Man Am I STUFFED!!!

Whew!  Tonite… was a good nite in the kitchen!  :)  We're wrapping up our worldwide excursion into cereal grains.  Tonite was Cereal Grains of the Americas, which included Central and South America (read: Mexico, the Caribbean).

We each made our own tortillas (man, just HOW could I screw up such a simple task!).  I managed to get only about four corn tortillas made, and I struggled with the dough for my flour tortillas until I just finally ran out of patience.  Garrrr!!!

Anyway, it didn't matter 'cause by the time we were all served, I ended up eating MUCH more than I should have!  Below is a delicious quinoa salad made by Group 3:

A colorful, flavorful quinoa salad

My team made this freakin' delicious item called Dunkanoo (sounds like something you'd get at the Dunkin Donuts!).  This is basically grated fresh corn mixed with happy good things like brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, coconut milk, golden raisins and cornmeal.  We made a mash of that and stuffed banana leaves with it, then popped these li'l packages in the steamer…

Unwrap the banana leaf to find the delicious goodness inside...

They needed to cool first so the mixture would congeal together all nice-like.  And when they did…  whoa.  Tender, sweet/savory goodness.  Sigh… I love this class!

We've made some more straightforward things, too, while exploring cereal grains, such as your basic risotto and a pretty dang tasty stuffed bell pepper called, believe it or not, Etli Biber Dolmasi…

Your basic, average, everyday risotto...

Fancy name for stuffed peppers!

Tomorrow we start a three-day run of Noodles and Dough, starting with Southeast Asia (pad thai, potstickers), then continuing on to Europe and North Africa (pierogies!), and ending up back in the Americas (TAMALES!).

Did I mention that I love this class?

Peace out.  Namaste.

The Best Damn Indian Lamb Stew – EVER!!!

That’s right, foodies!  Tonite was the first nite of our Cuisine Across Cultures class at LCB, and we got off to… an auspicious start!

This class is ingredient-oriented, rather than culture-oriented.  What this means is that, each night we focus on a particular ingredient and visit how different cultures will use that ingredient in their cuisine.  Tonight was easy: rice.  We did a Spanish Paella, a Chinese Yangzhou Chau Fan, and an Indian Gosht Pulao.

Cheryl stir-fries while Ron preps paella

We broke into groups of about four and covered each recipe.  Our team made the Chinese stir-fry, which was really pretty easy.  We made a delicious marinade of soy sauce, rice wine, oyster sauce, sesame oil, salt and sugar.  I broke down some pork into small bite-sized chunks and we marinated that for about half an hour.  We then roasted those on a pan in the oven to save time stir-frying it later.  We got the wok goin’, then did the ginger, garlic, soy sauce, shrimp, then the pork, rice and scallions on top.

Our super-delicious pork & shrimp stir-fry

Another group did the paella, which definitely scored high points with both our chef instructors and the rest of the class.  The star of the night, though, was definitely the Gosht Pulao, which is a braised lamb stew.

Yes, it really is the best dang Indian lamb stew EVER!!!

It may not look like much, but this stuff was freakin’ DELICIOUS!  The lamb was diced and marinated in such spices as cumin, cayenne and turmeric.  The group then got some ghee heated in a large, heavy-bottomed sauté pan and toasted a whole cinnamon stick, some cardamom pods and cloves.  They then added in sliced onions, garlic and ginger.  I walked past and Mark grabbed my shoulder, beckoning me over.  I just stuck my face over the pan and breathed deeply…  sigh!

Next they added in some coriander, nutmeg and black pepper, topping it all off with some diced tomato and a few bay leaves.  In went a quart of water and the marinated lamb, and they covered and simmered that mixture for a good hour until the lamb was nice and tender and the flavors were well infused.

They finally topped it off with a big ol’ pile of basmati rice and let that simmer just enough for the rice to cook through.  They served it… and the whole class just about fell over!  We were beside ourselves.  We’d all had the other items already and were feeling pretty full.  But it seems we saved the best for last and we cleaned that whole pan of stew in ten minutes flat.

This is going to be an awesome class.  Tomorrow night we’re making sushi!  Later on we’ll make arepas, pad thai, and pierogies!  Tamales, fried cassava chips, tapioca cake, a lamb tagine, sake no miso, falafel, hummus, duck confit, mole, jerk…!  And we’re making some crazy stuff I never heard of like Gaeng Ped Hoi Mang Phu, Smodampete Nypoteter, Aloo Partha, and Bang Bang Ji Si…  ?!?!

I’m tellin’ ya, this class alone is worth the price of admission…  peace out, and Namaste.

My Dinner at Chataigne

The saying basically goes that eating a meal at a culinary school’s café is like getting a free haircut from the students at the local beauty school.  I want to be offended by that comment (I mean, c’mon!  This is the last ‘class’ taught before our externship… we oughtta be better than that by now!).  But if my dinner at Chataigne was any indication, I’m gonna have a pretty tough time with that argument.

Chataigne, which means, um, a sweet chestnut (?!), is the student-run café here at Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago.  They’re open for breakfast from 8am to 9am, lunch is from noon to 1pm, and dinner service starts between 7:30pm and 8pm.  I’m stuck working the dreaded day job, so I take classes at night, which leaves me no time whatsoever to sample the school’s restaurant.  Luckily, both our evening instructors (one for Hospitality Management and the other for Psych) are fans of the idea of taking their students to the café for ‘class.’  Our psyche instructor met us there at 7:30 last Thursday evening for dinner.

We were impressed with the ambience and the service, although the food delivery itself was quite slow.  Our five-course meal took a bit over an hour and a half to finish.  Since there was only one other group in the restaurant that evening, bringing the total patrons to around twenty, it shouldn’t have taken that long.

We were started off with an amuse bouche of a duck breast canapé, coated in sweet onions and draped across a crostini.  The onions were cloyingly sweet and made the whole thing rather heavy-handed.  The fact that the crostini was hard as a brick didn’t help.  Next came an under-seasoned chilled potato and roasted garlic soup.  The soup had potential, but being chilled meant they needed to be pretty liberal with the seasoning, and it just didn’t quite come together.

The second course, though, was the star of the show as far as we were concerned.  Below is the ricotta salata and summer squash strudel with tomato coulis (forgive the nastiness of the pics, I was using a cheap camera phone in a pretty dim restaurant!).

The combination of sweet, almost tart ricotta salata, savory summer squash and tangy tomato coulis was a knockout.  This is one we could’ve certainly had second helpings of.  Third course was a mixed green salad with bacon and apple.

The combination of flavors was good, and the vinaigrette was perfect.  This set the stage for our main course, which was a choice between spice-rubbed pork tenderloin with eggplant jam, pommes anna and carrot puree, or sautéed sablefish with an herb salsa verde and panzanella salad.

I wanted to try them both, but settled on the pork tenderloin, which I thought was a little overdone.  The eggplant jam and carrot puree were both decent accompaniments, though the pommes anna was a bit on the mild side.  Overall the dish was solid enough.  The folks who had the sablefish said it was good, not over- or under-done.  But they were tré disappointed in the panzanella salad.  I took a bite: it was like a weak, flavorless salsa mixed with soggy bread cubes.

Our last course was a choice of desserts, and I had the coconut rice pudding with a raspberry coulis.  Good thing that coulis was there ‘cause the rice pudding, I’m afraid, left an awful lot to be desired.

Would we go there again?  Absolutely, and not just because it was “free” (there’s a “suggested donation” for students of the school).  From what we’re told, the menu changes all the time as the students are experimenting with different styles of cuisine.  We should get at least one more chance to go to Chataigne in the next couple of weeks when our other instructor plans on taking us, and maybe we’ll have to “miss” class one of these nights to try it out yet again.

Overall it was a decent experience, and as a student whose restaurant rotation starts about four months from now (Gasp!  Is it nearly that time already?), it was a good introduction to what will be expected of us down the road

Here is a link to the Urbanspoon restaurant review page:

Producing Palmier, Pithivier and Paris Brest with Puff Pastry and Pâte à Choux…

Reminds me of a certain Sesame Street sketch…

Anyway, it was French Pastry week for us at LCB… those of us who even made it to class, that is! I have to admit, it probably wasn’t a good idea to come to class sick, but I didn’t want to miss any more days and so decided to just tough my way through it. Problem is, I think I took out half the class with me… ☹

Yeah, either I spread it ‘round or folks were gettin’ sick anyway, but we’ve had a bit of an attendance problem these last couple of weeks. Needless to say, those of us who got our sorry asses to class made… PASTRY!

We started by making some base doughs: blitz puff pastry and pâte à choux. Then we made a few kinds of pastry cream for filling, such as a vanilla cream, praline diplomat and crème Chantilly.

Production wasn’t exactly hard, just time-consuming, and since Val and I were both running on almost-empty (thanks for the cough drops, Val!), we had a bit of trouble keeping up. We basically prepped all our doughs the day before, and we baked off the basic shapes of the pâte à choux into puffs, éclairs and Paris Brest (which are bicycle tire-shaped wheels piped with a star tip). These cooled and went into a bag for the next day, along with the base pastry cream for our fillings later.

Below we have Val verifying the proper consistency of the pâte à choux using the ill-named yet ever-popular “Snot Test”…


So the next day, we finished the fillings by either adding butter & vanilla or almond paste to each half of the pastry cream. We also made whipped cream, or crème Chantilly (since we threw some vanilla in it). These fillings went into the various shapes we had made the night before:


We used the puff pastry to make a funky, round, um… pastry ravioli (!) called a pithivier… except time ran out and I didn’t get to mine. Bummer, ‘cause it’s on our two-day practical tomorrow and Tuesday! We were also supposed to make palmiers, which looked like they’d’ve been tasty. But, alas, another one bites the dust…

And finally we have cheese straws. Pretty simple: take some puff pastry, roll it out, sprinkle on a mixture of delicious parmiggiano Wisconsiano, some cayenne and some paprika, chill it, cut it into strips, twist ‘em up a little as you lay ‘em down on a parchment-lined pan, then bake ‘em…


I mixed the cheese mixture into the dough itself instead of just sprinkling it on top, which I wish I could say was an intentional thing. Nevertheless, they were pretty tasty.

So, practical time is upon us again, and here’s what’s on the board for Monday-Tuesday:

• Apple pie
• Pear-almond tart
• A 6” pithivier
• Six Paris Brest
• Six éclairs

I’m pretty confident in most of the above, except for the pithivier (since I never got to it before, it’ll be the first time I’m attempting it now). But I’ve got all the notes, we can take Monday to prep almost everything we can, so Tuesday will just be a quick assembly day.

Now if I could just kick this dang cough…

Time Management and Confidence

Chef Kang said it again, and again, and again, almost all last week, and the week before: “Cameron, you gotta work on your time management!”

Well he didn’t just say it to me. He said it to lots of us who have trouble juggling eighteen separate little tasks and completing our 2-3 dishes per night in a more timely fashion. The basic setup is this: You listen to the lecture and watch the demo. He has the recipes there, so all you have to do is follow them. Once he’s done and we get to work, we ‘go shopping’ and gather up all the ingredients, then start prepping them for our dishes.

And this is where the time management thing comes in. We could prep everything, then go about making one dish at a time until we’re done. Or we could prep for our first dish, get it started, then while we’re waiting for, say, the chicken to braise (20-30 minutes), we prep and start our next dish. The idea is that our work overlaps, and we complete our 2-3 dishes in much less time.

The only problem is, it’s hard to know just what steps you can do ahead of time or while overlapping something else when you’re still just figuring out what you’re doing! I have a hard time with retention of the demo, so I tend to re-look at the recipe several times as I go. Some of the steps I’m more familiar with (we covered them before and have done them a few times already). But a lot of stuff is still relatively new, so getting what stages can be overlapped with others is more difficult.

So what I think it boils down to is confidence. I tend to get stressed that I’m going to get too many things going on at once and will end up screwing something up. It won’t be the first time that I over-reduced a sauce I had going on the stove while I was running around getting other elements of a plate together.

But the more I do this, the more familiar I’m getting with the basic techniques: grill some meat, start a braise, make a pan sauce, etc. Knowing how to fit those steps into production in a way that reduces any wasted time is a little difficult, but I’m getting the hang of it. Practice makes perfect.

These past weeks were pretty fun. Week One of class was beef, which was really rather easy:


This is my grilled steak with gratin potatoes underneath and creamed spinach on the side. While I may have had some difficulty getting everything in on time, Chef never complained about the doneness of the meat, which was near-perfect every time.

Week Two was poultry. I certainly needed more practice in breaking down a chicken, but we also broke down and cooked a duck, including confit (cooked in its own fat). I missed turkey night (out sick), but since Thanksgiving is coming up, I’m sure there’ll be plenty more to come.


Above is a simple grilled chicken breast, marinated with some oil, garlic, salt & pepper. We made some tossed greens and surrounded the plate with a delicious fruit salad, which was really very easy:

• Cantaloupe
• Honeydew
• Pineapple
• Red bell pepper
• Jalapeño
• Red onion
• Rough chopped cilantro
• Lime juice
• Salt

Just cut all the fruit and vegetables the same size, proportioning them how you want them. Throw in the cilantro, squeeze half a lime over it, toss in some salt and balance out the flavor with a little sugar or honey if it’s too acidic.

Tomorrow starts Week Three, which is fin and shellfish, including things like oysters and shrimp. I’m a little nervous since I can’t really stand the taste of most shellfish! But hey, I ain’t tried it all yet, so we’ll see. ☺

Namaste.

The Start of a New Chapter

Oh man, it’s been weeks since I’ve blogged about CHIC! Being in the evening program, and going for the full Associates Degree (rather than just the Certificate), means that we gotta take stuff like Math and Public Speaking classes (ugh!). This was the cause of the six-week break between Culinary II and III.

But hey, as much fun as math and speech are (at least they threw in some culinary math, and the speech class was fun and easy), it is so freakin’ great to be back in the kitchen! And what’s best is that we have Chef Kang again!

Say it with me now: Wwwwoooooooook KAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaannng!!!

Sigh… that was fun. ☺

So anyway, we were all chomping at the bit near the end of math and speech classes to get cooking again. And we were worried that some of us wouldn’t make it to Culinary III. Some folks dropped out of the math class, or didn’t finish the speech class, so for a while there we thought they were going to be held back or something.

But happily, The Team wasn’t broken up, and we all started together last Monday. I’m gonna love this class. Beef, turkey, chicken, fish, lobster, clams, oysters, etc., etc., etc… Yes, this is the class where we cook MEAT!

We all started with such a great attitude. Everyone was real happy to be cooking together again, and it’s shown in how things have been going. In general, we’re all a lot more confident. And generally more competent, too! I don’t know, it’s like having the six-week break from cooking allowed us to sort of settle and collect our thoughts or something. Gone is a lot of that frantic, frustrated thing that I know I wasn’t the only one to be going through. Everyone seems to feel better about what they’re doing in general, and it reflects in the whole atmosphere and tone in the kitchen.

So we spent this past week with beef. Next week is chicken and turkey, I believe. I’ll throw in some pictures once I get a new cable for my camera (teensy little apartment fire left me with a melted cable!). I’m settin’ down to study this week’s reading and recipes, and I’ll update The C-Dawg Chronicles as much as I can.

Peace out, and Namaste.

What a Week at CHIC...

(or two weeks, as it were)

Has it really been two weeks since I’ve posted? My how time flies when we’re… well, you know.

The one thing I’ve had to become accustomed to with going back to school are the ups and downs. Some nights go really well, and others… suck. Case in point: last Monday I went to class with plenty of energy, got through most of the production just fine, and generally felt pretty good. Then I went home and was up again until one in the morning working (day job, from home). I had trouble getting to sleep, then was awoken by neighbors in the hall having a fight at five am!

Needless to say, I was barely able to get through Tuesday night’s demo with my eyes open, and I knew I’d be no good in production. I (gasp!) excused myself from class and went home to crash. I got the basics of veg cookery from the demo, but not the practical experience. By the end of the week I managed to get back in the game a bit. Here’s my Potage Crécy (purée of carrot soup):


But what’s really, truly getting me is balancing work and school. We’re now at a point where we need to come up with our own recipes. Mind you, we’re not making them up out of thin air. We have the book, but the recipes there are designed for larger-scale food service. Our job is to reduce them down to single-serving sizes and still meet the needs of the recipe itself in terms of the flavor and consistency of what we’re supposed to be making.

But add that to the fact that the production seems to be increasing, and the time spent outside of class is getting to be more and more. Work has been hellaciously busy these days, so between OT and school, I’ve barely had time to breathe! ☺

At least I grabbed me a four-day weekend (I took Friday off, and we have Monday off for Labor Day). Sigh… maybe I’ll make me some more of that delicious Tabbouleh:


One nummy treat from last week: we played with potatoes, and deep fried ‘em! I’m very much a proponent of the philosophy that everything tastes better deep fried, and potatoes are no exception! We made delicious little Pomme Dauphine, which is a potato mixture made with Pate a Choux and cut into little segments which are thrown in the fryer… freakin’ delicious:


So, with my day off tomorrow, I not only need to get caught up on some housekeeping (!), but I need to work from home to be as caught up as I can before I go back into the office on Tuesday, AND I need to review this upcoming week’s material, AND write out all my recipes. Ugh. I know it will get better… I know it will get better… I know it will get better…

Peace out, wish me luck, and Namaste.

Success!! (or very nearly so)

What a night! It seemed as if all my time management issues were behind me. I’d studied my flashcards on the bus and at work, knowing what sauces we’d be making tonight (a slew of ‘em!). I felt confident walking into class, ready to go… only to realize I’d forgotten my cravat!

WTF?! I scurried on over to Student Services, waited forever for some dude to root through a cabinet and find me a loaner, which I then had to sign out (sheesh!), then I ran back over and got in line for inspection with nary a moment to spare. Whew!

Production went (mostly) awesome. I was on top of things, planning out in advance the different sauces I’d have to make, gathering up my stuff and being all organized and such and what not. I was cruising along when Chef Kang told us we’d also have to start a veal stock. What?! Um, well, ok. I’ll squeeze it in.

And I felt the squeeze. I was raring to go with both of my reductions going on the stove at the same time (Chef walked over to me with a smile on his face – yeah, I got this time management thing down, buddy!), then I had to break to drag out these big ol’ roasting pans full of veal bones. Ugh, talk about breaking my rhythm.

If that weren’t bad enough, I broke my Buerre Blanc, too! S—t! I think it was the heat of the plate I presented it on that broke the butter and vinegar reduction emulsion I was shooting for. I was told to (gasp!) do it again. Ugh. Double-ugh.

And then it broke the second time! Oh geez oh Pete! This time I went running around, looking for a freakin' chinois to strain my freakin’ sauce, leaving it to sit there and separate. A little last minute whisking helped pull it together well enough for the presentation, though, so I managed to pull that one out of the fire.

What really cheesed me off, though, is that I couldn’t get to the very last sauce. We’d had to make five sauces tonight, and dagnabit I was gonna get all of ‘em done! I was, seriously, THREE MINUTES AWAY from straining my vinegar reduction into my Hollandaise to make a Bernaise when Chef called it for the night! Ack! I gave him a pleading look as he walked by, frantically whisking egg yolks and clarified butter with one hand while sautéing shallots, thyme, vinegar and white wine with the other. But no dice. It was time to do the dishes…

Oof. Well, at least I can say I’m really prepared for tomorrow night’s sauce practical and quiz, and I get to have steak! Well, they were there for us tonight to use with our sauce if we wanted to (and, um, had time!), but anyone who couldn’t get to theirs tonight can have it tomorrow. Mmmmm… steeeaaak… <drrrroooolllll!!!!!>

And on that note, good night.

Time To Get My Act Together

‘Twas a rough week at CHIC, folks. I’m sure part of it was the feeling of being overworked at my day job (I’ve been puttin’ in quite the number of hours), but I have to admit that part of it was just my lack of preparation.

We’ve just finished Week One of six weeks of Culinary Foundations Two, and I already feel like I’ve repeated the whole of Foundations One class. Sure, we’re reviewing a lot of basic things, like making stocks, etc. But the amount of production is much higher. See, the last class was really only a little over two hours (7:45pm to 10:05pm – BTW, who came up with this ‘:05’ business?!). But Foundations Two is all evening, 6pm to 10:35pm (again, that extra five minutes, what is it FOR, I ask?!?).

This means that after a short lecture and demo, we set off to make a lot more stuff than we ever did in the first class. Wednesday and Thursday each I struggled to keep up while we had to make four or five separate sauces or dishes. Wednesday I did pretty well, even though I only turned in three items. Chef Kang was happy with both the flavor and the consistency of what I brought him, and I ended up making a pretty dang tasty little number called a Cauliflower Gratinée:


But Thursday… well, Thursday was another story. I was burnt out. Honestly, I was fried. I struggled through the day at work, then I struggled through class. We had five freakin’ sauces to make, and honestly, there’s no reason why I couldn’t get them all done. I struggled with TWO of them, and then I barely cranked out a third only after Chef stepped in with an assist! How humiliating! When the instructor steps in and starts doing it for you, you know you need to work a lot harder. ☹

I’m not (entirely) knocking the help – he did give me a bit of a ‘kick in the pants,’ which helped me at least get one more sauce done. I felt pretty sheepish walking up to him with it, after he’d called it for the evening (‘end of production, everyone clean up’). He gave me the chance, and it did turn out alright (a simple-as-all-heck-darn red wine and shallot reduction, for Pete’s sake). I just felt like it was a ‘gimme’, and I went home disappointed in myself despite it all.

The highlight of the week, though, had to be sitting down with Chef Beckman and recording a CHIC Podcast. Here’s the thing that got me interested in culinary school in the first place. Chef Beckman’s podcast comes out once a week, and is syndicated individually or through the excellent Culinary Media Network feed. What I love about it is the laid-back style. Meeting Chef Beckman was a treat, and he’s certainly one of the easiest people to get along with I’ve ever met! We rapped about my experiences (limited as the were) in the culinary world, and why I wanted to attend school. For anyone out there who either attends CHIC or is even remotely interested in what culinary school instructors are chattin’ about, this is a must-have addition to your podcast feed.

So on to Week Two, and this time I wisely read ahead in the syllabus and made flashcards of everything we’d be making this week. With all certainty, I’ll be studying those flashcards on the bus and at work. But my biggest crutch right now is Time Management. For the love of the gods, they could teach me a whole class in this! Some folks seem to come by it naturally, and others are picking it up well enough. But me, I’m still struggling with it.

I can concentrate really well on making one sauce at a time, and making it pretty decent. But to be working on five sauces at a time, and to get them done well, is quite a challenge. It’s one of those things that, quite frankly, just doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s probably because I’m still struggling with the basic cooking part! So it’s the kind of thing I’ll need to devise my own system for. This is like a lot of other things I've done. I need to figure out my own way out of the woods on this one, and that’ll take a lot of work. But I know that once I get it down… look out. ☺

A’ight, it’s late, it’s Sunday night, I’m beat having worked from home all day, so I’m hittin’ it. Check out The CHIC Podcast, as well as CMN. Good night, and Namaste.

The Difference is Night and Day

I started Foundations Two class tonight with Chef Wook Kang.

Whoa. Talk about a night and day difference.

Chef Kang is much more organized, calm, cool, collected, and easier to get along with than my former instructor. And he’s a bear for discipline (which our group certainly needs!). The more straightforward and disciplined approach is a welcome change. I was frustrated in my last class by things feeling too chaotic for me to concentrate and learn. Tonight we did a knife cut quiz, made veal stock, then ended with a written quiz. Everything seemed to flow smoothly from one part of the class to the next, and while we certainly got a lot done, it never felt rushed or chaotic.

Many of the folks from my prior class are in this one, so I already know everyone. Some went to a different class, and some I found were held back! They just didn’t get the grades they needed and so they have to repeat Foundations One (with a different instructor). Campus IT seems to have finally fixed the problem with my grades, though the instructor from my last class filled in a couple as estimates. I barely got by with a B- in Sanitation and a flat C in Culinary.

Oof.

I dunno, though. I had a nice long weekend to think about it, and things certainly feel different this time. My whole attitude and approach is different. I’ve made a lot of progress towards changing my patterns (the ones that got in the way, at least!), and I’m feeling better about what I’m doing overall. My focus is sharper, and I feel more confident in what I’m doing. I think the six-week blocks are a perfect way to segment the classes, as they give you enough time to get immersed in what you’re doing, but not enough time to feel too comfortable or get into a rut. They keep you on your toes at CHIC, that’s for sure!

So here’s to the new class. We’ll see what lies ahead.

IT’S OVER!!!!!

Well, this first 6-week block of classes anyway. ☺

What a nerve-wracking week it’s been. This entire time I’ve always found it difficult to find time to study, and so I’ve been cramming it in as much as possible in the last few days. I made flashcards last weekend and took them everywhere with me, going over them again and again and again, only to find that information seemed to seep out the more I studied!

And I was really stressing over the Sanitation final. This was the state exam that we had to pass to move on. So I memorized as much as I could cram into my noggin about bacteria, fungi, parasites, viruses, and the proper temperature food should be cooked to, stored at, cooled and reheated to with such-and-such amount of time, etc., etc., etc. Seriously, I had butterflies in my stomach all day at work leading up to this test.

And it turned out to be way dang easier than I expected.

WTF?!?

Is this really all that people gotta know to pass this exam and run a restaurant? That test only increased my apprehension level over the sanitation practices in various establishments…

But the worst was yet to come: the Kitchen Practical – otherwise known as… Hell (not Hell’s Kitchen, no, that would’ve been more entertaining, just plain Hell).

We had to make consommé and a sauce. The consommé was easy (we did it the night before, just grind up some chicken and some mirepoix, throw it in a sauce pan with some tomato paste and egg whites and sweat it, add some stock and a sachet, and let that baby simmer, then strain it out). But Chef picked which sauce we were going to do.

I (silently) pleaded: “Please make it Hollandaise! Please make it Hollandaise!” Hollandaise I can do in my sleep standing on my head with one hand tied behind my back. Well, you know. And it’s GOOD! Alas, I was given a choice between Espagnol and Velouté. If anyone reading this has taken Culinary before, you’ll know why I chose Velouté. ☺ Well, at least I do (it was easier!).

And you know what? It turned out alright! Initially. I was feelin’ so good with myself that I went ahead and set it on the back burner, thinking I’d present that and the soup at the same time for Chef and “impress” him (or something).

Bad move. My once semi-perfect sauce turned into a thick, gooey mess by the time I was breaking down my soup. S—t! I tried to save it with some oil and some seasoning, but to no avail. Chef ran a spoon through it, stopped, looked up at me and glared “Is this what I taught you??”

(a moment to swallow the lump in my throat – I swear, I felt like a scolded child)

“No, Chef.”

“What did I teach you??”

“Ummm…..” I frantically tried to come up with an answer that would both affirm my knowledge of the proper way to make this sauce and still explain why I’d managed to completely f— it up.

“It’s not… nappé?” (some culinary term I never quite got but I know Chef reminded us of time and time again when demo-ing sauces)

The look on Chef’s face said it all. Any of you who’ve taken Culinary know the look: “Why am I here? Why am I teaching Culinary One to a bunch o’ dingbats who can’t boil an egg? I could be off running my own catering business, or my own personal chef business, or my own… whatever. Anything… but this.”

Chef proceeded to demonstrate how incorrect my sauce was with the back of his spoon, and then it was over. My sauce was graded, and I threw the rest of it out, moving on to break down my consommé with a heavy heart.

Sigh…

My consommé actually turned out alright. After a mishap with the china cap (and a trip next door to Chef Bruno’s kitchen which I choose not to describe), I had a relatively clear, clarified soup that, after proper seasoning, actually tasted pretty good. I got it back up to temp, did my knife cuts, laid ‘em in there as garnish and presented it. This time it was a cursory “Mm,” and I was done. On to cleaning.

I didn’t get home until after eleven last night, but I was both fried and wired at the same time and ended up working (day job, from home) until one-thirty in the morning. I knew I was gonna sleep well the next day…

Which was today (well, tonight). A repeat performance of yesterday: butterflies in my stomach all day, even to the point of feeling sick! OMG, when’s the last time I ever felt sick to my stomach with nervousness?!?

But all it was was the Culinary final, and like the Sanitation exam, this one was much easier than expected. I sailed through it, then we all went in the kitchen and cleaned a bit before Chef gathered us around and “wished us luck” in our next class by warning us of all the things we could potentially get wrong and in how many ways we needed to improve if we ever hoped to get through Culinary Two. Sigh… good times.

So I got a three-day weekend here (taking a much-needed Friday off of work) to clean and run chores and errands, getting myself ready for the start of class Monday. Now, as long as Campus IT fixes their screwup where they deleted most of my grades from the system (!), I should be all prepared and ready to go, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, for the next chapter in The C-Dawg Chronicles…


Namaste.

FINAL WEEK!!!

Well, of the first set of classes. ☺

But it does feel like the end of something significant. I look back over the last six weeks of notes and syllabi and realize I’ve taken in an awful lot in a very short amount of time. It’s been very whirlwind, and my only real frustration is that I haven’t had the time to adequately absorb all of this. My brain’s fried already and I’ve now got Foundations 2 to think about!

I will admit that I’ve changed considerably since I started. In all brutal honesty, I’d let my brain go to mush. I’ve spent so many years working dead-end jobs that I hated, and being surrounded (mostly) by people from whom I got nothing but negative energy (or no energy at all), that I’ve let my brain fall apart – like a muscle you rarely use. It’s kinda obvious, I know, but it’s not something you really think about until you’re in such an entirely different situation in life like I am now.

I get so much more energy from the people I’m in class with, and so much more (mostly) positive energy, that it’s taken me a lot to ‘re-wire’ myself and begin building up those muscles again. The final week of classes is coming up, and I’ve spent a decent part of the weekend studying and making flashcards of all the material (thanks, Val!). I’m gonna take these things with me everywhere: well, on the bus to work, and at work, and, um, at home again. ☺

As I head into Foundations 2, which will be an even more intense class, my main goal will be to finish this re-wiring and really get myself to a point where I can absorb all of this much better than I have been. I’ve been trying to let go of some bad habits and establish a better routine for myself, which is pretty hard after all these years. But this is most certainly well worth it.

One final note: I bought myself a camera and took a picture of my test the other night… a potato leek soup.


We were supposed to make two different soups, and my other one was a shrimp bisque. I was almost done with it when time ran out and I had to ditch it. We also were told to tourné five potatoes, and as I placed them down on the table and walked away I swear I head Chef say “These are the worst tournés I’ve ever seen in my life!”

Pphhbbbtttt!!!!!

So anyway, it’s back to flashcard-making. I’ll take a break for a little Iron Chef America action, of course. Then we’ll see how this final week goes…

Namaste.

A Moment of Zen

Wow, this past week has been – hellacious.

This whole 'working-full-time/school-full-time' thing has really taken some getting used to. I try to use the weekends to get caught up and read ahead so I’m prepared, but then I end up working tons of overtime! This is the super-busy season at my job now, so there’s not much choice in that.

But I think I’ve finally reached a ‘balance point’ with things. At one point I had hit bottom, thinking that I’d definitely bitten off more than I could chew and made a big mistake. Then I realized that I’m putting too much energy into all of this, which only raises my frustration level to the point where I want to give up. Especially when things don’t go well.

And things certainly didn’t go well this week.

I missed Monday’s classes for a stupid reason, which I later realized was my ‘burn-out’ point. The rest of the week saw ever-increasing pressures in class and at work. Not only was I working overtime every day (by getting in extra-early), but we had exams and heavy-duty cooking practicals at school. I’d come home burnt out, hit the sack and get up the next day to start it all over again.

And a funny thing happened – I learned to relax. ☺ It seemed as if the more over-worked I was, the less energy I had left to worry and stress about things. That doesn’t mean I slacked off, ‘cause I certainly couldn’t. But it means that when things didn’t go well, I didn’t stress, I just rolled with it and moved ahead, doing what I could and letting go of the mistakes.

‘Twas a good thing, too, ‘cause man, Chef can get ornery when things don’t go well!

He called Thursday night’s class a big ‘cluster you-know-what!’ and shouted at the whole class. We were running around trying to make a Béarnaise sauce with a vinegar reduction for our grilled and marinated chicken. Sure, some people got it done, and done well. But some of us… well, we take a little more time to learn than others.

I first screwed up the reduction by not straining it, then screwed it up by not using enough vinegar. I couldn’t crack an egg without screwing that up, too! I know I was getting more and more frustrated, and that was sapping my concentration. But by then we had to pack it up and start cleaning, so I essentially didn’t get anything done at all.

Fact is, I’m a slow learner. It’s always taken me longer to get things, and I have to make lots of mistakes to eventually get what I’m doing. Problem is, the classes just aren’t structured that way. You either get it right away or you don’t, and there’s not enough time for slowly-but-surely figuring it out.

But I’ve learned to let go and stop stressing about that fact. That doesn’t mean I’ve given up, it just means that I accept I won’t get as far as some people in my class. Some of these folks have been cooking in restaurants since their teens! This is all brand new to me. ☺

So I’ll focus that energy on what I’m doing instead of stressing about what I’m not, and if it doesn’t turn out as well as it should have, oh well. I’ll keep moving forward. I found out I have Chef Wook Kang for my next Foundations class, which is awesome. The CHIC Podcast is part of why I got into this in the first place, so it’ll be great to learn from him. Here’s hoping I have Chef Beckman for one of my baking/pastry classes!

Now it’s back to work (!), and hopefully I’ll get some studying in, too. Peace out, and Namaste.

Tourné This!

Or, “Will I EVER learn to cut a potato?!?”


It was back to potatoes tonight, this time a tourné (to turn). I swear, I am gonna get these knife skills down even if it kills me.

I almost tourné’d my thumb off. ☺

We used small, new potatoes, started at one end with a bird’s beak knife, then turned the potato away from us while holding the blade along the end, cutting a curve across the surface. We then followed that along, making curved slices along the length of the potato, all the way around, until we (supposedly) had a football shape.

Mine looked like sawed-off lumps of, well, you know.

I barely even had the basic instructions down, and I think Chef was rather frustrated when he saw I’d tourné’d about a dozen of these things wrong by lopping off the ends as well. Sheesh, I gotta take better notes…

In all, it was quite a learning experience. I found a really good video on this technique on YouTube, though the guy does it real differently than we were taught in class (his way looks easier!).

There’s also some decent discussion on it over at Chef2Chef. I love one poster’s little tagline: “If you don't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?” Heh heh! Stoned cats…

A’ight, it’s gettin’ late. I’m hittin’ the sack. Namaste.

Change Is Good (or so I’m told)

I don’t know what it is. I get home from class at about 10:30 pm, and I should be fried, right? Instead I’m kinda charged up. Ready to go. I want more!

Which ain’t so good, ‘cause I gotta get up early in the morning. ☺

Even on the long days (this one started at 5:30 am), I still seem to have more energy when I get home than when I leave for class. This can only be a good sign. I was really worrying that I’d be too pooped at the end of the day and I’d lose focus. I guess my biggest fear was that I’d end up ‘wasting’ my time and money on something I couldn’t maintain.

But in hindsight that was more my ‘inner wimp’ trying to convince me to give up. I’ve been, well, trepidatious (I know, big word!) about this huge commitment I’ve made. I’m realizing now it’s not just some after-work activity or something I might want to ‘try out’ some day. I’m really making a significant change in my life.

I’ve been stuck in this rut for, how long? Fifteen years or so?? I guess I’d just resigned myself to the idea that there was nothing else for me unless I, I don’t know, won the lottery or something. I’d given up, and so the idea of taking this ‘newfound interest’ and even turning it into a serious hobby was quite a change.

It’s slowly dawned on me that what I’ve actually done is completely change the course of my life. This is no longer some ‘side hobby’ that I’m just trying out to see if I like. The more I do this, the more… natural it feels. Like something I can find real happiness in doing with others who share that same happiness with me. The more I learn about it, the more I want to learn, and the more I want this to BE my life. I want this thing to envelop me. I don’t wanna get all sappy here (!), but I haven’t felt this way about something in, oh, twenty years? :O

Here’s a great quote I found online about Change:

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” – sendwisecards.com

So finally, after all this time, I’m instead spending my energy on the change.

Good night. Namaste.

Those Darn French And Their Bâtonnet!

Finally we got to cook something! After a scintillating video on parasites, bacteria and fungi, we finally got to break out our kits and demonstrate our knife skills!

Mine suck.

Seriously, I had no idea it’d be so hard to cut a frickin’ potato! In nice straight lines, we had to make a perfect small dice, then make French fries. For cryin’ out loud, if I can’t even cut a potato straight…!

But mmmm, the French fries were good! I’m glad at least some of the folks in our class were better at it than me. ☺

It’s a pretty fun class, too. On just the second day people are relaxing and getting to know each other, and we’re a pretty friendly group. In all honesty, I’ve had that whole ‘am I gonna fit in’-nervousness thing goin’ on since I signed up, but I can ditch that as this is a real easy group of people to get along with.

But hey, in that French fry frame of mind, I found a list of the best-voted fries in Chicago. It’s from ’07, but a quick search ‘round the ‘net shows most of these places are still in business:

http://chicago.citysearch.com/bestof/winners/2007/french_fries

So there it is. Now I’m hungry.

Peace.

First Day!!!

Back to school!

I really wasn’t sure what to expect, and found myself pretty unprepared as well! You mean I need a… a pen? And a… a notebook?? Now why didn’t I think of that?? Can’t I just play with my knife kit? :)

I guess the prospect of sitting for long stretches of time and taking notes just didn’t enter into my concept of culinary school. But there I was, learning about food safety and sanitation, and about famous French chefs, and having to take notes! I guess it has been a long time since I’ve been in school…

But the hour is late and my mind is weary, so I’ll leave it there for now. I’ve got to get up early and (gasp!) read!! Peace.