Cutting Corners

I was but a mere waiter, poking his nose over the pass, hoping to glimpse a genius at work. The toque dipped towards the work top, large hands gripped a pair of scissors, snipped the corner from a white plastic pouch and tossed it into a microwave. Seconds later, yellow rice flowed from the bag onto a plate, next to a freshly cooked curry. I picked up the plate and delivered it to the waiting patron - in the dining room of a five star hotel.

I was inexperienced, and the hotel was in England, and perhaps I was naïve - I was only about 20 so I was undoubtedly stupid – but this concept of serving microwaved rice out of a bag, in an incredibly expensive restaurant, struck me as something close to deceptive and misleading conduct. I vividly remember the taste of that rice. Musty. Having now spent several years in the food industry, I do know I was naïve and stupid - this sort of stuff’s everywhere. For many chefs, the dreary thing about working in a kitchen, is actually having to cook.

Apparently people want to know more about their food and where it comes from, but they might be stunned by what’s happening in some commercial kitchens.  Would you be annoyed if your rice in a five star hotel came out of a bag? What is reasonable to “bring in”? Pre-cut veges, frozen veges, minced garlic…..do they have a place in a professional kitchen? Do you expect curry pastes in an Indian or Thai restaurant have been made from scratch, or would you be disappointed if they came from a tub? Are you expecting all your gravies and sauces in a steak house to be built from the bone up? Do you care that almost every chip you ever eat is par-cooked in a distant factory and stored frozen until minutes before reaching your table? Are your expectations lower for an RSL than a pub, and a pub below a restaurant, and so on? Or do you believe that everything is being prepared in-house, from chopping the garlic upwards?

My most regrettable purchase of 2011 thus far, was the above $15 soup I took brief ownership of in the Rocks last week.   It was either straight from a can, or a powder, with pre-cooked, defrosted chicken slices tossed in as an afterthought.  The picture speaks volumes. All I could do was sit and dream of the Ploughman’s, and a half pint of Three Sheets at the Lord Nelson just up the hill and out of reach, but I was burdened by tiara-wearing minors after a charming Princess Day at Fort Denison. Travelling further than George St in clopping shoes was out of the question. No wonder the McDonalds around the corner was full.

Some people gauge the standard of food in this country by how many restaurants we have in the San Pellegrino World’s Top 50 restaurants, instead of looking at the state of things where most of the money’s being spent – surely the true barometer of national food standards. Nor are the majority of overseas visitors going to those top restaurants. Most of them in the Rocks or at Circular Quay would just be happy with a seat and a decent sandwich, something I found unattainable. Tourism Australia chose to ignore my Tweets on this topic.

I thought I’d have a squiz at the range of things restaurants can have delivered to their door. Scanning past the perplexing “Fresh Frozen Fish Fillets” section offered by one food service distributor, my eyes fell on some interesting stuff. One product promoted itself as “natural Blue Eye Trevalla medallions in a frosted crust…..ideal for hotels, bistros, pubs & clubs, restaurants, cafes”. The true beauty of the offering lies in what they generously term “cooking instructions”. Just “deep fry frozen fish for 4-5 minutes or until golden brown.” That’s some mis en place.

Ever wondered why all salt & pepper squid tastes the same and nothing like you make? It could be they’ve all descended from the same bag in the freezer. Apparently the advantages of one salt & pepper squid offering include its “quality upmarket presentation” and the fact you can “cook from frozen”. And the knockout punch: “deep fry for 2-3 minutes”. You can get tempura snapper, soft shell wild baby mud crab – it’s not just crumbed filay-o-fish type gear so it’s probably appearing on your plate more often than you’d like to imagine

And then, there’s the option of buying in fully cooked dishes like the curry in the picture above.  On this, I can speak with some authority, as I worked for a boutique food producer established by Tony Bilson in the late 1990s. Stocks, sauces, soups and curries were all cooked in a central kitchen by chefs and sent to restaurants, pubs and food retailers all over the country. Cooking sous vide, some of the best things were 12 hour-cooked duck confit, pork belly, beef cheeks - things now prepared sous vide in many restaurants. Everything we made was cooked by chefs using great ingredients, but would it surprise customers to learn their dinner had been cooked miles away, and days, or even weeks, earlier? Although, this isn’t quite as extreme as the business in Melbourne which knocks out tens of thousands of fully cooked, shelf-stable lamb shanks each year which are shipped to England and served in hundreds of pubs.

It was refreshing to receive a series of Tweets this week from Alex Herbert of Bird Cow Fish in Surry Hills, direct from Flemington Markets introducing her network of growers – which she posted while I was sleeping.  There are several thousand cafes, restaurants, pubs, clubs and caterers in Sydney – wonder how many had chefs out there with her?