The Kitchen: Andy Alander

Welcome to Episode 10 of home! This week’s guest is Andy Alander, Executive Chef of Residential Dining Services at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Thank you, Andy, for joining me. Andy Alander's bio is here.  

Takeaways: Believe in yourself in the kitchen. Try something new. Bring curiosity to what you eat. Take on a big culinary challenge and watch with bated breath as things improbably fall into place, or erupt in chaos. 

Suggested pairings:

Mom’s lasagna and red sauce (use cottage cheese and bell peppers), for 100

Grandparents’ giant onion rings, 75 count

Grandma’s fried chicken, 150 pieces

A copy of the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

Black chef’s apron

The song Stand up and Shout by Dio 

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The dog in the photo is named Champ. Champ is the University of Minnesota Duluth mascot. The sculpture was made by Nick Legeros. Photo by B. Greenfield. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right, welcome Andy to the podcast home. My name is Brennan Greenfield, and I'm so happy to be here today with you. Um so we met in Book Club at University of Minnesota Duluth. And so I only know you a tiny little bit from there and what you think about leadership. But um could we start by you just telling me more about yourself and your role at UMD and where you're from? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Uh my name is Andy A. Lander. I am uh a chef, which is the professional capacity that you know me. Um here at UMD, I am the executive chef of residential dining, which means I uh lead the team that feeds all of our students here that live on campus as well as um folks that join us for meals and all the camps and conferences and things like that that come on campus.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

That's a big job.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

It's a big job.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

What does it include? Like, are you planning the meals or are you doing some of the cooking yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Uh generally, in my role, I don't do a lot of cooking anymore. Um, a lot of my career these days focuses more on leadership and strategic thinking. Um, I'm more of an administrator at this point. Um, also given the nature or the kind of foibbles of how things work here, we have union employees, and so they do a lot of the day-to-day on-the-ground work, and they are supported by a team of supervisory staff.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

So you must have some background as like on the ground as a chef, too. Correct. In the past. Like, tell me a bit about that background.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Yeah, I got my first job in a kitchen when I was 15, I think, shortly before my 16th birthday. Uh, started as a dishwasher, um, spent some time in high school uh washing dishes, and then worked my way up through line cooking and things like that. Um, a lot of different restaurants and kind of um different food service settings, and then I've been in uh full-time leadership for almost 20 years now.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Okay, wow, that's a long time. Uh, what was your childhood kitchen like and where was it?

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Um so I actually live um just north of campus here, about 10-15 minutes, and I actually live uh on a little farm that my dad grew up in, so I live like 45 seconds away from the house that I grew up in. Um and I grew up in a house of cooks. Uh both my mother and my father were cooks. Uh my mother was a professional um bank manager and and then transitioned into a different career later on. So they split a lot of the duties of cooking. Um, and both of them are really solid cooks. And I grew up in a house that was very much like dinner is every night, everybody comes to the table. There's only three of us, so that's not a big crowd. Um, and it was it was a homemade meal almost every meal, unless it was like sports practice night or something, then it might be a convenience meal. Um, my mother also was a prolific baker. Um, she was very well known for a number of the things that she baked, but then at Christmas time, her and her best friend would spend weeks making hundreds, thousands of dozens, I'm not even sure, uh, Christmas cookies. And that's what they would give away as Christmas presents. Um, so I kind of grew up uh steeped in the world of cooking. Um I can actually recall the first thing that I ever cooked for myself at the guidance of uh the gal that was doing my daycare when I was uh 10, 11 or something like that, which was totally ramen noodles. Um it was the 90s, so ramen noodles were just kind of becoming a thing then. Um but yeah, uh discovered a passion for it when I was in my early 20s um and did a lot of things. I've done a crazy amount of stuff throughout my life as far as occupations go, but transitioned into full-time food service leadership and about 2007 or so.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Okay, wow. Um, so a long history of cooks in your family. What um was the feel in your childhood kitchen?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Um generally it was it it felt good. It was homey, it was a place of not even my kitchen, but all of the kitchens um in my family, it was a place of fellowship. Um, it was a place where family gathered. Um the farm that I live on, my family kind of owned several plots of land that were fairly large next to each other. And so we would do a lot of uh, like in the summertime, um uh bailing hay and things like that. And that would require a huge group of people. And I can recall my grandmother in the kitchen that I live in now that I don't enjoy cooking in, um, preparing meals for you know 30 people um and you know, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and all this stuff, and then feeding this whole crew of people that would come and help bale hay and and stack all the hay bales in the various barns and things like that. Um, and it was the same thing with my other grandparents, um, where they cooking was always a part of uh what they did as well, and then oftentimes throughout the year we would have big social gatherings of family that would get very elaborate um meals going, obviously Christmas, Thanksgiving, and things like that. But then, you know, it was always a tradition of uh a big onion ring fry. My grandmother used to like plaster her entire kitchen and newspapers, um, and then they would just like spend the whole day preparing and frying onion rings, and it was just everybody would like eat a bunch of onion rings and then fry a bunch more onion rings, and it was yeah, just so that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, yeah. Um, were there any cultural influences for from your grandparents in terms of what foods you ate? No, you know, not particularly.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Um, I would say that most of what we uh cooked and ate was very American fair. Um the kind of Scandinavian influence of my family was not really, really present. There were occasionally some dishes, but no, I would say it was just you know kind of Midwestern fair.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

What was what did your dad make that was your favorite dish to eat?

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Um he would always do a smothered pork chop that I didn't love when I was a kid, and then as I grew older, I grew to appreciate it a lot more. Mostly I didn't love it because, in very typical fashion of their generation, you had to cook pork to death, otherwise they thought you'd get trychnosis. Um, and so it tended to be fairly tough. Um, and then as I grew in my technique of cooking, I kind of was able to help guide them, so to speak, to maybe let's not cook these pork chops for an hour. You know, kind of a thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So would you cook it like based on temperature and then pull it out? Or how did you know when it was done?

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah, I mean, uh I taught my dad how to it uh temp things or how to tell of meat being done by its feel, um, and its firmness, and and also like, hey, realistically, this half inch, three-quarter inch pork chops gonna be cooked in just a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Not an hour.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

No, definitely not. Uh it doesn't need to be shoe leather.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Um and then your mom, was there a dish that you really cherished that she ate, that she made, or um baked goods? Maybe one of both.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

You know, I'm actually, I I hate to say it. I was not I didn't love her bakery as much as everybody else did. I don't have much of a sweet tooth. Um, so of course I appreciated cookies and things like that growing up. Um, but two dishes that to this day I still cherish was her red sauce um and uh her lasagna. Um and to this day they are almost exclusively the only red sauce and lasagna that I eat because I think they just kind of set a standard for what my palate enjoys. Um and her red sauce was kind of halfway between what we would think of as like a bolognaise, like a classic like um Italian bologna's and like like a kind of an American red sauce or like a like a pasta, red sauce joint, like very stereotypical uh spaghetti sauce. Um and actually that's that's the recipe that I prepare these days for myself, and with a slight variation, um, but really traditional to what she made, and then her lasagna, which I've just never found a lasagna that I've enjoyed as much as hers. Um recently uh scandal. Um she changed up her lasagna recipe just to try something new, and both my father were like, Oh, this is unacceptable. It's it's not the same as we've had for 40, 50 years, you know. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah. What is she uh like what herbs does she use in her lasagna?

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Um just pretty standard uh oregano and a little bit of thyme and a little bit of rosemary. Oh, in her lasagna, in the red sauce of her lasagna. Um and then uh, you know, I know there's always, especially in this area, there's two camps. There's either ricotta or cottage cheese, and we were a cottage cheese family. Um and then just it really your really standard lasagna. Um, but I think really her sauce was again not having much of a sweet tooth. Her sauce was not overly sweet for a lot of times red sauce for me, anyways, gets a little too sweet and then it kind of diminishes or clashes with what I want in the other savory flavors.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, I find that too.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah. So nice. Um, and then you said there was you have a farm. Um were you growing things in a garden? Were there animals? How did that get incorporated into what you ate? So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Um, so our family raised cattle for a very long time, up until recently. Um, and the farm that I live on now um had my grandfather raised cattle there, and then my grandmother had gardens there. Um, and nothing like really prolific, um, but she would always incorporate some of her vegetables, squashes, things like that in the fall, um, you know, fresh herbs that she had, uh peppers and carrots and those kind of things once those were available. Um, but she also raised five boys and kind of had a she had a side house. She wasn't she was an Avon lady, you know, uh gig economy before it was a thing. And um so she didn't she didn't spend an insane amount of time in the garden. Um in the years that I've lived there, I did spend a lot of time gardening. My biggest garden that I had was uh just under an acre, uh which was a lot of work, um, and I just don't have the capacity to do that anymore. Um, but I was able to uh slip some produce to a couple of the the restaurants that I'd formerly worked at and things like that, and then of course just incorporated a lot of that into my own cooking.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Um for someone traveling through Duluth, what restaurant would you recommend they go to? Uh uh one, just one that comes to mind. I'm sure there's many that you like.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Minneapolis. To be frank. Um I have a lot of hot takes on the dining scene in Duluth. Um I uh we could do a whole episode on that. Um but uh I've really been loving Faholic lately, especially their new location on London Road that has an expanded menu. I've also just been for the last couple years really into like East Asian and Southeast Asian flavors. Um and I think that a lot of what they do, I've spent a little bit of time in that region, um, is pretty classic to the flavor profiles of the dishes that I had when I was in Cambodia and in Southeast Asia. Um, and so I've really been enjoying um going there lately.

unknown 11:02

Okay, thanks.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Uh so let's switch gears a little bit to UMD. Um so am I right in thinking that you're kind of in charge of like the overall experience for all the students, like crafting what their food experience is like, or not really job like that you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

So we have a couple different kind of um leadership buckets to draw off of there, so to speak. So we have the residential dining program, uh, we have our retail program, which is um you know the food court um that people know of, plus the coffee shop and uh kiosk and outlets there. Um we have our catering operation, and then we have our main production kitchen. Um so uh Cheney McCall is the executive chef of the main production kitchen. Um and I used to be her sous chef. Um and so she and I have been Thickest Thieves for years now. Um and she and I do a lot of the work to uh write menus or kind of curate dishes towards um towards in in my the lane that I kind of steer into is what our our residential diners, our young folks that live on campus, want to enjoy, and we try to try to kind of focus on their palates. Um we also are we have a very strong team of culinarians in our leadership um group, and so we also try to spend a lot of time like balancing, like you know, a lot of these young folks they want to eat macaroni and cheese and chicken strips and hamburgers a lot. Um, and at the same time, we still want to uh chef things up, so to speak, and do creative dishes or incorporate a lot of uh ethnic cuisines into what we do here because it's challenging for us as chefs and it's flavor profiles that we enjoy. Um, and we also kind of want to expose our diners to cuisines they may not necessarily see in Duluth, Minnesota, where you don't have a lot of um a lot of South Asian influence in the cuisine here. Um and and you know, do a lot of that, but then also still bring them the chicken strips and the macaroni and cheese burners. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

So one of your goals is thinking about expanding their palates a bit or like having them try things they wouldn't normally.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Um and then what's the so I've been over in that dining area um before. In the summer it's easier to get in. Absolutely. Uh, but what's the feel that you want students to have when they're in that space? And how do you use food to make that happen?

SPEAKER_02 13:30

So I often when I am um touring around like prospective um new employees and we're interviewing candidates, I always like to kind of use what maybe is a little bit of a cliche term because I've used it so many times now, but I think of the dining center as the heart of campus, both literally and figuratively, because it is in the middle of campus, and all of our folks that live, almost all of our folks that live on campus, they have to kind of walk past it. It's also um it's a third space for them. Um, and we see a lot of folks that spend a lot of time there as uh using it as a social space. And so I want to and I and I wish my team to create an environment that's nurturing and welcoming for them. And you know, food is nourishing not just to our stomachs and our bodies, but it can be nourishing to our hearts and souls as well. Um, and so by bringing them the foods that we do, I hope to not just kind of expose them to new cuisines, but also, you know, hope that they that they find um enjoyment and fulfillment both physically and a little bit maybe emotionally, especially when you're kind of away from home for the first time, um, in that experience and in that food.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

So, what are examples of how food can nourish the heart and soul?

SPEAKER_02 14:45

I mean, it can be a lot of different things. You know, of course, there's always you know what we think of as comfort foods, or maybe it's the foods that are family prepared, that lasagna and spaghetti that we talked about. Um, but I also think that you know trying something new, and then maybe all of a sudden you have that experience of going, like, wow, like I've never had that flavor profile, or I've never never tried this particular protein or vegetable, and then kind of discovering uh a love for that, and then I hope taking that and being curious about that, and leading yourself down a pathway of you know discovering more about cuisine, whether it's it's you know different ethnic cuisines or just particular ingredients. Um, and I hope that that curiosity kind of nourishes uh nurses our soul and and kind of nurses our intellect. Um a lot of being a chef for me um is about being curious and kind of being willing to challenge yourself and challenge others with that curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Um which overlaps nicely with the purpose of being here to get an education. Of course, yeah, with the curiosity. Um that's amazing. Uh any funny stories from the kitchen.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Oh my my mom always jokes that um that I should write a book. Um I will regale them throughout throughout my career with stories of the wild things that happen in the food service world. Um and um they're always my my folks are getting a little older, they're almost 80 now, so they're oftentimes a little bit outraged or a little bit like shocked at um, you know, oftentimes the the food service world, especially kind of in the restaurant side, is a bit of a rogues gallery. And um so they always, you know, I tell them these stories about you know just crazy, crazy stuff that's happened in the kitchen, and they're like, what? What I can't believe that. You know, my brother you know worked at a bank, you know, for a long time. Not a lot of crazy. Are you gonna give us a teaser of a story?

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Um preview of your book.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Um I haven't written the book. Actually, my brother, who was my super chef, uh, and I actually started writing down like little anecdotes of all these things in the hope that someday can we hear one? Um just the one that just happened the other day. Uh-huh. Um, our sprinkler in our main kitchen was set off. From the heat, um, we have these gigantic ovens um that we cook bread in. Uh, and there was a sprinkler that, unbeknownst to us, uh, was positioned a little too close to one of the ovens, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, our baker opens the oven, goes to pull some bread out, and kadoosh, the sprinkler goes off. Um, and I've seen Ansel systems, the fire protection systems that are on the classic line go off. Um, I also worked in the fire service for a lot of years, but I'd never actually seen a sprinkler go off to see the amount of uh water that came out of it. And I was unfortunately not there to see it happen. Um, but apparently the gentleman who was working in the bakery was just like, I don't know what to do right now, and just completely shocked as one would be when all of a sudden there's a deluge coming from above you. Um it just kind of like stood there and and it was just like, what do I do? Um and so I I saw some video of it because one of our teammates like cuts a video and I was just like, holy moly, this is wild. And just things like that, not maybe of that caliber, but there's always just things that happen. It's it can be such a chaotic environment, you know. I think a lot of what we do is try to control that chaos, but there's so many different moving pieces that there's probably not not a day, but at least not a week goes by that something doesn't happen, and you're just like, huh, well, okay, I can't believe that just happened. Now, now what do we do next? You know, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Oh, that's great. Um, on the a prior episode, I was talking about that with someone like fire alarms going or the smoke alarms going off and all that. Um so there's like an element in the kitchen where, yeah, that piece of like chaos where it's not so orderly. Um do you like that piece of it?

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Um yes. I think that um eventually you become inured to it. I think a lot of times there's probably some really negative things that you become used to in it, right? You you kind of thrive in that chaos, and then that chaos becomes um really normal. And then, you know, I could I will say I can even admit in my career, there becomes times when then that becomes that normal, becomes something you desire. Um, and um you are the the psychologist, correct? Here. Um so maybe we could you could probably analyze that a lot more than me, but uh there becomes kind of an unhealthy fascination with it. Um I think of I think of the show The Bear, right? If for folks that have seen the bear, um that there is so much just in the just in the restaurant part of what's going on in that television show, let alone the family piece, there's so much like trauma and and stress and things like that that are going on in that show. Um that you know, I I do think in some ways, at least based on you know my almost 30 years of doing this, that it does translate really well. And a lot of those unhealthy things that are going on there translate from that show into the industry in general as well. Um I don't I don't love that, you know, at this stage in my career. I don't I don't enjoy watching that show very much because of that. A lot of chefs that I know kind of say the same thing that it's it can be very triggering for them. Um but there's also a certain amount of satisfaction that comes from controlling that chaos as well, hopefully in a really healthy way. Yeah. Um but that is part of what we do as chefs, uh, I think of uh or or culinarians of all levels, whether you're working washing dishes or you are running you know 400 seat restaurants where you know you practice at controlling that, and then as you get better and better at it, you take some satisfaction from it.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

As you should. I think so. Yeah, yeah. So uh so I have two questions from listeners, former guests for you. The first one is um a former guest uh is an artist, spends a lot of time like curating online spaces and doing um different forms of art and writing, and hasn't spent a lot of time cooking in their life and they want to get into meal prepping. Um, where would you have them start?

SPEAKER_02 21:16

You know, I think that there are a ton of really good resources out that wet for that, whether it is um uh on the internet or in book form. Uh one thing that I would advocate for them is focus on um professional chefs, now which is not to say like take away from the home chefs or the kind of influencers, um, but when it comes to recipes and recipe testing, especially professional resources are a really good way to go because those recipes are going to be really well tested and spec'd out. And I think that a lot of like the flavor profiles you're looking for and the yields are going to be more accurate than an influencer could be.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Does anyone come to mind who you would recommend looking at their work on meal prepping?

SPEAKER_02 22:05

You know, I I don't do I don't do a lot of I haven't focused a lot of my attention on meal prepping because it's something I just kind of I can just do. Yeah. Right. So um I used to do CrossFit and work out quite a bit, and my roommate is a former professional chef, former professional chef, and is still in the industry. And I remember I was talking to one of my coaches when I was doing CrossFit and he was like, How much time do you spend meal prepping a week? And I was like, probably we do we do about an hour, and he's like, What? And I'm like, Well, we're two professional chefs. Like it just it just comes kind of naturally after you've been, oh, I've got a banquet for 300 people tonight, and I need to make you know X many pounds of mashed potatoes. You just kind of build the skill and you don't really have to think about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

So maybe you're the wrong person to ask that.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Not not maybe not the best resource in that aspect, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah. Um, and then what about uh mom who has um elementary school-aged kids and she wants them to eat more vegetables? How could how can she do that?

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Um try to incorporate them in ways that are sneaky, right? Like um blend them into your sauces, things like that, where the the young person might not know that they're eating some bell peppers. I hated bell peppers when I was a kid, so um, but you know, my mom also snuck them into the spaghetti sauce that I love a lot now, and I didn't know that they were in there. Um I think that uh what vegetables are in there? Not apparent. Um onions, garlic, bell peppers, basil, herbs. Okay. So pretty simple red sauce. Um, but if I'd known, and I can remember times where I'd where I could see peppers in there and I'd be like, oh, I don't want this, you know. And now I'm like, oh, I can see the how the flavors are integral to the dish.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Chocolate zucchini cake was big in our family. And then no one ever knew there was zucchini in it.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

You know, I and zucchini is such a great outlet for that, you know, most of the summer where you just have so much zucchini, and you're just like, what do I do with this? Um but yeah, a lot of times I think blending it into sauces or blending it into dishes where it can't be recognized. Also, caveat, not apparent at all. So um, you know, your mileage may vary there.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yeah, okay. Awesome. Uh, those are all my questions. Okay. Thank you for meeting with me. Um, it was really great talking with you, and I learned a lot, so I appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Yeah, thanks for having me.