Cross Contamination

A couple days ago, I was sitting on the restaurant deck eating lunch with the art director of a magazine after a photoshoot—we couldn't let all that good food go to waste, now could we?—and during the course of our conversation, he asked, "How antagonistic is your relationship with the Health Department?"

His question seems to be informed by books he's read and stories from the city where he lives. I think I surprised him when I replied that I had never found the Health Department to be against us, that they have always approached me and my restaurant from the perspective of giving us guidance about how to handle food safely, about how to apply the ivory tower "Health Code" to real world restaurant conditions.

We seem to have a really good working relationship, even though we've had the occasional skirmish over the years. The relationship with each inspector has been different, but each has operated from the perspective that we are not trying to handle food badly, that we really do have a vested interest in not harming customers. It has never been an us versus them thing.

It was my guest's turn to surprise me by asking, "Restaurant kitchens are a lot safer than most home kitchens, aren't they?" In the restaurant world, our equipment, procedures, and training are designed to help prevent foodborne illness. So, when I leave the restaurant world where we take all this for granted, I am often shocked by what I see in home kitchens. I have seen the most egregious food handling practices in home kitchens, so I had to agree with him.

This led into a discussion of cross contamination and other terribly unsafe food handling practices that I have witnessed in home kitchens. Simply put, cross contamination is the transfer of pathogens from one food substance to another. More specifically, we're talking about the transfer of pathogens to a food that will not be cooked sufficiently to kill those pathogens, thus greatly increasing the risk of becoming sick.

For example, if you were to cut raw chicken on a cutting board (chicken is notorious for being contaminated with Salmonella) and then you were to chop a salad on the same cutting board without first sanitizing it (Unthinkable? I've seen it!), you would put everyone eating the salad at risk of becoming ill. More frequently, cross contamination is not this obvious. Picture the same scenario, in which the cutting board has been sanitized, but in which you use the same knife, without sanitizing it.

At the restaurant, we use color-coded cutting boards to help prevent cross contamination. As you see in the photo, we break down meat on the red board, poultry on the yellow board, seafood on the blue board, and ready-to-eat foods and vegetables on the green board. Notice that we store the boards by hanging them with good air circulation to ensure that they dry properly.

I'm sure you don't have enough room to store four cutting boards at home (I surely don't, not even in my vast kitchen), so that's not an option for you. But here are a few simple things you can do to prevent cross contamination in your kitchen:

• Be aware that cross contamination is an issue.


• Wash your hands and knives frequently in hot soapy water.


• Plan your cutting such that you prep vegetables and ready-to-eat food before raw proteins.


• Make a sanitizer solution of a capful of household bleach per gallon of water and wipe surfaces frequently with that solution.


• Store raw proteins in your refrigerator well wrapped so that they cannot leak.


• Separate raw proteins in your refrigerator such that if they leak, they cannot contaminate anything else.

You can learn more at www.foodsafety.gov.

Surprise!

Yesterday was the prep day from hell in getting ready for our monthly wine dinner, this month our annual Harvest Dinner celebrating the hard work and products of our primary produce suppliers Gene and Beth Nowak of Mayfair Farm.

These multi-course meals are a lot of work: think about cooking Thanksgiving dinner for all your family and then multiply that by ten. I went in the kitchen at 7am and I never really left it until just after we opened for dinner, around 5:30pm. I blanched and peeled hundreds of tiny yellow tomatoes for the gazpacho, sliced about half a bushel of heirloom Corno di Toro peppers, cleaned and roasted 10 pounds of green beans, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea that I was constantly in motion all day long trying to get ready for the Harvest Dinner. And if ever there were a day that I really did not need any interruption or distraction in my day, yesterday would have been that day. So what could have been been more fitting than at three o'clock when a server came into the kitchen to tell me, "The health inspector's here."

Surprise! Depending on the inspector, it's generally a two-hour guided tour of the facility. But our current inspector's a really reasonable guy and when I told him that I was going to have to keep working while he did his thing, he was most agreeable.

I was shocked to learn that he has read this blog (and probably is reading this post, so thanks for working with me) and my comments about the health advisory that we are required to display. Those of you who read this blog know that I believe that the advisory is ineffective because it confuses those who read it. It was really unexpected to have a reasonable conversation about the confusion with the inspector.

I know that no day is ever perfect for an inspection, but why the single busiest day of the month?!? Just the restaurant gods making sure that I stay on my toes.

On Cooking Steaks

I just walked into the One Block West kitchen after having been away on vacation for seven days. Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you're away from something for a while, when you return, you see things in a different way?

The first thing I saw upon entering the kitchen was this poster directly opposite the kitchen door. I have seen this poster so many times that I no longer pay attention to it. Being away from the kitchen got me to focus on it once again, so I thought that I'd share it with you. I got this poster many years ago, probably as part of a ServSafe (food safety training) class. It was so hilarious that we had to post it on the wall of our kitchen. You'll need to click on the thumbnail provided here to read the words on the large photo.

This poster, from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and others, strikes us as very funny because it is yet another attempt by the government to protect us from us by trying to keep us from eating rare and raw meats. On this poster, the authors associated the common names that we use for doneness of meat (e.g., "rare" and "medium") with temperatures that a meat thermometer will read when the steak is cooked to this doneness. What's really crafty and Big Brotherish about this is that they have slid the temperature scale about 30 degrees Fahrenheit so that anyone cooking a steak according to this guide will overcook it by 30 degrees such that the final temperature of the steak ends up where the government wants it to be, in their so-called safe zone.

This is so absurd that I would immediately fire any grill cook who followed this scale. Why? Because the steak would be coming back from the dining room just as soon as the customer who ordered it cut into it and found it overcooked.

We don't generally use meat thermometers to determine doneness of our steaks—any grill cook who has cooked more than about three shifts in a restaurant can determine doneness by feel—but if we were to use meat thermometers on steaks, here is the scale that we would use:

XR, extra rare, 110 F, just barely warm blue center
R, rare, 115 F, blue with red around the edges
MR, medium rare, 120-125 F, warm and red in center
M, medium, 130-135 F, pink in the center
MW, medium well, 145 F, slightly pink in the center
W, well, 155 F, brown to barely pink in the center

As you can see, our "friends" would have us cook your medium rare steak to the degree of doneness that you associate with a medium well steak. Tell me, would you be happy if I did this to you?

Served Raw or Undercooked

On October 16, 2007, the Virginia Department of Health required all restaurants in the state to help protect the citizens of the Commonwealth from themselves. We, the restaurants that is, are now required to tell our customers that items are served raw or undercooked might be hazardous with a statement such as the following:

*Served raw or undercooked or may be ordered undercooked. The Virginia Department of Health warns you that raw or undercooked meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish, or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness.

I have put the blame for this nonsense squarely on the VDH by stating that they are the ones warning you. I operate from the premise that my customers are adults and do not need or want me helping them to decide what is appropriate for their diets.

Do I have to tell you how stupid this warning looks taped to the front of the display case at my favorite sushi bar?

Do you have any idea what a nightmare this verbiage at the bottom of our menus has been for our servers? Can you imagine how many times a shift they must answer the question, "Does this mean that the quail is served raw?"

The VDH, following the lead of the FDA, has decided that most proteins and potentially harmful foods must be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 155 degrees. Have you ever had a steak cooked to 155 degrees? It's a travesty, a lump of shoe leather, and a dishonor to the cow that died so that we could eat it.

The required statement on our menu merely articulates that for certain food items such as steaks, you may order it rare if you like, but don't say that the VDH didn't warn you that you might get sick. They don't bother to mention that you have a higher chance of getting killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the restaurant, do they?

And for other foods where we don't give you the choice of how you want it cooked, the warning is stating that we're not going to make shoe leather out of that duck, because you're either going to send it back or go tell everyone you know how bad it was.

I've been in restaurants long enough to know that bad things can happen when people handle food and I know that the VDH is sincerely trying to help prevent that. But, guys, a regulation that causes more confusion on the part of the consumer is not helping.