Friday, March 07, 2008
$250 Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe
It's one of those forwards that I hardly ever read... but it sounded like a good chocolate chip cookie recipe!
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When decent people get screwed over, this is the result!
A little background: Neiman-Marcus, if you don't know already,
is a very expensive store; I..e., they sell your typical $8.00
T-shirt for $50.00.
Let's let them have it! THIS IS A TRUE STORY!
My daughter and I had just finished a salad at a Neiman-Marcus
Cafe In Dallas, and we decided to have a small dessert. Because both of us are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the 'Neiman-Marcus cookie.' It was So excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe, and the waitress said with a small frown, 'I'm afraid not, but you can buy The Recipe.' Well, I asked how much, and she responded, ' Only two fifty - it's a Great deal!' I agreed to that, and told her to just add it to my tab.
Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement, and the
Neiman-Marcus Charge was $285.00! I looked again, and I remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf.
As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said,
'Cookie Recipe-$250.00.' That was Outrageous! I called Neiman's Accounting Department and told them the waitress said it was 'two fifty', which clearly does not mean 'two hundred and fifty dollars' by any reasonable interpretation of the phrase.
Neiman-Marcus refused to budge. They would not refund my money because, according to them, 'What the waitress told you is not our problem. You have already seen the Recipe. We absolutely will not refund your money at this point.' I explained to the Accounting Department lady the criminal statutes which govern fraud in the State of Texas I threatened to report them to the Better Business Bureau and the Texas Attorney General's office for engaging in fraud.
I was basically told, 'Do what you want. Don't bother thinking of how you can get even, and don't bother trying to get any of your money back.
I just said, Okay, you folks got my $250, and now I'm going to
have $250 worth of fun. I told her that I was going to see to it
that every Cookie Lover in the United States with an e-mail account has a $250 cookie recipe From Neiman-Marcus...for free. She replied, 'I wish you wouldn't do this.' I said, 'Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you ripped me off!' and slammed down the phone.
So here it is!
I paid $250 for this, and I don't want Neiman-Marcus to EVER
make another penny off of this recipe!
NEIMAN-MARCUS COOKIES (Recipe may be halved)
2 cups butter
24 oz. Chocolate chips
4 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
2 cups sugar
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
5 cups blended oatmeal
4 eggs
2 tsp. Baking powder
2 tsp. Vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
Measure oatmeal, and blend in a blender to a fine powder. Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda . Add chocolate chips, Hershey bar, and nuts. Roll into balls, and place two inches apart on a cookie Sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Makes 112 cookies.
-----------------------
When decent people get screwed over, this is the result!
A little background: Neiman-Marcus, if you don't know already,
is a very expensive store; I..e., they sell your typical $8.00
T-shirt for $50.00.
Let's let them have it! THIS IS A TRUE STORY!
My daughter and I had just finished a salad at a Neiman-Marcus
Cafe In Dallas, and we decided to have a small dessert. Because both of us are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the 'Neiman-Marcus cookie.' It was So excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe, and the waitress said with a small frown, 'I'm afraid not, but you can buy The Recipe.' Well, I asked how much, and she responded, ' Only two fifty - it's a Great deal!' I agreed to that, and told her to just add it to my tab.
Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement, and the
Neiman-Marcus Charge was $285.00! I looked again, and I remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf.
As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said,
'Cookie Recipe-$250.00.' That was Outrageous! I called Neiman's Accounting Department and told them the waitress said it was 'two fifty', which clearly does not mean 'two hundred and fifty dollars' by any reasonable interpretation of the phrase.
Neiman-Marcus refused to budge. They would not refund my money because, according to them, 'What the waitress told you is not our problem. You have already seen the Recipe. We absolutely will not refund your money at this point.' I explained to the Accounting Department lady the criminal statutes which govern fraud in the State of Texas I threatened to report them to the Better Business Bureau and the Texas Attorney General's office for engaging in fraud.
I was basically told, 'Do what you want. Don't bother thinking of how you can get even, and don't bother trying to get any of your money back.
I just said, Okay, you folks got my $250, and now I'm going to
have $250 worth of fun. I told her that I was going to see to it
that every Cookie Lover in the United States with an e-mail account has a $250 cookie recipe From Neiman-Marcus...for free. She replied, 'I wish you wouldn't do this.' I said, 'Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you ripped me off!' and slammed down the phone.
So here it is!
I paid $250 for this, and I don't want Neiman-Marcus to EVER
make another penny off of this recipe!
NEIMAN-MARCUS COOKIES (Recipe may be halved)
2 cups butter
24 oz. Chocolate chips
4 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
2 cups sugar
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
5 cups blended oatmeal
4 eggs
2 tsp. Baking powder
2 tsp. Vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
Measure oatmeal, and blend in a blender to a fine powder. Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda . Add chocolate chips, Hershey bar, and nuts. Roll into balls, and place two inches apart on a cookie Sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Makes 112 cookies.
Finally, Called To The Stove
Much as I couldn't wait to be on the line, I must admit that I'm not a very big fan of this station.
I was on Garde Manger for the longest time now (here in California, back in New York, I was working on the line) and I was just getting bored. I needed something new to do. I needed to learn how to cook on the line.
I must say that there's a huge difference between cooking AND cooking on the line. I'll expound on that later. And, there's an even bigger difference between cooking on the line from my job in New York and cooking on the line on my job now in California.
Cooking is pretty intuitive. Or at least to me it is. Taste it, smell it, taste it, smell it and cook it till it's done, till it's right. Till it's perfect. Till I like it, just until I love it.
Cooking on the line is a whole different ball game. There's a logistical strategy in play when you think about it.
1 - Prepping - a lot of the items may take a long time to cook. The sauces especially. But that's the beauty of it. It takes time for the sauces to cook down. It develops flavor as it cooks. And while sauces are cooking, cream has to be reduced for fondue, Wine and Shallots are reducing for Beurre Blanc, Potatoes are in the pot for Papas, Greens are blanched for building pots and making purees and I have to do my knife work while I have everything going on the stove.
2 - Setting up - I have to heat up my soups and sauces, just around that time in the afternoon when every single pot is occupied, if not in the sink with some crust stuck on it. We don't really have dishwashers in the kitchen until later in the afternoon so I have to was my own pots so I can heat up my soups. Taste it, season it, stretch it, too thin, fix it, too salty, fix it. Do I add water or stock? Do I use veg or chicken? Do I add cream or butter to keep it together. More salt? More salt! And oh the beurre blanc needs to be finished. The foam has to be set up. The artichoke has to be pureed. And I have custards in the oven that needs to be pulled out and cooled! How about my chips? Can Garde Mange fry them for me? And the grapes need to be peeled! This is a one-man station! I should be able to do it!
3 - Service - I'm not even going to elaborate on this. It's bad enough that I only have 3 burners when one plate already uses 2 out of the 3. And when there are orders fired one after the other, back to back with souffles and scallops that need to come out with an Abalone and Papas followed by a Duck Soup and a Porcini soup and 7 tasting foie steaks... I just don't know where to turn anymore. I have to get the pan down, run to the walk in, then run to the oven at the back, then fire what ever has to go out and set the plates while the proteins are on the pan, hopefully not burning if not overcooking, and make sure that the sauces are out on the window before the plate is finished.
And this is a one person station. The good thing about Hot Apps is that there's 2 or 3 other people on the line for fish and meat stations that are usually not too busy yet while the appetizers are going out. So if I holler, help comes.
So far, I've been able to get by. With a little help from my friends on the line of course, assuming they're not hardly slammed with fire tickets.
Ok, There are a few good reasons why I moved:
1 - I did like working with Chef Peter. I consider him my first chef out of culinary school... well next to my mom and my grand mother of course who were my chefs in my lifetime. I must admit I learned a lot during my internship with Chef Peter. In his kitchen, you have to run as fast as you can and get a plate up or his bullet will hit you right in the head. Ok, I'll get on that later.
2 - I'll get to work with Acacia and Brian, people I loved working with at Aqua. I learned so much from them
3 - I miss fine dining. After working at 2 other restaurants that are just as fast paced but are not really fine dining restaurants, I started missing the logistical nightmare of working in a fine dining kitchen... coordinating plates, timing everything fired at the same time, fine chiffonades and perfect micro brunois.
4 - I miss the seasonal menu of California Cuisine. I like witnessing the season change with the menu change. It's exciting!
Meet Chef Peter. I don't have to say much...
2 - I'll get to work with Acacia and Brian, people I loved working with at Aqua. I learned so much from them
3 - I miss fine dining. After working at 2 other restaurants that are just as fast paced but are not really fine dining restaurants, I started missing the logistical nightmare of working in a fine dining kitchen... coordinating plates, timing everything fired at the same time, fine chiffonades and perfect micro brunois.
4 - I miss the seasonal menu of California Cuisine. I like witnessing the season change with the menu change. It's exciting!
So meet Brian Starky. He's a cool cook!
I respect his opinion when it comes to how food should taste.
If he says it's delicious. It's DELICIOUS!
I respect his opinion when it comes to how food should taste.
If he says it's delicious. It's DELICIOUS!
And the crazy lady below is Acacia O'boyle. O boy O'boyle!
She's the craziest and probably the fastest person I've ever worked with.
You turn around and the next minute she got a sturgeon mousse together, ready to be piped in fragile fried canolis. Not to mention she sneaked out and smoked a cigarette in between prep work.
We got along well and worked very well together too! We set up a station without really talking. We can mentally communicate! She's half Filipina so sometimes we I call her my other half.
We seem to be like 2 people with the same person. Well, we were born on the same day, 5 years and 50,000 miles apart.
We're planning on getting our own thing going.
Frenchy Filipino cuisine and we'll call it Chez Pinay!
She's the craziest and probably the fastest person I've ever worked with.
You turn around and the next minute she got a sturgeon mousse together, ready to be piped in fragile fried canolis. Not to mention she sneaked out and smoked a cigarette in between prep work.
We got along well and worked very well together too! We set up a station without really talking. We can mentally communicate! She's half Filipina so sometimes we I call her my other half.
We seem to be like 2 people with the same person. Well, we were born on the same day, 5 years and 50,000 miles apart.
We're planning on getting our own thing going.
Frenchy Filipino cuisine and we'll call it Chez Pinay!
Meet Chef Peter. I don't have to say much...
In Between Blog Backlogs
So what happened between New York and California.
To make the long story short, I did love working at the Spice Market. I got to cook fish which I really enjoyed. I was able to work the Saute station, which used to be an all-man station until moi. That was really fun too. I've encountered a few sexist remarks but, it comes with it.
I enjoyed New York, a lot! But for some reason, I just had to do this. I just had to go to California and work with Chef P. I've been asking myself what the compelling reason for the move is, I really couldn't find anything concrete. Somehow, I just have to.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm one to follow my heart. So I did.
The transition was pretty sharp too. I had to go to work on my last day in New York. And I had to go to work almost immediately after arriving in California.
I felt like I just broke down my station in New York and woke up working another station, except it's across the country rather than simply across the kitchen.
And then it just got too busy, too busy to write a line or two to share my day to my friends and family abroad that I hardly get to talk to. The only way they find out what's going on with me is through my ramblings on my blog.
So now I'm back, catching up on blog backlogs. This time though, I'll share more recipes, tips and tricks and a few food trivia that I picked up here and there.
To make the long story short, I did love working at the Spice Market. I got to cook fish which I really enjoyed. I was able to work the Saute station, which used to be an all-man station until moi. That was really fun too. I've encountered a few sexist remarks but, it comes with it.
I enjoyed New York, a lot! But for some reason, I just had to do this. I just had to go to California and work with Chef P. I've been asking myself what the compelling reason for the move is, I really couldn't find anything concrete. Somehow, I just have to.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm one to follow my heart. So I did.
The transition was pretty sharp too. I had to go to work on my last day in New York. And I had to go to work almost immediately after arriving in California.
I felt like I just broke down my station in New York and woke up working another station, except it's across the country rather than simply across the kitchen.
And then it just got too busy, too busy to write a line or two to share my day to my friends and family abroad that I hardly get to talk to. The only way they find out what's going on with me is through my ramblings on my blog.
So now I'm back, catching up on blog backlogs. This time though, I'll share more recipes, tips and tricks and a few food trivia that I picked up here and there.
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