Day 11

Believe it or not, its the third week already. Last week was weird with the serve safe one day and wine class another. It feels like we barely cooked. Except when I remember that I tasted more sauces based on butter than I knew existed. Wine class today was the same agenda as last week. We talked more about different wine regions around the world and then tasted a bunch. So today we had a sauvignon blanc from Napa, CA, an albarino from rias baixas, Spain, a pinot grigio from veneto, Italy, a viognier from south Australia, and a Riesling from CA. So those were the whites. I liked the sauv blanc and the albarino. If you haven't tasted one before, you should give it a whirl. Its very easy to drink and has some great floral notes, yet is still dry with medium to full body. For reds we started with a chianti classico (surprise! I actually liked it), a ribera del duero, spain, an easy drinking malbec from mendoza, and a zinfandel by Bogle in CA. I have a hard time enjoying tasting these big reds. They are really overwhelming in my mouth. Maybe that just means I need to practice drinking them more. I should get a good chance this week as we are beginning meat fabrication tomorrow. I can't wait. I have always wanted to learn how to fillet things and debone. Very mysterious techniques that I think are part secret ritual that regular home cooks don't get to learn. I plan on penetrating this secret circle tomorrow. Yes, I know that sounded really dirty, sor.

DAY 12 - I find out secrets involving carcass and knives!

Day 10

So we tasted wine today. We had a basic lecture which was long but informative and comprehensive. Then we tasted. We had a rose from Tavel, France, a chardonnay from Burgundy and a chardonnay from Sonoma, California, a Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara, California, a cote du rhone and lastly a bordeaux from Lalande de Pomerol. I didn't really like drinking either of the last two as they sort of blew my tastebuds off. Chef assured me that I would feel very different about them if I was eating some large portion of animal flesh. Unfortunately all I had was a crust of bread. It was a fun day, though. I did miss cooking at the stove, but a day of wine education was certainly not bad. I ended up going to dinner with chef, his wife, and some other couple that they had worked with. The evening ended with us drinking cocktails and having sort of a dance off. I haven't quiet figured out how things escalated to that but I had a fantastic time.
Monday's agenda: Wine Day #2

Day 9

So after throwing out half my fridge in fear of contracting one of the many foodborne illnesses that I learned about yesterday...Today I made sauce all day. It was fantastic. We made tomato concasse to start. This is just tomatoes and shallots with a pinch of tomato paste, sugar, bouquet garni, and salt and pepper.

Do not be tricked by the simplicity of this sauce. It is more than tasty and I will show you what I learned you can do with it. You just simmer these little ingredients up until pretty much all the water is evaporated. The test, as chef said, is to part the tomatoes with your spoon like Moses did the red sea. No liquid should scoot into the cleared walkway.

Let my people go! The mixture then can be adjusted for seasoning and used for garnishing and plating as well as in other sauces.

Look at that cuteness. Precious.

This one is ready for action, right? A piece of grilled swordfish and hey aren't I fancy? I love this stuff. Not for the plating but I liked how it tasted. I hadn't eaten breakfast this morning so I had to eat like half of mine before packing the rest up to freeze. Next we made beurre blanc 4 different ways. I don't really like beurre blanc. It doesn't do anything for me. I like the tang of the reduction but otherwise, meh. The basics are this: reduce, whisk in butter, strain. See, you can do it too!. I reduced equal parts wine and wine vinegar with shallots, peppercorns, and thyme until it was a syrup. Then pull it partially off heat and whisk in lots of butter, bit by bit, until it is smooth and shiny and then strain if desired. Maybe I just need the right protein to enjoy it with. This is one of the reductions before the butter was added.

This was the version from the CIA cookbook (culinary institute of America). It varied from the classic version with the addition of lemon juice and zest. After the butter orgy we started the hollandaise derivatives: Bearnaise (tarragon reduction), Choron (bearnaise + tomato concasse), Paloise (mint reduction), Foyot (bearnaise + beef glace), and mousseline (lemon + whipped cream). I have never seen so much saturated fat in one kitchen in my life. They were all delicious. I was assigned the original bearnaise and I have to say it rocked pretty hard. I love the shallots that taste like wine and the tarragon and the fluffy butter hollandaise base. You should make bearnaise, too. I had never heard of some of the other variations (like choron) but they were all really good. One of the highlights of the day (other than tasting all of these buttery sauces) was when a smug classmate (a dude) couldn't whip the cream to medium peaks for the mousseline cause his wittle arm got tired. Chef asked me to take over for him. He made some lame sounding excuses for his pussyness and I whipped that shit up. It was awesome especially because he worked for a very high end hotel around here and reminds us quite often of how they do things there. Why do I get so much satisfaction from kicking his ass in matters of whipping heavy cream?

Big wine day tomorrow! I can't wait to see everyone start to get tipsy.

Day 8

It was not a normal day of class at school. We had a guest instructor and took our servesafe exam. I don't know if these exist in other states but here its a test that makes sure you know not to spit in your salad before you serve it. Its mostly common sense. You cannot floss your teeth and then fillet some fish. Stuff like that. It might have been one of the most boring days I have had in a long while. I am pretty sure I passed. But you never know. Just because I say it was boring I might have to retake it because I forgot how you can get scromboid poisoning. Its a scantron type test that you have to wait a few weeks for to get results, real SAT style. It was not exciting. Tomorrow might be, however, because we are making beurre blanc and 5 variations on hollandaise. Who brought the English muffins?

Day 7

Isn't day seven supposed to be a day of rest? Not at cooking school. Today was mother sauce day. I made bechamel, tomato, hollandaise, and veloute. You should make them all too. They are not difficult and could greatly improve your meal. Bechamel is necessary because it is the base for mac'n'cheese. If that's not important to you then you should stop reading because you obviously don't get it. Bechamel is onion, butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, salt and pepper. You sweat onion in butter, add flour to make roux, add milk to correct consistency and then season and strain. I have made this a few times due to the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (many misadventures) and I enjoy it on pretty much everything. If I can get it together I might make biscuits and slop my leftover sauce on top. SOS style, baby.

I made tomato sauce next. Simple 30 minute tomato sauce: onion, garlic, basil chiffonade, tomatoes and salt and pepper. Don't tell me you don't know that one already.

Hollandaise was a life changing experience today. Chef demoed the sauce first and then we tasted his and then made our own. His sauce was for sure the best hollandaise I have ever tasted. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. It was fluffy. I swear, fluffy. It was like lemon pillows and you forgot you were eating a heart transplant.

Yes, we ate it with baguette. Sweet buttery pillows of the gods. This changed all prospective on brunch. To make it we first made the sabayon by whisking egg yolks and water over a double boiler. Once fluffy we mixed in an unholy amount of clarified butter. Then seasoned with lemon juice, salt, and cayenne. Try to eat it moderately, let me know how that works out.

Next we made a veloute. This is a sauce based on chicken or fish stock. You sweat a small amount of mirepoix and add your stock of choice. Then after 20 minutes of simmer you thicken it with cold chopped roux.

Roux's your daddy? It thickens and then you season it and strain it. Then you wish you had something to put it over. Or you just eat sauce with spoons like we did all day.

Tomorrow: Serve Safe Certification!

Day 6

Its crazy how 2 days away from school can make you feel out of touch. We got a lot of pots going today. We started with a simple vegetable stock. We filled a pot that would hold a small person with vegetable trimmings of all sorts (after sauteing mirepoix) and water and simmered for abotu 4 hours. Drain, chill, done. We also made a sauce espagnole. Beef trimmings were sauteed until very dark and then mirepoix and tomato paste were added and sauteed. Brown stock was added to that and simmered for 2 hours. After the simmer, roux was added to thicken and then the whole brown mess was drained and chilled to used for demi glace later this week.

So next was potato leek soup. I have made this at home a few times but never using a mirepoix first. We used a white mirepoix (no carrot) and sweated it before adding leeks, potatoes, bouquet garni, and chicken stock.

After simmering until the potatoes were just tender, we added cream and simmered 10 minutes more. Then into the blender and strained to desired thickness. Below is the thickness I desired.


I thought, as well as some of my classmates that it was slightly oversalted. Then chef walks over to taste it and proceeds to add at least 2 tablespoons more of salt. It didn't make it taste salty. I still don't get it. It just tasted stronger. This seasoning thing is taking me longer than I expected to figure out.
One thing I didn't do to embarass myself today: Not one, but two of my classmates attempted to puree their bouquet garni along with their soup. As you can imagine string + blender = bad news. I can't tell you how happy I am that it was not me.
Then we made a court bouillon. A poaching liquid used for fish, and seafood. Ours had water, white wine, white vinegar, and the rest of what you see here.

We combined all ingredients and simmered for 20 minutes. I plan on using mine to poach some shrimp later this week and possibly make a homemade remoulade sauce to go with them. Smug and smug I say!

So those were today's major activities. I am glad to be moving on to sauces and away from soups. I think I would be appreciating the soups more if it wasn't still in the mid eighties everyday. I forgot to mention the tourneed carrots. Yes we took the most annoying vegetable to cut and tried to cut it into near impossible football like shapes. I don't care for football or carving hard vegetables into football shapes. And I am pretty sure after a while you would get carpel tunnel.

Up tomorrow: Mother sauces motherf***er!

Day 5

Okay, so I get that I might not post Friday's happenings until Sunday. It was for a lot of reasons though. One, I went straight over to a friend's house. Two, we had to drink a bottle of wine at her pool. Three, I was beat. So beat, in fact, that over the course of the weekend I have not stayed up past 10:30 pm. This is by far the worst side effect of my new routine. On day 5, however, we made lobster bisque. It started with a demo by chef on how to murder a lobster. I said a prayer and then proceeded to murder my own lobster by stabbing it through the head. Wow. I had never killed an animal before and it was intense. I almost held the knife like in the horror movies until chef came over and humiliated me before class so I could remember not to do it like that. I was real focused on taking the life of an animal. It didn't do anything weird like scream but I still felt real responsible for ending its life so that I could make soup. It was good soup.

So you take your chopped up lobster, and saute it until browned, add veg, and saute until brown also, season both, of course. Add tomatoes and fumet (fish stock), tomato paste, and lobster paste. Below is just a glorious shot of a just slain lobster, milady.

So then you simmer all above mentioned ingredients for about an hour. Then you add some cream for another 10 minutes.

I can't lie. I love this picture for its random lobster claw sticking out of the pot. So sorry, Sebastian. Once simmered and creamed, we strained the stock and returned it to heat to add the roux. It thickened, we reseasoned, and we grubbed. It was pretty great. Then we tried to cut potatoes and zucchini into ridiculously small pieces that were "turned". To my chef that means you carve a shape with 6 or 7 sides shaped like a small barrel.

Chef demoed a few and his are on the right of my cutting board. Yep, those are them all smug and real nice looking next to my boats. I guess this will take some work. What's up for next week?