Goodbye Level 4

All in all, I must say, the 8 of us in level 4 have pulled off something that, as Chef Rob explained it, could only have been done by dedicated students. And I think we are just that. The 8 of us there have one agenda when we’re in class, and that is to produce a quality product. Chef Rob has explained to our next chef that we are a great class of 8 that works like a class of 16. Chef Janet said many times how sad she was to see us go, and we have to visit frequently. Chef Janet was definitely awesome. She showed us some amazing things that we never imagined doing (making our own bacon and pastrami and ham!!!) Chef Rob also showed us some incredible things and opened our eyes to new techniques and possibilities.

By the way, I believe I mentioned the slow cooked wrapped chicken that Chef Dave Arnold showed us. Well I took some home and fried it up for some friends who were in the house, and they were amazed. I explained I didn’t make it, but it was still fantastic. I didn’t deep fry it, but I did sauté it. And I made a rookie mistake. I got the oil nice and hot, but I failed to dry the skin properly before putting it in. It made for a little more of a mess (splattering), but it also allowed the skin to stick a little to the pan. It wasn’t a terrible thing, the food still came out great, but I should have known better. I realized it as soon as I put it in the pan. I must say, it’s been a while since I did some real cooking, so I need to really think a bit more before I jump right into it. So as a reminder, when deep frying or sautéing, the purpose of the oil is for flavor, color and to prevent sticking. If you do not remove the excess moisture, then you counteract this initiative and there will be more splattering and sticking to the pan.

Anyhow, to be perfectly honest, after we finished buffet, it felt like level 4 was over. And unfortunately that was after the first two weeks of level 4. Family meal was… just rushing to make some food and then not really giving a shit about the rest of class. Most of the time we busted our asses for no reason because people either didn’t need food, or we had our buffets and no one ate the family meal. And then when we got to production, we were never really rushing (except for getting the fish and chicken to the restaurant), but we were doing fun projects like curing meats and the like. Chef Janet was great because she let us focus on the aspects that were important, like the filleting of the fish and the butchering of the chicken, while she maintained the stocks and worked on other projects. And then when we were ready, she let us run the show.

So on our last day of level 4, the buffet guys did an entirely dessert themed buffet. They must have made about 10 or 12 different desserts, ranging from individual cheesecakes, to crème brule, chocolate tarts, bread pudding, ice cream sandwiches, and the list goes on. It was pretty amazing. That meant they weren’t making real food, so the family meal and production group had to step in. We put out our deli meats, a smoked sturgeon and a cheese fondue station for the pastrami. The family meal guys put together a “breakfast for dinner” station. They used some of our molasses bacon that we made. We didn’t let them touch the maple brown sugar bacon. I must say, the molasses bacon was absolutely delicious. I will try the maple bacon this weekend, but I am trying to eat a little better so maybe just a touch.

By the way, the pastrami was phenomenal! The ham and turkey breast were also amazing! Its indescribable, to be honest. Have you been to Katz's delicatessen? Well our meats could have been showcased there. It was quite an accomplishment. I went to party later that evening with the deli meats, and between about 5 people, we finished over 2.5 lbs of pastrami and turkey breast. They were impressed and I was pleased that we were able to make such an impressive product.

But the family meal team was making bacon egg and cheeses on bagels, they prepared lox and set out cream cheese for bagels, they were making omelettes, eggs benedict with a fresh hollandaise, etc. etc. It was pretty great. Oh they also put together a delicious corned beef hash and some tasty home fries. They did a fantastic job.

Oh, how can I forget? One of our classmates, Grace, is a great cellist. Her roommate is a musician as well. So Grace asked her to come in and play violin, and she did just that. It was AMAZING. It was such a classy affair, though we were in a kitchen and many of us were wearing our kitchen whites. Chef Rob was so proud of this class. We consistently raised the bar and produced some quality work. Chef Rob made a reputation for himself as a kick ass level 4 instructor, but he would never fail to mention that it couldn’t have been done with the 8 of us.

On to the kitchen of l'ecole.

Livin Sous Vide loca

SO we’re doing Production now. It’s cool. But let’s put that aside for a moment. We just had 2 lessons at the end of the previous two classes, totaling 3.5 hours on this relatively new method of sous vide and low temperature immersion cooking.

In brief, sous vide is a method of cooking items in a vacuum. We had a pretty large machine that sucked the life and air out of a package and sealed it. It was a large metal container with a glass domed top. You lay a plastic bag inside with the contents that you want to seal airtight and turn the sucka on. In a few seconds you see the gauge reading the percent of air removed. It reaches a 100% vacuum, airless atmosphere. When the machine turns off, and the bag is sealed with its contents, and air returns to the chamber, the bag compresses as much as the contents allow.

So for instance, we put a stack of white bread in the machine, without putting it in a bag, and we sucked the life out of it. Because the bread is so porous, the air was sucked out, but when it was done, the air easily refilled the pores. When we put marshmallows in, the y first started to expand, as the air was sucked out of the middle (since the outside is less porous, the air inside pushed against the inner walls until it broke free. When the machine was turned off the marshmallows just shrunk! And the texture went from light and fluffy to thick and Turkish delight textured. It was actually delicious and interesting. I enjoyed it. However, when we put the bread in a bag and compressed it, the air got sucked out and as the bag sealed and compressed, it just SMOOSHED the bread. So the point is you can’t just put anything in these things without some thought about the texture and what your goal is.

With that said, we tried a few texture modifications, which uses this concept of removing the air and compressing the item, as well as some flavor infusions (including alcohol).

Before we go on, the chef that instructs this course is Dave Arnold, and he specializes in this stuff. It turns out sous vide (vacuum) stile of cooking is not fully understood, and therefore the Dept. of Health won’t allow it to be served to the restaurant without a full HAACP plan. (I forget what that meant but it was something about food safety and storage and serving, etc. I did get a 96 on that test!!) But Chef Dave Arnold mentioned that if he could, we would do A LOT more sous vide cooking if he were allowed. But he sure does experiment all the time and looks for the right temperatures and the right times. It’s pretty scientific, but what’s great is cooking in a vacuum, provided you cook at the same temperature each time and same amount of time, is a guaranteed controlled method of cooking. The result will be the same EVERY TIME. Kind of like that old experiment of a feather falling as fast as a brick… in a vacuum.

So the first day we just did some basic stuff, learned some concepts, looked at some results of eggs cooked at different temperatures. It was amazing seeing the difference of 1-2 degrees Celsius. As I mentioned, if you follow the time and temp (particularly the temperature) it will be the same every time. There is even one stage of egg that the yolk turns into a moldable clay like substance. It holds together like clay and some chefs are using these yolks to sculpt cute little egg things… so we’re told.

As I touched, the beauty of the sous vide method of cooking, and just immersion cooking, is you can cook something and keep it in the water for HOURS, and as long as the water is circulating and the temperature is constant, the product will not overcook! So if you want poached eggs… set them to 62 or 63 degrees Celsius, and use them as you’re ready. They will all be the same. Always.

So the next day, Chef Dave has a rib eye and a piece of prime rib that were cooking sous vide for a while. We took them out, dropped them for less than 30 seconds in a vat of hot oil and pulled out beautifully crisp, tender, perfectly cooked meats. They tasted INCREDIBLE! We also had a whole chicken skin which had some chicken “meat glued” inside, and rolled. That was cooked for an hour or so in an immersion, then we deep fried that for a moment. Incredible. It tasted so frigging good! I brought some home that was unfried, which I will fry up real quick, and it should be super delicious still. The texture of the meat was so tender and moist, but not like fully cooked chicken, though it was fully cooked.

One of the last things we did was some watermelon infused with different alcohols and a vanilla and vodka mixture. Those were pretty good. They were VERY alcoholic, but still delicious! If they had better alcohol, it would have tasted really great.

Here’s where we stand with our creations.
Pastrami – COOKED! We smoked then steamed it, and it smells incredible!
Turkey breast – COOOKED! We smoked it for a while and it’s looking great
Bacons – COOKED! We smoked those too and those too, look fabulous.
Smoked sturgeon – I almost single handedly did this one. I put it in a salt, sugar and dill and onion cure, and then we cold smoked it followed by hot smoking it. It looks fantastic.
Bratwurst – We packaged and blanched some brats, need to cook on Saturday. I brought some home though. Looks great.
Ham – We put it in an immersion cooker and we let it sit over night. Should be fabulous!

Everything is looking good, and tomorrow is our last class of level 4. Oh my. We’re almost in the restaurant.

Production 2

This may be one of the more interesting sections so far. As I have mentioned a number of times, Level 4 is split into 3 sections. Apparently they will be reorganizing and redistributing responsibility of these sections for the classes that follow, however, for now, there is buffet, which is strictly setting up for the 2 buffets that you produce while in that section. There is family meal, which, as its name suggests, is strictly providing food for everyone in the school to eat (including the nights of buffets since not everyone makes it to the buffets). And finally there is production the section I am in now. Production is the least strict section as far as guidelines of what you have to do. Of course the buffet allows creativity, but you are only working on your buffet. For production, you start your night by assessing the stock situation, and checking to see if you need to produce chicken stock or veal stock or a fumet. You also MUST break down the fish and chickens necessary for the restaurant. We’re supposed to have that done by 6:30, but with 3 people working on 3 different things, it gets complicated. Chef Janet understands that the stocks are important, but she actually lets us work on breaking down the proteins and she gets the stocks going. I think that’s really great of her so we can then focus on the more creative aspects which I am going to get into.

By the way, I broke down the cod. After a THOROUGH examination I only pulled out a couple of worms from the fish. I think that’s pretty good!! That is, pretty good that the fish only had 2 worms. It was still gross. The cod was pretty nice to fillet. I think I did a great job. I got all the pin bones out, cleaned it up nicely and skinned it nicely. I was pretty proud of it. I wasn’t super speedy, but hey, it was my first time doing it, and I was trying to do a great job for the guys in the restaurant. I can’t imagine when some of the knuckleheads in Level 3 come to level 4 and break down some busted chickens for us. We’ll see. I’m sure the chef will have something to say if we’re getting poor cuts.

So after all this, we delved right into our projects. We got our second brisket of beef, which I cleaned up and cured with the pastrami salt mixture. Carlos finished up the Boudin blanc we were making (ground it up, seasoned it and got it into sausage casings), and Steve got going on some cures for our ham and turkey breasts.

We literally injected brine with a huge syringe into the ham and turkey and watched the flesh pump up. I think its going to be great. The brines had all kinds of herbs and seasoning. We got those puppies submerged in brine, and now it’s the waiting game.

After dinner, Steve and I prepared two cures for bacon that we will be making. One cure was a molasses cure, the other, which I think will be better, was a brown sugar and maples syrup cure! How does that sound? And you know, it really wasn’t hard. Its something ANYONE can do. Provided of course you buy the belly fat and have the means to smoke it afterwards.

I think, however, the highlight of the night was deboning a whole chicken WITHOUT taking it apart. What’s that? You want details? Sure, why not.

So the first thing you do is cut the wing off at the second joint (as we normally do). Then you take out the wish bone, which, we learned a new method to do, which doesn’t tear into the flesh. Take your knife and scrape away at it. Don’t go jabbing in there and hacking away at the flesh. Just take your knife, scrape, and then use your finger to dig in and get the bone. It was a great new trick, and it worked well.

Once you have that out, prop the chicken up and look at its shoulder. Start cutting and scraping away the flesh. Detach the arm from the shoulder and keep making your way down the one arm bone. Soon you’ll be able to pop the arm bone right out. Get going on the other arm, then don the ribs and around the neck, spine and back. There will come to point when you need to flip it over and star from the bottom of the rib cage and then the thigh and legs. I guess I can’t rally describe it since it’s mostly a process of scraping against bone and cutting around joints. But I assure you, I have a beautifully boned chicken, intact, waiting for a mean stuffing. We’re thinking about stuffing it with seasoned ground pork, which would probably be delicious! She also gave us a brilliant idea of filling it with a portion of pork loin, surrounded by either ground pork or chicken, and then roasted. The beauty of it is being able to have a seemingly whole chicken and slicing across it as if it’s a boneless piece of tenderloin, eating almost every part. This makes a fantastic centerpiece for a fancy meal. You can even stuff it with a traditional stuffing if you’d like.

In all, this is a fun portion of the class. Even though we ran about 20 minutes late since we needed to break down the day time stocks, it was still very fun, informative and creative!

Let’s see where this goes…

For starters there are a few main goals for production. The first and foremost is to prepare the proteins that the restaurant will be using. That is, breaking down a few chickens and a few fish. However, opposed to the chickens we broke down for family, these chickens require more care and attention. Since it is for the restaurant, it is imperative that the skin remain intact and you get the oysters, remove the wishbone and manchonner the legs. It’s rolling back to the basics again, and doing it right and fast.

We weren’t told that we needed to get this done by 6:30! We got in at 5:45 and we took a mini tour around the production area, counted stocks, etc. But no one mentioned that we needed to break down these meats for the restaurant by 6:30. With that said, one of the restaurant chefs came in and yelled at Carlos because he didn’t have the chickens ready in time. It was a bit of a rude awakening, but at least we know that it needs to be done earlier. The fish, I assume since they take less time to cook, were not pressured, but Steve and I took our time, and were no earlier than Carlos. There’s a lot of pressure to make sure we do not mess up these fillets, and to make sure we get all the skin off, and get all the pin bones. Whenever you’re doing something for someone else, you want to do a great job so it reflects nicely on you, and they know you’re trustworthy (which may be a downfall!! Sometimes you do a menial task so well you get asked to do it again and again!)

Actually, what’s pretty gross is the cod have WORMS in them. And this is NATURAL! But DISGUSTING. Steve was pulling worms out of the cod!! It was sick. But it had to be done. I just had some cod at a restaurant the other day, and it looked good, and I didn’t see any worms, not that I was looking, but the thought of it now is kind of nasty. Even though I am the type of person who will justify that if the worm is cooked, it’s probably okay to eat, but it’s still gross seeing the worms in the fish.

Something interesting was that we were told to use our butchering knife instead of our fillet knife for breaking down the fish. I can’t say that I was impressed with it. It’s so rigid that I couldn’t ride the knife along the bones, but instead I would start at the bones and end up just cutting into the flesh slightly. The fillet Looked fine, but I would have preferred the fillet knife with perfect smooth lines. It’s a mixed blessing that we only have 6 classes of breaking down these proteins. The pressure will be off, but at the same time, this is what being a chef is all about. Being able to take a whole fish, chicken, etc., and transform it from raw to beautiful and cooked.

Along those lines, we prepared a dry spice cure for some fresh pastrami, which smelled fantastic. We had to vacu-sealed beef briskets. Chef Janet had some pictures that showed us where the brisket on the cow was. Imagine a cow, and imagine that hump they have in their chest. That is the brisket. It is a Category 2, borderline 3 meat. So you don’t grill it, you need to break down the fibers with some low and slow method of cooking. Anyhow, I opened one pack and Carlos opened the other. Immediately a smell hit us in the face. My brisket was absolutely rank. I was sure of this, but we confirmed it with a couple of chefs to make sure it wasn’t salvageable. We tossed it. We’ll get another from the purveyors.

Since I could no longer help with breaking down the brisket (trimming the fat), I started closing up shop. We had to strain stocks, skim fat from our marmite, and cool down the stocks. A lot goes into all these things to produce stocks and meat for the school/restaurant. But what’s cool is that everyone benefits from it. It’s a team game.

Oh we also prepared a mixture for Boudin Blanc. Not 100% sure what it is, but I know it’s a sausage with rice, pig butt, and pig liver! We cut all this up, mixed in a bunch of veggies, and simmered for a while until everything was tender. To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about the liver. The pot smelled like liver, though Carlos said it didn’t have an overwhelmingly livery taste. We’ll see.

We didn’t have time to fill the sausages, but we cooled it down and will handle it today. We also have on the itinerary a few other deli meats, including cracked pepper turkey breast, maple ham, some fresh bacon, and other sausages, I’m sure. It’s fun, and very hands on.

BUSTED!!

Let me preface this post by saying “DO THE RIGHT THING.” Let me follow this preface by saying, no one in my class, including myself, are bad people, with the intentions of cheating or sneaking around the school and doing things we shouldn’t be doing. With that said, let me get into my story.

On Saturday, I think I mentioned I came in at 2:00 in the afternoon to assist the buffet group. I wasn’t asked, I wasn’t told, I volunteered. Should I receive special treatment or mention for this. Nope. A simple thank you is great, and I received just that. It was my pleasure to help them out. I actually just rolled out some pasta, mondered some tomatoes for an impromptu stuffed tomato dish chef decided on and did a few other random things for the chef that allowed him to focus more of his time on the buffet. I was just happy to help.

Steve on the other hand, was in the school at around 8:00AM for a management class he is taking, so I don’t know what that entails, but he was there MAD early, and then he even assisted the buffet group by setting up the “hanging rig” for their class as well.

Yes, this will be long winded, as always. So you probably read my post on the little family meal that could, but didn’t. We did indeed bust our asses all night and did what we needed to do; in addition to the help we gave the buffet group throughout the day. We cleaned up our area so that it was spotless, and we still had 20 minutes left in the class. Steve let out an innocent sigh of exhaustion followed by the courtesy explanation for the sigh, “I’m exhausted.” The family meal chef took that cue and said, you know what guys, you should just go. You did a great job today (it was only Steve and I, Carlos was out sick) and we’re done, you should just go. We looked at each other and basically told her, well Chef Rob said we shouldn’t go early especially without his permission. She said, very matter of factly, oh, don’t worry, just go, I insist. (I may be changing some of the exact words, but I assure you the meaning was very clear and my recollection and retelling of the story does not change the tone or intent of how it was delivered to us).

We were indeed tired. And of course everyone else was, but we were done. We were clean, we’ve accomplished our goal, and we were twiddling our thumbs. So we took her cue, and we left.

We did the wrong thing.

We justified it to ourselves, particularly with the family meal chef’s blessings, and the assistance we gave to the buffet team.

Sure enough as we were leaving class on Tuesday night, he gave us a little scolding. “Guys, about leaving early on Saturday, that wasn’t cool.” We explained to him that Chef Karen insisted that we leave. We told her that we shouldn’t and that he would probably disapprove, but she insisted. He said, he understands, and he’s sure that it won’t happen again, by either party. So we’re under the assumption that he will have a talk with Chef Karen, since he already had a talk with us. We were both a bit upset about it (Steve and I) because we knew it was “wrong,” but we were reassured that we should leave, and in fact, we really were very helpful and it was almost justified. Steve had spent 15 hours in the school that day, and I spent 10 hours there when I only needed to be there for 5. I am NOT justifying it. I’m just stating that perhaps Chef could have kept it to himself and justified it as well. But I guess it’s important to be consistent and fair (though, fairness in this situation could have had other factors playing in the game).

Anywho, our “punishment” for being dismissed early was we had to stay with a fish fumet that he was making for his buffet until it was fully cooked and cooled, which was no problem. A small price to pay for our foul. Unfortunately, there are deeper implications that I hope do not play out. For instance the term “trustworthy” comes to mind, as well as “sneaky” and “disloyal.” He gave me such a great review and I hope he doesn’t renege his sentiment and lower my grade or overall review because of it. Time will tell.

Well, just what you want after a long story not made short, a little review of Tuesday night’s class. Chef Karen forgot, or chose not, to order the meat for Tuesday’s class on Saturday, to prep and marinate so we can just cook it on Tuesday (we did leave a little earlier, therefore we did have the time). So when we got in, we had to prepare (QUICKLY) about 40-50 whole hanger steaks, briefly marinate them, grill them, finish in the oven, prepare chayote’s, arroz con frijoles, spaghetti squash, which definitely did not get out in time, and the salad and fruit salad.

We BARELY managed, and the Chayotes were taking longer than normal, so we almost didn’t even make it with those. Anyhow, we busted our asses off, with the help of two make-up students, and we got a DELICIOUS hanger steak, rice and chayote meal out. It was actually really delicious. I can’t imagine what it would be like if we had the steaks marinating since Saturday.

FYI, Chayotes, for my step mom reading this blog, I know she knows, but they are these vibrant green, almost pear looking, squashes. They are about the size and shape of mangoes and have a little bit of a creasing/wrinkling on the bottom. They, I assume, are a Hispanic/Latin American food, and were REALLY simple to prepare, and actually very tasty. I see them every time I’m in the grocery store but never think twice about them. We coated them in oil, salt and pepper (just a light coating), placed them cut side up, threw a little water in the pan to encourage steaming, and covered with foil. Then we popped them into a 350-375 oven for what should have been no more than an hour, and they came out tender and slightly browned on the top. It had a mild yet delicately sweet flavor. More bland than sweet, but you can taste the natural sugars. We placed in the center a spoonful of tomato fondue that we made, and it was very good. Surprisingly good.

The highlight was the Spanish style rice that Chef Wanda (who I believe is Puerto Rican) whipped together while we were cleaning up the steaks.

It worked out well. Everything came together and we pulled through, right in time for family meal. I loved it, and everyone else seemed to be enjoying their food. Just two more family meals, and then production time. We are planning on making deli meats, including pastrami, honey ham, turkey breast, etc., in addition to the sausages that we can whip together in a night. I must say, all of the sausages that the production teams have whipped together have been great. We’ll see how it goes.

Asian buffet pics

Picture from our 2nd buffet