Are some traditional breakfasts healthy enough to take in a daily basis?

If you are overweight and often felt lethargic this breakfast health advice may help you!

By NZChefSi

There are two obviously, emotionally disturbed teenage siblings crouching under my roof this summer, they would sleep at 3 am and love to get up at 3 pm naturally, upon calling them for breakfast at 1 pm - that was after I returned from work from 20 minutes’ drive away suburb of Auckland which started since early morning, they would be so reluctant to get up, the first thing they did was poking their nose with the half-opened eyes to see what I was cooking. If it was the boring “breakfast” they would return to the bedroom again and told me, “Wait a minute!” And that wait a minute would be another two hours sleep until they got up with finally eyes fully opened.

Honestly, as a trained chef I have been using them as my Guinea pigs to learn what teenagers actually like to eat, especially in this case, the two teenagers have been fed with all the best foods since babies. Traditional western style big breakfast doesn’t attract them anymore, I don’t like to cook it for them as among the foods found in the big breakfast, ask yourself, how many of them are not preserved or convenient foods? Bacon, sausage, meat patty, muffins, baked beans, hash browns, ketchup and even orange juice. So, how many items in the big breakfast that you eat in a cafe are really freshly prepared less than 3 days ago? Most of the time you could only find that the egg is the only freshly prepared food and follow by additional one or two items are freshly prepared and this varied from cafe to cafe in Auckland.

Imagine an older person sitting in a café eating his or her pan cake in the morning with the sweet maple syrup on top, some people eats the same breakfast food likes the routine Lord’s prayer without getting sick of it. I remember I had an older lady friend, I saw she added a big tablespoon of white sugar into her coffee every morning, I kindly reminded her to reduce her white sugar intake due to her age, she rebuked to me that she was very healthy, she even added an extra sugar into her coffee, I knew she hated me to “mother” her around.  Over the months, I saw more wrinkles appeared on her pretty face, a year later, she got diabetes.

If you don’t know about diet, eating less is always healthier than eating more starch, sugar and chemical additives “infested” breakfast. So, what is the best, the healthiest and the most appetizing breakfast?

Breakfast Drink:

1. First thing in the morning, give half a glass of warm water mixed 3 drops of lemon for children. Give 1 glass of warm water with 5 drops of lemon for an adult.

2. Children under 18 years old, they should not drink any tea and coffee. Store frozen mixed berries in your freezer. Rinse your frozen berries (or simply use fresh mixed berries during summertime), add water labelled up with the berries, then use a stick blender blend them until pureed. This will help to wake up kids prepared them to go to school, they surely will prefer this than the milk. They just need a half glass of this ultimate berries juice.

3. For adults, you can have a cup of coffee or tea, you only can have a teaspoon added raw sugar or honey in it. You only do this once a day.

Breakfast Starch:

Try not to eat too much starch during the meal, it will help to reduce your weight abruptly. As a modern mode of life is so different from the traditional mode of life, the changing of intake of starch must be changed to suit modern days lifestyle.

1. Your choice of healthy starch is important, try not to eat too much starch during breakfast. Try not to eat the white bread. Especially there are many children or older people who begin to develop a digestive problem with gluten.

2. You can have a piece of toasted sourdough bread, 2 tablespoons of oatmeal or a piece of gluten-free bread (e.g. Indian dosa). The amount of starch you eat should not more than a ping pong ball size (before the leaven), it is around 4 tablespoons of cooked rice (serve children’s portion to 2 tablespoons cooked rice if you serve it as breakfast).

Protein:

1. The main protein in the morning universally is almost the eggs and the milk, there are controversies went on, but let you tell you this sad Disney animal story before you decide what kind of milk or eggs you should take. There was a cow after her baby was born, she was so happy, the baby kissed her and she kissed the baby, the baby drank its mother’s milk filled with love, but very soon on the morning their master took away the new born calf, actually he brutal threw it into a pile of injured new born calves in front of its mother. And the master thought that this way the calf wouldn’t consume too much milk from its mom, so he could sell more milk to his customers. Do you think this cow milk’s constituent is the same anymore? When you are in grief, there would be different kinds of hormones flowing in the milk with no love but just the stress hormone and anti-stress hormone. Do you think cow won’t grief for its baby being taken away or never able to see its baby again in its lifetime?  And if you keep locking your hens inside the cage, and you eat its eggs daily, now you know why kids are super patience when they crouch in front the computer screen who acted dormant with no different than those caged hens!

2. Try to integrate a small piece of braised or stewed meat to replace bacon, meat patty or sausage, unless your sausage or patty is freshly made without any chemical additives.

3. Beans are the excellent protein substitute; however, you have to make sure you have cooked the beans well to prevent food poisoning (https://www.thoughtco.com/food-poisoning-from-beans-3975994). The most famous breakfast dish using sprouting peas is the Burmese Pe Pyot (http://www.tastymemories.net/2012/04/pe-pyot-boiled-peas.html), the cooked sprouted peas is usually sauté with onion and turmeric powder then serve together with a starch component like rice or naan.

4. Due to bake bean is full of sugar, you can always prepare it yourself without adding any sugar.

Vegetable:

1. The most popular vegetable used for western breakfast is spinach sauté with garlic and nutmeg.

2. There is another highly antioxidant vegetable that many people are not aware of its benefit of Amaranth. Popped Amaranth seeds are a good choice to add to your muesli when you just want a fast and simple breakfast.

3. Asian loves to use breakfast with cucumber and tomato, it is advised to get rid of the cucumber and tomato seeds and skin, where lectins concentrated. According to a study conducted by Dr Steven Gundry, a heart surgeon and cardiologist from California, a link has been found between memory loss and proteins called lectins in foods such as cucumbers, tomatoes, whole grains, soy, peppers, sprouted grains and some dairy products. However, the lectin can be denatured during the process of cooking, fermenting or pickling.

Recipe for Savory Oat Meal

Ingredients:

2 tablespoon Quicker oat

1 cup of stock

50g minced meat

1 tsp of minced onion

1 tsp Grape seed oil

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 tbsp pine nut

3 dates, chopped (Or fresh grapes)

3 walnuts

1 tsp basil seeds

1 tbsp Popped Amaranth seeds

½ Avocado, sliced (garnishing)

5g Cilantro, chopped (garnishing)

5g Parsley, chopped (garnishing)

Seasoning, grey salt, Kikkoman and black pepper powder

Method:

1. Sauté the onion with oil, add minced meat.

2. Add stock, wait until it boils, add oat, nuts and seeds.

3. Check seasoning.

4. Garnish with avocado on top and sprinkle with cilantro and parsley.

Recipes for Jumbo Pan Omelet and Flat Bread

This large-size pan omelet is sufficient to feed a whole family of four or five in the morning. It is so easy to prepare.

Flat Bread Ingredients (Yield 4):

0.5 cup Warmed water

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp yogurt

2 tsp Black sesame oil or olive oil

5g Chopped chives or scallion

1/2 tsp grey salt

1.5 cup Hard flour

Method:

1. Mix water with yogurt and oil.

2. Sieve the flour, mix in sugar and salt. Dig a well, add 1.

3. Slower incorporate flour with the liquid.

4. Knead the dough until it won’t stick your hand.

5. Cover the dough and leave it in a warm place for 2 hours then store in the fridge for a day or two.

6. Before grilling, mix the dough the with chopped herbs. You can roll the dough with pasta machine into flat rectangular sheet or you can tapper it into round shape naan.

7. Add a big of oil to a griddle, wait until it is smoking, grill the flat bread until it pops on both sides.

Pan Omelet Utensil and Ingredients :

A large size cast iron pan

6 Eggs, whisked, add salt and ½ tsp of vinegar

1 tbsp Butter

1 tbsp Grape seed oil

1 cup Chopped fresh tomato (get rid of seeds and skin)

1 cup Mixed colour capsicum (or baby spinach), Macedonian

4 Mushrooms, sliced

1 tbsp Pine nuts

2 tbsp Chopped walnut (or cooked peas like lentils, garden peas or chickpeas)

1/2 onion, julienne

1 clove Garlic, minced

1 Chorizo, sliced

100g Minced meat of your choice

10g Mixed herbs of cilantro, basil and parsley, chopped

2 tbsp Parmesan cheese, grated

8 Mozzarella cheese balls or 4 tbsp cream cheese

Seasoning, grey salt

Method:

1. Sauté the onion and garlic with butter and oil, then add the chorizo, then minced meat.

2. Add the vegetable and nuts, check the seasoning and then finally add the whisked eggs.

3. Place the pan into the preheated oven of 180 degree Celsius.

4. When the egg is almost curdled, sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on top and place the Mozzarella cheese balls on. Place into the oven again until the eggs is fully curdled and the Parmesan is melted.

5. Sprinkle some more Parmesan sparingly and also the herbs.

6. Eat together with the flat bread.

SEEKING A CHEF’S JOB BY WALK-IN AND SUBMISSION OF A CHEF’S RESUME

Did I get a job after I distributed over fifty resumes, covering letter and CV?

The chef tutors I encountered were all very kind-hearted and really cherished their young students. They allocated every young Kiwi white and Pasifika student to work at different western restaurants or hotels before or after their NZ Professional Cookery L2 or L4. However, I had to continue the culinary study in the hope that a chef somewhere in this world would finally employ me. After I graduated from my NZ Professional Cookery L5 diploma, probably because I was older, my apprenticeship emails written to all overseas hotels or NZ local restaurants and cafes were somehow detouring to Pluto, that was a year ago. Since sending emails did not work, I was advised to walk into different restaurants and cafes in Auckland city to seek a job as a chef.

But without personal recommendations from any chef, I did not have any luck with this as well. My extended family had never in history fostered a chef. Obviously, all the chefs I somewhat knew were honest and found it difficult to recommend me to their chef friends as none of them knew me well enough. Worse of all, the chefs higher up did not know who I was at all, and why would they employ me if a recommendation from another chef was lacking?

However, back to the main point of why I wrote this article. I wrote this article because I got really pissed off when I received a call around midnight last Saturday. Getting a call at this time means that the chef who called me had just gotten off from work and just wanted to chat with a girl. This should date back to a year ago, after I distributed a thick pile of my resume at Newmarket seeking a job as a chef, immediately on the next morning a chef called said he could ‘find me a job’. Despite this, I sensed that he was a little too friendly. I did not know who he was and wondered where he got my phone contact from. He said that someone had put my phone number on the NSIA bulletin board. This was strange as I was never an NSIA student, so I found it difficult to trust his words. 

From then on, he would call me on and off, every time I would ask had he found me a chef job yet, but he would only say that he was still looking. With this, my gut instinct told me he was more interested in looking for a girlfriend. True enough, soon he revealed to me that he had a Chinese girlfriend in the past. I was just too nice to tell him that’s none of my business. Seriously, even now I still don’t even know his name. I told him, I was not interested in having a relationship. I kindly told him I probably could be a lot older than him, but the reply from this foreign chef really pissed me off when he said, “Do you know many old Kiwi white women still make love with young men?” From the way he replied to me, I realized I was living in a different world from him. Was it because this was New Zealand and that was why he could talk derogatory words directly from his mind without any censorship? Why did I have to waste my energy to interact with a chef who didn’t know how to respect himself to speak politely?  

Soon, I found that I couldn’t even tolerate anymore even a friendly conversation with him, who was not genuinely wanting to look for a chef job for me but merely a female chef that he could “sleep” with.  Fortunately, he had nothing he could threaten me with. I am a New Zealand indefinite PR, I earned it through my professionalism probably a lot earlier than most foreign migrants, so I wondered what made him keep calling back looking to have a fling with me. Was it all because I answered his call simply without looking at the number when I was busy that gave him the impression I could be a foolish fish that could easily get hooked? Eventually, I had to tell him that I had another chef in mind and he said, “Oh, is he the white chef?” Instead of telling him that it’s none of his business, I replied, “No, he is someone that you don’t know!” Then, he replied, “Too bad, you just missed a GOOD CHEF!” Immediately I sensed he is a chef full of pride, who probably could only flaunt his chef hierarchy’s higher-ranking position to me, an Asian chef who just graduated from a culinary school.

How do I know if he is lying when he says he is not married when in fact he may actually have a stay-in girlfriend like most chefs do? How do I know he is not just like many foreign male chefs all over the world who only bully, make a fool of or make fun of those lower ranking Asian female chefs, but wouldn’t dare to bully any white female chefs or mixed blood females? Once beaten, twice shy, I could smell vagueness as common as roasted garlic!

Yes, he may be a good chef from a country somewhere north of India, but I wonder if he could cook for me a bowl of authentic Sarawak laksa, roll me an authentic Japanese style sushi or bake me a Parisians’ baguette? I got a few countries’ chefs’ secret family recipes and culinary tricks from people I have met. I didn’t go to culinary school to learn how to cook in order to fish a man or for flattery from a potential husband. Good food is used to reward me after a hard day’s work. NEVER in my life anymore I would dream for any smiling, acting really nice, humble and friendly celebrity chef to send me a little sample gift, to come to Auckland to meet me, to cook me an A5 Wagyu steak or prepare me a Japanese fusion Poke either. I learned that he never treated me as his true friend due to his deeply rooted chef hierarchy’s awareness, he only met and cooked for the rich and famous people or 'raise up' young female executive chefs with his heart and his gifts.

What would you do when a stranger's intention by then was very clear to you? He would keep on ringing - when I was driving on Highway 16, when I was working, and when I was talking with my friends. I had no choice but to turn off my mobile. My friend asked me to block him. I told her that it is useless. If a chef’s hierarchy ego reigned, but if he never learns about his limits and something called mutual respect and “human rights”, I would write my personal experience to deal with his case There was once a kind-hearted Asian female chef friend for him to choose in life, but he preferred an indecent fling, and at the end, he missed both. This article is also a warning to all Asian female “lower ranking” chefs. Regardless of age, harassment could be a hidden risk if you plan to submit your resume by walking into a restaurant or café because you never know which chefs could pass your contact details to another idiot! 

A PART-TIME CHEF WITH OTHER PART-TIME JOBS

Could it be at the end of the day she would be jobless like a man with two or three wives and none of them would love him?

By NZChefSi@ChefSarawak

I heard my sisters grumbled over the Viber at the end of November last year, “There is such a dude that we are willing to pay her air-tickets and all the traveling expenses and worse still, we have to beg her to come for the family reunion for the past 12 months!”

Eventually, the brainiest sister finally could convince me with a good reason, she said, “Come on, your passport will be expired soon, this is the best opportunity for you to renew your passport while attending the family reunion, one bird two stones!”

When I returned Auckland yesterday, the immigration officer couldn’t understand why I had changed a new passport that would be expired in May 2019. Actually, it only valid if I travel between now to November. But if I want to apply for an American visa, this new passport will lest me from many hassles as well.

The minute I returned to Auckland, my Beijing house guest enthusiastically told me that she has found me a chef job which a while back she strongly discouraged me said that a chef job would be too rough for me after she saw how my trial out jobs were all being unpaid. But in this special case due to a friend of her son needs a chef for his fast food outlet. She was very optimistic, she told me not to mention that I had worked for a Chinese restaurant before, I asked her, “Do you think anyone would employ me just because you described to your son's friend like I am a magician?” I went with her reluctantly to the interview, all because it’s hard for her,  the boss is the friend of her son, it’s hard for me, my experience told me it’s better for me to work only for a total stranger instead of for someone who is somewhere related to one of my friends or one of my ex-classmates, family members or relatives.

But I never regretted to attend the interview, because I found out one of the main reasons why I couldn’t get a chef job in Auckland even I am a PR. This Chinese guy told me, “I employ a mother with two toddlers at home, she only works in the earliest shift.” But he couldn’t employ a person like me who requested a part-time job similarly but I have to teach piano. He told me, “I won’t allow this happened, western chefs, will strictly not allow this situation happened as well.”  No wonder my friends all told me that I was being too honest, I learned that being honest doesn’t land me a job in the chef industry where I have not  meet yet an equal standing chef who could resonate with me, although my western and religious education taught me to be honest, then I have forgotten New Zealand is an atheist country, money is people’s god, it hints me that some people here may tango very well with foreigners coming from the socialist background who are also atheist.

I remember when I was running two music schools before, I encouraged all my employed piano teachers to teach their neighborhood kids at home, I told them as long as they didn’t work for another music school I would allow them to teach and actually earned much more money at home, but I could offer them better prospects like helping them to acquire teaching diplomas and keep exposing and upgrading them with workshops, masterclasses or even retreats to be trained as a better piano teacher. Of course, they were some staffs ran off with the students to open their new music schools, there are unethical people all over the world, but I counted on those who were honest and we are friends still after I dissolved the business.

Most people can’t digest a piano teacher also works as a chef or a chef also works as a piano teacher, I always wonder is it because they can’t handle two different jobs discretely and efficiently that’s why they think everyone can’t handle it? Well, I understand why, when some people can’t even make their own fingers to listen to their commands, I can’t blame their one-dimensional dexterity and mentality.

Most people don’t allow an unestablished person to run two or three business, yet ironically, they would admire a rich entrepreneur who runs every kind of businesses. If a boss or a chef is open- minded and big heart enough, why he minds his employer who could earn at least two times more hourly wage from her other part-time profession yet willing to take a minimum salary job to crouch in a kitchen where she could hear FUCK often? Honestly, I love cooking, negativities and lies BS to me by chef after chef… I treated that either as rubbish or compost. I believe one later day I will be able to meet a mentor who can resonate with me and will take me under his wings to further enhance my culinary interest, experience and skills.

My Experience as a Chef Apprentice

    Perhaps this is my most disappointing day when I learned the fact that my NZ L5 Cookery diploma can't beat a NZ L4 young student!

    I just walked out of my ex-chef school, met a young girl who has not even finished her NZ L4 cookery course, but after she just finished her apprenticeship in a 5-star hotel in Auckland for just 10 days, she was offered a part-time job. I asked her why after I tried to work there every weekend for 3 months but the executive chef’s Filipino assistant told me there was no on trial job for me but there was a part time job for her who hasn’t even finish her L4? She told me, “Oh, must be you have a bad PR!  Because I drank beer with the bald head big boss and also my section bosses.”

   Oh Yes, what’s the use of my academic awards? What’s the use being knowledgeable? What’s the use that I could cook many countries’ cuisines at ease? What’s the use I worked so hard as an apprentice for any kitchens? What the use being serious at work?  Miss China, surely, in this case, I got bad PR than you and also, I am not as young and as voluptuous like you from the point that I was never invited to any of your so-called “staff parties!”

    What I learned from this revelation is, older chefs never like old chefs in the kitchen, unless he or she is very experienced and could be helpful. They only want young, beautiful or handsome and inexperienced chefs in the kitchen that could provoke silence chemistry to elevate their EQ so they won’t swear those F words or swear without thinking twice on an older apprentice like me!

    You deserve it, “Bald head man! You prefer young and inexperienced chefs? This is your nickname young chefs have given you, at least I have more respect for you and I didn’t realize that your head was bald! But I always remember you swore arse this and arse that on me blamed that I was too slow, rationally it was not entirely my fault at all, I was just an apprentice trying to be helpful when my CPD was missing on the action!”

    If you want to be a chef, before you attend chef school, you better learn from my mistakes that no one without an NZ PR would tell you to jeopardize their future job hunting here in NZ!

    

1. If you never have any work experience in a kitchen before, start as an FOC chef apprentice right on the first term when you attend chef school. Don’t expect to work as a paid kitchen hand or apprentice, unless you are super lucky, you are a white, Asian speak perfect kiwi accent, Pasifika or you have a boyfriend who is a white boy. If you worked as an FOC apprentice, as long as you were not suspected by the management that you planned to steal their recipe, you should feel lucky. That’s my first apprentice experience in Mt. Eden, I was being treated as a recipe thief suspect by the management just because I asked the CPD too many questions. My chef tutor called their head chef to book the work experience appointment for me, it was actually the head chef’s off day, I only found that out after waited there for more than an hour before started to work. After 5 hours, the management got paranoid if I was a spy! When I went to the second café in the same area to work, as the first café wasted my whole week work experience break, I requested to work for ten hours a day, I worked very hard, the head chef was not the owner of the restaurant, there was a CCTV, the Asian boss knew there was an apprentice, but there was never a meal provided for me no matter how hard I worked, I remember the café was always busy, during some of the days I worked none stop and I didn’t know I was entitled to have a break. When I returned to chef school after the break, I was the only apprentice who was abused obviously, the rest of my classmates were all bragging how well they were treated by the hotel, café or restaurant’s head chefs or owners. I took a look at the mirror, I didn’t swear in the kitchen, didn’t mess up their prep food, didn’t break a single plate or cup, didn’t show my tantrum, didn’t cut myself. According to how I was treated perhaps due to my lacked confidence look caused by other reason, I wonder if New Zealand will be the last stop of my continuous sojourn, oh Lord, I am getting tired of moving, where will be my permanent home on earth?

    

2. I would advise ones to seek an apprenticeship in a hotel or large scale catering company, where you will be exposed and learn to handle more commercial equipment,  but if you work in a café, you won’t be able to see equipment that you could find in a large hotel’s commercial kitchen. But in another word, if you work in a cafe, you probably will have the opportunity to get involved in cooking faster than a hotel.

3. If you work in a hotel as an appreciate, again start right in the first term when you attend chef school since all chefs in the hotel kitchen will think all apprentice knows nothing, it’s very hurting when you already finish your level 5, yet they treated you like you didn’t know anything. Again, don’t expect the hotel to employ an Asian unless the boss is your chef tutor’s buddy friend. As now most hotels in New Zealand are “infested” with Asian chefs, and if these stereotype Asian chefs are God damn talented, good and studied hard enough for their culinary interest, I wouldn’t have such bad experience like what I mentioned in this article.

4. Working in a hotel environment, no chef there will treat you as a friend from day 1 to day last, as an apprentice if a CPD asked you to do something, but the minute another higher-ranking chef walked in to ask you do something, you just say yes chef, if you told him CPD asked you to do it this way, he would ask you sternly, “Who is the boss?” I had been confronted twice in this manner, eventually, I learned that’s the big kitchen hierarchy game went on probably since the 19^th century, everyone wants a change but not those who could exercise authority!!!

5. As an apprentice, your CPD just told you to prepare the food, you better don’t ask too many questions, I learned a lesson from my first apprentice’s rule 1: Don’t ask too many questions, or else someone might think you want to steal their recipes! Most of the time, they won’t tell you what’s the time you had to finish the prep or how many people the food was going to serve to. It happened once when my CPD left, and I just got my ingredients and serving plate less than 2 minutes ago, and a waitress was waiting next to the door. Again, it was my mistake, as an apprentice, you shouldn’t act as a busybody and being too helpful! Rule 2: Mind your own business because you are an apprentice, forget about the “be initiative rule!” I tried to be helpful when CPD was not around, so I went to look for his big boss. Immediately, I got bombarded that I was slow with the food that I actually just started to plate. It’s definitely not nice when you had a head chef who acted like a barbarian who started to swear at you %&*&$## ass this and ass that, except Fuck not coming out from his mouth yet, again he asked me, “Who is the boss?” I was not paid sir to work for your institution, so you are not my boss unless my status as an FOC chef apprentice is slavery-like here in NZ! In short, anything you did before was quick and efficient, they would keep quiet, that's their silence approval.

6. As an FOC apprentice, nobody cares about your background, immediately what it came to their mind was “you have no experience!” I personally saw them how slow they tried to roll some small roses, I remember I was being scolded unreasonably as a slow apprentice, could I mock at all of them were really slow? After an hour, I saw less than 20 small roses on the small bowls, where two most experienced chefs were trusting on a Japanese CPD, they let an artist-in -resident who stood beside them slipped off. Also, as an apprentice, they won’t trust your taste buds, even the minute you looked at the food they prepared, you could tell what’s wrong with it, although you have a very good taste buds, surely you had eaten more gourmet food, but as an apprentice, they would ask you to do plating only. Remember the rule 3: This is what will happen if you work in the hotel, they take hierarchy too seriously. They wouldn’t make friends with any apprentice if they targeting their future within the same kitchen wall unless they wanted to "drink beer" with you! My Burmese buddy can’t cook very well, but she is raised in a most notable Burmese family. She never needed to cook, but she has developed very good taste buds, she only could prepare a limited dish, but the taste was simply awesome, that’s how I learned taste buds has to be cultivated under prolonged exposure to gourmet food, thus one knows what the best taste of an ingredient should suppose to taste like. If a head chef could decide an apprentice has no good taste buds due to he/she has no work experience, I know that I would waste my time in this kind of environment, with my past experience in other arena was being treated like rubbish.

7. As an apprentice in hotel, I was asked by a Pasifika CPD if I knew what was called al dente, I almost wanted to reply her that I ate al dente pasta even before she was born. I was the one who asked my CPD if the pasta had to be cooked al dente, yet after she heard it she still asked me if I knew what was al dente? Is really stereotype Asian apprentice looked so dumb to her just because our English carried Asian accent? Does English carried Asian accent could lower a class for an Asian?

8. Acquire your apprenticeship as early as possible, never expected your chef tutor to arrange the apprenticeship job for you, unless you were lucky like me when my L5 chef tutor put me for a month to work and got paid in his catering business for work experience which he thought would be good for me. It was the first time I got paid to work as a chef assistant or apprentice here in New Zealand.

9. Don’t let some café to take your advantage.  I was asked me to go for an interview after I worked as a kitchen hand for 5 hours --- only washing dishes and prep jobs, then the minute the two foreign chefs found out I am an NZ PR, they asked you to pack and go. I was told they would call me, but I never heard from them anymore. WINZ would pay me if I don’t have work, I could read their minds! Also I learned that if you had chef school school certificate, you know what is called D4, but these "experienced" chefs who snubbed at you actually didn't know what was called D4, and when they asked you to cut julienne they expected the baton size!

10. I was the best student from level 4 to level 5 chef courses in both practical and theory, but if I was placed in a commercial kitchen, Asian chefs would even look at me really like a third-class citizen, they really thought I didn’t know anything, I learned a fact of life, if they were once a real lousy apprentice, they would think the rest of the apprentice must be as innocence and as lousy as them. Some of them would ask me why I would choose to become a chef as I didn’t need an NZ PR, but they needed NZ PR that’s the reason they became a chef. I did two things recently that I never regret in life, one is attending chef school. I don’t care what the stereotype looking at me that I got no experience, the time I spent in kitchen since a child was not summed up, but if a chef who never even cooked a meal when he was young, if they started to work in a café even without attending any chef school, such working experience would be summed up as working experience, then why there is a point of opening a chef school? Before I attending chef school, I went to look for a kitchen hand job as my sister suggested but they told me they wanted a chef, then when I completed chef training, they told me they didn’t want an inexperienced chef. The fact is: If they don’t want to employ you, they could give you 100 excuses. You better be smart enough don’t believe anything they told you, they don’t owe you anything, thus they were not obliged, to be honest with you.

   11. Apprentice is the lowest ranking in a commercial kitchen, not even a chef yet, Asian chefs would love to see apprentice so that they would have a free maid to boss around, they simply love to act like a boss. But I found out European chefs wouldn’t treat me like a maid, they would clean their own work bench or just asked you to clean your own space, if I saw that one of them was busy, when I cleaned it for him, he would say thank you to me, but most Asian chefs would expect you clean out the whole area but they never said a thank you for the work you assisted them, I am very sure if I was not there, they had to do the cleaning themselves. My most humiliating experience working as an apprentice for such a 5-star hotel was suddenly a Korean CPD jumped over from her working bench to tell me off that I was lazy all because when I cleaned the working bench, I didn't dare to move the prep food done by other chefs left on the working bench, so I thought of cleaning a section first, then move the food to the cleaned section of bench. I tried to explain to her that I was not lazy, instead, she said that I shouldn't "argue" with her as an "apprentice", she told me I had to apologize and always replied, "Yes chef!" if this was the case happened! She was the only Asian female chef dared to yell loudly in a usually quiet 5-star hotel kitchen, so as an apprentice, you would be the bullied victim for this kind of moody low EQ barbaric chef! Then another Japanese snobbish chef would give me a food safety education lecture whenever he found a chance. And I personally saw how he took up the D4 sprayed openly on the work bench and how its mist moved to other prep food on nearby benches! I bet I have an extra food safety certificate than him!

   12. Like the young apprentice, be a big flirt obviously could get you a job in the kitchen if your old bosses preferred a kitchen with fashion models walking around with chef uniforms but in a young version! If you are over 40 years old, please go for plastic surgery and please don’t tell anyone about it, or else they will call you as a plastic doll!

    13. Although I love the weather, environment, stabilized economic and politics of NZ, I want to do something for the good of this country, but when I write to this point, I felt very sad as an older Asian starts all over resided in NZ, I felt the general foreigners and Kiwis’ CQ are still very low. I remember there was a barely 18 or 19-year-old Kiwi girl in class, she really thought she could cook better than anyone of her foreign classmates, she asked me to grill a thin salmon medallion under the salamander for 20 minutes, when I returned less than 10 minutes, she was mad at me, and she turned every piece of the medallion checking the base to see if they were cooked. At the end, among the 4 teams in the class, the rest of the 3 teams' salmon were all overcooked, except our team’s salmon was almost overcooked! And during the cooking preparation time, she didn't agree with the ingredient amount I suggested, she asked me, “Do you know how much is 100g of mint?” Dude yes, it is a lot, but are you going to throw in all the stem to prepare the sauce? I tried not to provoke conflict, just let her decided what she wanted, at the end the sauce supposedly was green ended up was pale whitish green. Do I have to blow my trumpet that if I didn’t sell more than 2000kg NZ air-flown salmon before, at least I had the experience to sell more than 1000kg of NZ air-flown salmon before I attended chef school. Normally, I could estimate the weight of a salmon by a look at it. I remember first time I worked as an apprentice in a hotel, its pastry chef was counting the desserts, she treated all apprentice like pests and was yelling at all apprentice when blocking her way (all apprentices were doing the plating) while she was counting, I wonder if she chose to yell, why didn’t she just say, “Excuse me!” By right, nobody would like to block her way if she was doing her counting. We didn’t even mind to help her if she was nice and friendly enough, so I learned one more thing, these senior chefs never trust any apprentice, they only trust ranking! Also, I found out that low EQ people whenever they got a little busy, they started to scream, regardless in what profession they engaged! All because they are not capable enough to handle something more than in their head. The best to test a person's capability is during the busiest time.

   14. If you are Asian, start young in chef school and start young in any commercial kitchen.  If you are old, you are a natural loser first to go interview as a chef or even work as an apprentice, because no one in the kitchen will invite you for any staff party, they won’t even mention in front of you that there would be a staff party!

    15. Another experience I got in NZ was during my L4, there was a chefs’ headhunter came in our class trying to look for part time jobs for everyone, he found jobs for everyone he signed up, except not me even I tried to email and SMS him many times. When he saw my fashionable young Indian classmate, he said in front of the whole class, “I like your look, you are what a restaurant wants!” So, I don’t have a look, I don’t have the character, I don’t have the style, I am too old, I am too inexperienced, that’s why I was not being employed? I got the outstanding culinary school results, I was never sick once during my two years’ chef course, I can cook more dishes and better than average chefs, I can speak English better than most Asian, I know western food better than most people because I studied in Europe, studied and worked in British colonized countries, studied in the USA before, and I am still not good enough than an L4 still in school student who was offered a part-time job by a 5-star hotel? Please don’t tell me there are not enough chefs in NZ, perhaps you should consider why executive chefs in 5-star hotels rather want to recruit European culinary school graduated chefs than NZ homegrown chefs! If you don’t believe me, please go to the immigration office and WINZ take a peek! 

16. Lastly, if you ask me if there is racial discrimination happens in NZ chef scene, I will tell you my personal experience, I know an executive chef of a hotel towards the end of my NZ L5 Cookery study, I asked him if he wanted to employ me, he asked me sternly, "What is the reason you think I should employ you?" Just a month later there was a white Kiwi girl from L4 was employed by him, and she was still a student. Also, as an apprentice, I was asked by a European executive chef that if I knew what was called portioning and tested me if I knew how venison looked like. Is NZ L5 cookery diploma is such a low standard to provoke such an executive chef asked me this kind of questions? Or because I am an Asian girl, so these senior European or Kiwi chefs really thought I didn't know anything about western food even I had completed my NZ L5 Cookery Diploma? 

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!