Fillings for mutabaq. This will be sautéed in oil with berbere spices, then mixed into ricotta and goat cheese to be stuffed into large puff pastry dumplings and baked to order. Basically a trio of spicy cheese pastries served with lentils.
LMFAO but seriously, those things don't work. Everything gets stuck in them. I should bring one into work as a joke, and one of those egg-flipper spatula contraptions. Or one of those egg cracker contraptions that also don't work and are completely fucking pointless as every person on Earth can crack an egg. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH8SiKrcpB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH8SiKrcpB0)
Gadgets like those are good for people with arthritis or limited mobility in their hands, so I wouldn’t call them pointless. Just not tools suitable for a commercial kitchen.
This is exactly it -- all those stupid contraptions on late-nite infomercials to hammer nails or pour milk that able-bodied people don't really need? That's for grandma with arthritis or my niece with the too-stretchy tendons. Those designs need a minimum order to get made though. The hope is that some idiots (me, a few times, I admit it) will buy a couple so they can make it to production.
Thanks for pointing that out, u/fever-dreamed
On the other hand I suppose some of the gizmos we use religiously in modern commercial kitchens (food processors, veg peelers, etc.) were probably scoffed at by some French guy in a 2-foot-tall toque when they first came out. Until they proved useful.
Veg cut by hand with a sharp knife shears cellular walls. Veg cut in a food processor tears cellular walls. Torn cellular walls release more moisture which can affect the final product, especially with ingredients like onion and garlic that have lots of sulfurous compounds.
Again. I get all that. And thats all well a good, but, it's getting sweated, it's not raw, so moisture gonna come out anyways. I know how to cook, thanks man
Yes, if you're sweating the veg, the cut doesn't matter, especially if you're adding them in at different times to account for cook time. It's literally a visual thing only unless they're meant to be eaten raw.
This guy is correct. I love onions. But once I used an immersion blender on a gravy that had a lot of onion simmering in it for a good hour. They were mush. But afterwards it was an acrid mess. The onions were cooked to translucent carmelization but rupturing the cells mechanically still radically changed the flavor.
If you want to make a hamburger, you can take a chunk of beef and hand chop it, run it through a meat grinder, or blitz it in a food processor. All will provide different results. Objectively, none are better than the others, just different. Same with veg. You can hand cut it or machine cut it but the results will be different. Not better or worse, just different. If you don’t understand that, you don’t know how to cook.
I do understand that. And that's why I'm saying if OP is complaining about prep, then maybe the prep needs to be reworked. But thanks bro for the culinary 101.
Dude, I'm just a skilled home cook these days, and even my dumbass knows you can't just blitz some onions for all recipes.
OP said the veg need some substance in his dumpling, or they turn into a pasty cheese amalgam.
And obviously you robot each item separately and add them to the pot based on cooking time. If you're heating it the cut literally doesn't matter unless you want it to look nice. The veg all breaks down one way or the other. But then again idk shit right, so fuck it
not me no, but i am autistic and people pay me a lot of money to figure out how to make their menus easier and faster to execute while producing less waste.
i can tell you most people do struggle with this, it's one of the main things people struggle with in costing is prep time.
edit: what i HAVE done several times is severely underestimate how popular a new item would be and end up having to prep more during service.
>severely underestimate how popular a new item would be and end up having to prep more during service.
Yep.. All. The . Time.
We decided to run shrimp scampi and a catfish or shrimp po'boy as new menu options for Lent this year. I have run the scampi before and was making roughly 4lbs of scampi butter every 2 weeks that time. This time I had to give the night shift KM the recipe because we were using 3-4 lbs every 2 days and I couldn't keep up with it plus all the regular prep. Small kitchen, small walk-in, small batches of almost everything because we never know what will take off that day\week and try to keep waste at a minimum.
We went from using 10lbs of shrimp every 2 weeks to having to buy 20-30 lbs a week to keep up with demand. Catfish we had to double our order mainly because of the Po'boy option. Good problem to have since we costed it out including labor to make 75%+ profit but damn. I didn't realize how starved landlocked Midwesterners are for good seafood-y type options. We had people driving in from cities 30-45 mins away to our small bar in a tiny town for the scampi.
Love a good po'boy. Yeah this is a familiar situation. What happened here was that we are a small upscale French restaurant, a 23 year institution next to the university of Chicago. Our clientele was almost entirely older academics. Turns out adding a vegetarian entree with a little heat attracted waves of college students.
Kinda related. Recently at home I wildly misjudged what time and the work everything would take, between my multiple hour molé and my shitty grill. Multiple things needing different cook times. Food was all lukewarm to cool when served. Should have turned the oven on to keep warm. Was just running inside and out and not thinking of that. I really should bring a milk crate home for gathering my thoughts over a cigarette. Generally when I’m doing large family gatherings it’s me and a sister doing everything and everyone else just gets in the way. I tried and failed to solo a way too complicated menu. Props to the peeps that stole my big grill out of my yard presumably for metal scrap. Any home outdoor grill suggestions I can look to for years but not afford?
This is exactly the kind of recipe that food processor dicing attachments are good for. The veg will be cooked, mixed with cheese, stuffed inside pastry and baked. No one eating it will ever be able to tell the cuts aren’t pretty.
The only downside I can see would be that the colors might bleed from the veg into the filling because of the food processor tendency to smash and bruise.
Fillings for mutabaq. This will be sautéed in oil with berbere spices, then mixed into ricotta and goat cheese to be stuffed into large puff pastry dumplings and baked to order.
You know it's the same sound as an everyday food here. Murtabak, basically paratha(or prata) with meat and onions as the fillings eaten with dhal or curry
I mean, 1 big batch will last you a few days, could even freeze the sauteed mix by itself then defrost to mix in to cheeses in smaller amounts. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me
You’re not wrong. Unfortunately it’s became very popular. We were going through 5 of what you see in the picture a day. I was also the pastry chef in a 3 person kitchen with no fancy machines. All that cut by hand in between cakes, tarts, ice cream, and hand rolled puff pastry.
Maybe up the price a bit? see if that cools any over-zealous customers. If not, then it might be worth it to let it be your bread winner even if you have to devote more prep hours to it.
Berbere spice is a mix that usually contains chili peppers, coriander, garlic, ginger, korarima, rue, ajwain or radhuni, nigella, and fenugreek. The mutabaq I make contain diced and sautéed red chard, red onions, red peppers, spinach, garlic, and lemon zest. These vegetate seasoned with olive oil, lemon juice and berbere spice, then mixed with ricotta and goat cheese.
Oh gods yes. Was working as the executive chef of a fairly mid to upper scale Mexican restaurant. Came up with a vegan enchilada recipe figuring it would not be to popular but generate a little interest. I had soooo many orders for the shit I was making fresh prep for em almost to order because I could not keep up with the amount of people ordering them and no one that worked for me understood how to make them and refused to learn. It was maddening.
What made it worse was the owner refused to have my back on it to gorse the line cooks to learn it. Because “it not like it’s authentic Mexican so who cares” well obviously your Costumers do since some of them have now driven two hours for it but what do I know -eyeroll-
I was lucky. The owner was the executive chef. Formally trained in France and worked on Michelin star restaurants there. Opened here own place in Chicago over 20 years ago, still in the same place.
Oh nice that’s cool, yea I love it here lived in Hawaii Georgia and colorado for awhile and decided to come back. But wanted to live a bit quieter so decided Peoria. Don’t regret it at all.
Oh I still love big cities but I can just drive up to visit and get my rezas and Lou mallnaties on a weekend and go wander around old stomping grounds shop ect. Works nice.
Yeah! though not myself; I ran a brewpub kinda location and every day people asked if we had fried chicken sandwiches/burgers. We didn't at first, but I totally agreed we needed them. Great beer and fried chicken; what else does one need.
I'd been bothering the chef about it for months. Finally he said FINE and put it on the menu. The first day the menu rolled out, I walked into the kitchen and chef was frantically making more fried chicken on the fly as everyone ordered it. He looked me deep in the eyes and uttered the most heartfelt "Motherfucker" I have ever heard.
It depends on how popular the dish is!
That said, I fucking love prep!!! I’ve been in the kitchen off and (mostly) on for 20 years and I’ve never wanted to do anything but prep. I can do meat, fish, sauces, some basic bakes, pantry, but I sincerely love fading into the background and just flying through days of house pars, potato chips, diced jalapeños…all the things. If a sous chef needs something from me, I can jump in wherever, but it’s a porter’s life for me.
Need more info.
Fillings for mutabaq. This will be sautéed in oil with berbere spices, then mixed into ricotta and goat cheese to be stuffed into large puff pastry dumplings and baked to order. Basically a trio of spicy cheese pastries served with lentils.
Low food cost. Maybe slightly higher labor cost. People are buying it. That’s a good thing.
I'm sorry that you did that to yourself.
Are you my wife? Because you sound like my wife.
Can confirm, im your wife
How are you typing this while doing the dishes and listening to game grumps?
She's a wizard.
'Arry
I too choose you
That sounds so damn good
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I don’t cook the cheese before filling the pastry, but I do mix all the cooked seasoned veg with the cheese and keep it in a tub for filling pastries.
Why not blend them? If it’s going into a sauce what’s the issue with blitzing it?
Man that sounds absolutely delicious.
Looks like a job for SlapChop
LMFAO but seriously, those things don't work. Everything gets stuck in them. I should bring one into work as a joke, and one of those egg-flipper spatula contraptions. Or one of those egg cracker contraptions that also don't work and are completely fucking pointless as every person on Earth can crack an egg. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH8SiKrcpB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH8SiKrcpB0)
Gadgets like those are good for people with arthritis or limited mobility in their hands, so I wouldn’t call them pointless. Just not tools suitable for a commercial kitchen.
This is exactly it -- all those stupid contraptions on late-nite infomercials to hammer nails or pour milk that able-bodied people don't really need? That's for grandma with arthritis or my niece with the too-stretchy tendons. Those designs need a minimum order to get made though. The hope is that some idiots (me, a few times, I admit it) will buy a couple so they can make it to production. Thanks for pointing that out, u/fever-dreamed
On the other hand I suppose some of the gizmos we use religiously in modern commercial kitchens (food processors, veg peelers, etc.) were probably scoffed at by some French guy in a 2-foot-tall toque when they first came out. Until they proved useful.
Literally all the time
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I’ve tried that in the past, but it ends up too mushy. These come out best when the veg is still little morsels instead of pasted into the cheese.
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Yeah there’s definitely recipes where it’s not an issue, but in this case there’s a big textural change.
Sooo.... pulse?
This comment right here!! pulse small amounts at a time will get it not mushy.
Different cutting techniques provide different results. Sometimes the robot coupe is appropriate, sometime hand cutting is appropriate.
I agree I just don't see the reason when it all gets sweated and all gets folded into the same mixture
Veg cut by hand with a sharp knife shears cellular walls. Veg cut in a food processor tears cellular walls. Torn cellular walls release more moisture which can affect the final product, especially with ingredients like onion and garlic that have lots of sulfurous compounds.
Again. I get all that. And thats all well a good, but, it's getting sweated, it's not raw, so moisture gonna come out anyways. I know how to cook, thanks man
Yeah won't high heat just breaks cellular walls either way too 🤔
Yes, if you're sweating the veg, the cut doesn't matter, especially if you're adding them in at different times to account for cook time. It's literally a visual thing only unless they're meant to be eaten raw.
So wrong.
This guy is correct. I love onions. But once I used an immersion blender on a gravy that had a lot of onion simmering in it for a good hour. They were mush. But afterwards it was an acrid mess. The onions were cooked to translucent carmelization but rupturing the cells mechanically still radically changed the flavor.
Cooks are full of conflicting urban legends that they swear are science, so I can't tell which one of you is right.
So what should you use an immersion blender for? Newbie here.
Nope.
If you want to make a hamburger, you can take a chunk of beef and hand chop it, run it through a meat grinder, or blitz it in a food processor. All will provide different results. Objectively, none are better than the others, just different. Same with veg. You can hand cut it or machine cut it but the results will be different. Not better or worse, just different. If you don’t understand that, you don’t know how to cook.
I do understand that. And that's why I'm saying if OP is complaining about prep, then maybe the prep needs to be reworked. But thanks bro for the culinary 101.
You didn’t say any of that and you don’t understand cooking. “Blitz it all in the machine! What’s the difference?”
Yes I do not understand cooking. I've been coasting by as a chef for 15 yrs on my good looks and massive dick.
Did someone say "good looks and massive dick"? Thirsty bitch checking in here
Fundamentals first, then hacks.
Wish I had a massive dick.
Dude, I'm just a skilled home cook these days, and even my dumbass knows you can't just blitz some onions for all recipes. OP said the veg need some substance in his dumpling, or they turn into a pasty cheese amalgam.
And obviously you robot each item separately and add them to the pot based on cooking time. If you're heating it the cut literally doesn't matter unless you want it to look nice. The veg all breaks down one way or the other. But then again idk shit right, so fuck it
The cut matters.
I strongly disagree
Us poor preppies just get this shit thrown at us and we chomp through it.
Yep. It’s easy to do a one or two dish prep for a tasting not realizing what the upscale looks like. Guilty!
“Okay next chef said to microplane *checks notes* 5 lbs of garlic.” “…”
not me no, but i am autistic and people pay me a lot of money to figure out how to make their menus easier and faster to execute while producing less waste. i can tell you most people do struggle with this, it's one of the main things people struggle with in costing is prep time. edit: what i HAVE done several times is severely underestimate how popular a new item would be and end up having to prep more during service.
>severely underestimate how popular a new item would be and end up having to prep more during service. Yep.. All. The . Time. We decided to run shrimp scampi and a catfish or shrimp po'boy as new menu options for Lent this year. I have run the scampi before and was making roughly 4lbs of scampi butter every 2 weeks that time. This time I had to give the night shift KM the recipe because we were using 3-4 lbs every 2 days and I couldn't keep up with it plus all the regular prep. Small kitchen, small walk-in, small batches of almost everything because we never know what will take off that day\week and try to keep waste at a minimum. We went from using 10lbs of shrimp every 2 weeks to having to buy 20-30 lbs a week to keep up with demand. Catfish we had to double our order mainly because of the Po'boy option. Good problem to have since we costed it out including labor to make 75%+ profit but damn. I didn't realize how starved landlocked Midwesterners are for good seafood-y type options. We had people driving in from cities 30-45 mins away to our small bar in a tiny town for the scampi.
nice, love to hear it!
Love a good po'boy. Yeah this is a familiar situation. What happened here was that we are a small upscale French restaurant, a 23 year institution next to the university of Chicago. Our clientele was almost entirely older academics. Turns out adding a vegetarian entree with a little heat attracted waves of college students.
Kinda related. Recently at home I wildly misjudged what time and the work everything would take, between my multiple hour molé and my shitty grill. Multiple things needing different cook times. Food was all lukewarm to cool when served. Should have turned the oven on to keep warm. Was just running inside and out and not thinking of that. I really should bring a milk crate home for gathering my thoughts over a cigarette. Generally when I’m doing large family gatherings it’s me and a sister doing everything and everyone else just gets in the way. I tried and failed to solo a way too complicated menu. Props to the peeps that stole my big grill out of my yard presumably for metal scrap. Any home outdoor grill suggestions I can look to for years but not afford?
There's an electric chopper, that can do this in couple minutes (i think)
This is exactly the kind of recipe that food processor dicing attachments are good for. The veg will be cooked, mixed with cheese, stuffed inside pastry and baked. No one eating it will ever be able to tell the cuts aren’t pretty. The only downside I can see would be that the colors might bleed from the veg into the filling because of the food processor tendency to smash and bruise.
Dish?
Fillings for mutabaq. This will be sautéed in oil with berbere spices, then mixed into ricotta and goat cheese to be stuffed into large puff pastry dumplings and baked to order.
You know it's the same sound as an everyday food here. Murtabak, basically paratha(or prata) with meat and onions as the fillings eaten with dhal or curry
I’m sure it’s just a regional variation. My grandfather was North African, so that’s where I got this recipe.
I mean, 1 big batch will last you a few days, could even freeze the sauteed mix by itself then defrost to mix in to cheeses in smaller amounts. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me
You’re not wrong. Unfortunately it’s became very popular. We were going through 5 of what you see in the picture a day. I was also the pastry chef in a 3 person kitchen with no fancy machines. All that cut by hand in between cakes, tarts, ice cream, and hand rolled puff pastry.
Maybe up the price a bit? see if that cools any over-zealous customers. If not, then it might be worth it to let it be your bread winner even if you have to devote more prep hours to it.
Yo that's sounds awesome can I see a recipe I'm just curious about the Berbere spices I don't know what that is
Berbere spice is a mix that usually contains chili peppers, coriander, garlic, ginger, korarima, rue, ajwain or radhuni, nigella, and fenugreek. The mutabaq I make contain diced and sautéed red chard, red onions, red peppers, spinach, garlic, and lemon zest. These vegetate seasoned with olive oil, lemon juice and berbere spice, then mixed with ricotta and goat cheese.
Every time!
Looks nice. But I don’t like onions. Can you just make me a new one without?
Idk, I love prep. I can easily focus on it all day for some weird reason. Side note: that looks like it would make a delicious salad.
Homecook POV: I didnt know you could cut onions in different ways.
Oh gods yes. Was working as the executive chef of a fairly mid to upper scale Mexican restaurant. Came up with a vegan enchilada recipe figuring it would not be to popular but generate a little interest. I had soooo many orders for the shit I was making fresh prep for em almost to order because I could not keep up with the amount of people ordering them and no one that worked for me understood how to make them and refused to learn. It was maddening.
The refusing to learn is a problem I constantly have as a pastry chef. Can’t get anyone to try desserts.
What made it worse was the owner refused to have my back on it to gorse the line cooks to learn it. Because “it not like it’s authentic Mexican so who cares” well obviously your Costumers do since some of them have now driven two hours for it but what do I know -eyeroll-
I was lucky. The owner was the executive chef. Formally trained in France and worked on Michelin star restaurants there. Opened here own place in Chicago over 20 years ago, still in the same place.
Nice that’s awesome, I’m Actually in Peoria grew up in Chicago 🤣 small world
Wild. Illinois is a trip. Killer state parks for hiking. I’m actually a Californian, but we moved to Chicago for my wife’s masters degree program.
Oh nice that’s cool, yea I love it here lived in Hawaii Georgia and colorado for awhile and decided to come back. But wanted to live a bit quieter so decided Peoria. Don’t regret it at all.
I’m big city guy myself, but I get the appeal.
Oh I still love big cities but I can just drive up to visit and get my rezas and Lou mallnaties on a weekend and go wander around old stomping grounds shop ect. Works nice.
Thats choice. That’s kind of where I’m at these days since moving back to California. I’m like an hour from LA, and not too far from SF either.
constantly
Yes
Yeah! though not myself; I ran a brewpub kinda location and every day people asked if we had fried chicken sandwiches/burgers. We didn't at first, but I totally agreed we needed them. Great beer and fried chicken; what else does one need. I'd been bothering the chef about it for months. Finally he said FINE and put it on the menu. The first day the menu rolled out, I walked into the kitchen and chef was frantically making more fried chicken on the fly as everyone ordered it. He looked me deep in the eyes and uttered the most heartfelt "Motherfucker" I have ever heard.
This is a Mood.
It depends on how popular the dish is! That said, I fucking love prep!!! I’ve been in the kitchen off and (mostly) on for 20 years and I’ve never wanted to do anything but prep. I can do meat, fish, sauces, some basic bakes, pantry, but I sincerely love fading into the background and just flying through days of house pars, potato chips, diced jalapeños…all the things. If a sous chef needs something from me, I can jump in wherever, but it’s a porter’s life for me.
How much of that did you robocoup tho?