Fancy Pants Foodie

Foodie news, reviews and how-tos from Arkansas and beyond.

Announcing ARFoodJobs.com!

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Free job listings for employers throughout April with code APRILFOOLFREE. No joke!

Free job listings for employers throughout April with code APRILFOOLFREE. No joke!

It’s not a joke…I finally did it. Today marks the official launch of my new food job site, ARFoodJobs.com. And this month, employers can use it for free.

Since entering the culinary world as a student in 2009, I noticed there was no reliable system for filling our state’s food-related positions. Job openings were filled by word of mouth (which isn’t always a bad thing, but with limited reach), newspaper listings, Craigslist (gah) and a flurry of emails between those in the industry.

And then, around 2012 or so, our food world smooth blew up, especially in Little Rock. New restaurants, improved concepts and inspired chefs popped up everywhere. (A recent visitor who works in the industry marveled to me at our density and variety of dining.) By 2014, Little Rock was named one of five “Secret Foodie Cities” by Forbes Travel Guide.

So, who’s gonna work at all these places? And how will the busy owners, managers and chefs make connections to the best workers?

Today I offer a solution: ARFoodJobs.com.

It’s more than a job board…I like to say we’re matchmakers for Arkansas’ growing culinary and hospitality industry and the state’s most qualified job candidates in these areas.

Our matchmaking is made possible through strategic affiliate partnerships with Pulaski Technical College — Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute and the Arkansas Hospitality Association. With their help, we are gathering the resumes of the state’s best food job candidates, from students to seasoned (ha) veterans, and helping them connect with employers.

May I ask for your help in getting us started? It’s a big week. Help a sistah out.

1. Employers: Register as an employer on the site (click “register” and follow prompts). If you have a job opening right now, you can start at the “Post a Job” menu button and it will register you automatically in the process. Use coupon code APRILFOOLFREE to get free job listings all month in April.

2. Job Seekers: Select “Post a Resume” under “Find a Job” on the site and you’ll be registered as a job seeker in the process. Then fill in our resume form as well as attach your PDF or Word formatted resume. Please do both, as the form is searchable by employers, and they also like one to print out. If you’d rather be stealthy about your job search, you can just click “Register” and sign up as a candidate.

3. Everyone Else: If you’re not in the industry or not currently looking, please share this site with others. The more jobs and resumes we have listed, the better it will work for everyone.

Thank you in advance for your support. It means so much. What a great food culture we have right here in Arkansas!

Holy Cow, Y’all, I Sharpened My Knives

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Ahem.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how excited I was to finally sharpen some of my chef’s knives this weekend. More specifically, I was really excited upon using the first one I sharpened, a crappy santoku that was part of one of those newlywed starter kits, with steak knives and everything. Making a brunch hash Saturday, that santoku plowed through an onion like I haven’t done in ages.

Wüsthof two-stage knife sharpener I just bought at Kreb's, and the crappy santoku it resurrected.

Wüsthof two-stage knife sharpener I just bought at Kreb’s, and the crappy santoku it resurrected.

Shameful, really.

I haven’t even gotten to my better-quality knives yet, including the ones that were issued to me in culinary school. I’m pretty sure that is going to be life-changing. Chefs and beautiful knives go together like peanut butter and jelly. Although they aren’t for food preparation, I do find Hand Forged Knives to be a thing of beauty.

So, why did I not do this sooner? Well, combine my fatigue issues (read: limited to-dos each day) with a mom/blogger/business owner’s schedule, and you pretty much get it. And besides, I’m not the only one. Just about every chef I’ve worked with on events or stages grumbled about his/her knife. “If I would just make time to sharpen this dang thing!” “It’s been so long since I sharpened, my (insert crappy knife brand) is sharper than my Shun.”

The cobbler has no shoes. And the chef, very often, has no sharp knife.

This isn’t always the case, though. One instructor in school made a near holy ritual out of sharpening his knives, taking an occasional whole day away from his busy schedule to do so. He made sure it was clear to us not to do this too often, honing in-between. (You know, that stick-looking thing that might have come with your knives? It’s not a sharpener. More on that later.)

Here comes my big confession about the whole thing…I sharpened my knives with a cheater draw-through sharpener I bought this weekend at Kreb’s/The Restaurant Store. Echoing through my brain: real chefs use a sharpening stone. I used a stone during school, indeed. I bought one for the house long ago. And somehow, I lost the touch. (Either that, or I bought a crappy stone.)

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that, no matter how you get to it, a sharp knife is a sharp knife. And to be an effective cook, either in a professional kitchen or at home, that’s what you need. It’s really almost all you need.

That said, here are all your options for getting that sharp knife:

  1. A draw-through sharpener. This is what I finally purchased that got things going. I bought a two-stage model by Wüsthof for about $20, but I’ve also had a tiny version with just one stage that worked pretty well. I can’t find it right now, hence the new purchase. (Time to clean the gadget drawers.) This and its electric cousin below generally grind off miscreant bits of metal into just the right angle, usually 20 degrees each side. Use a lighter touch than you think, just a little more than the weight of the knife itself.
  2. Electric sharpener. Kitchen toy purveyors like Dillard’s and Williams Sonoma carry electric knife sharpeners that grind your knives to just the right angle with little to no effort on your part. I’m not sure this is worth the extra expense, but it is a viable way to get your knives sharp quickly.
  3. Whetstone. The stone is the professional standard for sharpening. It takes a steeper learning curve and more time than the other sharpeners, but the result is more even and removes less of the blade. It requires the user to hold the knife at just the right angle while drawing against the stone. Again, this is usually 20 degrees, but it’s sometimes different depending on the type of knife, a situation in which a DIY option is better.
  4. Professional sharpening. If you just can’t find the time or don’t want to purchase anything, there are several retailers who are glad to do the sharpening for you for free. In central Arkansas, two I know of are Kreb’s and Williams Sonoma. But, of course, this is just a way to get you in the store so you’ll be tempted to buy more stuff, so it might be best to invest in one of the above!

More another time on choosing a decent knife to begin with, and why that crappy santoku probably won’t hold the new sharp edge very long.

How often do you sharpen your knives? Or have you ever done it at all?

#AWBU Foodie Friday: Donnie Ferneau’s 500 Degrees of Foodie

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Chef Donnie Ferneau speaks at a Foodie Friday session of Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged.

Chef Donnie Ferneau speaks at a Foodie Friday session of Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged.

Hey, friends.

I’m coming at you on the heels of the awesome Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged 2013 conference at the lovely Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center, right here in Little Rock. As usual, it was tremendously inspiring and the community was great (despite my tendency toward introversion). Even more so, everything was very timely, as I’m wrapping up some big changes here at Fancy Pants Foodie.

I’ll esplain that soon enough. For now, I’ll tell you about Foodie Friday, the early-bird section of the conference just for us foodies.

The first speaker was Little Rock chef Donnie Ferneau.

Ah, Donnie. He’s so pretty. (You know, in a manly sort of way.) Talented, too. Known to be a bit of a renegade in the pro community, he brought some edgy authority to the Foodie Friday portion of the conference.

The home cooks in the crowd (as well as Benton area chef Liz Bray) gasped when he suggested cooking most everything in the oven at 500 degrees. “I bake brownies at 350,” he said. “Everything else gets blasted at 500.”

He offered these additional tips to home cooks:

  • Save money by buying produce in season. Take notice of when certain things are cheap because they are plentiful, especially things like cherries that have a very short harvest.
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  • Make accommodation friendly. If you’re serving a group of people who have a mix of special dietary needs (gluten free, vegetarian, etc.), prepare a single dish that will accommodate everyone when possible. It makes everyone feel special and well-served without singling anyone out.
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  • Let meat rest after cooking. He said this is the biggest mistake people make in cooking meats, cutting into them too soon. Resting allows juices to redistribute and settle into the meat.
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  • Save money on cuts like ribeyes by buying a rib roast and cutting it yourself. Which leads to the most important thing…
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  • Work on your knife skills. He mentioned the food blogger movie Julie and Julia, in which both title characters mercilessly practiced knife skills with bags of produce.  And to do this, you need to…
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  • Find a proper chef’s knife that feels good to you, and use it. This doesn’t have to be expensive. He said he often reaches for a $20 safety knife over his more costly models.

After his departure from his namesake Ferneau (later Rocket 21), Donnie has focused on freelancing with a vengeance while he waited for the next big thing. He’s spent quite a bit of time volunteering for my favorite food nonprofit, Share Our Strength, and he’s taught cooking classes in partnership with fellow blogger Thanh Raisco of Red Kitchen Recipes. Lately, he’s been busy as a consultant for Cellar 220, which used to be Italian Kitchen, which used to be Lulav, while his own new restaurant comes together.

Repeating his well-reported disdain for adult macaroni and cheese, he said his upcoming restaurant will be “only the kind of stuff that I like.” He described creating elaborate, creative dishes at Ferneau, only to get order after order of macaroni and cheese with fried chicken, what he called “kids’ plates.” The new place will just be what he wants to make, all the time.

Oh, and tilapia. There will be NO tilapia, ever.

“I’m gonna cook with my palate and only make the food I want to eat,” he said.

He also described the upcoming restaurant as nothing like anything Little Rock currently has or has even thought about, calling it “the restaurant we don’t know we need yet.”

All that said, Donnie’s a good friend to the food community. If your palate doesn’t match his (and, by golly, that’s all he’s gonna have at the new place), he’ll be glad to teach you how to cook for yourself at home.

I’m totally down with that.

A Foodie in Charleston, Part 1

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Our tour guide from Culinary Tours of Charleston/Bulldog Tours, Hoon Calhoun, kept us in line on the meandering cobblestone streets of downtown Charleston.

My family and I recently returned from a vacation in Charleston, South Carolina. Let me summarize: This is a foodie town.

Of course, there’s plenty else to do (we went to three different beaches, and I still managed to get home whiter than when I left). But if you love food, especially the history, technique, local ingredients and passion behind it, Charleston is your kind of town.

I was only there just short of a week and didn’t experience all it had to offer, but I wanted to share some highlights, especially from a behind-the-scenes kitchen tour I took. The “chef’s kitchen” tour is presented by Culinary Tours of Charleston, a division of Bulldog Tours. Tasting tours are available daily, but this specialty tour is only given once a week, on Friday mornings.

I had to go alone, as we had no childcare options that day. This was fine with our two kids; they were happy with Daddy’s arrangements to wear swimsuits and frolic in a couple public fountains made for such enjoyment while I completed my 2 1/2 hour tour.

Our tour began with coffee, cheese grits (yom) and a light, orange-zest laced cinnamon roll at Barbara Jean’s, while our tour guide, Hoon Calhoun, regaled us with the historical basis for Charleston food culture.

Of course, much of this culture revolves around its origins as an early British colony (read: [King] Charles’ Town) and its subsequent agriculture-based, slave-fueled plantation lifestyle. During these times, elaborate meals showcased the region’s bountiful resources of vegetables, rice, and seafood in concert not seen elsewhere in the world.

These meals were often made by talented slave cooks, who were frequently traded from household to household in order to learn new skills. “We should not forget,” Calhoun said, “that the food culture here rests squarely on the shoulders of the slaves who worked here.”

Upon the official end of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation, Charleston’s food landscape changed. Busy working women, former slaves and owners alike, now found themselves in the fields all day rather than cooking. This was the beginning of modern Southern high-fat, quick-cooking methods, as well as peasant-style stews and other items that could cook all day.

Calhoun noted that today’s Charleston marks a return to the earlier form of cookery: fresh, refined and celebratory of all the region has to offer.

An interesting note: Why does Charleston no longer wear its former crown as rice capital of the region? Calhoun said that ships from China would come to Charleston for its coveted rice. The answer also lies in the end of slavery. Heavy machinery replaced slave labor, and the silty soil of the region could not support the equipment. Rice production moved to states with sturdier soils, including Arkansas.

With this knowledge in hand, our group moved on to tour the kitchens, taste the food, and visit with the chefs who are keeping Charleston’s food culture one of the most dynamic in the world.

Keep reading!

So Sushi, I Was Wrong (about Lewis Curtis on Hell’s Kitchen)

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Image from Lewis Curtis' Hell's Kitchen Facebook page.

SPOILER ALERT…If you’ve DVR’d last night’s premiere of Hell’s Kitchen and haven’t watched it yet, don’t read this!

In an earlier post about the Wildwood Park Wine and Food Festival, I talked about meeting Lewis Curtis, executive chef at Lulav. Curtis appeared in last night’s premiere two-fer of Hell’s Kitchen…at least until he was axed in a surprise move by Chef Gordon Ramsay in the last moments of the second-hour episode.

At Wildwood, I described Curtis as “delightfully punkish, the one you’ll ‘love to hate’ in the show.” I was wrong. And possibly, in my opinion, it was his lack of ratings-drawing “punk” that got him cut.

Lulav Executive Chef Lewis Curtis (right) watches Wednesday's Iron Chef competition with sous chef J. Matt Lile (left).

Curtis came across as genuine and heartfelt, showing great emotion in the one-on-one interview after his dismissal. He also sounded much more country-fried on the show than he does in person, and I’ve spoken with him twice in the past week. Maybe, just as the television camera sometimes adds 20 pounds, for others it adds a few degrees south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The show’s second hour featured a sushi challenge, starting with a demo from none other than (!) Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. Curtis never seemed to get the hang of sushi, failing the challenge gloriously. So, of course, Ramsay places Curtis in charge of sushi for the men’s team during dinner service.

Would this happen in a real restaurant? Possibly in a teaching kitchen, or on a slow night when the chef wants a cook to learn a new skill. But Curtis was set up for disaster, which was apparent when, two hours into service, he still hadn’t produced a saleable plate of sushi.

At the end of the show, three other cooks stood before Ramsay for his decision on who would go home: moronic, bumbling Raj; talented, headstrong Boris; and charming, overconfident Vinny. Ramsay took a deep breath and plucked Curtis from the waiting group, sending him home instead for holding up dinner.

As a budding culinarian, I can’t fault the guy. We all have styles in which we’re comfortable, and Asian (at least sushi), obviously, just isn’t his. I’m sad that we won’t see his other talents on the screen. So I guess you’ll have to just go to Lulav and try the food.