Sam was robbed

Class is getting awesome.  At the end of the first week, we've covered culinary history, commercial kitchen tools, foodborne illness, types of ovens, and what seems like a helluvalot more. 

Tonight though marked the beginning of some genuine food-being-cooked chemical composition materials, focusing first and foremost on what happens when food is heated.

Chef Porter apparently has strong feelings about Ilian and Marcel from Top Chef a few years ago.  Tonight she called them rookies, newbies, shoemakers, hacks.  Reason being is that Sam, who got kicked off the show after their Hawaii cooking, prepared an entire challenge without ever applying heat to his dishes.  Collichio felt strongly that Sam did not cook his food because he never heated his food, and that led to Sam being kicked off.  Chef Porter does not believe that 'cooking' food should have to involve heat, because there are chemical qualities a cook can depend on to prepare food for him.  Chef Porter says the whole reason we cook is to make food A) palatable and B) digestible, and if a technique can achieve these standards, it should not matter if heat is involved or not.

So, Sam aside, we talked at length about heating proteins, heating carbohydrates, and the slight chemical reactions that each will bring about.  Caramelizing onions and other vegetables is a process of browning the sugars in the carbohydrates.  Same reason bread crust is brown and delicious.

We discussed the different cuts in beef, pork, and chickens, and the difference in muscle quality from static muscles and locomotive muscles.  Static muscles will be more like your tenderloins -- muscles and cuts with a fine muscular sinew.  Locomotive muscles, the muscles used to move the animal's body or to support the animal's weight, will exhibit more general toughness and white tissue for the collagen present in the muscle.  Slow cooking will alter the collagen and turn it into gelatin, softening the meat considerably.

After the first week, it's bizarre to look back at what we've learned and been tested on.  The school is blowing up, just getting started, and it's rad to be part of it.

Tonight I contacted Chef Josh at The Carillon, to see if he needed and culinary students to come stage for him, because I'd love to work with Chef John Watkins.  Additionally, I'd like to stage at Olivia.