Chef’s table NZ

  1. The steak is wet Moisture is the enemy of browning. Pat the steak completely dry with paper towel before it touches the pan. Wet steak steams and turns grey. 2. The pan isn't hot enough Heat the pan for several minutes, until it's properly hot, before the steak goes in. If you don't hear a sharp sizzle, wait. Use cast iron or heavy stainless steel, not thin non-stick. 3. It's seasoned too late (or too shyly) Season generously with salt. Salting about 40 minutes ahead, or just before it hits the pan, both work. Salting halfway through cooking doesn't. 4. You're cooking by time, not temperature Steaks vary in thickness, so timings are a guess. A cheap probe thermometer is the best tool you can buy. For medium-rare, take it off the heat around 52–55°C. It keeps climbing while it rests. 5. You skip the rest Give it 5 to 10 minutes on a rack or board before cutting. Cut too early and the juices run out onto the plate. Bonus: finish with butter In the last mi...

People imagine a health inspection like a surprise raid — clipboards, torches, someone crawling under the fridge with a flashlight. It's not that dramatic. But it's also not nothing, and if you've never been through one, here's what it actually looks like from the chef's side of the pass. It's Not the Surprise Raid You're Picturing Anymore If you're picturing an inspector turning up unannounced with a torch and a clipboard, that's the old-school version. These days in NZ, verification visits under the Food Act are usually booked in — you get an email, you agree on a date and time, and the visit happens on that schedule. That doesn't mean it's an easy pass. You know the day, but you don't get to fake the fundamentals. A booked visit still checks the same things a surprise one would — it just means the standard has to be real on a normal Tuesday, not staged for one afternoon. What They're Actually Checking It's less about spotless s...

  People use these two words like they're interchangeable. In a kitchen, they're not even close. The short answer A cook prepares food. A chef runs a kitchen. Every chef can cook. Not every cook is a chef. That's the whole distinction, and almost everything else falls out of it. What a cook actually does A cook follows the recipe, the spec, the standard that's already been set. They come in, work their section, execute what's been decided, and go home. That's not an insult — a great cook who's fast, consistent, and reliable is worth their weight in gold to any kitchen. Most of the people keeping a busy service running are cooks, not chefs, and it should stay that way. What a chef actually does A chef decides what the standard is in the first place. Menu, costing, ordering, training the team, tasting every dish before it leaves, taking the call when something's wrong at 8pm on a Saturday. A chef is responsible for the kitchen, not just for their own secti...

  Walk into any kitchen and I can tell you roughly how it's run before anyone says a word to me. Not because I'm gifted. Because after twenty years, the signs are always the same. The first thing I look at isn't the food It's the floor. Not for dirt — for how people move on it. Are people walking around each other with intent, or are they bumping into each other? A kitchen with a good rhythm has people who know exactly where everyone else is without looking. A kitchen in trouble has people colliding, apologising, resetting. The sound tells you more than the sight Before I look at anything, I listen. A healthy kitchen has a certain hum — pans going down with purpose, calls being answered immediately, not repeated three times. A kitchen under strain sounds different. Calls hang in the air. Someone's voice gets sharper than it needs to be. Silence in the wrong place — no chatter, no calls, nobody communicating — is often worse than noise. Silence usually means people h...

  My first knife was a Wüsthof, and it had a bolster. I bought it purely because it was beautiful — to my eyes at the time, it looked like what a "real" chef's knife should look like. Looks were the whole reason. It took years of standing at a bench, ten hours a day, before I understood what actually makes a knife worth owning — and it's not what most buying guides tell you. You don't need a block of twelve knives. You need one. One knife, not a set If you're starting out, buy one solid chef's knife and learn it properly. An 8-inch (20-21cm) chef's knife will get you through 90% of what happens on a home kitchen bench — chopping, slicing, mincing, breaking down most things you'll cook. Everything else is a nice-to-have you can add later once you know what you're missing. My Wüsthof was a 21cm chef's knife, all stainless steel — but it did have a bolster, and looking back, that's exactly what I'd tell you to avoid. Skip the bolster M...