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!