logic. They were frighteningly ignorant  of even a reasonable sense of what is to be expected.

Likewise, I used to get incredibly uncomfortable watching the antics of the young guys that Jamie Oliver had got together to offer an opportunity to work in the new restaurant he was setting up, as a training opportunity for those underpriviledged. So many of the original group thought that the glory and stardom should all be theirs, without them having to expend any energy to acquire it. Actually work for it? - don't be ridiculous!! Their sense of being 'owed' everything, truly mortified me. ( I am conscious however, that certain aspects of that may have been overdramatised for the TV cameras - something Ramsay indicates they don't hesitate to do.) And I think Gordon Ramsey makes very clear that working in a commercial kitchen is hard work, that can take a significant toll - there is very little that is glamourous about it, and people that percieve it in that light are bound to come unstuck. The fact that he has a really large percentage of staff who have stayed with him and gone on to thrive in his extended empire speaks volumes, and suggests to me that he doesn't have any ego problems, becos hes quite happy to let other people do really well  and burnish their own stars. Unlike the picture painted of Marco Pierre White, who didn't seem able to cope with competition from someone he considered an underling. That man really is a jerk.

Found some of the business aspects fascinating also - thru a very business savy father-in-law, and fortuituous meeting with a private equity company, he has been bankrolled into a significant number of food business', that operate at a number of different levels of the market. His top restaurant turns over 3 million pounds a year and has a profit of between 500,000 to 750,000 pounds a year. Thats 17-25%, and  I happen to know that the industry average in NZ is quoted as being 3.87%, so I'm impressed, very impressed! Its open Monday to Fridays lunch and dinner - has 12 tables, 40 seats. They don't turn the tables - one seating, thats it. So they can do 360 covers in a week - and yet they get 500 phone calls a day for reservations ( and I tried to imagine how it would be to have the phone ringing that often!) To have a net profit that high, the prices must be correspondingly high, but what he is saying is that for any one night they will have 30 tables trying to get in - so there is obviously a huge market quite comfortable with paying what he charges.

But he doesn't just operate at that level - he has the skill and business acumen to run successful restaurants right accross the board, and I think thats an amazing achievement.

The chapter on his TV experiences was extremely illuminating, especially in terms of the amount of money that competing channels were prepared to pay him to get his services. He made 500,000 pounds for 2 weeks work ( 25,000 pounds an hour), which as he says is what it would have taken one of the restaurants a year to clear as a net profit. The high profile without doubt, would have also brought lots of people to his restaurant doors, so its been a major win for him. He details without rancour, some of the more bizarre antics of the tabloid press, who treat him as fodder becos of that same high public profile - its a cost that seems to affect some people, but he appears to have the knack of treating it all with the distain that it deserves.

When we do our kitchen alterations ( hopefully next year), we are looking at putting in a kitchen table - we had a meal at the kitchen table at Bracu this week to celebrate 21 years in business and to get a feel for how they do it -and I've just been on the Gordon Ramsay website to have a look at how he sets them up in his various kitchens. A customer who'd been to one of our cookschools earlier this year, had just eaten at the kitchen table at the Connaught, and described the experience in depth, which is what got us intrigued by the concept. He says in his book at one point that they mean one million pounds in annual turnover. Not a figure to be sneezed at exactly. All interesting gist for the mill....

He appears to be driven to keep moving forward - standing still and smelling the roses just isn't an option for his personality, but I can't help but deeply admire the chutzpuh that has allowed him to create what he has. And probably what I respect most of all is the immutable fact that the man really can cook - he knows and is passionate about food, and his skill level is extraordinay. I like that.