Minimalism: Less is More

 

By NZ Chef Si@ChefSarawak

It's probably one of the smallest culinary schools in New Zealand, but here it crouches some of the fiercest and most experience tigers and dragons of chef scene, and it equally fostered some fearless culinary students dared to challenge or dared to break all rules.

Dare to break all rules in the culinary world? I have witnessed some of that happened already with my "eyes wide shut"; in short, if there was no Adam, there wouldn't be an Eve. With the help of Adam, Eve always could walk through back door, save 10 years time to climb ladder to be a somebody in a commercial kitchen, and for international students you don't need to further your study as NZ level 5 students.

So whatever they told you that you are inexperience that's why they won't take you as even a commi chef, I considered it as the biggest BS in the chef industry!!! They tried to tell all chef school students about it, but if those twenty over year old girls who walked backdoor wouldn't believe it, why I have to believe it?

Chef Awesome has become a poor guinea pig now, I saw him sitting in a class sitting for Advanced Cookery Diploma of London City Guild Exam, and in school  kitchen now, a selected group of my classmates are cooking brunch for a hundred over guests led by a pretty new chef tutor, she came in the class yesterday, I stared at her for just a minute, I asked her, "Chef, are you a Libra?" And bingo I guessed it right, and Chef Awesome told her, "Now you better get out here as soon as possible before Si found out everything about you in three minutes time!"

This morning my classmates decided to revenge on team 1 classmates, because during last week life service, some of them even pressed 5 orders/person to make us so busy, but my classmates never thought that "such increase volume of sales" actually made us became last week's winner. They wanted to eat at 10am and 1130am. I have to calculate now, at 19:00 how many round of jogging will be able to burn off my calories.

Lots of Asian love McDonald's big breakfast all because they didn't know how to make that crumpet, but actually all Chinese did the similar version except they steamed it and used rice powder instead.  You can call crumpet as English muffin as well. I think crumpet is  an ideal symbolic starch served that could represent minimalism - less is more. It's an effortless and cheapest  preparation, but French yeast is a must as one of its ingredients, for my modify version, you just take out a baking pan, cut few pieces of butter, add warmed water, once it got melted, add yeast, sugar and salt, lastly you add flour and milk for batter consistency, the secret is you have to keep mixing, so you won't get a crumpet that stuck to your teeth when you bite it. Next you just place your half-filled baking pan into an oven. Let it sits there overnight, next morning you would see the batter has risen to the top, take the baking pan out. Turn on oven to 200C preheat it,      5 minutes later, place the baking pan into the oven. Spray some water, let it bakes for 15 minutes. Let it rests for another 15 minutes. 

What more do you want for your breakfast? Freshly baked crumpet, plum jam from your last summer backyard plum  harvest and a cup of freshly brewed French style coffee? You know now why I think I have been over-eating since early morning! I did run the circle  next to a round volcanic cone empty flower patch for 15 minutes, that about a kilometer run in the early morning, I wouldn't have that endurance just a month ago, but if you were sad or missing someone, I realized such sadness or yearning hormone could give me magical endurance!