Souffles

Today, I ate three soufflés before lunch. Don't judge me. You would have too if you had been given the chance. A chocolate souffle, a cheese souffle, a raspberry souffle...how could I have said no? My waistline is regretting it, but I'm definitely not. Oh yeah...and I also ate profiteroles stuffed with chocolate mousse. Woops! Here are the pictures:

Raspberry Souffle

Cheese Souffle

Chocolate Souffle

Profiteroles with Chocolate Mousse

So I've almost made it through the week, with the addition of a few pounds. And I only have one more day with Martin, my favorite partner. Despite the pouring rain outside and what felt like 100 percent humidity in the kitchen, our souffles turned out pretty well. (Humidity is bad news when you're making things like souffles and meringues that involve fluffed air) Although we did have to redo two sets of egg whites because they were overbeaten. We started the day with chocolate mousse, whipping up heavy cream and egg whites and combining them together with melted chocolate. Then we let it sit in the refrigerator until the end of the day when we piped them into a pastry bag to fill the profiteroles. Next we did the chocolate souffle, which was delicious. It was crisp and fluffy on the outside and slightly underdone in the center and so rich from the bittersweet chocolate. And I don't usually like dessert.

Next we made a savory cheese souffle with Gruyere, and finally a raspberry souffle...all before lunch! After lunch we made pate a choux, the dough for the profiteroles, which is cooked twice, once on the stovetop and next its either baked, fried or poached. We baked them, and they came out to be very light and fluffy, but golden crisp on the outside. A perfect match for the chocolate mousse.

Yesterday we made ice creams, sorbets and meringues. Well, we didn't actually make any ice cream or sorbet because it involved putting it into one of those industrial ice cream makers, and they didn't have 12 of them to spare for every team to make their own ice cream. So we watched as Chef Jeff explained how to use the machine and made a delicious-looking vanilla-based ice cream with chocolate chips and some liquor. He also made a grapefruit sorbet while we watched. Next we moved onto meringues, making a Swiss and Italian meringue. A Swiss meringue is a meringue that is heated over a double boiler, with egg whites and sugar, until it reaches 130 degrees, then it is beaten until it reaches the soft peak phase (when it can slightly stand up on its own). As we whipped over the double boiler, Chef Rogers went around the classroom sticking a laser thermometer in everyone's meringue to see if it had reached 130 degrees yet. The Italian meringue is made by heating sugar to the soft ball stage (about 230 degrees when it can make soft balls when rolled together, but its still clear and not caramel yet) and then adding it to whipping egg whites.

This is what we made with the Swiss Meringue, a baked meringue shell that we filled with whipped cream:

For this, we split the meringue in half, added cocoa powder to one half and then wrapped each up in plastic logs, then wrapped them into one big log and put that into a pastry bag and piped it onto a baking sheet.

With the Italian meringue, we made a souffle glacee, a frozen souffle. Although it looks like your typical baked souffle, it is actually just frozen and made from meringue and whipped cream with a raspberry puree. Here is a picture:

It sort of tasted like a push pop! Remember those things? Martin made quite a scene trying to pipe the souffle into a pastry bag and into his ramekin. Our entire station ended up covered in pink blobs of frozen souffle batter.

And I finally have a recipe of my own to share with you! Last night I made a stuffed acorn squash with some delicious pork sausage that I bought at the farmers market. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 acorn squash, split and seeded
1 onion, small diced
1 garlic clove, chopped
2-3 sausages, casings removed (I used hot sausage, but you can use whatever you like)
1 tablespoon of fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
a pinch of dried sage (would have used fresh, but I had none on hand, so if you have some, use it!)
1 cup of rice
3 tablespoons, plus some for topping squash parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Split the squash in half, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place cut-side down in a baking dish and place in oven for 35-40 minutes until the squash is soft when pierced with a fork.

While the squash roasts, add some olive oil to a sautee pan, and when its hot add the onion. Sweat the onion for about 4 minutes until it starts to be come translucent. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute. Add the fennel and other herbs and cook for 2 minutes. Next add the sausage, breaking it apart with your spoon as it cooks. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

When the squash is done roasting, scoop out some of the pulp, leaving about 1/4 of an inch remaining on the squash. Add the squash pulp to the sausage mixture and stir until it comes together. Add the rice and the parmesan cheese. Next fill the squash with the stuffing and top with grated parmesan cheese.

Put the squash under the broiler for 2-3 minutes until the cheese is slightly crispy and browned on top. Enjoy!

Ok. I think it's time to go do some yoga and try to redeem myself for all the souffle calories. Does blogging burn calories?

Les Ouefs!

Once again the week is flying by and I haven't had time to blog until this afternoon! I'm putting in a special request to add several more hours to do the day so I can 1: get more sleep and 2: cook more! Yes, surprisingly after cooking all day everyday I still wish I had more free time to explore and expand upon everything that I've been learning.

After a great weekend in Richmond visiting my little brother and my old roommate, April, I ended up more tired on Monday than I was on Friday, and I'm still doing a bit of recovering, trying to catch up on my sleep from a night out on Saturday with April. When I arrived in the kitchen on Monday I was feeling ready to crawl back into bed for the rest of the rainy day, especially when I realized we would be switching partners. I've been pretty lucky with my partners so far, I've gotten along really well with all of them and we've all worked very well together. So I had a feeling this would be the week when it was my turn to be paired with someone not so great. When Chef Rogers called out, "Eleese you weel be with Marteen this week," I tried not to visibly cringe at getting the exact partner I was dreading ever having to be with, and headed over to the station to set up. In general, my class seems to be keeping up very well with the lessons and generally excelling in whatever we do. However, there are several exceptions to this, and one of these exceptions is Martin. Last week, his station was right in front of mine, so all week I observed him and his partner, Umut, brutally destroy a stuffed chicken breast, butcher a rabbit until it became unrecognizable and turn their station into a tornado mess of bowls, pots and pans. He would also come over to our station approximately every 5 minutes to ask a question that the chef had just explained the answer to very loudly and publicly.
Granted, I have a very low patience tolerance, as most people who know me will gladly tell you, and when he came over to our station so much to ask questions that were blatantly obvious, my partner Sam and I started to get more than a little annoyed.

So needless to say, I was less than thrilled to have the pleasure of being his partner for the week. So far, he and his little samurai-esque soul patch that I'm pretty sure has approximately 10 creepy long hairs in it (is that really sanitary?...I'd rather keep the samurai hair out of my food, thanks.) hasn't managed to mess anything up too badly. Granted that may be because I've been trying to keep everything that can be ruined out of his hands. I know that the kitchen is a hard place to adjust to, and things move really quickly and there is a TON of information to know at all times, but he hasn't been able to grasp the most basic concepts that we've covered so far. Sometimes I wonder if he ever boiled a pot of water before considering going to culinary school.

Yesterday, our lesson was on l'ouef, the egg. We made both flat and rolled omelettes, poached eggs, baked eggs with cream, a Basque-style omelette and stuffed eggs, Chimay style, which are basically deviled eggs but coated in a cheesy Bechamel sauce that provides all the cholesterol you should eat in a month. Chef Jeff joked that it should come with a side of Plavix. The most challenging dish was the omelette, which I expected. The flat omelette was the easier of the two because it is allowed to get slightly browned on both sides and it doesn't need to be perfectly rounded before being placed on a plate. The rolled omelette, however, was another story. Chef Rogers made it look so easy...quickly whisking the eggs together before pouring them into a non-stick pan, then quickly shaking the pan and stirring the eggs for about 20 seconds before proclaiming them cooked. Then he tipped the pan on a downward angle, tapped it, rolled over one edge then flipped the whole thing onto a plate, being sure that it landed with the rolled sides underneath. The omelette had absolutely no color on it and was just a perfect shade of pale yellow. I thought, I can totally do that. I was so wrong.

I thought I was doing ok with my omelette, moving the pan around, stirring the eggs so they didn't brown, until I stopped cooking and flipped up one side and saw the dreaded color. The thing didn't resemble Chef Roger's clean, yellow omelette whatsoever and I ended up throwing it in the compost instead of even thinking about bringing up to Chef Rogers to inspect. So, you know what I'll be cooking for Sunday brunch! Who's coming over for omelettes? (Just as a forewarning, if you actually show up, they will be the French-style omelettes, served slightly runny (baveuse) in the middle...nasty if you ask me)

Today we moved from our lesson in eggs to a lesson in custards, which makes sense since all custards are really a variation of cooked eggs. The first recipe we made was a Créme Caramel, which is basically a flan. We started out by making a caramel with sugar a very small amount of water, which cooks on the stove until it turns a rich, brown shade. During the demo, Chef Rogers showed us how to test the different stages of the sugar as it cooks by dipping his hands into the caramel as it boiled away on the stove. Before doing that, he asked all of us, "Can I test the caramel by sticking my fingers in it?" We all laughed and remembered Chef Nick warning us that a caramel burn was the one of the worst you can get in the kitchen because it will stick to your skin and pull off every layer that it burns. Sounds pleasant, right? So when he suggested he stick his finger in caramel, we were all a little confused. But he soaked his fingers in a bowl of ice water for about 10 seconds, then went in for it, grabbing a bit of the still clear sugar between his fingers to test its doneness. He asked a fellow classmate Nancy if she wanted to try next. She hesitated, of course, stuck her fingers in ice water for about two minutes just to be sure and then hesitantly stuck her fingers toward the hot pan very slowly. "No," Chef Rogers said, "You must move fast!" So Nancy re-iced her fingers and tried again, unsuccessfully. Finally, she did it on the last try, and with a smile realized that it wasn't so bad after all. "Now, you can use a thermometer to test its doneness," Chef Rogers said. "But why would you when you can use your feengers?"

So we made our caramel, poured it in the bottom of a ramekin dish and then made the créme with sugar, egg yolks and milk infused with vanilla bean. When we were finished I asked Chef Jeff if we were keeping the extra custard (sometimes we combine everyone's extras and pass them down to family meal who creates interesting lunch options out of the leftovers) and he asked Chef Rogers who said, "Let's make bread pudding." "Elise is making bread pudding, bring her your leftovers," Chef Jeff yelled to the class. I...what? I've never made bread pudding...great. All of a sudden, a huge bowl of custard and two large brioches from the bread kitchen downstairs appeared on my station and there I was, making bread pudding for everyone. Chef Jeff told me to do whatever the hell I wanted with it when I asked how to slice the bread, and told me to go "ape shit" with whatever I wanted to add to it. I didn't go quite "ape shit" and stayed conservative and just threw in some chocolate chips and raisins. Luckily its as uncomplicated a recipe as it gets, just rip up some bread, pour on some custard and put it in the oven. 30 minutes later, the delicious bread pudding came out of the oven and the entire class devoured it during lunch.

We also made a creme anglaise, which we will use tomorrow to make vanilla ice cream, Bavarian cream, which is creme anglaise, but with whipped cream and gelatin added, and finally a pastry cream, which is a thicker custard with flour and cornstarch. At the end of the day, we each made our own pate brissée, a tart dough, carefully incorporating cold butter into sifted flour and then trying not to work it with our hands as much as possible. Martin, of course, managed to somehow miss the fact that Chef Rogers reminded us about 5 times that our butter needed to be very cold, and ruined his first attempt by adding butter that after sitting in the 90 degree heat of the kitchen for an hour, had completely softened and started to melt. Chef Rogers made him throw out the first batch and start a new one as the rest of us started to clean up the kitchen. Ahh...I hope I can make it through this week!

Tomorrow we're doing ice creams, sorbets and meringues and then finishing the week with souffles and tarts. I'll start taking bets on how much weight I'll gain in Level 2 from eating all this pastry goodness.

An Awful Day of Offal

Thank god it's almost Friday! This week has been so crazy that I haven't even had a chance to sit down and blog about starting Level 2 until just now. And what a better way to start off my tales of Level 2 than with a description of today's activities...Organ Meat Day.

Last night I went to my first Richmond alumni event in NYC (since when am I a college alumnae? So weird.) and ended up staying out later than expected and drinking a little more than my post-college liver is used to. Whereas my Friday nights used to mean parties and bar hopping, now they mean bedtime by 10 p.m. (usually earlier, let's be honest) and hanging out with my parents while my dad debates the pros and cons of cotton versus synthetic underwear as he picks out some new pairs from the Jockey catalogue (hope that doesn't embarrass you too much dad). So after knocking back a few oysters and a glass or two of wine with Dad at the Oyster Bar and then a few drinks at the alumni event, I was feeling less than stellar when my alarm clock woke me up at 5:20 this morning. After stopping into Walgreens for some Extra Strength Excedrin, I headed to school. Upon entering the kitchen, my head pounding and my stomach feeling a little queasy, I found myself face to face with a 10 pound calf's liver, jiggling and pink on Chef Roger's station as Chef Jeff, our new assistant chef who replaced Chef Nick, peeled off its outer membrane. I muttered to myself, "I could not have picked a worse day to feel sick."

During the lecture, as Chef Rogers showed us sweetbreads (the thymus gland of a calf), calf kidneys, calf liver and possibly the worst of all...lamb's tongue, my head was spinning and each time I looked at the pile of lamb's tongues, my stomach churned a little. I thought to myself, this is not going to be good. For your viewing pleasure, I took a few pictures of the before and after of the two most disgusting-looking things I have ever seen in a kitchen, sweetbreads and the lamb tongue:

The Lamb Tongue, after 2 1/2 hours of boiling to tenderize the tough muscle.

The finished tongue dish, Lamb Tongue with warm potato salad and ravigote vinaigrette.

The sweetbreads before

After being transformed into crispy pan-fried sweetbreads with brown butter caper sauce and creamy goat cheese polenta

I tried everything, although I can't say I really enjoyed any of them. The sweetbreads were very soft and moist, almost like a sponge and the lamb's tongue would have been ok if I had not seen them whole with their outer skin. The tongue tasted similar to a braised beef, but just a little bit tougher. The calf's liver was very fatty-tasting and sort of chalky, with an aftertaste that I did not enjoy. After we cooked everything, Chef Rogers made a dish of sauteed kidneys for us to try and that was actually my least favorite, even though they were served in a delicious mustard sauce. I almost had to spit it out because it was so difficult for me to swallow. But I didn't want the chefs to see me do that after Chef Jeff yelled at everyone for not tasting what we were cooking, so I just swallowed it and tried to ignore the pungent taste and the hard, chewy texture. Needless to say, I'm happy to be done with that day!

This week we've been doing a ton of meat, braised lamb shank and rabbit ragout yesterday, veal blanquette with rice pilaf and simmered beef with horseradish sauce on Tuesday and roast chicken and sauteed venison loin on Monday. After being basically vegetarian all summer (with the exception of fish and pepperoni...weird, I know, but I love it too much), it's been a little bit of a shock to be eating all this meat, and the variety of different meats, and I'm honestly getting really sick of it, I'm ready to be a vegetarian again! But tasting everything is part of being a chef, so I just have to suck it up and eat the meat!

Yesterday, we had a new chef to the FCI, Chef Dave, who was rotating through his training. It was a new experience for us all....he is the exact opposite of Chef Roger's calm, controlled personality. To Chef Rogers, he was probably the epitome of every obnoxious American man, and he even made the mistake of pronouncing Chef Rogers' name (which is pronounced Roh-jay) as Roger...hard R. "Did everyone just hear what Chef Roger said!?" "Yes, Chef" everyone responded with a suppressed giggle. Every 5 minutes he would yell a command to us all, and periodically rotated around the classroom asking everyone the same question, "IS YOUR RABBIT RAGOUT IN THE OVEN?!" "Yes, Chef." 10 minutes later he would do another rotation to our station, "IS YOUR RABBIT RAGOUT IN THE OVEN?!" "Yes, Chef we put it in 20 minutes ago." Several times, he would come around to our station, poke me in the back, nearly knocking the wind out of me with his force, as a way of telling me to get out of the way because he was going to show us something. Later on, after we plated our braised short ribs and showed them to Chef Rogers, my partner and I were taking a few bites of our meat to see how it tasted. I had just finished taking a bite, with my fork held in the air when he comes over, grabs the fork out of my hand, takes the largest hunk of meat I've ever seen a person fit in their mouth and says, "Shit that's good." "I guess I need a new fork," I said to my partner. I grabbed another fork and all of a sudden he reappears, bearing his own fork and knife and takes another huge hunk of meat off the plate. It was an interesting day with Chef Dave in the kitchen.

We experienced another new chef this week, Chef Jeff, who took over for Chef Nick as assistant to Chef Rogers. After weeks of hearing nightmares about Chef Jeff in the locker room (someone would come in talking about how he made them cry several times a week), we were all scared to share a kitchen with him. So far, he hasn't been too bad. He's very strict, sarcastic and matter of fact about things, but he is definitely knowledgeable. At this point, I'd rather have a mean but knowledgeable chef instructor than a nice chef who doesn't really know much. The fact that he's a little bit stricter adds to the pressure of the kitchen and has made me want to do better.

In other news, I went to Eataly on Monday night with my friend Bridgette (Check out her blog on baking, here: http://bridgetteweeks.wordpress.com/). Eataly is a new Italian food emporium that just opened in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich, two of the most well-known Italian chefs in the country opened Eataly to be both a store and a restaurant space. The building is filled with different food stations, like Pizza and Pasta, Fish, Vegetables, Gelato, an Espresso Bar and a full Charcuterie and Cheese area. Around those areas are rows and rows of Italian goods like fresh and dry pasta, canned tomatoes, Italian jams and chocolates. I could have spent hours in there! But my train home was calling my name and unfortunately they wouldn't let me set up a mattress on the floor to sleep.

Here are some articles on Eataly if you're interested: http://ny.eater.com/places/eataly

I'm a little bummed because I won't get to cook this weekend because I'm headed to Richmond for family weekend to visit my little bro!

The Amused Bouche

The Exam

I did it! I passed the Level 1 exam today, which means I'm one level closer to being a real chef. The exam was relatively simple for all that we've learned in Level 1, it consisted of a written portion, which was very basic and pretty easy and then a practical exam. The practical exam was the more nerve-wracking part of the test because everything was done under such stressful conditions and we knew we were being judged on every little thing we were doing. We were told to arrive at 8:30, 30 minutes earlier than class usually starts. We reported to the downstairs kitchen, a different kitchen than we were used to using. We waited outside, some more nervous than others, while the chefs set up our cutting boards and bowls for us.

Everyone pretty much knew what the exam would be because the upper level students told us and Chef Rogers basically told us everything as well. He told us we'd need to do taillage (julienne, jardiniere, emincer and ciseler), tournage and make something with tomatoes, shallots and garlic (which most of us already knew would be tomatoe fondue). Even so, waiting outside the kitchen for almost 20 minutes made everyone a little more nervous than they should have been.

Finally we were let into the kitchen to get ready and Chef Rogers told us what we would do. First the written, then we would julienne a carrot, jardiniere a turnip, emincer (thinly slice) half an onion and ciseler (dice) the other half. Then we would turn one potato into 8 shapes and turn an artichoke (basically whittling it down to just the artichoke heart). Last, we would make a tomato fondue, a recipe we were all familiar with, having made it a few times during Level 1.

We had 20 minutes for the first portion, and I hastily grabbed a very thick carrot to make my julienne. I cut into it at the exact length it needed to be, but the top portion cracked, so I had to cut further into it, so that the length wouldn't be enough for a julienne. Part of the grading for this portion includes how much waste we have from cutting the vegetable, and unfortunately this faux pas left me with a ton of carrot waste in my bowl that the chefs would undoubtedly notice. But I forged ahead, thinly slicing my julienne, while Chef Rogers and Chef Nick walked around, sometimes hovering over our stations for a minute. Next I moved onto my turnip, cutting it into shorter and thicker jardiniere pieces. As I was cutting, two people ran into the area where my station was (I was located right next to the first aid box) with their fingers dripping blood and their uniforms and towels covered with drops and spatters of blood. Trying not to faint and brushing off my lightheadedness from seeing the blood (ew), I continued with my onion while Chef Rogers bandaged the wounds. "Good thing I'm a doctor," he said jokingly as he pulled on rubber gloves. When he was all finished he said to the girl who had sliced her thumb, "Now don't forget to give me your insurance information so I can bill you." The sarcasm slipped right by her and afterward I heard her telling someone else that she wasn't sure if she had to give Chef Rogers her insurance or not.

After the chefs came by to inspect our carrots, turnip and onions, we moved onto the potato and artichoke. I turned my artichoke into the perfect shape, but getting the choke out of the middle was quite a task. I had forgotten to take out a spoon to scoop it out more easily, so I ended up using my paring knife, going at it while trying not to stab myself by poking my knife out the other end of the artichoke. I gave up when most of the choke was gone and moved on to my potatoes, carefully trimming one potato into 8 oval cocotte shapes, which should be 5 cm in length. I moved slowly so I wouldn't mess any of them up and luckily it worked. I turned out 8 potatoes, even though they may not have been the most beautifully turned potatoes in the world.

Lastly, we moved onto cooking our tomato fondue, first peeling three tomatoes, then finely chopping them and cooking them with shallots and garlic to make a mushy tomato mixture, that should have no moisture left. As we worked, Chef Rogers kept coming into the room and yelling, "I smell that something ees burning" and then ran out with a grin, trying to scare us into running toward the stove to check our pots. Nothing was actually burning, although I did save mine just in time from crisping up a little bit. In the end, I sort of ran out of time...thinking I had more time than I did, I added a little more water to mine so that the tomatoes would get a little softer, but when Chef Nick called times up, the water hadn't completely evaporated, so it ended up being a little too watery. But, imperfections aside, I passed the test and I'm moving on to Level 2 on Monday, which I am very excited for because Level 2 recipes are basically pastry, eggs and pasta...and one day of organ meat, but I'm trying not to think about that.

It's been a long week, and I'm ready to relax! I'm headed to the farmer's market tomorrow so I'll post about some of my weekend cooking tomorrow.

"Careful cooking is like writing. You have to find the exact word (or ingredient), to pare down (to get the essence of a flavor), to make seamless transitions (the compatible movement from one course to another). And then there is focusing, knowing what you are doing. One big difference is that Galway can put away a poem and go back to it again and again, sometimes for years, refining and perfecting it, whereas the chef is not allowed that indulgence. He has to get dinner on."

-Judith Jones, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food

Quack Quack

Level 1 is rapidly coming to a close in the next few days...with our Level 1 test on Friday! The test is both a written and a practical test, meaning it will be a comprehensive written test of everything we've covered (all the French vocabulary, cooking terms, temperatures, etc) and a practical exam testing our ability to julienne, jardiniere, tournage and make a few basic recipes. If we don't pass, we don't go onto Level 2. But I think they just say that to scare you...everyone usually passes.

After a very relaxing weekend of hanging around the house and enjoying a pedicure plus lengthy foot massage for my very tired feet, I headed back into the kitchen on Monday to continue with our Introduction to Poultry. We cooked two recipes: Sauteed breast and braised leg of duckling with orange sauce and pan roasted quail with rice and sausage stuffing (Two things I had never tried before...I'm not too adventurous with my meats). After our chicken lesson on Friday, we were all familiar with the general anatomy of the duck, which is quite similar to the chicken, but larger and with more fat and darker meat. Our first recipe, Duck a l'orange, was probably the most complicated dish we've had to make so far. After grabbing our ducks from the refrigerator, some classmates pretending to fly their plastic-wrapped ducks back to their stations while going "quack, quack," we attempted the recipe. First we had to quarter the duck, separating its breasts from its legs. Next we used the duck bone trimmings and wings to make a braising liquid for the legs. We added some carrot and onion to the duck bones, along with some veal stock and added the legs to braise in the oven for about 40 minutes. While the legs braised, we made a gastrique, similar to a caramel (you brown the sugar, then add vinegar), which would flavor the final sauce of the dish, adding sweetness and a hint of tartness from the vinegar. It gives off a very strong vinegar aroma when you first add the vinegar to the sugar, and I'm pretty sure I lost a few brain cells by accidentally inhaling it.

Next we rendered the fat from the duck breasts, slowly cooking them in a sautee pan on very low heat to get rid of some of the fat on the skin side, while being very careful not to cook the actual meat of the breast. Every few minutes, we had to take out the breasts and drain the fat off, and at the end we were left with a significant amount of duck fat and a crispy layer on the outside of the duck breast. When the legs were finished braising, we strained the liquid they cooked in and reduced it down to a sauce consistency (called nappant, which means when the sauce can coat the back of a spoon, it is nappant and thick enough to actually be called a sauce). Next we added a bit of the gastrique, some orange liquer and orange segments to the sauce and finished it with...butter of course! We served the dish with the breast sliced into aguilletes (thin slices of duck breast) and one leg cut in half, bone in and topped with the sweet orange sauce. I was hesitant to try the barely cooked duck breast, so I decided to nibble on the most cooked slice on the plate, and realized that I really liked it! It was moist and richly flavored...so much more than a chicken could ever wish to be. No wonder the French are so enamored with their ducks!

After ducks we moved onto stuffed quails, which are quite possibly the smallest thing you could ever imagine eating. A whole quail is maybe one inch larger than my very small hand and whenever Chef Rogers said quail during the demo he would say, "Your leetle quail," in a squeaky high voice. We made a stuffing with rice, zucchini, carrots, mushrooms and Italian sausage that we stuffed into the teeny cavity of the quail and then trussed it very carefully so that the sausage would stay inside the quail. The quail is usually deboned when it arrives in the kitchen, leaving two holes on either end that make it quite difficult for stuffing to remain in the stuffing cavity without the crafty assistance of some twine. I tied my little quail up like I would wrap up a Christmas present and prayed that enough of the stuffing would remain in the cavity during the cooking process. First we sauteed the quail to brown the outsides, while basting it with butter. Then we finished it in the oven and served it with a demi-glace and a fried basket of potatoes filled with a frisee salad. (I took a picture, which I will try to upload when I am not feeling so lazy). Unfortunately because quail are so small, they are very easy to overcook, which both myself and my partner did. I wasn't crazy about the flavor of the quail either (but I also forgot to salt it before cooking, which may be why). It was pretty flavorless to me. But the stuffing was good! Our recipes turned out pretty well that day...although I was feeling very clumsy and kept burning myself on everything! I took a hot pan out of the oven and 3 minutes later put my hand around the sizzling hot handle, searing the palm of my hand. But a little ice bath cured took care of that! Only teeny burn today, so I'm doing better! I'd rather be burned than cut because I do not like to see blood.

Today we cooked two types of beef dishes: Grilled Strip Loin Steak with compound butter and Beef Medallions with Sauce Bordelaise and pommes frites. When I arrived this morning, I got everything ready at my station, got all my ingredients...checked the clock and saw that it was past the time when my partner usually arrives and decided to get her station ready for her. But then it was 9:00, time for attendance, and she still wasn't there! I knew she wasn't coming in when Chef Rogers skipped over her name during attendance. I quickly panicked...doing these recipes on my own! Usually we split the tasks between partners, so we never make a full recipe on our own. Then I thought to myself...Now's the chance to really prove yourself, that you can do on your own what everyone else is doing with two people. And so I did. Luckily it was a relatively easy day, but I kept up with everyone else.

After watching Chef Rogers carve a massive bloody chunk of fillet in the beginning of our lesson, we were sent out on our own to make two compound butters and a sirloin steak for the first dish. We grilled the sirloin steak, attempting to make a perfect quadrillage (those criss-crossed grill marks) on our steaks. Unfortunately mine did not turn out so perfect, for some reason the middle section of my steak did not have the same marks as the outside, but hey...it was my first attempt at grilling. When we brought our dish up to the chefs to test, we were supposed to guess how the steak was cooked (medium, medium rare, medium well ,etc) without cutting into it. You're supposed to be able to push down on the flesh of the steak and be able to tell how cooked it is. The chefs taught us this cool trick for feeling how a steak should feel at certain degrees of doneness: Touch your index finger and thumb together and then pat that little piece of muscle under your thumb that pops up...it will feel like a rare steak. Do the same thing with your thumb and your middle finger...medium rare. Thumb and ring finger, medium well, thumb and pinky finger, well done. If you can remember how that feels, you'll always cook a steak to your desired doneness!

Easier said than done though! I guessed right on my sirloin...medium well. Although I intended to cook it medium rare. On my second steak, the beef medallion, I guessed medium rare, but it ended up being quite rare. For the beef medallion, we sauteed it in a pan instead of grilling, after molding it into a perfect circular shape and tying it with twine. While we sauteed it, we basted the beef with butter, of course. We also cooked a sauce bordelaise along with it, which consists of a red wine reduction with shallots and peppercorns and then a demi-glace (a reduced veal stock), and of course the sauce is finished with butter. Mine overreduced at first, turning into a deep purple syrup, but with the addition of some veal stock and a little heat, I was able to fix the sauce to the perfect consistency and flavor. Next we made some pommes frites while the cooked beef medallion rested (so the juices can redistribute and you don't lose the precious juices, which are "liquid gold", according to Chef Rogers, when you cut it) after putting a few potatoes through a mandoline to get a thin julienne shape. When everything was ready, I pulled a hot plate out of the oven, spooned some sauce bordelaise on the bottom, carefully placed my beef medallion on the sauce and topped it with a heaping pile of pommes frites and a flourish of watercress (Anyone's mouth watering right now?) Even though it ended up being cooked rare, it was tender and delicious...but that can easily be attributed to the fact that during the cooking process it was bathed in a mount of butter. Those chef pants are getting a little tighter from all this buttery, rich food!

Tomorrow we have a big test on poultry and beef (we have to label the meat cuts from a diagram of a cow, ugh) and then we move onto pork and lamb for our last two lessons of Level 1.

Murder in the Kitchen

Ahh fall finally feels like it's just around the corner, that hint of crispness in the air. While I'll miss the bountiful summer offerings of the farmers market every Saturday: the plump, juicy tomatoes and the crisp cucumbers, I'm looking forward to the flavors of fall: the cinnamon scent of a baking apple pie, the warm comfort of a simmering stew. It's been a few days since my last post on Wednesday so I'll update you with all I've done in the kitchen since then.

On Thursday morning, a stabbing occurred in the kitchen...on my cutting board. I murdered a lobster; slicing my freshly sharpened chef's knife through its head, in a vain attempt to ease its suffering before being dropped in a pot of boiling court bouillon. I've eaten and killed plenty of lobsters for the pleasure of their sweet flesh dunked in warm butter during my summers in Maine, but this time it was more than just averting my eyes to the last struggle of the lobster and dunking it in a pot of boiling water. In class, we were using the lobsters to make a sauce americaine, a rich creamy lobster and brandy-flavored sauce that would coat the lobster meat poached in court bouillon. To make the sauce we first had to each kill a lobster, take it apart completely and make the sauce americaine with the leftover shells. After watching a demo from Chef Nick on how to take apart the lobster, we were sent to do it on our own. I pulled out two lobsters from the box in the refrigerator, one for me and one for my partner, Sam. As we prepped our cutting boards and knives, the two lobsters crawled around the metal bowl they were being held in, one grabbing onto another bowl and causing it to spin around my station. I quickly grabbed an empty bowl and it put it on top of the one carrying the live lobsters so we wouldn't have to see them moving around and so they wouldn't escape prematurely. I didn't feel too squeamish about killing the lobster to be honest, or as squeamish as it seemed like most of the class was. Yes, of course I felt bad for the poor thing, but as with most things in the kitchen, you can't really hesitate, you just have to jump in and do it. I watched Sam kill her lobster, pointing the tip of her chef's knife into the back of it's cephalothorax (head and trunk part), at the point where the shell has a slight horizontal line. After inserting the knife, she quickly maneuvered it through the shell and head part, splitting its head in two.

Then it was my turn. I said a quick goodbye to my lobster friend and positioned it on my cutting board, taking one more good look at it. "Don't be afraid, Eleese," Chef Rogers said, walking by my station. "I'm not," I said, "Just saying a quick goodbye." And with that I inserted my knife and pushed it down through the lobster's head, it's nervous system still causing the body and legs to move even though it was now dead. We took our lobsters apart, separating the meat from the parts we would use for the sauce and got everything on the stove to simmer. For the presentation, we removed the meat from the tail and claws and arranged it on the plate so it slightly resembled a lobster body again. Then we topped the meat with the rich, orange-colored sauce americaine. It was not my favorite dish because of how rich the sauce tasted and how concentrated the lobster flavor became from how far we reduced the sauce. But I am a bit of a lobster snob, always preferring a freshly caught and steamed lobster to any other variation on the delicious crustacean.

Next we made a quick mussels dish with white wine, shallots and parsley, which was very good. Because we were very careful about not overcooking them, and ate them right away, they were much more tender than any mussel I've ever had before. Usually in restaurants they end up getting too overcooked and rubbery. After mussels we made seared scallops with a parsley coulis. We ended up burning the outside of our scallops a little bit so even though they still tasted good, they did not look so pretty. And we ran out of parsley before we could grab enough for our parsley coulis so it ended up having more of an olive green tint to it than a bright, grassy green that we were looking for. Slightly embarrassed, we presented our dish to Chef Nick, right as Alain Sailhac, one of the deans of the French Culinary Institute and a former head chef of restaurants like the 21 Club, Le Cirque and The Plaza Hotel, came into our kitchen. He said hello to us, asking us how things were going, while our overcooked scallops bathed in an olive green mess of parsley coulis. Luckily he didn't mention the less than pleasing aesthetic of our plate, but nevertheless I was a little embarrassed that he had seen it.

After scallops, we made escargot and then took a shot at shucking clams and oysters. After attempting to shuck an oyster, I realized a new found appreciation for anyone that shucks oysters for a living. To shuck an oyster, you have to hold it carefully in a towel, so you don't stab yourself (great!) and then try to dig a semi-dull knife into the hinge on the back of the oyster, while not breaking the extremely fragile top shell. Then once the knife gets into the hinge (a nearly impossible task), you have to carefully scrape of the adductor muscle that holds the oyster onto the shell. I managed to shuck two oysters, although both had a great deal of crumbled shell in the oyster when it was eaten. Several hours later, I was still picking shell out of my mouth from eating the two oysters. Besides that, they were pretty delicious. I wasn't brave enough to try a raw clam though...something about it freaks me out. I did try escargot though, which was a first for me. I thought I would like it more than I did because of all the butter and garlic that it's swathed in during cooking, but I think it was the antennae sticking out of the shell and the muddy taste of the snail turned me off from every trying them again.

Yesterday, on Friday, we had our first poultry day! How exciting. We made Poulet sauté chasseur (Sautéed Chicken, Hunter Style) and Poulet Poché dans un court bouillon méditerranéen (Chicken Poached in a Mediterranean-Style Broth). We started out our day with our second test of the week, on the fish and shellfish lessons from the previous few days. Then Chef Rogers took us through a powerpoint on different methods of cooking: roasting, braising, grilling, baking, etc, etc. And then he showed us how to quarter and how to truss a chicken. Each team took two chickens, one to quarter for the poulet saute chasseur and one to truss for the poached chicken. My partner Sam did most of the work for the quartered chicken while I prepped for the sauce ingredients, although I did cut off one half of the quartering. I decided I really hate chickens. Well, I've never really like chickens, but trying to truss it made me hate them even more. Most of you probably know this, but trussing a chicken is when you tie a piece of twine around it so that all the chicken is stuck together so that it cooks evenly if you are roasting or poaching it or whatever other cooking method you want to use for it. Chef Rogers instructed us to take a piece of twine the length of our arms, "For Elise, you take a leetle more." (For my midget arms). Then you slip the string under the chicken, make an x over the legs and slip the twine under the legs and bring it up to the front of the chicken, tying it tightly, ensuring that the legs are crossed under the breasts and the wings are tightly secured under the string.

The Poulet sautee Chausseur, was sauteed first, then finished cooking in the oven, while we made a sauce with brandy, mushrooms, enriched chicken stock (chicken stock boiled with the leftover chicken bones from quartering it), shallots and white wine and finished with butter, and chopped tarragon and chervil . Our sauce ended up being a little thick and very rich tasting, so it wasn't my favorite dish. But I loved the next one. For the poached chicken, we made a Mediterranean -style chicken broth with sauteed onions, lots of garlic, Kalamata and green olives, capers, tomatoes, red peppers, tumeric for a yellow color, fennel seeds and red pepper flakes. It was fragrant and delicious smelling...and was probably the most healthful thing we've made so far...I don't think it had any butter! We poached the trussed chicken in the broth until the meat was so tender it started to fall off the bones. When it had reached a temperature of 150 degrees, we pulled it out of the broth and then cut it into serving sized pieces. For serving chicken, the rule is that you always have to have one piece with bone and one without, and one dark piece of meat and one white piece of meat. So we carefully carved out the breasts of the chicken and the legs, removing all the necessary bones and leaving some for the presentation. Then we place one piece of boneless dark meat under a piece of white meat with the bone in on a bowl, surrounded it with the luscious yellow colored broth, punctuated by the red pepper and tomato, topped it with two twisted caper berries and a flourish of chopped parsley and served it to Chef Rogers, who proclaimed it perfect.

So now it's the weekend again, time to relax and practice cooking on my own time without the restrictions of recipes and butter! I just returned from the farmer's market with a bag of tomatillos in their sticky green husks, bright pink finger radishes, eggplants, and some of the first Macoun apples of the season. I better start cooking!

A Fishy Fire

Here's a photo I forgot to add to my last post of some of my weekend cooking, a sweet plum tart:


I made a pate sucree, a sweet tart dough and baked it briefly in the oven, lined with some almonds and lentils that I found in the pantry (I wouldn't recommend using the almonds though...they caught on fire in the oven, and then in the panic of all the smoke I picked up the tart pan so that part of the dough fell underneath, woops!) so that the tart dough wouldn't puff up too much. While the dough cooked, I sauteed the sliced plums, fresh and tart from the farmer's market with plenty of sugar, orange zest, cinnamon, allspice and cloves. I didn't really measure any of the spices and would definitely go with just cinnamon last time, or less cloves because it overpowered the fresh taste of the plums. I cooked the plums on the stovetop until they were fairly soft, but not completely cooked, then I arranged them in the tart, leaving the syrup behind, which I then added to whipped cream. I sprinkled some raw sugar over the plums and put it back in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes until the dough and plums were cooked through. Not bad for my first plum tart, and at least it looked good!

Today was an eventful day at school. We worked on fish for the second day, although today we did a flatfish, flounder, which is filleted differently than the roundfish that we did yesterday. They're designated as either a flatfish or a roundfish based on their skeletal structure (flatfish are literally flat) and where their eyes are. Whereas a bass has eyes on both sides of its head (roundfish), a flatfish has an eye on only one side of its head. Flatfish also produce 4 fillets, while roundfish only produce two. Filleting the flounder was a bit easier than the red snapper and trout were yesterday, even though there were more fillets to cut and it involved removing guts. Yesterday the fish had already been gutted so we didn't have to deal with any of that good stuff. But the first thing we had to do with our flounder today was carefully cut around the head of the fish, being careful not to push down too hard and to cut up through the skin so that we didn't puncture the intestines and make a huge mess of the fish. I successfully navigated around the bones that indicate where to cut, pushed down hard to separate the bone that holds the head on and then twisted the head while pulling it out. More cleanly than I expected, a handful of fish guts and liver slipped out of the body cavity as I pulled the head off, leaving only a small trail of blood for me to wash out with cold water.

After slowly and carefully cutting out four fillets from the flounder, I went to rinse them and grab a bunch of paper towels to dry the fish because we would be frying them next. I needed a good bunch of paper towels to do this, so I grabbed four or five from the machine and put them down to the left of me. Next thing I know, the paper towels are in flames, one after the other lighting up and blowing around my station. I frantically tried fanning and blowing on them to put out the flames but it wouldn't stop! In a moment of panic I yelled "Chef!" while my old partner Christian ran over from his station next to ours and put the paper towels into the bucket of sanitation solution that we keep on our station. With the flames put out, we all started to laugh a little, while Chef Rogers came over to inspect the situation. With an amused look on his face, he looked at the now black remnants of paper towel covering my stovetop, raised his eyebrow and gave us a look that said, "Seriously?" and walked away. In case you're wondering how my paper towels lit on fire (no they did not spontaneously ignite), our stoves have pilot lights, so there is always a very small flame below the burner, which I stupidly put my paper towels right on top of. While my new partner Sam and I laughed about that look Chef Rogers gave us during lunch, he reappeared from his lunch, pushing a rolling cart with two salamanders through the door (portable broilers that create crusts on dishes like french onion soup, gratin, etc). With a loud BANG, one of the metal salamanders crashed on to the floor from the rolling cart getting caught on the door frame, with a yell from Chef Rogers, "Who deed that?!" He laughed to himself as he picked up the pieces of the salamander and put it back together with the help of a few other students. The more time I spend in the kitchen with Chef Rogers, the more I appreciate his lighthearted approach to cooking.

Here is a picture of my Gaujonettes (essentially fancier fish sticks) with two different sauces, a red pepper coulis and a remoulade or tartar sauce:


They were delicious, especially the sauces, but it involved a little more work that we were accustomed to, since we had to carefully fry the delicate potato basket that holds the goujonettes, fry the parsley, the fish itself and make the two sauces. It was worth all that work though when Chef Rogers saw our dish and said, "Wow, zat ees magnificent!"

After lunch, a buzz started to grow in the air, with students getting excited for the chef demonstration by Jacques Pepín that afternoon at 3:30, right after class. Jacques Pepín is one of the deans at the French Culinary Institute and is also one of the most famous classical French chefs in the world. Even Chef Rogers was excited for the demonstration, telling us we could leave 10 minutes early if we did a good job, which never happens (once he made us wait around for 15 minutes when we finished early, instead of letting us go before 3). In the afternoon we made a braised dish with what was left of the trout we filleted that morning. It was served with a white wine and shallot sauce, with plenty of cream of course. As soon as we were done preparing and then presenting the dish to chef, everyone started to clean up as quickly as possible, but we were running late. Soon we saw the Level 2 students from the classroom next door walk by, on their way to the locker rooms and then to the demonstration. We started to panic...there wouldn't be seats left! It was slowly approaching 2:55 and the kitchen was still a disaster. While some people were cleaned up and ready to go, others were still plating their dishes and hadn't even considered cleaning up yet. So we all started pitching in, helping everyone else get cleaned up and finally at 3:05 it seemed like we were almost done when Chef Rogers yelled, "This duck confit isn't going to wrap eetself back up and go into the fridge!" Several people scrambled to get the saran wrap and put away the duck confit. Finally at about 3:07, Chef gave us the OK to go and there was a stampede of chef whites racing out of the kitchen and down the stairs, some headed straight to the auditorium without changing. I got changed as quickly as I could, running into the eerily-empty locker room and throwing off my chefs whites. I ran down to the auditorium where seats still remained and Jacques Pepín was preparing his station with the help of some student volunteers. Here is a terrible picture I took from my phone of Jacques Pepín:

Before the demonstration, Pepín told the crowd he would be willing to take some photographs and sign autographs while we waited until 3:30. Half the auditorium of eager culinary students lined up to meet one of the most famous chefs in the world, each eagerly shaking his hand and then posing for pictures. I wished I had brought my copy of his book, The Apprentice with me for him to sign while the line of students hoping to get close to Pepin grew longer by the minute. Finally, the waiting students were asked to sit back down for the demonstration. He didn't really cook anything at the demonstration, but rather took the audience through a basic demonstration of kitchen technique and essential tools, like which type of metal works best for what in pots and pans, which knives are essential and how to perfect our knife skills. Being in his presence was awe-inspiring, and made me want to keep working on my knife skills so I can chop as quickly as he can! But after being in the kitchen for more than 60 years, I don't know if I'll be able to match up anytime soon.

Tomorrow we continue with fish, moving onto shellfish. Wish me luck, we have to kill our own lobsters!

Potato Dreams

I was not feeling the 5:20 wake up call this morning after a relaxing three-day weekend full of sleep, U.S. Open tennis and cooking, of course. But at least when I woke up I realized I didn't have any more dreams about potatoes like I did all weekend, which I assumed were most likely due to "potato day" in class on Friday.

We made 8 different potato recipes on Friday in class, pommes gaufrette (fried waffle shaped potatoes), pommes pont neuf (a thicker version of pommes frites), pommes anna (a dish of circle shaped potatoes arranged in circular rows and then sauteed and baked to a golden crisp perfection), pommes duchesse, pommes puree (mashed potatoes), pommes darphin, gratin dauphinoise, and croquettes. Each recipe was delicious from the crisp pommes pont neuf that put McDonald's french fries to shame to the creamy and cheese-encrusted gratin dauphinoise. Who would have known that such an ugly brown vegetable (tuber, technically) could turn into so many delicious recipes?

Here is a picture of my Pommes Anna:


So after cooking all those potato recipes, I was literally dreaming about cooking potatoes on both Friday and Saturday night. "More pohtayoes, more pohtaytoes, we need more pohtaytoes!" Chef Rogers yelled in his French accent in each of my dreams. I guess something from that lesson stuck with me.

Today started out with our second test (I got a 98 on the first one, woohoo!), which was pretty easy, but longer than the first. It took everyone about 45 minutes to take the test and then we moved on to our recipes for the day: Trout en Papillote (baked in parchment paper) and Trout al Meuniere (in a brown butter sauce). After Chef Rogers instructed us how to fillet the whole fish, we were sent to the refrigerator to pick up our own fish. When it was my turn to pull out the trout from the cardboard box holding them, they kept slipping away from my hands, covered in their own slime (which is apparently a good indication of their freshness). Each time I reached in to grab one of them, my hand would slip until finally I managed to grab one, only to have it's sharp pectoral fin stab my finger! And this was right after Chef warned us to be careful about being cut by the fins because of the "nasty infections" they cause. Awesome. So I brought back the fish to our station and quickly tried to rinse out the cut, which really wasn't so bad at all, just a little slice. My finger hasn't fallen off yet, so I think I'll live.

I set the whole fish out on my cutting board and stared it in the eye, determined to fillet this thing right. I started by cutting off all the fins with my scissors, whispering a little, "take that" to the fin that tried to slice my finger earlier. Then I flipped it so it laid horizontally on my board and began to cut along the backbone until I reached the ribs, where I took out my scissors again and cut the rib bones to free the fillet from the skeleton. It wasn't really so bad after all. I managed to cut a recognizable fillet of fish, and then proceeded to do the same with the remaining half of the fish. Since the fish was so fresh and firm, it was relatively easy to slice away the bones and then the skin on the bottom without touching the fillet too much, which can inadvertently cook the fish. After we were done filleting the trout, we started on the remaining ingredients to cook it en papillote: tomato fondue, mushroom duxelles and julienned carrots, leeks and celery. We put it all together, a layer of tomato fondue and duxelles on the bottom, then the fillet, then topped with a delicate julienne of vegetables, a sprig of thyme and a splash of wine. Then we carefully folded the parchment paper and put it into the oven, where it puffed up and turned a deep golden brown on top. It won the approval of Chef Rogers, our fish was tender and moist and the vegetables were properly seasoned with enough salt for his salt-loving palate.

After our lunch break, we moved on to the trout, which was slightly harder to fillet because it was not as fresh and therefore fell apart very easily when touched too much and the bones are much thinner, making it harder to find the proper places to cut. And then I had to pluck out about 30 teeny little bones, which caused the flesh to break apart even more from the heat of my fingers and because I had to press down on the flesh to find the bones. Next we got everything ready to cook the trout in a sautee pan and make the brown butter sauce with lemons, capers and parsley. For the plating, we also had to make a tournage out of red potatoes, which we spent a considerable amount of time perfecting. When we had everything ready, we started to cook: first we coated the skin side of the trout with flour and put it in a sautee pan with clarified butter, cooking it slowly so the heat would permeate through the whole fillet and we would only have to flip it for 5 seconds to cook it fully. Once the fish was done, we prepared the plate with three tournage potatoes, with one edge dipped in chopped parsley, and topped the trout with a few capers, freshly made croutons and small lemon segments. Next we started the brown butter sauce, which on our first attempt burned and filled with black bits of burned butter. Not what we were looking for. So we started again, this time bringing the butter up to the proper hazelnut color quickly, while swirling the pan. Once it was at the perfect color, we hit the pan with a splash of lemon juice to stop the cooking. Then we added parsley and more lemon segments to the sauce and carefully spooned it over our fish. After bringing it up to Chef Rogers for approval, we got to taste the rich deliciousness of the butter sauce on the moist trout, the tang of the lemon juice adding to the intensity of the flavors. It was delicious, although with all that butter, a few bites was enough for me!

Tomorrow we continue with our fish, moving on to flounder. It better not stab me this time.

Week 2

"The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude." -Julia Child

I apologize for my lack of posting this week. In all honestly, it hasn't been too exciting in the kitchen. Although I know you're all very excited to see this...



I know you've been waiting to see that one. I'll make sure to get another one that includes how great my chefs pants make my butt look. (not). Yes, that is me, in my chef's whites in our kitchen classroom. And yes, I'm aware the hat makes me look like an elf. You can borrow it if you want. This week we made soups on Tuesday (French onion, Split Pea, Farmer's Vegetable Soup and Beef Consomme), preserved food on Wednesday (Duck Confit, Preserved Lemons, Pickled Vegetables and a dish called Branade with Salted Codfish) and today we made salads (Nicoise, a Macedoined Vegetable salad with a basil mayonnaise and tomato fondue, and a bitter green and herb salad). Today was the busiest day of them all, but I still managed to turn out some pretty good dishes. Here is a picture of my Nicoise salad:



Doesn't it look yummy? It was (I had it for lunch.) After all that work, the only injury I sustained this week was the minor loss of some arm hair due to an unfortunate singing incident that I didn't happen to notice until I got on the subway and thought, "Hmm, part of my arm hair appears to be missing and what is remaining looks a little funny...oohh, so that's what singed hair looks like." Let's just hope the same thing doesn't happen to my eyebrows. If you've ever seen my license picture, you know that is not a good look for me.

Since this week was relatively slow, I thought I would take you through a typical day for me at school:

I usually arrive in SoHo around 7:45/8 am after a train ride into Grand Central and a subway ride into downtown Manhattan. I usually go to Starbucks if I have some time to kill and get the paper or look over the recipes again for the day. Sometimes I go to the library at school to take out some books. (The library, by the way, is my personal heaven...it's all cookbooks and books on food writing, I could spend weeks in there reading all the books!) Around 8:10/8:15 I head over to school to get changed in the locker room. It's usually pretty busy by the time I get to the locker room, with women carefully putting on their uniforms: the jacket, the neckerchief, the hat, the pants, the shoes, etc and then gathering their notes and knifes and whatever else they'll need for the day. And it's all done while talking about how many ducks they'll have to debone that day or how much they love or hate a certain chef. This morning I heard a story about someone in an upper level class who decided to fry up a smaller fish found in the stomach of a larger fish they were supposed to be filleting and give it to the chef who promptly replied in a French accent (of course), "What the hell eez thees???"

After changing, I head up to the classroom, where I get my station ready. I grab my cutting board and safely secure it with a wet paper towel underneath so it doesn't slide around while I'm cutting something, then I get out all the equipment from my knife kit that I'll need that day and lay it out on a clean towel underneath my station. I grab a few towels, tuck one into my apron, and then consult the recipes on the index cards I carry with me for what I'll need for my mise en place (meaning "everything in place" in French, mise en place basically refers to all the prepwork needed before starting a recipe). With my partner, we grab all the ingredients we'll need for the day in metal bowls and bring them back to our station.

At 9 a.m. sharp Chef Rogers calls us to the front for attendance, everyone responding to their names with a "Here, Chef." At the end of attendance he greets us for the day and we all respond in unison, "Good morning, Chef." Then Chef Rogers will go through a powerpoint with our lesson for the day and demo the first recipe for us. The chef's station is equipped with an overhead camera that zooms in on whatever Chef is doing and projects it onto a screen so we can see everything Chef is doing from above the dish. After the demo, we're on our own to make the dish. Usually we'll do one or two in the morning, depending on what we're cooking that day and then we break for lunch around 12. At 12, our "family meal" is delivered, cooked by the upper level students who try to think of creative ways to use the scraps left over from the whole school. Sometimes its a success...sometimes it leaves you wondering what exactly it is your eating. For example about a week ago we had meatballs...I took two and they ended up being two different types of meat. Another day we were given a tray of every kind of meat you could carve out of a pig...I decided to pass on that one....I wasn't even 100% positive it was pig and it happened to be the day after Level 2 did organ meats, so it really could have been anything.

Depending on how many recipes we have to make that day, we usually reconvene after lunch around 12:30 or 12:45 and usually have another demo from Chef Rogers before beginning the last recipe of the day. After each recipe is done, we carefully plate it and bring it up to Chef Rogers or Chef Nick to taste. For things like the Hollandaise and Bernaise sauces, they don't taste them, but just check their consistencies. "I cannot eat all that booter, eet ees bad for my heart," Chef Rogers said. Some things though, like salad and cooked vegetables, they need to try to see if we've seasoned it correctly. We usually aren't given much open praise...I've learned that the rule in the kitchen is no criticism is equal to praise. Whenever we're done with our last dish, we clean up our stations and our tools and wait for chef to dismiss us. Then I head back to the locker room, where someone is usually complaining about a chef or how much they reek of sesame oil or how their uniform is covered in duck blood. It's all just a typical day..

Potato day tomorrow! I'm going to be stuffed with pommes frites, pommes anna, pommes dauphinois, pommes, pommes, and more pommes!