Season To Taste - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather".

Three little words. They sit at the end of nearly every savory recipe. After slicing and dicing and roasting and blanching and braising and basting and sweating and resting, after you've exhibited every ounce of cooking prowess you possess there they sit. Dainty as a demitasse spoon, quiet as a quail egg - season to taste.

Ho Hum, just season it to taste, as if it's been flippantly tossed into the recipe. But beware this task.

Do not trust the seeming ease with which television cooks fling their salt, the two or three power turns with which they crack pepper. Seasoning to taste is an art.

The task is also known as add salt and pepper. But the phrase season to taste gives the cook such grandeur, as though at the end of the process you, the chef, will confer your special magic on the dish. And that is not far off from the truth. Salt and pepper are magic ingredients. Wars have been fought over both. They are nearly universal in cuisine.

The reason is that salt and pepper have a unique ability to highlight the flavors in food. They are like a giant spotlight that make your food shimmer. No matter how carefully you have painted your portrait or sewn your costume it is only when you turn the light on that people can appreciate it. So it goes with salt and pepper.

And so it is very easy to use too much or too little. One of the secrets is to add salt as you go. Just a little bit to each part of the recipe. It will add up so be sparing. But incorporating it into each part of the dish you will begin embodying each of the ingredients as you go. That way, when you reach the end, you need only add a tad of salt and pepper to bring that final light to your dish.

Another secret is to learn the size of your hand. How much salt do you hold in that pinch of your fingers? You will start to learn how your body measures food.

And finally, never, ever, ever, pour salt from the box. One oops and your dish is ruined in a cascade of white.

As for pepper, a little often goes a long way, though you can add more if it has been ground fine.

Julia Child - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

While Julia Child was undoubtedly knowledgeable and quite charming neither of those facts is what endeared her to me. What I found so lovable about that mistress of French cooking was that she screwed up. She didn't try to hide it. She didn't pretend to be perfect like so many of those cooking shows today. Julia accepted failure as a part of life in a kitchen. And she handled it with aplomb.

In one of my favorite moments a wooden spoon escaped from her hand, went skidding across the island and landed with a rattle on the floor. "Well," she said, picking up another wooden spoon, "that's why it's always good to have two."

If you are going to cook well you are going to screw up. Not that any of our mistakes ever make their way to your party. No, our mistakes are what we refer to as staff lunch.

I must confess that I am prone to a certain number of, um, "mistakes." Oh, nothing like the over salted polenta incident of 2006. But I have had my fair share.

The latest involved our caramel pot de cremes. It was the end of the prep day. Tiny caramel pot de cremes was my final task. They take a while to bake so I should have started them earlier. There are times in the kitchen your eye simply skips over a prep task on the list. No one knows why this happens.

Anyway, I made the pot de cremes, helped everyone clean up, and then watched everyone go home as I stayed to wait for the pot de cremes to finish. And I waited, and I waited... and waited. The way to check a pot de creme for doneness is to give the ramekin a little shake. You want the edges solid but for the center to have a slight wiggle, like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Well my pot de cremes were all wiggle, from the center to the edges.

One hour went by, then two hours. It was now ridiculous. My pot de cremes would not set. I called Hugh whose sage advice was, "Maybe you did something wrong." After the third hour I took my wiggly pots out of the oven and went home. A mystery left unsolved.

That is until I awoke at 4 in the morning with the sudden realization - I forgot to put the eggs in.

I convey this story of my humiliation in the spirit of Julia Child. May it bring you solace when you too screw up.

The Potato Gaufrette - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

A potato gaufrette is a wafer thin lattice-work slice of potato. That’s what it says on the Internet. Most of us know them popularly as waffle fries. Continue reading and you will be told they are simple to make. Peel a potato, slice it on a mandolin turning 90 degrees with each slice. Fry in oil.

That’s a bit like describing marriage this way: find someone you like, get a cake, continue to be nice for 20 years. It’s just a little more work than that.

Let’s begin with the mandolin, kitchen tool or ninja weapon?

The mandolin has certainly claimed more finger flesh over the years than many a sword. Then there is the inevitable shifting of the blade. One second you’re cutting perfectly thin slices and the next a potato thick as a side of ham falls out.

Suddenly, slicing potatoes becomes a cat and mouse game with your mandolin, moving the blade up, moving it down, pressing harder on the potato, flicking your wrist at the end of the slice to keep the end from becoming ragged.

As you get down to the end of the potato heed the sage advice our chef David gave me, “Don’t be a hero.” It’s ok to leave the nub of the potato for another use. Better to have all your finger tips.

If you’ve made it this far you now come to the oil. Potato gaufrettes are notorious for browning on one end while remaining soft on the other, or refusing to cook in the center. Just as you must adjust your mandolin a good gaufrette demands constant heat control.

Get you flame up high when the gaufrettes go in. The temperature will plunge. As it comes back up turn your flame down. You’re looking for that sweet spot, that magic place where the potatoes turn brown and crisp before burning.

Get your spider in there. It actually looks more like a web with a long handle. Who knows why they call it a spider? Get it in there none-the-less and move it around. Adjust your heat. I guarantee you that the minute you turn your attention to something else your gaufrettes will turn an invisible corner and be ready.

Now pull, pull, PULL. Get them out of the oil and onto some compostable, recycled, blessed by the earth paper towels. Salt ‘em.

If they didn’t work, throw them out before anyone sees them. But discuss the failure with your spouse. It’s all about communication.

The Age of The Slider - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

There is a magic to small food. Do not ask me how it works because I don't know. But there is something that happens when you take a regular sized piece of food and make it small.

You've experienced this magic. Ever found yourself inexplicably drawn to the word sliders on a menu. The half pound hamburger, ho hum. But oh how those sliders call to you. They beckon with their tiny little buns and, if you're lucky, that single slice of pickle. It's as though you are being offered nothing but the unencumbered center of the burger. Each bite is going to be perfect; no edges to get cold, no middle to navigate and get your cheeks dirty. White Castle built a small empire on the back of this phenomenon.

Growing up in New York I have fond memories of rolling into White Castle at 3 a.m. excited to order a sack of burgers. But the HGC slider exists in a whole other plane. Our sliders backpacked through Europe before enrolling at Johnson and Wales. I think they're the king of our tiny food.

We like to joke that Hugh is rather fond of the word tiny. In the super secret HGC recipe vault you can count 19 recipes that begin with the word tiny: tiny cupcakes, tiny chocolate cakes, tiny tacos, tiny meringues (those are so good), tiny tarts, tiny pot de cremes, tiny creme brulees. But right above all those tiny's in our alphabetical menu comes "The Ultimate Sliders." I think part of the delight is you can eat a "whole one" without feeling like you did. Or maybe it's because they're just so darn cute.

Whatever the reason now is the time of the ascension of the slider. Of all the tiny food we make here nothing causes such gasps of joy. Nothing causes so many guests to stake out the door to the kitchen keeping a sharp eye for their appearance. And no matter how fancy the party nothing so tiny has ever been met with such delight at two in the morning. Hugh always steals the last tray of sliders and passes them out; soaking up all the love. We all hate him a little bit for that.

The Zen of Caramel - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

Caramel, just the word can make your mouth water. But making caramel can be a bit more daunting. Caramel adheres to Malcolm Gladwell's meme of a tipping point. You want to heat the sugar until it just caramelizes, but not so much that it tips and burns. That's it - in essence. In practice everyone has their system.

Here at HGC we make a caramel pot de creme that is, in a word, fantabulous. But how to make it, ah, that is the question. The first few times I tackled / was forced at gunpoint to make the caramel there was no end to the advice given.

"Don't stir it with a spoon. Swirl it by moving the pan."
"Don't swirl it, you'll get too much up on the sides of the pan."
"Whatever you do, don't scrape down the sides of the pan."
"Scrape down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush."
"Use low heat and bring it up slowly."
"Crank the heat and blast it."

The one thing I was sure of was that I wanted to use a candy thermometer. At 250 degrees it would be ready.
The one thing everyone agreed on saying to me was "What are you doing with that thermometer?"

Not only does caramel have a very fine tipping point but I was supposed to know where it was by feel, by sight, by smell, by sheer primal cooking instinct. That's how it goes sometimes in a professional kitchen, you make your bones by being so immersed in the context of your food you just know.

Needless to say my first attempt ended in a dark brown melted disaster. That was two years ago. I am still trying to clean the pan.

The next time our pastry chef extraordinaire David came over. He watched me watching the light gold bubbles rising and popping. Then, at the critical moment, he shoved me into the wall and took over. With a towel in his hand he grabbed the handle of the pan and shook it and swirled it and tilted it to get a look at what was going on at the bottom. The man had no fear. He spun it around. He smelled it. He gave it a good long squint.

He was moving with the flow of the sugar. In technical terms it moved from soft ball to hard ball to hard crack. But we were experiencing it from light brown into deep golden brown, from a light sweetness to a rich sweetness. With one last look David pulled the pot from the stove.

There, at the bottom, was a beautiful golden caramel. David had me pour in the cream. It foamed and roared then settled down. Now we had ourselves a caramel sauce. I added some milk and then we tempered in the eggs and we just like that we had moved our way to our pot de cremes.

You can't really learn to make caramel. You have to live it.

Never Open Your Mouth While Cutting An Onion - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

The most dreaded task in nearly any kitchen is the cutting of the onion. Oh the tears. Great bucketfuls of them. It was such a guarantee that when I was 16 and Sarah Goldberger wouldn't speak to me I went into the kitchen to chop an onion so I could cry without shame.

It's the sulfur that gets you. When you cut the onion you release sulphur. That gets up into your eyes and mixes with water to become sulfuric acid. Your eyes produce tears to wash away the acid.

Everyone seems to have their own method for avoiding the tears. I was told to never open my mouth while cutting an onion. The movie "Like Water For Chocolate," famously had everyone putting a half a raw onion on their head to stop the tears. Others will tell you to run the onion under water. While this works it also dilutes the flavor of the onion. You could just not use onions but honestly, who wants to live in a world like that?

The simplest, easiest, and most effective solution we have found in the kitchen is the use of a lowly and humble fan. Just set up a fan by your cutting board and the wind carries the sulphur away. It never reaches your eyes. Never becomes sulfuric acid. And you never cry.

Genius, you say. Well yes it is.

How We Roll - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

Hugh’s vegetarian summer rolls are a favorite amongst our clients; so much so that some days we’ve been known to roll upwards of 400 of them. Scaling to such numbers is not a big deal in our kitchen. Working with Vietnamese rice papers – that comes with difficulties.

Galettes De Riz as it says on the package, made in an industrial park in Vietnam (who knew?), are thin, round, stiff and brittle. In order to work with them you have to place them in hot water. That’s one thing we can all agree on around here.

How long should the papers sit in the water? Well, for that we all have our different strategies. The trick is to rehydrate the rice paper enough to be flexible but not so much that it tears when you’re rolling.

Some believe a good long soak is the key. Others say drop it in and pull it right out. And still others find a short soak, say about 5 seconds, is the magic point. I am a believer in this third way, the Goldilocks solution as the astrophysicists might say.

The following are directions for how to conquer the elusive rice paper.

First, fill a bowl or hotel pan with your hottest tap water. Next, cover a table with plastic wrap. This is key; not only will it keep the papers from sticking to the table, but the plastic does not absorb the water leaving it for the papers to continue softening.

Then, and this is very important, put on the song “Rawhide” by Frankie Lane which begins, “Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep them doggies rolling. Rolling, rolling, rolling, Rawhide.” This will help you find your rhythm.

Drop a rice paper into the water. Let it sit for 3 to 5 seconds. Give it a tap with your hand so you feel like you’re doing something. Pull it out. It should still be rather stiff. You might think it’s too soon. But lay the wet paper down on the plastic wrap and it will keep absorbing water.

After you’ve repeated this process 10 or 15 times your papers should be reaching a perfect consistency.

And that’s how we role here at Hugh Groman Catering. All 400 rolls sometimes.