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.