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.

CA 103 so far

We have done so many things this week, I have learned so many things this week.  It is impossible to write them out completely how I would like, giving the story, mise en place, preparation for each sauce.  I'll just have stay up on my notes and write a long post this weekend.  Suffice it to say this week has been a learning curve I personally have not experienced since that first week, alone in my car with my new driver's license.  Learning these stocks, sauces - these foundational building blocks - has felt that game-changing.  I'll catch up more over the weekend.

We have next week off for Spring Break.  Having more than an hour a day with my family will kick giant asses.

Our lab

This is 1/3 of our cooking lab space.  Picture the entire room as a large U shape; this space is the right arm of the U.  The U butt is where we students cram in order to see chef's demo, get lectures, and grab a stool in the off chance that we have a minute of down time.

The left arm of the U is a replica of this arm, same functionality.  So from the back, there's pots, pans, cutting boards, china caps, rondeauxs, ladles, etc.  The 3 compartment sink and disposal.  Tables in the center; with 4 tables, 4 cutting boards to a table, this space holds 16 students pretty well.  Heavy duty gas burners on the left and the right.  Convection oven, gigantic tilt kettle.

This is my home away from home until April.

Piper making a funny face during Yo Gabba Gabba

 

 

CA 103 has begun....

CA 103 night one was all about knife cuts.  We met our two new chef instructors, learned about their bios and background, and were lined up for uniform inspection, a practice that will occur nightly.  Thank God I remembered my thermometer; I almost left it at home.

Chef demoed all the cuts for us.  Each night, class will start with our demo, where chef talks us through the technique, the name for the technique, the reasons behind the technique, and he allows us to inspect his finished work.

Chef first demoed cutting onions -- the cut is called celesier, celetier, something -- it's when you lay some horizontal lines in the onion, then vertical lines, then you turn it 90 degrees and celesier it up.  The lines need to be about 3/8" apart.  Next, same technique with shallots, then a mince of garlic, half minced, half minced then smeared into paste, which is good for dressings so that your poor taster doesn't get little garlic flavor bombs in the dressing.

Next, minced parsley.  Stemmed it, rolled the leaves together, then cut it over and over until minced.  (Which requires attention, as there are always some rogue parsley leaves sticking to your knife or hand.)  After the mince, chef cut some cheesecloth, packed the parsley in it, and rinsed it under hot water.  Squeezed it dry, then tumped it out on a plate.  This way, your parsley will be nice and fluffy.

Next, carrots: batonneted and diced.  The batonnet is a stick cut: 1/2 x 1/2 x 2-3".  A batonnet gives way to a dice: 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2.  Batonnet creates a fair amount of carrot waste, so it's a good idea to save your scraps for a stock, or for carrot chunk snacking.  Chef's dices were a sight to behold.  Skills.

After batonnets and dices, chef cut mirepoix: onions, carrots, and celery for Tuesday's stock.  Mirepoix is 50% onions, 25% carrots, 25% celery.  Depending on your stock (fish, veal, chicken) and therefore the time required for a simmer, you'll cut your mirepoix accordingly.  Longer simmer, thicker mirepoix, or 'poix.  Quicker simmer (fish stock), smaller poix.

After the demo we went to it.  The great thing about this class is that we'll have tons of individual lab practice time.  Very few team assignments in this class.  Teams are fine, but this way I have more hands-on time, which is what we're paying for.  All in all I did well for my first night.  We each received a tray of product.  We had to prep our mise en place, decide on a routine for execution and presentation, and as we completed a few cuts, we had to bring our plates to chef for one-on-one critique.  My dices looked like odd parallelograms instead of cubes, but chef said overall not bad.  Based on the cut he knew exactly what I did wrong, and gave me feedback.  My shallots and my parsley were good, and my poix was proportionate.

I'll take a picture of the lab tonight, so you have a better idea of where I'm spending my time.  Tonight is stock: veal stock, chicken stock, and maybe mother sauces too.

Next class

Tonight is the first day of our new class.  We get to bring tools to class, and the rumor is we'll be making sauces.

I'm absolutely thrilled to be in a lab, doing some actual kitchen work.  Also quite nervous.  I've never cooked in front of so many people before. 

Afternoon at the school

I have two tests this evening, a quiz on some chapters and my manager's level sanitation certification, so I got here early today.  Some studying, but then I got sidetracked, reading about consommes.  I've never made consomme, never seen it made, so finally reading about the clearmeat process was fascinating, and honestly put it into practical terms.  I hear our next class is basics, knife cuts and sauces, beginning with the five mother sauces, so hopefully we'll do consomme in there too. 

 

I took a break, left the library and went outside to eat some chicken leftovers.  (School has me on an odd schedule where I eat my dinner by about five in the afternoon.  The alternative is to hold a nightly tailgate in the classroom, and I don't like that alternative -- particularly because we won't be able to eat in labs.)  I sat in the shade by the herb garden.  The school grows a great herb garden; sitting there, I could see chervil, fennel, mustard greens, baby greens, parsley, and more herbs down to the right.  These plots of individual herbs are huge -- giant greens, large bushes. 

 

Back inside I return to the library and pass the bake shop, where the students have put their nightly up-for-grabs extras in the hall.  No exaggeration, I walked past six whole cheesecakes and two whole carrot cakes.  Each cheesecake sat on a stool, and the carrot cakes had their own small table.  Sugared, glazed fruits garnished each cheesecake.  Last night I had a piece of sacher torte (with 'Sacher' in cursive frosting on each piece), so I have to pass on the cheesecake today. 

 

After our two tests, we're having a wine tasting.  The campus wine expert is hosting a tasting, and Chef Porter has already cracked the whip to make sure no one thinks they are getting loaded  I've seen the sommelier leving other classes after tastings, and she pushes a cart filled with empty wine bottles and one giant sloshing spittoon.

 

Off to take my quiz.  I hope the cheesecakes are gone.

Yep, PI.

Three beers, 22 year old rookie cop, PI.

Was pissed but already did 8 years and didn't want to end up doing more, so went with it.  I'm not sure what the alternative was, but whatevs.

Dude probably cooks like a bat out of hell, can't wait to see this class do its thing in a lab.

Week three underway

It's officially culinary school.  Day one of week three, and we finally had a student say they were absent because they got arrested. 

"I was in jail.  Sorry chef." 
Chef Porter says "Don't they give you one email?"

Kitchen no-shows due to arrest are pretty common, at least where I've cooked before.  I'm trying to remember this one guy's name but it escapes me.  He was real quiet, sometimes prone to rage, like physically hold back from the front of the house rage.  He was a prep cook mainly but did have line skills.  Totally spacing on his name.  He was a huge drunk and was always disappearing due to PIs downtown, sometimes fights too.

Got so every time he didn't show up for a shift someone started passing the hat so we could go bail him out before the dinner rush kicked off.  Other times he'd vanish and we'd go out to the smoking table behind the restaurant and find him snoring in a fetal position, have to wake his butt up because we needed to soak black beans and he needed to inspect the case for small rocks first.

He wasn't the only drunk, not by a long shot.  (I've blacked out behind the line more than once, we all did.  One minute you're on the line, next minute you're waking up at home and it's a new day.)  He stands out because he was a sweet guy, and very police interaction-prone.  No idea why.

Anyway, this guy in my class, the cavalier way he said he was in jail, we're totally talking either a PI or fighting while sauced.  That's just how it goes.

This is what happens when Piper gets banana in her hair