mini chicken & waffles

For our last day of skills week, we did a couple of appetizers. Tishara and I continued together to make mini chicken and waffles.



To make the chicken pieces small, we used a round cutter on some chicken breasts.



These were floured, egged and breadcrumbed. The flour was seasoned with poultry seasoning, onion, cayenne, salt and pepper and leaned toward the spicy side.



The waffles were made with a standard waffle iron, then quartered. I added a bit of orange zest to the batter to freshen things up.

The waffles were topped with maple syrup and cinnamon butter - piped with a star tip to look nice.

As for the garnish, we were recently taught how to cut strawberries into roses, so we did that. I made bouquets out of the roses by using skewers as stems, apple peels as leaves, and an orange as a base.

A pretty end to second semester of culinary school.

tiramisu reimagined

After sausage and cheese, Tishara and I got to work on crafting the dessert while Jason, Dustin and LaToya worked on an entree. While poring over the pastry textbook in the library, Tishara mentioned that she liked ladyfingers. While I didn't want to make tiramisu, I thought we could make something that was the tiramisu deconstructed.

To do this I thought about the flavor components involved in tiramisu - chocolate, cinnamon, cocoa, cream. Each of these components would be reconstructed as something else.

First there was chocolate. We decided to do chocolate cups to hold our dessert. To do this we had to inflate some water balloons with air, manually. My lungs weren't up to the task, but Tishara got it done.



Glazin the balloons (to form the cup shape) proved to be no easy feat. Although we chose to use chocolate glaze (easy) as opposed to tempering chocolate (hard), what gave us trouble was trying not to have the balloons explode on us. First the glaze was too hot, then we were applying too much pressure. Eventually I was able to get the balloons all glazed by rotating them through the glaze on an angle (as opposed to sinking them directly in). Then we had to double-dip them because the glaze was too thin.

The next day we eased the balloons out by poking them with a skewer and letting the air out slowly (popping them would have destroyed the cups). Chef told us that they would come out more easily if we had sprayed them with oil and wiped them off (for just the thinnest layer of oil).



The cinnamon and cream components were turned into cinnamon ice cream, made with the help of an ice cream maker (and Devon's expertise). Cooking the creme anglaise (ice cream base) was the hardest part - one batch was destroyed because the temperature got a little high and the eggs in the cream got cooked.



The cocoa component was the finishing touch - in the form of cocoa nib tuile cookie garnishing the tops of each dessert.

We kept the ladyfinger component though - they're crumbled in bits underneath the ice cream.

Turned out delicious, and that's just the beginning of my journey in dessert.

making cheese

There are some simple miracles in cooking that seem to make everything worthwhile. Meringue is one of these miracles. Making cheese is another one, as I so discovered.



This is milk, brought to a simmer with citric acid added in. It took a few tries with the citric acid for it to curdle, but then all I did was pour the mixture through a china cap strainer layered with cheesecloth...



And there, freshly made ricotta cheese.



Making mascarpone cheese wasn't much different, simmered heavy cream with the addition of tartaric acid. Then poured into coffee filters set in plastic baskets, chilled in the refrigerator overnight.

You can make your own too! Supplies here.

making sausage

Finally, skills week came for my team (Jason, Dustin, LaToya, Tishara) and I. Together we made the five mother sauces (bechamel, veloute, brown/espagnole, tomato and hollandaise), which was great fun because we did it all in order with each other, going from one prepped cup of ingredients to another, all the while angling for pans and stovetop space.

After the first day we divided ourselves up for the smaller tasks. Tishara and I decided to make sausage, choosing cajun boudin out of a recipe book.

While a great many sausages utilize pork butt as the main protein, our recipe called for cooked pork butt.



Besides meat there is generally some starch (rice, barley, oatmeal, etc.). Our recipe called for nishiki (short-grained) rice. We didn't have any so we substituted sticky rice. Besides that there were scallions, parsley, oil and spices.



Then we ground up the cooked pork butt into the mix-ins.



And used the sausage machine to shoot the meat mixture into casings.



After the casings were filled, we twisted them into sausage-lengths (kind of like twisting balloon animals). Then we boiled them and tried one - very mushy. Next time I will try using raw meat instead.

chaud-froid

One day we had little to do in meat lab, having butchered all of the meats that the upstairs kitchen(s) needed, so Chef Oakley told us we had some time to play.



So we arrived that morning to a giant bowl of blanched vegetables. Turns out we were going to do chaud-froids. (Chaud-froid, meaning hot-cold in French, refers to foods that are made hot but eaten cold.)



In our case it involved roasted chicken with breasts made skinless for display purposes. The breasts were glazed with a mayonnaise/gelatin mixture, which provided a white background for decoration.



The blanched vegetables, as it turns out, were meant to be sliced thinly, have shapes cut out of them with different mold cutters, then pasted on with more liquid gelatin. As luck would have it, when I started thin slicing some red bell peppers, the natural grooves in the pepper led me to cutting these petal shapes, which ended up forming the basis for my flower/butterfly design.



Working across from me, Jason created a whole organ system for the chicken.



Working next to me, JD created his dream vacation.

(More of my classmates' chicken art can be found in this set on flickr.)



In the end Dustin had the painful task of washing away all of our art. Chickens are for eating, after all.

sushi workshop!

The Five Star Club on campus hosted an after-school workshop on sushi-making. I love to eat sushi and didn't get to attend last semester's workshop, so naturally I went.

Chef Andy from We Be Sushi was our guest instructor for the day. He's been making sushi for 50 years, and his mother for 50 years, so with a century of accumulated experience, I knew this was the real deal.



Before diving into the hands-on stuff, we got a mini lecture, replete with diagrams, on how to (and not to) wrap our sushi. For regular maki rolls, you want to spread your rice (get two mounds about the size of two large eggs - wet hands to prevent sticking) over the rough side of a half sheet of nori (seaweed), leaving a half inch of space at the top. The rice should be heavier on the top and bottom with a trough in the middle for the other ingredients.



Sprinkle a layer of sesame seeds and swipe a pinch of wasabi (if desired) before laying on fish/vegetable/etc. Make sure the nori is positioned half an inch from the bottom edge of the bamboo mat (which is wrapped in plastic to prevent sticking).



The actual rolling motion occurs twice. The first roll has the bottom edge of the bamboo mat touching the top edge of rice. The second roll incorporates that half inch of seaweed space. To keep the rice fluffy, apply only a little pressure to the rolls. When finished, place the roll with the seam side down so the steam moisture can seal the nori edges together.



We made a lot of different rolls - cucumber, mushroom avocado, spicy tuna, salmon, tamago (egg), and California roll. For the inside out rolls, rice should cover the entire half sheet of nori and there only needs to be one rolling motion.



After that we moved on to nirigi sushi, with precise shaping instructions. First lay your fish in your palm vertically in the crook formed by your fingers, then dab a dot of wasabi in the middle. Then grab a matchbook-sized piece of rice and lay that on the fish. Then pinch the top and bottom of the rice once (with thumb and index finger), then half-close your hand (as if making a fist) while laying your index finger across the rice pressing down (as shown above). Then rotate the piece so the fish is on top. This time pinch the left and right sides (with thumb and middle finger), then lay your finger across the fish pressing down. Finish by rotating the piece 180 degrees, pinching the the left and right sides (with thumb and middle finger) and laying your finger across the fish pressing down.

We made shrimp, salmon, albacore (white tuna) and unagi (eel) nigiri.

After that Chef Andy showed us how to make sushi rice from scratch, without a cooker (the rice we had used for our rolls/nigiri had been pre-made in a cooker). The pictorial instructions are here, but basically you take equal parts of nishiki rice and water, let the rice soak in the pot for at least an hour, then bring the pot to a boil over medium high heat and let it boil for 1 minute, then let turn the heat down to medium for 2 minutes, then turn the heat down and simmer for 7 minutes, then turn the heat off and let the pot sit on the stove for 15 minutes.



After that the rice is combined with sushi vinaigrette. For 1 quart of rice you'll need 7 oz Japanese rice vinegar, 4 tablespoons sugar and 1 heaping tablespoon of salt. The vinaigrette mixture can be boiled if you want the salt and sugar fully dissolved.

Using a big bowl, combine rice and vinaigrette, then comb through the rice with the skinny edge of the rice paddle to break up any lumps. Use immediately, or keep in a covered container.

And there you have it, sushi and sushi rice as a master taught it.

buffet time!

For the buffet we produced many appetizers and cold platters. I took the not-as-fun task of slicing meat and managed to have a lot of fun arranging the meat platter.



We had mortadella, roast beef, pastrami, turkey, smoked ham, chicken galantine and pâté.



From there I moved on to building fruit platters: cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon and pineapple, with strawberries and kiwis and grapes for garnish.



I tried reproducing the honeydew flower technique on a kiwi. Had limited success (a couple of petals were broken).



Then I attempted it on an actual honeydew. The hardest part was actually getting the melon to open - apparently I didn't cut deeply enough and had to retrace a few times. It looks a little rough around the edges, but it is my first and only attempt so far!



I think at one point when I was arranging this platter, Chef said something about a "future garde manger chef in action". Maybe, if I don't end up in pastry first!

melon carving

Besides small things like mushrooms and potatoes, Chef Oakley can also carve all manner of decorations. In advance of us preparing platters for the Fall Semester Buffet in the PCR, he showed us how to carve melons.

To cut a honeydew into a flower, first cut petal shapes (almost like an elegant zigzag) around the circumference. This actually could make two flowers, since the top and bottom turn out the same (although we shave the petals off one half and upend it to make a base for the other).



Then trace petal shapes within the original petal shapes.



Cut into the outer layer of flesh for each petal and fan the petals outwards.



To finish, Chef took a small ice chisel (he does ice sculptures too) and carved lines inside.

Oh, and Chef also carved a poinsettia out of a watermelon too. So beautiful.

fun with potatoes

Another vegetable we were taught to carve with a paring knife was the classic tourné-ed potato. As with fluting mushroom, it required steady hands and repeated fluid arching motions, which looks deceivingly easy once you've mastered it but is incredibly hard starting out. This one was my... tenth attempt?



Chef Oakley also showed us other things we can do with potatoes, such as converting them into mushrooms (by whittling down one end and peeling spots off the other end).



We also saw how to cut potatoes into two interlocking pieces - I call them claws because they look like crab claws to me.



The next day when we were doing fruit platters I managed to recreate the technique on a kiwi. Just cut two vertical slits on either side, then with the fruit standing on a table edge, hold your knife at a 45 degree angle to the table edge and cut in till you hit the slit. Repeat with the other side, then pull the top and bottom apart!

fluting mushrooms

Besides meat/protein, occasionally we get to do fun things that stray into the realm of garde manger. Like fluting mushrooms.



I've fluted mushrooms before, with a channel knife, back in PCR for the shrimp louie salad. Fluting them with a paring knife is much harder, which is what Chef Oakley was trying to teach us. You know you're doing it right if the strips you carve out hang on the edge (see above) for you to peel off at the end.



Here's the line-up of mushrooms I practiced on - some of them have stars in the middle because Chef taught us how to make designs using the tip of our paring knives.



Besides stars there was also this pattern that spiraled outward to cover the entire mushroom cap.



My attempt is on the left. Chrissy got creative on the right and made a porcupine!

grinding meat

From time to time we'll take all the accumulated scraps of meat (some too fatty to be eaten straight) and grind them all into ground meat.



The industrial grinder we have is really scary. It sucks down multiple pounds of meat at a time and grinds it up in seconds. A complete monster and a marvel of machinery.

One day we took two sheet trays full of twice-ground beef and turned it into hamburger patties with this other monster of a machine.



You basically feed the top of the machine with ground beef and it ejects a patty at a time, complete with patty paper. All I had to do was take the ejected patties and pile them on a sheet tray and I couldn't even keep up with the machine.



Another thing Chef does with ground meat is turn it into sausage. This piece of machinery spits sausage mixture (not automatically but via churning) into casings, which are then tied up. I haven't gotten to use this yet, but hopefully once before the semester ends.

fish butchery

One would think that butchering fish would be similarly easy to butchering chicken. After all, it's easy to identify all of the parts. However, that is not true.



The list of difficulties is long, just like this salmon.

I think it has something to do with fish not being mammals, their structure is kind of alien. The scales, the slipperyness, the flaky flesh that tears easily.



The procedure is basically to cut into the head, take the two sides off the spine, then take the belly bones and fins and finally the skin off.



Then we had to pluck the pin bones out with pliers - they're small and embedded and remind me why I didn't like eating fish growing up - all the bones.

I've since grown into eating it - as least the boneless fileted versions of it, but the butchery's still hard.

family meal

Down in Meat Lab we're split into three teams, two teams for butchering while another team embarks on skills week.

During skills week that team learns to make all of the mother sauces (béchamel, velouté, espagnole, tomato and hollandaise), after which they come up with a two-day menu to feed the rest of us.



The first team to do skills week made an entree of skirt steak with chimichurri sauce over a bed of spinach, mushrooms, shallots and polenta cakes. This was the most delicious meal I had eaten in a while, not just because I liked the ingredients, but because the steak and sauce were done really well - the steak was charred on the outside and juicy on the inside, and nicely fatty, and the sauce was herby and tangy and spicy.



The coming together part was really exciting to watch. And real professional-like.



We call this "family meal", just like how they call staff meals in restaurants.