Restaurant Practical is OVER

God it was weird last night, leaving the Le Cordon Bleu campus for the last time.  Since Valentine's Day, I have been up there five nights a week.  I've met many amazing chefs, picked their brains, made some laugh, pissed some off, learned from them all.  Some got the fully stoked, inspired me, and some got the burnt out, fuck this place me.  I've been so lucky to learn from them -- I took a ton of notes throughout the program, so now I can go back and practice and refine the recipes, keep my techniques up. 

Fino starts on Monday, and I can't wait.  My family gets a change for the better in our weekly schedule, and I get to play with the restaurant's immersion circulator.  My work schedule will also relax some, because I won't have to leave at three every day.  Everyone at work has been understanding, but I've felt pretty guilty about bailing so early every day.  Not to mention bringing my laptop home and working on projects over the weekend to make up the hours. 

The chefs gave us an apple cider toast at the start of class last night, and gave it up with the motivational speeches.  Chef Randy's parting wish is that we stay in touch and help each other.  It's all been so awesome.  And I have to mention chef's cookies -- Chef Jay made us chocolate chip bacon cookies that were insane. 

Piper loves Marcel's skates

She adores this dude, also wants skates of her own.

Thursday already!

I think when Nietzsche wrote about eternal reocurrence, he had the daily life of culinary school in mind.  I can't believe it's already Thursday.  The days are very similar to one another!  Going back to school makes the week feel like one giant run-on sentence.

The good thing is I am closer to the weekend, where I get to devote some time to the wife and kids.  There's a plate of warm gingerbread pancakes in our future, I think.

Last night we had a lively class discussion about restaurants where waitstaff are salaried, rather that minimally paid and tipped.  Everyone had an opinion, it was a good talk.  Only in culinary school can you get a group of people arguing about front of house salaries at 10:40 at night.

Slow Tues night

Tonight's food was gorgeous.  We were way too slow, it being a rainy Tuesday evening -- but the food that did come out of the kitchen was great to look at.  An amuse bouche composed of Asian slaw topped with a curl of tea-smoked duck.  The slaw had a quick flavor profile, spicy and citrusy, followed by a rich, hearty taste of soft duck meat.  I've eaten five of them so far, wouldn't mind finding one or two more before we leave. 

Friday the restaurant is closed for a private party.  We're serving a party of 95 senators, elected officials, and other important folk.  Apparently there will be a band too.  Senators and bands, what else is there?

Back at Ventana

I've returned to school, leave of absence is up so it's back to the program.  We have a new chef instructor for front of house, and he brings a different air of professionalism.  The last guy told too many inappropriate war stories, stuff about naked Twister with the waitstaff and whatnot.  Funny for a moment, but then it was like blech, loser why are you telling us this... 

This guy's different, yesterday was lecture day and he showed us videos on leadership from this year's TED Conference.  He showed us videos on sustainability and creative farming, then talked about the 4 Steps of Leadership.  I've been at this school since February, and it was one of the most thought provoking, motivating lectures any chef instructor has given.

The dinner menu has changed from the last block.  Honey hoisin pork ribs seem to be the new customer favorite.  Tonight I'm waiting tables so I'll see what people like.  Last night we all had to pick one wine and write a paper on it, so now I can at least speak honestly about our Incognito Blanc from Lodi Vineyards...  I haven't waited tables since the days when our president was getting bee jays from an intern and arguing about what the definition of "is" is.  Friday, we have a black tie event at Ventana, serving about 96 people, apparently some senators among them.  That's a new one on me!  Let's just hope I can get MY black tie in order by then.

I tie the shittiest tie.  Last night it gradually loosened, slipping down the front of my shirt until it hung slack around my neck like a bib.  Too bad I can't tie the tie knot, then wrap a rubber band around it.  I sucked at cravats but eventually got them wired; if I can get ties down, then this school's steep tuition is worth every penny.

It's genuinely great to be back, and to have a new chef instructor who actually wants to teach instead of just tell us why he's the shit.  I want school to end but I don't want school to end.

Nuther couple weeks

Just two more weeks and this will be me again, back in the grind.  Looking forward to it, I feel like there's unfinished business.

Been cooking plenty at home though, albeit in a Henry Ford way: I'll make you guys anything you want as long as it's either chicken or black beans.  Breaking down whole chickens and preparing dry beans, that's mostly what I've done during leave.  Still meaning to make the kids some tortellini from scratch, but then I'm like, mmm adobo in the beans, must try...

This kid can pick some peaches

Don't even try to mess.

Piper and Jen picking peaches

Yesterday we went to Fredericksburg, Jen had a photo assignment to shoot peach-picking and a swap meet, so we tagged along.  Marcel picked some gorgeous peaches that Jen and I are going to use for cobblers.

Piper ran around between the trees, picking up old pits and throwing them.  She's got quite an arm now.  Also, she found three horses ("big dogs") so we watched them eat for a while.  Piper kept pointing at nice patches of grass for them to eat, but they didn't take her up on her offer.  If I was a horse, I'd trust her grass recommendations. 

Candied jalapenos in progress

Rusko "Hold On"

Rusko is insane.  This track is super mellow, rad but doesn't get into what he can really do.  I read that he's working with Madonna and some other deep-pocketed fools, so you know Rusko's getting paid.  Check him out.

Marcel and I taking pictures of each other

Po Po "Bummer Summer"

Po Po-Bummer Summer by maddecent

Being on leave from school, I have more time to post music here too.  Jen can tell you, I am now obsessed with anything/everything Mad Decent puts out.  Po Po's no exception.  Check it. 

I love this pic of Mar reading

He's the man.  Loves these Warriors books.

Beans pt 2

Well Piper's got strep, she slept most the afternoon so I knocked out poached shredded chicken, beef short ribs, salsa, tostadas, and the rest of the beans.

Jen's on her way home and I'll put it all together, so far it all seems flavorful, the salsa is crazy good.  The chicken from Bayless' book could have mo flava, I think using mirepoix rather than only onions would boost it up some.  Today though I wanted to set a baseline so I could understand the recipes then set about modifying them to my liking. 

I love cooking chicken, breaking down and cooking chicken.  Going from raw whole bird

My housemate

Pretty damn cute for having strep.

Beans from the Bayless book

Piper's home from daycare all week, plus she's got some throat thing.  We're pretty much homebound today, so it's a perfect day to work with the Rick Bayless book I've been meaning to cook from for a long time.

I intend to make chicken tostadas for dinner tonight, I soaked beans overnight and they're simmering now.  Should be done by the time we go to the pediatrician.  When we get back piper will nap (knock on wood) and I'll poach and shred the chicken, as well as make salsa. 
I'd like to do the beans refried but I need to taste them from the basic recipe first to see how it went, what I can change.  I'm taking notes throughout, because I'd like to nail these Bayless recipes and make them my own.

Also bought masa and corn husks yesterday, so I can practice tamales at least once on this time off from work.  Marcel also wants stuffed shells, so I'll rock that for him tomorrow.

Back to basics

Dinner with the fam.

Leave of absence

Culinary school is not for the faint of heart.
Last week was a Dickens week: best of times, worst of times.  The Ventana program was wonderful; I am enjoying having actual customers, working as a service team, learning the menu, wine pairings (which red goes best with the bone marrow salad, for instance).  The place is top-notch, unique, challenging.  Our chef instructor is ideal for this block, loves the industry and has a true passion for service (and upselling).  Has taught us much about liquor cost control already, which I need to know.  He also has a million restaurant stories, many of them entertaining and wholly depraved.

Last week was also the week my day job demands and family needs were offically stretched too thin.  I'm getting behind in work, and the crew at home really needed a break.  Which is a giant understatement.  It was a kind of crossroads: barrel on and wrap up the program and possibly cause some resentment, or find a way to slow it down and restore the quality of life for everyone.  We have been going nonstop since Feb 15 - and honestly the months leading up to the 15th weren't exactly chill, because I was training for/running a marathon.

So I talked to Chef Jason at my externship-in-waiting, talked to my day job boss, and yesterday worked it out with the school administration: I am now on leave of absence from school until August 20.  This pushes back my graduation date 6 weeks.  An enormous weight has been lifted from the family, and already things are more flexible and relaxed.  It was clearly the right call.  I texted my friends in the program, who will now graduate before me, and let them know.  We'll have to get together for a happy hour.  When I return, I'll be with students I don't know - but culinary school forces quick bonds with one another, I've seen it happen over and over for months, no one stands alone, unless he is a sociopath with a glass eye. 

But even the glass eye guy made friends quick.  And the cokey mascara guy.  And the blue electrical tape on the glasses guy...  So I should be okay come August 20. 

Piper at Mi Tierra, waiting for a table

Front of house

Maitre d.  This is what my world looks like.

Next week's Bastille Day celebration

note the price: $17.89...which I guess is the year the Bastille was stormed...?

Notes from day 1

First off, apologies.  Last night's class was 7 1/2 hrs and there's no way I can write/remember that much info in a post.  I wish I could because it's awesome stuff.  Let me say that although I came into this block with a shit attitude due to the whole 3:30 thing as soon as we got in there I fell in love with it.  I was jittery all night, so excited.

Facts:
30 students, half in front of house, half in back of house.  We flop (swap) in 3 weeks, I'm currently front of house.
Front of house positions: server, busser, maitre d, sommelier, expo.  I'm maitre d til next Monday, then we all rotate.
I'm one of three students with front of house experience, all others are tormented by having to talk to customers.
We serve real customers from 5:30-8:30, tues-fri.  Slower during evenings although we do have reservations for every night.
Two chef instructors.  Ours, chef paul, seems very very smart.  Looking forward to learning from him.
Nightly at 5 we have family meal.  The students in the dishpit make us family meal using product from the walk-in that isn't being used.  Last night we had chicken thighs and legs and polenta with snap peas.
We open at 6 tonight, a deuce reservation.  Chef said we should all be a bit nervous...

Ventana front of house

I'll be spending the next 6 weeks of my life here.

First night of Ventana

Break's over and we are about to suit up again for work.  I'm dashing off this email before I leave my day job, and tonight we start Ventana, the on-premise restaurant at school.  As per usual, I know nothing about what I am getting myself into: will I wait tables first, how is this structured, what's the day look like, why in the hell did we need to get there two hours early, etc. 

I am looking forward to it!  A little nervous, in fact.  Not sure why.  Six weeks left at school, then six weeks at Fino, then it's back to life as usual, whatever that is.  Of the six weeks at school, only three will be spent in my white coats.  That means in three weeks I will have five school chef's coats, and nowhere to wear them.  I think I'll use them around the house when I am perfecting my recipes for our restaurant.  Hell, I might wear them mowing the lawn -- they weren't cheap! 

But it's really winding down, at least it is to me.  Feels different.  As long as I can stay rested and keep enjoying the process, I still think I have a lot to learn.  In fact, with 12 weeks in restaurant environments, this will probably be the most educational part of the program.

(This is also my first day of leaving the day job at 3pm, in order to make class time of 3:30.  This feels bizarre.  I'm fortunate.)   

Summer Break!

We're on summer break this week, a welcome respite from class.  We were in the cold garde manger room for the past six weeks, for garde manger and for international, but when we get back we're starting off in Ventana, which is the fine dining restaurant on the school premises.  We'll do 6 weeks at Ventana, 3 in back of the house and 3 in front of house - so I'll get to see whether I can still wait tables worth a shit.

Ventana's schedule is bananas.  Class starts at 3:30, not the normal 5:30, and goes to 11pm.  I got special permission from my boss to leave my day job early in order to make it to school on time, provided I stay up on my work and put some hours in on Saturdays.  Kinda sucks but I had no other choice; I had already pursued tons of avenues at the school, talking with the head chef, the director of admissions, the VP of student affairs, I really tried to make this work without having to affect work, but it wasn't possible.  Some of my friends have strict jobs, like veterinary jobs and demanding office jobs, project management, I just hope they can make it work like I did.  I still feel like I'm about to enter a whole new circle of hell here, with 10 additional hours of school per week.

Ventana has a nice menu, and it'll be fun to be in a kitchen, rather than a lab.  Our labs have lacked time pressure and the urgency of a kitchen, as well as the teamwork and need to stay organized.  Messes have been okay in lab.  Poor communication has been okay in lab.  None of this will work in a restaurant setting, you must execute, communicate well, and be clean.  Some students will do just fine, but there's a few who just might shit themselves.  And Ventana isn't anywhere near as high pressure as other restaurants.

But all that's for next week.  What's amazing is that everything is working out.  Every obstacle has worked itself out with some faith, some creativity, and some elbow grease.  Staging, scheduling, externship, my real job, the kids, Ventana.  Everything has worked out.  To me that is proof positive that chasing a dream is worth it, and that it'll work itself out.  Having faith is an idea that has fallen out of vogue with my generation, but there's something to be said for optimism.

because, you know, Batman.

Batman and friends.

my mise en place for miso soup

L dicing tofu for miso soup (he's the one who threw up shish kebab)

L's amazing chicken adobo

Cooling brown veal stock

Morocco was a riot

Turkey and Morocco tonight, big bold flavors of lamb and honey, cumin and lemon, onion, bulghur, and fig.  We made lamb tagine and couscous, the tagine turned out so good, very rich with tender lamb. 

Another group had kebabs of lamb, onion, and peppers.  As they cut the lamb, a pile of fat trimmings grew, which we'd normally throw away.  Tonight though, my friend L decided to skewer the fatty trimmings, grill it along with the kebabs, and eat it for himself.  He grills this fat on a stick, for some fucked up reason devours this fat on a stick, and thinks nothing of it, end of scene.

Later, we eat, and chef makes a strong Turkish coffee for us (I had four of them), and the food is one of the best we've had since day one of International.  All groups nailed their dishes tonight, and we tore up the food.

We're finished, and we're cleaning, and normally L is in the dish pit with me but today he's gone.  Then he shows up holding his stomach, and in his Filipino broken English goes "I needed some help, buddy.  I threw up my food."  He puked in the bathroom because he ate too much.  Tells me all about how the meat in his puke was in cubed chunks.  We all lost our minds laughing at him.  This class is overflowing with inside jokes and shit talk, and now we've got another classic.

International so far

This class is educational but not the most engaging.  Each night we visit a different country's cuisine, last night we visited Greece and tonight is Lebanon.  We have four dishes, sometimes five, to make as a class.  Chef assigns a dish to a group (we have a group of four), tells them how many times to multiply the recipe, and once we all have our dishes we're off.  The drawback of this is that at least one group each night will get a dish that is very easy to make, regardless of volume, and ends up having spare time.  For instance last night we were assigned a salad, consisting of red onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic, feta, and oil and spices.  This is nowhere near enough product to fill up the time for the four of us.  My teammate S used the time to cut perfectly perfect brunoise of the cucumbers, which passes the class time but is nowhere remotely representative of the actual time management of a real kitchen's pressures and expectations. 

I bring textbooks in and study recipes with my friends to fill the time; last week I practiced my tourne cuts on potatoes for an hour.  So there are certainly things to do, constructively as well as otherwise.  And at the end of the night we have a family style meal, where we all eat our fill of the country's food.  And no matter how slow this class is in some parts, I am super appreciative of the fact that I get to sit with my friends and eat new food each and every night.  Like last night, I had like three pieces of baklava that my friend J's team had made.  So that's cool!  Even a half-assed culinary class still beats watching mindless TV at home.   

The homeys sauteeing spaetzel

R making spaetzel

International class in underway

Day one of International, same big honking class, same chef instructors.  Very cool vibe in this class.  Each night we'll cover cuisine of a different region, and we make a handful of dishes, then we all sit down together and have a huge family style meal.  So last night while most people are watching Daily Show or Jay Leno, me and my homeys were sharing a meal in the style of mother Russia: prune perogies, borscht soup, salmon roe blinis, Hungarian potatoes, and cabbage rolls. 
My team made the prune perogies, the pasta dough practice was valuable. 
So after prunes, beets, and cabbage at 10pm last night, I just hope I don't shit myself today.  Oh - also got news that for the final we're doing a mystery basket.  Each student'll get something slightly different and we have to bang out a 3 course meal.  Gonna rock.

Piper looking fresh dressed in Target

Sent from my iPhone

Garde Manger final sucked

I was in a crap mood last night, which didn't help my focus for the final.  I had a what am I doing with my life moment right before we had to make the mayonnaise - if you're going to have a minor existential crisis, don't do it right as you're whipping up an emulsion; whisking oil is an existential crisis in its own respect.
Anyhoo I got over it and did good on my mayo, one of my friends who is an amazing cook could not get her's to form and she turned in an oil slick that smelled like lemon.
He let us loose after the goddamn mayonnaise, and we built caesar dressing, french style croutons, red pepper coulis, and a vicchysoise (sp?).  The coulis and the vicchyssoise have a similar process, kinda - in that garde manger classroom the tables aren't right by the burners, which also merits a little angst because you're running back and forth further than normal.  In the other kitchens, burners are only a pivot away. 
Basically I'm just trying to create an excuse for burning my croutons the first time - which I totally did.
In the end I got great grades on my vishyschwaze and my caesar (19s), a good grade (17) on my mayo, and a 15 on my coulis - docked me 5 points because there were a couple black flecks of blistered red pepper skin in my coulis, and he said that can bitter it up.

The written final was gnarly.  Just gnarly.  2/3 of the class finished in 10 minutes - they gave up and bailed.  Me and three others stayed and grinded that damn thing out.  Probably not going to get me a scholarship to CIA based on that performance, but at least I didn't give up.  And I know they gave up because they were turning in some blank-ass pieces of paper, probably ready to hit the bar.

Hell yeah its the weekend.  I cleaned out the garage this morning and put all Marcel's stuff front and center so he and his homeboys can have air hockey tournaments this summer.

Our canapes

Trying this from memory, I'll try to get them all:
We made
* a puff pastry curried chicken
* a wild mushroom tartlet
* a puff whiskey shrimp
* a goat cheese peppers
* a tuna confit
* a proscuitto mascarpone melon
* a deviled quail egg
* a salmon mousse
Overall, pretty yummy stuff!  We did well.  Tonight is the garde manger final.  He has us doing basics, like mayonnaise, red pepper coulis, caesar salad.

Our canape presentation

This mirrored presentation showcases 8 canapes we have made this week.  Our group created everything you see here, from the tartlet shells to the melon cuts.  I'll go through each canape soon.  (Formally, canape means a 1 to 2 bite open faced sandwich -- which can assume a variety of shapes and presentations.)

Sent from my iPhone

Last Week Livin Large

Monday through Thursday last week were all about spreads and forcemeats.  We made a chicken liver pate that was honestly real yummy.  i was not sure at all whether I'd like it, but yep it was good.  We also made a vegetable terrine using thin grilled vegetable pieces and gelatin. 

Since making pates and terrine, I've read a couple references to vegan pate.  Honestly I have no clue how to make these, but I think they'd be more complex and flavorful than the gelatin-based ones.  I have no problem with the flavor of gelatin, other than the fact that it is limited. 

Another forcemeat we made, the country style pork pate.  This pate was shaped in a mold and contained a rabbit tenderloin running down its center.  We then wrapped the molded pork with a pate dough and baked the sumbitch. 

The fourth big forcemeat from last week, the chicken gallantine.  This one was gnarly: fabricate a whole chicken, separating the bird from its skin, leaving the skin 100% intact.  Process the meat; reserve the breasts and isolate the legs and thighs.  Pate up the dark meat, along with gelatin, chicken livers, and seasonings.  Hammer the breasts into one thin rectangle o' flesh and slap it on the chicken skin.  Spread the pate onto the breastmeat, then roll it up nice and tight so that the outside is like a a big thick cylinder of chicken skin, like a skin football.  Wrap the gallantine in cheesecloth, then wrap that in plastic wrap, then either roast or poach.  We roasted, due to volume, but poaching is more traditional.

Once the gallantine is cooked, unwrap it and then it gets three thick coats of a 'chaud froid', a Bechamel-based gelatin outer coating. 

So then on Thursday we took these forcemeats and arranged them on a massive oval mirror.  Each one required eight identical slices and a thick solid base.  We had to display the slices in a fancy, curved order, and we also had to show our rabbit rillette, the rabbit forcemeat we had done earlier on and packed in a rammekin and topped with a layer of duck fat. 

My friend L took a few pictures of my group around our mirror; I need to plunder her facebook and get the pictures of our display.  It's rad.

Then on Friday, we got to 'relax' with some old school cooking, only this evening was timed.  We had a couple hours to fabricate a chicken, execute batonnet and and julienne cuts on some carrots, do a bunch more shit, baste an airline chicken breast, serve a pilaf and carrots au buerre, and then once it's all done drink beer in the parking lot with your friends.  We're actually not graded on the parking lot part, but if I were to grade us, I'd say we execute it like pros.       

****
And on to the next one!  This week we are doing another mirror display on Thursday, and we're having our garde manger final on Friday.  This week's mirror is for canapes and tartlets.

Garde manger getting good

We've started the forcemeats in full swing now.  This was one of the reasons I wanted to go to culinary school in the first place, so I'm stoked.  Last night's production: Rabbit rillette, chicken liver pate, country style pork.

Rabbit rillette: fabricate a rabbit and poach its legs, ribs, and backbone in mirepoix and spices for two hours.  (Learned last night why you should always buy rabbit from reputable sources: skinned, the rabbit body looks just like a cat's.  Meow.)  Remove rabbit parts and shred all meat from the legs.  Pitch bones and mirepoix, reduce stock.  In small ramekin, add shredded rabbit and reduced stock.  Top off ramekin with warm duck fat and refrigerate.

Chicken liver pate: (is good!  I am now a liver convert -- when properly prepared...)  Process aromatics, livers, cream, spices, brandy, other yums, and pour into a lined rectangular terrine pot.  Cook, then remove and press down on top of pate with a lined board - to maintain the precise rectangular shape.  Refrigerate.

Country style:  Mix pork, chopped livers, aromatics, with a panada (mix of cream, flour, eggs, brandy, spices) and develop semi-thick, slightly tacky texture.  Scoop into plastic bag and refrigerate.  (This is for tonight's production - we also made a pate dough that we'll roll out, mold into another kind of rectangular pot, and then we'll fill the dough with the country style and cook that bad boy.

The whole notion behind forcemeats is if you're a chef, and your kitchen only has, say 7 whole portions of a certain protein, and you need to stretch those 7 portions into 20 or 30 portions for a dinner service.  So you get creative, use your remaining protein along with big flavors and effective binding agents, then you have enough covers to run a special that night (rabbit pate instead of the roast rabbit you had originally intended, for instance).  And since it's fancy and requires a certain amount of labor and knowhow, you can charge a premium, possibly even more than you would have with just the roast protein.   

Last night's stage

Last night will be my last stage for a while, I think Jen and Marcel are going to key my car if I'm away from home any more on these weekend nights.  Works out fine, because I have my externship set up there, so the effort's paid off. 

The specials last night were crazy good - 'retarded good' as the sous chef put it.  A watermelon and feta salad, topped with wild arugula and a pink peppercorn vinaigrette.  That was seriously retarded good.  And batonnet cut chickpea fries, also retarded good.

The chef de cuisine prepared me a small order of the pork belly crostini, topped with green apples and microgreens.  I also tried the bacon wrapped, chorizo stuffed dates.  THOSE are good.  The food is insane and the flavors are huge.  Also new desserts last night: goat cheese cheesecake.  And bitter chocolate semifreddo.  The food is retarded good, and I'm going to get retarded fat during my externship.

Fruit and veg carving

One of the coolest nights in culinary school so far.  We did fancy carving into fruits and veggies.  First we watched a video demo by a woman from Singapore who is one of the world's best decorative carvers.  Then chef demoed an ornate floral pattern across the side of a whole watermelon.  Then we each got a turnip, peeled the white half of the turnip, and mimicked a part of his design on our turnips.  Chef was cool, very supportive, emphasizing the therapeutic quality of fruit carving.  We were cracking jokes, asking him if next Friday we could do basketweaving.

After we practiced the flower on the turnip, we did it again on a honeydew melon.  The larger surface lent itself to larger petals and the space to do cool leaves.  After honeydew, we got two roma tomatoes.  The first one, we peeled in one long strip (nailed it my first try!), then rolled the peel up to look like a rose bloom.  The second tomato, we cut in half the long way, then took one half and finely sliced into many small pieces.  Then, we spread the pieces out into one fine, long line of tomato slices, then curled it into itself over and over, making yet another tomato rose.

After tomatoes we cut swans out of granny smith apples.  Parallel patterns for the wings, spread them out far, then popped in a little head. 

He also let me practice more on a cantaloupe but I was getting tired so I just diced it and ate it instead.  I also ate a couple tomatoes, some honeydew, and my friend P's amputee apple swan.  That's more fruit than I've had all week; I need to wear a Depends this weekend.

Jen took the kids to Likkity's last night

Holla

Great news - today I met with chef Jason and he's going to let me do my externship at Fino.  This is huge for me, I feel like I now have clarity on what the rest of the program looks like for me.  I'm happy!

Thursday already?

Criminy, where's this week gone?

Last night was duck night in garde manger.  We smoked duck breasts that had been cured overnight, then browned them in the oven.  Then pan seared the skin to get it crisp, then sliced it extremely thin (chef: "one duck breast should give you at least 27 pieces") and arranged over an Asian slaw.  The slaw dressing turned out nice, but I only managed about 14 pieces of our breast, and my cuts were jagged.  Not my best knife work.

We also had duck leg and thigh on the stove in a confit - poaching the duck in its own fat.  we let the duck confit go at 190 degrees for about three hours.  When done, the duck meat slid off the bone like a slow cooked bbq rib.  (I reserved most of the duck confit and made Marcel a duck sandwich for lunch, thought that would be pretty gangster.)

The night before last was slow, sauce building.  Nothing earth shattering.  Tonight will be cool though, getting in to forcemeats.  We're making three different kinds of sausage.

Also today, I have a meeting with chef J from Fino; I'm trying to secure a spot for externship beginning in August.

First night of garde manger

Our classes have recombined, so there's once more around 40 students under one classroom roof.  Some students hate this, thinking they won't be able to use all the pans, bowls, whisks - and they're right, there was tons of stuff unavailable tonight - but I'm in favor of the disarray, it more accurately reflects life in the professional kitchen.  Plus it's cool seeing old friends.

Tonight we pounded out mayonnaise, vichyssoise soup, and two red pepper sauces, all four chilled and served cold.  One red pepper sauce was spicy, prepared with fire roasted peppers - the other was sweet, with oven roasted red peppers as a base.  It was incredible to learn how red peppers can have two such different flavor profiles just from different roasting techniques. 

R and I paired, and he made the mayonnaise while I made the vichyssoise.  The soup was so delicious!  I made it a little too thick but the rich leek flavor was just wonderful.  My family is not too amped on potato soup; otherwise I'd love to make this for them.  Maybe my mother in law would like some vichyssoise.

The red pepper dishes were amazing.  Easy to make and super sexy and rich.  R and I were both stoked and amazed at the range of flavor coming from the same damn veggie.

Garde manger is all about the cold side - salads, cold sauces, terrine, forcemeats.  This class is the one I have been looking forward to since day one.  I want to master garde manger and apply its cold side sensibility to dishes in Ithaca. 

Last night’s stage

I got my ass handed to me during last night's stage.  We were so busy, insane busy, for a minute I thought it was going to be a slow night but I don't know the place well enough to know when their dinner rush hits.  We got hit and I got schooled hard.  We had to go from zero to 90 in seconds; those guys knew it was coming but I had no idea.  It was hardcore, humbling, and way educational.  I learned so much – the real life on the job education I get from staging is the perfect complement to the Le Cordon Bleu labs.  You can't teach insane urgency.  You have to go through it.  Seriously felt like an army cadet going from exercises and lessons to a severe wartime simulation. 

I've been in a busy kitchen before, and my time management on the line is rusty but I still have the instincts.  But the difference is, in my previous life on sauté and grill, we were making $6, $7, maybe $9 dollar dishes.  We didn't give two shits how it looked, whether it had been safely prepared, consistency, etc – we just wanted to sell the ticket and get the food the hell out.  Here we're selling $12 tapas, $15 desserts, $30 entrees.  This is one of the nicest restaurants in Austin, and the quality standards have to be impeccable.  Sure, I get all that in theory – who doesn't want to prepare quality products – but to execute the high quality under the pressure we were under last night, that is something you can't fake.  Can't get it in a classroom, won't even get it in Ventana, the restaurant at Le Cordon Bleu, when we 'work' there later on this year.  My early chef instructor Chef Edna said our goal needs to be "Get very good, then get very fast."  And last night L, the pantry cook, kept yelling at me "You need to work faster.  You need to work faster."  Speed will come from repetition, menu familiarity (the menu at my stage is seasonal, I showed up to a few dishes last night), knowing how to haul ass and get the job done well.  I'm still thinking about everything.  "Small plate or big plate?  Order of hummus…one scoop or two?  Hummus gets…sumac?...fried garbanzos?...shit."  As ten more tickets roll in, and I'm so caught up in the hummus thing I have nothing even in the frier, so no appetizers are even dropped yet, and I think SOS means sauce on side, but by now I'm too scared to ask because I've already asked that same question twice tonight, and we're out of the fried olives bowls, so what do you normally put the fried olives in when you're out of that one bowl, and how the hell do these Manchego cheese triangles sit perfectly on these salads because when I make one it flattens the whole damn salad, and no of course I didn't just dump a bunch of fried crispy things in the sink for no reason, what would make you think that…

Imagine about three hours of doing that in your head and that's pretty close to what my stage felt like last night.  But I'm not complaining at all.  Back when I was skateboarding my homey Kenny Grace said "Dude, you always have to skate with guys better than you are.  That's the only way to learn."  Staging is all about the Kenny Grace philosophy, makes perfect sense.  At 11:15 last night I cleaned the frier.  Drained the oil, scraped a bunch of detritus that can only be described as Disgusting Shit, and got a ton of sarcastic shit from the guys as I did.  Little grease, little hazing, it's all good.  I'm gonna get better and go back next week.  I'm gonna be a machine.         

Baking is dead, long live baking

On to the next one, baking's behind us now.  The written final consisted of 12 short essay questions, along the lines of: explain why the laminated dough process is important, outlining the steps.  And, how is a Swiss butter cream prepared, and so on.  Pretty hard, but I knew a good chunk of it, and I'm banking on partial credit for the ones I fudged.

The practical was: 4 eclairs, 4 cream puffs, 4 swans, all turned in at the same time.  They use the same pate a choux dough, but each has a different cream, and the eclairs also have a fondant glaze.  I did well, 95 on the eclairs and 90/90 for puffs/swans.  My cream puffs are always too small, a customer would feel so ripped off buying one of my lil puffs.  But I handled my biz, made this shit from memory, and it's a new class on Monday.

Garde manger next, then international.  Tonight, no school - seeing Conan OBrien with Jen.

Aloha

Here's last night's work.  A tempered chocolate box, inside there are two dozen truffles.  Again, last night C and I opted for the screw it let's just have some fun route with our chocolate box.  Tempered chocolate, with no thermometer use, is not my pleasure.  Too much room for error, and there's all kinds of side effects errors will create.  So we said aloha to all the fancy filigrees that she had out for us to use, and instead made a tree with hazlenut sand, coconuts, and leaves.  And we got another 20 - class consensus though was that she was handing out 20s just for breathing.  Anyhoo.

Production final tonight.  We're on the hook for eclairs, cream puffs, and these crazy cream puff swan things.  No tempered chocolate required, so shouldn't be too bad.

Taco night

Tonight: apple charlotte, a candied apple concoction so buttery, even by le cordon bleu standards, I felt that I was contributing to US child obesity just by making the damn thing.  Apple charlotte has huge potential as a recipe and technique to tweak and make a TX version of for use in Ithaca.  As is though, it's the Medusa of diabetes; anyone who so much as looks at it gets Type II.

Also, rice pudding, served in a tuile cookie.  Chef demoed a tuile cookie that was spread like a thin pancake, baked, then shaped over a ramekin until it had a bowl-like shape to it, kind of a pinch pot thing almost.  Garnished with caramel filigree that we cooked, then created and cooled.  Long story short, rather than the boring big bowl, C and I made rice pudding tacos.  Two smaller tuiles, shaped over whisk handles until tacoed out.  Rice pudding in the shell, cinnamon for color, diced kiwi and raspberry for the veggies, a spiral filigree acting as cheese.  The whole class was all up in our business; no lie, at one point there were 4 cameras on our tacos.  And chef loved them, we got 20s.  We were real proud of our tacos and paraded them around to other classrooms. 

Last week of bakery

I've been dragging ass for the past two weeks, largely due to the family getting spanked by strep.  On top of that though, I've learned bakery's not really where my tastes or ambitions lie.  So it's cool but not as cool as roasting techniques, sauces etc.

That said, chef knows we feel that way, so she's doing a great job clueing us in about how as chefs a modicum of bakery skills can really set us apart.  Expand our menus on the cheap, and become more marketable too.

Makes sense to me, because when I think about our future place, I definitely think of having empanadas, and some kind of bready sticks or flatbreads for dipping.

Last night C and I made tuile dough and florentine dough, which we'll use tonight making moldable cookies.  We got Friday's creme brulee's graded, and we did well, chef said they were delicious but our caramel crust was not thick enough.  Jen, who wants me to gain weight, will be happy to hear I ate a ton of creme brulee at 9:30.

We made creme Anglaise, also for use tonight.  I could bathe in that stuff, tastes awesome.  And we cooked, cooled, then piped out what will end up being truffles, milk chocolate Frangelico hazlenut, and dark chocolate powdery.

Last week's high point for me: C and I made souffles and we absolutely dominated on them.  The first week though, we blazed through some of the baking basics, only one night for baguettes, one night for danish and croissant.  Our croissant didn't have much time to proof and rise, so we cooked up some mini bull horns, looked like something you'd see hanging on a steakhouse wall.  I'd like to redo those, Marcel loves croissant.

Next week we start International, which we think is also 1/2 garde manger.  This Friday Jen and I are going to Conan OBrien, holla.

Piper Houdini

She was pouting that I had run out of cinnamon graham crackers, but then got too quiet.  When I turned around I busted her trying to make a break for it.  Notice one of her shoulders are free from the harness.  I think if she had gotten both shoulders free she would've clobbered me with a board book.

Bakery class starting tonight

For the next three weeks, we'll be in baking class.  Three weeks ago, when my big class split into two smaller ones, half the class did proteins (us) and half did baking (them).  Today, we swap - they start chef Ernie's proteins class and we get to bake. 

This class will be the biggest threat to the waistline yet.  The other class made things like swan-shaped cream puffs, eclairs, candied fruit tarts, jelly roll, wedding cakes, madelines, biscotti, turnovers, cookies.  This means my eating schedule needs to change yet again -- for the past three weeks I've banked on some form of protein leftover (our dish after it's graded) for a late dinner.  Typically I'd eat my half of our dish and maybe some carrot or any other leftover veggie.  Still rich, because everything is whole butter this and cream that, but it's worked.  This one though, man I can't be eating eclairs for dinner for the next month.  Besides, everyone wants a piece of the bakery action; tonight we're doing basic breads and I will bring an extra bag to smuggle food out for the family.  I never brought home any proteins because I wasn't comfortable with how much time they'd have to stay unrefrigerated.  Baked goods are different, so I can bring some home provided I can get it out the door.

First impression of the chef was good; she came by on Friday night to tell us we'll be doing a completely different set of techniques and skills, no sauteeing or braising in the bakery.  In Ruhlman's book, when he gets to the bakery he experiences a total sea change in terms of chef's attitude and overall pace.  It'll be interesting to see if the same thing happens here.     

Friday/Saturday

Friday was the final for our proteins class, super fun night.  Everyone was scared to death about what dish they would yank from the toque of destiny.  There were actually two toques, one with dishes and one with presentation times - so it was possible to draw two braises (long cook time) and the first presentation time (you're screwed). 

I pulled presentation slot #11, giving me three hours.  And for food I got poached salmon a la nage, and sauteed airline chicken breast with veg tagliatelle and tarragon sauce.  I could make everything on burners, no deep fry or convection oven needed.  I stashed some extra whole butter in plastic and on ice so it could be cold for the tarragon sauce; none of my sauces have broken and I was going to lose my shit if I broke one on finals night.

I sliced my knuckle pretty decent with a mandoline while cutting tagliatelle.  A couple choice burns while basting the chicken breast.  But overall I did well, stayed organized and served two good dishes on time, both were 18 out of 20, two As.  The salmon needs to be cooked medium, which has been a wildly moving target for me and my friends.  Due to different cut sizes of salmon and varying cook times, no one has nailed the sweet spot yet.  Mine was a bit overcooked (yet for a normal salmon it was just south of fully cooked), and my friend R did his two minutes shorter than mine, but chef said his was undercooked.  This poach is elusive as hell.

Staged at Fino again last night, loved it.  Huge flavors!  We were busy, we started the night with a 45 top.  Keeps me on my toes.  The next few weekends are booked at home, so I let them know I can come back as soon as May 15th.  My school friends need to get up on a stage, this experience on the Fino line is so valuable.

Finals tonight

Last night L and I knocked out two 20s with our BBQ shrimp, dirty rice, and steamed mussels.  An awesome night, and we ate the hell out of it afterwards.  This seafood week hasn’t really produced much by way of yummy snacks, but last night’s was a good dinner for us. 

 

Tonight is our final, we have a written test and a practical test.  The written is the classic diagram of a cow and we have to label the cuts of meat, and we have to identify various birds, and roundfish, flatfish, lean meats, fatty meats.  40 questions in all, he said.  Then we have to make two of six possible dishes for grading: roast lamb, fried chicken, hanger steak, poached salmon, beef bourginon, and one other dish, I forget.  And of course, the dishes are in French so they sound better, and they have sides and sauces too.

 

Next week, we’re on to baking.  I will be able to bring home more snacks to the fam then.  For the past few weeks, I haven’t been keen on bringing these proteins home, in case they stay at an unsafe temp for too long. 

 

And tomorrow night I’m staging at FINO again!  Looking forward to it. 

 

More info on how the finals go tonight.        

 

Fish Week

We had Monday off so fish week will be a short one.  Last night we poached salmon and served it over julienned veggies and an odd cream sauce verjus.  If I had eaten much of that cream sauce, I would be in the Le Cordon Pooper all day today.  But chef seems to stomach it just fine.  We also basted/pan fried striped bass fillet and served that with yummy lentils with brunoised veggies, and a buerre rouge, a gorgeous acidic red wine sauce mounted with butter.  Of all the things we made last night the sauce was my favorite; I am finding I am decent at making sauces.  Thus far they are shiny, velvety, great texture, and do not break.  I need to practice my sauces more out of class.

We get to keep same partners, so L and I are together for another week.  He was so excited to bring home the salmon head so he could make soup today, but at the end of the night chef threw away L's salmon head.  He was crestfallen. 

Tonight are flatfish, sole and flounder.  Flounder are one of those things that religious people can use to say God has a sense of humor.  They are hysterical looking and taste delicious. 

I called James from Olivia, playing phone tag with him -- and followed up with Chef Jason from Fino to stage again this Saturday.

Marcel at Austin's Park

Yesterday before my stage Marcel and I logged in some father/son time at Austin's Park.  In this picture he is soaked from bumper boats ( I was too) and we're in line for the go carts, which he loves - he was rocking it in a car solo, racing the teenagers and getting pissed when they'd bump his car.

Stove Monkey shirts

Man I just found an awesome tshirt company that makes shirts for cooks and chefs.  I want them all.  From their website:

Stove Monkeys was established in 2007 by Matthew Mytro and Anthony Lynch. As young, energetic chefs they were proud to represent themselves as culinary professionals but were limited outside of the kitchen. Inspired to create a line of clothing that could be worn by chefs as everyday street wear, Stove Monkeys was born. Their passion continues to grow as does their clothing line…so don’t go anywhere… you might get left behind….
Stove Monkeys purpose is to provide the culinary industry apparel that will bestow a sense of camaraderie amongst culinary professionals, students, and foodies throughout the world.
As progressive chefs, we are concerned with sustainability and health. We carry these beliefs into the production of our apparel by utilizing eco friendly printing materials and recycled products where available.

Check it out: stovemonkeys.com

Stage update!

Yesterday I got a call from the executive chef at Fino, checking on my availability for a stage at his restaurant this weekend.  I got the call while at work, I was completely surprised and just about speechless.  I absolutely did not expect anything like this.  We talked and lined up a stage for tomorrow afternoon, I go in on Saturday at 4pm. 

Here's where I'll be working tomorrow evening: http://www.astiaustin.com/fino/

 

Then today at 8am James from Olivia emailed me to set up an interview!  Chef James Holmes is a huge local talent, and I'm excited to talk to him.  We tried to get together today, but I went to Olivia this afternoon and he had been called away.  So we talked and we'll try again on Monday.  Olivia would be the ultimate stage and externship opportunity. 

 

So just like that, I'm now working two great stage opportunities.  Happened so fast.

 

Last night's class was a fun night, fried chicken and chicken fingers.  The idea behind last night being in the curriculum is that basically every place needs to have some chicken fingers on the menu for the kids, so we fancied them up Le Cordon Bleu style with smoked paprika, panko, and other nice ingredients.  We got them GBD (golden/brown/delicious) as the chef-instructors like to say.  Another 20, and an 18 for the country fried chicken legs -- our creamed zucchini was a bit loose, and the mashed potatoes needed a wee bit more butter.

 

We left early too; the neighbors in the building next door laid down some epoxy on the floors to dry overnight, and all the night shift students like me got a mouthful of fumes.  Our class was fine, just a bit lightheaded, but the fire trucks had to come out and give some people oxygen.  I saw one girl getting an oxygen mask while 6 firemen stood around her eating fresh chocolate biscotti.  I bet they love getting calls out to the culinary school.  

 

I was able to go home and hang out with Jen some, surprised her by coming home an hour early.  Getting home at 10pm is now early to me.  My whole internal clock is completely different now.  Whatever my life looks like when I get out of this program, it'll require some major schedule readjustments.  Especially considering that I literally did marathon training until the day before culinary school.  There are so many books I am not reading these days. 

A great week so far

The past two nights have been great.  Last night was grill night, and L and I made bacon wrapped quail with madiera sauce and ratatouille, and grilled balsamic honey glazed chicken breast with a vegetable Napoleon.  Each dish was high in prep work, and our mise en place took forever, especially with the ratatouille - all those small dice, which I actually did in a brunoise, a tad smaller than it was supposed to be, although my cuts were consistent.

The Napoleon is a riff on the dessert; we made a layered tower of grilled portobello mushroom, roasted red pepper, grilled zucchini, topped with browned mozzarella cheese.  The mushroom grilled so well, very yummy.  And L made the glaze while I grilled the breast.  Grilled quadrillage on the skin side, flipped it, grilled more, then finished in the oven.

We scored perfect on the chicken, and we got an 18 on the quail - my pinche ratatouille went cold, and our presentation wasn't perfect on the plate.

The night before, we sauteed chicken breasts served with a vegetable tagliatelle (which means rat tails), and sauteed duck breasts with quinoa, sugar snap peas, and a blackberry gastrique.  We dominated; a 20 on the chicken, a 19 on the duck.  The duck tasted so good.

Also last night, our buddies in bakery made eclair, macaron, and creme puffs.  So right after we were through cooking, these yummies showed up and we inhaled them all.

Tonight is deep frying night, should be fun.

Poultry week is underway

New meats, new techniques, and new partners.  This week I'm with L, my Filipino friend who loves his Glock and loves him a 5 Hour Energy shot. 

Last night was roast whole chicken with mushroom dressing and gravy, and half a partially deboned Cornish hen with batonned celery root/carrot in anise burre blanc over a horseradish cream sauce.  Our birds both came out juicy as can be.  It was easy to take the temp of the chicken and pull it when it hit 160; the hen was harder, at that size of a bird chef said the thermometer can lie to you so you must also get to know doneness by the feel of the meat.  Which sounds like an awesome way to give someone samonella.  But ours came out perfect.

For both birds we let them rest 15-20 minutes before carving and presenting.  Chef said chicken should be served just above room temperature, and it will do some reheating from the sauce.  Other teams had some juice loss, or some meat that looked underdone.  Theirs didn't rest long enough, but our timing was good.  The only things we missed were A) too much negative space on our chicken plate and B) the horseradish sauce was a little too thick. 

Tonight is saute: duck breast, chicken breast.

Marcel's first jam skate lesson

Friday's class

We made a veal blanquette and the veal/veloute combination ended up looking like some of the pale wet dog foods I get for Salado.  Which was the desired effect, it needed to be as white and monochromatic as possible, and as we plated it with rice pilaf it was a very very pale plate. 

Beef bourguinon was delicious.  We made a hell of a sauce for our beef to braise in.  My partner eats almost no salt so I have to taste and season for salt levels; any salt is too much salt for her, and this French cuisine is like creamed salt lick after creamed salt lick. 

With dishes like beef bourguinon, I'm wondering how it could be tweaked to be vegetarian friendly.  Thick chunks of root vegetables, some tempeh chunks, something.  The wine is there foremost to cut into the collagen in the meat, break it down and tenderize for the braise to be effective, but maybe there's a way to pull out more of those rich wine flavors in a different method, kinda fudge and back into the bourguinon flavor profile.

In any case it was good and so cool to think about how these techniques originated from the peasants.  Culinary study is unique, I'm very happy.

Also on Friday, I dropped off resumes at Olivia and Asti, looking for staging opportunities. 

We killed it tonight

Okay it took a few days but beef juice and I clicked tonight.  Tonight was braising night (oh yes its braising night, and the feelings right, oh yes its braising night oh what a night), we did beef short ribs and osso bucco, which is a veal shank.  Both tough cuts of meat, needing hours in a braise to gelatinize, soften, fall off the bone. 

The osso bucco paired with a risotto and was topped with a gremoulade (anchovy, lemon zest, parsley, garlic) and brunoised veggies.  My brunoise is getting good, knife cuts were rough for me at first but I'm getting the hang of it.  I did the osso bucco, and it came out quite well.  Chef found it to be tender, my sauce nappe (thick enough to coat the back of a spoon), he did say my risotto was done but not creamy enough.

The short ribs were executed by A; I cut the veggies for it and also sliced the beef thinly on the bias when complete.  She made the sauce, seared and braised the ribs, plated the dish.  Chef loved it, and gave us the first 20 (perfect score) that he has given our class to date. 

Meat is bananas

My partner is insane.  Last night we were doing rack of lamb and veal cutlets.  The sauces for each dish require veal stock, the rack of lamb actually needing a demiglace so you have to reduce the stock.  So we're busy as hell and she's a mumbler, I don't do well with low grade human white noise speak up if you want to be heard, and every time I deduce what she's saying, she's always asking me where the beef juice is.  Beef juice, beef juice, then she trots off to wash dishes, then comes back and hints for a cigarette.
There's a restaurant term called in the weeds, defined as the state when not only is one fucked, one knows one is fucked, prays for an extra minute to get caught up, but that minute never comes.  And A, who henceforth shall be known as beef juice, creates this feeling wherever she goes.
Our food actually ended up okay.  The veal was not sweet like chef's was, but it was okay.  And he said we nailed the rack of lamb.  Thoroughly enjoyed making that lamb.  Frenching it, searing, breading.  Its just a cool shape and satisfying to cook, feels creative.  If only beef juice didn't drive me crazy in the process.  I work hard at staying organized before, during, after cooking.  Beef juice works hard at taking a giant poop on my mise en place and mumbling all night.  Very ready to switch partners.

Night one was a riot

Like literally, like prison riot.  Last night we were doing a stuffed roast pork and a roast beef, and I had the pork.  My group had 3 people, one dude who was brand new to our class.  Anyway something happened and one thing ate another and before you know it we're presenting two porks to chef to taste.  No beef.  No clue no beef.  My partner A had hacked the fat off of he pork that I thought was beef, and I was so busy checking temperatures that I totally spaced on identifying the meat's color.  Massive duh no shit moment.
Anyway tonight we're doing a rack of lamb, watch me turn in a roast gerbil.

New 3 week session

Tonight starts our proteins class.  Half my class is going to baking, other half is proteins, pretty sure I'm going to proteins.
The last two weeks were such a whirlwind, I'm glad I took notes because I completely forgot about some (most) of the soups, sauces, and veggies I even made.  Carrots vichy, gratin a dauphinoise, poached eggs, sauteed spinach, consomme soup, cream of mushroom soup, shrimp bisque, garlic mashed potatoes, perfect pommes frites, ---- this list doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the dishes we did.
I did however pull a perfect score on my consomme soup during our practical final exam.  Consomme is witchcraft.  Love it.  Witches with cauldrons, ever wonder what they're making?  Consomme.

The kids reading last night

Jennifer sent me this picture last night, the kids reading together while I was at school.  These children, they grow so damn fast.  We've got a couple of old souls with young energy here.  Cool kids.

School Monday was more soups, this time cream soups.  Cream of mushroom soup, shrimp bisque, potato watercress (potage) something something.  We got new partners, I'm cooking with M now which is rad, M is very good.  She cooks during the day too, so she's on her game. 

First step of the night was to start the shrimp stock.  Shell shrimp, mirepoix, agua, bouquet garni, simmer.  While that was going we started onions and mushrooms for the mushroom soup, then threw in small tosses of flour until roux-like.  Chicken stock, simmer.  With the shrimp stock and the mushroom soups underway, we prepped for the potage, cutting julienned leeks and selecting bunches of watercress. 

Cream cream, simmer simmer, blend blend, present and grade.

Presented the mushroom soup first, Chef liked it very much.  I think our mushroom soup was awesome and actually I'm convinced Marcel - who HATES mushrooms - would like it.  It was so delicious.  We forgot to add sherry, so we were docked one point.  M said she is an alky and she drank it all, but Chef didn't buy that line.

Our potage, which I built, had a bit too much pepper in it.  The watercress also gives a kind of peppery, fresh flavor, but you could tell it was my white pepper by where it hit on the tongue.  It was yummy though, great pastel green hue and perfect consistency (which was the result of some soup CPR - at first it was too thick so we added more stock, re-pureed, re-reasoned, and did that a couple more times until the texture was more velvety).

Now, I'm in this program to learn from the process, not to get perfect grades.  THAT said, M and I worked together on the bisque, seasoning a bit at a time (after that potage and the sherry mishap), because it involved cayenne and white pepper, and we didn't want to make a shrimp mouth bomb.  Chef said our bisque was perfect.  20 out of 20.  Something amazing, while we were making the bisque, I got a good understanding of how the heavy cream influences and rounds out the overall flavor.  I tasted our pureed soup before we added the cream, and I panicked because it tasted thin and carroty.  But when the cream and seasoning were added, the shrimp stock came to the forefront, carried largely on the fats of the cream.  Very cool.     

Cute picture of wifey outside the Cut Chemist show

We were hella cold but got to see Cut Chemist, Mos Def, J.Rocc, DJ Craze, and a couple other rad DJs.

Marcel ripping it at the skate rink

The kiddos

Spring break

Spring break off from school.  Our homework from Chef Gary was to cook.  Try new recipes, stretch our comfort zones out, challenge ourselves.

So far, I have made French onion soup, which had a deeper brown color to it than the French onion A and I made in class.  Then, I made chicken soup, and it tasted like chicken soup is supposed to taste like.  That's a nice step forward for me, making things that taste just like they are supposed to taste.  Used to be I'd make something and try to create an original taste or texture.  Now I just want to show due respect to preestablished flavor profiles and execute flavors as they are meant to taste.

Chef Porter said that our goal should be to learn how to cook correctly, then learn how to cook correctly fast.  I think learning the established flavor profiles is part of correct cooking. 

Day 4: Sauces

Day 4, more sauces.  R was not as school, so I worked with A.  We were a good team! 

• Clarified butter: not so much a sauce, but still needed to be demoed and practiced.
• Veloute: mother sauce #4.  Light yellow color, with basic chicken flavor.  
• Sauce Supreme: small sauce made from veloute, tastes like the most delicious, impeccable chicken mushroom soup you can imagine.  This sauce with dark chicken meat and fresh biscuits would make my head explode.
• Hollandaise: mother sauce #5.  Prepared using egg yolk as an emulsifier.  Should have a rich butter and egg flavor.  Common with eggs hollandaise, yum yums.  I had to make it twice, the first time I made it too fast and made scrambled eggs.  
• Beurre Blanc:  A white wine/butter sauce.  Reduce down wine with shallots and thyme, then hit with cold butter and keep the pan in motion while heating, otherwise the sauce will break.  Strain it and serve em up.  A delicate butter and wine reduction.  With a fresh trout, hell yeah.  

Day 3: Sauces

Sauce day one rundown:

• Sauce Espagnol: mother sauce #1.  A rich, base sauce with a reddish brown color and a beef flavor.  No discernible taste of flour in the roux.  The sauce should have a nape consistency (nape [nap-eh] means like a tablecloth, it should coat the back of a spoon evenly like a tablecloth or napkin).
• Veal Demiglace: mother sauce #2.  50/50 espagnol and brown veal stock, reduce it by 50%.  Similar flavor as the espagnol, a  bit more intense without sabotaging the color or being too gummy.
• Marchand du Vin: a small sauce made from the demiglace.  "Wine merchant".  An intensely rich beefy, winey sauce that begs for a luscious cut of beef and some crusty bread.  I'll make this one for Jen the nest time we have good steaks.
• Bechamel: mother sauce #3. Thick, creamy white sauce.  Gorgeous texture, neutral milky flav.  Don't make it in aluminum pans, it's gotta be stainless steel, otherwise the sauce will turn grey.
• Mornay: a small sauce made from the bechamel.  Gruyere cheese, Parmesan cheese, white peppercorn, hell yeah this is a good sauce.  Just don't let it get too thick or it'll look like thick blobby, not sauce.  If it all sticks to the bowl when chef turns the bowl upside down, you might want to make it again.  Didn't happen to me, but it did happen a few times to others.   

Tonight I partnered with R, and we worked well together, although we didn't execute as much of our mise en place as we could have/should have.  I'm huge on being organized, trying to be as organized as I can.  Each night I try to minimize my steps at least a bit from the night before, and also make my station cleaner.

Day Two: Stocks

Here is the chef's demo area, at the center of the room.  Two pitchers of wine for deglazing, one white, one red.  The pot on the burner had white veal stock going. 

Day two was all about stocks.  Intro to chicken stock, fish stock, veal stock (also called beef stock, but most beef stock is actually from veal bones; veal bones have much more developmental collagen in them and therefore give off a richer result). 

Chef Gary was roasting huge veal bones, "knuckles", in a convection oven.  Chef Paul was lecturing to us about chicken stock, which we would be making later in the evening.  The knuckles were for a brown stock, whereas the chicken would be for a white stock.  The color in the brown stock comes from the roasting, the bones get a nice rich brown hue from the Maillard effect, which is the browning that proteins get at or above 310 degrees F (often mistakenly called caramelization: caramelization relies on the sugars in carbos, whereas Maillard happens to proteins).  Chef took the veal knuckles out, coated them with a thin rub of tomato paste, then threw them back in, good for the stock's complexity.

The coolest part of the chicken stock demo was the preparation of the sachet d'epice and bouquet garni, both of which we are responsible for on a daily basis, two traditional methods for flavoring stocks, soups, and sauces.  Sachet d'epice means 'bag of spice', it's a cheesecloth pouch we make that contains bay leaf, clove, and peppercorn.  Bouquet garni - leek, celery, thyme, parsley - is cool: you roll thyme and parsley up tight, wrap it with the leek leaf, tuck that in the celery, and tie it with a slipknot.  Both of these you secure with kitchen twine and submerge it in your stock.  I had to learn how to tie a slipknot from my friend T at break; I wasn't going to be the only person who didn't know how to tie one.

I partnered with M for chicken stock production.  He is a young student, nice kid who takes tons of good notes.  They paid off for chicken stock night, because he kept way better notes about what we were doing than I did.  But our stock turned out nice, and the class has been using that chicken stock for the rest of our recipes this week.

While cleaning I tried to get my helpful on, and asked Chef Paul if Chef Gary's pot of stock (seen here) was chicken stock.  He said yes, so E and I added it to the rest of the chicken stock.  Chef Gary returned and I wanted him to hook me up with an approving high five and give me bonus points for being rad -- long story short turns out that was white veal stock (veal stock from bones that are not roasted) that I poured in the chicken stock.  Awesome.  He didn't mind though, pretty cool guy and an honest mistake.  Next night, sauces. 

 

Marcel Beane roller skating in the house

When I'm at school, Marcel and Jen roller skate in the house or garage almost nightly.  Marcel would sleep in his skates if we let him.

Baby Bukowski ate too many black beans

Friday Soups

We've done so much this week, I need to begin with the most recent class and just work backward until my memory totally fails me.  Last night was our first soup night.  We've done sauces and stocks and knife cuts up til then, but last night was soups.  Three soups, caldo verde, French onion soup, and consomme.  Earlier on this week Chef Paul said he'd rather see us execute one recipe correctly instead of crash and burn on five recipes - so I decided I would completely engage in this consomme process and then catch up on my partner's work with the other two soups.

I've regarded consomme as one of those odd, almost alchemical food productions, and was looking forward to learning it hands on.  (The following excerpt from this blog is a good how-to on making consomme:)

You put the mirepoix of onion/carrot/celery, plus a little tomato, a couple of egg whites, a few ounces of “clearmeat” (ground chicken breast in this case) in a saucepot, and stir this mess to combine. Throw in a  bay leaf, a few cracked peppercorns, and a parsley sprig for flavor. Add a quart of chicken stock. Put it on the stove and let it simmer. The solids gather and form a “raft” on the surface of the stock, with the proteins in the egg whites and clearmeat and acid in the tomato attracting impurities in the stock. You keep an eye on the raft while it forms, using a spoon to gently create a vent, or “chimney,” in the center. The raft looks disgusting, like the worst frittata you ever saw.

God forbid your raft should sink, or you’ll need to take emergency measures to rescue the consomme. Our textbook devotes pages to saving doomed consomme.

Once the raft has done its dirty job of capturing impurities, it’s time to reveal the beautiful consomme below. You set a chinois (fine-mesh strainer) over a very clean saucepot (you don’t want your consomme to pick up new impurities, after all). Place a coffee filter inside the chinois.

Then carefully ladle the consomme into the chinois. It’s not a bad idea to repeat this process–and blot the surface of the soup with a piece of parchment paper–to eliminate any lingering impurities. Put your consomme back on the stove to get piping hot, and add salt to taste.

When finished, consomme looks like gasoline or chardonnay.  Some upscale restaurants serve it in wine glasses for the effect.  We had to brunoise carrots and celery for garnish, but according to Chef Gary my brunoise looks like boxcars.  I told him I'd practice over the break, because he's right, they do look like boxcars.  But my consomme turned out very good, he said "Make no mistake, this is a real consomme."  That to me is total validation, man.  Not bad at all for my first time ever.  It was awesome watching the raft develop and the broth beneath getting clearer and clearer.

The French onion soup required onion carmelization for a long, long time.  The onions were actually the first thing the chefs wanted us to get going.  Onions for that soup, the raft setup for consomme, and we weren't even supposed to thing about caldo verde until the other two were almost wrapped.  The chefs said the onion soup could've been caramelized further to develop even more color and flavor, but hell it was still pretty good.  (And I redeemed myself today by making some for Jen; it was darker and yummier.)

Caldo verde is very delicious.  Render cured chorizo, then throw in onions and garlic, sweat them, throw in chicken stock and peeled diced potato, cook until tater is 2/3 tender, then throw in kale for 5-10 minutes, let the stock tighten some from potatoes that have disintegrated, and serve em up serve em up man!    

The chefs were cool about giving us all some time to eat and enjoy our creations.  They are very much in tune with us wanting to eat and learn more about the food we make by getting sustenance and fullness from it, as well as wanting to know the tastes.  Since we all eat together in some form each night -- be it a stolen apple pie, some cookies someone brought, a stew from the next class over, some clams from the proteins class, or our own soups -- we have a brief window of leisure time each night, after grading is complete, where we can eat up and laugh and relax a bit before we have so clean the kitchen from top to bottom.

A and I did well, she's a fun partner.  We now have a full week off, unheard of, ad I'll use the time to work on my brunoise, because I can't have boxcars in my consomme.  If the price of carrots spikes in the near future, it's because I've bought so many for knife cuts practice that I've created a scarcity.

I'll write about sauces shortly.