goodbye main kitchen

After veg station, it was time to rotate back into the same station I started in - prepping for Latin Quarter. The station was chaotic as always, what with order sheets changing every day, so there was always something different to keep track of, not the mention the last-minute requests and modifications.

I tend not to lead unless asked (or unless the leaderless situation warrants it), so one day I got into this situation where I thought I was making a certain number of things but kept getting asked to do other things. Which was fine, except I wasn't getting my stuff (namely red mole sauce) done. Dustin and I had talked about working together on the mole, except he had gotten pulled into doing other things too, so I was alone and demoralized and stopped caring and burned all of the dried peppers that were needed to go into the mole.

So I went into the storeroom and cried, partly over the burned peppers and failed mole but mostly over how I've been feeling like I've been alone and abandoned with stuff to deal with. But Dustin helped me get more peppers (thankfully there were more), and when I came back to my station, I found everybody helping me to stem and seed them. I almost felt like Chef Hammerich (whom I had approached earlier when tears were just starting to escape) said something to everyone about how I needed help - that's how much these hands seemed like miracles.



Today was the last day of our rotation in the Main Kitchen. Chef Hammerich made a speech about how he really enjoyed having us, noting that we were exceptionally good at helping each other without being asked - a rare and almost unteachable trait.

That makes me love being a part of this group, or any group - because isn't that what we're here for?



Go team.

lentil soup

One day my friend Cris brought over some lentils, chicken broth, and mirepoix vegetables (carrots, celery, leeks). In order not to disappoint his intentions (and to make something of things), I made a pot of lentil soup.

From my time in soup station, I knew that I needed a ham hock. So I went to Trader Joe's, which was the wrong place since all their meats are neatly pre-fabricated, with nothing as primal as a hock of ham to be found. They did, however, have a package called "bacon bits & ends", which I thought would be great as a flavor substitute. C'mon, it's bacon.



That went in the pot first to be browned and to release some oil. Originally I was going to use only half a pound (half the package), but then I thought why not and used up the whole package. I mean, there was going to be a pound of lentils, so the two pounds balanced each other out? :)



Once the oil was released from the bacon, I put in the diced mirepoix to sweat/soften. The standard mirepoix has onions instead of leeks, so this was a nice change of pace (carrots can also be substituted for parsnips, and the combination of parsnips + celery + leeks is white mirepoix, which is often used for light-colored stocks like fish stock).



My roommate Molly was making dinner at the same time and had some leftover tomato sauce, so I stole some to mix in. (Adding tomato product to brown is a process called pincé, which is commonly done for stock/sauce-making in order to add color and flavor.)



Then I added chicken broth, the whole container was 4 cups of liquid so I added another 4 cups of water since the instructions on the lentils called for 8 cups of liquid.

Brought the whole thing to a boil, then simmered for about 45 minutes. And there you have it, lentil soup for the soul.

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.