I got to class with about 10 minutes to spare. My partner got there about 5 minutes after me. 10 minutes is about enough time to lay out your cutting board, take out your knives and begin to get your ingredients. We have gotten into the groove of laying out 2 cutting boards if your partner isn’t there. It’s an additional 20 seconds compared to an extra minute of having to do it yourself.
Anyways, I look around and EVERYONE has been in class long enough to not only gather all of their ingredients, but also to wash and peel their vegetables, start to boil water if necessary, start chopping their ingredients, etc. With that said, it was inevitable that my partner and I were going to be on the slower side (Not to mention, they were out of mushrooms, which we needed, and had to wait for).
However, we rushed our asses off, and we were not the last team to present our dish, which was quite impressive.
The main recipes we made were escalopes of beef, stuffed with a ground sausage and mushroom duxelles farce, and stuffed vegetables (mushrooms, zucchini, and tomatoes). None of them were really difficult, but stuffings add another element to a dish, which requires careful seasoning and consideration.
Oh, by the way, a farce is simply a stuffing. And a forcemeat (or force-anything, I think) is a ground up meat.
The beef was a top round, cut into thin slices, pounded to thin escalopes (not very thin). I think we could have pounded it a bit more and tenderized it with the jagged end of the hammer a bit more (my partner prepared all of that while I was furiously chopping away at the mushrooms we finally got, and making brunoise out of the carrots). Then we put some stuffing inside, rolled it up and secured it with some string. After a light seasoning, and a light dusting in flour, we seared all the sides (well, as much as we could sear while Chef Tom was rushing us and calling us up to look at something or another), removed the meat, sweated some carrots and onions, replaced the beef “roll-ups”, and filled halfway with stock. We loosely covered it with some parchment paper (perhaps we should have used a proper lid, but Chef Tom said to do it this way), and stuck it in the oven.
So, the beef wasn’t very tender, and the sausage inside wasn’t great either, though it was seasoned well. It was all just “okay” (though the sauce we reduced from it was outstanding). We have to keep in mind that the cut of beef we used is naturally a leaner, tougher cut. And as we learned, the leanness of the meat keeps it from getting too tender. So I partially blame the meat for its toughness.
The stuffed vegetables, however, were delicious. Unfortunately, we were rushing and I was unable to fully appreciate what we were doing, even though I did a lot of it. The stuffing consisted of little pieces of lardon (little chunks of bacon), shallots (I believe), more chopped mushrooms with chopped zucchini guts, one chopped garlic clove, and parmesan cheese. Awesome.
Despite all the rushing, we not only finished this meal with plenty of time to spare, we also made a chicken liver pate. Chef was only supposed to demo this, but instead we all made a dish. I didn’t feel bad throwing it out, because, after all, it was only chicken livers. It didn’t taste bad, but it wasn’t what the doctor ordered.
By the end of class (like 10:00) we clearly had plenty of time to spare, and we found ourselves listening to Chef talk, which turned into a discussion about the mafia, and how we should not get involved with them. HOW did we get to this? And WHY were we rushing just to have 45 minutes to kill, and a conversation on mafia run businesses in the Bronx?
I can appreciate rushing for the sake of expedience and working under time constraints, but when we have extra time, and we are learning something new, why rush us? Of course it didn’t help that everyone had all their ingredients set up from the beginning except for us, but that doesn’t explain 45 minutes of relatively useless conversation.
We also had time to prepare sweet breads for the next class. If you’re reading this and don’t know what it is… well time for some independent study.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Um...something witty? nope...Just Stew.
Hmm. I really should be a little better at posting to the blog. Some days seem to mesh with past days, especially when the recipes are similar.
After we set up our stations for our test (in the previous class), the word “partner” came out of Chef’s mouth, and I was shitting my pants thinking that my partner was going to be the guy who cooked my (our?) carrot macedoine on the test. But when we got to class, a couple of people switched partners, but most of them remained the same. So when my previous partner suggested we work together, I JUMPED on it, and agreed. What a sigh of relief. There was a new guy in class today. This new guy had taken 2 classes with the FCI and then decided to take the career class, so he skipped level 1. So they worked together.
We made the chicken we marinated after our test (a red wine marinade), which was really delicious, and we made a lamb stew. Because the preparation of these dishes calls for low and slow cooking, breaking down fats and sinews, we had a bit of free time. So what did we do? We turned cocotte! Chef asked that we make 12 of each cocotte needed. That is, 12 carrots, 12 potatoes, and 12 turnips. This, believe it or not takes so much time. And even though we could have finished the lamb stew with plenty of time to spare if we did, say, 6 of each, we ended up rushing. Not to mention, we only had to present 3 pieces of each cocotte. So 6 pieces is superfluous. And for the record, carrot cocotte is really annoying because the core of the carrot CONSTANTLY messes up the fluid motion of the cut, leaving a slightly mangled piece of cocotte. Needless to say, my partner and I did do a pretty good job.
OH, the preparation of the lamb called for searing the cubes before covering and cooking them in liquid (water in this case). As we learned, and as our recipes clearly stated, do NOT over crowd the pan when you are searing/sautéing. What happens is you crowd the pan and not only does the temperature of the pan decrease significantly (this was most apparent when we fried just a handful of pommes frites), but when there is no room on the sides of the pieces of meat for the moisture to escape, you end up steaming the meat, and not getting the golden brown crust you’re aiming for.
With that said, I may have been the only one in the class who did not dump my lamb in all at once, and Chef came over and was very pleased and called everyone in the class to come take a look. A little embarrassing, but definitely a nice touch. Because of this, I took longer than others to get my lamb in the oven, which is the downside of doing things right.
The lamb called for being cooked for about an hour or so. Ours was tender in 45 minutes. The chicken also called for about 45 minutes, and ours was well overcooked in less than that time.
So the time that these recipes call for are pretty off, I feel. Keep that in mind.
Considering this, I made a chicken last night, and when I thought that it couldn’t be ready, but perhaps I should check the temperature, it was actually 145! 140 would have been ideal, but 145 is better than 165.
I was pretty happy about this.
Still, we need to work on our seasoning. Under-salting is better than over-salting, but under-salting just makes the food taste bland. Hence… get it right.
After we set up our stations for our test (in the previous class), the word “partner” came out of Chef’s mouth, and I was shitting my pants thinking that my partner was going to be the guy who cooked my (our?) carrot macedoine on the test. But when we got to class, a couple of people switched partners, but most of them remained the same. So when my previous partner suggested we work together, I JUMPED on it, and agreed. What a sigh of relief. There was a new guy in class today. This new guy had taken 2 classes with the FCI and then decided to take the career class, so he skipped level 1. So they worked together.
We made the chicken we marinated after our test (a red wine marinade), which was really delicious, and we made a lamb stew. Because the preparation of these dishes calls for low and slow cooking, breaking down fats and sinews, we had a bit of free time. So what did we do? We turned cocotte! Chef asked that we make 12 of each cocotte needed. That is, 12 carrots, 12 potatoes, and 12 turnips. This, believe it or not takes so much time. And even though we could have finished the lamb stew with plenty of time to spare if we did, say, 6 of each, we ended up rushing. Not to mention, we only had to present 3 pieces of each cocotte. So 6 pieces is superfluous. And for the record, carrot cocotte is really annoying because the core of the carrot CONSTANTLY messes up the fluid motion of the cut, leaving a slightly mangled piece of cocotte. Needless to say, my partner and I did do a pretty good job.
OH, the preparation of the lamb called for searing the cubes before covering and cooking them in liquid (water in this case). As we learned, and as our recipes clearly stated, do NOT over crowd the pan when you are searing/sautéing. What happens is you crowd the pan and not only does the temperature of the pan decrease significantly (this was most apparent when we fried just a handful of pommes frites), but when there is no room on the sides of the pieces of meat for the moisture to escape, you end up steaming the meat, and not getting the golden brown crust you’re aiming for.
With that said, I may have been the only one in the class who did not dump my lamb in all at once, and Chef came over and was very pleased and called everyone in the class to come take a look. A little embarrassing, but definitely a nice touch. Because of this, I took longer than others to get my lamb in the oven, which is the downside of doing things right.
The lamb called for being cooked for about an hour or so. Ours was tender in 45 minutes. The chicken also called for about 45 minutes, and ours was well overcooked in less than that time.
So the time that these recipes call for are pretty off, I feel. Keep that in mind.
Considering this, I made a chicken last night, and when I thought that it couldn’t be ready, but perhaps I should check the temperature, it was actually 145! 140 would have been ideal, but 145 is better than 165.
I was pretty happy about this.
Still, we need to work on our seasoning. Under-salting is better than over-salting, but under-salting just makes the food taste bland. Hence… get it right.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Age is but a number
I got a message/post from someone, who is hopefully not one of my friends posting for the heck of it (though that's very much appreciated as well), but is instead someone who is interested in my blog, which is great! Well more importantly, they're interested in knowing the age breakdown of the class.
So, there are about 11 of us in the class. Some classes have less, others, usually more. And there is quite a diverse age range.
Let me list the ones I am sure of:
18 - F
21 - M
21 - F
23 - F
24 - M (me!)
28 - M
31 - M
someone who graduate HS in like '76? Making him about 50?
and then I can only guestimate the other ages, and I'll say:
20- M
28 - M
24 - M
I was about to say some of the people are mature, others aren't, but basically everyone has their own personality, and this transcends age. There are the mature 23 and 24 year old kids (like myself and Grace, I'd say) and an immature 28 year old. Our oldest classmate is, lets just say not the top of the class.
With that said, you mentioned you will be joining in January. Well that's awesome! I hope to meet you because we'll be on the same schedule. But, do know now, I don't share this blog with my classmates, mainly because it is divulging a little more than is necessary. Though, hopefully, a little less than "too much", whatever that may be. But it may be a breach of trust if they find out I'm talking about them, good or bad? I don't know.
Hope this helps. And I don't think 35 is on the older side, and when you get here, and everyone is in uniform, you'll see it quickly makes no difference. And hopefully you'll be having a few drinks after class with your older and younger classmates, alike.
As a final word, I believe a few of the guys call the 50 year old in our class "Pappy," which I refrain from calling him, but he doesn't seem to mind.
So, there are about 11 of us in the class. Some classes have less, others, usually more. And there is quite a diverse age range.
Let me list the ones I am sure of:
18 - F
21 - M
21 - F
23 - F
24 - M (me!)
28 - M
31 - M
someone who graduate HS in like '76? Making him about 50?
and then I can only guestimate the other ages, and I'll say:
20- M
28 - M
24 - M
I was about to say some of the people are mature, others aren't, but basically everyone has their own personality, and this transcends age. There are the mature 23 and 24 year old kids (like myself and Grace, I'd say) and an immature 28 year old. Our oldest classmate is, lets just say not the top of the class.
With that said, you mentioned you will be joining in January. Well that's awesome! I hope to meet you because we'll be on the same schedule. But, do know now, I don't share this blog with my classmates, mainly because it is divulging a little more than is necessary. Though, hopefully, a little less than "too much", whatever that may be. But it may be a breach of trust if they find out I'm talking about them, good or bad? I don't know.
Hope this helps. And I don't think 35 is on the older side, and when you get here, and everyone is in uniform, you'll see it quickly makes no difference. And hopefully you'll be having a few drinks after class with your older and younger classmates, alike.
As a final word, I believe a few of the guys call the 50 year old in our class "Pappy," which I refrain from calling him, but he doesn't seem to mind.
Test Day
Let me first say, I have a couple (like 10 or 11) days off remaining at work, so I decided that it would be a good idea to use one and practice in the morning. I ran to the supermarket and bought a couple of carrots, some turnips and I already had potatoes. I also bought a whole chicken because chef mentioned he would grade us on how we butchered it (which he didn't). I ran to Duane Reade the day before and picked up a perfect soft rubber ruler, which chef said we could use for our cuts. The taillage has specifications:
Jardeniere - .5cm squared, by 5 cm long. (a long thin rectangular block)
Macedoine - .5cm cubed. Take the above, cut and cube it
Julienne - 1-2mm squared, by 7cm long. (You all know what a julienne looks like)
Brunoise - 1-2mm cubed (cubes cut from the julienne)
We had to do the above with a carrot and a turnip (carrot first two cuts, turnip, second two). Then we had to take one onion, chop it in half, and emincer (slice) one half and ciseler the other (fine dice - the way they showed us). And then we had to turn a potato to 4 cocotte sized footballs, followed by cooking the carrot macedoine a l'anglaise (in really salty water until tender).
The written portion was, a piece of cake. I memorized my stuff, and wrote it down and submitted it. I was nervous about my taillage, even though I practiced. No reason to be. My taillage was pretty damn good. I must say, I did a fantastic job julienning the turnips. Its harder than you think to get 1-2mm slivers from a block of vegetable. Usually one end is too thick or too thin, or your knife cuts the slice before making it all the way down. I did a really good job. And my brunoise were so cute!
THEN.. dun dun dun!! lightening strikes. I was working across from one of the kids in the class who probably deserves to just.. leave the FCI, or at least repeat level 1 until he can get it right. Chef said earlier that we will be using boiling water as teams. And I took that to mean we would share the water, and he took it to mean we share the water and cook the macedoine together. While I was turning cocotte, he combined our macedoine and took it to the water to boil.
What do I do? Do I say no, we're not supposed to do that? He convinced me earlier that we're supposed to do it as a team, but I'm kicking myself in the ass now because that clearly makes no sense. Its a test!! But I went through with it, and we presented together, and besides the fact that they weren't completely tender, he chewed us out for working as a team when obviously you're not supposed to. I could have reserved half of the macedoine and presented them separately, or something, but I didn't. And for that I am fully to blame for my actions, or lack thereof. But HE is just a numbskull and just is not at par with the rest of us. It is students like him that make the FCI look bad when they take their money and pass them.
After kicking myself in the ass for the next few hours, and enduring a semi-interesting refresher course in HACCP (food safety), a few of us went out for drinks. It was a good time, but Friday at work was rough. I didn't get home til 3:30 and I had a long day of data entry type work to complete. FUN! It was the usual 3 of us plus Steve who was cool as shit. We really had a good time, and I recall having a semi-sociological debate with Bret, and we both concluded that we had no answers, but it was fun having an educated debate/conversation.
Oh, I got an A in Level 1. Yessssss. Though my evaluation score remained the same (81), but the combination of all our in class tests and a pretty good practical score, surely hindered by my "partner," had me floating around an A.
L.I-Quality:Intro. to Basic Techniq
Exam 1 - 100.00
Exam 2 - 100.00
Exam 3 - 100.00
Exam 4 - 100.00
Eval 1 - 81.00
Eval 2 - 81.00
Theory Final - 93.00
Practical Final - 88.00
On to level 2!!
Jardeniere - .5cm squared, by 5 cm long. (a long thin rectangular block)
Macedoine - .5cm cubed. Take the above, cut and cube it
Julienne - 1-2mm squared, by 7cm long. (You all know what a julienne looks like)
Brunoise - 1-2mm cubed (cubes cut from the julienne)
We had to do the above with a carrot and a turnip (carrot first two cuts, turnip, second two). Then we had to take one onion, chop it in half, and emincer (slice) one half and ciseler the other (fine dice - the way they showed us). And then we had to turn a potato to 4 cocotte sized footballs, followed by cooking the carrot macedoine a l'anglaise (in really salty water until tender).
The written portion was, a piece of cake. I memorized my stuff, and wrote it down and submitted it. I was nervous about my taillage, even though I practiced. No reason to be. My taillage was pretty damn good. I must say, I did a fantastic job julienning the turnips. Its harder than you think to get 1-2mm slivers from a block of vegetable. Usually one end is too thick or too thin, or your knife cuts the slice before making it all the way down. I did a really good job. And my brunoise were so cute!
THEN.. dun dun dun!! lightening strikes. I was working across from one of the kids in the class who probably deserves to just.. leave the FCI, or at least repeat level 1 until he can get it right. Chef said earlier that we will be using boiling water as teams. And I took that to mean we would share the water, and he took it to mean we share the water and cook the macedoine together. While I was turning cocotte, he combined our macedoine and took it to the water to boil.
What do I do? Do I say no, we're not supposed to do that? He convinced me earlier that we're supposed to do it as a team, but I'm kicking myself in the ass now because that clearly makes no sense. Its a test!! But I went through with it, and we presented together, and besides the fact that they weren't completely tender, he chewed us out for working as a team when obviously you're not supposed to. I could have reserved half of the macedoine and presented them separately, or something, but I didn't. And for that I am fully to blame for my actions, or lack thereof. But HE is just a numbskull and just is not at par with the rest of us. It is students like him that make the FCI look bad when they take their money and pass them.
After kicking myself in the ass for the next few hours, and enduring a semi-interesting refresher course in HACCP (food safety), a few of us went out for drinks. It was a good time, but Friday at work was rough. I didn't get home til 3:30 and I had a long day of data entry type work to complete. FUN! It was the usual 3 of us plus Steve who was cool as shit. We really had a good time, and I recall having a semi-sociological debate with Bret, and we both concluded that we had no answers, but it was fun having an educated debate/conversation.
Oh, I got an A in Level 1. Yessssss. Though my evaluation score remained the same (81), but the combination of all our in class tests and a pretty good practical score, surely hindered by my "partner," had me floating around an A.
L.I-Quality:Intro. to Basic Techniq
Exam 1 - 100.00
Exam 2 - 100.00
Exam 3 - 100.00
Exam 4 - 100.00
Eval 1 - 81.00
Eval 2 - 81.00
Theory Final - 93.00
Practical Final - 88.00
On to level 2!!
Braising Hell...The end of Level 1
For the most part the title of this post is just a play on the word braise, in fact, our braise was quite heavenly. Every team had a couple of lamb shanks to braise. We had to remove the bulk of the tough sinewy silver skin. This is the same stuff that reduces and releases gelatin, but there is plenty on there even after you reduce most of it. We browned it on all sides, and then partially covered with stock, and then baked. It was actually pretty simple.
I'll keep this one brief. I've been a little behind on posts, and I can recount the food, but I can't necessarily recount the social interactions (which is what I find interesting for the sake of this blog)
We also made a type of braised chicken, on the stove. Let me first say, braising is wonderful, however, chicken... well, of course its wonderful as well, but pretty much EVERY recipe we've had calls for cooking the chick about 15-30 more minutes than necessary. What is necessary? There are a few schools of thought. If you work in a hospital where your "customers" are relatively high risk, weaker immune system patients, then it is pretty necessary to cook that chicken to rubber and make sure no one contracts any food borne illness. But when you're cooking for friends or customers at a high end restaurant, then the chicken is READY at 145F. Therefore, you remove the chicken when the internal temperature is between 135F-140F. You must consider carry-over cooking. That chicken will continue to cook through well after it is removed from the heat source.
With that said, all of our recipes, even ones that call for low and slow cooking, usually lend themselves to overcooking the chicken. I have never stuck my thermometer into the chicken and had it be under 160. The chicken doesn't automatically turn to rubber. They have all been juicy, not super juicy, but pretty moist, but none have been tinkering around 145F. I guess that's something to work on, and I guess something for you to keep in mind.
Oh, Chef made a big batch of couscous to go with the lamb, which was very good. They complement each other perfectly.
Moving right along, it is important to know that after this braising class, we are DONE with level 1. And that means a big ole TEST!
Chef told us exactly what we needed to do. He told us that we needed to work on as far as our cuts (taillage), work on our tournage (footballs), and know how to cook a l'anglaise and a l'etuvee. He also gave us the usual run down of what was going to be on the written portion. Piece of cake, right.. we'll see.
I'll keep this one brief. I've been a little behind on posts, and I can recount the food, but I can't necessarily recount the social interactions (which is what I find interesting for the sake of this blog)
We also made a type of braised chicken, on the stove. Let me first say, braising is wonderful, however, chicken... well, of course its wonderful as well, but pretty much EVERY recipe we've had calls for cooking the chick about 15-30 more minutes than necessary. What is necessary? There are a few schools of thought. If you work in a hospital where your "customers" are relatively high risk, weaker immune system patients, then it is pretty necessary to cook that chicken to rubber and make sure no one contracts any food borne illness. But when you're cooking for friends or customers at a high end restaurant, then the chicken is READY at 145F. Therefore, you remove the chicken when the internal temperature is between 135F-140F. You must consider carry-over cooking. That chicken will continue to cook through well after it is removed from the heat source.
With that said, all of our recipes, even ones that call for low and slow cooking, usually lend themselves to overcooking the chicken. I have never stuck my thermometer into the chicken and had it be under 160. The chicken doesn't automatically turn to rubber. They have all been juicy, not super juicy, but pretty moist, but none have been tinkering around 145F. I guess that's something to work on, and I guess something for you to keep in mind.
Oh, Chef made a big batch of couscous to go with the lamb, which was very good. They complement each other perfectly.
Moving right along, it is important to know that after this braising class, we are DONE with level 1. And that means a big ole TEST!
Chef told us exactly what we needed to do. He told us that we needed to work on as far as our cuts (taillage), work on our tournage (footballs), and know how to cook a l'anglaise and a l'etuvee. He also gave us the usual run down of what was going to be on the written portion. Piece of cake, right.. we'll see.
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