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.