Lots of Hustle

 I was doing so well with a weekly update of school.   Then the last four weeks happened.   It’s been hard to reflect this quarter.  My days at school have gone something like: ”Then we made this thing.  Then we made this other thing. Then we did that.  Then we did another thing.” Go, go, go, a go-go.

No wonder I’m so dang tired right now.  There’s been a big heaping of hustle-your-bustle this quarter.  I really get what people meant about 2nd Quarter showing you what you’re really made of.  Yep.  I definitely am seeing the stuff I’m made of.   Just not a lot of time to think about it.

One of my classmates has been cooking in commercial kitchens for 15 years, since he was 16.  Another was the head of a kitchen for many many years.   They are not as challenged as the rest of us.  But as for the rest of us… whew.

In order, the four last weeks’ stations were:

1. Sous Chef (My partner and I did the leading thing for the rest of the class that week)

2. Breakfast/Asian Station (Two days of making breakfast-for-lunch, then two days for making the assigned Asian dishes)

3. Butchery (We fabricated meats needed by our classmates for their dishes, plus we make our own entrée for Student Lunch)

4. Sushi/Stocks, Sauces & Soups (Two days of sushi, one day of stocks & sauces, then one day in the Bistro kitchen making soup for the actual Public At Large)

These were intense weeks.  Sous Chef was alright, actually.  I activated my inner Sixth Grade Teacher and got organized.  It felt like a successful week, and I received good feedback from people about how the kitchen was “run.”

Even so, it was exhausting.  At times I had some misanthropic feelings, especially towards folks who acted ungracious when we served them lunch.  There were not many of them, but they sucked.  As they say, the only people complaining about student lunch are the people who are not making student lunch.

I didn’t complain last quarter, and I sure as hell will not complain in quarters to come.  On principle.  Even if they serve me crap-on-a-plate.  I’ll just eat salad.  I’ve seen it from the front lines: people are doing their best.

Breakfast and Asian Station were fun but took longer than I would have expected.  My favorite parts of that week were making phad thai with an industrial wok (the dish pictured above was my practice run of that dish), and the shirred eggs and “overnight” waffles with yeast.  A pastry student from the program asked me for the recipe for the waffles.  Waffle awesomeness!

Butchery was a station that I expected to love but then didn’t.  I left school every day feeling frustrated and raw.  I liked the actual butchery part, but I think there were some ways that the station was set up that weren’t conducive to our learning.  Here’s some meat!  Go!

Even so, I had some good experiences that week. My partner and I deboned chickens while still intact (remember when Chef showed us earlier in the quarter? Now we can do it, too!!)  and made a “ballotine” by rolling it with a stuffing, cinnamon-roll-style, then serving it with a Madeira sauce.  I also got to make a smoked pork roast that I deboned myself.  In the near future I need to continue to work on chicken fabrication, because our end-of-quarter knife competency will be cutting up chickens in different ways, in a certain number of minutes.

This week my sushi rotation went well, although slow.  Anyone in the sushi station has to decide: perfect and beautiful sushi, or get ‘er out there?  I, and the helpers that were assigned to me, tried to make mostly beautiful sushi.   So I wouldn’t call us early.  Anyway, I’m glad we got it out without Chef KG saying, “Where’s the sushi?”  (Which he will do, if you’re too, too late).  One thing I felt proud of in this station was my mis en place (how all my ingredients were set up before I got started).  Things were organized and neat.  This felt good, especially with a project that has so many ingredients.  Also especially because my mis en place outside of school is more like “Holy crap, where’s the baking soda?!?”

Soup station yesterday was a wonderful moment in time.  I was in the 3rd Quarter kitchen, and it was one of the most relaxed days I’ve had in the kitchen so far.   There wasn’t much to do, and everyone was relatively chilled out.  After making some salmon chowder and cleaning & steaming some mussels, I had a chance to taste eight or nine dishes from the 5th quarter “COD (Chef of the Day)” project.  This was inspiring and fascinating.  3 students’ menus were being presented that day, so plate after beautiful plate was being sent back to the kitchen for Chef Vicky to grade.

After she finished tasting and rating a plate, she would put it on the counter, which happened to be at my station, for the students to try.  People would come over with spoons to taste, reflect, and react.  I was ladling up stock into containers to freeze, so I just went through a soothing process of taste, ladle, reflect, taste, ladle,  reflect.  Having the time to ponder on  different flavor combinations was so different from the rest of this action-packed quarter.  It felt collegial, magical.  Everyone passing by was interested and had a different, personal reaction to what they tried.

It was also cool to listen to the chefs’ reactions.  The beets gratin from an Eastern Bloc menu, which I particularly loved, were also exciting to Chef Vicky.  She pointed out that the crisp part at the bottom was particularly delicious.  A few minutes later I passed through Chef KG’s (our) kitchen and saw the same dish sitting there at a table.  I commented to Chef KG that I loved that gratin, and he said, “Yeah.  A little overcooked,though.”  Really?  I went to taste it again, from the dish in his kitchen, and sure enough, that plate’s gratin had a little tougher consistency than the one in 3rd quarter kitchen.  I wonder what happened to make the two gratins turn out so differently.  I also wonder what it will be like in just a few quarters when I’m making my own COD project.

There have been some other glimmers of excitement and culinary inspiration:  Yesterday morning Chef KG showed us some fun cuts and garnishes, including making cherry blossoms (and plum blossoms) from carrots, and carving a ball inside a cage with a potato.  Who cares if you never cook with that potato? It is so dang cool.  I will definitely carve another one and take a pic for your amusement.

Also, there’s a tapas competition coming up at school.  The two winners will then go to Spain to compete with people around the world with their tapas.  I’m going to submit some ideas to Chef Karin (which is what we’re supposed to do to see if we qualify for the next round).  So my mind is constantly mumbling to itself about flavor ideas right now.  It’s a good feeling.

Anyway, I’m tired.  I feel compelled, for posterity’s sake, to record what I “produced” in these last 16 school days:

Breakfast:

• Shirred eggs with gruyere and cayenne
• Eggs Benedict with shaved ham
• Omelets with shallots, mushrooms, and fresh thyme
• Eggs over easy
• Light & fluffy pancakes
• Overnight waffles (with yeast)
• Hash browns
• Sausage

Asian Station

• Tenshin Don (Rice bowl with crab omelet, peas, and sauce)
• Phad Thai

Butchery

• Chicken Ballotine with Madeira Sauce
• Smoked Pork Shoulder
• Roasted Chicken au Jus Lié

Sushi

• Nigiri:
  • Ebi (shrimp)
  • Atsuyaki Tamago (omelet)
  • Unagi (freshwater eel)
• Hosomaki (small rolls with nori on outside of roll):
  • Kampyo (dried, rehydrated gourd) roll
  • Tekuwan (pickled daikon radish) roll
  • Kappa Maki (cucumber roll)
• California roll
• Futomaki (“Fat” roll with tamago, kampyo, spinach, mushroom, and denbu–pink fish flakes)

Stocks and Sauces:

• Espagnole sauce
• Brown roux
• Halibut fumet

Soups

• Salmon chowder

The picture above–of my daughter and me enjoying a creation that took patience and several days to create, has nothing to do with the cooking I’ve been doing this week.  That picture would be a blur.

Second Quarter’s Practicum–our main class–is called “Quantity Cooking.”  As I’ve said before, we’re cooking for all the culinary students at our school.  Before knowing anything about the school, I assumed it would be more like banquet-style–creating enormous vats of food and spooning portions from chafing dishes over sterno flames.  This is not the case.

Instead, if you’re making entrées, you need to time it so that you churn out several at a time, because the students come at anytime between 11 and 12:30.  Is there a regularity to their arrival?  Not really.  It’s all based on what’s going on in that class’s reality that day.  Sometimes they come in for lunch in waves, and other times they trickle in like a leaky faucet.  Sometimes we have too many plates available to be picked up, sometimes not enough.

This makes it more of a challenge to feed them fresh, hot food.  You should see how quickly a plate of perfect pasta can dry out under the lamp.

Swedish Meatballs were a perfect first-day item to serve.  Now there’s some banquet food.  If I had to, I could have cooked them all at the same time and served them in a hotel pan over the course of an  hour and a half, no problem.  The Mediterranean-Style Quinoa Wraps were also a great make-ahead, and they seemed to go fast, too.

The Fusilli with Italian Sausage, Roasted Tomatos and Braising Greens? Not as easy, because there was last-minute sautéeing involved.  The Salmon en Papillote was another toughie.  Sharing ovens with other people can get tricky, especially with fish.  Especially if people change the oven temp for their own dish–while your fish is cooking in there–and you don’t know it.  Especially if your papillote (parchment envelope) is the size of the Goodyear Blimp and your portion of salmon is just shy of 4 ounces.  Note: if you make that recipe, make sure you make an envelope that is proportioned to the fillings, otherwise it will dry out (or leak)!

Anyway, not a single dish I made ended up tasting as good as when I make it at home.  Big surprise!  Actually, it was a big surprise.  But the other big surprise is the positive feedback I got for dishes anyway.   People liked each of those menu items, and took the time to tell me so.   I had to battle with myself to keep from blurting, “Really?!” or “It’s usually waaaay better.”   A few times, with some of my friends, I did admit that it’s usually better when I make it at home.

BUT!

Julia Child’s wisdom, to never apologize for your cooking, is great advice.   At bare minimum, you diminish their enjoyment of the food by criticizing it.   So most of the time, when someone said they liked my (dry, but on-other-occasions tender and juicy) salmon, I would try to just smile and say, “Thank you.”  Because just as my food was a (hastily wrapped) gift to them, their kind words were a gift to me.  So I should just take the valentine and smile.

Today’s the last day I’m on the “student entree” rotation, which means the food I’ll cook for the rest of the quarter will usually be recipes assigned to me, rather than ones I bring myself.  Today I’ll have another chance to be gracious and grateful.  My goal today? No apologies or explanations.  Only thanks.

This morning before class started, my classmate turned around and warned us, “The substitute teacher today is supposed to be really strict, you guys.  He used to teach here.”  We straightened up and tried to contain ourselves a little better.  We’d been noisy and laughing up until then.

When class started, though, and the substitute started talking, it became clear that this guy was quite funny, himself.  Also, chatty.  The powerpoint slide from the lesson plan was cued up for ”eggs – sunny side up”, but somehow he started telling us about this enormous (hot-tub sized!) antique cast-iron pot in his collection–for picnics needing a lot of corn on the cob. 

There were plenty other tidbits, too.  He talked about a severe boss he had a long time ago (in the 60′s) who would throw his tray of lunch down the hall if it was cooked incorrectly.  So basically this chef/substitute was telling us jokes, and they were funny, but we were caught up on the idea that he was supposed to be this hard-nosed guy.  On his end, he must have been thinking of us, “Geez, tough crowd!” It took awhile for us to loosen up, and we were also wondering a bit if we would learn the lesson plan for eggs.  

Class was nearing an end, and he had a hard-cooked egg and a raw egg in each hand.  “How can you tell when an egg is cooked on the inside or not?” he asked us.

 I answered something about rolling the two eggs, and the less wobbly one was cooked. Then he demonstrated the spinning trick.  If you spin a cooked egg, it really spins.  The raw egg sort of peters out after a few go ’rounds.  I commented, “Wow, that works a lot better than my idea.  Less likely for eggs to break.” 

“What?” he asked.

“I said, it’s less likely for the egg to break-”

And that’s when he threw the egg at me.

I think he was tossing it to me to scare the crap out of me, which he did. But his throw was a bit short, so it hit the floor on the far side of the table where I sat.  It smashed on the floor and people shrieked and laughed with surprise.  It was so funny, but I’m also slightly confused.  Was that part of the lesson plan? Has he pulled that trick for years, each year, for each class? Or was he feeling especially jolly and egg-tossy today? Anyway, he’s subbing for us again tomorrow and I’ll have my catcher’s mitt ready this time.

Tonight I practiced an upcoming task that awaits me in second quarter kitchen in a few weeks: Eggs Benedict.   Happily, they were a great success.   My husband commented, “This sauce tastes light and airy! What’s the main ingredient in it besides butter?”  Mmmm….not much.  Oh, and lemon and egg yolks. Completely delectable and equally unphotographable.  Trust me, you don’t want to see the quick shots I took before dinner.  It will probably be on my to-do list now: photographing hollandaise sauce without making it look absurdly viscous and gross.

But!  If you find yourself making Eggs Benedict, I’ve got a wine pairing idea for you:  Rioja!  If you’re a big red wine fan and wish to have it with every meal possible, go with Rioja for your Eggs Benedict dinner.  Wine stewards and pairing books will tell you about some amazing whites and also some bubblies that will pair amazingly with this dish, but Spain is nothing if not a ham-obsessed country.  They also love their eggs, baby.  Bold rioja tastes so good with the big, bright flavors of the ham and hollandaise.  The egg is a gentle balance and the toasted muffin adds mildly sweet crunch.

Well, it’s been an eggy day, and tomorrow promises more of the same with omelette practice.  Can’t wait to see what the teacher throws at us this time–literally.