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.

Quick Recipe: Tandoori Chicken

Scouring the Internet I found plenty of different forms of Tandoori spice, so I’m convinced that everyone sort of has their own and therefore I’m free to figure one out for myself. ☺

So I decided to roast a chicken the other night and wanted to Tandoori it. Michael Ruhlman has a great rant on the ‘convenience food’ thing, in particular pre-roasted chickens (you know, the kind you pick up from the grocery story on the way home from work). And speaking of America’s growing inability to cook for themselves, read this astounding article from The New York Times. It truly blew my mind.

I’ve tried this before but on boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I baked, and it didn’t turn out so well. I’ve adjusted the proportions a bit, and I think I’m getting closer, plus I’m trying it on a whole roaster. So here’s the mixture:

• Curry powder
• Cumin
• Coriander
• Turmeric
• Smoked paprika
• Cayenne pepper
• Minced garlic
• Grated ginger
• Salt & pepper
• Peanut oil

(I wanted to add some cardamom, but do you know how freakin’ expensive cardamom is?! Yeah, it’s $16 for one of those little 2 oz bottles, sheesh!)

I used a tablespoon of each of the dry spices, except for the cumin, of which I used only a half-tablespoon. I also used only about a teaspoon of salt and just a pinch of pepper. I minced up four garlic cloves and about ½” of ginger root (with the skin off).


I then added about ½ cup of peanut oil and stirred it all together. I placed the chicken in a large stainless steel bowl and coated it with the spice mixture. I then covered the whole thing and put it in the fridge for about two hours before cooking it (stuffing about five cloves of garlic and two handfuls of a combination of fresh rosemary, thyme and sage inside the cavity just before putting it in the oven).

The bird looked beautiful, and it tasted great, too. I made some basmati rice using chicken stock instead of water, and I steamed some mixed veg to go with it.


I’m still working out the balance of spices. The cayenne certainly gives it the kick it needs, and reducing the cumin was a good move, too. I think I need to increase the curry powder and coriander, ‘cause I’m getting a good combination of flavor there. And I should just break down and get that $16 bottle of cardamom, just to try it out and see what it does.

A'ight, Happy Sunday, peace out, and Namaste.

Baking & Pastryyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

Man, has it really been since last November that I posted?! Sheeit, how time flies when... yeah. Anywho, I can catch up on Foundations III Finals later, and I'm sure no one wants to hear about my travails with English Composition and Food Cost Control/Management... PHBT! :)

Really, the main reason for this post is because a certain bench partner has been out sick two days in a row! Needless to say, these last two days have been a LIVING HELL! (I can't bitch too much... I did ditch 'er two days last week, which just so happened to be two reeeaaaally heavy production days)

A'ight, Val - we're even!!!

Last night was all about making doughs for tonite. We made mealy dough. We made flaky dough. And we made something called sucree, as well as frangipane and some lemon curd stuff, too. All of this was in prep for tonite's cooking... Apple pie, pear-almond tart, Quiche Lorraine, key lime tartlets, and some other stuff I never got to... :)

Chef laid out the production for us on the board... holy SHIT it was a lot of work! Even those with partners had trouble getting to it all, and those without... we were pretty much SOL. I decided to just start at the top of the list and concentrate on getting each item done properly... no sense in rushing and then screwing it up (though I did manage to make that happen, too!).

I started with the apple pie by peeling then slicing a bunch of green apples. I then cooked them in a pan with some butter and a little bit of lemon juice, later adding in a mix of sugar, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg (and a cornstarch slurry to thicken it up)...


I rolled out the mealy dough (the one where the butter is incorporated very thoroughly) as the bottom crust, and when the apple mixture had cooled, I filled the pan...


The last step was topping it with the flaky dough (the one where the butter is only a little bit incorporated), chilling it a bit, then brushing on some milk and sugar. The baking commenced...


Success!!! We get to save this one for tomorrow nite when we'll eat it with a creme chantilly...

Next I moved on to the pear-almond tart. I started out on the wrong foot by using the wrong tart pan (Hey! I saw a bunch of tart pans, I took one! How the frak was I supposed to know it was too big?! Oh yeah, Chef Leahy specified the size... damn). I lined the bottom of the pan with another mealy bottom crust, then sliced the pears thuswise...


Nice! We peeled the pears last nite and passed them to Chef, who placed them in a big ol' pot with wonderful ingredients like wine and sugar and various spices and such and whatnot. Anyway, she poached them in there for a while, then they went in the walk-in. We pulled 'em out tonite, Sliced 'em in half, then made cuts lengthwise starting at about 3/4" from the top and cutting all the way to the bottom. We then lightly pressed on them in one direction, and the slices, still attached at the top, fanned out...

Alright, so we filled the tart crust with the frangipane we made the night before, then topped that with the pears, like so...


Then I put it in the oven and... oh, there's my other mistake. I was supposed to chill the dang thing before I baked it! Sheesh! No wonder it came out looking like this...


Sigh! The team next to me of Steven and Cheryl, though, made an excellent pear tart...


So on I went. I actually spent so much time futzing with dough that I ended up having trouble with the next item: a Quiche Lorraine. I got the crust started, which involved filling the pan and trimming it just so. Then you line the crust with plastic wrap and fill that with these beans that will help keep the crust from 'poofing up' too much during the pre-bake phase. I got that part done, and it was already 9:30. Shoot! Dang! Golly! The next step was to cool that, then remove the beans and plastic, fill it with the quiche mixture (swiss cheese and bacon), as well as the curd, then bake it.

I did start the key line tart crust, which also had to chill, but I ran out of time so it had to be trashed!! Anyway, here's someone else's Quich Lorraine, just so we all have a good idea of what mine was SUPPOSED to look like!



So, what's on the docket for tomorrow?

• A quiz on cookies! (reach the chapter in the book and review what we've done in class so far)
• Pate choux (which will be for eclairs and such... mmm!)
• Blitz puff pastry dough (which will be for Thursday, more than likely)
• Paris brest (noooo... B-R-E-S-T! sheesh)

As a side note, I got a 93 on my written exam last week - woot!


Y'know, I talked to Chef about the whole production thing. See, theyz seen me coughin' and hackin' the last week or so, and some of 'em have even made comments about it (well, some were like 'Wow! You're such a trouper!' while others were like 'You shoulda stayed at home!'). And with Val out sick-as-a-dog (hey, she's NEVER missed a class since we started last July - NEVER!), Chef knew I was doing the best I could under the circumstances.

She doesn't ask us to bring up our production for review like we do in our culinary classes, so I was wondering how I was being graded. She tells me, "Hey, I look around the room and see who's working hard and who's slacking off. I won't bother checking your production, you're doing just fine in here."

Nice.

A'ight, I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I wanna watch Lost... Peace out, and Namaste.

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.

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.

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.

The journey begins...

“The C-Dawg Chronicles.” Cheesy title? To be sure. But I wanted to get this thing goin’ and the only way I could think to start it is with a cheesy nickname given to me when I lived back in Cali.

Yeah, I’m a transplanted Chicagoan back from SoCal in the Windy City, trying to make a new start of things. Man, I shore did mess up the first fifteen-or-so years of my life (at least, the life after high school, which is when I start counting). I’ve made lotsa mistakes and paid for them, so here I am, ready to start all over again and head in a new direction.

Which is Food. I’ve always had the culinary bug ever since I was a kid, but of course never took it seriously. I had much grander dreams (more of that later). But when those didn’t work out I was forced to reboot, to wipe the slate clean (as it were), and to find something that genuinely made me happy that I felt I could make a life out of.

So I enrolled in culinary school at The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (a.k.a., CHIC). I have little idea of what awaits, or where I want to go with this thing. But that’s sort of the point. It’s nice for once to take each step one at a time, to savor each moment, with no firm set expectations of what’s to come. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.” That’s why I’m doing this.

So this is the story of my journey. I hope you dig it as much as I do.

Peace out, and namaste.