how eggciting! (part 2)

In lecture (which we have after kitchen work), we've also learned a lot about eggs - their different purposes, different sizes/grades, different market forms, and the different ways of cooking them.

This is a square egg press. If you don't want your eggs to roll around (or if you want to fool some naive person into thinking there are square chickens), you can buy one here.

I think the most relevant things we learned was the power and versatility of eggs. They serve so many purposes:

1) As a main course! You see this a lot in breakfast.

Chef Morse demonstrated the difference between an American omelette and a French omelette. Basically, the French omelette is cooked to be less well-done (a bit runny). I think people tend to overcook eggs - usually when they're still runny you can finish them off the heat because they will still cook for a little.

2) The yolk can be combined with cream to form a liaison (ha, ha). A liaison is generally added to soups or sauces to thicken them and add color/richness. Alfredo sauce is an example.

3) The yolk contains lecithin, which is an emulsifying agent (able to keep fat/oils and other ingredients in uniform suspension). You'll see this process at work in dressings and things like mayonnaise - without an emulsifier the oil would just separate from the other ingredients.

4) When beaten, the liquid can be used as a binding agent. For example, when making breaded cutlets you would dip the meat in flour to coat, then the egg mixture, then breadcrumbs (or other crust agent).

5) The whites can be used as a clarifying agent. So far I've only heard of it being used when making consomme (richly flavored clear soup made from stock), something about the egg proteins allowing the solid bits in the stock to congeal at the surface so they can be skimmed off.

6) The whites can also be used as a leavening agent. This is illustrated by the almost-cooked omelettes we finish off in the broiler (they puff up), but more famously in souffles.


These are the ingredients for a souffle omelette (the egg yolks and egg whites having been beaten separately, then combined before entering the pan). The result is a puffy, creamy omelette.

Aside from all these amazing uses for eggs, a few tips about buying and using them:
1) If the recipe doesn't specify what kind of eggs, assume large eggs.
2) Always check the eggs to make sure they are clean, uncracked and uniform in size.
3) Eggs are graded AA (freshest, highest quality), A, or B. Depending on what you're making, the grade can be very important. For poached eggs you'll want grade AA eggs because they contain a greater amount of thick egg white, which will cling to the yolk when cooking and result in a successfully poached egg. As eggs get old, thick egg white gets turned into thin egg white, which leads to grade B eggs that are very runny and not good for much except for scrambled eggs or for baking.
4) Always store eggs in the refrigerator. If you store them at room temperature, they will drop one grade a day.
5) Because the typical egg shell has 17,000 pores, eggs absorb odor easily, so don't store them next to smelly things!

how eggciting! (part 1)

On my sister's birthday last month we frequented a couple of Denny's for some free birthday Grand Slams. Always at each place they would ask how she wanted her eggs, and she would say scrambled, because that's the most accessible type of breakfast egg we know. But then she wondered about all the different ways you can prepare an egg, so I googled "ways to cook an egg" hoping to find a definitive list (sunny side up, over easy, poached, etc.). But the list was far from definitive, and in fact, mind-bogglingly long. This site lists 100 just for starters (with pretty pictures)!


Currently I'm in breakfast station, hoping to learn some common (if not all) breakfast egg preparations. I figured that since we crack two cases (that's 360) of eggs and immersion-blend the heck out of them every morning we must be doing something with them right?


And in fact we do. We scramble a lot of them in a tilt fryer - mostly plain, with some toppings thrown in for the last portion so diners have some options (they mainly stick with the plain though).


We also make omelettes. Here are some that have mozzarella inside and are then topped with romanesco sauce (fresh uncooked tomato sauce), more mozzarella and scallions.


Here are some more that involve swiss cheese, diced apples (sauteed in butter) and bacon. Also topped with scallions for color.

And here's the recipe if you want to make some culinary-school-like omelettes at home!

1. Put some oil (canola/vegetable, butter, or Pam - enough to coat the pan) in a frying pan over high heat; wait a few minutes until the oil starts smoking (or alternatively, you can test it by shaking some water droplets into the pan - if it sizzles furiously you're good).
2. Pour in a well-beaten egg mixture (salt and peppered if you so desire), enough fill about half the depth of the pan.
3. Shake the pan vigorously back and forth as you stir the egg mixture with a spatula. Continuously fold in the edges of the omelette so they don't get dried out.
4. When the bottom of the omelette is cooked but the top is still runny, put the pan into the oven with the broiler on high (if the pan handle is not heat resistant, transfer the omelette to a baking dish).
5. When the top of the omelette puffs up (and traces of runny egg have disappeared), pull the pan/dish out of the oven. The top of the omelette should be a nice sunny/moist yellow with no brown (if there is brown it's overcooked).
6. Pile your choice of shredded cheese down the length of the omelette, then fold both edges toward the middle with your spatula (tripartite fold, if you will).
7. Garnish with your choice of topping(s) and serve!

lettuce have some fun

One of the things we learned in lecture was the reason behind tearing lettuce.

Apparently the abundance of water molecules in lettuce means that when you cut it with knife, the water molecules get sliced through and turn brown from oxidation. This is why lettuce should be torn, at least when you're talking small quantities. (In an industrial kitchen like ours, tearing lettuce simply isn't an option. I'd be there well into the night.)

As a student chef last week, I neither cut nor tore lettuce. I juiced it. More specifically, 2 lbs of it accompanied by 2 lbs of arugula and 4 lbs of spinach (with a Jack LaLanne juicer in honor of his passing). Most of the leafiness ended up as discarded pulp, but the richly-colored greenness that was juiced out seemed to me the essence of health. So pure, natural, and green.

Anyway, the liquid was needed to prepare a frozen salad recipe from the cookbook Alinea. The chef author supposedly scoffed at the idea of salad between courses as a palate-cleanser (quote Chef Morse, "he did not think that chewing a bunch of leaves was palate-cleansing"), and developed the frozen salad as an alternative, not merely to cleanse the palate but refresh it with the frozen tinglyness.

So after the juicing we poured it on a sheet pan and put it in the freezer. And every half hour or so we would use a fork to "rake" the ice crystals as they formed. (For those of you familiar with making granita, it's basically the same process, except with granita you would be using fruit juice and a circular bowl and you would stir rather than rake.)

In addition we also froze some red wine vinegar, employing the same sheet pan + raking process.

Eventually for assembly we scooped the frozen salad into little tasting cups, topped it with a minute amount of vinegar ice, then added olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper.



Most of the class's reaction ranged from "interesting" to "blughh". It was certainly interesting for me, and undeniably palate cleansing/refreshing. I think the vinegar's acidity sharpened the frozen sensation so that you felt the crystals acutely on your tongue, in a way that you wouldn't experience with granita or other frozen/semi-frozen treats.

Out of all of the things I've made, this is definitely the one that oversteps the boundary into molecular gastronomy, which is interesting in the academic theory kind of way - interesting to explore intellectually but hard to translate to reality (not just because it's a lot of work - all that juicing!, but because people tend not to understand/appreciate it - hence the "blughh" of some classmates' reactions).

Molecular gastronomy or not, it is a play on texture - an instance where you alter taste/sensory experience by putting the material (in this case, salad) through an unexpected preparation method (juicing then semi-freezing). I will be on the lookout for more chances to play in this way as I go along!

oh my lobster

A big part of why I chose to come to culinary school was because of the hands-on aspect, and boy have I been getting it.

The first week we did spend a few days going over safety procedures (via hilariously outdated videos and horrific narratives of kitchen mishaps), plus getting our chef uniforms and knife kits.


(Thanks again to Maura for goodbye-gifting me the knife bag!)

But right after that we launched into food prep, which involved looking up recipes from the school's collection and just making them, guided here and there when we could manage to grab the chef instructor walking by.

I think there are maybe 100 of us first semester students, split into morning and afternoon sessions. The sessions are then split again into savory and pastry (to switch mid-semester). I'm in the morning session, currently on the savory side with Chef Morse, and amongst us 22 students we're divided into the breakfast, sandwich, salad, and service stations (in teams of 5), with 2 lucky students serving as student chefs.

Instead of arriving at 6 or 6:30 in the morning, students chefs have to come at 5:45, which meant nobody wanted to do it. I would say that Bernie and I got stuck with the job, but we both wanted to fill in wherever was needed, so we became it.

As student chefs we attend to all of the stations, locating ingredients and providing the occasional direction. We also get assigned special projects from Chef Morse, which at first meant things like steaming potatoes.



But it quickly escalated to juicing 6 pounds of greens for a frozen salad (more on that later), preparing things like red wine jus and roasted garlic mustard dressing and lemon sabayon (yay sauces!) for demonstrations to advanced culinary students, and then one day there was a recipe involving fresh lobster.



Three of them came in the box. And they were very much alive, waving their constricted pinchers in vain whenever provoked. Chef Morse said we would be doing something like twisting their heads off with our hands, which of course I assumed we would do after they were cooked (having been coaxed into a nice hot bath...). I assumed wrong and experienced the "Julie and Julia" lobster scene moment of utter panic.

A neighboring chef instructor deftly knifed one through the head (which is apparently the most humane way of killing them, since it is instant). Then I watched Chef Morse repeat the gesture of inserting the blade into the top and slicing clean through between the eyes. Then there was one lobster left. I had to do it.

After I sliced it the lobster stretched upwards and started crawling forward. That was terrifying, especially since it exceeded the chefs' description of death rattle (when the nerve impulses are jerking around for life but any known consciousness has ceased). So I knifed it again, just to correct any possible mistake.



This was the first time I've single-handedly killed something larger than a fly (or cockroach), and I don't know how I feel about it. I am still going to eat meat, I think.

But I noticed that after the lobster was cut up into pieces, my feelings toward it were completely different. And I think the food industry is such that meat is completely depersonalized, and people would feel differently if they were closer to the sources of their meat/food.

But enough musing, as I have to get to sleep so I can hustle another day, though no longer as student chef (since we rotate every week). I hope to be able to post more often, but 7-8 hours of class a day does make it hard. Wish me luck!

everything new and crazy

Culinary school has begun, but before I delve into that I just wanted to recap the craziness that has been the new year.

My first week was spent being sick, leftover from December and all the stress that came with packing my life up and moving. After sleeping through days and drinking tea on repeat, I finally caved to antibiotics, which was just as well since I had an sinus/ear infection. Luckily I got better to go room-hunting in San Francisco for a day, and was able to find a room right by campus.

Spent a week in Hawaii, most of which was spent visiting my best friend on the Big Island. Made sure to indulge in some local Hawaiian cuisine, which is meat and starch heavy, something which I think is shared by many physical labor-intensive countries (Latin American rice/beans/pork/plantains, African corn/cassava/dough/fried stuff, etc.).


This is the kind of food that would be at a lu'au, even though I didn't get to attend one.


Loco Moco: a traditional plate usually consisting of hamburger patty and fried egg served over rice and drenched in gravy (though this had the addition of mushrooms and onions).


A fast food fried chicken and spaghetti combo.

It's interesting that Hawaii's food is composed of many different cuisines: Japanese, Thai, Filipino, Korean (kalbi in the first picture of this post), Chinese (won ton noodles are even offered on fast food menus), etc.

You can see the influences in the desserts as well:


Shaved ice: usually topped with crack seeds, pickled plums and the like (Japanese/Chinese).


Mochi ice cream (Japanese).


Sweetbreads (Filipino).

But what I really wanted to talk about, besides the exploration of Hawaiian cuisine, is the discovery of novel cooking methods, like the way they toast hot dogs in Hawaii. They have these nail-like irons that they stick the uncut buns on, which toasts the inside of the bread and gives it a toasty crispness that you wouldn't expect with hot dogs.


I can just imagine using that for other purposes, like maybe a creme brulee puff with the crispy top actually inside. Crazy, I know.

But anyway, after a week in Hawaii I flew back, immediately moved in to that room I found, and started classes the next day at 6:30 in the morning. I still haven't recovered, and probably won't for a bit since I have class 40 hours a week, but I'll try to post again soon.