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…