20 Minute University

A s a bread baker, I am always looking for new and seasonal ways to make the perfect loaf. But before we discuss what to add to our bread, let’s talk about the four fundamental building blocks of bread making. Flour, water, yeast and salt are all that are needed to make a spectacular loaf.

The language of wine

If I say a green bell pepper tastes like a green bell pepper, you know what I mean. But if I say a Sancerre tastes like a Sancerre, that’s not very helpful. With wine, we need to employ other “languages” in order to put our taste impressions into words.

Creating a farm-to-table menu

Menu change is never an easy task. Transforming the menu for a flagship restaurant at the CIA was a learning experience I will not soon forget.

In 2009, I was given the opportunity to help turn St. Andrew’s Café into a local, seasonal and sustainable operation. This meant transitioning the restaurant from a global menu with a focus on healthy cooking to a farm-to-table concept.

If you’re thinking of moving your menu in a farm-to-table direction, I’m sure you have many questions, just like I did:

Chiles of the Americas

Chiles all belong to the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, the same one as tomatoes, eggplant and tobacco. While they are called chiles in Mexico, they are known as ajíes in Peru, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela; pimentas in Brazil; and peppers or chile peppers in the United States.

Today there are five species of the genus Capsicum—annum, baccatum, frutescens, pubescens and chinense, though this may change due to more genetic research.

Dendé Oil

At the Center for Foods of the Americas at the CIA San Antonio, our job is to capture and document the culinary traditions and ingredients that define Latin America’s diverse foodways. Not surprisingly, going to the source is an essential part of this process. During a survey of Brazil’s regional cuisines in 2008, we went to Salvador, Bahia and drove north to the rural hamlet of Imbassaí. We wanted to see firsthand how dendé oil, one of the hallmarks of Afro-Brazilian cuisine, is made.

Chocolate mousse

Every chef needs to have a few “go-to” desserts in his or her repertoire, and none is more important than chocolate mousse. The versatility of this preparation is enormous, as chocolate mousse on its own can fill a need for the simplest bistrostyle dessert, while the same recipe could also be turned into a layer in the most sophisticated glazed entremet. An understanding of the basic techniques involved in preparing it will help ensure success with each attempt and eliminate the possibility for mistakes.

A trio of sweet wines

When I am in a restaurant concluding a meal, I feel the server is remiss if he neglects to offer dessert wine. The restaurant has lost an opportunity to sell a profitable product and perhaps exceed the expectations of the guest.

After all, a sweet wine is a perfect way to end a great meal. It is a small, luscious, lingering finale to a hopefully wonderful dining experience. Like dessert itself, sweet wines complete a meal; the best of them leave us with magnificent memories.

The aging palate

All of us enjoy good food; it is one of the most pleasurable parts of our lives. From the moment we are born, we seek out the tastes that make us feel good. As children, we have strong opinions about food but have trouble articulating our sensitivity to new tastes, textures and colors. As adults, our palate matures and ages, and we learn to appreciate new and unusual flavors that we may have shied away from as kids. In our golden years, we struggle with weight, medication, special diets and food restrictions that inhibit our enjoyment of food.

The impact of menu design

Menus are a restaurant’s most intimate point-of-sale connection to the customer, yet there is little understanding of how the menu actually impacts consumer behavior. Research conducted at the CIA has taken an evidence-based approach to understanding how consumers interact with restaurant menus. In one project, “menu typo-graphy” was investigated to better understand how price presentations impact consumer purchase behavior at St. Andrews Café on the Hyde Park campus. In another study conducted at the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant on the St.

Effective service management

One night early in my career as a manager, I passed one of my new servers in the dining room and heard him responding to a guest’s question about our beers. “We have Heineken and um… Budweiser and um…Becks and um…” After service, I met with him and explained that he had told the guests we had two brands that we did not, in fact, carry and forgot three that we did serve. In addition, we did not have any “and um…” beer. He defensively replied that he couldn’t help it—he was an actor, not a waiter.

Interviewing candidates in a buyer's market

Today’s economy has produced a “buyer’s market” for employers who have open positions. On the surface, this looks like a good problem to have. After all, you can get more for your money! However, with the market saturated with good people looking for jobs, the hiring process can be daunting.

Cooking with wine

For many of you, the title of this article refers to what you do while cooking for your family at home—wooden spoon in one hand, wine glass in the other. However, here we’re talking about using wine as an ingredient in professional cooking. All of us who graduated from the CIA cooked with wine at one point or another, making traditional sauces (beurre blanc) and braises (boeuf Bourgignon) in which wine was a major ingredient.

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