Melancthon Mega-Quarry

Water concerns and environmental risk assessments impede plans for a mega-quarry near the GTA

By Ruth VanDyken

Ontario’s densely populated Greater Golden Horseshoe, which hugs the western tip of Lake Ontario from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to Niagara and stretches all the way to Georgian Bay and Peterborough, has less than four percent of the province’s land mass but is home to nearly a quarter of all Canadians. The region is one of the country’s biggest economic engines, with industries such as auto and steel manufacturing as well as Toronto’s diverse economy pushing urban development across agricultural and natural land. Such sprawl is often controversial. But the need for raw materials — specifically, the gravel required for road and building construction — is creating another clash between man and nature.

2. Work with the best people
To become a great chef you do not need to work with twenty top chefs. You need to experience three or four very good chefs. The best is not necessarily the most popular or most famous, it can just as easily be a chef in a small place who is simply very organized and very good. Focus on a few chefs for your foundation, then for specialties- for example, charcuterie, pastry and so on- you can do internships.

3. Keep Your Station Orderly
From the storage of vegetables to the finishing of mise-en-place, everything needs to be marked, labeled and in the proper containers, taking up the minimum of room. Then, during service, you will be able to fill orders with maximum efficiency. A well-organised station also gets respect from the rest of the kitchen.

4. Purchase Wisely
The profitable restaurant runs on the same principle as the frugal housewife’s kitchen: Use everything, because everything you do not use is potential profit that goes straight into the garbage. Any underutilized food items will affect your food costs. Pay attention to the price of ingredients and keep them in line with what a customer will pay for a dish. The more you utilize everything, the more you will be able to afford the best ingredients. A great chef respects the culinary value of every ingredient- from truffle to turnip.

5. Season with Precision
The taste of every ingredient is elevated by proper seasoning. There is an exact point at which ingredients are seasoned correctly. More is not always better.
Learning the peculiarities of your palate and attuning it to finished results requires precision and endless practice.

6. Master the Heat
From 120*F to 800*F- there is an enormous range for heat to affect ingredients. A truly great cook has such an intimate knowledge of heat that he or she develops a sixth sense of timing for the moment of doneness. Learn the basics of heat in the classical repertoire.

7. Learn the world of Food
Experience different cuisines whenever you can. Do it when you are young, before you are building your career. Learning other cuisines will broaden your foundation as a chef. Even when you have begun to progress through the ranks of the kitchen, use your time off to go places, try new restaurants, buy books. In other words, immerse yourself in the world of food.

8. Know the Classics
No matter what cuisine you concentrate on, the classic dishes will cover the spectrum of techniques and ingredients needed to master a cuisine. The fundamentals of stocks, sauces and seasoning are all there in the classics… whether that classic is clam chowder in Cape Cod or bouillabaisse in Marseilles.

9. Accept Criticism
As a young chef, you spend your days and nights being criticized and analyzed by the chefs for whom you work. It is important to learn from criticism. It is equally important to learn from criticism. It is equally important to learn how to criticize usefully when you become a full fledged chef. And finally, you must learn from the criticism of the public. Recognise that to keep yourself interested you are constantly varying, innovating and reinventing, succeeding at times and needing more work at others. Criticism is the public’s way of telling you how to improve on the results of your creative impulses.

10. Keep a Journal of your Recipes
You cannot remember everything you see cooked, or even have cooked, but with a journal, a computer, a digital camera, you can bring those taste memories to life to guide you for the rest of your professional life.

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“In 2004, Coudreaut arrived at McDonald’s headquarters, a sprawling, bosky campus in Oak Brook, Ill., outside Chicago. His kitchen, which is on the third floor of the main building, is the sort you would see in the back of house at an expense-account restaurant. It features granite countertops (requested by Coudreaut), a giant Wolf range that cost more than most McDonald’s employees make in half a year, and a salamander, a device that professional kitchens use to brown food before serving. (See more about McDonald’s.)

On the day I visited, Coudreaut was experimenting with some very non-McDonald’s ingredients: celery root, broccoli rabe, wild salmon, hazelnuts, candied orange rind. There was a huge pot of veal stock simmering on a back burner of the Wolf. He seemed to want to prove his culinary skills, and he did — he made a delicious lunch — but what does any of this have to do with creating food at a real McDonald’s?

The answer is that every great manufacturing company runs a crazy R&D department, a place where mad scientists get to fiddle with toys and produce one or two breakthroughs a year. Coudreaut and his staff of 16 consider approximately 1,800 ideas for new menu items each year, but only a couple — or in an atypical year, as many as five — make it onto the menu. Few stay permanently.”

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