Mahsa Munches at the Culinary

a persian in rome

2009-12-06T07:11:00.003-05:00

It's been a week now (still haven't grasped being in rome) and its going well. It has been an adjustment to say the least. There's always a trial period when I start in a new kitchen, and at times I didn't know if I'd fit into this one, but everything seems to be falling into place.

The week ended much better than it had begun, working on saturday with a few of the fellows from the academy and some of the children on the property. Much to my delight, the head chef Mona, told me that I was a good cook and that she was excited to work with me. Having had a rocky first week, this was the jumpstart I needed to know I had made the right decision for my externship. A few days into my externship, Mona had told me about her love of Persian food, that its her secret passion, and has many persian cookbooks and friends feeding this love. One of the fellows at the academy is a scholar of persian music. Tonight, Mona was having a dinner party where she was making some persian food, and invited me along this morning to help her cook it.

I was excited to spend time with her, which would not only help build our relationship, but to be able to show her some things from my culture. I made some fereni that she was going to serve with rose petals and pistachios from her friend Leila. I also made the dough for barbary, showed her how to make polo and tadig, and helped with the lamb khoresht. It was a fun day, especially since I learned to use the espresso machine at our bar, which ill be using everyday from now on :-D

We all found out we are off on tuesday together, which is a rarity, so we have been brainstorming day trips, and might possibly be venturing down to naples for the day... :-D a demani!

roma

2009-12-02T04:57:00.002-05:00

Buongiorno tutti! It’s now my 5^th day in Rome, though I still don’t quite believe it. I think it may take me another week to fully realize that I will be living here until April, but it’s alright since I have the time to do so at my leisure. I started work in the kitchen on Monday, and honestly had no idea what to expect. Though I know the principles of the Rome Sustainable Food Project, the way the kitchen was run had still been a mystery. (and in italiano)

Work started bright and early at around 7am on Monday, though being me, I arrived at about 6:10 to a dark kitchen whose keys I had not received yet. To say it was an off day would be the nicest way to put it. At about 7:30, while dutifully wiping down the counter around my area, my pointer and middle fingers were sliced along the length of my chef knife, therby ensuing blood gushing onto the wall of the hand washing sink where I went to take care of my cut. It bled until the end of the night, causing me to have to change my gloves every hour or so because blood would fill up the areas around my finger. For the next day or so, everytime I uncovered my finger it would start bleeding again, but seems to be doing okay now, the wound healing up nicely. So anyways back to work, due to this injury, on my right hand nonetheless, my quality of work suffered, I couldn’t work quite as fast, not to mention get my mental mise en place together enough to focus on the tasks at hand. All of that combined I think made me look farily incompetent to the sous chef Chris… what an amazing first impression I had made.

The next night went 100% better, as I worked with the dinner chef, Dominico, an Italian cook who spent much of the night making fresh pasta for the main course at dinner. I took care of the primi, or the first plate, which consisted of fava bean puree, sautéed chiciory and dandelion greens, marinated geta olives, and bruschetta. To complete four components on a plate by myself was quite satisfying, given the previous days events. I believe I will be working with Chris again tonight, so I hope I can prove to him and show him that I deserve to be here. Afterall, he is the one grading my externship manual modules. Other than getting situated into Roman life, there is not much to report. Given some miscommunication and unorginization, our sleeping arrangements have been off and on for the past few days, but they should be clearing up soon. All I need to do now is improve my Italian so I won’t feel like such a foreigner when I try to order an espresso at the bar (café). Ciao!

va bene

2009-11-29T13:48:00.002-05:00

I have arrived! I got into Rome yesterday and given the fact that I had no sleep, made it to 8 or 9pm without dying. Today was my first full day in Rome, the last day before I start my externship. Ill be working at the Rome Sustainable Food Project, where we stress the importance of foods that not only take, but give back to the environment. Its a peaceful and healthy way to live and I suggest all of you start looking to eat more healthy, and to pick up the books "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer as well as anything related to sustainable agriculture, slow food movement, and Alice Waters.

So I'm still getting settled in here, our apartment is lovely with high ceilings and the most breathtaking view of Ancient Rome, it seems surreal. Today my roommates and I walked over to the Vatican and went to the sistine chapel, where not only the ceilings were beautiful, but the mosaic on the floors as well as sculptures lining the walls were astounding. Later on we went over to the Academy for a fellows birthday. The way the Academy works still confuses me some, but people who have won the Rome Prize come and stay at the Academy as fellows to complete fellowships in their specific field. Tonight at the reception I talked to a fellow writing her dissertation on Ancient Rome as well as a gentleman from Virginia staying here as a visiting scholar. The grounds and entire atmosphere is a very educated place and I love that I will be able to talk to such smart individuals on such a varied body of subjects.

It's only 8 o clock now but I think my body is yelling at me for some sleep, having woken up several times in the night and getting an early start today. Walking through Rome and up the hills and steps to our apartment have proven that I spend way too much in the kitchen and not enough in running shoes. There is a gorgeous park around the corner from our apartment which I'll take advantage of walking through until the weather gets too cold. The internet here is a bit daunting to use, but I will post photos just as soon as I can... if anyone still reads this. :-D

io vado a roma!

2009-11-23T14:52:00.003-05:00

The life of a culinary student caught up to me the past few months which is why I haven't posted a blog in just as long. After cuisines of Asias I took quantity production lunch, where we served between 400-500 students within an hour (busy to say the least), then breakfast class which took place from 1am to 9am (wtf, to say the least.) After that was our final class before externship, Garde Manger, where we learned to set up buffets, do hors d'oeurves, and cold food productions such as making sausages, hams, and terrines.

In other news, over my period of nonexistence on blogger, I managed to land the externship I had been dying to get in Rome, Italy. So as of this friday, I'll be blogging to you from my new home in Rome until April where I am sure to learn a ton about Sustainable Agriculture!

Check back for updates, arrivederci tutti! (baci)

korea & the harvest dinner

2009-09-13T09:34:00.007-04:00

It's been a week in our Asian Cuisine class, and though I have been learning a lot, I cant shake this cloud over every one of my days. I hope it goes away because I haven't been enjoying school as much as I used to. Yesterday I had the opportunity to work at the Hudson Harvest Dinner, that showcases the harvest of the season with a 6 course dinner made with (mostly) all items from right here in the hudson valley. Everything we tasted was simply prepared but had so much flavor, it was delicious. Here are some pictures from our first day doing cuisines of korea, and some from the dinner, though I didnt have much time for pictures.

korean bulgogi marinating:

beef short ribs:

scallion salad

daikon radish salad, mu chae:

Kim chi:

jap chae, a vegetable and glass noodles dish, garnished with egg crepes and scallions:

completed beef short rib plate with rice:

beef bulgogi:

At the harvest dinner, these were some of the hors d'oeuvres during cocktail hour:

Salad course:

And plating the entree:

Cheese plate:

With some berries and fruits for adding on:

wokin asian cuisine

2009-09-06T19:22:00.006-04:00

I have an excuse for going missing. My life has been so hectic and busy that my lack of sleep has led to some eye issues? I think not sleeping has dried them out so I can barely keep them open these days. Not to mention being up at 4:30/5 everyday to go to my american cuisines class, which is now over. Here are some more pictures from the class that I didn't get a chance to post before. Tuesday we start cuisines of asia class, which should be a lot of fun considering most of us haven't learned lots of the techniques we are about to encounter. Hopefully it will be a good distraction and way to get my mind off things.

6 weeks to go and still no externship, I just can't find a place I'm in love with, meh...

moqueca with seafood and coconut milk:

brazilian braised goat:

ceviche sampler:
fejoida, brazilian ribs and linguisa sausage:
brazillian mixed grill with chimichurri:
yayy:
Pescado al Veracruzana
street platter with tamales, empanadas and sopes:
chicken mole with fresh tortillas:
quesadillas with rice and 2 sauces:
grinding corn on a matate:

during service:
jerk game hen:
curry goat:
guava glazed ribs:

dan's birthday bash

2009-08-25T14:01:00.008-04:00

Today was my friend Dan's birthday so we embarrassed him by singing every chance we got. Here he is with the biggest rondeau (pot) of collard greens on campus.

Our kitchen (and Amber posing):

Today we made creole/Louisiana cuisine and finally having the courage to bring in my camera, I snapped a few shots. Though personally I have been distracted lately, we put out delicious food. On the menu today was: shrimp & alligator gumbo, sweet potato & peanut soup, mixed greens with peanut dressing, fried chicken & mashed potatoes & collard greens, crayfish etouffee, grilled vegetable jambalaya, beef brisket with hush puppies and fried onions, and the dish Taylor and I made, stuffed quail with sauteed spinach and red beans and rice. Pretty impressive menu for 14 students, I'd say.

Here is a goat head.. we cooked the meat in a curry sauce for tomorrow:

Here are the boys on the fried chicken station plating up during lunch service. Each station had 2 people and 3 or 4 plate components that they are responsible for. Our menu changes every other day:

Here is the crayfish etouffee being plated during service:

And the vegetable jambalaya:

Here are the quail I made stuffing for and fried:

They were so small, even when they were stuffed they fit into the palm of my baby hands:

Here was our completed dish:

After we sell out of our food we make platter for "family meal," a term used to describe food we eat as staff. Here is my partner Taylor with our platter for family meal:

Everyone enjoying each others cooking:

new hatred for cuisines of americas

2009-08-22T11:41:00.004-04:00

What a week. We completed our first week in cuisines of americas, and I have to say, all the warnings about our chef were true. Up to now, though we have had strict chefs or precise ones, we've never quite had one like our current chef. It makes me sad that for the first time since starting school here, I don't want to go to class. I can't even really be myself because I am afraid of the possible backlash from the chef. So far, I haven't been told that "I won't make it in this industry," (though she did tell someone that). I'm sure it's coming.

Without time to breathe, much less take pictures, my blog will probably be missing in action for a while, but hopefully will return soon. After this class we are onto cuisines of asia, which should be a lot more interesting and fun. Other than the tense classes, my life is filled with trying to get some sleep, finding an externship and getting time to talk to my friends. Have a great weekend everyone.

onto american cuisine?

2009-08-14T14:58:00.000-04:00

I admit I sort of failed at posting during skills 3, mostly because it was our first production class and I didn't want to waste time taking pictures, and I figured blogging without pictures wouldn't be exciting enough.

So skills 3 has come to an end, next week we start Cuisines of the Americas, with a Chef who we have heard is very strict. Though personally I wasn't at my best, skills 3 went great, with Chef Zifchak seeing the potential in me that I have been looking for in a Chef.

We worked through various cooking competencies, roasting & grilling to braising and poaching, each day making 30-40 portions to sell to students for lunch. It was invigorating and we learned a little bit about how the future kitchens will be.

I only got to take pictures on the last day so here is a random selection

Our vegetarian plate of risotto cakes, smoked tomato sauce and vegetable medley

Making pierogis

Sauteed chicken with fines herbes sauce and fresh pasta:

Shallow poached flounder with my fresh tomato linguine and vegetables:

and another set of skills

2009-07-30T14:53:00.005-04:00

I haven't had time to write in a while, though there hasn't been a shortage of exciting things happening. This week we started back at the Culinary and my third skills class, which is the first production kitchen we start in. While in the other two skills classes we learned the foundations of cooking and made 1-2 portions of each recipe, this is the first kitchen where we make around 40 portions of all the menu items in teams of 4-5 for lunch service at 11am. This means my day starts at 5 when I wake up and have tons of coffee, and am in the kitchen by 6:15 prepping for the day.

We just finished up day 3, and I finally faced my fear today. While I am a good enough cook, I have never worked for a long period of time on the hot line of a kitchen. These are the stations that cook the dishes to order, typically having 5 or 6 saute pans cooking at once, making plates. The speed of this has always scared me and prevented me from trying it. I got thrown on the saute today and while the beginning was a little rough, once I got going it was such a rush. Before I knew it, I looked up and lunch service was over. For a long time, I sort of idolized the cooks on the saute station for their sheer speed and never thought I could do it. It is very stressful but rewarding at the end of service.

It was hard to get back into the school mindset after such a relaxing and fun break, but I think I am at full steam ahead. Though our chef takes the cooking and everything else quite seriously, he doesn't rule by intimidation and seems to enjoy teaching us. I can tell I will learn a lot from him. Some of my skills 2 classmates got split up into the other skills 3 class which doesn't have as much foot traffic as our kitchen (we usually sell out in 20-30 mins). And we lost 3 members on our team so we were down to 4 people doing the same amount as the groups with 7. I think both of these restrictions will only help me learn to be more efficient and be able to see more in each of the stations.

Tomorrow we're making sauteed chicken supreme breasts with fresh pasta, veggies, and fines herbes sauce. It should be a good day. :-D

persian parties

2009-07-13T11:26:00.005-04:00

As I have been on vacation, nothing quite newsworthy has happened, though maybe since I am home, I just have less time to take pictures of it all.

Last night, one of my aunts from Iran finally got a visa to come to the US. It was great news after years of trying (its impossible for anyone to visit from there) so we had a huge party to celebrate, and had tons of family and food. I had a great time playing with some adorable kids and watching my aunt reunite with family that she hadnt seen (in some case for over 20 years.)

Just a few light appetizers since we were having an early dinner (8 is early for us...)

A staple at any mehmooni (party) is lots of tea:

One of my aunts is superstitious, so we burned some esfand, the smoke is said to ward off bad spirits:

I guess it had been a long day, my cousins daughter Skyler got a bit tired:

Some of the dishes at dinner, whole salmon (as I was cutting it I was teaching one of my friends about the adipose fin that lets you identify it as salmon/trout family :)

Koobideh Chicken Kabob:

This is an Iranian rice that is sweet with orange peel, carrots, and currants which is eaten with chicken kabob:

White rice is a must, with some of it mixed with saffron on top:

Here is the whole table:

And onto dessert, I made a few fruit platters:

Persians love their fruit cake, so my sister picked this one up:

Some type of mocha cake:

I made this traditional Iranian ice cream with rosewater, saffron, and pistachios

Bon appetit!

monkey bread

2009-07-04T18:36:00.002-04:00

Last night my mom and I made banana chocolate chip monkey bread. our baker counterparts made this dough by hand, but since I'm not baking inclined, I bought the mix for my mom as a souvenir. So here we are making the dough, rolling the balls in sugar, and baking it off.

We needed a comforting breakfast today, so I made a garden omelet/frittata, filled with tons of herbs & veggies.

Here's the monkey bread dough mix:

Making tablespoon sized balls and rolling it in brown sugar:

Press all the sugar coated balls into a baking dish

Baked and ready to go

And the eggs from today:

free and easy down the road i go

2009-07-03T20:10:00.006-04:00

I woke up around 5 this morning, not with an alarm, but because I have become so accustomed to that wake up call. I got packed and headed out for my 6 hour drive back to virginia for a week or so for part of my summer break. It won't really be a break as I will spend it prepping for externship, the practical exam, and skills 3, but I will focus more on those during the last 2 weeks. I'm going back to NY early so I can focus my energy on the future.

The drive was supposed to be very congested and lengthy since it was the day before fourth of july, and though it was fairly crowded, everything went according to schedule and I was back home before I knew it.

This is the pretty scenery of the drive through upstate New York:

The first state I drove through was New Jersey... a loong drive:

Then I went through Delaware from the Delaware Memorial Bridge:

Then through the tunnel and into Baltimore, Maryland:

And finally Virginia!! (aww I miss that Great Falls Village sign):

skills 2 completeee

2009-07-02T18:28:00.009-04:00

Another set of skills down. Today was the last day of Skills 2, so we had our knife skills practical, written exam, and costing exam, along with our regular lesson for the day. It was also the last day of the semester, so now we have 3 weeks of summer break, and it should prove to be an amazing one :-D

On the lesson plan today was beef tenderloin medallions with chasseur sauce, broccoli rabe, potatoes au gratin, and onion rings. It was pretty simple today, and my speed in plate up and coordination is getting better, which is important since starting in Skills 3, we actually sell plates of food to people. And our Skills 3 chef is known to be a hardass, for a lack of better word, so we need to be on our A game at all times.

Here is Chef's demo plate:

Here are my trays for knife skills and production today:

We sliced our potatoes on a mandolin, very sharp edges that cut my thumb nicely, but did give me some evenly sliced potatoes. Here they are simmering in heavy cream and milk for a few minutes before being layered with cheese to go into the oven.

Here it is all layered & topped with cheese, ready to go into the oven

Here is my broccoli rabe. We boil it for a few minutes in water, then, as shown here, shock it in ice to stop it from cooking and to keep the color.

After that and when its time for plate up, I sauteed it with some olive oil, shallots, garlic, and red pepper flakes

Here is the sauce, made in the saute pan I sauteed the beef tenderloin in. It has shallots, garlic, then is deglazed with some white wine, mushrooms, and demi glace (one of the derivatives of the mother sauces made from brown veal stock)

Here is the making of our beer batter for the onion rings.. first you need beer

Mixed into flour with egg yolk and baking powder

Then we whisk the egg white that we separated to stiff peaks (that means when you flip the bowl over it doesnt spill out) and fold it into the batter to make it lighter.

Here is my completed (with a perfect score!) plate

I'll miss K4 (kitchen 4), and am excited to move upstairs to K9 in three weeks!

steak frites

2009-07-01T13:41:00.004-04:00

We practiced our knife skills practical today and then went on to make grilled steak, veggies, and french fries. What was funny is that the potatoes we cut for our knife skills were what we fried up, perfectly squared ends and all uniform. I doubt anyone in the industry actually makes perfectly squared french fries that don't utilize the entire potato. My camera was running out of battery, so I didn't have that many pictures.

Here is my tray:

The demo wasn't too exciting today, but here is Chef making compound butter for the top of the steaks:

Here is Chef's demo plate:

Here is my compound butter, which is just whole butter mixed with some garlic, parsley, lemon juice, salt & pepper for the top of the steaks:

Grilling the veggies for provencal style grilled vegetables:

Roasting the bell peppers to get the skin off:

After they were roasted and grilled, we diced them up and reheated them through with some provencal herbs (thyme, rosemary, and basil) and finished with a touch of balsamic vinegar:

To make the fries, we first blanched them in a lower degree oil until they looked like this, then fried them again to make them super crispy:

Here is my steak marinating in some olive oil, rosemary, thyme, garlic and crushed peppercorns:

We grilled our steaks to medium rare, which was nerve wracking for me because you can never quite tell how hot the grill is, and I was striving for perfect cross hatch grill marks. Here is my final plate, the steak grilled to medium rare, topped with compound butter, and served with french fries and grilled vegetables provencal style.

spatzle

2009-06-30T21:06:00.006-04:00

Since I hadn't had breakfast yesterday because eating at 5:30 is not appealing at all, I decided to have breakfast for dinner, with this corned beef/baby greens and eggs.

In class, we made fried pork cutlets, sauteed kale, coleslaw, and spatzle. I have never made spatzle, so that was exciting. Sorry, I don't have much to say, its been a long day and I'm exhausted.

Here is Chef demonstrating spatzle using the spatzle maker. You pour the dough batter(flour, milk, and eggs) into this cup. Then you pull back and forth so the dough falls through the slots and makes the pasta:

Chef's demo plate:

Here is part of my mise en place for the morning:

Ingredients for spatzle dough, flour, eggs, milk:

The traditional method is to mix the ingredients by hand until elastic:

Here is the dough with some parsley added for flavor:

Then I poured it into the cup and let it fall through into salted boiling water:

For one of the side dishes, we made mayonnaise by hand, then made it into coleslaw. You probably can't tell from the pictures, but the carrots are cut into fine julienne, which is perfect squared ends and 1-2 inch in length.

My finished plate, which of course I didn't eat because I don't groove on the pork:

So I went to the Americas kitchen and got some fajitas. I just ate the steak with some guacamole and salsa since I'm doin the low carb thing:

trout meuniere

2009-06-29T19:21:00.005-04:00

Skills 2 is winding towards its end, and we are all excited about our summer break for a few weeks. Over the weekend we got our schedules for Skills 3. Up until now we have been making 2 plates during class, but starting in skills 3, the kitchen is open to students/faculty to come and swipe for lunch, so its actual production. Our class will be broken up into a set of students who are upstairs and a set who are in the kitchens downstairs. A few friends of mine and I got the upstairs kitchen, which means more foot traffic and a higher amount of plates being sent out. This will help us with speed but is also a bit nerve wracking.

Our chef also told us about the Chef we'd have for skills 3, whos "precise, stern, very detail oriented..."

Here is my tray for the morning:

One of the items on our plate was tourneed root vegetables. As I've said before, tourne is a seven sided football shape cut done on a vegetable (one of the harder cuts.) Doing this cut on a root vegetable proved even harder since the flesh of these vegetables are naturally more dense and harder to cut through. After tourne-ing 10 of them, I started to get a blister on my index finger (imagine cutting a beet into 7 sides.)

We also practiced julienne and medium dice

Here is Chef's demo plate:

We used trout as the entree, so we fileted and skinned our own fish each:

Here are my filets without skin:

Brussel sprouts and pearl onions with lardons (thick cut bacon) (gross):

Pan frying the trout:

And my completed dish (I forgot to say we also made wild rice pilaf for our plates)

I wasnt into eating that fried fish and rice, so I made a salad when I got home with some "sassy baby blend" lettuce with a red wine vinaigrette, and some of the roast chicken from last night.

cravin the low carb lifestyle

2009-06-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

The heft of culinary school finally hit me. After a few months of traditional french cuisine and delicious desserts, my body revolted. So I'm trying (keyword: trying) to get back on the low carb lifestyle combined with less fatty foods. I was always particular to the atkins diet since it allowed you to eat meat, but this time around I'm choosing more fish dishes and using olive oil in lieu of butter.

The new atkins website is pretty helpful, you can make up your own menus, with 3 options for each course, and it has recipes for each course which makes it all easier for people who don't have time for that. Of course I couldn't help myself with some of the recipes or methods, but I'll tell you more about that later. Today for breakfast I had a "southwestern omelet," which was just a regular omelet with some red bell pepper, onions, (turkey) bacon, and cheddar cheese.

For lunch, the menu I chose was poached salmon and Caesar salad. They gave me a recipe & method for poaching salmon, but since just this past week we learned the art of the submerge poach with a court bouillon, I chose that method. And instead of regular salmon, I saw that they had wild sockeye salmon in the market today. Chef Clark had told us to buy this as soon as we saw it, and so I did. The color is such a vibrant red, and cooks up just like king or atlantic salmon. I wasn't a fan of the flavor, it was quite salmony (which was obvious since it had a darker color) and more firm than the salmon I'm used to. The stronger flavor & color came from the fact that its a higher activity fish which means it's more oily and the bones aren't good for stock. (yessss I still remember stuff from fish class) I made the caesar dressing from scratch (which used mayo as an ingredient.) I was about to make the mayo by hand too since it is so easy, but decided to be lazy and just used some store bought mayo.

Though I was still full from lunch , I still decided to cook the dinner and eat it a bit late. Since I had missed roast chicken day in class, I used this as an opportunity to practice that cooking method. Any practice is important since we have to take a practical exam before we are allowed to go on externship. For the practical, there are 6 menus, and we are randomly given one and must cook all 7 components within 2.5 hours. Many many people fail this, but hopefully I won't be one of them. So I delved into my meat class skills bank and trussed up the chicken with some twine, and roasted it in the oven with some veggies. Oh my goodness, I am not exaggerating when I say this was one of the best roasted chickens I have had in my life. I don't know if it was because it was organic or because of how I roasted it, but everyone needs to try this for dinner tomorrow. It was so juicy that when i was carving the breast out, juice literally squirted out and it was so tender it melted in my mouth. I used a 4 pound chicken, but you can use a smaller one too. All I did was put some rosemary, thyme, and a bay leaf into the cavity & season with salt & pepper. Then on the outside rub it with some canola oil and liberally season it with kosher salt and pepper. I roasted it at 400 degrees for about 80 mins and it was absolutely delicious.

spinal rainbow

2009-06-27T18:57:00.008-04:00

The day started off pretty good, I planned on heading out to the stars & stripes event at school, there's fireworks and a dance tonight for our version of fourth of July, but my body had other plans. After going strictly from class to bed the past week; my apartment had been somewhat of a mess. I woke up all set to clean up but about halfway through, the top of my spine/neck hurt from my injury, so I have been pretty confined to my bed for the day, researching places I can extern starting in November. (We need a list of 25 possible places since the economy everywhere is so down.) Isn't this rainbow swiss chard gorgeous? I love the orange ones where the color goes all the way up the leaf.

I never crave anything substantial or sweet for breakfast but today I had a craving for some french toast, so I made a banana & walnut stuffed french toast and had a nectarine on the side. It was huge so I couldn't eat the entire thing, but it was quite tasty, I added some cinnamon and freshly ground nutmeg into the filling, so it brought out the sweetness of the dish.

I haven't really had much of an appetite lately, but since I have to take my neck medication with food, I whipped this up, some brown rice, chutney marinated steak and yummy swiss chard I had picked up from the farm market on the way back from the doctor.

Hopefully I'll be able to go to the block party tomorrow, it sounds like a good time!

endless opportunities for extern

2009-06-26T16:16:00.007-04:00

Happy Friday Everyone! It has been a long and eventful week to say the least. And to finish it off, as soon as I was done meeting with the career services counselor, a storm started and by the time I got to my car, I was dripping wet. On the positive side, the UK lifted its ban on student visas so now I can apply to work there for my externship :-D

In class today, we made fresh pasta (fettuccine), sauteed chicken supreme with fines herbes sauce, and paysanne cut root vegetables. It was fairly straight forward and one of the tastiest dishes we have made yet. This was due to the sauce for one, we used 6 oz of glace de vollaile, chicken stock that has been reduced down to a gloss, about a gallon down to 2 cups, which results in an extremely concentrated chicken flavor. That is thinned out with some shallots, white wine, heavy cream, and finished with herbs.

Chef pounding out the chicken so its even thickness and cooking time:

Twirling pasta on a fork for plating:

Chef's completed plate:

Here are all the trays with ingredients for the day:

And my paysanne (flat square) cuts of vegetables to be tossed with pasta right before plate up:

My fresh fettucine:

My sauteed chicken cooking. Saute traditionally is done completely on the stove (which we did), but can also be seared on the stove and finished off in the oven if you don't have enough burner space:

We poured off the excess fat, added the shallots, white wine, glace, heavy cream, and herbs. Here is my final plate:

Here is my friends plate she got from the America's kitchen at lunch. When she took the cover off, we all oohed at how pretty it was:

"atleast you dont have multiple sclerosis"

2009-06-25T20:34:00.007-04:00

It's been a long day, filled with chicken fricassee, whipped potatoes, haricot verts, and xrays. In class, we demonstrated knife skills on certain vegetables in our fricassee sauce, made a blonde sear on the chicken, then stewed it in the oven for about an hour. The sauce was finished with heavy cream, vegetables, and fresh herbs.

Here is Chef's demo plate

All the trays lined up for the day with our ingredients:

Blonde searing the chicken

(no color)

After you take the chicken out, you make a thickening agent (roux) with the fat thats in the bottom of the pan, sprinkling some flour into it... which is called the singer method. Then we added some white wine, herbs, and chicken stock.

My plated dish: [see my pretty cubes of carrots... no level needed :)]

After class, I had a doctors appointment with a back specialist in Connecticut. I hate going to the doctor, but atleast the drive was pretty. Parts of it like this reminded me of Great Falls, and other parts past wineries and up mountains reminded me of tuscany...

After finishing up at the doctor, I thought I deserved a treat, so I stopped at the farmer's market for some yummy fruit and veggies

"dont let mahsa do anything"

2009-06-24T14:00:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, I had to do something I never wanted to, and missed a day of class because my back hurt so much I could barely get dressed in the morning.

Today it hurt pretty much the same, I barely slept last night but I knew I had to tough it out in class. Standing for six hours straight didn't help though.

We made braised beef ribs, roasted root vegetables, and hard polenta. Polenta is originally an Italian grain that is cornmeal cooked with stock, similar to our grits in the south, though those are made with hominy and not cornmeal.

Chef said everything I presented was perfect but that my sauce was too "intense."-- He must not know me well enough...

Here is Chef searing all the ribs for us:

And flattening his polenta before cooling:

Chef's completed plate:

First we started by caramelizing mirepoix (carrots, onion, celery), then making a pincage, which means caramelizing the tomato paste with the mirepoix.

Then we add the short ribs and espagnole sauce (which is one of the mother sauces made with brown veal stock, mirepoix and thickened with a roux):

While the beef ribs are in the oven (for two hours), we made polenta. Here is Emily streaming the cornmeal into the stock:

After its cooked, we added some herbs and parmigiana reggiano cheese and cooled it on a tray. After cooling, we cut it into triangles and shallow fried them in a saute pan:

Here is my completed plate (pretty good for being in so much pain, I'd say):

"fork tender" meat

shallow poach

2009-06-22T13:36:00.007-04:00

It was one of the first days that I didn't want to go to class, and that was only because I could barely stand for 10 minutes without my back hurting, much less lift heavy bones, and pots, and etc that we do in class everyday. But I'm glad I went... we made flounder paupiette, sauteed spinach, glazed carrots, and rice pilaf.

We got to fabricate our own fish today, so we cut the fillets off the whole flounder, which was good practice of what we learned in fish.

I made a batch of veloute for the class. It's fish stock thats combined with a roux (butter, flour) and thickened:

Chef Johnson filleting a flounder (which we all did):

Rolling it into a "paupiette":

Chef's demo plate:

My carrots glazing:

My flounder fillets rolled into paupiettes:

Bed of shallots, garlic, peppercorns, and parsley stems that the fish steams on:

My completed plate:

father's day

2009-06-21T06:59:00.000-04:00

There are guest speakers and Chefs here that remind us what a great opportunity we all have to be at the best culinary school in the world. My parents are the two people I could never thank enough for being able to fulfill my dream and come here, and today is dedicated to fathers. My brother in law says that my sisters, dad, and I write cards like hallmark, but its really impossible to say in words what my dad has meant to me, and everyone who has met him, and I'm not sure if he ever realizes it.

I truly look to my dad as someone I admire as my hero. I could never even aspire to be like him, but continually try to better myself in that direction as well as surround myself with people who have his qualities. From the stories he tells me about jumping off roofs with his cousin as a child to his quest to make my mom, sisters, and I completely happy, I can safely say God doesn't make 'em like that anymore. He used to tell us that he wanted to be known as Mahsa's dad or to be recognized as having my sisters and I as daughters but every time I meet someone who knows my dad, they know him for him. I see the nod, the smiles, the air of comfort and thankfulness that comes across their faces when they talk about him. They go on and on about his generosity, strength, and courage, and everyday I strive to even be an ounce of the person he is. In every aspect of his life he sets good examples for my sisters and I, and I'm sad that I can't be with him today to try to show him how blessed I am for having a dad like him.

I actually tried to think about the perfect gift to get my dad, though after years of birthdays and holidays, I've deemed that impossible. I take after him, it's not about the material gifts or anything that can be purchased, its the time spent with someone that makes me happy. Talk about someone who is hard to shop for. It's because nothing is quite worthy of him. It's the same way with my mom. Maybe they think its my aversion to shopping that doesn't allow for me to get them shiny presents on mothers or fathers day, but it's not. Its simply the fact that nothing is good enough for them. How do you give a gift that expresses thanks for devoting their entire life to making ours possible? To working 13 hour days, 6 days a week and still being a coach, mentor, advisor to me when I need it. To being the voice of reason when it is so often needed, with the added compassion and warmth that he is known for. Someone so tolerant in an intolerant world that gave us the room to grow into the women we are today. And I just hope one day I become the daughter he is recognized by.

Happy Father's Day Daddy, I love you.

Our song

submerge poach

2009-06-19T17:15:00.008-04:00

On Friday, we learned the method of submerged poaching and put together our first plate, complete with protein.

The trays ready to make julienne vegetables, tourne potatoes, poached salmon in court bouillon, fish fumet (stock), and Bearnaise sauce.

My julienne vegetables ready to be cooked

Little present of salmon being poached in a court bouillon:

Chef's plates:

And mine:

It was Korean at the Asian kitchen on Friday and I got Bulgogi, Korean beef.

I'm pretty sure I lifted one too many boxes/big stock pots and pulled some kind of muscle in my back. I've been out of commission for the day and hope to get better soon, because I can't do anything right now...

eggscellent

2009-06-18T14:07:00.005-04:00

We went through dozens and dozens of eggs today. To present, we had to make poached eggs with hollandaise, over hard eggs, over easy eggs, and a 3 egg omelet. It all seems easy to the home cook, but trying to get 9 eggs onto one plate cooked in 5 different ways all hot at the same time presents some problems. I was glad I have the flipping part down, so I just had to focus on timing everything at the same time. Since it was a rush to the finish (everything happening in about 5 minutes total), I thought I took a picture of my final plate, yet it didn't come up when checking my camera later. They looked fairly close to Chef's demo, though they were all on one plate.

I also made a chorizo, black bean and pepper side dish for our family meal today. Here is the mise en place for it:

This box of eggs was full at the start of the day. We only had about 2 flats left over.

Chef demonstrating how to make omelets, it took him 45 seconds to make his:

My poached eggs in their ice bath while I finished off all my other egg dishes:

These are chef's demo plates (which we had to duplicate). This is the poached eggs with hollandaise and eggs over hard:

3 egg omelet and over easy eggs (no color on these at all):

As a class, each group of students made a dish, here they all are:

Huevos Rancheros:

And deviled eggs:

And eggs benedict:

va bene

2009-06-17T14:20:00.008-04:00

Class today made me miss Italy a ton. We did fresh pastas and each team made a different sauce, Emily and I made bolognese. It's made up of three types of ground meat cooked with mirepoix and some tomato paste & puree, with some brown veal stock added. I made tomato pasta, regular pasta, and used some of my friends spinach pasta to make Iran flag ribbons :-D

Spinach Pasta:

Rolling it out:

Filling ravioli:

He also put some parsley in between pasta and rolled it out:

Eggs and fine ground semolina are all you need for fresh pasta:

This is my tomato pasta, just simply add 1.5oz of tomato paste into the dough:

Meanwhile our bolognese mise en place:

Then as it simmered away:

After the dough rested, we rolled it out on hand operated pasta makers:

I combined 3 types of pasta and cut ribbons out as the flag of Iran:

I also made tortellini:

On the left are the baby bow ties I made and on the right are the orchiette, "little ears":

There is also my pappardelle, wide pasta noodles added to all the types I made:

Here are all my pastas cooked and ready for presenting to the chef:

bran keeps you regular

2009-06-16T15:31:00.009-04:00

We made all sorts of rice today. We did a pilaf style, boiled rice, risotto, jardiniere vegetables, poivrade sauce, and brown veal stock. It was a pretty busy day, but I'm glad that in my life as a persian, rice is ingrained into my soul. Since our production is more hectic and we have to present (at least) four dishes at the same time, I have had less time to snap pictures of the process, but I always have pictures of my final plates.

During our lecture that prepped us for tomorrow, we talked a bit about fiber and its role in our diet. I'm pretty sure yall know about how fiber is an important part of our intake to keep our digestive tract going and help wash out the particles that build up along our intesinal walls. This being said, have you always been trying to get rid of your belly fat with tons of sit ups and without success? Well thats because it was your large intensines and not fat. Next time, try some extra fiber in your diet, since not enough can lead to colon cancer, (number 3 cause of death in the US).

Here are my onions sweating for pilaf:

And when its done:

Here is my risotto:

And my jardiniere vegetables sauteed in some whole butter (here is where our knife cuts come in handy):

Here are Chef (left) and my plates (right) side by side:

I was pretty full after tasting my rice dishes, but stopped by the Asian kitchen and got some chicken:

we need more skills?

2009-06-15T14:06:00.007-04:00

Another three weeks, another new class. Today we started skills 2 with a new Chef, Chef Johnson. Some of my friends had him for fish fabrication class and said that he is very detailed and grades every little thing we do; but I'm glad, since Chef Viverito didn't give us as much feedback as most of us would have liked. I can tell I'll learn a lot from Chef Johnson because he seems to genuinely care about our succeeding and learning how to get better at what we do. I was a little tired today, and to top it off, last night we got extreme thunder and lightening that kept me up most of the night. As time goes on, we have lost more and more students, which is apparently how it is here, being such a rigorous program. We started skills one with 16 and three weeks later we are down to 9. I guess it shows who can really hack the pressure or not (and we aint seen nothin yet!)

We made glazed beets, demi glaze, braised cabbage, pommes duchesse, and chateau potatoes. It was really weird, maybe it was because we had a different Chef, but we all worked really efficiently today and some things like tourne-ing potatoes that would have given us anxiety before, came a lot easier to us. I think it's the organization on Chef Johnson's part that helps us be better at what we do. I can't imagine some of the students in my class doing this class a week ago, having 5 things going at once didn't seem feasible, but we did it without a problem today.

Here are some pictures from Chef Johnson's demos today.

Chef adding the pureed potatoes into the piping bag:

Then piping the pommes duchesse:

For the glazed beets, we simply boiled them, cubed them, then pan glazed them with some oj, honey, and butter.

The braised cabbage was filled with ingredients such as red wine, red wine vinegar, sugar, onions, and many spices, simmered with a sachet for about 40 minutes.

For our chateau potatoes (the fried ones) we made tournes out of the potatoes (the 7 sided ones) and fried them and tossed with some s&p and minced parsley. Chef said my tournes were really good :-D

The pomme duchesse (the piped potatoes, which remind me of the vegas theme dinner from JMU) were potatoes that you mix with butter and egg yolk, pipe onto a sheet tray and bake until golden brown.

Here was the tray of items at the beginning of the day:

My braised cabbage working:

Here is Chef's completed plate

And mine... close, no?

The Mediterranean Kitchen was doing the middle east today, so I had some shrimp, which had TONS of garlic, my dad would have loved this dish:

comfort cooking

2009-06-14T12:41:00.009-04:00

No matter what is happening in my life, I always find myself gravitating towards the kitchen and creating new recipes and enjoying the process of cooking. Today was one of those days. I started out with the intention of making grilled flank steak with a cold Asian noodle salad but ended up with this, grilled flank steak with some caramelized onions and a bamboo shoot, edamame, bell pepper salad.

I'm glad I get to have days like this where the kitchen isn't the source of stress and tension, as it usually is at school. At home, I enjoy taking whatever ingredients I have in my fridge and creating something new and tasty from them. Happy Sunday everyone.

practically perfect

2009-06-12T20:15:00.005-04:00

I definitely didn't have time/brain capacity to take pictures today. It was the last day of skills 1, so we had a practical exam where we had to make clarified butter, hollandaise, mayonnaise, consomme, espagnole, and vegetables. It was all simple enough as long as we had a good mise en place plan/timeline/all the right tools. I was anxious driving to school, but had a moment where I felt so blessed that my exam consisted of cooking, something that I take so much pride and pleasure in on a daily basis. I'm so incredibly lucky to be at the CIA doing what I love everyday.

I got in around 6:15am, so I could start gathering ingredients for my recipes and stay on track with the rigorous timeline I made the night before. We got into the kitchen around 6:30, I gathered all the pots and tools I needed, then proceeded to weigh out all the ingredients for the 6 recipes we had to do. It's always important to have the mise en place ready to go, that way, cooking time will be spent at the stove instead of milling about the kitchen looking for ingredients, measuring, etc... which is very beneficial when there are 13 newbies cooking 6 different things on a time limit.

Everything turned out great, and even though Chef didn't let us start until 7:30, I finished exactly on time with the timeline I had made (good thing I built in a buffer zone). I presented my items around 9:30 and Chef had positive complements for them all. He even took the carrot/celery root julienne garnish out of the consomme bowl and looked at the ends to make sure they were square! Since I was done pretty early, I spent the rest of class bagging up 20 or so gallons of stock from the huge kettles the PM class had been cooking the night before.

After lunch we had our written exam, which was pretty straightforward and stressed mainly ratios, such as for a gallon of stock, you need 8# bones, 1#mirepoix, 1 sachet, 6 quarts water...

I was to head home this weekend, so I quickly hustled to the train station after class only to hear that "no trains are leaving Poughkeepsie due to police activity in the New Hamburg area." Since this would mean I'd miss my connecting train in the city, I thought it best to come back, relax (I've been up since 4:30!), and get everything ready for skills 2 on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!

salt brings out the sweetness

2009-06-11T18:58:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone, we have an intensive practical and written exam tomorrow so I wont say much but I didn't want to leave you hanging. Today we made tomato sauce (one of the mother sauces), pasta, practiced hollandaise, demi-glace, and we had our knife skills tray exam.

It was a busy day with lots of dishes, but it was a good one. I didn't take pictures of my knife skills tray, since it looks the same everyday but I did well on the test and got some extra points for finishing early. :-D

I'll mostly share the story with pictures today:

Here's our mise en place:

This is the beginnings of our tomato sauce (I made mine a la Apicius style):

As it simmers away:

And with the penne (picture isn't too good because I forgot to take one until the last second):

We also made a shallot/red wine vinaigrette:

With chiffonade of basil:

We also clarified butter for our hollandaise (which is made with egg yolks, shallot/vinegar reduction, and clarified butter emulsified into it):

As it clarifies:

We reduced the espagnole sauce we made yesterday with some brown veal stock to make demi-glace:

Chef made his tomato sauce with some vodka, red pepper flakes, and garlic:

I also had writing class today, and to prove how asinine and useless this class is, here is a picture of our professor reading us the 3 little pigs. good lord.

thickened mammal juice

2009-06-10T14:15:00.010-04:00

It was a pretty good day. We spent it making knife skills trays, espagnole sauce, jus du veau lie, and another shot at hollandaise. Espagnole is another one of the mother (or grand) sauces of classical cuisine. So far we have done bechamel (white), veloute, hollandaise, espagnole today, and tomato sauce tomorrow. Espagnole is a brown sauce thats made with caramelized mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery) that are browned with tomato paste. Brown veal stock is added and the mixture is thickened with a brown roux (flour and butter cooked to a light brown color). Espagnole is used to make derivative sauces from it, such as demi glace, which is half espagnole and half brown veal stock that is reduced by half.

Here's our mise en place for the day:

Heres our knife skills tray (the first few days we had 70 mins to do this and have gradually been reducing the time, its now down to 35):

Here is our mise en place for our two stock reductions:

Here is my roux for the espagnole (at its blonde stage):

And as it browns:

Here is the espagnole simmering with the roux added to thicken it:

Unlike the espagnole sauce, which is thickened with roux, jus de veau lie, is thickened with a pure starch slurry, in our case, arrowroot. Cornstarch is probably a pure starch youre more aware of, but arrowroot creates a more glossy and clear finish. A pure starch based liquid also doesn't have to be cooked out, flour does.

Here is the arrowroot slurry, thats arrowroot powder mixed with a liquid. A tip is to use some brown stock, so the flavor wont be diluted with water:

Then you brown some veal meat:

Then we deglaze the pan with the carrots, onions, celery, and tomato paste. Then add the brown veal stock and sachet of spices. We simmer this for about an hour:

Before the slurry is added:

After, notice that its more glossy and viscous:

While our two sauces were simmering, we made a hollandaise sauce, heres our mise en place:

And completed hollandaise:

The Asian kitchen was making Indian food today, so I tried out their tandoori chicken:

careful not to break it

2009-06-09T15:29:00.010-04:00

I was pretty tired today, training for my breast cancer walk at night was not a good move, though I'm glad I got 5 miles in. Today we made mayonnaise, hollandaise sauce, beurre rouge, and consomme. It was a pretty busy day and since 3 of the 4 were emulsion sauces, they could easily break if not tended to correctly. I remember the first day we made consomme, we were all nervous wrecks about making sure our protein clarification items would float as they simmered, since they have a tendency to sink and ruin your perfectly clear broth underneath. But the second time around we all did it with more confidence and urgency since we had 3 other sauces to get done in the same amount of time.

As usual, we started off with our mise en place and knife skills trays:

First we got our raft ingredients for the consomme together. Consomme is a perfectly clear broth that you clarify through simmering proteins and aromatics as a "raft" which produces the clear broth underneath as you strain it out. Here is the raft, which is ground chicken, egg whites, tomatoes, mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery), and some herbs. This is stirred into the chicken stock, then simmered for 45 minutes until the broth is completely clear and the raft stays floating:

Next we made the mayonnaise, which I'm sure everyone buys in the jar, though it is very easy to make yourself (and builds arm muscle!). Using an egg yolk, some mustard, vinegar, and salt, you slowly stream in vegetable oil until its the consistency of mayonnaise. It's important not to add too much oil at a time or it will break.

Then we made a hollandaise, one of the five mother sauces of classical cuisine. Its also an egg yolk based emulsion sauce. The egg yolks are brought to a sabayon stage over a double boiler, then clarified butter is whisked in very slow until its all blended. It is quite an easy sauce to break if you get overzealous and add more butter than the yolks can take at a certain point. Breaking is when the oil and other molecules in the sauce separate, and must be reagitated or started all over.

Here are the egg yolks for the hollandaise:

And the gastrique you add to it (a vinegar, water, shallot, peppercorn reduction that helps the oil hold its emulsion as well as adding flavor):

First you bring the egg yolks to sabayon consistency over a double boiler, until pale yellow and can coat the back of the spoon:

Then the clarified butter is slowly ladled in until it reaches the right consistency:

We also made a beurre rouge, which is a butter based emulsion flavored with vinegar, red wine, and shallots:

Here are the mayonnaise, hollandaise, and beurre rouge:

And my clear consomme:

For lunch, I went to the Asian kitchen and got the curry platter:

a belly full of bechamel

2009-06-08T14:29:00.006-04:00

Today we worked on another mother sauce, bechamel. It is a white roux based sauce that is mixed with milk (and burns you really bad as I experienced while straining it through the chinois.) We also did a knife skills tray, mornay sauce, cauliflower gratin, and creamed spinach. After class we all felt overheated and full of cream, ready for a nap.

It was pretty calm today, and three students were out so there were only 12 of us in the kitchen, which made for speedy cleanup at the end of the day. We got to practice tourne-ing potatoes during our extra time.

Here is our mise en place tray in the morning:

And my knife skills tray (which Chef called beautiful):

Here is the roux for the bechamel sauce:

Which gelatinizes as you slowly add milk in batches. That means as the water molecules in the milk are added to the flour of the roux, they expand and soak up all the water, hence the gloup of roux/onion:

Then you add the milk in:

And let it simmer. Since it is milk (and flour), it has a strong tendency to scald/burn on the bottom or edges. Surprisingly no one in our class burned theirs, and Chef was proud of us:

Mise en place for creamed spinach:

Sweating shallots in butter, then sauteing the spinach for the creamed spinach:

The finished product with bechamel added to it:

Here Chef demonstrates cauliflower gratin by buttering the dish, adding the cauliflower (which has been mixed with mornay sauce... that's bechamel with Parmesan and Gruyere cheeses added), then topping it with panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) and cubes of butter to help it brown:

My blanched cauliflower:

And my presented cauliflower gratin (which Chef loved the flavor of):

We were all pretty full after tasting our dishes (we also made mac & cheese with our leftover mornay sauce). A tip to bring out the flavor of your cheese sauce is to add some balsamic vinegar, it helps the flavors pop:

But I still ventured over to the Asian kitchen to see what they offered, and got the vegetarian pad Thai to pick at a bit:

With its side dish of "street food":

When we got back to class we practiced tourne-ing potatoes for a bit, thats turning potatoes into 7 sided football shaped pieces, which is one of the hardest cuts we learn here:

lazy sundays

2009-06-07T17:32:00.005-04:00

Whenever the weekend rolls around, I'm so exhausted from jamming my brain with information during the week that I hardly can summon the urge to do anything productive. It was no different this weekend, though I did enjoy the pretty weather for a bit (thanks to zyrtec.)

Here is what I made for lunch/dinner tonight.

A whole wheat linguine with chicken/broccoli rabe/chinese cabbage, and some oven roasted yellow squash on the side.

Surprisingly, I was in the mood for something sweet so I toasted up a whole wheat/cinnamon waffle and topped it with some ice cream and powdered sugar. It reminded me of a gastronomy class where Professor Chalmers told us that the reason why we crave sweet things is because more often than not, our first flavor profile was our mothers milk, which was sweet tasting.

Its the last week of skills 1, which ends with a practical & written exam, so it should be quite a hectic week, though I'm going to head home for the weekend just to check everything out before skills 2 starts next week. And maybe I'll even cook my parents something... I got them used to the 3 course meals I cooked every night before I left for school, and they have been going through withdrawal since I left, poor guys...

CIA stands for cockiness in abundance...

2009-06-05T14:02:00.008-04:00

Happy friday!

What a week. I learned a ton this week, and got many burns and cuts (which I treasure,) most recently stabbing myself deeply on the pinky finger with my pairing knife as I was cleaning it (not even while cutting!)

It is absolutely crazy how much I love it here. I guess this is how every other college student feels when they find the right school, I loved JMU, but here is where I feel I have always belonged, the people, the atmosphere, the classes, its all perfect. Of course I am so glad to have gone to college beforehand, but I feel blessed that I get to do soemthing that makes me so incredibly excited to wake up at 5am everyday.

Today we made one of the five mother (or grand) sauces of classical cuisine. The sauces are: veloute, espagnole, bechamel, hollandaise, and tomato. We made veloute, which is a chicken stock that is thickened with blonde roux, and proceeded to use it to make our cream of broccoli soup. It was pretty light in production, and our class did a lot better today. We made knife skills trays as usual, and my scale rescued the day again when the kitchens scales were off.

Here was most of our mise en place tray in the morning:

And my knife skills tray:

Here is the chicken stock heating up with white mirepoix (leeks, onions, celery) for the veloute (one of the five mother sauces):

And the blonde roux for the veloute:

Whisking the roux into the stock and bringing it up to a boil until it forms a nappe consistency (when it coats the back of the spoon):

Here is the veloute simmering away with the sachet:

Here is some of the mise en place for the broccoli soup:

The white mirepoix being sweated for the soup (that means its cooked on a lower flame until it softens, but no color on the vegetables)

Then sweating the broccoli out a bit:

Then you add the veloute to the broccoli and mirepoix and let it simmer:

After which you blend, add cream, and strain through a chinois, which Chef demonstrates here:

Here is my presentation plate of cream of broccoli soup (with some steamed florets), which Chef said tasted great, was well cooked and flavored:

During clean up today, one of my classmates accidentally tipped over the food waste trash can with 240 pounds of steaming hot chicken bones in it. You could tell it was friday...

At lunch, I opted for the Asian kitchen again, since the cream soups are so heavy in class. I got a spicy beef pho:

it's worcestershire not worchestire

2009-06-04T19:50:00.008-04:00

I guess yelling works. Today we all worked a lot cleaner and chef was impressed with the fact that our knife skills are getting better too. He doesn't even check mine anymore which makes me sad, but I guess that means I'm doing it right.

Today we made chowda, fish chowder to be exact. First we had to make the fish fumet (fish stock). To do this you sweat some aromatic white mirepoix (leeks, onions, and celery) and then add the fish bones, white wine, and water. It's important to use low or medium activity fish bones (as we learned in fish fabrication class) because they have less fat which creates a lighter stock with less oil and a milder flavor. Today we used halibut and flounder bones to make our fumet.

Along with the stock and chowder, we also made our knife skills tray, and some of us roasted brown veal bones for stock and made its pincage. Pincage is using the fond, or leftover drippings from roasting the bones, to caramelize mirepoix (onions, carrots and celery) then caramelizing tomato paste into it. These are all added to the simmering bones when they have about an hour of cooking time left in their 8 hour long cooking process.

I knew I was learning a lot here, but it has all begun to connect itself and I'm becoming aware of all the learning, it's quite exciting. Whenever Chef asks a question in class, I answer, (sometimes wrong), but it reinforces how much I learned from years and years of watching cooking shows. :-D

Here are some pictures from the day.

This is our mise en place tray at the beginning of the day:

(and the fish bones):

And my knife skills tray (aren't those baby cubes of potato cute?):

Here is my fish stock (fumet):

Just bubbling away, with the sachet of spices and herbs:

And my mise en place for my chowder:

(All the while having browned the veal bones and now caramelizing the carrots for the pincage):

Here is Chef Viverito demonstrating how to temper the fumet into our roux. (if you remember from yesterday, a roux is a thickening agent made with fat and flour). Tempering is to add a little bit of the liquid at a time, let it come up to a boil to see the full thickening power of the flour before adding more stock.

My chowder bubbling away (before I added cream):

And my presentation plate. Chef said the flavor was great, but it wasn't light in color enough. (that's because I held back on the cream or else it wouldn't have had the good flavor that it did...):

During our lunch break, I got food from the Asian kitchen. I'll explain this since it might be confusing. As we progress in our studies, we have 3 week long classes and will eventually have Asia, Mediterranean, Americas, etc. When we go for lunch, we can choose any of these kitchens to get food from (where our peers are making the dishes as part of their class). Today I went to the Asian kitchen. Here is their demo table:

And a little glance into the kitchen:

And the chicken salad I got for lunch. Easily one of the best dishes I've eaten here so far:

dirtiest class of all time

2009-06-03T16:35:00.012-04:00

Well, we finally got yelled at today. We had all been waiting for the day when Chef Viverito's nonchalance towards our class would end and he would finally teach us in the strict manner that we had been accustomed to, and boy did it happen today. Having worked for CIA grads and other strict chefs, I have always known to keep my station clean and to have my mise en place ready. Apparently some of the other students in our class didn't get the memo, since Chef Viverito expressed that it looked like bombs had exploded all over their stations day after day. He finally yelled about us being the dirtiest class and that we never listen (which is true in some students' cases.) Besides that, it was a pretty calm day, though I did get a large grease burn from browning veal bones for stock.. it comes with the territory though.

Today we made brown veal stock, roux, and a pureed lentil soup. All quite simple separately, but challenging for some to do when attempting to multitask. I guess my need to be doing 57 things at once and writing lists and lists finally pays off (so far.)

Here are all the trays while we get them ready in the morning:

And my portion ready to be cut (with my new scale in the corner!):

Of course we did a knife skills tray, and I have been progressively getting better at my cubing (thank god), with a high yield on my julienned potatoes which chef called perfect:

Here are all the veal bones we got in to make stock today (only 120 pounds):

Which Chef shows us how to roast in the oven:

And turn about halfway through the hour or so of roasting:

Until they look like this:

Now for the lentil soup, the mise en place:

Caramelizing the aromatic vegetables:

Simmering the soup down with the sachet of spices:

We also pureed it once it was done cooking (here is Chef doing his):

And my presentation plate for Chef (who loved the flavor of my soup):

During that time we also made a roux (which is a butter and flavor combination used to thicken sauces and soups:

It has three stages, white, blonde, and brown. Here it is at blonde:

And Chef working on his:

And the blonde and brown roux side by side:

We went to the Skills 3 kitchen for lunch:

And here are some of my friends skipping back to class...

butter tastes better

2009-06-02T19:45:00.004-04:00

The legend of Mahsa mashti potato lives on. When I was younger and we would travel to Iran, I'd be in charge of mashed potatoes, as well as the tomato omelet (with plenty of saffron.) Thereafter I became one in the same as Mahsa mashti potato and my uncle has yet to see me once without a request for it.

Today in class (as you have guessed) we made mashed potatoes, as well as potato leek soup (known as vichyssoise when served cold.) I was on stock duty again today which means we were in charge of making chicken stock with 200 pounds of bones, 25 pounds of mirepoix (onions, celery, and carrots,) and gallons and gallons of water. Things went smoothly today. We started out with a knife skills tray:

And went on to make potato leek soup (did you know items that are served cold require more salt, that is because you don't have aromas coming off the items. because of this, your olfactory senses don't work with your taste buds to give you a complete tasting experience so you need to salt items more heavily):

And mashed potatoes (I forgot to take a picture of the presentation plate so I just took this one quickly during clean up):

Chef liked both of my dishes and said the flavors were very good and perfectly seasoned (which is hard to do since all chefs like different saltiness amounts.)

My lunch (seafood udon noodles from the Asian kitchen):

And Simone's dessert, champagne jello... only at culinary school

Stopped in for banquets tonight and met some new people, it's always fun being seated for a 4 course meal with total strangers. I can't believe it's only Tuesday, I've had a productive week so far. Back to training for my walk tomorrow..

dont knock the raft over

2009-06-01T17:45:00.006-04:00

What a long day. I've been up since 5 (like every other day), except today we had an externship prep seminar, so I stayed on campus and trained for my 60 mile walk to kill some time. Only 53 more days to go until the 3 day walk in Boston, and I have lots of money left to raise, a little under $2000. I'm excited for the walk; not only to prove to myself that I can do it (60 miles is a lot!) but to raise the awareness/money for research as well as funding for women who can't afford the costly treatments. It should be a life changing event.

In class today, we made consomme. Consomme is a completely clear broth that is made by introducing a certain set of ingredients that coagulate all the proteins in the broth and result in a clear broth. After Chef's warnings, we were all a bit unnerved going into class, knowing our rafts of clarification ingredients may sink and ruin the whole dish. But also due to the warning, none of our rafts did! We worked some more on our knife skills and the perfectionist in me tried and tried to get the perfect large dice (a lot harder than a small dice if you believe it) and even though I wasn't completely satisfied with my cuts, Chef Viverito said I did a great job and it's not something I should put myself in an early grave for...

Here is Chef Viverito demonstrating proper degreasing of the top of your consomme:

And his completed Consomme:

Here is what the raft looks like as it floats to the top of my pot (the liquid under is completely clear.. or should be):

And my completed consomme:

(Chef said my knife cuts on the brunoise vegetables were very good.. brunoise is teeny tiny cubes of whatever you're cutting)

At the externship seminar I got excited and nervous and overwhelmed all at once. As part of our studies for the associates degree here, we are required to go on an 18 week externship in a kitchen in order to practically apply all the knowledge we have gained so far. For my class, this falls in between November and April and it is quickly approaching. I'll be researching restaurants and kitchens all over the world, so if you have ideas, let me know!

Oh and here were some things I cooked over the weekend. I was on an asian kick so I braised some beef and served it over white rice with kimchi:

And I also marinated some flounder with an asian flavors and served it with broccoli rabe and kim chi:

i wouldn't change a thing

2009-05-29T18:15:00.012-04:00

What a great day. It was a relatively easy one, though most of my friends and I agree that the pace in Skills 1 is surprisingly slower than that of meat or fish fabrication classes. Since we are still in the opening days, most of these skills are familiar to us. Today, Chef told us that Monday would separate the boys from the men, that he has seen tears when students rafts fall and their consommes aren't clear. He explains how patience is extremely important when making consomme, and since we come from a multitasking instant-satisfaction generation, it's hard for us to deal with. (hopefully my inner 40 year old patience will kick in then.)

Here is our mise en place platter for the day, including our knife skills items and things for our soup.

Today we made french onion soup. It was really surprising how even though we all used the same recipe, 15 different students made 15 completely different tasting dishes. I have to thank my dad and mom for this one. His love of onion soup and my moms piaz dagh (a Persian caramelized onion that starts practically every dish) trained me for today. Though the method seems easy enough: caramelize thinly sliced onions in clarified butter, deglaze with brandy, simmer with stock, it is still a science as most dishes are. There are many variables that can ruin the dish. Firstly, if you didn't slice your onions uniformly, then the level of the flame, or if you stir your onions too much, these are factors that can lead to your demise. We all did really well, I was proud of some who had never made onion soup before and it tasted good. Though some students burned parts of their onions or over reduced their stock, there weren't any fires, and that seems good enough for our second recipe.

Here is Chef Viverito demonstrating the soup:

Here is my soup mise en place tray, ready to cook:

Here are the onions when you first put them in the sauce pot (or rondeau):

And again when they're nearly caramelized (I think the patience thing kicked in a lot here, some students had the heat up too high which leads to some burnt pieces and other white ones):

Here it is bubbling away with the sachet, which is a bouquet of herbs that add flavor as the soup simmers (made up of bay leaves, thyme, garlic, peppercorns and parsley stems):

And here it is all done:

Here are the croutons for the top layer. You have to "waterproof" them with some clarified butter so they don't soak up the broth too quickly when you put it on top of the soup:

And topped with parmigiana reggiano and Gruyere cheeses:

And plated up for Chef to taste:

That was nerve-wracking to say the least. Chef Viverito tastes all of our dishes and gives us feedback (though not as much as I would have liked). After tasting mine, he simply said "i can't say anything... it's excellent, i wouldn't change a thing, it's perfect." It was a good day.

i dont eat mammals

2009-05-28T18:15:00.007-04:00

Today we actually used stoves on our own, hurrah! We made a few different things, including chicken glace, beef and vegetable soup, and clarified butter. Chicken glace was basically 32 ounces of chicken stock that we reduced at a gentle simmer until it was 4 ounces. This is done so it can be a flavoring agent in sauces or soups. A small portion of glace has an extremely concentrated chicken flavor and adds body to sauces. Clarified butter was made by simmering butter to release the water and separate the milk solids and butterfat. It's a completely clear butter matter that results and can be heated to higher temperatures without reaching the same smoking point as whole butter. This way you can use it for saute items without worrying about it burning.

Here is our daily knife cut tray, I still wasn't perfect on the cuts, but improving and the sizes of julienne were correct, so that was exciting. Each day we get less time to produce the tray with more cuts in order to work on accuracy and speed.

Here is my mise en place for my soup. Mise en place is having all the ingredients/tools prepped and ready to go for making the dish, so you aren't running around the kitchen missing ingredients halfway through the dish.

Here is my completed soup. Definitely not the best thing I have made but chef liked it, at least the broth anyway. He is also the fish ID instructor and refuses to eat beef, saying that he "doesn't eat mammals." The look on his face after tasting his own soup was priceless.

Here is Chef Viverito demonstrating how to create clarified butter. This demo was probably the best example to date of what type of chef I learn most from and what type of chef I aspire to be. It may be simple to give a demonstration about clarifying butter by telling us there are 3 parts of butter: butterfat, milk solids, and water, and its necessary to release water and milk solids to get pure clarified butter. But the manner in which Chef Viverito did it made me understand where his passion lies, in the method of doing it. He explained how all 5 senses are being utilized, you can see the water bubbles coming to the surface, and hear them steam up and release air, or you can smell if it starts to brown. Something as simple as clarifying butter may seem trivial to many chefs, but the passion with which he demonstrated the importance of using all 5 senses or the science behind it helps us get excited about cooking. We learn about why certain things are widely practiced and how to become better utilizers of all of our skills instead of just one or two.

It has been quite a long week and though I love skills, I'm looking forward to finally getting some sleep to fully get over this cold I have had. Tomorrow I will be back to training for my 60 mile walk that is approaching rapidly!

leaning tower of potatoes

2009-05-27T18:18:00.007-04:00

Even though the cuts we are learning everyday seem trivial, for some reason I find this class incredibly relaxing. The repetition of the cutting, how I feel when I'm holding my knife, the quiet atmosphere when everyone is prepping their knife skills tray, there's something therapeutic about it all. And I know many of my peers are terrified of Chef Viverito, but I know that the more harsh the chefs are, the better we learn (up to a point of course.) Because we don't always receive immediate feedback, I find myself approaching the chef and asking if my cuts needs improvement and etc. Today we all finished our knife skills tray early (given that it was simple things like 1/4 inch julienne of onions, 1/8th inch diced onions, minced shallots, garlic, and parsley, concasse of tomato, and a bouquet garni,) so the chef rewarded our speed with a 50 pound bag of potatoes that he taught us how to tourne.

Doing tourne'd potatoes is probably a lot of chefs least favorite prepping methods, since you are turning a round potato into a seven sided torpedo shape. Although it is a bit hard to grasp at first, after some practice it becomes quite fun (I will probably be the only one to say that much.) I spent part of the lunch hour practicing these with my pairing knife in order to hone my skills and get into the habit of how it feels to tourne potatoes.

Here was our first tray (not exciting but documented nonetheless):

And some of my potatoes tourne (no where as good as the chefs, but not horrible either):

Another part of our skills tray was various cuts on a potato. We did battonnets, julienne, and 3 different sized cubes. (1/4 inch, 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch dice) It is quite intimidating when the chef gets out his plastic kit and measures your cubes against the model for consistency in size and shape. And believe me, if they are not perfect squares or the right size, they're not good enough.

Some of our potato cuts (surprisingly hard to get perfectly sized cubes):

And with the repetition in cuts, I find myself learning about the knives more, my hands more, how I hold and interact with my knife. It's something you probably don't think about at all, but when holding a knife for hours on end, I try to find ways to make the movement flow instead of being choppy. To date, one of my favorite things to do is watch professional chefs cut. To me, it's very telling about their attitude towards the job, whether they care or not, and how they feel that day. I saw it in meat class with Chef Schneller, the way every cut came so naturally to him, he knew where all the muscles in the animals would be from years of repetition. Thinking about it, I even remember watching Chef Marcella, Chef Andrea, or Chef Max in Italy cut items. The way they get into a zone where it's only them, their knives, and the item they're cutting. I think it's one of the great marks of a chef. Chef Thomas Keller, one of the most famous in the country and world, is known for having spent everyday for 2 years practicing making a hollandaise sauce until it was perfect. Some of us can't even do the same cuts two days in a row...

Anyways, enough rambling, my right wrist is kind of tired because the french knives I'm used to aren't as heavy as the CIA knives, so I'm still finding my way with them.

Everyday, one of the outputs from our kitchen is stock (chicken, beef, veal, etc). I really do love how this school was set up. In the meat class, they learn how to cut the chicken off the bone, then our kitchen gets the bones to turn into stock, then various kitchens at higher levels get the stock to make soup or sauces. It's a pretty great system. Here is some from today's stock production:

Chilling the stock on ice before putting them in the fridge:

there are lot of dirtbags around this school

2009-05-26T14:30:00.004-04:00

Today we started Skills Development I, where we learn all knife cuts, mother sauces, stocks--basically the fundamentals of cooking that we will carry with us throughout our careers as chefs. We have Chef Viverito, who claims to hate teaching this course (probably because it's so elementary.. we 70 mins scheduled to cut mirepoix, 3 shallots, 3 garlic, and some parsley stems... it took about 15min). Chef Viverito is the type of chef I hope to be someday. He mentioned how he travels constantly for cooking (just got back from Thailand) and how he used to be a private chef on yachts and a personal chef. I have at one point or another wanted to literally be all three of those. I hope to learn a lot from him in the kitchen and as a mentor regarding my career in the future. His theory is that being a chef is about knowing the ratios, the functions, instead of just recipes. It's been hard to express this to people in my life. They always come to me asking for recipes and get frustrated when I give them the method instead.

Chef Viverito is a clean freak, to say the least. His term for messy people, "dirtbags" is a phrase we hear often in class. Did you know that 70% of pico de gallo in the US has traces of fecal matter in it? It's because people don't wash their hands. dirtbags!

The pictures of today aren't that exciting, especially given that I'm still sick (ugh), but here are a few.

Here are my pretty knives and tools all ready to go:

This is the basic layout of the kitchen:

We made some stock today:

I didn't have much of an appetite so I went down to the storeroom to poke around and see any new products. I looked at the list of items they had (over 37 pages long!), so I'll probably order some items not normally found in the Hudson Valley area.

Here are a few of the asian products:

I'll write more tomorrow, hopefully I'll be back at 100% by then...

you're playing monopoly with a businesswoman...

2009-05-24T16:03:00.008-04:00

What a long week. After being constantly on the run either studying or in class, I was excited to finally get a few days off. Friday was exciting because my parents and sister Pegah came up to spend the weekend here. It was my dad's birthday so we all just spent some low key time together, which was much needed. I felt bad that I was sick but it was nice seeing them all. We played some monopoly (so non-persian of us) and went out to Le Petit Bistro in Rhinebeck for my dad's birthday. Today I took them all to Eveready Diner, which has been featured on the Food Network. Now I'll try to unwind a bit and get organized for Skills I on tuesday.

I wasn't the frontrunner... but soon enough, having all 4 railroads, 4 houses on boardwalk, and 2 on park place brought me to victory :-D

Some of the food from eveready:

Now onto D block, Skills Development I, which will be tons of work but lots of learning. Happy memorial day everyone!

caviar used to be the same price as beer

2009-05-22T15:55:00.008-04:00

I just turned on my tv for the first time this week. The couch hasnt been sat on, and mail is scattered on my counters, it feels like I haven't been home in days. You can tell it's the end of another block. It surprised me that I was so busy I didn't even get a chance to attend the grand buffet this week. Luckily, it happens every three weeks so I'll go to the next one.

This morning we had our fish class final exam. Like our meat exam, 10 different fish were put out and we had to identify them and other facts about them including what family they belong to, their activity level, if the bones are good for stock, what type of cutting method used to fillet the fish, etc. Though I felt prepared, I still had some apprehensions going into it, but it ended up working out well. Another important portion of all our exams here is a yield test, we calculate what percent yield we get from a fish being fabricated into a fillet. This tool will help us set menu prices, determine food costs, and other costs required to purchase raw material inventory. Finally, we take a written exam which encompasses all the lectures we had throughout the week. It was nice to get all of it out of the way before fabrication and lecture for the day. We fabricated filets again today, but the tasting was especially exciting since we talked about caviar, including Iranian. :-D

The end of class was bittersweet. All week I loved just listening to Chef Clark tell his stories, the years of experience shining through. It was nice to just listen to his words of wisdom and I'll be sad that I won't have that after today. I am very excited to move onto Skill Development I, one course out of three that builds our fundamental techniques and skills.

Here are some pictures from the fish room:

These are the bins in the walk in cooler:

Here are some flat fish:

And the general layout of the fabrication room:

Our lecture room is through the glass attached to the fabrication room:

Some of the caviar:

Our tasting plate of different caviars including: 3 types of ostera from the caspian, russia, and the US. Pike fish roe, white fish roe, salmon & trout roe. The other eggs are not allowed to be called caviar because they don't come from the sturgeon:

The value of each of our plates was over $100

And these were our smoked/cured salmon:

Oh, just another week at the culinary, I absolutely LOVE this place!

jimmy was a blue crab

2009-05-21T18:19:00.008-04:00

Today we covered shellfish such as lobsters, shrimps, and etc. As usual we filleted lots of fish for the schools' kitchens (that we will be moving to next week). Today we filleted a fish named Barramundi, which is part of the bass family (identifiable by the shape of the gill plate which looks like a Hershey kiss). Here are some pictures from the fabrication room:

Gutting some hybrid striped bass (you know its that type because the stripes are broken and uneven):

Barramundi fish:

And its fillet:

Chef Clark with a male and female lobster (you can tell them from the geophone on the male or the swimmerets on the female):

What a mahi-mahi's back bone looks like.. pretty cool, eh?

Soft shell blue crabs:

Here are the crabs cooked:

This is our crab and lobster tasting: (Did you know it takes 9-12 years for a 1.5-2.5 pound lobster to grow to that size?)

And here is a tasting of black tiger shrimp, and white shrimp cooked 3 ways (peeled, peel on, head on.) Obviously the one cooked with the head had the most flavor. If you find black spots on the shrimp you buy, it means that during harvest when they were cutting the heads off the other shrimp, the gut juices got on some and they didn't wash it off quickly enough. An important quality factor to keep in mind.

I don't have much time to write since we have a final tomorrow on tons of fish stuff, but will catch y'all up soon. Have a great memorial day weekend!

ipswich is to soft shell clam as kleenex is to tissue

2009-05-20T16:59:00.007-04:00

Today we covered mollusks. I didn't take any pictures of the many many many rainbow trout I filleted, but that was a good practice on straight cutting and I got into a rhythm after a while. It was a quiet day, we didn't get yelled at too much since we did better on ID-ing all the fish and other facts about them. Here are some pictures from the day...

We learned about univalves:

And many bivalves:

Here is an abalone shell, inside it is where mother of pearl comes from:

And we did several raw and cooked tastings:

Clams (raw & cooked) and Mussels:

Here are some things to keep in mind next time you go to buy scallops. There are two ways scallops come packaged, dry pack or wet pack. The wet packaged one are treated with STP (sodium tri-polyphosphate), which is a preservative that adds water to the scallops and helps them retain added water. So essentially you're paying the price per pound for scallops in order to buy water. Check how they were packaged to get the best flavor and quality. Two different types of scallops we tried today:

And raw oysters:

Did you know in order for a fish to be organic it has to be farm raised? How does that even make sense? Isn't organic supposed to be how nature intended items to be? The fish must be farmed because they have to be fed certified organic food (since apparently natural food they consume in the ocean isn't organic enough).

cod is a LOW LOW LOW activity fish

2009-05-19T21:40:00.005-04:00

Everyday when I get home from fish class I am shattered. Even though it starts later than meat (8am instead of 6:45), I think the fact that it is from 8am-4pm with virtually no breaks (maybe one 5 minute one) that does me in. And the fact that when I went to review my notes, it was over 10 pages of information today. Today, in fabrication, we reviewed all three cutting methods for fish: straight cut for soft bones, up & over for hard bones, and flat cut for flat fish. I filleted lots of fish and took a few before and after pictures, even though they all end up looking the same:

Here are a few of the rainbow trout before I filet them:

It's important to keep the filets flesh to flesh or skin to skin:

And a few filets:

Here is Chef Clark with a few of his spongebob toys to which he simply states:

"Spongebob is cool."

I could teach you a whole lot about bass, snappers, and groupers, which were the topic of lecture, but I'm sure its a lot more interesting to me than it is to you, so I'll leave you with the interesting fact of the day:

Because Japan spends so much money on their fish market, the global fish market is dependent on their preferences at a time. If Japan wants a certain type of fish, it won't be available to us, for example, one of our most popular sushi fish here is yellowtail ahi tuna. Do you think Japan eats this type of tuna? Nope, they hate it and don't eat it, or else there wouldn't be enough for us.

no gills, no guts, no scales

2009-05-18T23:00:00.001-04:00

Today I was extremely busy and barely had enough time to write this post. Some people think fish is easier than meat class, but personally I have been spending hours on the homework (the same as meat), but for some reason the ID part of fish seems harder, I think mostly because in meat, we were more hands on, and saw demo's that were specific to cuts we did that day, instead of whatever needed fabrication. In that manner, I can see how meat was a lot more organized and the atmosphere was more conducive to learning.

In class, we went over the importance of omega 3 fatty acids in fish (the fattier the fish, the more omega 3 fatty acid its likely to have). For example, krill is what salmon eat (and which is why theyre pink in color. Those krill have more omega 3 fatty acids than salmon (which has a large amount), so people are starting to eat krill for its health benefits. Since our bodies do not make these omega 3 fatty acids, we must consume them, they help with many functions in our body including prevention of heart disease, depression, colon cancer, reducing blood pressure and raising HDL's.

Heres the fun fact of the day (though we receive a lot of interesting information from Chef Clark):

Do you know why traditionally malt vinegar is eaten with fish & chips?

No, its not because it cuts the fat from frying. Because in the old days in Britain, the lower class would be the ones who ate fish & chips. They would use a type of shark called dogfish as the fish for it because of its cheap cost, and because these sharks did not have urinary tracts, they excreted urine through their skin. Because of mishandling during shipment and use, they would add malt vinegar on top to get rid of the strong uric acid smell left on the fish. (yum!)

Anyways, here are some things we did in class. I have less opportunities for pictures in this class because we are more busy and its a repetitive filet everyday usually.

Here's a wolf fish. It's extremely ugly, but very tasty:

It was one of the fish we filleted:

There is an interesting story behind this black sea bass. If you can tell from the photo, the gill plate is protruding, instead of lying flat like you usually see in whole fish. The reason for this is because the fish is so fresh that it is still in rigor, and the gill plate hasn't toughened up. It's likely that this fish is "too fresh," and its flavor won't be as developed as a black sea bass after its passed its rigor stage:

Here is part of the tasting we did that day:

you dont know nothin, you aint been nowhere, and you aint done nothin, how can you have a big ego already?

2009-05-15T17:20:00.008-04:00

Our Chef was in today, so we had the pleasure of having Chef Clark as our fish instructor for the first day, and it was entertaining to say the least. My role as group leader was well defined today, everyone looking to me for leadership and coming to me when their filets turned out nice, I felt like a proud mom. (I know, lame) It was a long day but we learned how to filet multiple fish, I did several flat fish and some round fish as well. Chef Clark is hilarious to listen to, here are some colorful quotes by him:

"there is nothing new in cooking. you dont create new things. those people who say 'i created'--well you didn't create shit"

"all of you have already decided shit about things you dont know nothin about"

"you came here to listen to what i think, i dont give a shit what you thought you did, its about what i think"

"they're trying to make me wear these black pants-- makes me look like one of those assholes-- excuse me, i mean, one of those deans..."

"i love my motorcycle, children, and wife... and probably in that order"

"im bilingual, i speak a little english, and a whole lot of country"

"you are always gonna ask dumb shit- i can speak for the men, you will continue to ask dumb shit all day. like in the morning i wake up next to my wife who's sleeping, and i say 'hi honey, how are you' and she yells 'shut up im sleeping!'... thats saying dumb shit"

"i learned a new word from the class before you- tramp stamp. i was laughing forever"

As you can see, Chef Clark is quite the character, and that made for quite an eventful day both in fabrication and lecture. Its been a long week so I won't write much and instead let you look at some pictures.

This is one of the bins in the cooler, these are all the tilefish (they're really pretty):

I tried to take a close up of the fins because theyre gorgeous, but it's dangerous because they have toxins in their dorsal fins that will make your finger balloon up if you cut yourself:

And this is a cod fish, really ugly:

The TA did a demo of a Dover Sole Colbert, which is a classical presentation of Dover Sole, quite an expensive dish. After the demo, I cut off those two filets and two more from the other side:

I'm sure many of you like eating Halibut. Well know you know what it looks like. It's a huge flat fish (whose bones are great for stock) and though it barely fit on my cutting board, it fileted rather easily off the rib bones.

There's the right side before I filleted it: (One side of the fish has color, called the pigmented side, and the side thats flat against the ocean floor is stark white, like this in this photo.)

And here is the filet:

Here are some other pictures of fish we saw today.

This is the pigmented side of the Halibut:

This is a skate filet, it looks like thin fingers:

This flat fish is called Turbot, both of its eyes are on the left side, because if you pick it up and face it swimming away from you, the pigmented side is on the left, hence where the eyes are:

The fish with outstretched fins is a Robin fish and the ugly one behind it is Monkfish or "poor man's lobster"

I know I always say I hate weekends because it means no CIA, but thank God for friday today. It has been quite an exhausting week. I learned a ton and was very busy, I need to store up some sleep for next week... Have a great weekend everyone!