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!

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...

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…