Chef Bobby Buzz - Spice Rubs and Seasoning Blends

Ingredients

Gravy Base

• 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
• 2 pounds turkey necks and/or wings and any giblets that came with turkey
• 2 cups diced onions
• 1 cup diced peeled carrots
• 1 cup diced celery
• 6 cups (or more) low-salt chicken broth

Turkey

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
• 4 tablespoons Bobby Buzz Coq Rub
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme plus 15 fresh thyme sprigs
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary plus 5 fresh rosemary sprigs
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh sage plus 5 fresh sage sprigs
• 1-2 large onions, quartered
• 1-2 large lemons, quartered
• 1 10- to 12-pound turkey
• 4 cups low-salt chicken broth
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour

Preparation

For gravy base:

Melt butter in heavy large deep skillet over high heat. Add turkey necks and/or wings and sauté until deep brown, about 15 minutes. Add onions, carrots, and celery and sauté until vegetables are deep brown, about 15 minutes. Add 6 cups chicken broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Pour gravy base through strainer set over 4-cup measuring cup, pressing on solids to extract liquid. If necessary, add enough chicken broth to gravy base to measure 4 cups.

(Gravy base can be prepared 2 days ahead. Refrigerate and rewarm before using.)

For turkey:

Mix the butter, Bobby Buzz Coq Rub and all minced herbs in small bowl. Transfer ¼ cup to another small bowl and reserve for gravy; let stand at room temperature.

Set rack at lowest position in oven and preheat to 425°F. Rinse turkey inside and out; pat dry. Starting at neck end, slide hand between skin and breast meat to loosen skin. Rub1/4 cup spiced herb butter over breast meat under skin. Place turkey on rack set in large roasting pan. Sprinkle main cavity generously with salt and pepper. Place 1/4 cup butter and all fresh herb sprigs, quartered onion(s) and lemon(s) in main cavity. Tuck wing tips under. Tie legs together loosely. Rub remaining herb butter over outside of turkey. Sprinkle turkey generously with salt and pepper.

Place turkey in oven and roast 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F, pour a cup of broth over the turkey and continue roasting, adding more broth and basting as needed (every 30 minutes or so). If the turkey has reached a deep golden crust, cover turkey loosely with foil. Roast turkey until thermometer inserted into thickest part of thigh registers 165°F. Transfer turkey to platter; let stand 30 minutes (internal temperature will rise 5 to 10 degrees).

Strain pan juices into bowl; whisk in gravy base. Melt reserved ¼ cup spiced herb butter in heavy large saucepan over medium heat; add flour and whisk constantly until roux is golden brown, about 6 minutes. Gradually add pan juice-gravy base mixture; increase heat and whisk constantly until gravy thickens, boils, and is smooth. Reduce heat to medium; boil gently until gravy is reduced to 4 1/2 cups, whisking often, about 10 minutes. Season gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

Chicken: A Story of Love and Hate

The Love Part

The great gourmand, Talleyrand, once said that the chicken is a canvas upon which the chef paints his masterpiece.

A cook that I worked with named Gene told me, “A chicken ain’t nuttin’ but a bird”.

I suspect the real truth is somewhere in between those two. Chicken, as we know it, has become a tasteless, dry piece of cardboard served with an unnaturally yellow sauce or gravy. Why is this you ask? There are a number of reasons, the first being that the modern chicken is raised inside a building in little pens and all fed pretty much the same diet, no greenery, no bugs, none of the stuff they would eat if they had an option. Another reason is the way we prefer to buy it: The boneless skinless chicken breast is missing one more adjective, Tasteless; because the bones and skin add a terrific amount of flavor when cooked intact in and on the bird.

The final insult we inflict upon the noble chicken is cooking it to death. There are some health concerns to eating undercooked chicken, but using a quick-reading dial thermometer can help you cook chicken to the required temperature without completely desiccating the poor bird.

There are a couple of things you can do to help your chicken taste better, First buy a whole bird, and cut it up your self. The chef way to cut up a chicken is to grab it by the Pope’s nose and hold it upright. Using a sharp knife, cut down on each side of the backbone and remove it. (I save and freeze this part until I have enough to make some stock.) Then turn it flat with the inside of the chicken facing upward and whack it hard to split it down the middle on the same line as the backbone. Now you have 2 halves.

Separate the legs from the breasts and then cut the wings free, I like to leave a goodly amount of breast meat on the wings by cutting about an inch away from the joint where the wing attaches to the breast. This also allows the wing joint to cook quicker than if you left it intact, so there will be no need to cook it to death to get it cooked through.

Another trick I like to use is a quick brining of the bird. I mix 1/4 cup of salt into a quart of water and soak the bird for an hour or so. This allows the bird to cook faster, without drying. And if you BBQ on the grill, it also helps keep the flare ups to a minimum. The salt also seasons the bird all the way through.

When I use CHEF BOBBY BUZZ COQ RUB on chicken, I figure 1 tablespoon or so should add a nice natural smoky flavor to the bird. I like to toss the chicken in 3 tablespoons of olive oil and then add the Coq Rub. Let the rub hydrate on the meat for an hour or so, then place chicken in a roasting pan and pour any oil and spice juices left in the marinating bowl. I like my chicken skin to get nice and brown so I cook it at a little higher temp than other meats, about 375 degrees for about an hour or if you brined the bird maybe 50 min.

If for dietary reasons you can’t eat the skin, peel it back, season the meat and pull the skin back over. When it comes time to eat, just pull the skin off and don’t eat it, but it will help flavor the food and also keep it moist. Bon Appetit.

Part Deux, The Hate Part

When I was a boy, my family used to spend summers at my grandparents’ house in upstate New York. It was a huge old farm house built by the brother of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, one of the Livingston’s I presume, Robert or Peter. My Grandmother was a great cook and she taught me a lot when she let me hang out in her kitchen. She was into composting and organic gardening before it was cool. She always kept a couple of chickens in her garden to eat bugs off the plants, their scratching also helped control weeds and the droppings were a natural fertilizer.

Now, these weren’t really nice chickens; they were almost feral and would charge out of the garden to attack you if you walked too close to them. We feared them; they were evil. We found it to be great sport to run from them and see if they could catch us, and if we turned and chased them back they would run back into the garden.

My grandparents’ house, being old and in the country, had a septic tank and between the 5 kids in our family, my cousin Jimmy, our Aunt Ernesta and my parents, we could really overwhelm the plumbing. The solution to all this was for all the kids to use an old outhouse next to the barn out by the swimming pool. Oh, the outhouse…the sights the sounds, the smells; we hated it.

There were flies the size of your fist living in there and we were warned about the black widow spiders. Great. Sure, we were going to go and pee in there. There was an option for us guys: the stone wall. Being an old farm, there was a stone wall running the length of their property made from fieldstones, dredged up from plowing over the years. If you have ever tried to dig a hole in Upstate New York, you know how rocky the soil can be, so it was a pretty good sized wall with pretty big stones. So instead of facing the horrors of the outhouse we would drop our swimming trunks to our knees and pee on the stone wall.

Well, one day I felt the call of nature and tried to sneak into the house to use the indoor plumbing. Damn, caught in the act. So I tried the outhouse option, too many smelly bugs. Damn, I had to pee. I quietly sneaked past the garden so as not to awaken the chickens and walked up to a spot on the stone wall that I had used before; I dropped my swimsuit down to my knees and let it fly. Man, I really had to go bad.

I was just about finished when I heard a noise behind me. It was one of the evil chickens. I couldn’t run because I had my pants down around my knees and the chicken started to peck at me. I was still mid pee and as I tried to get away I fell down…still peeing. I rolled over, still peeing, tried to stand, still peeing, and all the while the chicken was pecking at my naked parts.

I finally was able to stand and pull my pants up. I was wet and literally pissed. The chicken made another move for some more pecking action. Feeling the need to defend myself I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find, a large stone from the stone wall. It was about the size of my 7-year-old hand. With the chicken advancing toward me in a menacing manner, I threw the rock with all my might and hit that chicken right in the head. The bird was down for the count and twitched a couple times, and then it just lay there.

My happiness with my well-aimed rock gave way to a sense of dread. I had just killed one of Grandma’s chickens. I panicked, in my urine soaked stupor I was wondering how I needed to handle this…Confess my crimes? And all my brothers and cousin Jimmy would find out why I was all wet. In a moment of clarity, I realized what I had to do. I grabbed the lifeless bird and ran up to the side of the country road they lived on and threw that damn chicken on the shoulder. I ran into the house and told my Grandmother that the chicken was up by the side of the road eating gravel and must have been hit by a car. She said that was too bad and had me bring the bird in and showed me how to gut it and pulled the feathers . Not something I had planned on doing but did it as my own personal penance. We had fried chicken for dinner that night and my grandmother told the story to all about the bird getting hit by the car and how I cleaned the bird and helped her cook it. I really didn’t enjoy the dinner that much, probably because of my guilt for the lie and that funny urine smell I couldn’t wash off.

Many years later when I was cooking with my grandmother, I asked her if she remembered the chicken we cooked that day. She started laughing. “You mean the chicken that attacked you and made you pee all over yourself?”

“You knew?” I said.

She told me it was the funniest thing she had ever seen and she had seen the whole thing. She was most impressed with my clever lie and knew I was mortified about the peeing all over myself and didn’t want to embarrass me further. I loved my Grammy.

The cold weather we’ve been having lately reminded me of the day I moved to North Carolina. It was a cold and snowy day in Albany, New York. I had packed all my worldly possessions into my 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and pointed that mother South. There was less and less snow the further I drove down the super slab, Interstate 95. I turned the heat down and then off. After spending the night in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I set off bright and early for the final leg of my trip to Southern Pines, North Carolina.

I hit the NC border at just about noon, and I needed to get something in my stomach other than lousy rest stop coffee. As I sat myself in the booth by the window where I could ensure the safety of my loaded car, the gum-snappin’, teased-hair, dentally-challenged waitress walked up to my table, pulled a pencil from her bouffant and said, ”What’ll it be taday, shuge?”

I told her I was from New York and this was my first time in the South. I asked her what people liked to eat, maybe a local specialty.

She took no time in answering, “The barbecue is very popular.”

I asked her what kind of BBQ, and she gave me a quizzical look and said, “Honey, there ain’t but one kind”.

This is when I realized that BBQ in the South was not a verb, but a noun.

She hustled back into the kitchen and brought forth a big basket of fried bits of something I  couldn’t recognize. “Here, darlin’, ” she drawled. “These are called ‘hush puppies,’ and you eat ‘em.” I thought she was kidding; of course you eat them: this is a restaurant. I took a bite. DAMN, those are good. Starving,  I scarfed one after another. Hush puppy number 6 had come and gone when my waitress burst through the kitchen doors. With a proud smile and a flourish, she placed a plate of steaming, chopped and chunked meat, boiled potatoes, what appeared to have been at one time some green beans, and a big pile of coleslaw. In another basket she had some dinner rolls and a bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce.

Her instructions were to place the BBQ–which I assumed was the meat part–into the sliced rolls, add some slaw, and shake a few drops of hot sauce on top. I asked her for some BBQ sauce and she said, “It’s right there darlin’.” She pointed to a squeeze bottle of a reddish brown liquid with a goodly amount of red pepper flakes at the bottom of the bottle. She told me that in the South–or at least in North Carolina–they didn’t use the ketchup based sauce. She explained that the NC sauce was a spicy vinegar-based liquid, and that the meat was slow cooked pork, and the green stuff that looked like it could once have been green beans, actually were.

She didn’t have to ask how I liked it. We just exchanged a knowing grin. And I knew North Carolina was going to be very good for me.

Since that day I have developed a real fondness for NC BBQ pulled pork. As a professional chef, there’s an obvious allure. Something as special as North Carolina BBQ pulled pork is the kind of dish that makes anyone smile. The marriage of the sweet meat and the sour vinegar, well, the flavor is so distinctive, and the texture so perfect. Now, before I tell you how you can achieve this kind of goodness at home, let me explain how the pro’s do it.

Typically a whole pig goes in a gas cooker that is purpose-built for making BBQ. This process takes about 10-12 hours over low and slow heat (around 250 degrees). The pork is basted with the vinegar sauce and cans of beer–if the guys working the cooking vigil feel the need to open a fresh one and don’t want the backwash to go to waste.

Sometimes chunks of the pig are chopped and sauced, or the diners are just let loose with some tongs to rip and shred the poor carcass at their leisure (known as a “pig pickin’.” Usually there isn’t any smoking or aromatic wood involved, just the vinegar sauce to season and keep the meat moist.

If your mouth is watering like mine, break out your crock pot. My version is going to knock your socks off both with the amount and intensity of flavor, as well as how danged easy it all is. And don’t worry, I’ll hook you up with a quick and easy way to whip up some of that trademark North Carolina vinegar sauce. It is easy and freezes well. Cook it ahead and reheat as needed.

Chef Bobby Buzz Pulled Pork

• 3 lbs pork, cut in 1-inch cubes
• 2 tablesppons CHEF BOBBY BUZZ BUTT RUB
• 1\2 cup Basting sauce (recipe follows)
• 1\2 cup Water

Toss pork cubes with CHEF BOBBY BUZZ BUTT RUB. Place into slow cooker and add basting sauce and water. Set crock pot on medium, cover, and cook for 6-8 hours. Shred the meat with a fork, and add any juices from the pot. Serve on buns with cole slaw, and additional basting sauce.

NC BBQ AND BASTING SAUCE

• 2 cup cider vinegar
• 1\2 cup water
• 6 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper
• 2 tablespoon Texas Pete hot pepper sauce, or to taste
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon paprika

Mix in a mason jar and shake It till your arm gets tired. Use it baste pork butts or other slow roasted pork or beef items, or use it as a table sauce when serving the cooked and shredded meat. This sauce keeps in the fridge for a long time.

Check out this article in the News & Observer that features me, your friendly neighborhood chef:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/01/09/906338/chefs-put-their-names-to-work.html

I got this the other day via email from a very happy user of my Espresso Rub, Donna Peacher-Hall:

Bob, I gave many in my family some of your rub. Everyone is VERY happy, happy, happy. Donna

I responded:

Thanks Donna.  Nothing makes a chef happier than people enjoying their creations.

I had an epiphany of sorts tonight. I was cooking just for me and got lazy, took out a FROZEN boneless skinless chicken breast. (I prefer chicken cooked from fresh with the skin and bones still there…more flavor.)  I rubbed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with espresso rub, 350 degree oven.

Then I sat and watched the Hitler—I mean history channel—until I heard noises coming from the oven; the oil was hissing and popping and the chicken was done. I sliced it and made a sandwich on a Kaiser roll with mayo, lettuce and tomato. It was delicious.  I sell every tin knowing it works and is easy: “Chef in a can!”  LOL!

Sitting here watching the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen and i am worried about the skill levels of the people on the show….I have been cooking for almost 40 years and feel I have earned the title “Chef”  ..every snot nosed little bastard on that show calls themselves a chef..i don’t think so…Just watch how most of them hold their knives….WRONG…I was working at a restaurant filling in for a chef that was AWOL and this young dude stuck his head in the window and said “Do y’all need any help”  I said sure if you can pass the test…A Test?   “What kinda test” ?  I handed him a knife and a whole onion and told him to dice it medium….No lingo, no jargon, no French cutting terms…Just dice it medium…Dude studied it for a second and stated chopping away, scraping and chopping, scraping and chopping…stopping to study his work and resuming his frantic chopping…..Finally putting the knife down he tells me”There ya go”…Looking at his work i asked him if he should have peeled the onion first….His response????   “Ya didn’t tell me to peel it”…Beam me up Scottie…..No intelligent life down here.

My daughter is a lovely girl, and I mean she is a beauty.  I think she should be a rock goddess or a super model because she needs “doers” around her…..A retinue or group of people circling around her doing her bidding would really help her get things done in the manner she feels she deserves.   I know this may sound harsh but I don’t mean any of this in a bad way, it is just the way she is and I doubt that she will ever change. 

She called me a couple of days before Thanksgiving and asked me if she could make Pecan Diamonds for dinner.  Pecan Diamonds is a recipe developed and perfected at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) by a pastry chef by the name of George Metropolis.  We all called him “Screamin’ George” , amd trust me, he deserved that appelation.  He would come in after a tough night of elbow bending and would make sure that before the end of the class all who had any contact with him would also feel bad.  Basically he was the poster boy for hostility.  I had the pleasure of being thrown out of his class for not cutting his “Diamonds” correctly.  As I was wielding a large chef’s knife cutting the hard edges off a pan of his specialty, he shoved me and yelled…”Your F#*king up my s&#t”….my response was  “George….if I knew how to do it what would be the point of having to take a class to teach me? “  The logic was too much for an addled brain to process so he told me to get the hell out of his kitchen, as he was now holding the large chef knife in his hand I thought wise to follow his advise.  I did need to take this class to graduate so marched down to the Dean of Students office and related my story to him and ask his help.  He was aware of the problems with the chef and walked with me back to the class and begged George to allow me back into class….He was scared of him too….Anyway back to cooking with my daughter.

She shows up…Late…I had the crust at room temp to make it easier to press into the bottom of the pan.  Well…it was sticky and getting under her nails and she was worried about getting it on her new jeans.  So I helped her finish it after I had helped her start it.  Next step was to put it in the oven….well the pan was heavy and the oven was hot so I put it in the oven for her.  About halfway through the baking of the crust you have to remove it and press the dough down and back up the sides…It is VERY important that there are no holes in the dough and it goes all the way to the top edge of the pan. Well it was hot and pressing her fingers onto the hot dough was completely out of the question so I did  the pressing and returning to the oven.  While the dough was baking we cooked the caramel which is basically butter and brown sugar cooked to 240 degrees and it bubbles and spits molten balls of hot sugar and needs to be stirred while it does this….so guess who got to do the stirring…YEP….and then we, I mean me, had to remove the pan from the oven and stir the nuts into the melted hot sugar  Yes your right… and then pour the hot mixture into the hot crust and spread it evenly and return it to the hot oven…yes yes yes…I know…Now I will say the removal of the bubbling hot molten sugar covered pan from the oven is not a job I would let her do, but by now I wasn’t even going to ask.. after they cooled down we wrapped them and saved them for the big meal.  With great pride she served the dessert she made to the accolades of all 14 people at the dinner, and I will admit…they were absolutely the best I have ever eaten.

PECAN DIAMONDS

2 packages sugar cookie dough I use Pillsbury from the refrigerated section at the super market.

1\2 size sheet pan…you need to buy one of these at a restaurant supply store

press the dough across the bottom and up the sides of the pan bake at 350 degrees until the dough starts to brown…remove from the oven and with a towel to protect your fingers, press down and work the dough back up the sides return to the oven and brown a little more.

Alot of people assume that I must be a food snob because I am a chef.  Not even close.  I believe now and have always believed that if it tastes good, it is good.  One of my favorite fast food items is hot dogs…or are hot dogs.. damn I wish I was still an English major.  There is a small place in Raleigh called “The Roast Grill” where all they cook are hot dogs and you have a choice of 5 toppings, chili, onions, slaw, mustard and Texas Pete.  The chili is fairly standard bean-less hot dog chili and it is made in house.  The onions are large chopped and obviously they could use a sharper knife in the kitchen.  The slaw is just weird…coarse chopped cabbage with no visible dressing, mustard is the regular cheap yellow type and Texas Pete is a hot sauce made here in North Carolina.  You notice there is no mention of Catsup, they don’t permit it and it is not available to put on the hot dogs.  No fries, no chips but you can get a beer or soda and they serve both Coke and Pepsi products.  I prefer my dog dark brown or as they say…”Burn one for Bob”…It is a neat feeling to walk in and have George prepare my dogs the way I want with out even ordering…and he even knows how Irma likes her dogs.  It is a small place 10 stools and only 6 match, and 2 tables of 2 so it is hard to get a seat sometimes.  I know that if you you read this you are going to say, “Why should I go there?”.  Well, sometimes the sum of the parts is more than the parts alone.  Is it culinary teamwork?  I think so, all the food bits just blend and work together, as they should…Hey its called cooking but it’s really food chemistry and if you get it all correct it is magic..

Last weekend Irma and I had the chance to spend the weekend in Asheville NC a smaller city in this state but it is in the mountains and it is leaf season.  It was stunning….Anyway we pulled off for gas in a small town called Clemmons and were trying to get a hot dog for lunch at the ”C” store we had stopped at.   Kinda scary …a “C” store hot dog….Who knows how long those suckers have been going round and round on the roller grill.  I asked the guy on the register where there was a good hot-dog joint in town..His eyes lit up and he said “you gotta go to Howie’s right down the road”.  Well we jumped back in the car and headed off in the direction he had pointed….Seems we drove alot longer than we should have and we were about to give up and turn around when up on the left, just as the C store guy had said, like a paved oasis in the green, there was Howie’s we walked in and ordered the dog special, 2 HD s an order of fries and a drink…all for $5, not a bad deal… they serve a Great dog.. So if you are ever in Clemmons NC take the time to go to Howie’s…they serve more than dogs and I would bet all their food is great….Bon Appetite

I have a love\hate relationship with fungi…I grow truffles but my trees are now infected with Eastern hazelnut blight…a fungus that will eventually kill my trees…IT SUCKS…I can cure the fungus, but the fungicide I have to use will kill the truffle fungus on my root system…I have been advised that I need to cut the trees to ground level to keep the fungus from spreading….So I have my next few weekends planned…just me and the chain saw and 500 or so trees HEY if you wanna come help just let me know and I will be happy to let you join in..I think I will replant with what is called live oaks…or holly oak and also evergreen oak in that they are not deciduous…IE don’t loose their leaves.   they grow slowly but my orchard is full of the melanosporum mychorizae so the roots will not have to compete to pick up the sheathing that insures truffleproduction.  I hate being a pioneer cause everyone else goes to school on my dime.  I don’t mind sharing my experiences to help keep people from going down the wrong path, I just wish it didn’t cost me so much in time and money…My harvest should still be OK because the tree is just a host and as long as the roots are alive I should get truffles..  My 3 dogs get so excited this time of year..Every time I put on my shoes and don’t have on my chef uniform, they think they are going to the trees…My dog Pierre gets so excited he cries all the way to the orchard We speak French to the dogs and people ask me if my dogs speak French….No …they understand French,,,, they speak dog…le woof…le woof.  And they like truffles, especially in a demi glace on a NY Strip steak served medium rare…I have to say my dogs eat well on occasion.  Next up “So You Wanna Open a Restaurant”

So chef Sakai and I were chatting after our demo’s and he asked me if I was going to the Chef Sakai dinner being held at the hotel we were staying at…(my English teacher will be pissed for that last bit of bad grammar)…We had to communicate through a translator, I speak no Japanese and Chef Sakai doesn’t speak much more English..  I said I didn’t know about it and Chef asked me to be his guest..  So when I got back to the hotel I called the special events coordinator and was told the dinner had been sold out for 3 months…CRAP…left a message for Chef and said there was no more space in the room….  10 minutes later I got a call from the translator and was told that there will be space for us at the event and to show up at 6:30.  We got dressed in our finest duds and headed down to the dining room.  The Maitre d’ approached us and said that chef Sakai had requested that a special table be set for us…WOW How cool We walked through the room past tables of 8, 10 and 12 and more, to the only table for 2, set in the middle of the room.  As the room began to fill up and the dinner was starting, Chef Sakai came to our table and asked if he could join us?  Of course we said yes and Chef and his translator sat with us…The room was full of Saki fans, many of them Japanese I’m sure, but there he was sitting with us…MAN HOW COOL IS THIS….The sommelier (wine steward) stopped by to pour our first wine and and Sakai spoke to him in French >>>>>HEY I speak French…well at least better than my non existing Japanese.  We both laughed and he told the translator she was fired..JK I’m sure.  and my girl Irma speaks French too, so the only person who couldn’t understand what we are saying is the translator.  All eyes were on us, or more likely Chef Sakai….who is that white guy, why is chef sitting with them???  OH he’s just a North Carolin dirt farmer…It turns out in Japan being a farmer is a noble profession, and well it should be.  Farmers are also wealthy, not in money but as land owners and there isn’t a lot of land to own.  The point is Chef treated Irma and myself like the star he is.  Oh and the meal was great too