To all young chefs and culinary students

Current European and American cuisines are very ingredient driven, but we're drawing from some different traditions and ingredients.  So, the food offerings are different, but the trend towards informality and personalized offerings has been going on in North America for quite awhile.  Decades, even; so it doesn't seem like much of a revolution here. 

The "new" high-end food trends here are uber good and preferably local ingredients, in imaginative but relatively simple combinations; loooooooooong, expensive tasting menus.  Ambitiously high-end places are opening, as destinations, in town-sized ingredient centers. Thomas Keller's influence is palpable. 

As it happens our mutual friend KC is working on opening his own "tasting menu" restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. 

There's also ongoing reassessment of "tradtional" American foods (whatever that means), and "dive" including ethnic dive restaurants as providers of excellent food.  New or not, every generation seems to congratulate itself on it's own discoveries.

The "Boy Food/New American Bistro" trend seems to have run its course.  Not that the restaurants aren't popular, they're just not trendy.  Hurts to think of Tom Colicchio as old, but tempus fugit dammit.

Anyway, I don't mean to drag your thread to what's happening over here.  It was only meant by way of contrast.  The new stuff coming out of Europe is impressive.  I like what I see.

Good thread topic,

BDL

"a herd of chefs" 

That's funny

Rawhide!

Not to take away from the intent of the thread at all.  Watching all the long shaggy hair and scruffy beards hanging over food being prepped gives me the Hebe Jeebes.

Why don't they just blanch the birds to remove the feathers?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kuan 

Why don't they just blanch the birds to remove the feathers?

It's a classic French technique to stretch and fire (etirer-flamber) a bird after removing its feathers. It allows to burn any reminding piece of feather stuck inside the skin.

I haven't heard of blanching a bird for that purpose, but I suppose it would start cooking the bird. When "etirer-flamber" you are only placing the poultry on the flame for a matter of seconds. If I saw someone blanch a bird to remove the last feathers they couldn't remove manually, I suppose I'd be asking myself... "Why don't they just place it a few seconds on the fire?" - much faster than waiting for a big pot of water to boil!

http://webtv.ac-versailles.fr/restauration/spip.php?page=iframe-video&id_article=8

Thank you for sending link on Swedish Chef Magnus and the Belgian Chefs.

Having hand plucked thousands of birds in my youth and then working for a company that built and sold processing equipment used in poultry plants I can with some authority tell you this.

Blanching is not quite, almost but not quite, what is needed.   You simply dunk the bird, holding by the legs into boiling water, swirl it around a few seconds to make sure the hot water penetrates to the skin.  Pull the bird out, hold above the pot so the excess water runs off, shake it a time or two up and down over the pot to get the rest of the water to fall out.

Then you pull both sets of long wing feathers, then the tail.  I'm not talking about one at a time, grab a comfortable hand full and pull.  Once those large feathers are gone start pulling the rest of the feathers off by the hand full.  You have about five minutes before the feathers set again in the skin.  A normal 5 lb. chicken can be bare ass neked in that time, no problem at all. 

The only feathers that can give you trouble are pin feathers.  Those are the small undeployed feathers that are enclosed in a sheath that looks like the end of a skewer sticking out of the skin.  You have to pull them one at a time since they don't stick out far enough to grab like the rest of the feathers.   There is also some very tiny feathers around the joint where the bare leg and feathered part of the leg join.  A section about 1/4" long with 1/2" and smaller feathers, you end up pulling them with your finger nails.

Just get busy when that thing comes out of the water.  And get them all in five minutes or less or they start getting hard to pull again.

I have a machine that pulls the feathers off without the hot water issue. This is a tumbler that has small raised "fingers" on it. It rotates at high velocity. There is a tube extending from the base of this contraption to which you attach a vacuum cleaner hose to. By holding the bird and guiding it over the spinning fingers the feather are simply ripped off. There is a trick to holding it with little pressure as the feather are stripped off, so as not to tear the meat from the bones. It's a cool machine and I use it every year on geese, chuker, and partridge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chefross 

I have a machine that pulls the feathers off without the hot water issue. This is a tumbler that has small raised "fingers" on it. It rotates at high velocity. There is a tube extending from the base of this contraption to which you attach a vacuum cleaner hose to. By holding the bird and guiding it over the spinning fingers the feather are simply ripped off. There is a trick to holding it with little pressure as the feather are stripped off, so as not to tear the meat from the bones. It's a cool machine and I use it every year on geese, chuker, and partridge.

 

I'm talking 1955 here. The old goat that owned the chicken farm I spent summers shoveling and plucking on made one from an electric motor, a wood cylinder with wood slats screwed on it.  The wood slats held strips cut off an inner tube  (remember cars used them at one time).  A couple of pulleys and a V-belt.  No vacuum though, feathers really flew.  But you still could keep up with the machine with a big cast iron pot over a fire with boiling water.  In the winter you may have had to dunk the chicken more than once to get all the feathers loose.
 

Young chefs unite!

The food in this video is exciting! I did not know who Magnus Nilsson & Kobe Desramaults were until i came across this thread. You can clearly see that casual clothes are warmly accepted. i love how the food is plated on rocks. & the chefs come out to serve the guests for each course. The presentation of the food is a breath of fresh air. Looks like white plates are not used & will not be used.