Chef de Cuisine required for Roka Macau

Club Lusitano Looking for Sous Chef

Chinese Chef for Culinary Promotion Trip to Europe needed

click here for more info.

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Charge         :        365.-per Member  465.- for non member

See you there!

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For the Benefit of All Sentient Beings

By: Fred Tibbitts Jr.  Global Wine Program Consultant, NYC

2009 has at last arrived around the world.  Most of us are hoping for change.  Change for the good.  The President Elect of the United States has proclaimed “…At This Defining Moment in American History…Change Has Come to America”.  And changed all we are; no matter our identity or whereabouts on planet Earth.

Gandhi said “Be the change you seek”.  But is it that simple?  For most of us, our desire for change is recognition that our lives are less than perfect; that we feel driven to be connected with a better solution for our unhappiness and perceived lack of satisfaction with our lives.

Many feel lost.  “Where are the great leaders of the past?” they ask, who arose to lead us from the depths of despair, giving us hope that the future would soon be better for everyone.  They cry out “Is there not someone who will show us the way?”  

The truth is that we all have the potential to be great leaders.  Be the leader you seek.  Our intuitive self, the home of our connection with the Energy of the Universe and all that is Real and Unreal, knows the way forward.  We need only ask and our path appears at our feet, bathed beyond our imagination in the White Light that beckons us to begin our journey.

At every turn, events and others would have us believe that we are at the mercy of our future; that we are not in control of our destiny.  Those who would discourage us to be the leader we seek, do so because they, themselves are lost and do not recognize their Amazing Grace within.  Events unfold without warning, suggesting that our fate is sealed, that we are defenseless to make a difference or save our souls or more importantly, the souls of others.

But those who have become One with their intuitive self and have learned to trust in it know differently: We can see the way forward and we can be the great leader we seek.  We must have the unwavering conviction to look forward and not be distracted by events and those who would seek to discourage us with seemingly irrefutable logic.  We must go against the wind, fire and rain that assault us without conscience.

We must never surrender our confidence that we will prevail, despite whatever our analytic mind would argue or suggest we accept as reality.  For our reality, now and forever more is directly connected to the strength of our belief in ourselves to be our solution and our hope for the future.   Never surrender your dreams.  Never give-up and your future will be what you make of it: Not what events or others would impose upon you.

Which brings us to the motivation we must embrace to be the future we seek.  Great leaders are not focused on being great: They are focused on showing others the way to a better place, never at the expense of any individual or group.  They exist to be a beacon in the night; the White Light that bathes our path forward to that place where our dreams and altruistic ambitions await, as a shelter for all from the storm.

If our genuine intention is service to others, not ourselves, with unwavering confidence that we can and must make a difference for the benefit of All Sentient Beings, it will be so.  We must be our future, but for the benefit of all humanity.  It is a perfect Universe: We need only understand how it is organized and that we have the ability to be the future we seek, but for the benefit of All Sentient Beings, not merely ourselves.

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Use A Slow Cooking Method To Match.

By: Christopher Gallaga

In the past decade, it was high times for chefs in Hong Kong. Some of the “elite” newcomers to our catering scene were even using only the centre of prime filet and discarding all the remainder.  Wasteful maybe, but it was allegedly what the customer had ordered.

In times of general economic excess, center-cut, prime, steaks minimally prepared and quickly seared to order may be a good way to keep up with the demand of a customer base that has temporarily decided to ignore the fool hearty impact of such excess. But as the economy tightens so do all purse strings, and it is no longer easy to ignore frivolous waste or extravagance.

For the chef who only knows or remembers prime cuts and minimalist cooking methods this is a dangerous season indeed. Typically our cost of goods (food and beverage) is the first to heat up in high times and the last to cool during a down turn. Last I checked many chefs were struggling between the rock of consumer demand for low prices and the hard place of soaring food costs. The news on this front can be good, if the chef has courage and patience.

We need only look to our mothers and grandmothers who made many great family meals with scant pennies. The traditions of slow cooking come from the working class kitchens most chefs grew up around, and they are as old as both culinary art and food science itself.

It has long been know that aging primal cuts of beef in a cool room for a few weeks both strengthens flavor and greatly increases tenderness, all due to the meats own enzymatic processes. Meat can be carefully slow roasted, braised or stewed for dozens of hours using mild heat to bring about both similar enzymatic processes and also the frugal application of heat will gently unwind the tight proteins and make the toughest cut of meat both very flavorful and as tender as ambrosia. Immersing poultry and pork in brine for just a few hours expands the cell structure of the meat allowing flavor and moisture to move in while softening normally tough and elastic sinew of the meat. Adding acidic marinades to fishes and seafood’s can infuse flavor and soften tougher cuts of the fish.  Utilizing scraps, shells and bones to slowly infuse tap water with those abundant flavors until they become stock is as old as cookery itself. Clarifying that stock with meat scraps, vegetable bits and eggshells creates the lordly and sublime consommé, once the emperor of all soups.

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By: Christopher Gallaga

I must have been born color blind, I just don’t see it. I see no black fella, white fella, yellow fella, nor red fella, at least not worth noting. I see only the human animal, both in all it’s glory and all it’s shame as well. I see a smelly one walking ahead, and one there, drinking too much. That one behind us is smiling, and there are two there in love. Some are playing together, one is helping a small child, and others are at war. I see only the human animal doing all it does. I must be blind, or perhaps mentally unstable, because I cannot understand you, my ancestor. You who are long gone in the mist of time, and you who have just recently perished, you had what seem to me to be very strange ideas.

How could you come to a land and see a person made of skin and bones, flesh and blood, the same as you in nearly every way; the differences so minor that they had to be grasped at like trying to capture smoke in the palm of your hand? You said their skin was the wrong shade, eyes the wrong shape, hair the wrong texture. They talked differently, told different stories, prayed to different gods, sang different songs, celebrated different things and mourned in different ways. All this I can understand, all this I also see.  But how could they not be human animals, equal in every reasonable way to either you or I? How did you dream up the manifold geometry required to cut and splice so that only what looked most like you, acted only in a way you proscribed, would fit into your idea of the human race? 

Black fella, yellow fella, red fella, white fella, mixed breed; you all did the same, in one way or another, I know.  The victors got to call the shots, and through agriculture, disease and technology, dominate the vanquished for a time. But how could you not see what I see?

Maybe I am not blind at all; maybe my judgment is not so disturbed, as well. Could it be that it was you, with your wars, your incessant need to dominate and destroy, who had been insane, and obtuse? Were you blind to the beauty of the diversity of life, even within our own species? Did you not comprehend the fact that the true glory of the world, is that we all have something to put into the melting pot, and the result of that concoction will be a far better human culture than any single contribution can possibly achieve?

Then again, perhaps I am deranged. Now a day the children of the conquerors are rightly embarrassed and apologetic for the sins of their fathers. And the children of the subdued are demanding that no quarter be given, that turn about is fair play.  I don’t see that a new imbalance is a just way to settle the score. And while you, my ancestor may have been guilty of uncharitable deeds; I have taken nothing that was not mine. What I have I worked for and gained through the labor of my own sweat and blood. I have trod on no one, and respected all as my equal, or perhaps better.

I long for the day when we will all recognize that the only thing of true value to us on this earth is the limited time we have to spend, and how we spend it together. I am perhaps mad as a hatter, because through all the sorrow I have seen in the world, all the continued bigotry and bloodshed; I believe we progeny of common ancestors can reach this apex together. I believe that if we do so, we will not need stories of a life after this. Rather we will be living in the greatest of all possible worlds, here and now.

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http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/travel/globespotters/?cat=7

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