Happy New Year 2012!

I thought a good way to chronicle 2012 was in pictures.  Since this will be a huge transition year, I thought I would take a picture a day to document the day to day, or maybe the new in this year.  Also, I want to improve my photography skills using my DSLR, so I thought this would be a good goal and a picture a day should help me to improve.

I thought of the idea on my walk yesterday, so I thought it was fitting to take a picture of my running shoes.  The shoes haven't seen much running lately, but I do get out to exercise a few times a week - hopefully more now that my schedule is a little more settled.

Anyway, here's the picture for January 1, 2012.  I'm a day late in posting.

As an aside, I made Buffalo Chicken Rice last night for dinner.  I was watching Sara Moulton on PBS yesterday and she made it - it's one of her 5 ingredient weeknight meals and I had all five ingredients!  I didn't take a picture (because it's pretty boring looking), but it was sure tasty.  Here's the recipe:

Buffalo Chicken Rice

8 ounces chicken breast, cubed

1 cup long-grain rice, uncooked

2 Tablespoons butter

4 ounces blue cheese

2 Tablespoons hot sauce (I added two, but wish I would have added more)

Cook rice according the directions on package.  Remember to add salt to your boiling water before adding the rice - trust me on this.

Season chicken with salt and pepper.  Melt butter in large skillet and add chicken and cook until brown and cooked through - this should only take a few minutes.  Add hot sauce to chicken and stir to coat.  Add hot rice to chicken and top with blue cheese.  Stir to combine and continue to stir until blue cheese is melted.

I'm back!

For those few of you who actually read this,  school is done, except for a few classes in the next few months.  I've started my externship, finally, after having two places fall through.  I'm about a month behind my classmates, but since I'm working full time, it shouldn't be hard for me to catch up and I will definitely be done before graduation in June.  There's a reason that people start out in restaurants when they're 20 - it's grueling work!

I'm working as a prep cook in the restaurant.  It's just like it sounds - prepping for that evening's service or a banquet.  I chop potatoes and celery, peel onions (150 pounds of them in 2 days!), carrots and tomatoes and clean and debeard mussels.  There's more to it than that, but I'm the low man on the totem pole, so I get to do a lot of the most grunt work.  As I start to learn the ropes, I will be making stock, soups, roast beef and the like, in addition to the chopping tasks.

I still have all fingers attached, although all of the onion and tomato peeling have left the tips of my fingers very sore.  I also have the customary blister on my right index finger from chopping so much.  Eventually it will callous over.

Today is Sunday, so it's pretty slow for the prep cooks.  There were two of us on, so we got things done pretty quickly and then we were sent home.  Nice to have the time back, but, unlike my salary-paying job, if I don't work, I don't get paid.  My biggest job of the day was to pass about 30 pounds of cooked potatoes through the tami (it's like a huge fine-mesh strainer) and make mashed potatoes.  In addition to the callouses, I'm going to have huge forearms if I do that a lot.

The people who I work with are nice, for the most part.  Many don't speak much English, which makes it difficult at times to communicate, especially when I have a "why" question, but it'll work out.  As I didn't have a day off between leaving my old job and starting this one, I've now worked 7 days in a row and have 3 more to go before having 2 days off.

Do I like it?  Well, it's ok.  I knew that restaurant work wouldn't be my dream job, but I think I'll learn a lot that will take me in other fields.

Stay tuned - I'll try to keep you up to date on my adventures.

A more normal week

I think this week should be more normal than last week - it was hard going to school Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  I like having that Friday break, it's needed.

Last night was a cold dish appetizer night.  We started out with a carrot and fennel salad with a champagne vinaigrette.  My chef is starting to really talk to us about different textures in dishes - smooth, crunchy, etc.  So, what I thought would be an easy salad of julienned carrots and fennel was not so easy.  We started out cooking some carrots in butter and then pureeing them with some champagne to make a smooth puree.  This was laid on the bottom of the dish and topped with julienned fennel that had been mixed with the champagne vinaigrette.  On top of the fennel was fried carrot strips - just plain julienned carrots that were deep fried.  Scattered around the dish was some fennel brittle - just hard caramel with fennel seeds added.  It was good.

We also made steak tartare - raw ground beef served with an egg on top.  It's supposed to be a raw egg yolk, but we poached ours.  We also had a parmesan tuile on the side and a little arugula salad to go with it.  When I went for my interview with the school, this was what I had for lunch.  It's not bad - not as bad as you think.  I wouldn't eat it all the time, but it was tasty.  We started with a top butt of meat and chopped our own finely.

An odd week

It's been an odd week at school.  We had off on Saturday and Monday for the 4th of July holiday, so we came back to school on Wednesday and then Thursday we had the second session of our wine-tasting class.  Tonight (Friday) we have a make up class for missing Monday but we are doing a taste sensation class with the head chef from school, no producing anything.  I have no idea what taste sensation entails, but I'll let you know - I guess it has to do with the sweet, salty, bitter, sour, etc. sensations.  Tomorrow is a big cook day (7 items!).  I'll be ready for some sleep when it's all said and done.

On Wednesday, our cook night this week, we made a cold cucumber and mint soup.  It was refreshing, but a little too "cucumber-y" for me.  I like cucumbers, but it was a bit much.  It had cucumber, mint, garlic, anise seeds and some sherry vinegar and yogurt all blended in the blender until smooth.  We had seeded the cucumber and mixed the seeds with some chives for the topping - interesting.

We also did paella.  Yum!  How can you go wrong with chicken, onions, chorizo, peppers, tomatoes, shrimp, mussels and peas?  Add the rice and some saffron in and it's a little bit of heaven on a plate.  Best part?  Lots of ingredients, but only one pot!  Sorry I didn't get a picture, because it was pretty all there in the paella pan with some fancy lemon wedges on the top.

I'm starting to look at places to do my externship - looking at some higher end hotels around the area.  Praying something comes of one of them.

Have a great weekend!

A short break

Tonight was our last night of class until next Wednesday.  Can't say I'm really disappointed, it'll be nice to have the break.  They gave us Saturday off and then Monday, of course, is the 4th of July.  We do have to make up Monday's class, so I will be in school Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday next week.  That's ok, though.

Our last night before the break was also a break.  We had a Master of Wine come in tonight and do a wine explanation and wine tasting with us.  It's the first of 3 times he will be with us, the last time being a food and wine pairing where we will cook (I think) and then pair it with the wines.  There are only 21 Masters of Wine in the US and he is one of them - he's so interesting.

We were done early, so we cooked and ate some duck confit and had some bread to go with it.  Then we had 1:1's with the chef if we wanted them.  I talked to him about my externship and I think I'm going to look at hotels to extern at, rather than a restaurant.  Since I've worked in corporate America for so long, it seemed like a natural transition for me.  The chef was agreeable to that - he said this area has a lot of really big name chefs in hotels here.  So now the fun starts - looking for a job!

Have a great 4th of July, everyone!  I'll try and get some pictures up of things I cook this weekend.

Duck Gizzards

I'm back!  I'm in my second week of Phase 2 of my classes.  What does this mean?  We're building on the techniques that we learned in Phase 1, making our dishes more refined and elegant and continuing to learn. My Phase 1 exam was challenging (putting it mildly), so it'll be interesting to see what Phase 2 holds.

Also, I have to start looking for an interviewing for externships.  My original plan was to do hotels - a little more structured, but the more I think about it the more I realize that I will never learn in a hotel what I will learn in a fine dining place.  Even if I don't do restaurant after graduation, the experience will be invaluable.  So, I'm sort of starting from scratch, researching chefs, restaurants, etc.  It's been a long time since I applied for a job and having to do a whole new resume highlighting my culinary "experience" was interesting.  Luckily I have my personal chef stuff, although even that is pretty slim.

So, what does this have to do with the title of my post?  Nothing much.  However, in starting to think like restaurant chefs, we are starting to think about using everything in the restaurant - it's called utilization.  So, last week we butchered down ducklings, taking out the offals, the liver, gizzards, etc.  Don't throw them out - they can be used.  The original application that we made was seared duck breast with a sweet and sour sauce.  I think I've mentioned before that I'm not really a fan of duck.  It was ok - a bit chewy for my liking.

Last night then, we did utilization - we made a frisee salad using duck livers and gizzards that had been confited.  To confit is to cook something in it's own fat, so if you're in a French restaurant and get duck confit, you are getting a duck that has been submerged and cooked for several hours in the oven in it's own fat.  A delicacy, I guess.  We cooked the livers and gizzards in duck fat last night and then served them on a salad of frisee, watercress and radishes.  It's then served with a warm vinaigrette.  Not as bad as I thought, but I'd never order it in a restaurant (not that I've even seen it).

I'm sorry I didn't get a picture, but we were rushed at service time, so I didn't think about it.

Til next time!

First stretch is almost done

I'm in my final week of Phase 1 of my classes.  Now the fun really begins!!  Class will get harder, I need to start looking for, applying for and interviewing for externships.  How can I look when I'm not really sure what I want to be when I grow up??  The externship advisor talked to us last night and gave us a list of restaurants in the area that we can look at - it's about 12 pages of single-spaced places!  Wow, who knew?

I've been forgetting to take pictures of the dishes that we've made, but I did have a couple from a few weeks ago that I haven't put on.

The first dish we made was braised rabbit.  Yes, you read that right.  Rabbit!  We had to butcher them down, and you really could tell they were rabbits.  A little creepy, but I guess it's really no different than butchering down a chicken.  That's what I told myself.

So, we used the legs for the braise with mushrooms, tomatoes and stock.  It was ok - as I've said before, I wouldn't order it in a restaurant.  We served it on top of polenta.

Along with the rabbit, we also made "brain cake".  Ha!  Not really - it's called Charlotte Royale - made with jelly roll and bavarian cream.  It's done in a bowl, so it's kind of a fun presentation, but it does look like brain cake.  What do you think?

Some non-class pictures coming soon.