zeynep fan club
it’s true. i have an mba. and it was all worth it for one class i took in my final year with zeynep ton (← that’s a 45 min video but worth it if you want a mini mba). zeynep’s mission is to show businesses how to be operationally excellent. and what this really boils down to is that if you treat your workers well and invest in them, you’ll be a more profitable company.
my main takeaways from her class that i’ve applied in work, life, and food are:
the good jobs strategy is about investing in your people and is made up of four components.
offering less: do fewer things better
cross-training: invest in making your workforce a team of swiss army knives who are ready for any task and can sub in for each other when needed
operating with slack: the cost of understaffing is higher than the cost of overstaffing because shit happens. it could be the natural swells of a sales cycle where your restaurant is overrun at midday. it could be an environmental catastrophe like COVID or a storm.
standardizing to empower: make a repeatable process that everyone can follow. if something doesn’t work, it’ll be a lot easier to isolate the problem variable if things are standardized. and if it’s broken, fix it across the board
operational excellence in the kitchen
cooking is mostly a solo endeavor for me because i have really high standards (i am a virgo after all). but these standards are in service of *excellence*. i’ve been thinking about this for awhile and i think these are my general kitchen ops principles:
do fewer things really well
(in some cases ONE) and only when you’re really fkn dialed with that should you offer more. i have to do a lot of variations in my day-to-day because i live with seven other people who are gluten-free, vegetarian, pescaterian, vegan, and allium-intolerant, respectively. that means i often start with a simpler scope and do some amount of delayed differentiation for the dietary lifestyles. and for delight! delight is really important and enabled by standardization :)
develop an order of operations
this will cut down on time, overhead, and clean up (which is ultimately time). i make a list of what can be prepped ahead of time and what needs live action and then prioritize the steps. also it’s important to make use of non-active cooking time — e.g. boiling water. at it’s worst, it’s multitasking. at it’s best, it’s very efficient and intentional task switching.
ABWD always be washing dishes
to me, this is the sign of a good home cook. not only because those dishes have to get done at some point, but because it maximizes the utility of the space. if you only have a limited set of equipment or your stuff starts piling up in the sink, you render your kitchen unusable when you need it most.
be selective with your sous chefs
give them expectations. there are two ways to do this.
social cooking is different from cooking cooking. often times when i host friends, i want to have a leisurely conversation, which is different from making a meal as efficiently as i can and assigning every minute to a task. this means, i do a lot of prep ahead of time and by the time friends come over, they get a fun, well-scoped task and i can focus on cleaning and conversation.
if someone really wants to help, they gotta be on board with the operational standard, which means this isn’t about socializing, at least not in the traditional sense. and you might not get a glamorous task. they gotta be self-sufficient especially with noticing what still needs to get done, owning tasks, and cleaning. often times the best thing to help with is cleaning, but that doesn’t feel “fun” or like “cooking.” if i get a whiff of cooking ego, i tell them to chill with a glass of wine.
with virgo supperclub, these things become even more important. luckily garrett is also a virgo and is as ruthless as i am about dishes with prepping. and as we build our little supperclub into something more established, it’s a nice little test of whether we can walk the talk with regard to zeynep’s business principles above.
what does this look like in practice?
ok it’s tuesday night, i’m cooking dinner for 10 people. first, i start with what i want to cook within the constraints i have. silicon valley is always saying constraints drive innovation, and i love/hate tech but they’re right.
my constraints:
adaptable to vegetarian (v), dairy free (df), gluten free (gf), allium free (af), soy free (sf)
done in an hour
works in my kitchen - 4 stovetop burners, 1 oven, etc.
scales to ten people
budget of roughly $15/pp
so let’s say i decide to make spaghetti bolognese. i’m obsessed with marcella hazan’s OG recipe and use that as a base for what i’m going to do, which is to make three different variations of this dish:
sauce 1 (v)(af): impossible, crushed red pepper, celery, carrots, wine, milk, tomatoes, parmesan rind*, wheat pasta water
sauce 2 (v)(df): impossible, crushed red pepper, onion, garlic, celery, carrots, wine, soy milk, tomatoes, wheat pasta water
sauce 3 (sf)(gf): beef, crushed red pepper,onion, garlic, celery, carrots, wine, milk, tomatoes, rice pasta water
noodles 1 (v)(af)(df)(sf): wheat
noodles 2 (v)(af)(df)(sf)(gf): rice pasta
garnish 1 (v)(af)(sf)(gf): grated parmesan
garnish 2 (v)(af)(df)(sf)(gf): grated cured egg yolk
salad 1 (v)(af)(df)(sf)(gf): romaine, egg yolk, kewpie, olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon, vegan fish sauce, black pepper
*i believe people with dietary restrictions should get as much delight as those without, so substitutions have to come with an addition of delight.
next up, i make a list of what needs to get done when and how long it’ll take:
make sauces x3
food process my veggies, with alliums going in last for allergen purposes
bloom red pepper in all three cast irons
add vegetables and simmer until soft and fragrant
add meat and brown
deglaze with wine (and pour some for the cook)
add milk
add tomatoes
simmer for minimum 20 min…and meanwhile do the rest
boil water for pasta
get this going right away so it’s ready whenever you decide it’s time
cook pasta
cook rice pasta first in a strainer so it’s easy to take out for allergen purposes
add pasta water to sauce 3
cook wheat pasta
add pasta water to sauces 1 and 2
interchangeable tasks to do whenever there’s down time
make salad
make garnishes x2 — a grate (hehe) task to give to a willing helper
wash dishes duh
an exception
so i don’t use recipes. defiantly. irrationally. because it’s more fun to me to feel like i have an intuitive sense of proportions, flavors, and combinations rather than following a recipe verbatim. i know that makes me less standardized and perhaps i’m missing out on consistently perfect food, but my food is good enough and i’m happy with the tradeoff of protecting my right to be a mad scientist in the kitchen.
i do, however, reference recipes for inspiration and rules of thumb! especially if i want to understand the function or mechanic of a particular technique to add to my toolbelt. serious eats and america’s test kitchen are my fav go to resources for this.
my obsessions of the moment
well i’m currently in japan and i’m ready to leave everything in my life behind and move here so i can eat a tuna onigiri for breakfast on my morning commute every day.
katsu. what would a schnitzel katsu crossover look like?
curing meats in ume, yuzu, and/or miso. i had an incredible miso cured roast beef at a szechuan restaurant this week.
miso kabocha broth. i took a day trip to 甲府 kōfu where the specialty is 砲塔 hōtō, a hearty winter stew with a miso kabocha broth, lots of veggies, pork, and these flat noodles that are a cousin of udon.
whipped cream on curry udon. “it’s better than you think!” in general i think this is a really unhinged and fun way to present food because it’s sort of a surprise what’s under.
if you want my recs, head on over to this tokyo map i’ve been maintaining for a couple of years. you’re welcome. a special thanks to my ideo tokyo friends mio, mike, kei, and michio for all your recommendations over the yeras.
icymi
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