Let’s just get this out of the way: I have made another life-altering decision. I have decided to leave the Culinary Institute of America. I have already applied to and am waiting on a decision from IUPUI’s School of Education to pursue a degree in Elementary Education. I bet that right now a lot of you are saying, “Didn’t Brendan leave school once already and dedicate all of his time the past three years to go to the CIA?” Well, yes I did. Believe me, this is by far the hardest thing I have ever decided to do and I did not approach it lightly. Let me try to explain my reasoning behind my choice to leave the Culinary Institute of America.
In every career that I have ever dreamed about/pursued/actually had, the end goal was to one day teach it. When I was in middle school, I wanted to be an English teacher. In early high school, I wanted to work in museum education. In late high school I wanted to be a Government teacher. Even as I entered the culinary world, I always knew that after working in restaurants for a while, I would hopefully work for a culinary school. Every job that I have had in the past has been in the form of teaching and giving tours (The Children’s Museum, coaching high school rowing, and being a college tour guide). While the subject matter has often been different, being an educator is the one constant theme in my career path.
The most difficult part of making this decision is that I have been incredibly successful in culinary school. I had a 4.0 and was my class leader at Ivy Tech. Here at the CIA, I have gained incredible amounts of knowledge and have maintained a 3.6. At The Hawthorns, I was a full-fledged line cook and was running my own station by the time that my apprenticeship came to a close. I really am incredibly proud of the things that I have done in the past three years. I don’t regret the time that I have put in or the places that I have gone. The problem is just that cooking and being part of the food industry does not make me as happy as I thought it would. While food is indeed a passion, I have come to the realization that it is just a passion and not a calling. As much as I want to love working in a kitchen, I do not. I think that having my experience at the children’s museum and as a rowing coach as taught me a few valuable things about having a job/career. Even though every minute of it is not fun, I never ever dreaded going in to work coaching or interpreting. At the end of the day in Dinosphere, I was always quite happy with what I had done. Oftentimes when walking into class at the CIA or driving in to work at the restaurant, I would be filled with an overwhelming sense of dread at what was about to happen. I wanted more than anything to not be there and just get the day done with. I hope that it is not idealistic of me to say that I want a job that I enjoy going to and makes me feel accomplished.
It’s more than just being happy that I am looking for, though. I want a job that matters. While there are people in the food industry who can contribute to the world, very few do. At the end of a night of dinner service, all I have really done is cook some chicken and make some sauce. I want to have a bigger impact on people. I feel like I have abandoned some of the ideals that once motivated everything that I did. Being a cook has caused me ignore my passion for vegetarianism, my awareness of world events, and my dedication to various human rights issues. While I know that educators do not save the world in the way that others do, I still know that I have the potential to do more good than just cutting carrots and making demi glace all day. The final major reason that I want to go into education is that I want to lead a more normal life than I have had the last few years. As much as I love going to the grocery store at midnight and nobody is around, I miss being able to see my friends and family in the daylight. I know that one day I will have kids. I really want to have a family. As a chef, the long, late hours and the demand to work holidays and weekends make maintaining relationships difficult, yet alone trying to raise children.
So…what is the end game in all of this? I am not sure. I think I would be happy in a classroom as a traditional elementary school teacher. However, I would first like to explore what it would take to be successful as a museum educator. I have spoken to my former boss at the Children’s Museum and we are exploring the possibility of my return this May. I know that there are few things in the world that make me as happy as being on the floor of that museum after a successful program. I love talking to kids and making them smile as we talk and play games about dinosaurs. In the past, I have returned to work there time and time again because it’s fun and I enjoy the company of my coworkers. This time, I am really excited to explore Interpretation as a possible career.
This is never, not even in a million years, where I thought I would end up. I was convinced that I had found my career in cooking. However, I do not regret any of the things that I have done in the past four years since high school. I have learned volumes about what motivates me, where my interests are, and what I can do in the future. I have made a lot of changes and taken a lot of non-traditional paths. I am incredibly grateful to have had such understanding and supportive parents. I would not have been able to pursue (so many) dreams without them. I also want to thank all of my other family and friends for understanding that I have never been one to make decisions and do things the traditional way. I cannot ask for any more or thank you enough for supporting me as I start yet another chapter in my life.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Football Shaped Hell
In the final week of Skills II, the emphasis was put on creating perfect plates of food. As if this wasn’t the standard already, even more pressure was put on us to create dishes that were completely free of errors. We had to sequence all of our food so that it would be done at the same time, not be held too long, be cooked to the desired doneness and color, be plated beautifully, and have excellent flavor. It’s what the restaurant industry is all about… pressure.
Monday: sautéed chicken fines herbs, homemade pasta, snap peas, and battonnet cut root vegetables. Battonnets are sticks that are ¼” x ¼” x 2”. It’s not a difficult knife cut, but making sure that the ends are prefect squares can be a little challenging. Homemade pasta was easier this time than a few weeks ago because we got to make it in a food processor, then roll it out by hand/pasta roller. I honestly can’t remember the critiques that chef made this day, but I can imagine that the herbs in my sauce could have been a bit greener and my knife cuts could have been more precise. Those are things that I get from him quite often. At the end of class, we got our midterm tests back (100%), and had face-to-face meetings with Chef to find out how we were doing in the class. I found out that I was doing quite well, and that if I was able to nail all of my dishes the rest of the week and on the practical, I could get an A in the class. I was determined to make this happen. He told a lot of people the same thing and it made us hopefull for the future. Sadly, though, one girl found out that she was failing the class and had to drop out. She had never been that great and did some dangerous things in the kitchen, so it was a good thing for her and for us. I feel bad for her, but I am glad that I don’t have to worry about getting stabbed with a paring knife or having hot oil thrown in my face anymore.
Tuesday: The technique of the day was fish sauté. We were scheduled to produce trout a la meuniere, wild rice, tourné cut glazed root vegetables, and brussel sprouts with bacon and pearl onions. We got to cut, skin, and fabricate our own trout fillets. I’ve said it before and I will say it again; I hate eating fish but fabricating it is one of my favorite things to do in a kitchen. The first thing that we had to do was cut all of the vegetables that we needed. I cut parsnips, rutabaga, turnips, and carrots into tournés, which is a two-inch long football shape with seven sides and flat ends. It is ridiculously difficult and unimaginably wasteful and time-consuming. Because of these facts, no restaurants use the cut anymore. However, the CIA thinks it’s necessary for us to learn them. We’ve been practicing on potatoes the past few weeks, but Monday we actually had to cook them. Mine looked ok, but they were defiantly not the best tournés in the world. Cutting the trout made the whole day worth it, though. We sautéed the fillets and then used whole butter to brown and add parsley and lemon juice to right before service. It creates quite a delicious sauce. The fish, brussle sprouts, and glazed veggies went with some boiled wild rice, not my favorite of accompaniments, as discussed before. The only problem that Chef saw with my dish was that my brown butter sauce was a little too dark, so I didn’t quite nail the dish as I was hoping. We each had some leftover trout fillets, so chef threw a second dish at us. We left the skin on this fillet, sautéed it, and then made beurre blanc sauce to go with it. Beurre blanc is an interesting sauce. As with most any sauce, it starts with sweating shallots in clarified butter. Then white wine and a small amount of heavy cream go into the pan with aromatics like peppercorns and bay leaf, etc. Once the wine and cream have reduced, HUGE amounts of cold, whole butter are whisked in. The milk solids in the heavy cream help to hold the sauce together and keep the sauce from breaking and separating. The flavor of the sauce, once finished and strained, is shallot and butter. While normally this would taste great, I think the large and reduced flavors of the sauce are just a bit too much for me. Chef Velie was eating his with a spoon…this man is great and such a chef.
Wednesday: Technique of the day: pan fry. The day started with making mayonnaise b hand. Just like a lot of things that I describe, it’s not hard, but it takes a good amount of whisking. By the end of every cup of mayo that I make, I am usually a little sweaty and more than a little sore. The mayo went into the cole slaw that we had to make and keep tasting throughout the day to see when it was ready. Caitlin would have loved it! Once our cole slaw was sitting, we started braising kale. In general, kale is not my favorite cooking green, but when it is slow cooked in stock and has plenty of flavor additives (like bacon), it make for a tasty and easy side dish. The next event was to make sauce charcutiere. It is a derivative sauce of sauce Robert which is a derivative of demi glace. Luckily, we already had demi made, so all we had to do was go though the normal reduction and flavoring process(wine, shallots, peppercorn, Dijon, etc.) for the Robert and then added julienne of cornichons. Before we could start the meat, we had one last thing to make: spaetzle. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with this delicious item or not. I had only had it once before coming to the CIA, but it is one of my favorite things in the world. Luckily, it seems as if the CIA agrees, because we eat a lot of it. It starts with making a batter of flour, egg, water, milk, and seasonings. It has the consistency of pancake batter. Then you get a ricer, colander, fryer basket, or really anything with holes and place it over a pot of simmering water. When you pour the batter through the item with holes, it creates little stream of batter. When these hit the boiloing water, it creates little pea-sized dumpling of dough. After they cook in the water, they are transferred to a sauté pan and cooked until golden brown with butter and herbs. OH GOD! I just love spaetzle. We got pork cutlets up from the meat room, so we used the standard breading procedure of flour, egg, then bread crumbs. We did the pan fry in clarified butter, of course. My critiques for the day were that one of my cutlets could have been more evenly breaded. Again, I didn’t nail it, so my dreams of an A went flying out the window. It tough to see a perfect dish with great flavor and everything cooked perfectly and plated beautifully, but get points off because one side of one cutlet had a small hole in the breading. I understand why they say that CIA graduates the best chefs, because we learn to create perfect food. I don’t mean to toot my own horn; I’ve never created anything in this place that is prefect. What I mean to get across is that I am learning to pay attention to absolutely everything so that I will one day be able to create perfect dishes from start to finish.
Thursday: Second to last day of Skills II. The cooking methods that we were learning were grilling and deep frying. I can’t even begin to describe how hot and smoky the kitchen was on Thursday. But before we get there, we first had a tourné practical exam. We had 30 minutes to create 8 perfect tourné potatoes. Let’s just say that it did not go in my favor. I got a 60%… Haha…opps. Again, that A was just slipping away from me. No big deal, My food that day turned out ok. We made grilled herb-marinated strip steaks with maitre d’hotel butter, grilled vegetables, and fresh cut French fries. There is nothing quite like topping a piece of red meat with slices of compound butter. My grilled items had great grill marks, and my veggies were cooked perfectly. My butter had great flavor, my steak was seasoned right, and my fries were good, but my steak was cooked a little past medium rare, which was our goal. I keep saying that I am going to post pictures, but really, I am going to find a way. I have one of my plate from Thursday, and it looks really good. At the end of class, we took our written final. I think I nailed it. There are maybe just two questions that I might have missed
Friday: Cooking Practical day. We were given the recipes and demonstrations the day before. So the night before, all we had to do was write out our mise en place lists and create a timeline for the day. Each student was staggered ten minutes apart. We could not come into the kitchen until our time started. Then we had 2.5 hours to set up our station, get our mise en place, do any cutting that we needed to do, get all prep done, and start cooking. Then we had a half-hour window to serve our food. We could not serve before our window opened, and we failed if we missed our window. The pressure is indeed “on”, but there is more than enough time to get everything done. I was even able to take a 15 minute break and call Caitlin. I started at 2:00. This means that my service window was from 4:30-5:00. The dish for the day: pan-seared beef medallions (basically the same thing as fillet mignon), sauce chasseur, broccoli rabe, potato gratin, and battered and fried onion rings. I feel like I have bored all of you enough with cooking details in this post, so I will not go into it her. I will say these few things: I was really nervous before the day started. The dishes were not hard and I made myself some incredibly detailed prep lists to help myself out, but I was nervous regardless. I got all my mise en place done early. If I would have started the cooking and firing of dishes then, I would have finished before my service window opened. So I decided to take a break and call Caitlin for some encouragement. She was great, but I was still kind of anxious when I was walking back to the room. I was talking myself into believing that it was going to be fine, and then I realized something. I was getting ready to take a test over something that I loved. Even if things went wrong, I was still able to do something that makes me happy. I felt just fine after that. I don’t know if it was because of my positive attitude or not, but I created some really outstanding dishes. My steak had amazing color, my sauce was really flavorful, my steaks were cooked prefect medium rare, my onion rings could have had more color, but they were cooked through and flavorful. The only other critique was that my knife cuts on the tomatoes in the sauce could have been smaller. Then Chef Velie told me that my potato gratin was delicious. I don’t think that I have ever been more proud. Usually, he just says that things are “good”, “have good flavor”, or are “ok”. I have never had a “delicious” before. I was quite pleased and I would also have to agree. I wound up eating both of them.
It is kind of sad to leave Skills I & II. We have been in the same kitchen, with the same chef, and the same group of students for the past six weeks. We have come a very long way. At the beginning, it would take us all five hours to make one or two soups. The kitchen would be filled with dirty dishes and it would take us forever to make and bag all the stocks. Now, we have 2.5 hours to create entire meals and the kitchen is rather clean at the end. Our class has gone from 19 students to 15, and we have really grown to work very well together. In Skills III, we move into new groups, new chefs, and new kitchens. I am leaving some of my friends, but I am going into what I think will be a solid group. Lots of the best from my class and the other current PM class are going into this new class together. I am generally excited. We will be making all of the same dishes that we learned in Skills II, but we will be making them for a production setting. It will be more like working a line in a restaurant. Each group of three students is responsible for about 20 covers. I am ready to get back on a line. I am sure that all of you will hear from me soon, and wish me luck in Skills III!
Monday: sautéed chicken fines herbs, homemade pasta, snap peas, and battonnet cut root vegetables. Battonnets are sticks that are ¼” x ¼” x 2”. It’s not a difficult knife cut, but making sure that the ends are prefect squares can be a little challenging. Homemade pasta was easier this time than a few weeks ago because we got to make it in a food processor, then roll it out by hand/pasta roller. I honestly can’t remember the critiques that chef made this day, but I can imagine that the herbs in my sauce could have been a bit greener and my knife cuts could have been more precise. Those are things that I get from him quite often. At the end of class, we got our midterm tests back (100%), and had face-to-face meetings with Chef to find out how we were doing in the class. I found out that I was doing quite well, and that if I was able to nail all of my dishes the rest of the week and on the practical, I could get an A in the class. I was determined to make this happen. He told a lot of people the same thing and it made us hopefull for the future. Sadly, though, one girl found out that she was failing the class and had to drop out. She had never been that great and did some dangerous things in the kitchen, so it was a good thing for her and for us. I feel bad for her, but I am glad that I don’t have to worry about getting stabbed with a paring knife or having hot oil thrown in my face anymore.
Tuesday: The technique of the day was fish sauté. We were scheduled to produce trout a la meuniere, wild rice, tourné cut glazed root vegetables, and brussel sprouts with bacon and pearl onions. We got to cut, skin, and fabricate our own trout fillets. I’ve said it before and I will say it again; I hate eating fish but fabricating it is one of my favorite things to do in a kitchen. The first thing that we had to do was cut all of the vegetables that we needed. I cut parsnips, rutabaga, turnips, and carrots into tournés, which is a two-inch long football shape with seven sides and flat ends. It is ridiculously difficult and unimaginably wasteful and time-consuming. Because of these facts, no restaurants use the cut anymore. However, the CIA thinks it’s necessary for us to learn them. We’ve been practicing on potatoes the past few weeks, but Monday we actually had to cook them. Mine looked ok, but they were defiantly not the best tournés in the world. Cutting the trout made the whole day worth it, though. We sautéed the fillets and then used whole butter to brown and add parsley and lemon juice to right before service. It creates quite a delicious sauce. The fish, brussle sprouts, and glazed veggies went with some boiled wild rice, not my favorite of accompaniments, as discussed before. The only problem that Chef saw with my dish was that my brown butter sauce was a little too dark, so I didn’t quite nail the dish as I was hoping. We each had some leftover trout fillets, so chef threw a second dish at us. We left the skin on this fillet, sautéed it, and then made beurre blanc sauce to go with it. Beurre blanc is an interesting sauce. As with most any sauce, it starts with sweating shallots in clarified butter. Then white wine and a small amount of heavy cream go into the pan with aromatics like peppercorns and bay leaf, etc. Once the wine and cream have reduced, HUGE amounts of cold, whole butter are whisked in. The milk solids in the heavy cream help to hold the sauce together and keep the sauce from breaking and separating. The flavor of the sauce, once finished and strained, is shallot and butter. While normally this would taste great, I think the large and reduced flavors of the sauce are just a bit too much for me. Chef Velie was eating his with a spoon…this man is great and such a chef.
Wednesday: Technique of the day: pan fry. The day started with making mayonnaise b hand. Just like a lot of things that I describe, it’s not hard, but it takes a good amount of whisking. By the end of every cup of mayo that I make, I am usually a little sweaty and more than a little sore. The mayo went into the cole slaw that we had to make and keep tasting throughout the day to see when it was ready. Caitlin would have loved it! Once our cole slaw was sitting, we started braising kale. In general, kale is not my favorite cooking green, but when it is slow cooked in stock and has plenty of flavor additives (like bacon), it make for a tasty and easy side dish. The next event was to make sauce charcutiere. It is a derivative sauce of sauce Robert which is a derivative of demi glace. Luckily, we already had demi made, so all we had to do was go though the normal reduction and flavoring process(wine, shallots, peppercorn, Dijon, etc.) for the Robert and then added julienne of cornichons. Before we could start the meat, we had one last thing to make: spaetzle. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with this delicious item or not. I had only had it once before coming to the CIA, but it is one of my favorite things in the world. Luckily, it seems as if the CIA agrees, because we eat a lot of it. It starts with making a batter of flour, egg, water, milk, and seasonings. It has the consistency of pancake batter. Then you get a ricer, colander, fryer basket, or really anything with holes and place it over a pot of simmering water. When you pour the batter through the item with holes, it creates little stream of batter. When these hit the boiloing water, it creates little pea-sized dumpling of dough. After they cook in the water, they are transferred to a sauté pan and cooked until golden brown with butter and herbs. OH GOD! I just love spaetzle. We got pork cutlets up from the meat room, so we used the standard breading procedure of flour, egg, then bread crumbs. We did the pan fry in clarified butter, of course. My critiques for the day were that one of my cutlets could have been more evenly breaded. Again, I didn’t nail it, so my dreams of an A went flying out the window. It tough to see a perfect dish with great flavor and everything cooked perfectly and plated beautifully, but get points off because one side of one cutlet had a small hole in the breading. I understand why they say that CIA graduates the best chefs, because we learn to create perfect food. I don’t mean to toot my own horn; I’ve never created anything in this place that is prefect. What I mean to get across is that I am learning to pay attention to absolutely everything so that I will one day be able to create perfect dishes from start to finish.
Thursday: Second to last day of Skills II. The cooking methods that we were learning were grilling and deep frying. I can’t even begin to describe how hot and smoky the kitchen was on Thursday. But before we get there, we first had a tourné practical exam. We had 30 minutes to create 8 perfect tourné potatoes. Let’s just say that it did not go in my favor. I got a 60%… Haha…opps. Again, that A was just slipping away from me. No big deal, My food that day turned out ok. We made grilled herb-marinated strip steaks with maitre d’hotel butter, grilled vegetables, and fresh cut French fries. There is nothing quite like topping a piece of red meat with slices of compound butter. My grilled items had great grill marks, and my veggies were cooked perfectly. My butter had great flavor, my steak was seasoned right, and my fries were good, but my steak was cooked a little past medium rare, which was our goal. I keep saying that I am going to post pictures, but really, I am going to find a way. I have one of my plate from Thursday, and it looks really good. At the end of class, we took our written final. I think I nailed it. There are maybe just two questions that I might have missed
Friday: Cooking Practical day. We were given the recipes and demonstrations the day before. So the night before, all we had to do was write out our mise en place lists and create a timeline for the day. Each student was staggered ten minutes apart. We could not come into the kitchen until our time started. Then we had 2.5 hours to set up our station, get our mise en place, do any cutting that we needed to do, get all prep done, and start cooking. Then we had a half-hour window to serve our food. We could not serve before our window opened, and we failed if we missed our window. The pressure is indeed “on”, but there is more than enough time to get everything done. I was even able to take a 15 minute break and call Caitlin. I started at 2:00. This means that my service window was from 4:30-5:00. The dish for the day: pan-seared beef medallions (basically the same thing as fillet mignon), sauce chasseur, broccoli rabe, potato gratin, and battered and fried onion rings. I feel like I have bored all of you enough with cooking details in this post, so I will not go into it her. I will say these few things: I was really nervous before the day started. The dishes were not hard and I made myself some incredibly detailed prep lists to help myself out, but I was nervous regardless. I got all my mise en place done early. If I would have started the cooking and firing of dishes then, I would have finished before my service window opened. So I decided to take a break and call Caitlin for some encouragement. She was great, but I was still kind of anxious when I was walking back to the room. I was talking myself into believing that it was going to be fine, and then I realized something. I was getting ready to take a test over something that I loved. Even if things went wrong, I was still able to do something that makes me happy. I felt just fine after that. I don’t know if it was because of my positive attitude or not, but I created some really outstanding dishes. My steak had amazing color, my sauce was really flavorful, my steaks were cooked prefect medium rare, my onion rings could have had more color, but they were cooked through and flavorful. The only other critique was that my knife cuts on the tomatoes in the sauce could have been smaller. Then Chef Velie told me that my potato gratin was delicious. I don’t think that I have ever been more proud. Usually, he just says that things are “good”, “have good flavor”, or are “ok”. I have never had a “delicious” before. I was quite pleased and I would also have to agree. I wound up eating both of them.
It is kind of sad to leave Skills I & II. We have been in the same kitchen, with the same chef, and the same group of students for the past six weeks. We have come a very long way. At the beginning, it would take us all five hours to make one or two soups. The kitchen would be filled with dirty dishes and it would take us forever to make and bag all the stocks. Now, we have 2.5 hours to create entire meals and the kitchen is rather clean at the end. Our class has gone from 19 students to 15, and we have really grown to work very well together. In Skills III, we move into new groups, new chefs, and new kitchens. I am leaving some of my friends, but I am going into what I think will be a solid group. Lots of the best from my class and the other current PM class are going into this new class together. I am generally excited. We will be making all of the same dishes that we learned in Skills II, but we will be making them for a production setting. It will be more like working a line in a restaurant. Each group of three students is responsible for about 20 covers. I am ready to get back on a line. I am sure that all of you will hear from me soon, and wish me luck in Skills III!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Of Cabbages and Kings...
To wrap up Skills Development I: The whole class ended quite nice for me. I got a B for my final grade. Of course, I was very much hoping to do better, but didn’t really expect it. I am content with the grade, but it pushed me to do better in Skills Development II.
Tuesday 2/16: Well, I didn’t exactly get off to the best start. On the first day, I would say that I failed miserably. We made braised red cabbage, glazed beets, duchesse potatoes, cocotte potatoes, and demi glace. The only thing that turned out right was my demi glace. My braised cabbage was over-cooked and walking the line of burnt. My glazed beets were undercooked. My duchesse potatoes were too wet and not brown enough, and my potato cocottes were unevenly brown and different sizes. Boo. Not a good day at all.
Wednesday 2/17: I started my tour guide training this day. There was not much to it; I just followed around another tour guide to learn the talking points and stops on the tour. In class: Rice day. Generally, I don’t like rice. It is not at all on my top list of choices for a starchy side. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not feel the same way. Chef Velie is one of those people who just loves rice cookery. Again, this was not a good day for me. We made rice pilaf, boiled rice, risotto, and vegetables jardinere (blanched vegetable batonnets that are then finished with melted butter, of course). My risotto was good. My boiled rice was ok, but needed more salt. My vegetables were fine, I think. However, my rice pilaf was overcooked. Because we had enough time, Chef told me that I could make it again to get some points back. So I did, but this time I undercooked it. I doubt that I got any points back…
Thursday 2/18: I was not in a good place this day. I was really not looking forward to class at all. I didn’t want to be there and I was seriously becoming jealous of Chrissy for leaving the CIA. I couldn’t handle another bad day in the kitchen. Well, I was in luck because it was Pasta Day. We made cheese filling, duxelle filling, and homemade pasta dough. Half of the dough we rolled out into fettuccine and the half we made into ravioli. It was perhaps the best day that I have ever had in class. Chef had nothing but good things to say about my dishes. I felt awesome. On top of that, we also put together a GIANT pasta buffet where we got to sample everybody’s pastas and sauces. My team made Bolognese, but there was also tomato, putanesca, pesto, etc. I felt a lot better at the end of the day.
Friday 2/19: I think I followed another tour on Friday, but at this point I don’t remember. In Skills, it was egg day. I was kind of excited. I love egg cookery. We started the day making mayonnaise (again), hollandaise (for like the 34567th time), and poached eggs with Canadian bacon and English muffins which we turned into eggs benedict. I think all of you know by now that eggs benedict is my favorite dish of all time. Love it. Then we worked on hard boiled eggs and two different custards. Then we had to practice our à la minute egg cookery. We had 20 minutes and one Teflon pan to make two scrambled eggs, two sunny-side-up eggs, two eggs over-easy, two eggs over-medium, and two eggs over-hard. It was at this time that I became thankful for two things: one, that I worked the omelet bar at the country club on Sunday mornings. Two, that I made myself one egg over-medium every morning for breakfast for the past two years. I didn’t get the over-hard done by the time that time was up, but I still executed all the others perfectly and didn’t break a single yolk. J By the end of the day, all 17 students and Chef Velie went through a flat (30 ea) of eggs. For those of you keeping track, that’s 540 eggs. Wow.
Weekend: I had big plans for getting all kinds of things done and catching up on work and my Externship search. Very little of that happened. On Friday night, Steph, Jen, and I just hung out in my room. We were too exhausted to even change out of our chef whites. On Saturday, I spent most of the day reading Twilight (don’t judge me!) and catching up on Grey’s Anatomy and Brothers & Sisters. That night, Jen and I went out to Steph’s apartment again to make dinner. This time it was antipasti and pizza. We had all kinds of toppings like mozzarella, olives, several sausages, parmesan, peppers, etc. So delicious. Stephanie also made some Guinness ice cream. I had the foresight to bring some Kaluah to drip on top. It was also a tasty combination. After dinner, we had a great conversation about how religion develops and affects society. As much as I love food, I don’t get to think about much else, and it was such a relief to talk about something stimulating like religion again. Sunday, I really have no recollection of what I did, but I am sure that it was not productive. I would assume lots of Facebook and napping.
Monday 2/22: Poached Salmon. Ahem…I hate salmon. I hate poached meat. Not looking forward to this day. We made a court bouillon (a short broth made with water, acid, and mirepoix) to poach the salmon in. we then made a béarnaise to serve with the salmon. It went with julienne vegetables and haricots verts. This was the first day that we had to give the chef a composed plate. Usually, we just turn in dishes as we finish them, but starting Monday, everything was a whole meal that has to be served beautifully, cooked perfectly, and be warm all at the same time. While it is indeed more difficult than before, it feels good to make a whole meal and have more “real world” practice. I really love the rush of dinner service. I love how fast everything moves, how I have to ignore the world and live in my zone while I finish the food, and turn out perfect plates. I can only imagine it’s like the rush that keeps sky divers going back for more. I love it and it’s nice to be back in that world, even if it’s only on a small scale…just one plate. Chef liked my plate this day. Everything was cooked fine and had good flavor. Needless to say, I did not eat the leftovers. After class, I hung around to talk to Chef Velie about how I had done in Skills I, a few assignments that I had questions about, and to ask his advice on a few externship opportunities. It was incredibly productive. I got a lot of good information and feedback from him, and it seems like he got to see that I really am a dedicated student who wants to do well in this school and industry.
Tuesday 2/23: Shallow Poached Flounder with a sauce reduction served with saffron rice pilaf, sautéed spinach, and glazed carrots. Again, it was a good day. I was worried that my spinach and flounder were both overcooked. Chef disagreed. I was pleased to find this out. I have trouble judging when fish is done because I don’t really know what it needs to look since I avoid eating it like the plague. We were supposed to get whole winter flounder in and then we were going to fabricate them ourselves. I was oddly looking forward to this. While I hate eating fish, I really enjoy fabricating it. Flounder is the easiest type of fish to fillet. It’s what we got to do for our cutting practical in Seafood class. Sadly, though, the seafood class sent us already fabricated flounder. I have never seen such a disappointed room of culinary students. I really love the student body at this school… Where else do seventeen 18-24 year olds get sad about not breaking down a whole flounder?
Wednesday 2/24: Herb-Roasted Chicken with pan gravy, oven-roasted potatoes and classic ratatouille. This was one of the easiest days that we have ever had. Once the chicken was in the oven cooking, all we had to do was finish all the small dicing for the ratatouille. Generally, I had a good day. My chicken was cooked and broken down properly. My gravy had good flavor and consistency. The ratatouille had good flavor and was cooked well, but of course, my knife cuts were off. They so often are. My potatoes also could have been a little more moist. All in all, not a bad day.
Thursday 2/25: Best. Day. Ever. We made Braised short ribs, haricots verts, soft polenta, and roasted root vegetables. I have a very fervent, fiery, love of all things braised. Also, polenta is just the best starch ever. Since after the ribs are seared, all they do is sit in stock in an oven for two hours, it was another easy day. There is always about 10 minutes when it’s service time that get busy, but other than that it was another calm day. When Chef Velie was giving us a demo on how to plate the dish, he pulled out these giant tweezers to place the haricots verts around the plate one at a time. Picture tweezers that one would use to pluck eyebrows, but make them 10 times larger. I could not contain my laughter at not only how ridiculous the process was, but also at the size of the tweezers. Without missing a beat, my friend Stephanie says, “Oh, damn! I forgot to bring my giant tweezers today.” On the surface, it’s not that funny. However, I lost it. I had to walk away for a minute and collect myself. My food turned out quite well. Chef’s only critique: my knife cuts on the root vegetables… of course. He also told me that he nominated me and another kid in my class for a faculty-nominated leadership scholarship. I was completely touched and honored. I never thought that he would choose me for something like that, especially since the other person he nominated is Jim, our class’s outstanding group leader. Even if I don’t get it, just knowing that Chef Velie sees potential in me was a great gift. It really boosted my confidence and was just what I needed to hear.
Friday 2/26: We made simmered broccoli with (say it with me now: ) melted butter, whipped potatoes, and veal fricassee with all kinds of classic, French, cooked garnishes. Fricassee is basically a thickened white stew. I have never had it before, and I really quite enjoyed it. The plating was kinda cool: we piped the whipped potatoes into a boarder around the plate and used them as “walls” to hold in the fricassee in the middle of the plate. It was garnished with bacon lardoons, mushrooms cooked in bacon fat, and glazed pearl onions. I was really worried that my potatoes were overcooked, dry, and under-seasoned. Once again, I proved that I am a terrible judge of food because Chef saw no big problems with the dish other than a little overcooked broccoli. As the days pass, I am learning to really hate cooking broccoli. It’s quite a temperamental vegetable…
Now it’s the weekend again and I am determined to get things done. Today I am dedicating to my externship search, and tomorrow I am dedicating to homework. Perhaps there will be an Indian food break in there somewhere. We’ll see, though. I have my Writing final on Tuesday morning. It’s just an in-class essay. I am not worried. That will also be the last day of that class. I can say goodbye to waking up at 6am every Thursday and Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, I have my first tour. I have followed like four so far. I will give the tour on my own, but there will be another guide there in case I need help or get stuck. Then on Friday, I have my written final and cooking practical for Skills II. Big week…wish me luck!
Tuesday 2/16: Well, I didn’t exactly get off to the best start. On the first day, I would say that I failed miserably. We made braised red cabbage, glazed beets, duchesse potatoes, cocotte potatoes, and demi glace. The only thing that turned out right was my demi glace. My braised cabbage was over-cooked and walking the line of burnt. My glazed beets were undercooked. My duchesse potatoes were too wet and not brown enough, and my potato cocottes were unevenly brown and different sizes. Boo. Not a good day at all.
Wednesday 2/17: I started my tour guide training this day. There was not much to it; I just followed around another tour guide to learn the talking points and stops on the tour. In class: Rice day. Generally, I don’t like rice. It is not at all on my top list of choices for a starchy side. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not feel the same way. Chef Velie is one of those people who just loves rice cookery. Again, this was not a good day for me. We made rice pilaf, boiled rice, risotto, and vegetables jardinere (blanched vegetable batonnets that are then finished with melted butter, of course). My risotto was good. My boiled rice was ok, but needed more salt. My vegetables were fine, I think. However, my rice pilaf was overcooked. Because we had enough time, Chef told me that I could make it again to get some points back. So I did, but this time I undercooked it. I doubt that I got any points back…
Thursday 2/18: I was not in a good place this day. I was really not looking forward to class at all. I didn’t want to be there and I was seriously becoming jealous of Chrissy for leaving the CIA. I couldn’t handle another bad day in the kitchen. Well, I was in luck because it was Pasta Day. We made cheese filling, duxelle filling, and homemade pasta dough. Half of the dough we rolled out into fettuccine and the half we made into ravioli. It was perhaps the best day that I have ever had in class. Chef had nothing but good things to say about my dishes. I felt awesome. On top of that, we also put together a GIANT pasta buffet where we got to sample everybody’s pastas and sauces. My team made Bolognese, but there was also tomato, putanesca, pesto, etc. I felt a lot better at the end of the day.
Friday 2/19: I think I followed another tour on Friday, but at this point I don’t remember. In Skills, it was egg day. I was kind of excited. I love egg cookery. We started the day making mayonnaise (again), hollandaise (for like the 34567th time), and poached eggs with Canadian bacon and English muffins which we turned into eggs benedict. I think all of you know by now that eggs benedict is my favorite dish of all time. Love it. Then we worked on hard boiled eggs and two different custards. Then we had to practice our à la minute egg cookery. We had 20 minutes and one Teflon pan to make two scrambled eggs, two sunny-side-up eggs, two eggs over-easy, two eggs over-medium, and two eggs over-hard. It was at this time that I became thankful for two things: one, that I worked the omelet bar at the country club on Sunday mornings. Two, that I made myself one egg over-medium every morning for breakfast for the past two years. I didn’t get the over-hard done by the time that time was up, but I still executed all the others perfectly and didn’t break a single yolk. J By the end of the day, all 17 students and Chef Velie went through a flat (30 ea) of eggs. For those of you keeping track, that’s 540 eggs. Wow.
Weekend: I had big plans for getting all kinds of things done and catching up on work and my Externship search. Very little of that happened. On Friday night, Steph, Jen, and I just hung out in my room. We were too exhausted to even change out of our chef whites. On Saturday, I spent most of the day reading Twilight (don’t judge me!) and catching up on Grey’s Anatomy and Brothers & Sisters. That night, Jen and I went out to Steph’s apartment again to make dinner. This time it was antipasti and pizza. We had all kinds of toppings like mozzarella, olives, several sausages, parmesan, peppers, etc. So delicious. Stephanie also made some Guinness ice cream. I had the foresight to bring some Kaluah to drip on top. It was also a tasty combination. After dinner, we had a great conversation about how religion develops and affects society. As much as I love food, I don’t get to think about much else, and it was such a relief to talk about something stimulating like religion again. Sunday, I really have no recollection of what I did, but I am sure that it was not productive. I would assume lots of Facebook and napping.
Monday 2/22: Poached Salmon. Ahem…I hate salmon. I hate poached meat. Not looking forward to this day. We made a court bouillon (a short broth made with water, acid, and mirepoix) to poach the salmon in. we then made a béarnaise to serve with the salmon. It went with julienne vegetables and haricots verts. This was the first day that we had to give the chef a composed plate. Usually, we just turn in dishes as we finish them, but starting Monday, everything was a whole meal that has to be served beautifully, cooked perfectly, and be warm all at the same time. While it is indeed more difficult than before, it feels good to make a whole meal and have more “real world” practice. I really love the rush of dinner service. I love how fast everything moves, how I have to ignore the world and live in my zone while I finish the food, and turn out perfect plates. I can only imagine it’s like the rush that keeps sky divers going back for more. I love it and it’s nice to be back in that world, even if it’s only on a small scale…just one plate. Chef liked my plate this day. Everything was cooked fine and had good flavor. Needless to say, I did not eat the leftovers. After class, I hung around to talk to Chef Velie about how I had done in Skills I, a few assignments that I had questions about, and to ask his advice on a few externship opportunities. It was incredibly productive. I got a lot of good information and feedback from him, and it seems like he got to see that I really am a dedicated student who wants to do well in this school and industry.
Tuesday 2/23: Shallow Poached Flounder with a sauce reduction served with saffron rice pilaf, sautéed spinach, and glazed carrots. Again, it was a good day. I was worried that my spinach and flounder were both overcooked. Chef disagreed. I was pleased to find this out. I have trouble judging when fish is done because I don’t really know what it needs to look since I avoid eating it like the plague. We were supposed to get whole winter flounder in and then we were going to fabricate them ourselves. I was oddly looking forward to this. While I hate eating fish, I really enjoy fabricating it. Flounder is the easiest type of fish to fillet. It’s what we got to do for our cutting practical in Seafood class. Sadly, though, the seafood class sent us already fabricated flounder. I have never seen such a disappointed room of culinary students. I really love the student body at this school… Where else do seventeen 18-24 year olds get sad about not breaking down a whole flounder?
Wednesday 2/24: Herb-Roasted Chicken with pan gravy, oven-roasted potatoes and classic ratatouille. This was one of the easiest days that we have ever had. Once the chicken was in the oven cooking, all we had to do was finish all the small dicing for the ratatouille. Generally, I had a good day. My chicken was cooked and broken down properly. My gravy had good flavor and consistency. The ratatouille had good flavor and was cooked well, but of course, my knife cuts were off. They so often are. My potatoes also could have been a little more moist. All in all, not a bad day.
Thursday 2/25: Best. Day. Ever. We made Braised short ribs, haricots verts, soft polenta, and roasted root vegetables. I have a very fervent, fiery, love of all things braised. Also, polenta is just the best starch ever. Since after the ribs are seared, all they do is sit in stock in an oven for two hours, it was another easy day. There is always about 10 minutes when it’s service time that get busy, but other than that it was another calm day. When Chef Velie was giving us a demo on how to plate the dish, he pulled out these giant tweezers to place the haricots verts around the plate one at a time. Picture tweezers that one would use to pluck eyebrows, but make them 10 times larger. I could not contain my laughter at not only how ridiculous the process was, but also at the size of the tweezers. Without missing a beat, my friend Stephanie says, “Oh, damn! I forgot to bring my giant tweezers today.” On the surface, it’s not that funny. However, I lost it. I had to walk away for a minute and collect myself. My food turned out quite well. Chef’s only critique: my knife cuts on the root vegetables… of course. He also told me that he nominated me and another kid in my class for a faculty-nominated leadership scholarship. I was completely touched and honored. I never thought that he would choose me for something like that, especially since the other person he nominated is Jim, our class’s outstanding group leader. Even if I don’t get it, just knowing that Chef Velie sees potential in me was a great gift. It really boosted my confidence and was just what I needed to hear.
Friday 2/26: We made simmered broccoli with (say it with me now: ) melted butter, whipped potatoes, and veal fricassee with all kinds of classic, French, cooked garnishes. Fricassee is basically a thickened white stew. I have never had it before, and I really quite enjoyed it. The plating was kinda cool: we piped the whipped potatoes into a boarder around the plate and used them as “walls” to hold in the fricassee in the middle of the plate. It was garnished with bacon lardoons, mushrooms cooked in bacon fat, and glazed pearl onions. I was really worried that my potatoes were overcooked, dry, and under-seasoned. Once again, I proved that I am a terrible judge of food because Chef saw no big problems with the dish other than a little overcooked broccoli. As the days pass, I am learning to really hate cooking broccoli. It’s quite a temperamental vegetable…
Now it’s the weekend again and I am determined to get things done. Today I am dedicating to my externship search, and tomorrow I am dedicating to homework. Perhaps there will be an Indian food break in there somewhere. We’ll see, though. I have my Writing final on Tuesday morning. It’s just an in-class essay. I am not worried. That will also be the last day of that class. I can say goodbye to waking up at 6am every Thursday and Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, I have my first tour. I have followed like four so far. I will give the tour on my own, but there will be another guide there in case I need help or get stuck. Then on Friday, I have my written final and cooking practical for Skills II. Big week…wish me luck!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Demi-Post
Hey everybody!
I don't have too much to report this week. Every day has continued pretty much the same as last week. We continued to to Knife Cut Trays every day. Then we would watch a demo from Chef and start our student production for the day. Some of the things we made this week: Cauliflower gratin, bechamel sauce, mornay sauce, creamed spinach, chicken consomme, hollandaise, mayonnaise, espagnole, jus de veau lie, demi-glace, tomato sauce, pasta, and vinaigrettes.
On Wednesday, we were supposed to get a ton of snow, so the school canceled all afternoon classes. Woo Hoo! Snow Day! I should have spent the day getting ahead on homework, but instead I sat in my room and watched Heathers and some True Blood. I didn't actually snow as much as they thought it would and we could have had class just fine. One of the sad events of Wednesday was that my good friend and classmate Chrissy told us she was going to leave the CIA. It's really pretty sad for us. She is wicked funny and great to be around. The kitchen will not be the same without her.
Because of the snow day, everything that we were supposed to do on Wednesday, we had to do on Thursday in addition to everything that was scheduled for that day. It was kind of nuts. We got it all done and Chef even liked some of my dishes. Friday was our last day of Skills Development I, so we had all of our finals. I got a 12.75/15 on my knife cuts practial. For our cooking practical, I had to make mayonasie by hand, beef consomme brunoise, espangole sauce, demi-glace, boiled broccoli and cauliflower, and hollandaise. We had 2.5 hours. It was great to feel the pressure of lots of production and getting things done well and on time. It was like being back in the restaurant again. I was pretty pleased with how I did. Chef Velie's only critiques were that my consomme was a little oily on top and that my brunoise cuts were off (of course). He also thought my mayo was a little high in acid, not too high, but almost.
At the end of the night, he had an absolute mountain of dishes to clean. I'll try to post some pictures later. after about an hour and a half of cleaning, we had to take our written final. I think I did pretty well. There might be only a few questions that I missed. I got a 100% on the written midterm, so I might have gone into the final a bit too confident.
Friday night, we just hung out with Chrissy for the last time and ate pizza. We said goodbye to her early on Saturday morning. sad. Later that day, I was able to move into the big side of the dorm room because Anthony left for externship. Now I don't have to climb up the side of a bunk bed to go to sleep and I have tons of room to keep all my things. It's glorious.
When I get my final grades, I'll be sure to update you all. Skills II starts Tuesday. Also, I don't know if I mentioned it, but I got a job as a Tour Guide through the school's Hospitality Office and I start training on Tuesday morning. If you know me, you know how stupid excited I am about being a tour guide...
I don't have too much to report this week. Every day has continued pretty much the same as last week. We continued to to Knife Cut Trays every day. Then we would watch a demo from Chef and start our student production for the day. Some of the things we made this week: Cauliflower gratin, bechamel sauce, mornay sauce, creamed spinach, chicken consomme, hollandaise, mayonnaise, espagnole, jus de veau lie, demi-glace, tomato sauce, pasta, and vinaigrettes.
On Wednesday, we were supposed to get a ton of snow, so the school canceled all afternoon classes. Woo Hoo! Snow Day! I should have spent the day getting ahead on homework, but instead I sat in my room and watched Heathers and some True Blood. I didn't actually snow as much as they thought it would and we could have had class just fine. One of the sad events of Wednesday was that my good friend and classmate Chrissy told us she was going to leave the CIA. It's really pretty sad for us. She is wicked funny and great to be around. The kitchen will not be the same without her.
Because of the snow day, everything that we were supposed to do on Wednesday, we had to do on Thursday in addition to everything that was scheduled for that day. It was kind of nuts. We got it all done and Chef even liked some of my dishes. Friday was our last day of Skills Development I, so we had all of our finals. I got a 12.75/15 on my knife cuts practial. For our cooking practical, I had to make mayonasie by hand, beef consomme brunoise, espangole sauce, demi-glace, boiled broccoli and cauliflower, and hollandaise. We had 2.5 hours. It was great to feel the pressure of lots of production and getting things done well and on time. It was like being back in the restaurant again. I was pretty pleased with how I did. Chef Velie's only critiques were that my consomme was a little oily on top and that my brunoise cuts were off (of course). He also thought my mayo was a little high in acid, not too high, but almost.
At the end of the night, he had an absolute mountain of dishes to clean. I'll try to post some pictures later. after about an hour and a half of cleaning, we had to take our written final. I think I did pretty well. There might be only a few questions that I missed. I got a 100% on the written midterm, so I might have gone into the final a bit too confident.
Friday night, we just hung out with Chrissy for the last time and ate pizza. We said goodbye to her early on Saturday morning. sad. Later that day, I was able to move into the big side of the dorm room because Anthony left for externship. Now I don't have to climb up the side of a bunk bed to go to sleep and I have tons of room to keep all my things. It's glorious.
When I get my final grades, I'll be sure to update you all. Skills II starts Tuesday. Also, I don't know if I mentioned it, but I got a job as a Tour Guide through the school's Hospitality Office and I start training on Tuesday morning. If you know me, you know how stupid excited I am about being a tour guide...
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Oh, I'll Just Have Some Foie Gras and Soup, Please
This week has been interesting. It’s had some big highs and some big lows, but I guess I’ll get to it all in due time. Skills Development I is all about getting the fundamentals down now, so that when we move on to the production kitchens, we will be able to execute everything perfectly and quickly. We make lots of sauces and soups and every day we do a knife tray. I think I explained them last week, but these knife cuts rule my mood for the day. It’s like how Jeopardy was my life in Seafood class. All I want is to do well and impress Chef Velie with my knife cuts, but we always fall short. We are never quite good enough or fast enough. I understand that we are expected to be the best and that is why they push us so hard, but sometimes I wish we were graded on where we should be now instead of where they expect us to eventually be. Did that make sense? I don’t know…the past two weeks have done a lot to teach me and my class that we have a lot of room for improvement. It’s also emotionally hard to go up to an incredibly talented chef and have him tell me what I already know. When I look at my knife cuts, I can tell what is off and what didn’t turn out right. It’s hard being told over and over again how much we suck.
Monday: We only had 50 minutes for our knife trays this week. It was rushed at first, but I got it done. I was really looking forward to this day because we got to make consommé. It’s a really fun preparation. You take stock or broth and them make it perfectly clear. It’s amazing how it works out. For a quart of veal consommé, you take 12oz of ground veal, 4oz of mirepoix, 3 egg whites, and 2.5oz of tomatoes concassee, and salt and mix them together for quite a while in a bowl. The acid from the tomatoes, the salt, and the agitation from the stirring start to denature the proteins in the ground meat and egg whites. Then this mixture is stirred into cold stock. As the liquid and meat slurry come up to a simmer, the proteins start to cook, or coagulate. As they do, they form a raft on the top of the stock. As the liquid convection simmers around the raft, the proteins trap any impurities inside their web. Classically, when the consommé is finished, you should be able to read the date on a dime when placed at the bottom of a gallon of consommé. It’s amazing and a lot of fun. I had to make it a few times at Hawthorns and for a final at Ivy Tech. My consommé in class turned out well. It was perfectly clear and free of grease. I served it with blanched julienne veggies as garnish. Chef Velie liked my soup.
Tuesday: Potato day. We made Potato and Leek Soup and Pommes Purées (mashed potatoes). Both were relatively simple. I love potato and leek soup, so that was fun to taste while I was cooking. For the mashed potatoes, I got to use a food mill, which is my favorite piece of kitchen equipment. This was the first day that we had two different dishes to present to chef, so that made things a little rushed during our service window. The dishes took forever to clean at the end of the night. Chef Velie liked my soup. It had good flavor and consistency and was served warm, which is all you can really ask for in a soup. My mashed potatoes were a little cold, but good flavor. A big problem was that there are only two food mills for the entire class of 19 to use, so waiting for a food mill to become free to start the puree added to our collective temperature issues.
Wednesday: Ok, things started to get a little crazy today. I was on Stock Team today. This is kind of like Ice Team from Seafood, but instead of stuffing fish full of ice, we make stock all day in addition to all of our other work. We made 200# of bones worth of chicken stock and 100# worth of Brown Veal Stock. The hardest part about the chicken stock is that it needs to be degreased every 30 minutes or so. This involves going over to the stock kettles and using a giant ladle to scoop the fat off the top, but not getting the liquid underneath. For the brown veal stock, we have to roast the bones in a very hot oven and the turn them every 30 minutes for about 1.5 hours. Well, life does not stop just because I have to turn some bones or degrease. So while time is going on our knife trays, we have to go do other things too. I was a little rushed and my knife cuts were awful. It feels great having your minced parsley compared to grass clippings.
Well, the day didn’t get any better when I had to make soup. It was a puree of lentils that day. The cooking process was fine. My soup was well seasoned and flavorful, but Chef Velie told me that my soup was very thick. Not too thick, but bordering on too thick. Ah well, so it goes.
Thursday: 13/15 on my knife tray. It was the best grade in the class that day. I don’t know what happened, but my small-diced potatoes, my battonetts, my concassee tomatoes, parsley, and most of the others were prefect. It felt really really good. I couldn’t have been more pleased.
Then it was time for production. We made fish fumet and then from that we made fish chowder. Fumet is like fish stock, but you start by sweating the aromatics and fish bones first. We used cod. Ew. Cod fish are bottom dwelling fish and are infested with cod worms and have nasty faces. With my luck, all of my bones were heads. The fumet process was not fun and tasting was just unbearable. Then we had to make chowder from the fumet and the addition of pale roux. I like making roux. It’s fun for me… usually. When I was all done adding the potatoes and cream and cod meat such and went to turn in my bowl of soup, my chef just looked at it and looked at me. Then he put his spoon in it and stirred a bit, doing the same thickness test that he did with my lentil soup. Then he said, “Brendan, what’s wrong here?” Well, I knew he wanted me to say that it was too thick so I did. Then he told me to go fix it and bring it back. I took it back to my station, added more fumet, brought it to a simmer, plated it, and took the soup back to Chef. “Ok, Brendan, it’s a little dark. Fix it and bring it back.” Are you kidding me? I really suck this much Whatever. I went back, added some simmering cream, some more fumet, re-seasoned, and brought to a simmer. This time when I turned it in (for the third time, for those of you keeping track) it was acceptable. I just want to do well. I just want to cook good food and I can’t even do that right.
Friday: Knife tray, I was back to failing miserably. My fine brunoise (1/16th of an inch cube) were perfect. However, my medium dice (1/2 of an inch cube) was just terrible. I think a big part of my knife cuts being off was that I was back on Stock Team for the day in addition to having to stir my brown roux every three or four minutes. I was rushed and it showed. On top of all of that, I decided to miss my carrot while peeling it, but instead I peeled the skin off the end of my finger. It didn’t hurt that bad, but it’s my left pointer finger, so it makes guiding my knife cuts kind of hard. The soup on Friday was cream of broccoli. It starts with making a velouté sauce, simmering broccoli and other aromatics in it, blending it, adding cream, and then garnishing with blanched broccoli. I turned my bowl into Chef and he stirs it and looks at me. I just pick it up without a word and take it back to my station to thin it out. I can’t even believe that my soup was too thick three days in a row. When I turned it back in, it was the prefect color and flavor, so at least I have that going for me.
On Friday nigh, Jen and I drove 45 minutes south to this town called Beacon. It’s really quaint and a lot like Rhinebeck. The main street reminds me of Mass Ave. in Indy. It’s filled with bars, restaurants, boutiques, etc. We heard about this great wine bar called Chill. I absolutely loved it. It was like being back at the Chatham Tap. They had a pretty decent wine list, tons of beers, and really great platters of cheese, hummus, meats, etc. The clientele was older than most bars in Poughkeepsie. I’d say most were in their early 30’s, so it was not filled with annoying Marist and Vassar kids. It was great. I plan on going back often.
Saturday: All month long our school has been preparing for this big event called The American Bocuse d’Or. The Bocuse d’Or is a huge culinary competition that takes place every two years in Lyon, France. It takes one team from something like 30 countries around the world and they have to make two elaborate meals/presentations that focus on two different main ingredients. You should look up some of the platters that these teams create; they are astonishing. Well anyway, our school was hosting the American finals to see which team would go on to represent us at the international event next year. This is no laughing matter. This is, by all means, the top culinary competition in the world. The panel of judges at our school this week included the best chefs in the country. To name a few big’uns: Thomas Keller, Tim Ryan, Alan Wong, Jerome Bocuse, Grant Achatz, David Chang, and so many others. Oh god. There was just a ridiculous amount of talent all in one room. I went to watch some of the competition and judging on Saturday morning. It was unbelievable watching these people work and create their food. When the judging was about to begin, we had to clear out from around the kitchens and move back. I started walking to the stairs to go up to the balcony. I turned around to make sure that I hadn’t lost my friends in the crowd. When I turned back forwards, I looked in front of me and there was Thomas Keller. I was about six inches from knocking him over. All I could manage to say was, “Sorry, Chef” and then turn and run away in horror. Guess that’s just another example of the crazy life we lead at this school. Oh, I also went to a foie gras tasting and lecture. I learned a great deal about the process and then got to sample three different preparations. I do love me some fattened goose liver… even if it’s at 10:00am…
Monday: We only had 50 minutes for our knife trays this week. It was rushed at first, but I got it done. I was really looking forward to this day because we got to make consommé. It’s a really fun preparation. You take stock or broth and them make it perfectly clear. It’s amazing how it works out. For a quart of veal consommé, you take 12oz of ground veal, 4oz of mirepoix, 3 egg whites, and 2.5oz of tomatoes concassee, and salt and mix them together for quite a while in a bowl. The acid from the tomatoes, the salt, and the agitation from the stirring start to denature the proteins in the ground meat and egg whites. Then this mixture is stirred into cold stock. As the liquid and meat slurry come up to a simmer, the proteins start to cook, or coagulate. As they do, they form a raft on the top of the stock. As the liquid convection simmers around the raft, the proteins trap any impurities inside their web. Classically, when the consommé is finished, you should be able to read the date on a dime when placed at the bottom of a gallon of consommé. It’s amazing and a lot of fun. I had to make it a few times at Hawthorns and for a final at Ivy Tech. My consommé in class turned out well. It was perfectly clear and free of grease. I served it with blanched julienne veggies as garnish. Chef Velie liked my soup.
Tuesday: Potato day. We made Potato and Leek Soup and Pommes Purées (mashed potatoes). Both were relatively simple. I love potato and leek soup, so that was fun to taste while I was cooking. For the mashed potatoes, I got to use a food mill, which is my favorite piece of kitchen equipment. This was the first day that we had two different dishes to present to chef, so that made things a little rushed during our service window. The dishes took forever to clean at the end of the night. Chef Velie liked my soup. It had good flavor and consistency and was served warm, which is all you can really ask for in a soup. My mashed potatoes were a little cold, but good flavor. A big problem was that there are only two food mills for the entire class of 19 to use, so waiting for a food mill to become free to start the puree added to our collective temperature issues.
Wednesday: Ok, things started to get a little crazy today. I was on Stock Team today. This is kind of like Ice Team from Seafood, but instead of stuffing fish full of ice, we make stock all day in addition to all of our other work. We made 200# of bones worth of chicken stock and 100# worth of Brown Veal Stock. The hardest part about the chicken stock is that it needs to be degreased every 30 minutes or so. This involves going over to the stock kettles and using a giant ladle to scoop the fat off the top, but not getting the liquid underneath. For the brown veal stock, we have to roast the bones in a very hot oven and the turn them every 30 minutes for about 1.5 hours. Well, life does not stop just because I have to turn some bones or degrease. So while time is going on our knife trays, we have to go do other things too. I was a little rushed and my knife cuts were awful. It feels great having your minced parsley compared to grass clippings.
Well, the day didn’t get any better when I had to make soup. It was a puree of lentils that day. The cooking process was fine. My soup was well seasoned and flavorful, but Chef Velie told me that my soup was very thick. Not too thick, but bordering on too thick. Ah well, so it goes.
Thursday: 13/15 on my knife tray. It was the best grade in the class that day. I don’t know what happened, but my small-diced potatoes, my battonetts, my concassee tomatoes, parsley, and most of the others were prefect. It felt really really good. I couldn’t have been more pleased.
Then it was time for production. We made fish fumet and then from that we made fish chowder. Fumet is like fish stock, but you start by sweating the aromatics and fish bones first. We used cod. Ew. Cod fish are bottom dwelling fish and are infested with cod worms and have nasty faces. With my luck, all of my bones were heads. The fumet process was not fun and tasting was just unbearable. Then we had to make chowder from the fumet and the addition of pale roux. I like making roux. It’s fun for me… usually. When I was all done adding the potatoes and cream and cod meat such and went to turn in my bowl of soup, my chef just looked at it and looked at me. Then he put his spoon in it and stirred a bit, doing the same thickness test that he did with my lentil soup. Then he said, “Brendan, what’s wrong here?” Well, I knew he wanted me to say that it was too thick so I did. Then he told me to go fix it and bring it back. I took it back to my station, added more fumet, brought it to a simmer, plated it, and took the soup back to Chef. “Ok, Brendan, it’s a little dark. Fix it and bring it back.” Are you kidding me? I really suck this much Whatever. I went back, added some simmering cream, some more fumet, re-seasoned, and brought to a simmer. This time when I turned it in (for the third time, for those of you keeping track) it was acceptable. I just want to do well. I just want to cook good food and I can’t even do that right.
Friday: Knife tray, I was back to failing miserably. My fine brunoise (1/16th of an inch cube) were perfect. However, my medium dice (1/2 of an inch cube) was just terrible. I think a big part of my knife cuts being off was that I was back on Stock Team for the day in addition to having to stir my brown roux every three or four minutes. I was rushed and it showed. On top of all of that, I decided to miss my carrot while peeling it, but instead I peeled the skin off the end of my finger. It didn’t hurt that bad, but it’s my left pointer finger, so it makes guiding my knife cuts kind of hard. The soup on Friday was cream of broccoli. It starts with making a velouté sauce, simmering broccoli and other aromatics in it, blending it, adding cream, and then garnishing with blanched broccoli. I turned my bowl into Chef and he stirs it and looks at me. I just pick it up without a word and take it back to my station to thin it out. I can’t even believe that my soup was too thick three days in a row. When I turned it back in, it was the prefect color and flavor, so at least I have that going for me.
On Friday nigh, Jen and I drove 45 minutes south to this town called Beacon. It’s really quaint and a lot like Rhinebeck. The main street reminds me of Mass Ave. in Indy. It’s filled with bars, restaurants, boutiques, etc. We heard about this great wine bar called Chill. I absolutely loved it. It was like being back at the Chatham Tap. They had a pretty decent wine list, tons of beers, and really great platters of cheese, hummus, meats, etc. The clientele was older than most bars in Poughkeepsie. I’d say most were in their early 30’s, so it was not filled with annoying Marist and Vassar kids. It was great. I plan on going back often.
Saturday: All month long our school has been preparing for this big event called The American Bocuse d’Or. The Bocuse d’Or is a huge culinary competition that takes place every two years in Lyon, France. It takes one team from something like 30 countries around the world and they have to make two elaborate meals/presentations that focus on two different main ingredients. You should look up some of the platters that these teams create; they are astonishing. Well anyway, our school was hosting the American finals to see which team would go on to represent us at the international event next year. This is no laughing matter. This is, by all means, the top culinary competition in the world. The panel of judges at our school this week included the best chefs in the country. To name a few big’uns: Thomas Keller, Tim Ryan, Alan Wong, Jerome Bocuse, Grant Achatz, David Chang, and so many others. Oh god. There was just a ridiculous amount of talent all in one room. I went to watch some of the competition and judging on Saturday morning. It was unbelievable watching these people work and create their food. When the judging was about to begin, we had to clear out from around the kitchens and move back. I started walking to the stairs to go up to the balcony. I turned around to make sure that I hadn’t lost my friends in the crowd. When I turned back forwards, I looked in front of me and there was Thomas Keller. I was about six inches from knocking him over. All I could manage to say was, “Sorry, Chef” and then turn and run away in horror. Guess that’s just another example of the crazy life we lead at this school. Oh, I also went to a foie gras tasting and lecture. I learned a great deal about the process and then got to sample three different preparations. I do love me some fattened goose liver… even if it’s at 10:00am…
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Glace Class
This is going to be kind of short. I have a lot of work to do today. First of all, let’s wrap up Meat and Seafood. I got an A- in both classes. I expected lower grades in both, but certain assignments never get handed back to us, we never get told our daily grades, and things are weighted so heavily that it makes final grade prediction really hard.
We had a three-day weekend because of the new block, so I was able to accomplish quite a bit. Most of Monday was spent getting work done and organized for the first day of Skills Development I. On Tuesday ay 1:15, we had to do to a kitchen safety lecture to learn about fire extinguishers and the importance of non-slip shoes. Thrilling. Then we headed on down to Kitchen #4. It’s in the basement of the school, not too far from the Seafood ID room. The kitchen has lots of stations for students to prep and cook. There are three lines (rows of burners, ovens, low-boy refrigerators, salamanders, and counter space) just like a restaurant would have. The difference here is that the front of the kitchen has three HUGE steam-jacketed kettles. They are the big, free-standing kettles that you see on TV that places use to produce big quantities of soup. The Skills I&II classes are responsible for providing the school with stocks. Everyday, these kettles get turned over twice with stock. Basically, about 200 gallons of stock are made every day.
My instructor is Chef Velie. He is truly outstanding. This is the level of instruction that I was hoping to receive here. He is incredibly nice and helpful. If we have questions or need to know what to do, we can ask him without being afraid of him. Also, if he sees us doing something wrong, he doesn’t yell about how dumb we are; he comes over and shows us how to do it right. He is a Certified Executive Chef, one level under CMC, and he has worked everywhere. He really knows his stuff and I can’t wait to spend the next six weeks in his class.
On Tuesday, we had a tour of the kitchen, had a lecture/demo on stock making, and had a demo on basic knife cuts. Then we practiced mincing shallots and garlic. We also had to chiffonade parsley. We wrapped up with another lecture on broth making. On Wednesday, we had a bunch of group work to do at the beginning like peeling/cleaning all the produce that the class will use the rest of the day and getting the stocks started. Then we had another demo on other knife cuts. We had to make our first knife cuts tray for a grade. This is something that we are going to do every day. We have to mice two shallots, mince two garlic cloves, produce a tablespoon of parsley chiffonade, make battonnets of one potato, small dice another potato, julienne another potato, make four tomato petals, one tomato concassee, make one boquet garni, one sachet d’epice, small two onions, and make 1/8th inch slices of another onion. We had an hour to do this on the first week. I got a 10.5 out of 15 on Wednesday. My cuts need some work. We will get less and less time every day as the class continues. Also on Wednesday, we had to produce one gallon of beef broth per person.
On Thursday, after group work and knife trays (12 out of 15), we made vegetable beef soup with the broth that we made the day before. My soup had good flavor, the veg was cooked perfectly, was seasoned well, and was not at all greasy on top. However, he said that my knife cuts were a little off and was a bit heavy on the pepper. We also each reduced 2 cups of chicken stock into glace de volialle. It’s cooks down slowly into about 2oz. of really flavorful liquid that can be used to fortify the flavor of other sauces and soups. Glace is really tasty and sets up like jello when it’s allowed to cool. It’s handy stuff to have around. Finally, each group made 1 gallon of chicken broth.
On Friday, I was really proud of my knife tray. I even finished a few minutes before the deadline. I turned it in and got an 11 out of 15. He said my parsley chiffonade looked like grass clippings. Boo. However, we got to do our first real cooking on Friday. We made Onion Soup. WE had to cut a bunch of extra sliced onions and then caramelized them in clarified butter. Once they were brown and the pan had developed a dark fond, we deglazed the bottom of the pan with calvados and then flambéd it. This was fun, but it was scary to have 19 other kids do it around me. I was afraid for the life of my eyebrows. When I turned in my soup and chesse-covered croutons, he generally liked it. My soup had good base flavor, the onions were cooked well, it was seasoned properly, and the crouton was the right texture. Once again, though, I put too much pepper in. Turns out, I like things kind of hot from pepper. I guess I will have to be better next time.
This weekend has been really great. Saturday night, I went to my friend Stephanie’s apartment and made dinner with her, Jen, and a guy named Andrew from our Skills class. We made some fresh pasta, a salad, steamed artichokes, and white chocolate mousse cups. It was nice cooking and cutting without being graded. I was free to add as much pepper as I see fit…
We had a three-day weekend because of the new block, so I was able to accomplish quite a bit. Most of Monday was spent getting work done and organized for the first day of Skills Development I. On Tuesday ay 1:15, we had to do to a kitchen safety lecture to learn about fire extinguishers and the importance of non-slip shoes. Thrilling. Then we headed on down to Kitchen #4. It’s in the basement of the school, not too far from the Seafood ID room. The kitchen has lots of stations for students to prep and cook. There are three lines (rows of burners, ovens, low-boy refrigerators, salamanders, and counter space) just like a restaurant would have. The difference here is that the front of the kitchen has three HUGE steam-jacketed kettles. They are the big, free-standing kettles that you see on TV that places use to produce big quantities of soup. The Skills I&II classes are responsible for providing the school with stocks. Everyday, these kettles get turned over twice with stock. Basically, about 200 gallons of stock are made every day.
My instructor is Chef Velie. He is truly outstanding. This is the level of instruction that I was hoping to receive here. He is incredibly nice and helpful. If we have questions or need to know what to do, we can ask him without being afraid of him. Also, if he sees us doing something wrong, he doesn’t yell about how dumb we are; he comes over and shows us how to do it right. He is a Certified Executive Chef, one level under CMC, and he has worked everywhere. He really knows his stuff and I can’t wait to spend the next six weeks in his class.
On Tuesday, we had a tour of the kitchen, had a lecture/demo on stock making, and had a demo on basic knife cuts. Then we practiced mincing shallots and garlic. We also had to chiffonade parsley. We wrapped up with another lecture on broth making. On Wednesday, we had a bunch of group work to do at the beginning like peeling/cleaning all the produce that the class will use the rest of the day and getting the stocks started. Then we had another demo on other knife cuts. We had to make our first knife cuts tray for a grade. This is something that we are going to do every day. We have to mice two shallots, mince two garlic cloves, produce a tablespoon of parsley chiffonade, make battonnets of one potato, small dice another potato, julienne another potato, make four tomato petals, one tomato concassee, make one boquet garni, one sachet d’epice, small two onions, and make 1/8th inch slices of another onion. We had an hour to do this on the first week. I got a 10.5 out of 15 on Wednesday. My cuts need some work. We will get less and less time every day as the class continues. Also on Wednesday, we had to produce one gallon of beef broth per person.
On Thursday, after group work and knife trays (12 out of 15), we made vegetable beef soup with the broth that we made the day before. My soup had good flavor, the veg was cooked perfectly, was seasoned well, and was not at all greasy on top. However, he said that my knife cuts were a little off and was a bit heavy on the pepper. We also each reduced 2 cups of chicken stock into glace de volialle. It’s cooks down slowly into about 2oz. of really flavorful liquid that can be used to fortify the flavor of other sauces and soups. Glace is really tasty and sets up like jello when it’s allowed to cool. It’s handy stuff to have around. Finally, each group made 1 gallon of chicken broth.
On Friday, I was really proud of my knife tray. I even finished a few minutes before the deadline. I turned it in and got an 11 out of 15. He said my parsley chiffonade looked like grass clippings. Boo. However, we got to do our first real cooking on Friday. We made Onion Soup. WE had to cut a bunch of extra sliced onions and then caramelized them in clarified butter. Once they were brown and the pan had developed a dark fond, we deglazed the bottom of the pan with calvados and then flambéd it. This was fun, but it was scary to have 19 other kids do it around me. I was afraid for the life of my eyebrows. When I turned in my soup and chesse-covered croutons, he generally liked it. My soup had good base flavor, the onions were cooked well, it was seasoned properly, and the crouton was the right texture. Once again, though, I put too much pepper in. Turns out, I like things kind of hot from pepper. I guess I will have to be better next time.
This weekend has been really great. Saturday night, I went to my friend Stephanie’s apartment and made dinner with her, Jen, and a guy named Andrew from our Skills class. We made some fresh pasta, a salad, steamed artichokes, and white chocolate mousse cups. It was nice cooking and cutting without being graded. I was free to add as much pepper as I see fit…
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Farm-Raised Pacific King Salmon
This week became a little bit more routine than last week. I had Seafood ID every day. It felt nice to settle in. Let me walk you though my basic schedule each day.
9:00am- wake up and shower
9:30am- study the previous day’s material to be ready for Jeopardy
11:30am- get dressed and pack my knife bag
12:00pm- lunch
12:45- line up outside the Seafood Room for class
1:00pm- class starts; de-head, de-gut, and scale the fish for the day
2:00pm- clean the scaling sinks and do dishes
2:30- ID lecture
3:00pm- fish fabrication
4:30pm- organize the cut fish, re-pack the fish in the Ice Room, and clean the Fab. Room
5:30pm- Jeopardy
6:00pm- seafood tasting and palate development
6:45pm- Lecture
8:00pm- return to room to shower and start laundry
9:00pm- dinner
10:00pm- start on homework
12:00am- finish homework and watch one episode of Will and Grace to get fish off my mind before falling asleep around 1am
A few variations/details on this basic schedule:
Monday: I was on Ice Team this day, so I showed up to class early to pull out all of the fish that needed to be fabricated this day. It’s called ice team because you spend most of the time digging around in large bins of ice to pull out and count/weigh fish. At the end of the day, we have to pack the fish’s cavity with ice and burry them again. We work closely with Savannah, our TA, to make sure the inventory is all correct. She is really wonderful. She knows her fish backwards and forwards, she is the best multi-tasker I have ever seen; she can simultaneously fill orders, answer questions, and ask us review questions. Chef Boyardee had the day off on Monday so we had another one of the Seafood instructors, Chef Viverito fill in. He got us in and out of ID and fabrication in about half the time that Chef Boyardee takes. He was harsh and demanding, but it worked. During lecture, he was correcting mistakes in Chef Boyardee’s powerpoint. I developed instructor envy…
Tuesday: We had Writing at 7:00am. Woo hoo! Not much different in Seafood. Chef Boyardee continued to be ridiculously repetitive. I spent most of the evening memorizing fish identifications and information.
Wednesday: Ice Team again for Seafood. We had a practice ID test during class. We had to stand up in front of the class, Chef handed us a fish, and then we had to identify it and talk as much as we could about. I got in front of the class and Chef Boyardee says, “Brendan, you look like a smart guy. You don’t get a fish. Talk to me about halibut.” The thing is, there are 16 people in my class. We only had 12 species of fish in that day. I had to go without one in front of me. Fine. I know about halibut. So, I talked all about the family it’s in, how to identify it, how to cut it, its market form, the best cooking methods, etc. The only thing I forgot to mention was that halibut cheeks are sold separately as a delicacy. No biggie. Our tasting that night was mollusks (clams, oysters, mussels, etc.) I may or may not have regurgitated an oyster during the tasting. It was not a good night for my palate.
Thursday: Writing at 7:00am. I can’t tell you how irritating that class is. We had to peer edit papers again. My favorite…. In Seafood class, we had our cutting practical. We were each going to do quarter filets of a winter flounder. I was relieved. Flounder are flat fish and require the easiest of the three cutting and skinning methods. The problem is scaling. Flounder have thousands of tiny scales on both sides of their bodies. We loose one point for each scale that Chef finds. Well, as it turns out, I got all of my scales off, but he found four salmon scales down by my flounder’s tale that must have gotten on him in the scaling sinks. Lame. My bad. I lost four points and laughed out loud at my own stupidity. I got a 54 out of 60 for the cutting. When that was done, Chef Boyardee decided to surprise us with our Identification Final. This wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow. Well, Chef Boyardee realized that there wouldn’t be many different fish in stock on Friday because of the up-coming three-day weekend. Um, for those of you out there who don’t know, we here at the CIA have a three-day weekend at the beginning of every block. That happens every three weeks. Now, Chef Boyardee was a student here and has been an instructor for the last two or three years. I really don’t know how he could have forgotten. At the end of the ID test, I was really confident. I had probably only missed three of the 40 questions. Our tasting that night was crustaceans. Turns out, I really like whole-roasted langoustines and smoked shrimp. I was up rather late that night, along with my whole class, writing my research paper on wild vs. farm-raised fish.
Friday: Last day of Seafood Hell! It was going to be an easy day. There was only a little bit of fabrication to do. We knocked that out and cleaned the kitchen faster than we ever had in the past. Our tasting that afternoon involved a plate that was worth about $80. We each sampled 10 types of caviar, 6 or 7 smoked/cured salmons, and assorted other smoked fish. Um, I like some caviar. Some of it was too strong for me, but some of it was really quite delicious. The salmon and trout roe was gross, but the true sturgeon caviar had awesome flavor and texture. When it was time to take the final, Chef Boyardee handed back our ID tests first. I was a little surprised to find out that I got the Farm-Raised Pacific King Salmon ID wrong and then lost all the points below it for getting the ID wrong. The same thing happened to another guy in my class, Jim. When we went to ask Chef about it, he told us that “it’s a farm raised salmon from New Zealand, so you can’t call it a Pacific salmon because it wasn’t raised in the Pacific Ocean.” Um, well, that’s not quite true. New Zealand is actually surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. When I pointed this out to him, he told me, “well, that doesn’t matter because even Pacific Salmon don’t come from the Pacific.” I was lost and confused. He maintained that you can only call it a Pacific King Salmon if it comes from the wild. Otherwise, it’s just King Salmon. Well, I went back to my seat, pulled out my lecture notes and saw nothing to that effect. Then I pulled out his powerpoint print-outs and went to a slide titled Pacific King Salmon. The slide showed a map of the world and used two different colors to denote where they are cultivated (farmed) and where they are caught (wild). There was no differentiation between names. They are all Pacific King Salmon. I showed him this slide, and he told me that it does not matter, I still got the question wrong. Actually, I was right. I was more right than the rest of the class because I put the entire name of the salmon where as everybody else just put King Salmon. He tried to count Jim wrong on another question because he said that, “yellowtail flounder is the fish on which all other flounder are based”. Chef said that that did not make any sense in English. Chef Boyardee said that he needed to write, “yellowtail founder are the flounder that all flounder are based on”. Um, really Chef? Not only is that sentence hopelessly redundant, it’s also grammatically incorrect. I stood up for Jim from the back of the class and got him his point back. I guess I was visibly angry because when I went to turn in my written final, he tried to talk about the salmon again with me. We went back and forth for about 5 minutes before I just abruptly ended the conversation by asking to see how I did on the yield test. I wouldn’t have fought so hard for 10 test points back, but this ID test is worth 20% of our grade in the class. I realized that it’s pointless to use logic on him. Yes, he can cut fish very well. Yes, he can identify all the fish that the school uses. He may be able to cook well. But he really has no place teaching students.
The kicker to this whole event is that yesterday Jen, my friend from Florida who had Chef Viverito for Seafood, told me that they were required to write Farm-Raised Pacific King Salmon on their ID test. If they didn’t have that whole name, they would get it wrong. Ridiculous.
My notes and binder from that class are now sealed in a plastic bag in the bottom drawer of my desk. They smell to strongly of fish to keep with the others. My uniform, after two washes with Oxyclean, Tide, and Fabreeze is now odor, gut, and scale free. My grades should be up sometime this week. Skills Development I starts on Tuesday, and I could not be more excited. After two and a half months, it’s time to cook something!
9:00am- wake up and shower
9:30am- study the previous day’s material to be ready for Jeopardy
11:30am- get dressed and pack my knife bag
12:00pm- lunch
12:45- line up outside the Seafood Room for class
1:00pm- class starts; de-head, de-gut, and scale the fish for the day
2:00pm- clean the scaling sinks and do dishes
2:30- ID lecture
3:00pm- fish fabrication
4:30pm- organize the cut fish, re-pack the fish in the Ice Room, and clean the Fab. Room
5:30pm- Jeopardy
6:00pm- seafood tasting and palate development
6:45pm- Lecture
8:00pm- return to room to shower and start laundry
9:00pm- dinner
10:00pm- start on homework
12:00am- finish homework and watch one episode of Will and Grace to get fish off my mind before falling asleep around 1am
A few variations/details on this basic schedule:
Monday: I was on Ice Team this day, so I showed up to class early to pull out all of the fish that needed to be fabricated this day. It’s called ice team because you spend most of the time digging around in large bins of ice to pull out and count/weigh fish. At the end of the day, we have to pack the fish’s cavity with ice and burry them again. We work closely with Savannah, our TA, to make sure the inventory is all correct. She is really wonderful. She knows her fish backwards and forwards, she is the best multi-tasker I have ever seen; she can simultaneously fill orders, answer questions, and ask us review questions. Chef Boyardee had the day off on Monday so we had another one of the Seafood instructors, Chef Viverito fill in. He got us in and out of ID and fabrication in about half the time that Chef Boyardee takes. He was harsh and demanding, but it worked. During lecture, he was correcting mistakes in Chef Boyardee’s powerpoint. I developed instructor envy…
Tuesday: We had Writing at 7:00am. Woo hoo! Not much different in Seafood. Chef Boyardee continued to be ridiculously repetitive. I spent most of the evening memorizing fish identifications and information.
Wednesday: Ice Team again for Seafood. We had a practice ID test during class. We had to stand up in front of the class, Chef handed us a fish, and then we had to identify it and talk as much as we could about. I got in front of the class and Chef Boyardee says, “Brendan, you look like a smart guy. You don’t get a fish. Talk to me about halibut.” The thing is, there are 16 people in my class. We only had 12 species of fish in that day. I had to go without one in front of me. Fine. I know about halibut. So, I talked all about the family it’s in, how to identify it, how to cut it, its market form, the best cooking methods, etc. The only thing I forgot to mention was that halibut cheeks are sold separately as a delicacy. No biggie. Our tasting that night was mollusks (clams, oysters, mussels, etc.) I may or may not have regurgitated an oyster during the tasting. It was not a good night for my palate.
Thursday: Writing at 7:00am. I can’t tell you how irritating that class is. We had to peer edit papers again. My favorite…. In Seafood class, we had our cutting practical. We were each going to do quarter filets of a winter flounder. I was relieved. Flounder are flat fish and require the easiest of the three cutting and skinning methods. The problem is scaling. Flounder have thousands of tiny scales on both sides of their bodies. We loose one point for each scale that Chef finds. Well, as it turns out, I got all of my scales off, but he found four salmon scales down by my flounder’s tale that must have gotten on him in the scaling sinks. Lame. My bad. I lost four points and laughed out loud at my own stupidity. I got a 54 out of 60 for the cutting. When that was done, Chef Boyardee decided to surprise us with our Identification Final. This wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow. Well, Chef Boyardee realized that there wouldn’t be many different fish in stock on Friday because of the up-coming three-day weekend. Um, for those of you out there who don’t know, we here at the CIA have a three-day weekend at the beginning of every block. That happens every three weeks. Now, Chef Boyardee was a student here and has been an instructor for the last two or three years. I really don’t know how he could have forgotten. At the end of the ID test, I was really confident. I had probably only missed three of the 40 questions. Our tasting that night was crustaceans. Turns out, I really like whole-roasted langoustines and smoked shrimp. I was up rather late that night, along with my whole class, writing my research paper on wild vs. farm-raised fish.
Friday: Last day of Seafood Hell! It was going to be an easy day. There was only a little bit of fabrication to do. We knocked that out and cleaned the kitchen faster than we ever had in the past. Our tasting that afternoon involved a plate that was worth about $80. We each sampled 10 types of caviar, 6 or 7 smoked/cured salmons, and assorted other smoked fish. Um, I like some caviar. Some of it was too strong for me, but some of it was really quite delicious. The salmon and trout roe was gross, but the true sturgeon caviar had awesome flavor and texture. When it was time to take the final, Chef Boyardee handed back our ID tests first. I was a little surprised to find out that I got the Farm-Raised Pacific King Salmon ID wrong and then lost all the points below it for getting the ID wrong. The same thing happened to another guy in my class, Jim. When we went to ask Chef about it, he told us that “it’s a farm raised salmon from New Zealand, so you can’t call it a Pacific salmon because it wasn’t raised in the Pacific Ocean.” Um, well, that’s not quite true. New Zealand is actually surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. When I pointed this out to him, he told me, “well, that doesn’t matter because even Pacific Salmon don’t come from the Pacific.” I was lost and confused. He maintained that you can only call it a Pacific King Salmon if it comes from the wild. Otherwise, it’s just King Salmon. Well, I went back to my seat, pulled out my lecture notes and saw nothing to that effect. Then I pulled out his powerpoint print-outs and went to a slide titled Pacific King Salmon. The slide showed a map of the world and used two different colors to denote where they are cultivated (farmed) and where they are caught (wild). There was no differentiation between names. They are all Pacific King Salmon. I showed him this slide, and he told me that it does not matter, I still got the question wrong. Actually, I was right. I was more right than the rest of the class because I put the entire name of the salmon where as everybody else just put King Salmon. He tried to count Jim wrong on another question because he said that, “yellowtail flounder is the fish on which all other flounder are based”. Chef said that that did not make any sense in English. Chef Boyardee said that he needed to write, “yellowtail founder are the flounder that all flounder are based on”. Um, really Chef? Not only is that sentence hopelessly redundant, it’s also grammatically incorrect. I stood up for Jim from the back of the class and got him his point back. I guess I was visibly angry because when I went to turn in my written final, he tried to talk about the salmon again with me. We went back and forth for about 5 minutes before I just abruptly ended the conversation by asking to see how I did on the yield test. I wouldn’t have fought so hard for 10 test points back, but this ID test is worth 20% of our grade in the class. I realized that it’s pointless to use logic on him. Yes, he can cut fish very well. Yes, he can identify all the fish that the school uses. He may be able to cook well. But he really has no place teaching students.
The kicker to this whole event is that yesterday Jen, my friend from Florida who had Chef Viverito for Seafood, told me that they were required to write Farm-Raised Pacific King Salmon on their ID test. If they didn’t have that whole name, they would get it wrong. Ridiculous.
My notes and binder from that class are now sealed in a plastic bag in the bottom drawer of my desk. They smell to strongly of fish to keep with the others. My uniform, after two washes with Oxyclean, Tide, and Fabreeze is now odor, gut, and scale free. My grades should be up sometime this week. Skills Development I starts on Tuesday, and I could not be more excited. After two and a half months, it’s time to cook something!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Crustacean Station
I know that I say this a lot, but I never know where to begin these things. Trying the process every week is quite a challenge. Also, settle in….this is a long one.
Monday: I went into class early for Early Team to help fabricate for the rest of the school. I think that I broke down some beef top round, but I really don’t remember now. I do remember that I had to take about 30 denuded beef tenderloins (#190) and turn them into portion cut tenderloin steaks (#1190A). These are the steaks that are grilled for fillet mignon. That’s a whole lot of money on one sheet tray. Basically, I was not to screw up. It went fine; it just took a while. Then in class, it was lamb day. In lecture we went over all the primals, subprimals, portion cuts, quality grades, etc. When it was time to go down to the meat room, we watched Chef Schneller take apart an entire lamb. Then we each had to debone and fabricate a leg of lamb. That was actually really fun. In order to get the femur out, you have to hold your boning knife like you are getting ready to stab somebody. It’s called The Psycho Knife Grip from that famous stabbing scene. It’s awkward, but it works really well. I felt confident in myself by this day. My leg looked pretty good and Chef didn’t say anything to me about my knife cuts. He will usually call you out if he sees bad work.
Tuesday: Through the grace of God, I got a different group of people to go in for Early Team. This means that I got to eat lunch with my friends for the first time all block. I know it sounds small, but after how stressful things had been in meat class and how I knew they would be in fish class, it meant so much to me to take 40 minutes to myself. Every waking moment is dedicated to doing homework, studying, prepping for class, and being in class. I get maybe 20-30 minutes a day to watch some show online or not think about class. If you know me, you know how important “me time” is. The topic of the day was Poultry. We went over all the different varieties and sizes in lecture (duck, broiler chickens, guinea fowl, capon chickens, Cornish game hens, etc.) as well as poultry safety. In lab, we started by finishing some frenched lamb chops from the day before. Mine turned out really good. I used a trick that Alton Brown from the Food Network used to get the fat and meat off the bone. We trussed a few chickens and got graded on them. When he graded Jim next to me, Chef just kind of flicked the string to make sure it was tight enough. When he graded mine, he picked it up by the string under the legs and started spinning it around to check for tightness. Then he told me that it could have been tighter. Um, really? You mean that the string, after being hoisted up and spun around like wet laundry, came loose a little? Gee, thanks, Chef. I got a C- on my trussing. Outstanding. I ate a very quick dinner that night and spent most of the night, until about 3am, studying for our final the next day.
Wednesday: Since our Meat final was this day, we didn’t have to come in for early team. Again, getting 40 minutes to eat with my friends in the best part of the day. Speaking of eating, my favorite kitchen to eat out of is Cuisines of the Americas. I really love most everything that I have had from them. There is a lot of regional American food as well as Latin/Caribbean food. Their tortillas are homemade. Delicious! But I digress….When we went in for lecture on Wednesday, we learned about ground meats and sausages. Um, let’s just say that my love of Taco Bell has decreased slightly. They add ammonia to their meat and use radiation to kill pathogens because their beef is often tainted. Also, friends, no matter where you eat out, even if it’s a nice restaurant, please please please order your hamburgers medium well to well done. Ground meat, even when done correctly, can be so dangerous. In lab, we had to de-bone some Boston pork butts (I have done about 10 or 12 of these things now) and then use the meat to make 10 pounds of breakfast sausage. Half was made into patties and the other half went onto natural lamb casings to make 4in. links. The next morning, K16 and K11 Breakfast Classes served them. They were quite tasty.
At the end of class, we had to take our final. It included everything we learned, even the sausage material from that day, so we had to learn it the night before. There were 30(?) multiple-choice questions. We had to know all the primal, subprimal, and portion cuts from every animal, NAMP identifying numbers, as well as general knowledge about the grades and quality factors for every animal. Then there were 10 short answer questions where we had to basically explain the process for creating different cuts (like how to go from a full tenderloin to steaks, or how to debone a lamb shank). There was also a yield test. The last part was an ID test. Laid out on the tables were 20 different cuts of meat. We had to identify the full name of the cut, what animal it came from, and what the best cooking method would be (steak, grill, London broil, sauté, roast, braise, etc.). I think that I did ok. The multiple choice were hard, the short answer was not bad, the yield test was easy, and the ID’s were challenging, but I spent a lot of time studying them. I am truly shocked by how much that class taught me. I did not understand anything about where different cuts came from, how to make them, how to cook them, or anything two weeks ago. I am now well versed in meat identification and ordering and can hold my own when it comes time to cut it. Again, I had to eat dinner fast because there was a ton of reading, printing, and prep to do for Seafood class the next day. Also, there was a midterm the next day in Writing. Also, I had developed a really bad cold. Also, Anthony (my roommate) is in Breakfast class, which means that his sleep schedule is screwed up because he has class from 1am-9am. The world was conspiring against me.
Thursday: The day started off with the mid-term exam in my writing class. It was just an in-class essay. Not hard at all, just annoying.
Ok, if you know me at all or have read this blog before, you know that there are very few things that I hate more than seafood. I hate fish and the like when they are alive, I hate how they smell when they are dead, and I really hate how they taste when they are cooked. I have never dreaded a class more. All the seafood kids smell terrible after class. All the chefs are jerks. The TA’s are really hard on the students because they have to do even more work than the chefs. The product, fish, are very expensive and very delicate. Every class, the students have to play a round of Jeopardy. It counts as your daily quiz grade. You get one question. If you get it wrong, you get a zero for the quiz for the day. Also, I had no idea how to even start cutting apart a fish. I have never been so nervous/anxious/grumpy in my life as when I was standing outside the Seafood room door at 12:45pm on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010.
To keep me and my classmates safe in this blog, we are going to refer to my Seafood ID chef/instructor Chef Boyardee.
We walked in and the first thing I noticed was the smell. It was overwhelming. The second thing I noticed was how small the room is. It is really narrow. The cutting room is only about three times the size of my dorm room. It has to fit my class of 16, Chef Boyardee, the two TA’s, a lobster tank, two big sinks (one for scaling fish and one for washing dishes), a desk, a large white board, plus our entire product on speed racks. The room is tile, from floor to ceiling, with big drains on the floor so that when it is time to clean, we literally just hose the room down and then squeegee it dry.
The first day, we were given lots and lots of information. I took about 10 pages of notes in my little memo book just on class procedures and information. We were given a tour of the walk-in and a lesson on fish storage. Everything is packed with and on ice. The fish stay fresh, but they are very very cold. Then we were set to work gutting and scaling farm raised Atlantic salmon and hybrid striped bass. Scaling a fish is a mess. We use little metal comb-like objects to rub against the scales. The teeth of the comb get caught underneath the scales, rip them off, and they fly everywhere. I mean, the room gets covered in them. Gutting a fish was surprisingly not gross. You just stick your fillet knife in by the anal fin (CUTTING EDGE OUT!) and rip up past the pelvic fin. Then you just stick your hand in there, pull out the viscera, cut through the esophagus, and you’re done. Chef Boyardee gave us a demo on the three different cutting methods for filleting a fish. I took notes like a crazy person. They were so bad, that I had to re-print and rewrite my notes that night. He made them look easy, but I knew that they would be hard to do on my own. There was no actual fabrication for us to do that day. Just like the Meat Room, the Seafood Room supplies the rest of the school with the fish and seafood that they use in the kitchens. Unlike in meat class where the students do tasks to learn the skills of meat cutting while the chefs, TA’s, and early team focus on the fabrication for the school, in seafood class, the students do all of the fabrication. There is no set plan for work, we just learn whatever needs to be done that day. On our first day, we didn’t actually have any cutting to do since all the fish ordered that day were ordered “as purchased”, or AP. This means that we didn’t have to do anything but gut and scale them.
Chef Boyardee and our TA Savannah are setting up for our Identification Lecture, where we are going to learn about the basic characteristics of each family of fish as well as see some of the major varieties in each family. We get the kitchen cleaned, get our notebooks ready, and stand around this huge 20ft. cutting table that has now been filled with fish. Savannah begins with the salmon and trout family. Again, I’m taking notes like a crazy person. But here’s where things get weird: I realized that I’m smiling. Um… I hate fish. Right? Well, turns out that I actually kind of like this class. I learned so much in just an hour and a half lectures about the fish families. I’m really looking forward to learning more about their identities and how they live and what they can be used for. I don’t know how this happened, but I promise that I will investigate and get back to you.
Class ended with a formal lecture in a classroom about general fish knowledge, storage, receiving, regulations, food safety, and the like. I went back to my room, ate a sandwich, and got busy with the memorizing, reading, and prepping for day two. I could already feel the butterflies set in as I made flash cards to get ready for Jeopardy.
Friday: This time I mean it: I have never been so happy to see a weekend in my life. I am still sick, had a ton of work to do, and just need to drink some wine with my friends.
I spent most of Friday morning studying all the information from day one. The chef and TA’s won’t answer questions that they have already said the answer to, so I needed to know everything. I went over all the knife cuts for fish, how the walk in was organized, the storage temps for all the varieties of seafood, freshness identifiers, market forms, everything that I was told the day before. We then go into class and look at The White Board. It’s this huge dry-erase board on one of the walls of the room that tells us everything we need to do. Listed under each kind of fish is now much needs to be cut, what kind of cut it needs, where it is going, and it’s AP weight. We have a ton, about 200#, of fish to gut and scale. Then we have to fillet and skin lots of salmon, stripped bass, and flounder. Well, we get our gutting and scaling done, but then chef decides that he wants to do ID before we fabricate anything. So the ID table gets set up with tons of fish. Again, I kind of enjoy this part. I knew NOTHING about fish a few days ago and now I’m pretty decent at describing most of the major varieties sold in American markets.
Anyway, fabrication begins and I get nervous again. A girl named Nicolette (she’s great…I love her, and she lived in Indy for a few years) and I are given a farm-raised king (wild is not in season now) salmon to fillet. We got lucky. Salmon is a soft-boned round fish, so it gets the easiest of the three cutting methods, a straight cut right down the backbone. Nicolette did an awesome job on her side. It game off very clean and she had zero waste. I then had to do the other side. Mine was almost perfect. I only had about one inch where my knife came off the backbone and I missed about a 0.5oz of salmon. Well, let me tell you, Chef Boyardee was not pleased. From across the kitchen, I get “Chandler! Why did you do that? That’s now money down the drain. How am I supposed to sell that trim?” It’s one of those moments where you know the question is ridiculous because clearly I did not intentionally miss product in order to be yelled at. Believe me, not a dream come true. You just have to say, “You can’t, Chef. I lifted my knife too much, Chef. I’m sorry, Chef”, and then live with the fact that you are lower than a cod worm. I think as punishment for my sub-standard cutting, I was the only person with salmon who had to skin their fillet. Not an easy task seeing as now fragile the fish is and it weighing about 5 pounds. I got it done, and it was perfect. I even laid it out flat in front of my work station so that he could see how perfect it was. I got every single bit of skin in one cut while leaving all the meat still on the fillet. I now know how angry .5 oz of waste makes him. When Chef Boyardee came back to me, did he say anything about my superior skill? No. He just told me to cut the fillet into 24-2oz portions. I got a 42 out of 50 for the day. Fine. Whatever.
After clean up, we went into the classroom for Jeopardy and a fish tasting. The room was so incredibly tense. One question: all or nothing. Sometimes it’s really easy, like giving the receiving temperature for live mollusks (35-40°F). Sometimes it’s really hard like naming all 10 freshness checks for finfish. Well, the girl before me got the question: Describe the storage procedures for round fish and flat fish. She got it wrong, so the question came to me. I powered through the answer. I talked about packing the drawn fish cavity with ice, I talked about perforated pans, the angle at which they could be turned, all of it. I was really happy with my answer. The chef asked me what direction they need to face in the ice pans. I thought I had said that already, but I repeat myself, upright, dorsal fin up, swimming away. “That’s not what I asked”. Actually it was, chef…you jerk. Well, Chrissy next to me starts whispering the word “right”. So I just say: “to the right” not really knowing why. Then he asks me why do they need to face the right. Well, this is not something I have ever been told or read. I looked through all my notes and reading after class and not once have I ever been told that they need to be facing the right or why. I start listing reasons like, uniformity, space saving, identification, ect. Then chef leads me though this long drawn out question and answer period where I eventually get to the answer that fish need to face the right since most Americans are right handed. When we go to remove ice from the top of the bin, our hands move from right to left. Since some fish like snapper have very sharp, poisonous spikes on their dorsal fin, keeping them in this direction helps us stay safe. I was on that quest with him for maybe 7 minutes while the class just sat in silent solidarity with me and my complete and utter humiliation. I KNEW all of that storage information backwards and forwards. The rest of the class was using my flash card to study. I was so damned prepared for that quiz, and he was going to make me look like an idiot for not knowing something that I have never been told before. Ah well, that’s the Culinary Institute of America for ya’. We also had to do a flat fish tasting. We tried 5 different flat fish like flounder and dover sole. They are low activity fish, so they don’t have too much fishy flavor. Actually, the skate wing was delicious. I might even be tempted to order it at a restaurant and pay money for it. I know… I don’t have any idea what’s happened to me. Again, I’ll look into it.
When I got back to my room, the locks on my door had been changed and I couldn’t get in. Ask me about that story and I’ll tell you in person. This entry has just gotten out of control. Suffice it to say: I had to wait in the lobby for 20 minutes to get my new key, while everybody who walked by me made some comment like, “oh, guess you’re in fish class” or “hey buddy, you smell like squid”. Great end to a great week.
I can’t believe that all of this has only been one week. As I sit here writing this on Saturday afternoon, it feels like my Meat final was two or three weeks ago. In two days, I’ve learned about 40 varieties of fish and how to gut, scale, fillet, and skin finfish. Things are happening so fast. I am so busy. My mind never stops focusing on what I am learning. The chefs are tough and the TA’s are demanding. They are not afraid to yell or belittle you; but they do it because we are supposed to be the best. They don’t just accept it; they demand it. It’s hard, but I know that I really love it. I don’t think that I could be happier with my decision to come here.
Monday: I went into class early for Early Team to help fabricate for the rest of the school. I think that I broke down some beef top round, but I really don’t remember now. I do remember that I had to take about 30 denuded beef tenderloins (#190) and turn them into portion cut tenderloin steaks (#1190A). These are the steaks that are grilled for fillet mignon. That’s a whole lot of money on one sheet tray. Basically, I was not to screw up. It went fine; it just took a while. Then in class, it was lamb day. In lecture we went over all the primals, subprimals, portion cuts, quality grades, etc. When it was time to go down to the meat room, we watched Chef Schneller take apart an entire lamb. Then we each had to debone and fabricate a leg of lamb. That was actually really fun. In order to get the femur out, you have to hold your boning knife like you are getting ready to stab somebody. It’s called The Psycho Knife Grip from that famous stabbing scene. It’s awkward, but it works really well. I felt confident in myself by this day. My leg looked pretty good and Chef didn’t say anything to me about my knife cuts. He will usually call you out if he sees bad work.
Tuesday: Through the grace of God, I got a different group of people to go in for Early Team. This means that I got to eat lunch with my friends for the first time all block. I know it sounds small, but after how stressful things had been in meat class and how I knew they would be in fish class, it meant so much to me to take 40 minutes to myself. Every waking moment is dedicated to doing homework, studying, prepping for class, and being in class. I get maybe 20-30 minutes a day to watch some show online or not think about class. If you know me, you know how important “me time” is. The topic of the day was Poultry. We went over all the different varieties and sizes in lecture (duck, broiler chickens, guinea fowl, capon chickens, Cornish game hens, etc.) as well as poultry safety. In lab, we started by finishing some frenched lamb chops from the day before. Mine turned out really good. I used a trick that Alton Brown from the Food Network used to get the fat and meat off the bone. We trussed a few chickens and got graded on them. When he graded Jim next to me, Chef just kind of flicked the string to make sure it was tight enough. When he graded mine, he picked it up by the string under the legs and started spinning it around to check for tightness. Then he told me that it could have been tighter. Um, really? You mean that the string, after being hoisted up and spun around like wet laundry, came loose a little? Gee, thanks, Chef. I got a C- on my trussing. Outstanding. I ate a very quick dinner that night and spent most of the night, until about 3am, studying for our final the next day.
Wednesday: Since our Meat final was this day, we didn’t have to come in for early team. Again, getting 40 minutes to eat with my friends in the best part of the day. Speaking of eating, my favorite kitchen to eat out of is Cuisines of the Americas. I really love most everything that I have had from them. There is a lot of regional American food as well as Latin/Caribbean food. Their tortillas are homemade. Delicious! But I digress….When we went in for lecture on Wednesday, we learned about ground meats and sausages. Um, let’s just say that my love of Taco Bell has decreased slightly. They add ammonia to their meat and use radiation to kill pathogens because their beef is often tainted. Also, friends, no matter where you eat out, even if it’s a nice restaurant, please please please order your hamburgers medium well to well done. Ground meat, even when done correctly, can be so dangerous. In lab, we had to de-bone some Boston pork butts (I have done about 10 or 12 of these things now) and then use the meat to make 10 pounds of breakfast sausage. Half was made into patties and the other half went onto natural lamb casings to make 4in. links. The next morning, K16 and K11 Breakfast Classes served them. They were quite tasty.
At the end of class, we had to take our final. It included everything we learned, even the sausage material from that day, so we had to learn it the night before. There were 30(?) multiple-choice questions. We had to know all the primal, subprimal, and portion cuts from every animal, NAMP identifying numbers, as well as general knowledge about the grades and quality factors for every animal. Then there were 10 short answer questions where we had to basically explain the process for creating different cuts (like how to go from a full tenderloin to steaks, or how to debone a lamb shank). There was also a yield test. The last part was an ID test. Laid out on the tables were 20 different cuts of meat. We had to identify the full name of the cut, what animal it came from, and what the best cooking method would be (steak, grill, London broil, sauté, roast, braise, etc.). I think that I did ok. The multiple choice were hard, the short answer was not bad, the yield test was easy, and the ID’s were challenging, but I spent a lot of time studying them. I am truly shocked by how much that class taught me. I did not understand anything about where different cuts came from, how to make them, how to cook them, or anything two weeks ago. I am now well versed in meat identification and ordering and can hold my own when it comes time to cut it. Again, I had to eat dinner fast because there was a ton of reading, printing, and prep to do for Seafood class the next day. Also, there was a midterm the next day in Writing. Also, I had developed a really bad cold. Also, Anthony (my roommate) is in Breakfast class, which means that his sleep schedule is screwed up because he has class from 1am-9am. The world was conspiring against me.
Thursday: The day started off with the mid-term exam in my writing class. It was just an in-class essay. Not hard at all, just annoying.
Ok, if you know me at all or have read this blog before, you know that there are very few things that I hate more than seafood. I hate fish and the like when they are alive, I hate how they smell when they are dead, and I really hate how they taste when they are cooked. I have never dreaded a class more. All the seafood kids smell terrible after class. All the chefs are jerks. The TA’s are really hard on the students because they have to do even more work than the chefs. The product, fish, are very expensive and very delicate. Every class, the students have to play a round of Jeopardy. It counts as your daily quiz grade. You get one question. If you get it wrong, you get a zero for the quiz for the day. Also, I had no idea how to even start cutting apart a fish. I have never been so nervous/anxious/grumpy in my life as when I was standing outside the Seafood room door at 12:45pm on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010.
To keep me and my classmates safe in this blog, we are going to refer to my Seafood ID chef/instructor Chef Boyardee.
We walked in and the first thing I noticed was the smell. It was overwhelming. The second thing I noticed was how small the room is. It is really narrow. The cutting room is only about three times the size of my dorm room. It has to fit my class of 16, Chef Boyardee, the two TA’s, a lobster tank, two big sinks (one for scaling fish and one for washing dishes), a desk, a large white board, plus our entire product on speed racks. The room is tile, from floor to ceiling, with big drains on the floor so that when it is time to clean, we literally just hose the room down and then squeegee it dry.
The first day, we were given lots and lots of information. I took about 10 pages of notes in my little memo book just on class procedures and information. We were given a tour of the walk-in and a lesson on fish storage. Everything is packed with and on ice. The fish stay fresh, but they are very very cold. Then we were set to work gutting and scaling farm raised Atlantic salmon and hybrid striped bass. Scaling a fish is a mess. We use little metal comb-like objects to rub against the scales. The teeth of the comb get caught underneath the scales, rip them off, and they fly everywhere. I mean, the room gets covered in them. Gutting a fish was surprisingly not gross. You just stick your fillet knife in by the anal fin (CUTTING EDGE OUT!) and rip up past the pelvic fin. Then you just stick your hand in there, pull out the viscera, cut through the esophagus, and you’re done. Chef Boyardee gave us a demo on the three different cutting methods for filleting a fish. I took notes like a crazy person. They were so bad, that I had to re-print and rewrite my notes that night. He made them look easy, but I knew that they would be hard to do on my own. There was no actual fabrication for us to do that day. Just like the Meat Room, the Seafood Room supplies the rest of the school with the fish and seafood that they use in the kitchens. Unlike in meat class where the students do tasks to learn the skills of meat cutting while the chefs, TA’s, and early team focus on the fabrication for the school, in seafood class, the students do all of the fabrication. There is no set plan for work, we just learn whatever needs to be done that day. On our first day, we didn’t actually have any cutting to do since all the fish ordered that day were ordered “as purchased”, or AP. This means that we didn’t have to do anything but gut and scale them.
Chef Boyardee and our TA Savannah are setting up for our Identification Lecture, where we are going to learn about the basic characteristics of each family of fish as well as see some of the major varieties in each family. We get the kitchen cleaned, get our notebooks ready, and stand around this huge 20ft. cutting table that has now been filled with fish. Savannah begins with the salmon and trout family. Again, I’m taking notes like a crazy person. But here’s where things get weird: I realized that I’m smiling. Um… I hate fish. Right? Well, turns out that I actually kind of like this class. I learned so much in just an hour and a half lectures about the fish families. I’m really looking forward to learning more about their identities and how they live and what they can be used for. I don’t know how this happened, but I promise that I will investigate and get back to you.
Class ended with a formal lecture in a classroom about general fish knowledge, storage, receiving, regulations, food safety, and the like. I went back to my room, ate a sandwich, and got busy with the memorizing, reading, and prepping for day two. I could already feel the butterflies set in as I made flash cards to get ready for Jeopardy.
Friday: This time I mean it: I have never been so happy to see a weekend in my life. I am still sick, had a ton of work to do, and just need to drink some wine with my friends.
I spent most of Friday morning studying all the information from day one. The chef and TA’s won’t answer questions that they have already said the answer to, so I needed to know everything. I went over all the knife cuts for fish, how the walk in was organized, the storage temps for all the varieties of seafood, freshness identifiers, market forms, everything that I was told the day before. We then go into class and look at The White Board. It’s this huge dry-erase board on one of the walls of the room that tells us everything we need to do. Listed under each kind of fish is now much needs to be cut, what kind of cut it needs, where it is going, and it’s AP weight. We have a ton, about 200#, of fish to gut and scale. Then we have to fillet and skin lots of salmon, stripped bass, and flounder. Well, we get our gutting and scaling done, but then chef decides that he wants to do ID before we fabricate anything. So the ID table gets set up with tons of fish. Again, I kind of enjoy this part. I knew NOTHING about fish a few days ago and now I’m pretty decent at describing most of the major varieties sold in American markets.
Anyway, fabrication begins and I get nervous again. A girl named Nicolette (she’s great…I love her, and she lived in Indy for a few years) and I are given a farm-raised king (wild is not in season now) salmon to fillet. We got lucky. Salmon is a soft-boned round fish, so it gets the easiest of the three cutting methods, a straight cut right down the backbone. Nicolette did an awesome job on her side. It game off very clean and she had zero waste. I then had to do the other side. Mine was almost perfect. I only had about one inch where my knife came off the backbone and I missed about a 0.5oz of salmon. Well, let me tell you, Chef Boyardee was not pleased. From across the kitchen, I get “Chandler! Why did you do that? That’s now money down the drain. How am I supposed to sell that trim?” It’s one of those moments where you know the question is ridiculous because clearly I did not intentionally miss product in order to be yelled at. Believe me, not a dream come true. You just have to say, “You can’t, Chef. I lifted my knife too much, Chef. I’m sorry, Chef”, and then live with the fact that you are lower than a cod worm. I think as punishment for my sub-standard cutting, I was the only person with salmon who had to skin their fillet. Not an easy task seeing as now fragile the fish is and it weighing about 5 pounds. I got it done, and it was perfect. I even laid it out flat in front of my work station so that he could see how perfect it was. I got every single bit of skin in one cut while leaving all the meat still on the fillet. I now know how angry .5 oz of waste makes him. When Chef Boyardee came back to me, did he say anything about my superior skill? No. He just told me to cut the fillet into 24-2oz portions. I got a 42 out of 50 for the day. Fine. Whatever.
After clean up, we went into the classroom for Jeopardy and a fish tasting. The room was so incredibly tense. One question: all or nothing. Sometimes it’s really easy, like giving the receiving temperature for live mollusks (35-40°F). Sometimes it’s really hard like naming all 10 freshness checks for finfish. Well, the girl before me got the question: Describe the storage procedures for round fish and flat fish. She got it wrong, so the question came to me. I powered through the answer. I talked about packing the drawn fish cavity with ice, I talked about perforated pans, the angle at which they could be turned, all of it. I was really happy with my answer. The chef asked me what direction they need to face in the ice pans. I thought I had said that already, but I repeat myself, upright, dorsal fin up, swimming away. “That’s not what I asked”. Actually it was, chef…you jerk. Well, Chrissy next to me starts whispering the word “right”. So I just say: “to the right” not really knowing why. Then he asks me why do they need to face the right. Well, this is not something I have ever been told or read. I looked through all my notes and reading after class and not once have I ever been told that they need to be facing the right or why. I start listing reasons like, uniformity, space saving, identification, ect. Then chef leads me though this long drawn out question and answer period where I eventually get to the answer that fish need to face the right since most Americans are right handed. When we go to remove ice from the top of the bin, our hands move from right to left. Since some fish like snapper have very sharp, poisonous spikes on their dorsal fin, keeping them in this direction helps us stay safe. I was on that quest with him for maybe 7 minutes while the class just sat in silent solidarity with me and my complete and utter humiliation. I KNEW all of that storage information backwards and forwards. The rest of the class was using my flash card to study. I was so damned prepared for that quiz, and he was going to make me look like an idiot for not knowing something that I have never been told before. Ah well, that’s the Culinary Institute of America for ya’. We also had to do a flat fish tasting. We tried 5 different flat fish like flounder and dover sole. They are low activity fish, so they don’t have too much fishy flavor. Actually, the skate wing was delicious. I might even be tempted to order it at a restaurant and pay money for it. I know… I don’t have any idea what’s happened to me. Again, I’ll look into it.
When I got back to my room, the locks on my door had been changed and I couldn’t get in. Ask me about that story and I’ll tell you in person. This entry has just gotten out of control. Suffice it to say: I had to wait in the lobby for 20 minutes to get my new key, while everybody who walked by me made some comment like, “oh, guess you’re in fish class” or “hey buddy, you smell like squid”. Great end to a great week.
I can’t believe that all of this has only been one week. As I sit here writing this on Saturday afternoon, it feels like my Meat final was two or three weeks ago. In two days, I’ve learned about 40 varieties of fish and how to gut, scale, fillet, and skin finfish. Things are happening so fast. I am so busy. My mind never stops focusing on what I am learning. The chefs are tough and the TA’s are demanding. They are not afraid to yell or belittle you; but they do it because we are supposed to be the best. They don’t just accept it; they demand it. It’s hard, but I know that I really love it. I don’t think that I could be happier with my decision to come here.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Loins, and Trimmings, and Brisket...OH MY!
I don’t even know how to begin to describe the roller coaster of my week.
Kristofer and I drove back to NY from Indiana on Sunday night/Monday morning. We left at midnight and then drove through the night and morning. While it was great to be back at the CIA early enough to get my things together for class the next day, it threw my sleep schedule for a loop.
On Tuesday, I had Writing at 7:00am per usual. We just got more work to do for the next few weeks. We still don’t have our first essays back. Then I went back to my room for a nap, then ate lunch, and then went off to my first day of Meat Identification and Fabrication.
Every day, Meat class starts out with an hour or two of lecture. We talk about the individual animal (beef, veal, pork, lamb, etc.), go over their anatomy, and talk about the primal cuts, sub primal cuts, and portion cuts. We also talk about good cooking methods for each sub primal. We also learn about the different quality grades for each animal and what to look for when purchasing that meat item. Then we head down into the sub-basement of the school for a few hours of lab/fabrication. The Meat Room is two floors below the main building. If you are going with the whole my-school-is-Hogwarts analogy, think Potions room: a cold, dark, and smelly basement. It’s cooled to about 55°F and has two sets of fans blowing air around. It’s a little chilly. It’s good for the meat, bad for us. We usually watch a few demos by Chef Schneller and then go back to our tables and do what he showed us.
On Day 1 (Tuesday), we had a general introduction to meat in lecture. In lab, we learned how to de-bone a beef shank, trim a top round and then break it down into a flat iron steak and the heart of the top round. We then turned the top round heart into four roasts. This gave us an opportunity to practice roast tying. I had absolutely no idea what was going on the first day. I felt completely lost, and judging by the looks on my classmates’ faces, they did too. Butchery has it’s own language. It is filled with words that take a while to learn. If you don’t know what a piece of meat is, it’s very difficult to break it down or figure out that to do with it. I hate not knowing what’s going on. It makes me feel so stupid and low. Apparently this did not show, because my class asked me to be group leader. All this means right now is that I have to take as purchased weights and at the end of class every day, and I have to make sure that I weigh every single thing that has been fabricated that day. Then I have a team of people who cryovac everything, then I put labels on it and put it away. It’s not that hard, but trying to keep over 300# of meat a day organized can be a challenge. On top of the day of class, I then had to go back to my room and do 3-4 hours of homework (reading, videos, study questions, key terms, mental mise en place, etc.)
The next day, I went down to the meat room at 11:00am as part of our class’s Early Team. Richard, Nick, and I go in about two hours early every day to help the meat room get some production done. Every piece of meat that is served at the CIA goes through the meat room for fabrication. Since it is cheaper to buy large sub primal cuts of meat and then break them down in-house, that’s what the meat room does. I helped my TA, Kevin, de-bone some boston pork butt into cottage butt roasts and cubed a bunch of lamb. Then in class, we learned about beef in lecture. We went into quite a bit of detail on dry aging. In lab, we denuded beef tenderloin and broke it down into portions. This is the stuff that filet mignon is made out of. It’s really quite expensive. I was very nervous. We also fabricated a beef strip loin. When we were all done cleaning, we got to do a tasting of dry aged beef. We tasted a 30-day wet aged striploin, a 30-day dry aged strip loin, and a 20-day dry aged strip loin. The 30-day dry aged was delicious. The best way I can describe it is that it tastes how meat should taste. It covers the palate and stays there. It is incredibly rich in flavor. All in all, I was in the meat room from 11am-8pm. Boo. Again, four hours of homework plus dinner and a grocery store run.
Thursday started with another 7:00am writing class. Then I went back to the Meat Room at 11:00am for more early team work. I de-boned about 6 more boston pork butts. I also took apart another beef top round, turned the heart into roasts and turned the trimmings into beef stew cubes. In class, the topic was veal. The day involved watching a baby calf being slaughtered. It was more than a little traumatizing. Let’s just say that it started with a gunshot to the calf’s head. In lab, we watched a demo on how to take apart the whole veal leg. We also reviewed beef cuts. Then we got to fabricate veal osso buco. Then we trimmed the various cuts of meat from the leg and turned them into veal cutlets. Even though I was going through the motions of fabrication, I still felt really lost. Understanding all the different cuts, how to make them, and where they came from is quite a bit of information to take in. Again: lots of weighing, bagging, and labeling. Lots more homework, and finally bed.
Friday was a turning point for me. After going in to Early Team and making some oxtail and ground beef and going to class lecture on pork, I finally started to feel like I knew what was going on. When chef would use a work like centercut tenderloin or veal shank, I could picture it and understand what to do with it. It felt very, very good to get to this point. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still know very little about meat, but I am getting to the point where I understand it more. Does that make any sense? Anyway, in lab on Friday we were fabricating pork products. We de-boned an entire pork loin, which was actually kind of fun. You have to use a boning knife to slide around the ribs and back of the vertebra. The meat from the center is a perfect cylinder so we tied those into roasts and got graded on them. I got an 8.5 out of 10. Some of my spacing was off and one knot was too loose. It shouldn’t matter too much though because I got some extra credit for coming for early team. We turned the ribs into baby back ribs and saved the other bones for pork stock making. We also had to de-bone a boston pork butt. I had done about six of these so far in early team, so mine turned out nicely. We turned the cottage butt into roasts and the trim into cubes for stew. We were graded on our cubes, but I don’t know how I did.
I have never been so happy to reach the weekend. Getting out of class on Friday night at 8:00 and knowing that I didn’t have four hours of homework ahead of me was such a liberating feeling. I have three more days of Meat Fabrication left, and the Seafood begins on Thursday.
Kristofer and I drove back to NY from Indiana on Sunday night/Monday morning. We left at midnight and then drove through the night and morning. While it was great to be back at the CIA early enough to get my things together for class the next day, it threw my sleep schedule for a loop.
On Tuesday, I had Writing at 7:00am per usual. We just got more work to do for the next few weeks. We still don’t have our first essays back. Then I went back to my room for a nap, then ate lunch, and then went off to my first day of Meat Identification and Fabrication.
Every day, Meat class starts out with an hour or two of lecture. We talk about the individual animal (beef, veal, pork, lamb, etc.), go over their anatomy, and talk about the primal cuts, sub primal cuts, and portion cuts. We also talk about good cooking methods for each sub primal. We also learn about the different quality grades for each animal and what to look for when purchasing that meat item. Then we head down into the sub-basement of the school for a few hours of lab/fabrication. The Meat Room is two floors below the main building. If you are going with the whole my-school-is-Hogwarts analogy, think Potions room: a cold, dark, and smelly basement. It’s cooled to about 55°F and has two sets of fans blowing air around. It’s a little chilly. It’s good for the meat, bad for us. We usually watch a few demos by Chef Schneller and then go back to our tables and do what he showed us.
On Day 1 (Tuesday), we had a general introduction to meat in lecture. In lab, we learned how to de-bone a beef shank, trim a top round and then break it down into a flat iron steak and the heart of the top round. We then turned the top round heart into four roasts. This gave us an opportunity to practice roast tying. I had absolutely no idea what was going on the first day. I felt completely lost, and judging by the looks on my classmates’ faces, they did too. Butchery has it’s own language. It is filled with words that take a while to learn. If you don’t know what a piece of meat is, it’s very difficult to break it down or figure out that to do with it. I hate not knowing what’s going on. It makes me feel so stupid and low. Apparently this did not show, because my class asked me to be group leader. All this means right now is that I have to take as purchased weights and at the end of class every day, and I have to make sure that I weigh every single thing that has been fabricated that day. Then I have a team of people who cryovac everything, then I put labels on it and put it away. It’s not that hard, but trying to keep over 300# of meat a day organized can be a challenge. On top of the day of class, I then had to go back to my room and do 3-4 hours of homework (reading, videos, study questions, key terms, mental mise en place, etc.)
The next day, I went down to the meat room at 11:00am as part of our class’s Early Team. Richard, Nick, and I go in about two hours early every day to help the meat room get some production done. Every piece of meat that is served at the CIA goes through the meat room for fabrication. Since it is cheaper to buy large sub primal cuts of meat and then break them down in-house, that’s what the meat room does. I helped my TA, Kevin, de-bone some boston pork butt into cottage butt roasts and cubed a bunch of lamb. Then in class, we learned about beef in lecture. We went into quite a bit of detail on dry aging. In lab, we denuded beef tenderloin and broke it down into portions. This is the stuff that filet mignon is made out of. It’s really quite expensive. I was very nervous. We also fabricated a beef strip loin. When we were all done cleaning, we got to do a tasting of dry aged beef. We tasted a 30-day wet aged striploin, a 30-day dry aged strip loin, and a 20-day dry aged strip loin. The 30-day dry aged was delicious. The best way I can describe it is that it tastes how meat should taste. It covers the palate and stays there. It is incredibly rich in flavor. All in all, I was in the meat room from 11am-8pm. Boo. Again, four hours of homework plus dinner and a grocery store run.
Thursday started with another 7:00am writing class. Then I went back to the Meat Room at 11:00am for more early team work. I de-boned about 6 more boston pork butts. I also took apart another beef top round, turned the heart into roasts and turned the trimmings into beef stew cubes. In class, the topic was veal. The day involved watching a baby calf being slaughtered. It was more than a little traumatizing. Let’s just say that it started with a gunshot to the calf’s head. In lab, we watched a demo on how to take apart the whole veal leg. We also reviewed beef cuts. Then we got to fabricate veal osso buco. Then we trimmed the various cuts of meat from the leg and turned them into veal cutlets. Even though I was going through the motions of fabrication, I still felt really lost. Understanding all the different cuts, how to make them, and where they came from is quite a bit of information to take in. Again: lots of weighing, bagging, and labeling. Lots more homework, and finally bed.
Friday was a turning point for me. After going in to Early Team and making some oxtail and ground beef and going to class lecture on pork, I finally started to feel like I knew what was going on. When chef would use a work like centercut tenderloin or veal shank, I could picture it and understand what to do with it. It felt very, very good to get to this point. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still know very little about meat, but I am getting to the point where I understand it more. Does that make any sense? Anyway, in lab on Friday we were fabricating pork products. We de-boned an entire pork loin, which was actually kind of fun. You have to use a boning knife to slide around the ribs and back of the vertebra. The meat from the center is a perfect cylinder so we tied those into roasts and got graded on them. I got an 8.5 out of 10. Some of my spacing was off and one knot was too loose. It shouldn’t matter too much though because I got some extra credit for coming for early team. We turned the ribs into baby back ribs and saved the other bones for pork stock making. We also had to de-bone a boston pork butt. I had done about six of these so far in early team, so mine turned out nicely. We turned the cottage butt into roasts and the trim into cubes for stew. We were graded on our cubes, but I don’t know how I did.
I have never been so happy to reach the weekend. Getting out of class on Friday night at 8:00 and knowing that I didn’t have four hours of homework ahead of me was such a liberating feeling. I have three more days of Meat Fabrication left, and the Seafood begins on Thursday.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Short Ribs
This is going to be short:
I got an A- in Product Knowledge. I don't know what happened. Baby Jesus must have come to my aid.
Meat Fabrication is crazy. I am so busy. I am group leader and have to be in class two and a half hours early every day. Lots of reading and memorizing. Also, lots of laundry.
Today is my 22nd birthday. My friends and family are great. Thank you so much for the birthday wishes.
I got an A- in Product Knowledge. I don't know what happened. Baby Jesus must have come to my aid.
Meat Fabrication is crazy. I am so busy. I am group leader and have to be in class two and a half hours early every day. Lots of reading and memorizing. Also, lots of laundry.
Today is my 22nd birthday. My friends and family are great. Thank you so much for the birthday wishes.
Monday, January 4, 2010
The Final (grade) Countdown
Oh, dear lord! It’s been a very long time, folks. The end of the block got very busy and then there was winter break. I am so sorry.
I don’t even know where to begin. How about Math? There is nothing much to say. The class got interesting, but not any more difficult. I finished with a 100% as my final grade. Who would ever have thought that me, the B- average math student in high school would receive an A+ in math in college? I was pleasantly shocked.
Writing class was very busy at the end. We had our first big essay due. I wanted to do well. I enjoy expository writing, and I hope that it showed in my final copy. We were required to do peer editing in class. There is nothing I hate more than peer editing. Kristofer, my friend from Boston U who is getting his masters degree in secondary English education agrees with me. It is incredibly frustration to read a poorly written essay. I want to take it out of the other student’s hand and just rewrite it for him. It would be easier than trying to correct all the mistakes and contest issues. Also, it leaves those of us with fairly good writing skills out because we don’t get edited by other good writers. Getting “good!” with a smiley face next to a paragraph or “I don’t know what you mean” are not helpful comments. I don’t know how I did on the paper yet, but I’ll get my grade in class tomorrow morning. The class is not over until March, so no final grade yet.
Gastronomy was actually very fun the last two weeks of class. I did very well on a few exams, quizzes, and a group presentation. We studied some modern food movements as well as the controversy over genetically modified foods. On the last day of class, I accidentally told Prof. Forrest to “shut up” when she announced that we were supposed to get a foot of snow over the weekend. Oops. There I go again with my lack of a filter. It didn’t affect my grade too much because I came out with 97% for my final grade.
Ok, now there is Product Knowledge. The last two weeks of class were spend on squashes, herbs, apples, pears, grapes, berries, stone fruits, citrus fruits, bananas, melons, specialty fruits, nuts, seeds, cheese, yogurt, milks, and creams. Oh my. It was a lot of info to take in. At this point, I was going to the storeroom every other day to keep up on my ID’s and quality factors. I was doing well. My friends even asked me to go with them to help them study. I had a 95% going into the final. I spent the night before going over all the info with my friends for hours. I don’t know what happened. Apparently I didn’t know the information as well as I should have. The final was made up of 20 practical questions. Some were just straight identifications, where all we had to do was write the name of the product. However, most of the time we had to name the product and then answer several questions about it as well, like naming quality and condition factors, storage temperatures, varieties, where it came from, etc. If you miss one part of the multiple part question, you miss the whole point. And in this class, one point on a test or quiz is one percentage point of the final grade. I’m pretty sure I failed the final. It was very very hard. However, even if I miss all 20 points, I’ll still have a 75% in the class, which should let me pass the class. This final was over two weeks ago. Our grades are still not posted. Take a guess how I feel about that….
I then went home for two weeks for Christmas and the New Year. I had an absolutely fantastic time. It’s always hard leaving friends and family back in Indy, but it’s nice to be back in school. Meat Fabrication and Identification is the next seven class days, and Fish and Seafood Fabrication and Identification is the seven days after that. Meats class starts tomorrow. I’ll keep you all updated.
I don’t even know where to begin. How about Math? There is nothing much to say. The class got interesting, but not any more difficult. I finished with a 100% as my final grade. Who would ever have thought that me, the B- average math student in high school would receive an A+ in math in college? I was pleasantly shocked.
Writing class was very busy at the end. We had our first big essay due. I wanted to do well. I enjoy expository writing, and I hope that it showed in my final copy. We were required to do peer editing in class. There is nothing I hate more than peer editing. Kristofer, my friend from Boston U who is getting his masters degree in secondary English education agrees with me. It is incredibly frustration to read a poorly written essay. I want to take it out of the other student’s hand and just rewrite it for him. It would be easier than trying to correct all the mistakes and contest issues. Also, it leaves those of us with fairly good writing skills out because we don’t get edited by other good writers. Getting “good!” with a smiley face next to a paragraph or “I don’t know what you mean” are not helpful comments. I don’t know how I did on the paper yet, but I’ll get my grade in class tomorrow morning. The class is not over until March, so no final grade yet.
Gastronomy was actually very fun the last two weeks of class. I did very well on a few exams, quizzes, and a group presentation. We studied some modern food movements as well as the controversy over genetically modified foods. On the last day of class, I accidentally told Prof. Forrest to “shut up” when she announced that we were supposed to get a foot of snow over the weekend. Oops. There I go again with my lack of a filter. It didn’t affect my grade too much because I came out with 97% for my final grade.
Ok, now there is Product Knowledge. The last two weeks of class were spend on squashes, herbs, apples, pears, grapes, berries, stone fruits, citrus fruits, bananas, melons, specialty fruits, nuts, seeds, cheese, yogurt, milks, and creams. Oh my. It was a lot of info to take in. At this point, I was going to the storeroom every other day to keep up on my ID’s and quality factors. I was doing well. My friends even asked me to go with them to help them study. I had a 95% going into the final. I spent the night before going over all the info with my friends for hours. I don’t know what happened. Apparently I didn’t know the information as well as I should have. The final was made up of 20 practical questions. Some were just straight identifications, where all we had to do was write the name of the product. However, most of the time we had to name the product and then answer several questions about it as well, like naming quality and condition factors, storage temperatures, varieties, where it came from, etc. If you miss one part of the multiple part question, you miss the whole point. And in this class, one point on a test or quiz is one percentage point of the final grade. I’m pretty sure I failed the final. It was very very hard. However, even if I miss all 20 points, I’ll still have a 75% in the class, which should let me pass the class. This final was over two weeks ago. Our grades are still not posted. Take a guess how I feel about that….
I then went home for two weeks for Christmas and the New Year. I had an absolutely fantastic time. It’s always hard leaving friends and family back in Indy, but it’s nice to be back in school. Meat Fabrication and Identification is the next seven class days, and Fish and Seafood Fabrication and Identification is the seven days after that. Meats class starts tomorrow. I’ll keep you all updated.
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