veg station

After roast station was vegetable & starch station - shortened to veg station, or veg. Usually there would be two vegetables and one starch, so for example one day we had broccoli with almonds, buttered turnips and carrots, and pasta napoletana.



Everything was cooked in batches for freshness, which lent itself to some crazy sauteeing since items would run out quicker than expected sometimes. The first time I ever used the wok was one of these unexpected run-out times - let me just say, those were some adrenaline-fueled sauteed snap peas. And there was a camera over my shoulder too! Some documentary film team was in the kitchen for a couple of days, and they wanted a close-up of wok sauteeing. Totally reminded me of the time I was in the Iron Chef competition and fried capers for the first time.

Here's Jason making Corn O'Brien, or corn sauteed with diced onions and bell peppers, or what I'd call Fiesta Corn.



To be honest, most of veg station was prep. Since we were working with 25-50 lb quantities of each vegetable, there was no way we had time to prep the day-off. I like prep though, since I find it rather meditative, so I liked this station for that.



Here's Jason roll-cutting carrots (cutting on the bias and rolling the carrot between each cut). This was my view from the cafeteria to the kitchen on my way back from lunch break.

crumbly goodness

So I haven't talked much about food I make at home, and that's because I don't make food at home all that often - only twice or maybe once a week. The reasoning was that I was tired from cooking so much at school that I didn't want to cook at home. This made me worried that culinary school was killing my passion for cooking, because home cooking was what I'd always enjoyed the most - cooking that I and people I loved got to enjoy.

Thankfully this is changing. I've gotten so much in the habit of cooking that I miss cooking if I don't do it. And this makes me wonder if there's some threshold for creative endeavor, where maybe you might do something once in a while and love it but avoid doing it every day since you think it will tire you out (or it actually does tire you out), but then you just keep pushing and you discover you do actually want to do it every day.

Anyway, there was one day where I was tired of seeing the same two Granny Smith apples sitting in my fridge, so I decided to do something about them. I didn't want to eat them plain, so I went to allrecipes.com and typed in "granny smith" as a search term under "Ingredients". I found this recipe for apple pie but I didn't have enough apples, so I decided to make mini-pies, or tartlets.



I peeled/cored the apples and cut them into little cubes. Then I sauteed them in butter with brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon until they got soft.

While those cooled I made the dough, with measurements modified from the recipe:

1 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup melted butter
1 egg

I mixed those all together, kneaded the dough and let it rest in the fridge. Later I took it out and portion them into ten balls, which I then flattened with my palms and placed into the muffin tins, pressing with my fingers to stretch the dough up the sides. I divided the apple filling I had between all ten tarts, but it wasn't really enough (could have used twice the apples, or half the dough).

Baked until the tarts became golden brown, then cooled them on the stovetop. And when I took one out to eat... that first bite into the crust amazed me. And I don't really do that to myself, with the things I make - it was just a happy coincidence, but it renewed my delight in cooking. I mean, I just want every pie/tart crust to taste like that.



Will have to do it again.

roast station

After entree station was roast station, which was similar to doing barbecue ribs in that we would pop the protein in the oven first thing in the morning and then do other stuff. Unlike the ribs however, we rubbed the roasts on the day of, usually just salt and pepper and another neutral spice like rosemary. There were always two kinds of meat, usually turkey and something else (beef/veal, pork, brisket) - and they would go in a 350 degree oven for about an hour or so.

While the roasts were... roasting, we would make bread dressing. Which was just like stuffing, except it wasn't stuffed in the cavity of a roast. Pretty simple to make - cut day old bread into cubes, pour enough stock for the cubes to be soaked, then add sweated diced celery and onion, then add dried fruit (apricot or cranberries and dried apples) and beaten eggs and put into a oiled pan and baked for about 45 minutes.



Then we would heat up two different types of gravy (usually turkey gravy and a brown sauce gravy) for the two roasts.

Pretty straightforward station. One day the veal roast was too big so I had to divide it in half and re-truss the newly divided roasts. Pretty fun, it reminded me of crocheting since you have to use your pinkie like a hook to pull the strings under and over sometimes.



Trussing is one of those skills taught in meat lab, which makes me look forward to that next rotation!

Oh and here is one of our roasts being carved in the cafeteria for service.

barbecue ribs (entree station)

Speaking of massive amounts of protein, there was one day where we did flank steak and I marinated 60 lbs of it. Cutting all that meat up was the worst part, almost one straight hour of slicing by hand.

Another massive amount we did was 24 racks of ribs. The day before I dry-rubbed all of them, which was enjoyable not only because it was my first time doing it, but because I like the movements of rubbing and kneading. Probably similar to the reason I love working with dough so much.



The ribs were dry-rubbed and wrapped the day before. On the day of, we just popped them into the oven at 350 degrees and let them roast for a good 2.5 to 3 hours. During that time we made barbecue sauce from scratch.



While I love learning how to make grocery store staples from scratch (ex: mayonnaise) because it's like a phenomena explained or mystery revealed, barbecue sauce had so many elements you're better off just buying the darn thing.



The ingredients pretty much took up the entire workbench, and included such things as molasses and worchestershire sauce (that you might not ever use for other things). My friend Tyler introduced me to this barbecue sauce, which is pretty darn good. If you live in the Bay Area, you can hit up one of their restaurants and get the sauce.



Portioning the ribs was a lot easier than the flank steak - each rack yielded about 4 servings, all mouthwateringly delicious meat falling off the bone. Our station was pretty popular for samples that day :)

breaded pork chops (entree station)

After pasta station I went to the main entree station, which was a lot of work because of the massive amount of proteins we would work with (though usually portioned by the downstairs meat lab, which is my next and last rotation of this semester). Despite the work, it was still simple because we only had to keep track of only a few elements: protein, sauce, and sometimes a garnish.

My first day on the station we breaded and fried pork chops. The standard breading procedure is done in three steps: first a thin layer of flour to coat, then a dip in an egg bath, then finished off with the breadcrumb coat (the flour helps the egg adhere and the egg helps the breadcrumbs adhere). For the pork chops we seasoned the flour with powdered onion/garlic, salt and pepper - it's not necessary to season all three steps, but you can if you want.



My partner Dustin fried the pork chops in a tilt fryer with a thin layer of oil. By frying I really just mean searing, for that crispy brown layer that looks and tastes appealing (thanks Maillard reaction!).



Then, to ensure the meat inside was cooked, we popped the trays of pork chops into the oven until a thermometer inserted into the chops read 155°F.



To finish, we ladled gravy (veal and chicken stocks thickened with roux) over the chops and garnished with a slice of lemon and a parsley leaf.



***

The same technique of sear-and-bake was used on another entree my station made - blackened catfish. The blackened-ness is due to rub of pre-mixed cajun spice that I put over the filets, surprisingly easy and super delicious.

The sauce was just roasted red bell pepper pureed and mixed with mayonnaise. The garnish was chopped scallions. The result? Yum.