My Day with a Cheesecake/She Says, He says

At one time I thought from my own experiences that owning and managing a restaurant, even with an experienced partner, was probably the most difficult job in the entire world. For instance, when the pot washer doesn't show up and you have to scrub pots and pans for 10 hours. This at the time everyone is yelling for plates and cutlery while a zillion things are waiting to be attended to.

To-day I discovered the trauma involved in making, decorating and photographing an uncooperative cheesecake for a local magazine. This starts with getting a recipe I have never tried before. So a trip to the supermarket, why do they keep them so cold, with my basket. To my great detriment, I don't shop aisle by aisle but as I remember the items I require, I rush from place to place all the time complaining softly that the item I need must have been moved. Finally, I have everything however, not in the most convenient size, but nonetheless I purchase the items required for the recipe. With groceries in hand heading for the car I remember I have forgotten to get the whipping cream. Back into the store. Now where in the name of mankind do they keep it, at last, found and purchased.

Back to the kitchen with recipe in hand I start to assemble the ingredients. To start off, the crust. Forgot to purchase graham cracker crumbs. Quick check thru the pantry, drawer by drawer all the time complaining loudly that someone - husband - must have moved them. Found graham crackers. They have been there a while! Oh well, we don't have to eat that part of the cheesecake if it turns out they are "funny" tasting. Out with the the Cuisinart to make crumbs from the crackers. Doesn't take too long but, a mess is now starting to occur and I don't do well with a mess while cooking/baking. Put Cuisinart aside to be washed later. Haul out restaurant style Kenwood mixer. It is extremely heavy so is kept on its own shelf in a cupboard, same type of shelf that the old manual typewriters used to sit on way back in the day. When it's in use the space between the counter top and the island becomes almost impassable. I have a large kitchen but, I'm beginning to feel it closing in around me. Oh well, pressing on with the batter.

By the time I finish mixing, adding and stirring, I have batter on myself, the mixer and the counter top. It should be easier to add ingredients without coming into contact with a messy beater every time. Cut and press parchment paper to bottom and sides of springform pan. I find I have to butter pan to get the paper to stick. Pour the ingredients into the prepared pan, bake for 1 hour, then with oven door ajar and heat turned off, leave it there for another hour. This way no cracks occur. It cracked! Waiting now for my son the chef to come over and decorate the cheesecake and oversee the taking of photographs for the magazine. Almost the first thing chef tells me when he arrives, is how busy he has been for the past several days and so he is quite tired.

In the refrigerator for 2 day, covered it shrank away from the sides somewhat and to top that off, it looked like a large bread bowl with the contents starting to spill over the sides. Oh dear.....

Time to decorate the cheesecake. This take the proverbial "3 cooks". Between us it is chaotic. For starters I purchased whipped cream in an aerosol can. A definite no, no as my son, the chef, never uses anything that sprays out of a can - never, ever. So then I have to do the decorating - not really my forte. If that wasn't bad enough, instead of regular whipped cream I had purchased the light variety. Shake the can as I would with all my might, the cream would not stand up on a plate never mind under lights for the photos. So off to the supermarket went the 2 - the chef who is very tired and cook #3 the driver, while I stayed back and started the process of clean-up, at which I am very, very good even if I do say so myself.

O.K. now we're all set. A new litre of whipping cream. Out comes the Cuisinart, the chef's choice as he thought the other choice would be a metal bowl and an egg beater. A great deal of spinning and beating occurs but, the cream is not doing its "thing." Cook number 3 has suggested using some gelatin to get the desired effect. However, he is in the driveway speaking to a neighbour and somehow forgets to mention that the gelatin should be dissolved first. It doesn't whip. Try, try again. Add more whipped cream, place in decorating bag and squeeze a rosette onto a plate, it now looks curdled. That's not going to work. Wash decorating bag and dry with hair dryer as this is the favourite bag of the 3rd cook and no other will do. Cook 3 gets ice from freezer, clean bowl and freshly dried decorating bag and its his turn. Hurray, rosettes in place, chestnuts on top of each and time for a photo. Disaster. No one would want to try something that looks like that. Take off chestnuts, remove rosettes and chef carefully cuts off the ridge of the cheesecake.
With each new problem, chef reminds me that he is tired. Meanwhile cook 3 makes additional filling in microwave to hide the offending crack in the cheesecake. An absolute work of art, crack disappears.

Chef is now in charge of whipped cream in the decorating bag. The cheesecake sits proudly on a clean plate with toothpicks at the proper intervals so the rosettes will be evenly placed around the newly levelled top. 12 rosettes, topped with 12 candied chestnuts. Beautiful. Time for photos.

Drape counter with white tablecloth, place cheesecake in position add various items in background. Gourds, large wicker chicken plus an assortment of flowers, leaves and stem from the garden. Spend a lot of time placing gourds "just so." Look for camera. Someone must have moved it! Take picture from several different angles. Remove gourds and chicken goes into background. More pictures at different angles. This goes on for some time with flowers and leaves. Download pictures to computer. Most won't do. Chicken far too large, to many gourds and on top of that there is a dark spot in the far corner of the shot. Get another white table cloth and instruct chef where to hang it. Look for camera, again. Please don't touch it!
More pictures with same decorations. Hooray, some actually look very good. Now its time for the "cake with slice removed." Cake is cut, slice placed on desert place with fork. Look for camera, find it under the newly arranged tablecloths. Set up shot again. Take a zillion more pictures, download to computer. Well, those won't do, the cake slice is messy looking. Egad, will this ever end? Another dozen or so more shots and at last we have the pictures we need.

With freshly brewed coffee we now try our cheesecake for taste, it is delicious. Thank heavens for that.

For me, every aspect of the food business I have been involved with can be time consuming and stressful. It is no wonder we celebrate the finished product. Great food. Now I look forward to the next adventure in the kitchen. That's how I see it, anyway.

This is the way the chef sees it.
Cheesecake - A Work in Progress

The Cheesecake Saga - The Way I See It
At one time my mother felt certain that owning and managing a restaurant, even with an experienced partner, (me) was probably the toughest job in the world. Her thoughts of sipping champagne with my stepfather in the front window of a nicely appointed dining room while everything ran efficiently were immediately dashed within the first few days of our business partnership. When I suggested that she didn’t actually have to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the kitchen floor after her shift, she said, “Really”, acting as if I were questioning her Protestant work ethic and the belief in the moral benefit of hard work. This continued night after night at the end of each shift until we sold the restaurant a couple of years later. It was the truth, she did not need to wash the floor but for whatever reason she chose to do it herself. This is a family trait.Until recently if you were to ask her about the difficulties inherent in running a restaurant she would illustrate her point with the example of the unreliable and thoughtless dishwasher who doesn’t show up for their scheduled shift. “Have you ever scrubbed pots and pans for 10 hours while trying to keep up with the dish washing machine and staff screaming at you for plates and cutlery,” she asks exercising her flair for the dramatic arts, “ And, all the while you’re attempting to do a zillion other things that come up all at once?”Now twenty years later she seems to be reconsidering her position about the toughest job in the world. On her blog she has posted a story I have encouraged her to write entitled, My Day with a Cheesecake, about a more recent event which she describes as a trauma. When I think of trauma, I think of an emotional or psychological injury, usually resulting from an extremely stressful or life threatening situation. Because we are food people, and serious about our vocation, like most professional cooks I understand her reaction.This all started when the regular recipe columnist had suddenly become unavailable and I suggested that I would be willing to pick up the slack by submitting several seasonal recipes that needed to be cooked and photographed for the upcoming issue. Suddenly I found myself busy with other pressing projects and with the deadline looming my mother (who among many talents could add professional cook to her resume) volunteered to bake my recipe for a spiced pumpkin cheesecake recipe with a chestnut crust. I was overextended, under time constraints and frankly quite exhausted.The first obstacle was to locate chestnuts several weeks before they are in season. They are needed both for the crust and to be candied for the top of the rosettes that will decorate the cheesecake. After some initial panic, the roasted, peeled ready to eat, vacuum-pack variety becomes the logical answer. Even though my stepfather (also a professional cook and baker) has tried to candy them, the sugar solution will not stick, undaunted we all forge ahead.On her blog, Mother posts she has just discovered the difficulties involved in baking, decorating, styling and photographing what she calls an “uncooperative cheesecake” She does not tell us that it is an unseasonably hot and humid late September day, which to my way of thinking is quite instrumental in explaining several of our mishaps. The trouble, the way she sees it, begins with getting an unfamiliar recipe that she has never attempted. It is a challenge for my perfectionist and good-natured mother who has a passion for baking. She is excellent at attending to every little detail and likes things done in a specific way, her own.We are a family who have collaborated on many different culinary projects throughout the years and are beliefs are deeply ingrained. When we are working together we believe that constant intervention and attention to detail is beneficial and absolutely necessary, we derive a very real sense of accomplishment, however fleeting, from the labours of our painstaking efforts and the solicited and often unsolicited advice we offer each other.To hear my mother tell it, the chaos began with a trip to the supermarket."Why do they keep these stores so cold, she asks?",in her blog. She admits that it is to her detriment that she doesn’t shop aisle by aisle but shops as she remembers the items she requires. She rushes from place to place all the time complaining softly (read muttering) that the items she needs must have been moved from where they should be located.Finally, she has everything,however, not in the most convenient size, but nonetheless she purchases the quantities required for the recipe. With groceries in hand and heading for her car she remembers that she has forgotten to buy the whipping cream. (read whipped cream in an aerosol can) Back into the store, now where in the name of mankind do they keep it, at last, she finds and purchases what she believes to be convenience in a can.Back home and to the kitchen with recipe in hand, she begins to assemble the ingredients. She starts off with the the crust and realizes that she has forgotten to purchase the graham cracker crumbs. After a quick check through her pantry, drawer by drawer, all the time complaining loudly that someone, the inference being her husband - must have moved them. The graham crackers are eventually found and she realizes that they must have been there a while.“Oh well, we don't have to eat that part of the cheesecake if it turns out they are "funny" tasting,” she later confides in her blog.She pulls out her Cuisinart to make crumbs from the crackers. It doesn't take very long, but a mess is now starting to accumulate and she doesn’t like a messy kitchen. She puts the Cuisinart aside to be washed later. Then she hauls out the consolation prize for her years as a restaurateur, a Kenwood industrial restaurant chef mixer. It is extremely heavy so it is kept on its own shelf in a purposely built cupboard. “It is the same type of shelf that the old manual typewriters used to sit on.” blogs, mother referring to the days when she did office work. “When it's in use the space between the counter top and the free-standing kitchen island becomes almost impassable.”My parents have an enviable and large open- kitchen, designed so that two people can cook together. My mother and stepfather built and custom designed it for themselves. Nevertheless Mother is beginning to feel mild anxiety, the kitchen intervening and closing in around her.She presses on with the batter. By the time she finishes mixing, adding and stirring, she has batter on herself, the mixer and the counter top. It should be easier to add ingredients without coming into contact with a messy beater every time. She cuts and presses parchment paper to bottom and sides of spring form pan. She follows the recipe directions and pours the ingredients into the prepared pan, baking for 1 hour, then with the oven door ajar and the heat turned off, she leaves the cheesecake in the oven for additional hour. The recipe clearly states that by leaving the door ajar it will allow the cheesecake to cool slowly and prevent cracking of the surface. Anticipating perfection but to my mother’s initial horror and later mine, the cheesecake is cracked. A small fracture, not crater size, "Just enough to lend the cheesecake an air of rusticity," offers Stepfather.“Waiting now for my son the chef to come over and decorate the cheesecake and oversee the taking of photographs for the magazine. Almost the first thing chef tells me when he arrives, is how busy he has been for the past several days and so he is quite tired,” blogs Mother.Because I was sourcing quince weeks out of season, and then had to prepare and photograph a chicken and quince tagine with my friend Kathy, I was unable to get to my parents home to see the cheesecake until early the next morning. In the refrigerator for a second day, mother alleges that the properly covered cheesecake began to shrink away from its sides, and as she put it, “To top that off, it looked like a large bread bowl with the contents starting to spill over the sides. Oh dear...”It is time to decorate the cheesecake, this proverbial dog and pony show takes "three cooks". Mother blogs that the experience is chaotic, “ For starters I purchased whipped cream in an aerosol can. A definite no no, as my son, the chef, never uses anything that sprays out of a can - never, ever. So then I have to do the decorating - not really my forte. If that wasn't bad enough, instead of regular whipped cream I had purchased the light variety.”Shaking the can with all her might the edible oil, whipped cream product half-heartedly emerged from the nozzle and immediately began to weep on the plate. It would not stand up on the plate, never mind it being used as piping for a decorative rosette border on a cake.So my stepfather and I went off to the supermarket to buy real 35% cream for whipping. Mother stayed back and started the process of clean-up, at which she says she is very, very good at, even if she does say so herself.O.K. now we're all set. A new litre of whipping cream. Out comes the Cuisinart, my choice as I thought the other option would be a metal bowl and a wire balloon whisk. A great deal of spinning and beating occurs but, the cream is not light and fluffy, there are no soft peaks forming. The whipping cream is doing its own "thing" and is quickly turning into buttermilk. Immediately we realize that we need to stabilize the whipping cream.Cook number 3 (my stepfather) has suggested using some gelatin to stiffen the mixture. But he forgets to mention that the gelatin should be dissolved first in water for five minutes. Immediately we find out that if the gelatin is just slightly too hot it will deflate the whipped cream when it is added. If it is allowed to cool too much it will not incorporate into the cream. It still doesn't want to whip. Try, try again. I suggest adding icing sugar, then more icing sugar, when that doesn't work I suggests a bit of cream of tartar. Later I realize that it wasn’t cream of tartar but corn starch that we should have been using. Nothing is working to bring the whipping cream back to the desired consistency. Stepfather washes piping bag and dries it with his hair dryer as this is his favourite piping bag and no other will do. Stepfather gets ice from freezer, a clean bowl and freshly dried piping bag and its his turn. Hurray, rosettes in place, chestnuts on top of each rosette and now time for a photo. Disaster. No one would want to try something that looks like that. Take off chestnuts, remove rosettes and I start carefully cutting off the ridge of the cheesecake.With each new challenge, I remind the other two just how tired I am. Meanwhile stepfather cooks additional pumpkin pie filling in the microwave and then begins to even out the surface as if sculpting, filling in offending crack in the cheesecake and smoothing out any unevenness on the surface. It is perfection, flawless an absolute work of art, crack has miraculously disappeared.I am now in charge of the whipped cream in the piping bag. The cheesecake sits proudly on a fancy elevated cake plate, and after several attempts by all 3 cooks the toothpicks are at proper intervals so the rosettes can be piped around the newly levelled top. Ten rosettes, topped with ten chestnuts. It is time for the photographs.The counter is draped with a white tablecloth, cheesecake is placed in position and various seasonal items are added to the background. Gourds, large decorative wicker chicken plus an assortment of flowers, leaves and stems that Stepfather is gathering from his garden. We spend a lot of time placing gourds "just so." Where is the camera? Accusations fly, “Someone must have moved it!” But it is sitting on the counter right in front of Mother, exactly where she left it. She leaps up on a step stool and takes photographs from several different angles. She removes the gourds and the chicken is relegated to the background. She takes more pictures at different angles. This goes on ad nauseam. Mother thinks she is Annie Lebovitz.Stepfather returns to the garden looking for more flowers and leaves. Finally the photographs are downloaded to the computer for our inspection. We all have an opinion but the consensus is that most of the photographs won't do. Chicken’s head is far too large, there are too many gourds, too many chestnuts, and on top of that there is a dark spot in the far corner of the shot. Another white table cloth is produced and I am instructed to hang it as a backdrop. Mother searches for the camera, again. "Please don't touch it." (It is right in front of her)More pictures with same decorations. Looking for the money shot. Lights, action. Hooray, some of the photographs look very good. Now it’s time for a closeup photograph of the cake with a slice removed. The cake is cut, a slice placed on dessert plate with a fork. Again, look for the camera, find it under the newly arranged tablecloths. Set up shot again. Take a zillion more pictures, download to computer. "Well, those won't do, the cake slice is messy looking. Egad, will this ever end? Another dozen or so more shots and at last we have the pictures we need."With freshly brewed coffee we now try our cheesecake for taste, it is delicious, the texture perfect. Thank heavens for that. Mother and Stepfather both think it needs more ginger less lemon."For me, every aspect of the food business I have been involved with can be time consuming and stressful. It is no wonder we celebrate the finished product. Great food. Now I look forward to the next adventure in the kitchen. That's how I see it, anyway", blogs Mother.