Category Archives: The Back End

The Psychology of Cooking, Professionally

  I have often wondered what it is that drives some of us to continue on in this business year after year, decade after decade. It is easy to understand why some might entertain the thought of entering the profession, especially these days with all of the media coverage of celebrity chefs, and celebrities pretending [...]

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Sourcing in Canada 2.0

As much as I have always wanted to keep my purchases within Canada, and my wish is to pass along any information I can gather in regards to this, I just have to pass along this information even though it is to do with an American company (read duty and exchange, international purchase). For months [...]

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Sous Vide 3.0

As I sat mulling over what I had managed to accomplish culinarily over the past year, on my days off anyways, I was quite happy with the situation. While I realize that at the moment I am never satisfied with the number of new and different things I manage to create, in hindsight I somehow [...]

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Study & Action

Study without action is futile, and action without study is fatal. I can’t remember where I read that little saying but it just came to mind again this evening as I was “studying” away here in my room at camp. This particular adage, while I fully understand its’ merits is one that I find totally [...]

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Sous Vide Success

  To anyone experienced in the technique it might not seem like all that much, it might even seem laughably simple, but my first foray into the world of cooking in a controlled temperature water bath can go into my history books as a success. Two perfectly cooked medium rare Striploin Steaks, cooked Sous Vide [...]

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What’s in a Name?

As I read back through the majority of my blogs, other than realizing that after the first couple of months the fact that my posting frequency has diminished I have also noticed that I may have not come up with the best name I could have for my little website here. While webrestaurateur.com is still [...]

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Hydrocolloids 101

Just the word itself does not, at first glance associate itself with fine dining, or the art/craft of cooking at all, at least in my mind. But such is the nature of cooking and the evolution, or progress of the discipline. Hydrocolloids is, in my mind anyways, just the fancy, proper term for a wide [...]

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Sourcing in Canada

While the Internet and the World Wide Web may be an indispensable tool for information, ideas and inspiration lately it seems it is also a constant source of frustration to me. Time and time again as I attempt to locate suppliers of that esoteric ingredient or extremely specialized tool I find that while a website [...]

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So much food, so little time

As another weekend at home draws to a close I sit back and think about everything that I wanted to accomplish on this set of days off. As usual I didn’t get half of what I wanted to done, but what I did manage was very encouraging in so many ways, lots of cooking and [...]

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Old School, New School

  Over the last few months, as I have begun to share my thoughts and some ideas here I have at the same time started to seriously follow fellow chefs and their blogs. In the beginning there were quite a number of blogs that I would visit regularly but as time went on the numbers [...]

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