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.

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.