I’ve mentioned this already, but this level is 10 times more interesting than the last one. It’s also less stressful. Not entirely stress free, but you get to step back and enjoy what you’re doing. We’ve tasted all of our food and tweaked it to become what we want it to be, not what its expected of us to be.
Since we’re still working o our buffet for Saturday, let me give you an update. We order chicken wings to prepare for the buffet. In addition to ordering 10 lbs, we wanted whole fresh wings. What we got was a bag of precut buffalo wings, frozen. What we originally wanted to do was manchonner the wings and lollipop them. When the wings are whole it’s a lot easier to manchonner. When they’re pre cut you need to do a lot more digging and scraping. So, I spent about 45 minutes cleaning up the wings. Not to mention the chicken quality was, in my opinion, sub par and just a little gross. If I were making buffalo wings at a bar, these would be perfect, but for our purposes, I felt they were downright gross. I have opinions on things…
Further, there just weren’t that many wings!! Definitely not 10 lbs. There were 5 lbs at best. That came out to 40 pieces, which is not as much as we would have liked. However, they’re marinating in a spicy Thai marinade that we made. We made all of our marinades and sauces from scratch, which is great.
We also brushed a basic ginger, scallion, soy, oyster sauce/hoisen sauce marinade on the fillet mignon and chicken skewers. It’s actually really good, and hopefully the meats absorb it all up.
We did a test run on the dumplings and spring rolls to see if they’ll fry properly or blow up in our faces. We heated up a small pan of oil. I was cooking them, so I kept a watchful eye on them. I was considering a couple of things. First and foremost, the dumplings and spring rolls were frozen solid prior to being cooked. So I wanted to make sure the fillings were cooked through. The dumplings were smaller and the meat was raw and frozen. I didn’t want to burn the outside and leave the inside undercooked. Either way they came out just right. After I was almost finished with the spring rolls, I remember that we filled it a) with just vegetables, and b) we cooked the vegetables, so we only needed to defrost and the inside and heat it up. So we could afford to go a little lighter in color that I initially cooked the spring rolls to. That’s why we did it… to get these questionables out of the way. Again, the spring rolls were slammin’.
Prior to coming to class, Chef Rob spent 30 minutes standing outside a Chinese restaurant watching them hack up a duck. He also purchased a duck so we could get some practice in, and admire and taste the flavor, the amount of fat left under the skin, the color, the texture, everything. What was really cool was the fact that as we were hacking the duck, we saw a piece of star anise in the cavity! What’s so amazing about that? We had it in a brine of star anise (amongst other things), which means we’re practically Chinese. No, it means we were doing everything right (so far). Chef wants to smoke it with star anise and then blast it in the oven to get the color and crispness of the skin. Not to mention the fact that the duck is currently hang drying in the fridge right now. (Which chef repeatedly mentioned “hey fellas, did I mention that we have 3 dugs hanging upstairs right now?”) He’s a riot.
He also wants me and Steve to watch the movie “Good fellas” so we can bust out quotes as he and Carlos have been doing. It’s pretty funny.
I also want to mention… We had a few duck breasts that we wrapped in sous vide plastic with a bit of duck stock and spice (the ones that were already chilling in the fridge in a spice mixture). We cooked them for 2 hours in the sous vide method (wrapped submerged in hot, but not boiling, water for 2 hours. We then took one breast, sautéed it skin side down to render some fat and crisp the skin and then we’re serving it thinly sliced for the picking. It was FABULOUS! We’re really going all out…
Also in this class we saw our HUGE chunk of tuna, which we’re serving rare, sliced thin. We tried some of that with a taboulleh salsa that we made for it, and it was phenomenal.
Lastly, the production group was working on the pig for the buffet. Chef Janet’s intention was to take fat back, compress it, then slice it thin and wrap pigmented pork in the fat back, and arrange it decoratively in the cavity, so when its cooked and cut, we would see a beautiful design. There were some issues with cutting the fat back because it was so thin in the first place. I have a feeling, however, that they will do a good job. I saw the sewed up pig, and it looked awesome.
I am going to class tonight (on an off day) to make the duck confit buns. I think it will be great. I realized today that the original recipe we used we put in what we thought was one cake of yeast. We were under the impression that one cake of yeast was about 40 grams. After a little research, it appears that a cake of yeast is more like 18 grams of yeast. That means we quadrupled the amount of yeast for a single batch. This explains its yeasty flavor which was pretty gross. Hopefully when I cut back on the yeast, it works out perfectly.
We’ll see.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Buffet!
I have been eating, drinking and sleeping this buffet for the past week and a half. In fact, I purchased 3 whole ducks from Chinatown for the buffet, as well as some other Asian products we needed (including white miso paste, and bonito flakes). I have a few issues about it that I will get into over the course of this post, but in general I am PSYCHED!
So let’s start with the basics. Level 4 started, and 1/3 of us (3 of us) are in the buffet group. The other 2/3 are split up evenly into “production” and “family meal”. Family meal is exactly what it sounds like. They make the food that all the staff and students eat for dinner. Production prepares all the beef, fish, stocks, etc. that the restaurant and classes need. It’s amazing to see what gets done in 5 hours.
Buffet, on the other hand, is in a world of its own. It’s the first time that we get to explore our creativity and abilities as aspiring chefs. We can choose any theme, or not even a theme if we don’t want one, but we choose the buffet menu. We came up with a tour de Asia theme. It wasn’t my first choice, but I’ll be the first person to delve into the unknown and leave my comfort zone to try something new. And, quite frankly, I may know a little more about some Chinese things than the people in my group, but collectively, for not being Asian, we have a wealth of knowledge in this or that.
Our menu (starting with the smaller items):
Filet mignon skewers
Chicken breast skewers
Vegetarian Vietnamese spring rolls
Pork (garlic and ginger) fried dumplings/wontons
Duck confit buns
Kimchee
Seared, rare fillet mignon slices with julienned cucumbers
Spicy Thai wings
Yellow fin tuna Tartar
A SLEW of dipping sauces for all of these things (ranging from spicy, salty, sweet and spicy, etc.)
Fried rice (kind of a cop out, but it’s our starch)
Duck breast sous vide
3 whole Peking ducks
A whole, stuffed suckling pig
3 various sorbets
I’d like to discuss the pig first. What we originally wanted was a traditional roasted sucking pig, similar to what you may see at a Chinese New Years feast. Nothing too fancy, just a whole roasted suckling pig… Somehow, the production Chef came in and said she had an idea for a suckling pig. And we were like, wow, we wanted to do a suckling pig. And we decided to let her roll with it. Her idea is truly brilliant, however far fetched it may be. First, you de-bone the body. Then she has this grand idea of mixing a very colorful pigment (they chose red beets and chlorophyll from a leafy green) with chopped pork and wrapping it in sheets of fat back, arranging them in a flower shape (picture the NBC logo, with two colors and making a complete circle) and stuffing it back into the pig, so when you slice it, you get skin, meat and the flower arrangement inside. It’s really a grand idea. What’s even grander is the method of preparing it. They want to cook it submerged in a circulation cooker overnight, in DUCK FAT, until its just cooked, then finish it in an oven to crisp the skin. Now, quite frankly, that sounds amazing. But I am curious as to how realistic it is. And will a pig submerged in duck fat get crispy and crackling like I imagine? We will find out. But it’s cool that they are doing it, and helping us out, and are as excited as we are about our buffet.
Next issue. I spent about 2 and a half hours pressing wontons together last night. That was great fun.
Moving right along, we have this wonderful plan for duck confit buns. The first day we had a case of ducks waiting for us to butcher. We also had a slew of vegetables to julienne for the spring rolls. Steve very nicely butchered the ducks, and saved the fat for the confit. We actually got a lot of fat from a case of ducks. It was pretty awesome. Chef then cured them in a delicious Indian spice mixture with salt. The next class we cooked them low and slow. The legs came out amazing.
Back to the first class. Within the first 30 minutes of level 4, we were on our way preparing for our buffet. We had to slice a number of veggies for the spring roll, starting with red pepper. One pepper in… SLICE. Carlos’s finger slips and he takes a cross section of his nail clean off!! I helped him clean up the wound (blood didn’t get all over), and we got a band-aid on and a protective finger rubber. Less than 5 minutes late, the rubber was SWELLING with blood. It was crazy!! Eventually it stopped bleeding, but still. Not a good way to start level 4.
Anyhow, by days 1 and 2, we finished a number of items, including the spring rolls, dumplings, prepared a basic kimchee, a bunch of dipping sauces. Prepared the bases for the sorbets, skewered the meats, prepared the duck for the duck confit buns, and a few other items.
Let’s move along to the whole Peking ducks… I purchased these ducks in Chinatown on Monday. 3 whole frozen Long Island ducks (which is pretty good, I’d expect the ducks to come from Guangdong province or something). So they were frozen solid when I got them, but I left them out, keeping a close eye on their temperature, throughout my day at work. By the time I got to class they were barely frozen, but still very cold.
What we did was first prepare a brine of 5 gallons of water, 3 lbs of salt (it was damn salty), 2 lbs of brown sugar, and a bunch of star anise and sticks of cinnamon. We brought that to a boil, cooled it down, and then poured it over the three ducks. I believe we are letting it sit in the brine for a few days, so the flavor penetrates the whole thing. Then on Thursday, we’re going to take them out, dry them up and hang dry them in the fridge until Saturday. Come Saturday, we’re going to baste and roast them for an hour or so until they are ready. I really think its going to be amazing!
Did I mention I pressed dumplings together for over 2 hours yesterday? Great fun!
The last thing I’d like to mention is that I am an avid fan of Chinatown pork buns, and I really wanted to tackle this challenge. We found a recipe for the dough, and we decided to use the duck confit legs for the filling (genius idea). We prepared a test run for the dough. It takes some time to rest and rise and so forth, but we didn’t pay attention to the part that said “Let sit overnight in the fridge.” That would explain why the dough tasted dense and yeasty. I took it upon myself to hold an experiment. I took the leftover dough home and cooked some that night and then prepared a few buns, put them in the fridge, and cooked them the next morning. Sure enough, the lightest and least yeasty buns were the ones I made in the morning. I think that means that I will be coming in Friday evening and preparing 60 or so buns for Saturday. It is what it is, and it will be great.
Sacrifices.
So let’s start with the basics. Level 4 started, and 1/3 of us (3 of us) are in the buffet group. The other 2/3 are split up evenly into “production” and “family meal”. Family meal is exactly what it sounds like. They make the food that all the staff and students eat for dinner. Production prepares all the beef, fish, stocks, etc. that the restaurant and classes need. It’s amazing to see what gets done in 5 hours.
Buffet, on the other hand, is in a world of its own. It’s the first time that we get to explore our creativity and abilities as aspiring chefs. We can choose any theme, or not even a theme if we don’t want one, but we choose the buffet menu. We came up with a tour de Asia theme. It wasn’t my first choice, but I’ll be the first person to delve into the unknown and leave my comfort zone to try something new. And, quite frankly, I may know a little more about some Chinese things than the people in my group, but collectively, for not being Asian, we have a wealth of knowledge in this or that.
Our menu (starting with the smaller items):
Filet mignon skewers
Chicken breast skewers
Vegetarian Vietnamese spring rolls
Pork (garlic and ginger) fried dumplings/wontons
Duck confit buns
Kimchee
Seared, rare fillet mignon slices with julienned cucumbers
Spicy Thai wings
Yellow fin tuna Tartar
A SLEW of dipping sauces for all of these things (ranging from spicy, salty, sweet and spicy, etc.)
Fried rice (kind of a cop out, but it’s our starch)
Duck breast sous vide
3 whole Peking ducks
A whole, stuffed suckling pig
3 various sorbets
I’d like to discuss the pig first. What we originally wanted was a traditional roasted sucking pig, similar to what you may see at a Chinese New Years feast. Nothing too fancy, just a whole roasted suckling pig… Somehow, the production Chef came in and said she had an idea for a suckling pig. And we were like, wow, we wanted to do a suckling pig. And we decided to let her roll with it. Her idea is truly brilliant, however far fetched it may be. First, you de-bone the body. Then she has this grand idea of mixing a very colorful pigment (they chose red beets and chlorophyll from a leafy green) with chopped pork and wrapping it in sheets of fat back, arranging them in a flower shape (picture the NBC logo, with two colors and making a complete circle) and stuffing it back into the pig, so when you slice it, you get skin, meat and the flower arrangement inside. It’s really a grand idea. What’s even grander is the method of preparing it. They want to cook it submerged in a circulation cooker overnight, in DUCK FAT, until its just cooked, then finish it in an oven to crisp the skin. Now, quite frankly, that sounds amazing. But I am curious as to how realistic it is. And will a pig submerged in duck fat get crispy and crackling like I imagine? We will find out. But it’s cool that they are doing it, and helping us out, and are as excited as we are about our buffet.
Next issue. I spent about 2 and a half hours pressing wontons together last night. That was great fun.
Moving right along, we have this wonderful plan for duck confit buns. The first day we had a case of ducks waiting for us to butcher. We also had a slew of vegetables to julienne for the spring rolls. Steve very nicely butchered the ducks, and saved the fat for the confit. We actually got a lot of fat from a case of ducks. It was pretty awesome. Chef then cured them in a delicious Indian spice mixture with salt. The next class we cooked them low and slow. The legs came out amazing.
Back to the first class. Within the first 30 minutes of level 4, we were on our way preparing for our buffet. We had to slice a number of veggies for the spring roll, starting with red pepper. One pepper in… SLICE. Carlos’s finger slips and he takes a cross section of his nail clean off!! I helped him clean up the wound (blood didn’t get all over), and we got a band-aid on and a protective finger rubber. Less than 5 minutes late, the rubber was SWELLING with blood. It was crazy!! Eventually it stopped bleeding, but still. Not a good way to start level 4.
Anyhow, by days 1 and 2, we finished a number of items, including the spring rolls, dumplings, prepared a basic kimchee, a bunch of dipping sauces. Prepared the bases for the sorbets, skewered the meats, prepared the duck for the duck confit buns, and a few other items.
Let’s move along to the whole Peking ducks… I purchased these ducks in Chinatown on Monday. 3 whole frozen Long Island ducks (which is pretty good, I’d expect the ducks to come from Guangdong province or something). So they were frozen solid when I got them, but I left them out, keeping a close eye on their temperature, throughout my day at work. By the time I got to class they were barely frozen, but still very cold.
What we did was first prepare a brine of 5 gallons of water, 3 lbs of salt (it was damn salty), 2 lbs of brown sugar, and a bunch of star anise and sticks of cinnamon. We brought that to a boil, cooled it down, and then poured it over the three ducks. I believe we are letting it sit in the brine for a few days, so the flavor penetrates the whole thing. Then on Thursday, we’re going to take them out, dry them up and hang dry them in the fridge until Saturday. Come Saturday, we’re going to baste and roast them for an hour or so until they are ready. I really think its going to be amazing!
Did I mention I pressed dumplings together for over 2 hours yesterday? Great fun!
The last thing I’d like to mention is that I am an avid fan of Chinatown pork buns, and I really wanted to tackle this challenge. We found a recipe for the dough, and we decided to use the duck confit legs for the filling (genius idea). We prepared a test run for the dough. It takes some time to rest and rise and so forth, but we didn’t pay attention to the part that said “Let sit overnight in the fridge.” That would explain why the dough tasted dense and yeasty. I took it upon myself to hold an experiment. I took the leftover dough home and cooked some that night and then prepared a few buns, put them in the fridge, and cooked them the next morning. Sure enough, the lightest and least yeasty buns were the ones I made in the morning. I think that means that I will be coming in Friday evening and preparing 60 or so buns for Saturday. It is what it is, and it will be great.
Sacrifices.
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