I've been out of school for a week now (Christmas break)and I'm really itching to get back to it. It may sound a tad crazy, but man do I ever want to get back to school and continue the learning process. Maybe I'm a tad weird that way, but hey one week is good enough for me - recharged the batteries, been spending time with my son. But there's a part of me that wants back into school.
I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen during this long break. I've made stock, and yesterday I worked on a recipe from Chef Michael Symon's "Lola". It's the BBQ sauce recipe you find in the back of Ruhlman's "The reach of a Chef". It turned out pretty darn good, though I didn't have veal stock or espresso beans. So I used some remouillage in place of veal. Not the same, I know but I used what I had on hand and I figured using the beef stock itself would lend to much of a "beefy" flavor to the sauce. I had regular coffee beans and that seemed to work well, though I will have to try and get some espresso beans. And at some point, I'll hunt down some Veal bones and do a proper veal stock.
Headed out to the mall today, need to stop by Kitchen Kaboodle (got a gift card for Christmas and I need some knife guards) and I'll make a swing by the book store, as I'm in need of more reading material. I've blown through all 3 Ruhlman books, I've been reading the section on sauces in McGee and even started "Letters To A Young Chef" by Daniel Bould. I'm sure I'll be posting again before the start of the New Year.
One of the things we're required to do at school is towards the end of our stay is a externship at a restaurant to get us in gear for the 'real' world of the kitchen. At first I hadn't put much thought into it because it seemed pretty far away, but I'm due to graduate in June - my externship will be leading up to graduation.
I'm slowly coming up with a list of places that I wouldn't mind externing at, though I'm still not sure what it is exactly I want to do when I graduate. Do I want to work the line? Do I want to go into catering? These are things I wrestle with pretty much on a daily basis. Why? Well the more thought I put into it, the better off I'll be when the time arrives.
Here's a short list of places I would like to extern at, including honestly some dream choices that I'm not sure I could get - most of these places are Portland based except for a few and if you know anything some of these are far from the friendly confines of the state of Oregon.
Yes there are some lofty restaurants on there and there are a few more in Portland that I wouldn't mind including Beast, and Higgins. But that's just a rough list at this point and time, I need to sit down with my Chef adviser and see what he thinks should be a good fit. I've really gotten interested in French haute cuisine at this point, though that might have to do with reading Ruhlman's "Chef" series and the fact for Christmas I got "The Art Of Modern Cookery" by Auguste Escoffier.
OK so I'm a bit behind in my movie watching, but last night I finally sat down and watched "Ratatouille". I was absolutely floored, what a great movie! I can't believe that I hadn't see the movie before this. But with the food connection, it was pretty darn good. It was also interesting to find out that none other than Thomas Keller of French Laundry, Per Se, etc. etc. was the Executive Chef for the movie and I guess he had a minor voice role in the movie as well.
I'm not sure what or when his voice was used, but hey I'm a geek that way and found it highly interesting. On another note, they just posted our grades for the Second Cycle, and I'm proud to say I'm still carrying a 4.0!!! Now this might not be all that exciting, but for a kid who squeaked through High School and never ever even sniffed a 4.0 this is pretty big thing for me.
I didn't doubt myself, though I though that I choked on a couple of the written tests, which is always a sticking point. I may take the most anal retentive notes of anyone I know - but I can digest all that information but as soon as that piece of paper is set down in front of me - I have a tendency to go blank. It's something that I really need to work on. I'll take some snap shots of what my notes look like, I take them in class and then type them out that night.
My son will be arriving from Spokane in a few hours, and I can't be more excited. Hopefully I'll get him to help me out in the kitchen, I think at some point before he goes home we're going to make Mt. Dew Cupcakes. Yes, you read that right Mt. Dew Cupcakes. I found a recipe a year or so ago and haven't tried it, and honestly I drink enough Mt. Dew that I should be a share holder. Oh, and I'm not a baker so anytime I take on a project like this - it'll prove to be interesting.
Chef Achatz is amazing, the things he does with food. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to post this. He's been in kitchens his entire life, worked at the French Laundry and Trio. He now has his own 'baby' Alinea.
Lately all I can think about is food, really this is nothing out of the normal realm of things with me. But when you write about baseball on a regular basis, that usually takes up most of my 'brain' space. With the off season in full swing, my thoughts have drifted to food, school, layering of flavors and such.
Maybe it's all the reading I've been doing, but what ever it is - it's taking over my very soul. This is fine by me, but let me give you an example. I'm readying "The Reach of a Chef" by who else, Michael Ruhlman. In it he describes a rub he used at American Bounty (a CIA restaurant), all he gave was the ingredients - not measurements. And I'm setting out to work my own rub off that list. Why? Because it's intriguing to me and I gave my last bit of rub to Chef Matt who in turn raved to Chef Wendy (our VP of Academics) which was a very proud moment.
Anyways the rub calls for 'sugar', so I shot off a email to Ruhlman to ask him what sugar was used and he replied with "Regulah. But that all three would work, and by that I had asked "white sugar, brown sugar, or turbronego?" so my thought process kicks into gear. I'm going to make at least two versions, one the way it's written the book - though I've never tasted the rub but I'll give it a go. The second one, I'm going to use all three - by weight because you need to pack brown sugar.
Just to take a couple steps back, all summer I worked on rubs and BBQ sauces. And came up with a kick butt (if I do say so myself) BBQ sauce, but in "Soul of a Chef" Michael included the one they use at Michael Symon's "Lola" - I'm going to give that one a shot too - the only thing is I don't have veal stock. I do have beef stock and remouillage - so I may use that and reduce it. The recipe calls for 4 oz of veal stock, I'll take 8 oz of remy and reduce it by half.
See what I mean? This is the shit I think about at all hours of the day. Not to mention I've completely mapped out the Aps I'm going to do for New Years Eve. Every NYE the fam puts together aps for grazing all day and what not. So I've picked up some slack and I'm going to do some Aps including Wings with 3 sauces, one of those being the Lola sauce. Though honestly I think I'm driving my mother nuts, being in the kitchen so much now. I need two more sauces for the wings, I'm think maybe a traditional sauce and a Asian inspired sauce (we have a bottle of hoisin sitting in the spice cabinet and need to do something with it.)
And feel free if you have a suggestion, leave it in the comments.
As I mentioned in a previous post I start Charcuterie after Christmas break, then after that I just learned that I'll be in Intro to Baking. Baking is by far one of my weakest area's for sure. I've always said that my mother is the baker in the family, and she's done it professionally - I'm the cook.
I had kinda hoped I get it this next rotation just to get it out of the way. I'm not going to try and wind myself up to much about it, but I know that's one class I'll have to be just as anal retentive on my notes as I was in Skills II.
As I promised here are a few pic's from the last two days. Mind you, I'm a bit new to photographing food.
I'm sure I'll post more pic's, just didn't want to go overboard. You can also check out my photo stream at the top left which has more pictures from this adventure in home stock making.
Michael is becoming far and away my favorite food author at the moment, I've even traded a couple emails with him - and he's always pretty quick to respond which blew me away especially after I sent him a long rambling email on my situation and how I became enrolled in Culinary School.
Anyways, I found this on myspace of all places and thought I'd pass it on here. He talks about "ratios" and if you know those - recipes don't matter really. It's short sweet and to the point.
The remy is now venting and should be ready for the refrigerator and freezer by the time I go to bed. Two day process that netted 2+ gallons of Stock/Remy, and shouldn't have to by store stock for a while. If you can make your own stock I highly recommend it, because you can control what's in it.
Here's what was in my beef stock.
Mire Poix
Beef Bones
Tomato puree (it was brushed on the bones during roasting)
Sachet (w/ bay leaf, parsley stems, and pepper corns)
That's it.The main stock simmered for 24 hours, the remy only went 4 hours. I'll have pictures tomorrow once I pull them off the camera and what not.
The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been horrible, I have visual evidence to this that I'll share in a later post. Yesterday I set about making Beef Stock (I have visual evidence of this as well).
I had about two pounds of beef bones and followed my procedure - now given I'm at home before roasting a pound of the bones were uncooked - another we had at Thanksgiving (a really nice roast).
So 24 hours later I'm blessed with a gallon of beef stock, now I'm headed back into the kitchen and taking those bones and making a remouillage.
Definition of a remouillage:
A second stock, usually made in restaurant kitchens from bones that have been used once for primary stock in order to make complete use of the bones.
The definition is from Micheal Ruhlman's "The Elements of Cooking". While I'm thinking about it, I've moved on to Rulman's third book "The Reach of the Chef".
Ok, where was I? Oh, that's right...
I'll use the remy where I would normally use water or even reduce it for sauces. Can't afford Veal bones so I'll use whatever I can get my hands on. Like I said I've got visual evidence of all of this process, though I didn't snap any shots while I spent at least once an hour skimming the top of the stock.
I've have now completed six weeks at the Western Culinary Institute, and by far Skills II has been my favorite, of course I've only had two classes so far. Chef Winter has been amazing, to the point of I gave her a huge hug at the end of class yesterday. This is a Chef that will always be one that I look back upon fondly. She even prepared a 30+ minute video of everything we did in class - quite awesome really to look back on and something I'm sure I'll save for years and years.
Everyday of Skills II I looked forward to getting up at 4:00am, making the 45 minute drive to school and putting on my whites. I don't want to sound like I'm towing some company line here - but I can't wait to get into my "Whites" tie that apron around my waist and getting to cooking. I feel almost honored that I can put those whites on and do my 'thang' as it were. It's been a while since I've felt this kind of pride in anything I do. I used to have that feeling when I was in radio, but the luster wore off - this time around I don't think that's ever going to happen.
Currently we're on Christmas break and will return to school in January, the 5th to be exact. Where I'll start a new class, "Charcuterie" or if you look at my class schedule "Meat and Seafood Identification and Fabrication". We start out in the class room for half the day, and then up to the butcher shop. Should be an exciting time, though I've bonded with some of my classmates from Skills II and most of them move on to another class as they're in the Associates program, I'm in just the diploma program - so for me - new classmates every 3 weeks. Excpet for the four of us who are diploma, we rotate together.
We only had three days of class this week due to weather, and that was a bit dishearting. I wanted to be in class, I wanted to learn what Chef Winter had to pass on to us. But after the break, she will hold what we call "open lab" after school to learn and prepare stuff we didn't get to with the shortened week. Which is great, there were two sauces we didn't get to make - and I want to learn how. Not to mention, I'm joined the schools sauce club called "Les Sauciers Sevants". I've really become to love a great sauce - made with the right things like a good veal or beef stock it can enhance a dish like you couldn't imagine.
With it being Christmas Break, I should be posting a bit more often.
That's a term I've picked up quickly on in regards to a kitchen and well at least in class. Just Friday I found myself knee deep before I knew it, and it took a bit to get out of said weeds. If you're not sure what "in the weeds" means, think of it this way knee deep in crap, way behind. But I wasn't nearly in the weeds as much as the rest of my Group B partners. Let me back track, at the beginning of Skills II with so many students, we were split into groups. Of course being the oldest guy in class outside of Chef's Winter and Matt - everyone immediately looked to me for guidance.
I'm pretty anal retentive when it comes to lecture and demo notes, so much that when I'm doing home work I'll type out that days notes, print them out and put them in a binder with sheet protectors. So up until Friday I had been letting my group members take a look if needed. On Thursday Chef came up and quietly pulled me aside and asked me to not bring them, or at least let my group members fend for themselves.
Both Chef Winter and I watched in amazement as at least 3 members of our six person group were constantly in heavy weeds not to mention every time they turned around they were asking Chef what they needed to do next.
Here's an example.
On Friday we were to do the following:
Steamed Salmon with brown butter sauce
Poached Halibut with Lemon Buerre Blanc Sauce
Steamed Broccolini with melted butter
Par Boiled Green Beans which were to be used on Monday.
Pretty simple right?
I guess it wasn't for one person, who had not paid attention the day before in the demo and lecture. She plated her Halibut with not only the lemon buerre blanc but on a bed of green beans that were to be used on Monday. And then she had the audacity to be pissed about it. Hello, you didn't pay attention in the first place and now you're the one pissed at Chef? Holy crap woman, catch a friggin clue.
It was also due to this particular person and her roommate that our group White Bean soup project was an abject failure. Too gritty (beans weren't cooked enough), it sat in the walk in over night as we didn't get it plated in time. Though when I presented my plate, Chef gave me that knowing look. A couple days before 4 of our group was missing leaving two of us to do our work, and work that had been divided between group members the day before.
I've got to work on getting lest frustrated, and just plow forward. It was definatly a learning experience.
First off let me note that after twelve years in the broadcasting community, I said enough is a enough and decided it was time cut bait and move on. My move, to enroll at the Western Culinary Institute (a Le Cordon Bleu program). This wasn't the first time I had thought about it, but the first time that I moved forward and got out of my comfort zone - a zone I had been in for nearly half my life.
Also a free lance writer (of sorts). I've been blogging about baseball for several years now, my blog has been picked up (just recently) by a great sports blogging network and I write for another blog that just got purchased by a bigger company. So blogging about school, is easy (its just finding the time). Everyday last week I was in the Skills 2 kitchen by 6am class starts at 7a sharp with line-up where not only do we get checked out to make sure our whites are in order. But usually Chef Winter and her associate instructor Chef Matt grill us on the summary of cooking terms we should have learned the night before as part of our daily homework).
So here I am working on week 2 of a 3 week cycle, right now it's Skills 2. But I'll talk about that later, right now though I've come across many books lately and have started reading like a mad man. I mean, I love to read so why not? Here are some books that I've purchased in the last couple of weeks, though I'm going to list them I haven't read all of them yet.
"The Making Of a Chef" Michael Ruhlman
"The Soul of the Chef" Michael Ruhlman
"The Reach of the Chef" Michael Ruhlman
"Letters to a young Chef" Daniel Boulud
"On Food and Cooking" Harold McGee
"The Elements of Cooking" Michael Ruhlman
The McGee Book is a must have it was given to us when we recieved our text book bundles in Skills I.
Posts
