Itching to get back to it..

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.

But man, can I just go back to school???

Externship

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.

• Paleys Place
• Simpatica
• Gustav's
• H5O
• French Laundry
• Alinea
• Lola
• Lolita
• Le Bernardin

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.

Ratatouille

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 Grant Achatz of Alinea

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.

My brain has been taken hostage...

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.

The Next 6 Weeks..

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.

Evidence

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.