Meat Fab, Week 2 Day 5. Last night Jen organized a little get together at a Japanese restaurant. Fun was had by all which resulted in a little tiredness in the kitchen. I couldn't get to sleep until 6am this morning. Today was my second day of butchery. Yesterday the chef demoed salmon, chicken, beef sirloin, and lamb racks. The practical for this portion of the class is to french a rack of lamb in under ten minutes. I finally hit that mark today after my seventh or eighth rack. I have the time down I just need to clean more meat off the bones.

Casey and Manny made stew for family meal. They elevated this humble dish to an artform. In lecture, we over the answers to the quiz we took yesterday. During the review session on Wednesday, Chef Pearson gave us a lot hints and outright answers to the quiz. But something led me to miss a few questions.

Meat Fab, Week 2 Day 2. Jim and I were the kitchen managers today. Our main responsibility is to make the family meal at 630pm. Jim was pretty open to any ideas, so I suggested fried rice. Our protein was pork loin. We roasted three of those off. One was marinated with a Chinese BBQ sauce I found in a cookbook. The recipe called for red food coloring which led many to wonder where the pink color came from. Another we stuffed with some sausage meat, roasted, covered it with mustard, rolled it in bacon, and finished in the oven. I like to call it pork three ways. The last one was an apple cinnimon recipe that Jim found on the web. We also made a fruit salad. Those four hours went by really fast. We wasted some time by peeling grapes for the fruit salad. I think we could have spent the time cutting up other fruit we had. I ended up taking more food home than I brought.

It felt good to cook for my fellow classmates. People liked the fried rice but I thought something was missing. I think it might have been the white pepper. We usually use that in class, but on this day we ran out. I used black pepper instead. It just wasn't the same.

Lecture was review for the quiz about poultry, fish, and shellfish. Last day of charcuterie tomorrow.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 4. More charcuterie fun. Chef Defleze is from Wisconsin so he has decided to teach us cheese-making. A little milk, a little cream, bring it up to 100 degrees add lemon juice to curdle and let it sit for a couple of hours. Then we poured it into grease trap bags which are roughly equivalent to twenty layers of cheesecloth. Tied it up and hung it in the refrigerator. More tomorrow.

Rodney made some Hot links. I brought it home and cooked one up. My parents thought it was extremely spicy, but it almost tasted sweet to me. I wonder what is happening to my palate. I got to make a torchon which means "dishtowel" in France. The method of making this comes from Thomas Keller's insane masterpiece The French Laundry Cookbook. Chef Defleze had all the fun of deveining the foie gras. I soaked it in milk for an hour to remove excess blood. Then I marinated it for an hour in brandy, white wine, and shallots. Then it is wrapped in a cheesecloth, poached for three minutes, shocked in an ice bath for ten minutes, wrapped in plastic film, and hung in the refrigerator. Tomorrow is the tasting. Can't hardly wait.

Rodney and I also made a pork mousseline terrine. Mousselines are protein, eggs and cream processed into a mixture which is then used in some way: mostly quenelles and stuffings. Another method is to shape it into a terrine which is what we did. I think I lucked out with the fun stuff first because the other half in butchery break down meat all day for the rest of the school. We get to make and take home as many charcuterie products as we can do.

Another video in the lecture session. I almost feel asleep. It was a continuation of the Pork salughter video. They described where each of the parts of the pig went.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 3. I got to class early and asked Chef Pearson to share his technique for knife sharpening. His technique is different from Chef Deflieze's in that there is no wasted motion; he sharpens on the forward motion and the backward motion.

We learned how to do galantines which is a whole chicken deboned, garnished, rolled, and cooked. The classical preparation is to tie the roll in a cheesecloth, poach in chicken stock, cool, and serve cold. Chef Deflieze likes to wrap it in bacon and roast it. I opted for the classical method because I was curious and because everybody else did it the Chef's way. Rodney and I also made Fennel Salami. Two more items on the list.

We also stopped to watch Chef Pearson demo breaking down a whole pork loin. In lecture, we watched a collection of four videos on the slaughter of cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep. I was more fascinated than disgusted. I don't know how some of those workers do their tasks day in and day out.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 2. I get to school ten minutes before class starts and manage to get in a little fingernail maintenance. Chef Deflieze checks it everyday for the charcuterie students. I panicked because I forgot my small recipe notebook at home. I wound up using my Palm Pilot. It was extremely useful, but I think it doesn't stand up well to possible stains and cuts. We learned how to make sausages today. It's pretty simple for fresh sausages anyway. Grind the meat, fat, and seasonings. Cook a test piece for seasoning. Reseason, and run it through the sausage press. Remove air pockets in the sausage and roll into links. Rodney and I made New York Spicy Italian sausage and Chicken and herb sausage. We smoked the NY Spicy Italian in the smoker, but Chef Deflieze left in too long. I didn't know you can actually overcook a sausage. The texture gets mealy because the fat separates from the sausage. The Chicken and Herb sausage came out okay. I feel that I'm going to have a pretty large collection of sausages in the freezer come winter break. Rodney has appropriately chosen this time to start on the Atkins Diet.

Over the Thanksgiving break, I suffered from withdrawl of the daily family meals. I had definitely taken that part of school for granted. We had a short lecture after class. We did a sample yield test where we figure out the actual cost per pound of a cut of meat, fish, or poultry after waste is considered.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 1. Another first day of a new block. We have two chefs: Chef Pearson, the Butchery instructor and Chef Defelzye, the Charcuterie instructor. Chef Pearson has made the rounds in hotels and resorts. He graduated from California Culinary Institute in 1995. Chef Defelyze is a young 27, graduated from the CIA and has had his share of restaurant experience. These guys have only been a duo for four months. Who knows how much longer they will stay on. I wonder where Chef Instructor lies in the path of my career. Since we didn't have the usual let's-go-around-the-room-and-share-our-culinary-dreams, I'll do a little musing here. I want to work a year or two in top restaurants around the nation for a decade and then take an executive chef position in my late thirties. Not sure what happens from there: a TV show, a chain of places, or possibly back to culinary school to teach. The future is just a chalkboard.

Chef Pearson went through all the details of the class with goals, grading procedures, homeworks, and other stuff. Then Chef Defelyze demoed filleting a salmon and cutting tranches of salmon (45 degree cuts). He demoed on a piece of salmon that was infected with kadoa, a bacterical diseases in which the bacteria eats away at dead fish flesh. It is commonly found in farm-raised salmon. The chef wasn't sure what health impacts there are for eating it but it degrades the quality of the fish. Chef never uses infected salmon and marked it down to notify the Purchasing. Then Chef Pearson demoed the various chicken cuts we are doing. 8 way chicken, airline breast, chicken supreme, drummettes, and boneless leg and thighs. It sounds like we're going to be butchering a lot of chicken.

An interesting aspect of this class is that the kitchen manager is in charge of the family meal. The Chefs tell us what protein is available and the rest is up to us. I'm thinking about fried rice maybe some chow mein. Maybe a small side of pork belly...

Saucier Week 3, Day 3. Final Exam. Rodney and I made Sweet corn fritters in class. They turned out very well. We plated at 5pm instead of the usual 715pm so that we could clean up for the exam. We were paid a visit by the Meat Fab chefs to get ready for Monday. There will be no production, but there will be videos and lecture. I'd feel a lot better if I didn't know about all the questions I got wrong. I messed up the cost card on the test. I knew something was fishy in the numbers, but I just couldn't put my finger on it until I got home. There were two soup questions that had me dumbfounded. I'm hoping for the best, but the perfectionist in me is disappointed. Another class in the books.

Saucier Week 3, Day 2. Practicals. The sautes for the practical were Chicken Marsala and Pan Seared Salmon with Lemon Beurre Nantais. Yesterday, Chef Holtermann introduced a new Associate Chef to the class. Mark graduated from SCI five years ago and has cooked in Alaska and Colorado. Today Mark was grading our sautes. They threw him right into the fire. Our knife cuts were julienne of parsnips and brunoise of bell pepper. The Blue team went last so I felt pretty good after getting advice from fellow classmates. I got a point deducted for my inconsistent bell pepper brunoise and another deduction for the slight overdoneness of my salmon. I got a perfect score on the Chicken Marsala though I felt that Chef Mark wanted to take a point off somewhere. It felt anticlimatic, maybe it was the wait to present to the Chef. There was a long line after the time limit to get graded. I spent the extra time cleaning my plate. It's good to have that out of the way. It makes up for the practical in Basics.

Before the practicals, it was class as usual. Shelby and I made Shrimp Puffs and small suaces from Chicken Veloute: Allemande and Supreme. Shelby spent about an hour spooning the shrimp puff mixture into quenelles for deep-frying until someone told us we had to wrap them in gyoza wrappers. It was a mad dash to the finish but we got it done in time for family meal. The meal today was quite large for some reason. There were steaks to taste the small Espagnole sauces, gratin potatoes, enchiladas, General Tso's chicken, and our shrimp puffs, as well as all the soups. I was worried that I'd be too stuffed to cook for the practical, but going last helped. Tomorrow is more production and then a final exam.

Saucier Week 3, Day 1. On Saturday, I volunteered to help Chef Holtermann with Foods from Provence Class. The menu was:
Pate de Fromage de Chevre aux Herbs Fraiches (Goat Cheese and Herb Dip)
Poulet Saute aux Herbes de Provence - Chicken sauted in butter with herbs
Saucisson en Croute - sausages wrapped in puff pastry
Bouillabaisse Marseillais
Daube de Boeuf - beef stew
Gratins Daupinois - yummy potato dish made with cream and Gruyere
Ratatouille
Tarte aux Pommes et Fenouil Caramelise - Apple tart with caramelized fennel
Tarte au Citron - lemon tart

When I first arrived in the kitchen at 8am, Chef Holtermann had me go outside and pick some fresh rosemary for the marinade in the Daube de Boeuf. While picking it I was questioning why I paid 2-3 dollars for this stuff in supermarkets. The stuff was growing like weeds in the patch I picked from. Later on I helped Jen, the baker extraordinaire, by squeezing two cups of lemon juice, peeling a lot of apples, and caramelizing the fennel. Chef Holtermann also had me brown the chicken. The students in the class basically learn about the region and do knife cuts. The Chef and the volunteers do most of the cooking. At the end of the class after all the students took their fill, I grabbed the rest of the sausage, the goat cheese, and the remaining bouillabaisse. Volunteering does have its benefits. By the way, long story short, I ran out of gas for the gingerbread house competition. I'm not as young as I used to be. Maybe Fallingwater was a bit ambitious, but I am a dreamer.

We're pretty much coming into the home stretch. The Blue team has rotated into Sauces. I made three small sauces derived from Bechamel: Cheddar Cheese, Mornay, and Soubise. Shelby made a Smoked Mariara sauce that Chef Holtermann praised highly. The soup team made soups and the stock team made stocks. I guess I now know why this class is only three weeks long. But I sometimes think that we're not being prepared for reality; that is, the repetition of cooking the same foods day after day in a restaurant. Maybe when we work in the a la carte kitchen, L'Academie, or the fine dining restaurant, L'Ecole, reality will set in.

We had our practice practical today. We have to do a double saute and some knife cuts in twenty minutes. The practice sautes today were Pork Medallion Marsala and Sole Amandine. The knife cuts were brunoise and julienne of celery. Hopefully things will be different tomorrow. Celery takes a little more time to square off than carrots. The pork was a piece of cake, but the sole was another story. I burned some almonds, I burned the sauce a bit, and I didn't cut enough brunoise of celery. It was a good learning experience. I think the most important thing is to cook the food until it is done. I learned my lesson from Basics. The time limit is only a portion of the total score, so I can definitely sacrifice that for doneness.

Saucier Week 2, Day 2. My first carpool with Rodney went well. I rushed a bit because I've been staying up way too late. But that will change. Maybe not. We went to Chef Karen to get more info about the trip to Tuscany and Paris. It's a ten day, nine night tour tweaked by the dean at Western Culinary Institute so that it's more geared towards culinary students. He also worked it out so that we stay in three and four star hotels. We have breakfast and dinner everyday, and we are on our own for lunch. Three cities are involved: Bologna, another Italian city, and Paris. We end at the mother school Le Cordon Blue. Chef Karen said that six people have already signed up. I hope to add to that, but I need to secure asource of income first. I plan to tackle that tomorrow with an interview with Bill Davis the owner of Anozira, a staffing company for hotels, resort, and catering events. They were at the job fair during orientation.

In class, we did the cost card for French Onion soup. It costs 0.99 to make a bowl of French Onion soup with our recipe that yields three gallons. The soups team did all the same soups that we did on Week 1, Day 3. Casey was assigned the one I did, Veloute Andalouse (Tomato Soup). I think she did a better job garnishing because she had more rice and had whole parsley leaves in between the roasted pepper strips. The sauce team made tomato sauces and veloutes. Shelby and I tackled the chicken stock today. Not too bad, we only had to cut 16 pounds of mirepoix today and there was no roasting of bones. We did blanch the chicken bones, but I found out later from Kenny that it was unnecessary. There is a debate whether to blanch or not to blanch. Blanching rids the bones of impurities, but it also takes a lot of flavor with it. I'm in favor of not blanching.

Kenny made a paella for family meal. We also had the potato tournees from yesterday's knife cuts. I opted not to eat until the sautes. Today we made Sole Amandine. Anything Amandine means its made with almonds, usually slivered and toasted. I mistakely thawed too many pieces of sole, so I ended up making five pieces. The key to this dish is to get the carmelization of the fish, the color of the toasted almonds, and the sauce all the same color. All the fish haters gave me their sautes. It was just Rodney, Eve, and Manny, but with my three extra pieces of fish, it seemed like a mountain of sole. I ended up taking it home along with some paella because we had to clean up.

Saucier Week 2, Day 1. The Saturday class was pretty interesting. Chef Holtermann taught 15 students about creating a Thanksgiving feast. He made two turkeys, Green Chile and Turkey Sausage Soup with Roasted Corn Dumplings, Cranberry Orange Relish, Sweet Potatoes, Glazed Shallots and Garlic Cloves, Cornbread Andouille Sausage Stuffing, Wild Rice Stuffing, Pumpkin Custard Pie, and Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti. I drove with Rodney to class at 730am. It took me a little while to wake up, but the day went by pretty quickly. I think I'm going to voluteer this weekend as well. Chef Holtermann is teaching a class about the foods of the Provence region in France.

Before class today I met Rodney at the AM catering banquet before going to the other campus to attend a meeting about a Gingerbread House Competition. The Pastry Chefs are building twenty "Gingerbread contrustions" themselves for a charity auction. It's nice because the chefs are providing the gingerbread and the royal icing, which is the primary icing used to hold gingerbread together. I will only say that I plan to enter the competition which must be finished by this Sunday. More will be revealed as I reach completion.

Today the Blue team moved to stocks. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but a vital component in the kitchen nonetheless. Shelby and I spent most of the time cutting ten pounds of onions, five pounds of carrots, and five pounds of celery, and roasting eighty pounds of veal bones. I also spent a great deal of time inside the walkin freezer trying to find calves feet. Who knew they were buried in the corner? At least I know where everything is now. So we didn't actually make stock; we made a veal kit which is everything but the water. It will be used eventually for stock.

The Gold team moved on to soups. They made the same soups that we did on our first day with the addition of Pumpkin Cider Soup and She Crab Soup. Chef also had Molly and Chaz plate a bowl with four soups: Potage Crecy, Black Bean Soup, Potage St Germaine, and White Cheddar Soup. The Green team made Bechamel and Espagnole, two mother sauces. Kenny, the extern assisting Chef Holtermann, made roast pork. Someone made two hotel pans of chicken enchiladas and a bowl of salad. Susan made some mashed potatoes and Kenny made a gravy using the pan juices from the pork.

Saute for today was Pan Seared Salmon with Beurre Nantais. Beurre Nantais is a Beurre Blanc with heavy cream. One fear from Basics was conquered when I was assigned the Potage aux Champignons (Cream of Mushroom) last week. Today another one was vanquished as I produced a consistent Beurre Nantais. My salmon was a bit overcooked, but I was too stuffed to eat it anyway. Shelby and Eve also offered me their sautes because they are not fish eaters. Maybe I should bring tupperware to school to bring all this stuff home.

Sauicer Week 1, Day 5. I am both happy and sad that we only have thirteen days in saucier. Happy that my stomach won't burst, but sad because there is much more to learn from Chef Holtermann. Another math lecture today. We did a cost card for veal stock. There was a small crisis when Tara lost her diamond earrings. I believe she found all of them though. The one gripe I have about our uniforms is that the pants packets don't hold small things well. Tara spied a sign on the bulletin board in the back about a trip to France during our summer break next year. There are arranged visits to top restaurants and hotels. It sounds really exciting but cost about $3400 and is limited to the first 30 students. I hope to save up for it. I guess I could always sign up and force myself to save up for it.

Today's production:
Eve - Lobster Bisque
Shelby - Corn Chicken Chowder
Me - Tortilla Soup
Rodney - Seafood Gumbo
Susan - Roasted Garlic Cream Soup - Chef Holtermann's Recipe and Provencal Garlic Soup - Julia Child's Recipe
Kalei Brazillian Black Bean Soup
Blair - Creole Tomato Soup
Jen - Cock-a-Leekie, Scotch Broth, Beef Barley

Eve's Lobster Bisque was super rich and yummy. She said that it was due to reducing heavy cream. I spent a lot of time learning how to grill chicken. Once again I had lots of help: Shelby helped me chop the chicken and garnish, Joe concassed my tomatoes, Deborah deep fried tortilla strips for my garnish, Nelson and Manny deep-fried tortilla chips, Richie roasted two poblanos and one anaheim chile, and James help me deep fry some tortilla strips. I love having all this help. I hope to help out my fellow classmates when I'm on stocks and have little to do. Rodney's Gumbo went real quickly. I lucked out because no one touched the presentation bowl.

The stock team, now consomme masters, lobster consommes along with their stocks. The sauce team had fun with Bearnaise and Hollandaise and all the small sauces derived from them. They made shrimp to try each of the sauces. Family meal also included hushpuppies, and some awesome polenta that I used with my saute. The saute for today was Tournedo Marsala. I really like the fact that we're getting experience using different liqueurs. Thank goodness the filet was only 1.5 ounces, I don't think I could've eaten any more. I'm getting more confident with my sautes. I don't burn things, I actually get a deeper flavor with the reduced sauces I make. Chef said that we're going to start doing double sautes on Wednesday.

Saucier Week 1 Day 4. I highly recommend training for a marathon while going through culinary school. Even if you don't run a marathon eventually, you'll still be able to see your toes. I think we are being spoiled rotten. Rotten to the core. We still have to cook and execute, but the food is getting a bit insane. But before the food orgy started, we had the first of six math lessons on filling out food cost sheets. I like the fact that Chef Holtermann sets a standard by carrying out all decimals to four places without rounding. It makes more sense than just two demical places where a lot of pennies could be lost or gained. Chef showed us that it cost .0197 cents per ounce when making 16 gallons of chicken stock.

Here are the Potages du Jour:
JB - Garbure
Eve - Thai Shrimp Soup
Shelby - Vichyssoise
Me - Potage aux Champignons (Cream of Mushroom Soup)
Rodney - Turkey and Wild Rice Soup
Susan - Soup aux gros Morceaux de Tomates (Chunky Style Cream of Tomato Soup)
Kalei -Roasted Fennel Soup
Blair - Muligatawny
Jen - Green Chile and Turkey Sausage Soup with Roasted Corn Dumplings

JB's Garbure is made with duck confit. Chef said that it was a soup that kept the doctor away. You first drank the broth, then ate the solids, and then sopped up the rest with bread soaked with red wine. Shelby's Vichyssoise came out well, but Chef said that he cooked the potatoes too long which led to a pasty consistency. I was peeling and chopping mushrooms forever. I think I may be finally at peace with the friendly fungi. Three quarts of mushrooms takes a long time, but I had lots of great help from Shelby, Molly, and Eve. I couldn't have finished on time without their help. Rodney actually made his soup with chicken not turkey, but it was still excellent. Kalei had to leave early but managed to finish his soup. Blair's soup looked really good, but there was way too much ginger in it. Jen's soup will be part of a class on Saturday taught by Chef Holtermann to the public. The topic is about making a Thanksgiving feast. Quite a few people from the Blue team including myself are going to help out.

I realize that this is nothing like a restaurant situation where repetition is the norm. That may be what the stock group is facing, but making a gallon of different soup a day is lots of fun. Sauces might be interesting. They got to make small sauces using the tomato sauce from yesterday. Chef got us a bunch of steaks for family meal intending for us to sample the sauces, but there was a problem with the demiglace and a lot of the brown sauces weren't up to par. We'll just have to wait until next week when the teams rotate. The stock team got make consommes today. Everyone made super clear soup with different garnishes. They also made some penne with sauce bolognese. Jen made another magical tray of biscotti. I realize now that she has been testing out a recipe for the Chef for his class on Sautrday.

Chef conveniently made our knife cuts potato batonnets (1/4" x 1/4" X 2"). Each day we do a knife cut to practice for the final. Jim, the Kitchen Manager for the day with Molly, made French Fries with our cuts to go with our sautes. As if everyone didn't have enough red meat for today, the saute was Boeuf Hache Au Poivre. In other words, we made a hamburger. But not any old hamburger. We encrusted it with crushed black peppercorns and topped it with a creamy dijon red wine sauce. Again I thought I might have charred it a bit too much, but Chef liked the color. What suprised me the most was when he cut into it, it was medium rare, just like he asked for. I was certain I went too far with the doneness. I'm gaining more confidence in my saute skills bit by bit. As stuffed as I was, I couldn't stop eating the saute with the fries. They were the best fries that I've had in quite some time. These are the fries that In-N-Out could have if they only cut their spuds a bit thicker.

Saucier Week 1, Day 3. Another busy day of production. I got an easy soup today, so I was having a good time. Here's what the Blue team did:
JB - Oxtail Soup
Eve - Clear Gazpacho made with Tomato Water
Shelby - Split Pea Soup
Me - Curried Cream of Cauliflower Soup
Rodney - Minestrone Soup
Susan - New England Clam Chowder
Kalei -French Onion Soup
Blair - Tuscan Bean Soup

JB's soup had great flavor. Eve spent the entire time making the garnish for the gazpacho. The mold for the tower was a section of PVC tubing. The Tomato Water is inspired by Charlie Trotter. I highly recommend making a batch. It's like drinking a tomato; it's super refreshing. Kalei made super French Onion Soup. He spent a lot time carefully caramelizing the onions. Shelby's soup had yummy pieces of ham hock. I wish it was cold outside so we could appreciate the warmth of these soups. Then again, its nice to be able to sit outside, eat a bowl of soup, and not worry about freezing to death. Rodney's Minestrone was a knife cut soup. He spent the entire time cutting vegetables. His soup turned out very well. Susan's Chowder also came out well. Although it would have helped if Chef halved her recipe, she made about two gallons of soup herself. Blair didn't get to finish her soup because it was quite involved.

I found out that the Magic Biscotti Fairy is actually Jen. She made it again today with dried cranberries and pine nuts, but it got a little burnt on the edges. It still went down very well. The sauce team made shrimp puffs for the class. Not too bad. There was also pasta and a chicken tomato sauce. It's very nice having a family-meal type break, but I keep forgetting that we have more to eat afterwards with our sautes. Today it was Pork Medallion Maderia. My saute turned out pretty well. I was surprised because I thought I may have burnt the pork, but it all turned out well in the end. Here's the recipe:

Pork Medallion Maderia
pork cutlet
salt, pepper, flour
1 tbsp clarified butter
1 tbsp raw butter
2 oz Maderia
2 oz Demiglace
1 tbsp shallot, sliced
chopped parsley

Season both sides of the pork cutlet. Dredge in flour. Heat skillet with clarified butter. Place cutlet in pan. Flip when the first side get a nice brown color. Add the shallots to sweat(no color). Remove the cutlet when cooked through. Pour off excess calrified butter and add Maderia. Then add the demiglace. Reduce and stir it until it coats the back of a spoon; this is called nappe. Thin with veal stock if necessary. Season to taste. Monte au beurre with the raw butter. Plate, sauce, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Saucier Week 1, Day 2. First day of production. We were on our feet from 3pm until 945pm. I didn't really feel it until the end of the day. I was mistaken yesterday when I said Blue team was doing stocks, we're starting off with soups. Chef Holtermann opened class with a lecture about retaining food knowledge and using the association technique to remember things. He likes to tell the story of certain names of soups. Today he told us about Veloute a la Andalouse. Andalucia is a region in Spain that is known for its tomatoes. Thus Veloute a la Andalouse is a fancy name for tomato soup.

Chef went through the Blue Group and assigned each person a soup. I got Veloute a la Andalouse. When I looked at the ingredients, I thought it was going to be easy. There's veloute, tomato puree, Sauce Soubise, and chicken stock. This is simmered for twenty minutes finished with a liaison(egg yolks and heavy cream) and monter a beurre. I guess it really was as easy as that, but I kept stressing over the veloute because I didn't know how thick it should be. It turned out very well. In fact, everybody's soup came out well. Rodney made Potage St Germain (a green pea soup), Eve made Black Bean soup, Shelby made White Cheddar soup, Zac made Potage Crecy, JB's soup Potage Parmentier was made into two more soups Potage Julienne Darblay and another one, Blair made Cream of Watercress, and Jen made Soup Cultivateur. During presentation, Chef made bowls of soup with ladels of different soups. The Potage St Germain matched well with the Potage Crecy. Peas and carrots are a classic combination after all. He also matched the Black Bean soup with the White Cheddar soup. Next week, he going to try to fit four soups into one bowl.

The Green team made stocks and the Gold team made sauces (Bechamel, Espagnole, and Jus de Veau Lie). After the presentation, we got to eat our soups. Tara made some chicken to go along with the soups. I spied Manny's oxtail stock and got a few people to try some oxtail. I guess I shouldn't have been too shocked that a lot of people haven't have it before. It's so fatty and flavorful. A sheet pan of biscotti also turned up from the bakeshop. It was crisp with a slight chewiness to make you want to keep eating it.

After the break, we did sautes. Today it was a Chicken breast in a Brandy Dijon Cream sauce. It's pretty simple. Seaon a chicken breast and dredge it with flour. Brown it in clarified butter. Then drain off excess clarified butter and add two ounces of brandy. Flambee until the alcohol is cooked off. Next add two ounces of heavy cream and a little bit of mustard to thicken. Plate and sprinkle with chopped parsley. We made our own sautes by group while the other groups started cleanup. I used a little too much mustard so my sauce was gloppy. Chef said to thin it out with chicken stock next time. Cleanup was a little unorganized, so we got out later.

I'm sad to report that Zac is leaving our class for the AM session. He got a job at a fancy restaurant at night, so he'll be doing double duty.

Saucier Week 1, Day 1. Today is the first day of thirteen days in the Sauicer kitchen. We get two less days due to Thanksgiving. Our instructor is Chef Bernard Holtermann. He's from Germany and is in his fourth year of teaching. After fifty years in the industry, he loves Arizona and never wants to leave.

In some ways it was a repeat of the first day of Basics. Everyone gave a little spiel about their background, hopes, and dreams. I guess now that we knew each other a little more, it was good to get reacquainted and refocused as to what our goals are. The previous class left us some soups as a snack. We had seafood gumbo, pasta fagoul, mushroom soup, and a creamy chicken soup. Chef split the class into three groups: Blue, Gold, and Green. We're each rotating through stocks, soups, and sauces and sautes. I'm in the Blue group, so I get to make huge kettles of stock first. A veal kit, used to make veal stock, consists of 100 pounds of bones and 20 pounds of mirepoix. This fits into one of three huge steam kettles in the kitchen.

Today was the first day of the new crop of Basics kids. Their uniforms are a little fancier than ours and they get white neckerchiefs. It was also the first day for the new catering kids. We got out of class at 8pm so I decided to stick around for the meal. Besides the usual first day pizza, the menu consisted of salad, pasta primavera, linguini with red clam sauce, assorted cookies, and the omnipresent melon plate.

Week 6, Day 5. Last day of Basics. We end the block with a final test and egg cookery. The test caused problems for a lot of kids because we didn't have the weekend to prepare for it. I prepared by getting eleven hours of sleep. I had a dream about eating in a restaurant. The woman next to me had a cheesecake for her entree and was eating a different one for dessert. I awoke with visions of omlete varations dancing in my head: egg white with fried parsley and intact egg yolks, breakfast sausage and carmelized apples, and oranges. Yesterday I experimented with medium-boiled egg omlete with bacon and cheese garnished with avocado slices. The medium-boiled eggs just didn't seem right. I think poached eggs would have been better.

The kitchen was all about eggs. We made sunny side up, over easy, and omletes. There was definitely less tension in the atmosphere after the test. In class, I didn't really want to mess around, so I made a simple omlete with breakfast sausage and cheeses. I never knew how restaurants made omletes like they did with the sunny yellow glow. Now all those secrets have been revealed to me. They are probably in cookbooks, but I didn't bother to learn them. The key is flipping the omlete and a teflon pan doesn't hurt either. I've never flipped an omlete before. I always just filled it with the top side still a little runny, then folded it. But if you flip it you have two chances to get a sunny presentation side. Whichever is the magic side goes on the bottom, the omlete is filled, folded, and finished in the oven if necessary. This is the American omlete. The French omlete takes about 30 seconds to make and involves shaking and rolling.

We also had the infamous Atomic Coffee. I encourage people to brew this at home. It's a very tasty beverage chock full of caffiene due to the cold pressing. What I don't encourage is what Rick did, which is drink twelve cups of the stuff. On to Saucier!

Week 6, Day 3. My practical was today. It could have gone better. My menu was:
Salad: Spinach with Hot Bacon Dressing
Soup: Consomme Brunoise
Entree: Grilled Salmon
Sauce: Hollandaise
Starch: Rice Pilaf
Vegetable: Asparagus with Compound Butter

The salad and the soup went fine. The entree was where bad things happened. I chose a thick piece of salmon so I needed to finish it in the oven. I took it out of the oven too soon because I was running out of time. I realize now that it's more important to cook food properly than beat the clock. I was caught up in "the game" and I wanted to win. I also tried to do a bit too much on my own. Eve was a super help, and I could have utilized her more. The asparagus was underdone as well. I tried to steam it, but it wasn't tender when I served it. Finals is not a good time to try new things. The Hollandaise was perfect, but I didn't keep it warm and it broke. My saving grace with the rice pilaf. I've eaten rice in some form a majority of the meals in my life, so I'm glad that turned out well. I learned a lot of organizational skills today, but I just wish I wasn't being graded.

Eve did the menu yesterday. She did very well. Her menu was:
Salad: Bound Shrimp Salad
Soup: Cream of Mushroom
Entree: Schnitzel a la Holstein
Sauce: Lemon Beurre blanc
Starch: Rissoto
Vegetable: Braised Cabbage

Eve makes a mean rissoto. Rick and I polished off her entree in no time. Yesterday was a much better day. I don't think I would have done as well as Eve did because Cream of Mushroom, Rissoto, and Beurre blanc are my weaknesses.Two more days, two more tests.

Week 6, Day 1. Test and practice practical. The test was not the bear Chef said it was, maybe it was hibernating. After grading the test, we were given the rest of the time to prepare for tonight's practice practical. This was the menu:
Salad: Caesar
Soup: French Onion Gratinee
Entree: Stuffed French Leg with Bacon, Shallots, and Mushrooms (our choice of stuffing)
Sauce: Mushroom, shallots and caper Supreme
Starch: Sauteed Rissole Potatoes
Vegetable: Glazed Juliene Carrots

The hour and fifteen minutes went by like a flash. I had no problem with the Caesar Salad and Eve took care of the French Onion Gratinee, but the chicken was a problem. We didn't get a good piece of caul fat, so it took a bit longer to cook. I took the chicken out with two minutes to go, but it wasn't done yet. Everything else was ready to go. Eve made a superb sauce. When we finally showed our plate to the Chef, he noted the slightly burnt rissole, but when he took a bite of the chicken, he praised the flavor. I offered Joe and Casey some of our chicken and they enjoyed it very much. Eve is up tomorrow and I have the menu on Wednesday. We're going to have to work a bit faster to get everything done on time.

Week 5, Day 5. A day of excesses. I have a love-hate relationship with Halloween candy. Several people brought in their leftover Halloween candy to share with the class. After gorging on a selection of chocolate(Snickers, Hershey Nuggets, Ghiradelli) and non-chocolate items(Starbursts, Laffy Taffy, LemonHeads), I suffered through the sugar low while watching two more videos on meat fabrication. I pretty much have the US primal cuts ingrained in my head. I think whenever I see a cow, I'll see dotted lines on it separating it into the chuck, rib, short loin, sirloin, round, flank, short plate, brisket, and shank. We also played Jeopardy. The score ended in a tie so everybody gets a bonus point. I think Chef Warden felt sorry for the other team because they had lost to our side every time so far.

We had another small planning session with our partners to discuss the filling for our Beef Roulade. A roulade is a thin slice of meat rolled around a filling. Eve and I worked with the idea of an asparagus center. In our palate of colors, we had green from herbs, orange from carrots, and white from cream cheese. We were doodling on the white board in the front of the class, and Chef Warden came over and incorporated our designs into a drawing of a pickup truck. He ain't no Picasso, but he can sure cook and teach.

In the kitchen, we also made Rack of Lamb Persillade and Steak Diane. A persillade is a mixture of bread crumbs, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, and clarified butter. It was packed on top of a rack of lamb(it was only four ribs, so half a normal rack) that was seared and smothered with Dijon mustard. Chef decided to time the cooking to give us more practice with working against the clock. I really didn't feel any pressure; I knew everything would be done on time. Things just worked out that Eve worked on the Lamb and Steak Diane and I make the Beef Roulade. For the roulade, we pounded a tournedo flat. Then we spread on a small amount of cream cheese mixed with chopped parsley. I interspersed the mixture with strips of green and yellow bell pepper and carrot. On top of this I put half of a blanched asparagus spear. This was rolled up and seared in olive oil and clarified butter. Then we sauteed garlic, shallots, and tomatoes. The pan was deglazed first with red wine, then with white wine. After reducing this, we added some demiglace and placed the roulade back in the pan with sliced mushrooms. This was braised for a while and then the roulade was removed to be sliced for presentation. The remaining sauce was reduced and finished with some raw butter. Eve really liked it. I think the cream cheese was a bit pronouced. Chef liked the presentation.

I packed away quite a bit of meat. Besides half of our rack of lamb, a small fillet of Steak Diane, a little Beef Roulade, and some chocolate Guiness tirmisu courtesy of the baking kids, Casey let me have two of her lamb ribs because Shelby didn't want them. I really, really enjoy racks of lamb. And this being a day of excess, I heard the siren call from the banquet room and floated up the stairs. Mexican night. It was like deja vu all over again. The catering class is only three weeks long, so the same menus rotate every three weeks. But it seemed better this time. Fruit salad with juicy watermelon, tart mango, and crunchy jicama seasoned with a touch of cayenne. Chicken mole and Spanish rice to die for. Bacon wrapped shrimp. Tequilla and banana sauce with sweet tortillas. I don't want to think about the weight gain that occurred today. Maybe it'll just be a blip on the chart.

Week 5, Day 4. A pretty cool day. In lecture, we went over the homework as usual. But then Chef Warden assigned us a mini-menu planning activity. In the kitchen, we were going to cook a tournedo of beef and roast either pork or beef. Chef wanted us to create an entree using the tournedo with a sauce, a starch, a vegetable, and garnish. For the roast, we had to lard or bard it, and shoot for certain internal temperatures: 132 F-142 F for beef or 150 F-158 F for pork. We had to use the following items: onion, carrot, celery, shallot, garlic, fresh herbs, leek, cooking wine, liqueur, mustard or egg yolk, citrus, stock, tomato, peppers, mushrooms, raw butter, and cream or milk.

Joe joined our group because he doesn't have a partner. I didn't understand why he didn't pair up with Zac, whose partner Rodney left home early because he was sick. Zac joined Bjorn and Kinsey. I was glad to have Joe's help. He did all the chopping for the group. We would have been a lot more rushed if he didn't help us. Brainstorming menu items was fun. We rifled through the book for recipes and found one called Roast Pork Tenderloin with Leeks and Whole Grain Mustard Sauce. We decided that if we got the beef roast we'd substitute leeks with tomatoes and use red wine instead of white wine.

For the starch, we chose to do rissoto, so that Eve could practice for her practical. For the vegetable, we chose to do Glazed Carrots. We didn't have any use for citrus or tomato, so our garnish was a tomato crown with lemon zest. I am really not a big fan of garnish for garnish sake. Ideally I'd like it to be a mini side dish. I think we lucked out with the pork roast. I was picturing that in my head instead of a beef roast. I was in charge of the glazed carrots and pork roast, Eve handled the rissoto, the tournedo, and the garnish, and Joe did all the chopping. This was our final menu:
Tournedo of Beef with Mushroom Duxelle and Roasted Garlic Rissoto
Garlic Studded Roast Loin of Pork with Mustard Sauce

We had ten minutes to gather all the ingredients and then one hour to cook everything. For the pork, I poked holes in it with a paring knife and stuffed it with garlic cloves. Then I patted the outside with brown sugar and wrapped it in 4 pieces of bacon(this is known as barding). I seared it in a mixture of oil and clarfied butter and put it into the oven. Then I zoned out for a bit, but Eve got me back on track. I sweated onions, shallots, minced garlic, leeks, and celery in the oil-butter-bacon fat left over from the searing. Next, I placed this mixture in the roasting pan underneath the pork roast. Then I caramelized a diced green apple with some sage. I added this to the roasting pan as well. Then I made the glazed carrots. The roast reached 150 F and I took it out to rest with ten minutes remaining. I deglazed the roasting pan with white wine and added a mixture of cream and mustard. After straining the sauce, I added some more mustard for flavor and body. Eve really liked the resulting sauce. I was surprised it turned out so well.

During this time, Eve was making the rissoto and the compound butter to go on top of the tournedo. In the final ten minutes, she made duxelles, pan-roasted the tournedo, and made the garnish. Things went pretty well. Although I didn't hear the feedback from the Chefs. I was busy cleaning, when I heard him yell at us to get our food if we wanted to take it home.

After this experience, I am trully in awe of the Iron Chefs. It took me an hour to make roast pork and some glazed carrots. How in the world do they turn out four and five course meals? Experience and speed I guess.

Week 5, Day 3. We watched two American Culinary Federation videos on beef. It wasn't the scary "here's Bessie, now let us show you how we turn her into hamburger." It was just two guys examining and discussing different primal cuts. I think the scary videos are shown in Meat Fab. Eve gave an in depth report on the history of the chef's uniform. It was well researched and informative. Her report was interrupted by a presentation a polo shirt to Chef Warden by the President for being a Chef Instructor of the Month or some other period of time. It was quite surreal.

More chicken cookery in the kitchen. We made Chicken Cordon Blue, Chicken Fricassee, and Naravin, a brown lamb stew. Today was not a good day in the kitchen. It started out well with a snack of scrambled eggs and hashed browns from the meat fab kids. But once I stepped into the kitchen, nothing seemed to go right. I guess just the Chicken Fricassee turned out bad. My liaison, a mixture of egg and cream used to thicken, broke and the fricassee was ruined. I also melted my instant thermometer by leaving it inside the Chicken Cordon Blue in the oven.
By the way, the chili competition was cancelled due to lack of entrants. There were only five entrants, three from our class though. Momma said there'd be days like this.

Week 5 Day 2. It was all meat, all day long. Chef Warden admitted that the meat test is a bear. I don't think he intended the pun. He informed us that our next class is Saucier, so it's even more important for us to get the meat stuff drilled into our heads now so that we'll be ready for Meat Fabrication after Saucier.

We were going to watch two videos about separating veal into the foresaddle and hindsaddle, but a lot of people asked questions about meat. I'm a little scared about watching graphic videos depicting the slaughter of calves. The vision that's in my head is that of Lisa Simpson being transformed into a vegetarian after watching a similar video in her class.

We also talked about Kobe beef and fetal veal. According to Chef Warden, the cattle are nailed in place after a day of being able to walk so that they don't develop muscles. They are massaged and fed a diet of grain and beer. The meat has excellent marbling. I couldn't find any sources to validate the nailing in place bit, but I did find this informative site. Fetal veal is an unborn calf. Chef Warden has had this and assures us that "It's goood." I can't seem to find any information from the web on this though. (If anyone can find info about this please let me know, thanks.)

Debra gave her report on Jello. She read us her paper because she doesn't like speaking in front of the class. She went pretty fast, but the paper sounded pretty good. There was once chocolate flavored jello. It doesn't sound that bad, I wish it was still around.

In the kitchen, we made Schnitzel a la Holstein, which is part of one of the practical menus, and Stuffed Frenched Leg. For the schnitzel, we pounded a piece of pork tenderloin thin and breaded it with panko using the Standard Breading Procedure(flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs). This was browned in clarified butter, topped with a poached egg, and a lemon wheel garnish with capers and an anchovy. We made a beurre blanc to go with it. I didn't care for the lemon wheel, but lemon juice would have flavored the sauce nicely. The customer is supposed to break the egg yolk and combine it with the beurre blanc to create a richer sauce. The original dish calls for a fried egg, but I think poached is just as nice. It it good stuff. For the stuffed frenched leg, we used a leg that we fabricated yesterday. We stuffed it with duxelles (sauteed mushrooms with shallots and garlic) and wrapped it in caul fat. Then we seared all sides in clarified butter and finished it in the oven. Another quality dish. It even got the parental seal of approval.

Week 5, Day 1. No tricks in the test. Though we did have to write out the steps to making mayonnaise from memory instead of just having the steps there and ordering them. Only two more tests left in this block. A lot of people did well on this one. Maybe the topics of salads and fish are easier for for people to grasp. They probably studied harder.

The extra credit reports started today. Only three students did them: Tara, Eve, and Debra. Tara presented hers after the test on organic foods. Lots of good info various ogranic foods. She also brought in some apple juice for everyone. Visual aids are key. Actually its more like a total sensory aid. I wanted to do a report on dim sum, but I just couldn't write the six pages for the report. I even took pictures of dim sum dishes a couple of weekends ago for the poster. I think I can save it for another class.

The kitchen was fun. Each of us got to take apart two whole chickens. I've always thought that one of life's greater joys was deboning a chicken. I think I will enjoy that even more with what I learned today. I've always felt very comfortable handling raw carcasses of chicken, not as comfortable as that guy in Iowa but that's a differnt story. We broke the chicken down into boneless, skinless, double lobe breast, Frenched leg, and boneless leg. All the other parts went into a stock pot. I'm cringing at all the bacteria that may have been left behind despite our best cleaning efforts. Eve and I were kitchen managers for like the tenth time. I think Chef Warden just likes to put Eve in charge because she gets things done. She's quite good at it too.

I was pretty hungry after class because it was the first time we haven't cooked something to eat in a while. We arrived at the banquet room while they were still setting up; it wasn't until an hour later that they let people in to eat. The main takers for the banquet are the Basics kids. Mostly from our sister class, since the Chef gives them a break from lecture to get dinner. The theme was Southwestern cuisine. There was the usual fruit plate but with a watermelon fruit sculpture. You could tell it wasn't carved by Rodan but one of the things did look like a cactus. There were fajitas with choice of steak, chicken, and pork. Taquitos and quesadillas. Not too bad, but maybe not worth waiting an hour for. I wonder what will be among the themes for our banquets.

Week 4, Day 5. Yet another futile review session. I don't know why I subject myself to this hour of pain. I guess I'm secretly planning for the day when I'll contribute to the session. They really need to teach the kids how to study for the tests. Stuff that the Chef instructors don't give them. Techniques to memorize certain things, focusing on ways to study, and maybe even give them a practice test.

Chef Warden was back today. He found out he has an ulcer and did not feel well after some treatment. He hates missing a day of class. He seemed really concerned that we understood fish cookery. It was as if someone else painted on his masterpiece and he was making sure that the integrity of his work was still in place. I have never had a teacher in my entire life who earnestly cared about their students as much as Chef Warden does. If you ever find yourself at SCI, make sure you get Chef Warden for Basics, he'll make you a chef.

We went over the test as usual. It seems pretty comparable to the others. We didn't get to play Jeopardy because we got into an involved discussion about our final practical exam in week 6. We have to make a soup, salad, and entree with protein, vegetable, and starch in a very doable hour and fifteen minutes. One person from each group cooks on either Tuesday or Wednesday. The partner can only do prep work; they cannot start or finish a dish.

We also discussed the meaning of the dish Poached Fish Bonne Femme. This dish is usually sole rolled up and poached in white wine and mushrooms. The mushrooms is the ingredient that makes it Bonne Femme, otherwise it would simply by Sole Vin Blanc. Bonne Femme in French translates to good wife. So does that mean a good wife adds mushrooms? Not any wife of mine I hope. I am not overly fond of mushrooms. I did a little more reasearch in the Bible aka Larousse Gastronomique and the entry for Bonne Femme said "dishes that are prepared in a simple, family or rustic manner." So I guess there's still hope.

Tomorrow is graduation day. I think there are two graduation days a year: one in May and one in October. Students graduate at different times times so they all gather in May or October and walk the walk. Chef said they would be preparing one thousand crepes with creme fraiche and duck confit tomorrow in the Basics kitchen for the event and that any volunteers would be welcome. I'm thinking about it. The bad thing is that they start cooking at 730am.

It was shellfish day in the kitchen. Chef Warden demonstrated cooking lobster in three different ways: boiled, grilled, and stuffed with casino mixture and baked. The boiled lobsters were boiled whole. The grilled lobster were split in half, topped with a herb butter before grilling. We didn't get to cook lobsters, but we got to eat them. Instead we got to shuck oysters and clams, prepare Oysters/Clams Casino, and make Scampi Shrimp. My sauce for Scampi Shrimp, or Butter with Shrimp as I like to call it, didn't turn out as creamy as it was supposed to be. I think I overbuttered it, who knew that was even possible.

Week 4, Day 4. I went to school early today to take advantage of the jacket and pants sale at the other campus. There was no one in line when I got there, but according to Chef Karen's talley a lot had been sold already. I got five jackets and five pairs of checkered pants for $35. Not too bad. The jackets have Gabrielle and Millie embroidered on them. Minor details. I had loads of time when I got to campus, so I decided to do some homework in the library. I bumped into Rick, Shelby, and Rodney who told me about the banquet that the AM students put out from 1-2pm. That seems like a more realistic target for food than the night banquet.

Chef Warden was absent from class today. Chef Blakemore was his substitute. She teaches one of the AM classes. It felt kind of awkward. She lectures differently. Her notes are just outlines of the material in the book. She did tell us the story behind "a la meuniere" or "in the style of the miller's wife." It's a classic method of sauteing fish dredged in flour with clarified butter or oil. The idea behind the name comes from the fact that millers lived in apartments above their mills. At the end of the day, everything in the apartment would be coated with a light layer of flour, including the miller's wife.

The kitchen portion dealt with fish cookery. Earlier in class, Eve mentioned to me that her mother's way of overcooking things has scarred her fish cooking skills. I think she was exaggerating, her preparation of Trout and Flounder en Papillote was excellent. She let me have half of her grilled salmon, her Poached Salmon in Court Bouillon, and her Trout a la Meuniere. She just doesn't like to eat fish a lot, that's all. I ended the day with gigantic plate of salmon and buttery trout and flounder. Shelby gave me his grilled salmon too. My dishes came out pretty good for some reason. Everything was cooked to the right degree of doneness according to the Chefs. I didn't really plan it that way, it just kind of happened. Maybe it's a sign that I should go to Le Bernardin, or maybe not. I would have liked to have had pictures of my dishes but I usually take them after showing the Chef. Chef Blakemore tore at the fish to check for the right texture and doneness, so I just snapped a shot of the camera-shy Zac sauteing trout and salmon in clarified butter. Don't tell him, but I don't think we were supposed to make Salmon a la Menuiere.

Week 4, Day 3. Lecture was kind of weird. We went over the homework which was about fish and shellfish. I learned that geoducks (gooey-ducks, huge clams) come from the West Coast, not the East Coast. Then Chef Warden gave us some time to work on the next chapter in class. After that we watched A&E's Biography on Julia Child. I really enjoyed it. It is hard for me to really appreciate all that she has done for the industry because I really don't have a good idea of what it was like before, I only see the fruits of her labor. I think she is a great role model as a person and as a cook.

Jamie reported that there hasn't been a lot of interest in the Chili Competition and it's in danger of being postponed or cancelled. I'll try to get my entry in on Friday. He also mentioned something about the school newspaper. I think I go to the next meeting to see if there's anything interesting to do. There's a big sale tomorrow and Friday for jacket and pants. These were made for students who have dropped out, so things are priced to move. Anyone one there want anything?

Today was an easy day in the kitchen. Two dressings Basic French Vinaigrette and Emulsified French Dressing and a bound chicken salad. Eve made the Vinaigrette, while I tackled the French Dressing. It's not the sweet and tomato-based French Dressing you see in supermarkets. This is unknown in France or at least not known as French Dressing. The French Dressing we made was oil and vinegar emulsified with egg yolk and seasoned. The orange tint comes from paprika. We were given the basic bound chicken salad recipe and allowed to modify it however we wanted. I found a red bell pepper in the reach-in, so I added that and some red curry paste. Chef Warden didn't like the pepper garnish, but he liked the color of the salad. It looked nice but I didn't think it was that great either. However the sweet crunchy red peppers were a perfect match for slightly spicy chicken salad. Maybe julienne strips would have been better or something more time consuming like red pepper powder (a la Thomas Keller).

Week 4, Day 2. I got my Maricopa County Food Handler's Card today. The test was pretty easy because we went over sanitation in chapter 2. There were people there who didn't pass the test. I felt sorry for them because they probably need the card to get a job. The test consists of 25 multiple choice questions. You pass if you get 5 wrong or less. After the proctor grades the test, he tells you your result right away. You only pay the $12 fee if you pass. Then you sit in a chair to get your picture taken, and then you get your card. It's a pretty quick process or maybe I just got lucky and went at the right time.

Today was kind of the opposite of yesterday. The topic was math, so I was very animated during lecture. I'm pretty good at simple math. Understanding formulas, using and manipulating simple equations, and stuff like that. The homework was all about units of measure, food cost percentages, portion costing, and recipe conversions. Sometimes, focusing on the math gets in the way. Simple math is a tool (as opposed to hard math which is more like an art form or full-contact sport) and you need to know how to use it properly. I like to think of the context of a problem. If it's a conversion, start out by thinking "Which number should be bigger?" Then go from there. If they taught the students to think about what they're trying to figure out instead of just telling them to plug numbers into a formula, it might make more sense to them. Maybe I can spread my gospel if I join the Escoffier Society and become a tutor. I just want to say "math rocks" and "food related math rocks even harder."

We got an unexpected treat in class today. No, I don't mean our grades for the first three weeks which we also got. Our class has perfect attendance so far! That translates into Vanilla Almond Crunch Haagen Dazs bars for everyone, that is, everyone who eats ice cream and likes nuts. Jim declined for dietary reasons and Bjorn doesn't like nuts. It just doesn't seem fair that they don't get to join in the celebration for our collective achievement.

After all the math madness, we watched videos that actually dealt with something we are going to learn. The first one was a safety video on fish and shellfish and the second one was about selecting and storing seafood. I appreciate the information contained in these videos, but their production values are dated and I'm sure there have been some equally educational videos made in the past couple of years dealing with the same topic. I just feel that if they really cared, more thought would go into choosing videos that are entertaining as well as educational. Soapbox time is over, on to the cooking.

The kitchen dealt with a category of foods that I often skip when browsing a cookbook. Salads. We made the classic Caesar salad and Wilted Spinach salad with hot bacon dressing. I burned my hot bacon dressing on the first try, so I was behind the whole class. Another result of this was that by the time I presented my salad to the chefs they were all salad-ed out. We were also supposed to make mayonnaise, but Eve and I ran out of time and forearm strength. It takes a lot of whisking to make mayonnaise which is very similar to Caesar salad dressing. I guess salads are okay and I may experiment with them in the future, but I prefer to leave them to the garde manger.

Week 4, Day 1. Another test in the books. The tests are pretty easy if you spent a little time studying the sudy guide, but on the previous two tests there's alway one section that you can't study for. Actually you can but you'd have to memorize the chapters themselves which is not a good thing to try. I got pretty lucky today. My educated guesses in "the section" were mostly correct. I'm especially proud of my shot-in-the-dark spaetzle answer to a dumpling question. Tests really take a lot out of me. Or maybe I was tired because I was up until 2am baking bread. (By the way, I'm getting there, but I still can't get the rise or the elastic dough.) I vow to get more sleep.

In other news, I hope to enter the Chili Competion on November 9th. My good friend Tushar has provided me with a recipe that will ensure a delicious bowl of chili for the spectators and who knows? It might just win over the judges. I got an email from Anozira, a staffing company that handles staffing for the catering events associated with the school as well as temporary positions at hotel, resorts, and country clubs. It'll be a great opportunity to get a taste of the food service industry. I'm sure they'll be plenty to learn from those opportunities.

I spent the breaks conserving energy for the kitchen. And it worked. I don't know what came over me, but I think I got a second wind. The theme for today was flavored pasta. We made pesto and puttanesca as well. Since I flubbed the pasta on Friday, I told Eve that I wanted to try making it today. She agreed to make the sauces. Eve owns a pasta maker and makes a mean noodle. I chose to use the "Eve method" and threw out the whole "weighing thing" that led to failure on Friday and just got equal amounts of flour and semolina. In addition to the two eggs, I added an extra egg yolk just because I think it's similar proportions to Barbara Lynch's pasta dough recipie I saw in the New York Times a while back. We decided to flavor our pasta with lemon juice. I couldn't taste it, but Eve said there was a hint. I had visited Cost Plus over the weekend to buy bannetons and I happened to browse through a book on pasta making. They said to roll the dough through the widest setting, then fold it in half and run it through until it is smooth. This technique worked out incredibly well, I wish we learned it in class. The pasta came out great and Chef Morrison liked it. Rodney, who will probably open his own Italian restaurant after graduating, made a cool looking tomato flavored pasta.

We were done pretty early, and I launched into cleaning machine mode. We rotated to the mop and sweep station which meant that I would be among the last in the kitchen. No matter. I helped out where I could until it was time to sweep and mop. Lara commented on my thorough sweeping job. I just try to do whatever I do as best as I can. It might not always be that good, but something like sweeping isn't a terribly hard thing to do very well. It's good to know I have something to fall back on. Now I'm tired again, but there's homework to do and studying for the Food Handler's Test. Sleep will come easy tonight.

Week 3 Day 5. Another week in the books. We get grades next week for the past three weeks. I wonder how that'll turn out. Chef Warden mentioned something interesting today when I told him that I brought in my starter for pasta making. He told me that we would be making different variations on Monday and that today we were going to make normal pasta first. I just said that I'd bring it back Monday which provoked him to say, "You don't get very excited do you?" I am often curious how people see me and I know that calm is used very often to descibe me, but I don't realize that I often appear unemotional. I feel emotions, but I guess they express themselves in ways invisible to the naked eye. By the way, I am tremendously curious what sourdough pasta will be like.

We went over what was going to be on the test as usual. This is where I feel a little awkward. Chef Warden pretty much tells us exactly what's going to be on the test. This feeling is reminiscent of math classes at Caltech, specifically AMA 95(Applied Mathematics) and Math 1(Calculus). Sean and Professor Ashbacher would go over what to expect on the test the day or night before. When we took the test it was no surprise. While this is very helpful, it reduces the material to a couple of problems. Pardon the digression, I know that these tests mean well, but I question their ability to invoke lasting knowledge. Will I still know everything six months from now? Maybe. Anyway, our Jeopardy win streak is up to three. Two more free points on the test.

The kitchen was an utter failure. Chef Morrison did the demo today for pasta and Alfredo sauce. I believe that I am cursed when working with dough. My breads haven't really developed and now my pasta was just horrible. Chef Morrison said he would work with me on Monday. I was still measuring out the flour and semolina while people were already rolling out their pasta. My dough never seemed to come together. Chef Morrison tried to work in some water, but by that time the dough was overworked. When I finally got a batch cooked, Chef had already eaten too much pasta to try mine and our Alfredo sauce turned a bit grayish due to over mixing with a whisk in a aluminum saute pan. At least we got out early. But is that really a good thing? In other news, I've decided to do my project for Week 5 on dim sum. I'm doing some "research" tomorrow.

Week 3 Day 4.Today's lesson was all about rice. Richie asked why rice was so cheap if it took so many machines to process it. Zack came up with the explanation, "Rice is cheap because it's made in sweatshops." But when you really think about it, a lot of things are cheap that go through a lengthy process like gasoline, gumballs, and anything you find in a vending machine or a 99 cent store. We were also talking about how to tell if rice has gone bad. Chef mentioned odor and weevils. Luckily(or unluckily) there were little containers of rice left over from some previous extra credit project. We got to see first hand little creatures roaming amongst the grains of rice. What was really distubing were the bugs crawling around inside a small jar of dried beans. I may have nightmares about that.

In the kitchen, we made rice using the pilaf method and the rissoto method. Everybody in class got to make their own pilaf. Eve chose to go simply with mushrooms and parsley garnish. When Chef Warden told us in class, I decided to make the Spanish Rice recipe in the book. But when I got downstairs, there was no paprika and I didn't feel like using green bell pepper. So I winged it. I rendered some bacon fat reserving the bacon for garnish. To this, I added chopped onion and garlic. I also added cayenne pepper, tumeric, salt, and white pepper. Next, I tossed in the rice to coat it with the flavored bacon fat. This is called necray for all French folks in the house. I then added some chicken stock, brought it to a boil, lowered it to a simmer, and let it cook. For the final presentation, I mixed about half of the bacon bits into the rice, spooned it into a bowl, and made a small indent in the middle of the rice with a ladle. Into the indentation, I cracked a raw egg and sprinkled the rest of the bacon bits and some parsley on top. The tumeric gave the rice a nice golden color and the cayenne pepper added a little kick. Chef Morrison was a little unnerved by the raw egg. He mentioned that guests might freak out if they saw that. I had remembered seeing this combination somewhere before but I couldn't think of it at that moment. Later on I realized that in Japan it is very common to mix raw egg into rice during breakfast time. I have also seen pictures of steak tartar garnished with a raw egg yolk. Back to the drawing board I guess. When I told Rodney about my dish, it blew him away. He was very supportive of my use of raw egg as garnish. Maybe I'm cooking for a different crowd.

The catering kids had their grand banquet today. The good thing was that we were definitely getting food. The bad thing was that we had to wait until after the public got first dibs. It was open to friends and families of the catering students. Luckily, we finished early and were first in line for the second dibs. There was plenty of stuff left for us: fresh fruit, canapes, cherry tomatos with fresh mozzarella, rissoto(which I couldn't touch), breaded mussels, chicken leg quarters, lamb chops, spaghetti carbonara, lots of cool looking breads that no one seemed to have the heart to tear into, and a dessert made with rasberries. I wonder if this means we've seen the last of banquets for a while. I don't thnk the new batch of kids will prepare banquets immediately.

Week 3 Day 3. We watched a couple more videos in class today. After lecturing about potatoes, Chef Warden decided it was too hot to concentrate. He said that the videos are to give us ideas about presentation and food pairing. We watched video #6 from the Great Chefs of Chicago series. The first part was a four course meal prepared by Yoshi Katsumura. The second part featured Jackie Ectheber aka Jackie Shen. In the video, the restaurant Jackie's was still operational, but a little research reveals that it closed in 1999. Jackie Shen is now executive chef at Lawry's The Prime Rib. I've actually eaten there. It's where Michael Jordan signed his first contract with the Bulls. In the video, for dessert, Jackie prepares a Chocolate Bag. It's chocolate in the shape of a luch bag filled with white chocolate mousse topped with fresh berries and served with a rasberry sauce. I must admit that I polished one of these off after finishing a mighty slab of prime rib and thier famous Spinning Bowl salad. I knew it couldn't have been a coincidence. That's not a common dessert to see on menus.

It was potato day in the kitchen. We made Anna Potatoes, Rissole, and Duchesse potatoes. I messed up the Anna potatoes because I didn't slice them thin enough. Chef Warden said that along with consomme, Anna Potatoes frustrates students the most. It certainly got me. Rissole are those football shaped potatoes browned in clarified butter. I'm getting used to cutting potatos into seven-sided shapes. Duchesse potatoes are a mixture of pureed potatoes, egg yolks, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. We then put it into a pastry bag and pipe out different shapes with a star tip. It takes a while to bake in the oven. The taste or lack there of was disappointing. I guess we should taste and season before we put it in the piping bag. It might go well with a sauce though or the jus of an accompanying meat dish...

Week 3, Day 2. My First Picture. As per a request from a good friend, I will attempt to provide pictures. At the beginning of class, Jamie gives us more details about the chili competition on November 9th. There a $10 entry fee, sign up is tomorrow, three categories: Red, Green, and non-traditional, contest is to make 1.5 gallons of chili, cooking starts at 9am, tasting starts at 12:30pm, and tasting tickets are 5 for a buck. I've been thinking a little about entering, but I've never made chili before. I'm thinking about a non-traditional entry using soybeans(edamame), dashi, thinly sliced beef, wasabi, daikon, and some other stuff. Sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure what the consistency should be or what taste I'm looking for.

Back into learning mode. The topic for today was soup. I really need to take more advantage of lecture. It's a time to ask questions about anything. That's how most interesting tangents in class get started. For instance, Zack asked how he should make roasted bell peppers if he has an electric range. We learned that Zack tried a variety of methods on the electric heating coils to no avail. Then Chef Warden cryptically asked Zack, "How's your kitchen?" This leads to a story from Chef Warden about a friend who was drunk and decided to show his non-chef friends the flambeeing technique. In two minutes, the guy caused $600 worth of damage to his ventilation system and partially melted his microwave. In response Zack claimed, "I don't cook drunk. It's dangerous enough sober." How true.

It was our last day of soups in the kitchen. We made consomme and spicy black bean soup. (Note: The consomme was a much more visually appealing dish, but I threw it away before I remembered to take pictures. Don't worry, I'm not done cooking yet.) I've been looking forward to the consomme making ever since I read about the process in The Making of a Chef. The process involves a clarification in which a mixture of ground beef, egg whites, herbs and spices, and lemon juice(for chicken consomme, tomatoes for veal consomme) is used to create a clear finished product. This raft starts at the bottom of the saucepan and rises to the top collecting impurities on its way up. It's a really cool process and I think everyone should try it at least once in their lives. The spicy black bean soup was not too bad. Eve and I decided to keep the heat content moderate by using ony jalpenos. Shelby and Casey used three habaneros and two scotch bonnets. Those are two of most hottest peppers arounds. I actually tried a spoonful of their soup. While the heat was strong, I wasn't panting like a rabid dog running for milk to cool down the burn like I was expecting to. I kind of surprised myself that I could take that much heat, but I really it was only a spoonful and a couple more bites would've probably rendered my tastes buds useless for a while.

A tray of chocolates appeared and quickly disappeared while we were cooking. Let me recount the hunt for tonight's banquet. We all waited anxiously in the hallway for the last students to finish their kitchen chores and for Chef Warden to dismiss us. A quick reminder about Chapter 18 tomorrow and we're off. Up the stairs to ground level, then up another flight of stairs to the banquet room. At ground level, there are three staff workers happily enjoying plates of food. This is a good sign! I'm a straggler, so by the time I'm half way up the stairs to the banquet room the faster and hungrier students are returning from the closed banquet doors. Dejected and disappointed, they spread the word that they have closed for the night. The hunt for the banquet continues . . .

Week 3, Day 1. Test Monday as usual. This time we graded each other's test in class afterwards. It was a difficult test in that it required reading the text rather than just studying the study guide. I was a little disappointed because I spent all weekend studying small sauces (and baking bread, making French fries and aoili.) We were given the impression by Chef Warden that small sauces would be a big part of the test, but only the last eight questions were devoted to the subject. On top of that, those questions weren't counted towards the test. Chef said that they hadn't counted the last nine times they gave the test. Well, I got a pretty good score. And I'm glad that I spent the time studying the sauces because I feel that those sauces will come in handy someday. These are classic combinations and they taught in culinary schools and cookbooks alike because they taste good. It's not like History class where you spend the entire weekend memorizing dates, names, and places only to forget them after the test.

The kitchen served as our introduction to soup week. Potage Crecy or Pureed Carrot soup, cream of mushroom, and French onion au gratin. I dislike mushrooms. Needless to say my mushroom soup was not up to par. My French Onion was out of whack, too. Chef Warden said that I needed to cook out the sherry more. It's been that kind of day. Everything has been just a little out of whack. The weather was a bit hotter than usual. The air conditioning in the classroom kept the room at a warm 31 degrees Celsius (I leave the conversion as an exercise for the reader.) I even noticed an abnormally high number of cars pulled over in the shoulder lanes suffering from various ailments. Eve made the Potage Crecy because it was one per group. She did a great job.

No banquet again. We really need to find out their schedule and plan accordingly. Sure we all had a little soup, there was even a roasting pan of turkey from the meat fab kids, but there's something pretty special about sitting at a table with fellow classmates, chowing down on decent free food, and washing it down with powerfully sweet Kool Aid. Well, there's always tomorrow.

Week 2, Day 5. Bad butter. Today we watched more videos. More Two Fat Ladies the Picnic episode and the Cakes episode. Chef Warden was grading our homework while we were watching Jennifer and Clarissa cook with reckless abandon. I had a chat with Joe between the videos. He has a real knack for making good food. He's here to fill in the gaps, and put terms to techniques he's been using all his life. Another person destined to succeed.

We played Jeopardy again for bonus points on the test. We edged out the other team for the win. Our class really knows their stuff. I really enjoy the level of dedication to the material in our class. Maybe I'm just biased but when I went to the review session before class, it was near chaos. Let's just say there was a lot of complaining, whining, and immature behavior.

The kitchen promised to be another easy day of sauces but we fell victim to bad butter. Apparently the morning kids left us poorly clarified butter. Clarified butter is purified butter. That is, when you heat up a stick of butter in a saucepan, the pure butter is between the top layer of foam and the bottom layer of milk solids. We were supposed to create a Hollandaise and then add a tarragon reduction to make a Bearnaise. Then we were to split the Bearnaise into two; we add tomato paste to one to create Choron and meat glaze to the other to create Foyot.

The prevailing theory is that the groups who got the bottom of the "clarified butter," had an abnormally high concentration of milk solids which caused havoc. But I've seen many recipes that use regular chunks of butter that work fine. However our ratio of bufferfat to milksolids was higher than that found in a pat of butter. Possibly heat was the problem. Not enough that is. I'll try some experiments at home. Eve and I did manage to make a yellow pepper coulie. Eve picked out a yellow bell pepper which resulted in a dark yellow-green colored sauce. Chef Warden liked the color probably because it was different from everybody else's who chose green peppers.

The catering students were back at work. Our table today consisted of JB, Tara, Bjorn, Jamie, Rodney, Lara, Manny, and Shelby. The theme was Mexican. The buffet featured scallops ceviche, canapes, chicken mole, shrimp, rice, quesadillas, refried beans, and some cake. Of course the bottomless pitchers of Kool Aid were omnipresent. I'm eager to see what they'll dish up next week.

Week 2, Day 4. Today was a weird day in class. We went over the homework on Chapter 17 Vegetable Cookery. After that Chef Warden started popping in videos. The first one was a Le Cordon Blue video. It looked like it was made in the early eighties. It was the first video in a seven part series. It reminded me of the Great Chefs series on the Discovery Channel (and the Travel Channel). The video was shot in Paris at the original Le Cordon Blue. The chef was speaking French, but there was a narrator translating the words. The were three dishes interspersed with scenes from Parisian markets. The first dish was an eggplant dish, the next was spinach loaf with tomato sauce, and the third was cruidtes with three different sauces. I don't understand the purpose of watching the videos. It seemed like we were just watching tv.

The next video was even more puzzling. We watched an episode of Two Fat Ladies cooking Fish and Shellfish. There wasn't anything dealing with vegetable cookery. Although Eve noted that it was the unedited version having seen the edited one on The Food Network. Just random comments made by the Two Fat Ladies that didn't have much to do with the cooking.

Chef Warden told us about an optional project that we can do for the fifth week. We can write a six-page paper about anything that deals with food. We also have to present it to the class. Extra credit is involved, so I'm not sure how many students will choose to do this. Chef mentioned that in the past people have done presentations on ducks, baby food, egg cookery, rices, and Escoffier. I'm not sure what I want to do. I'm considering topics like sourdough, offal, and sauces. Chef said that the school could provide any necessary ingredients within reason. That prompted Zack to request one porterhouse so that he could demonstrate the proper way to eat one. Sounds good to me.

Actually, I've done a little soul searching and I decided to pursue sourdough. I must confess that my first two attempts at this bread have been futile. But a little insight from the rec.food.sourdough FAQ has convinced me to try again. I think I owe it to my starter to make it into good bread. Since I don't have a fancy mixer with a dough hook, I'm hand kneading. I had no idea what a properly kneaded dough looks like, expect for the fact that it needs to be able to stretch so that you can see through it. I now know that I need to work the dough longer. I also discovered that I need to use colder water, possibly crushed ice, because kneading raises the temperature of the dough a lot. Stay tuned.

The kitchen was another easy day of sauces. We made the daunting Hollandaise, Robert, Bordelaise, and Beurre Blanc. The only mother sauce left is the ubiquitous Tomato. An interesting creature since the thickening agent is reduction with optional roux. The meat fab class sent over a roasting pan of enchiladas. Very tasty with little kick at the end to make you say, "Hey, that's pretty good stuff." There was no banquet today or as I like to call them "after-school specials." There's always tomorrow.

Week 2, Day 3. Discovery. Before class I managed to check out an industry magazine called Food Arts. It's keeps a pretty good pulse on the restaurant scene in major cities. I saw an ad for Sirha 2003 a hotel, catering, and food trade exhibition from Jan 25-29, 2003. Some cool events going on during this expo are the Bocuse d'Or and the World Pastry Cup. I'd love to go to this, but I'll probably be taking Management at that time. The Food Network has specials about these competitions. This is where chefs take cooking to an insane level.

Today's lecture was straight information about sauces and vegatables. No real tangets. Though Chef Warden did tell us the secret to good blueberry muffins. That is, without green color on the dough near the blueberries nor a blue batter. The blue batter happens because the juice of the blueberries gets into the batter. To prevent that gently mix in the berries at the end. Blueberries are the color they are because of the pigment anthocyanin. When it is cooked with an alkaline substance. such as baking soda, it turns greenish. Since we need the leavening power of the baking soda, we need a way to prevent the blueberry from coming in contact with the baking soda. We can accomplish this by coating the blueberries with flour before mixing it in with the rest of the batter. I really enjoy hints, tips, and tricks of all sorts. By the way I've added a comments feature to these entries so that you can give your own two cents if you feel like.

Late in the lecture, we were talking about freezer burn and Chef Warden asked the class how do we tell that something has freezer burn. Zach raises his hand and gives the following response, "Well, you know when you come out of the shower and you have a five-day-old scab. It kind of looks like that." Quite vivid. I'll never look at scabs nor freezer burn the same way again.

We did a couple more sauces in the kitchen: demiglace, bechamel, mornay, and soubise. Mornay and soubise are secondary sauces derived from bechamel. Sauces are basically a liquid, a thickening agent, and seasoning. For bechamel the liquid is milk, the thickening agent is a blond roux, and the seasoning is onion, cloves, and bay leaf. Mornay starts with bechamel and adds gruyere and parmesan. Soubise is bechamel with onions. We flambeed our onions with a little brandy. Cooks seem to like to play with dangerous things like fire and knives.

During the cooking time, I stepped outside to sample some food made by other students. There was a chocolate mousse cake, a pastry made with apples, rhubarb, and walnuts wrapped in phyllo dough, and some barbeque chicken wings. Little did I know that this was only a snack. The big discovery of the day was the spread that the banquet class puts out every night for the students. I guess Kalei mentioned something about this earlier, but I wasn't paying attention. I'm not sure what the theme was for today. There were fresh fruits, ratatouille, veal scallopini with saffron risotto, gnocchi, and a bunch of other things that I didn't bother to get because I had snacked earlier. Apparently there were ribs last night. I was beginning to wonder how people were going to put on weight during the course of the year. I think the average weight gain is 15 pounds. I don't think I'll make it though. Moderation is the key. It only takes a couple of bites to know the taste of a food.

I sat at a table with fellow classmates Rick, Lara, Rodney, Manny, Jeff, and the mighty Casey. There was also John who's in the final class, working at L'Ecole, the school's fine dining restaurant. He lives across the street so he gets to come down for free food. Aaron is in the Showpieces class. They do the fancy pastry creations including wedding cakes. The only oddity about the banquet was the beverage of choice, Kool Aid. There really is no beverage class, but maybe there should be. During the meal, I found out more about where people are heading in the food industry. Rodney is all set to open his own restaurant and he wants Rick to join him, Lara wants to work at a resort. As for me, I'm terribly curious about superfine dining. I have visions of working in four star restaurants in New York and maybe even getting some experience at fine dining establishments in France and Hong Kong. But who knows, maybe things'll change in the coming year.

10/8/2002
Week 2, Day 2. Just another day. This week I've been getting to school a bit earlier because there seems to be less traffic on the freeways. I chill out in the library and read the chapter we're assigned for the day. I'd like to get to the magazines, but there's so much reading to do. I see other students working on various other assignments. Up to this point, I thought that only the Basic kids have a gigantic amount of reading and studying to do. But I heard that we still have six more texts to go through in our other classes. There's a whole lotta learning ahead. I don't think it gets easier after Basics, you just get used to the workload. Bring it on.

At the beginning of class, two members from the Escoffier Society visited the class. It's an honor society of students with high GPA's that tutor and hold review sessions. And they also get to wear nifty powder blue neckerchiefs. I guess I'll apply for the club. Tutoring comes very natural to me, but those review sessions are not my speed.

Chef Warden began class by calling us up one by one to show us our test scores. I haven't done that since the fifth grade in Mr. Salonis's math class. I got a pretty good score thanks to the two extra points from being on the winning Jeopardy team. As Thomas Keller puts it, "Perfection is impossible. We can only strive to achieve it." Or something like that anyways.

During the review of the homework, Chef Warden tried to mess with my head. I gave an answer to a question and he said another term as if I had given the wrong answer and he was correcting me. After a brief silence and confusion from other students, Chef affirmed that I had given the right answer. Why do I bring this up? Well, I've been known to be an enigma at times to my former managers at my previous job. They claim that they can't tell my emotional state and my lack of expression at times seems to cause them confusion. Anyway, that's what that brief moment reminded me of. I guess it's my polite way of saying, "I am not amused."

In the middle of going over the homework, Chef Warden gave another speech in the series which I'll entitle "Meditations on What it Means to be a Chef." It was another awe-inspiring segment. I really like it when he launches into this mode. So idealistic. Chef Warden believes that being a chef is not about the money, nor the tv shows, nor about being the restaurant of the moment, nor the fame. It's about making and serving whole or part of a meal for someone who enjoys it and continually comes back to your restaurant and tells their friends about your restaurant. In other words it's about making people happy. For certain people in the world, myself included, there is no greater feeling.

During class we talked about stocks. This discussion led Zach to the realization that Jello is nothing but flavored liquid of boiled horse hooves. I'll still eat it. That could change if I actually saw it being made. Somehow the conversation contiued along the lines of animals carcasses. Lara revealed that she once held thirty lambs in her Camaro for her father's restaurant during a previous holiday season. She's been working in the restaurant since she was 13. She seems destined for something big.

But the story of the day came from Chef Warden's NECI days. He recalls going to his meat fabrication class at 215am. His class was usually responsible for providing the entire school and its restaurants with their meat. But on the this day, his Chef instructor brought the class outside to pen. Awaiting them were five live animals: a pig, a milk cow, a calf, a lamb, and an ostrich. They were informed that they were to slaughter the animal of their choice. Chef Warden chose the calf and used the revolver. Another student Tim choose the ostrich and spent twenty minutes chasing the bird down even after he had cut its throat. The Instructor handled the milk cow with his bare hands. Obviously, he was experienced. The pig went to an elderly woman of 64 who was there to learn more about cooking so that she could entertain her friends and family. Chef Warden recalled how she was extremely hestiant at first to even choose an animal. But after playing with the pig for a while, the old lady snapped, slashed the pig's throat with two quick stokes, and completed the task. I was disappointed when the Chef told us that we wouldn't have to do anything like that, but I wonder if I could actually go through with it...

The kitchen was ho hum. Two secondary sauces from the veloute me made yesterday: allemande and supreme. We also made another mother sauce, espagnole or brown sauce. I ducked out to eat some meat fab stuff before making my sauces. Apparently chicken was the topic matter of the day. The stuff was okay. I think I lost momentum for the day at that point though.

Week 2, Day 1. Big test. I was studying all weekend for the big test. Actually I was trying to bake bread, but that's another story for another time. I did study a lot though. Chef Warden told us on Friday what was going to be on the test, so it was no surprise. It was cut straight from the study guide. I don't even think the questions were rearranged just omitted. The toughest part was filling out a chart with diseases. We had to know the bacteria that caused the disease, foods that the disease was found in, and ways to prevent the disease. Certain things we have been learning stick in my head like Escoffier's Brigade system, equipment and tools, and cooking methods, but with diseases I really had to consciously review.

Besides the test, lecture was basically copying recipes out of the book into our recipe notebooks. Somehow, I managed to lose my recipe notebook over the weekend. Good thing there wasn't too much in it. I'll just have to get the recipes from Eve or someone else. I think the purpose of this exercise is to somehow plant the recipes in our heads. I don't think that really works for me. If the activity is something as mundane as copying something from a book, I tend to zone out and let my eyes and hand do the copying. Maybe I should try to think about what I'm copying down. That might actually slow me down, but I think I'll learn more. We also elected a student representative for the leadership board. There's one representative from each class that get together every Wednesday at the newer campus to discuss stuff like planning student activities or competitions and raise student concerns. Quite a few people ran for it; Jamie ended up the winner. He's working at a restaurant with a chef who graduated from our school. He's definitely got the personality to be a leader and he got my vote.

It's sauce week. All week we'll be making sauces. Today we made roux which is part of a lot of sauces. A roux is a cooked mixture of equal parts flour and butter. A white roux is cooked for 2 minutes, a blond roux is 6-8, a brown roux is 21. Past 21 minutes, you get black roux, which is used in Cajun or Creole cooking. It's for stuff like blackened catfish. We made three rouxs and veloute, which is one of the five mother sauces. It's blond roux and white stock. I don't think we're going to makes stocks in basics. There was a stockpot of it for us to use.

I had a little extra time so I made a dish that I didn't get to on Friday, sauteed mushrooms or duxelles. It's used as a stuffing for chicken legs and such. I used a bit too much butter and burnt some of it because I was in a hurry. I offered some some to Kalei who enjoyed it. I think the burnt pieces gave it a pleasing nutty flavor. I could've spent the time foraging for food outside, but I decided to pass. I think it was curry something. After that we had a timed exercise(15 minutes) with two carrots, medium dice and small dice. These sizes were a bit larger than I was accustomed to cutting. Small dice is 1/4 inch and medium dice is 1/2 inch. It felt cool looking a carrot and seeing it all sectioned out in head as to what cuts I had to make. Kind of like a sculptor freeing the sculpture from a block of stone, only less artistic and edible (unless we're talking cheese sculptures).