Soups (Raft: The Culinary Waste Treatment Plant)

Soup is traditionally the opening of a meal. In a restaurant, this will be a customer's first impression. It's an excellent place to use trim; most soups are simmered, strained and/or puréed. The main ingredient in a soup-base is water -- it does not get much more profitable than charging ten bucks for a bowl of flavored hot water.

Broth is defined as a liquid made by simmering vegetables, bone, and meat to extract flavor. Specifically, a consommé is a crystal clear highly seasoned broth made by the method of clarification. This method requires one to build what is called a "raft" (see picture above). Basically, a mush of egg whites, tomato product, ground meat, and mirepoix is boiled in stock until it congeals into the ugliest pale meatloaf you've ever seen. At this point, you leave it alone and let the lump sit on top of the simmering stock. In this way, the raft acts as a filter, sucking up all the impurities in the stock, while imparting the flavors of its ingredients. When straining, the goal is not to break the smog-monster-looking raft, or your consommé will turn cloudy.

Cream soup is defined as a velvety sooth soup which takes its name and color from the main ingredient. It is always thickened with roux and is always puréed and strained. It should have the final thickness of heavy cream.

Purée soup is one that's thickened by starchy vegetable; it's not roux and therefore is not strained, and turns out slightly thicker than heavy cream.

Finally, a soup garnish must relate to the soup, fit on a spoon, and should be hot on a hot soup and cold on a cold soup.

Then the knives came out:

Chef M broke us up into new work groups. I was paired with two guys I haven't had much interaction with, as they are quiet. They're both pretty passive, and to be on the PC tip, I'll call them RH (Round Head) and SH (Square Head). As we started our knife skills, neither of them were talking, just chopping -- if we were going to get through our three recipes (Chicken Consomme, Cream of Broccoli, and Purée of Split Pea), the three of us would have to coordinate. So I said, "OK, fine members of Team 5, let's figure out what we're doing next" and for the next 4 hours I became the defacto leader, telling RH and SH what do, coordinating our mise collection, sorting our pots, deciding what we were doing next, and approaching Chef M for his opinion on our productions as we went through.

First up was the Cream of Broccoli, which will also be the centerpiece of the practical exam we will be taking on Thursday. It's a little bit involved, as it takes making a velouté (mother sauce) first before making the soup base, and blanching and shocking evenly cut florets for garnish.

Second up was the Consommé, whose raft just looked nasty. As we're stirring, the egg whites start to turn into ugly little strings. At this point we stopped stirring as the eggs congealed and all the pale boiled meat, boiled vegetables, and scum formed a big floating patty. After simmering for a couple of hours, we carefully ladled out the golden clear consommé, which would make any Jewish mom proud to make chicken soup with.

Unfortunately, what was left in the pot looked freshly thrown up. Chef M told me a story about how he used to work at a restaurant where they would take spent raft and brown it before serving it with rice for Family Meal, the meal served to the staff before service. I imagine with enough spices and browning, it could be decent...

Third up was purée of split pea, which began with rendering lamb bacon and a load of garlic -- you know something is going to be good when you start with bacon and garlic. After adding stock and split peas to simmer (to tenderize the peas), the entire pot was puréed with an immersion blender; then we finished it with salt, and more lamb bacon, as a garnish. Our team was first to finish on all three of our soups, and with the exception of the broccoli (tasted great but not green enough due to overcooking, garnish included), Chef M was highly complimentary.

After clean up, Chef spent some time reviewing key points for the written exam tomorrow. Tonight, I shall cram in facts like the butt of a pig is actually its shoulder. Mmmm, pig butt. In addition, we're doing lobster bisque -- I assume I'll be having my second confrontation with the bare-handed slaughter of sea-bugs...

ADDENDA
Looking forward to the end of the week when I take orientations at City Harvest and God's Love. Real experience outside of the classroom! Over lunch, B mentioned her friend who now runs a very well reputed contemporary gourmet pizza restaurant in Brooklyn -- perhaps this is where I would like to extern? I don't know if I want to run a pizza place when I grow up (guffaw!), but to help turn out some of the best pizza in NYC, how fantastic would that be?

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, farmer's market granola with the good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:15pm, Panzanella Salad, gnocchi with pork sausage, water, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Went to lunch after class to a joint near B's office, with a shmancy Italian menu. They got a whole mess of stuff wrong. First, the Panzanella salad was on the menu as consisting of tomatoes, fried bread and cucumber. What we got had almost no tomatoes, absolutely no cucumbers, a mess of micro greens, radishes and small crouton-like squares of greasy bread, not the big cubes of lightly toasted-with-oil chunks I had come to expect elsewhere. And mealy white beans -- I know you get these in Northern Italian cooking, but it just felt jarring. And my gnocchi with pork sausage was a special not on the menu, described as smoked and with medium flavor, with little tomato. What I got was indeed gnocchi with pork sausage, with quite a mild flavor, and a brown sauce that had hunks of stringy dried braised meat and full sprigs of thyme, woody stalk and all. The branch and the tough meat chunklets were simmered in the sauce for flavor, but were never strained out. (Tough dry bits of meat among soft fatty sausage is NOT a good or interesting contrast.) This is the first restaurant meal that after having it, I thought, "Damn, I could cook this meal better than the shmoe in the kitchen." Chef M would have not been amused.

PM SNACK: 3pm, a few small cubes of dark chocolate, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4pm, overflowing ramekin of chocolate soy ice cream with dark chocolate chunks and salted freshly roasted cashews, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Wanted to make a dessert for B, who is feeling under the weather, and skipped the sweets yesterday. Unlike the 4 or 5 times I made this, this time I tasted the batter as I blended it and adjusted the amount of maple syrup and sea salt until it tasted right.

There is another century ride to Montauk on June 21st. Contemplating doing something I never did before - the 145 mile route. The idea makes me excited and squirmy at the same time, just like when I was contemplating c-school.

Looks like my schedule will allow me a 24 hour fast beginning after lunch Friday and ending for dinner Saturday. Will I hallucinate? Will I die? Will the laxative tea make me poo out a raft?

For those who care, here is the recipe, which I cribbed off the internet ages ago but now just do from sense memory. You need a blender, a double boiler and an ice cream maker (I use an ice cream attachment for the stand mixer.

• 1 brick of SILKEN tofu (non-silken doesn't make the batter as smooth)
• 1 cup of UNSWEETENED soy milk (less crap in the soy milk the better, making it easier to control the sweetness over all)
• 3/4 cup of maple syrup (or honey if you don't care if it's vegan -- just make sure it's a fluid sweetener, as we're not cooking it, and cane sugar would be gritty)
• 8oz unsweetened dark chocolate
• Pinch of salt to taste
• dash of vanilla to taste
• Cocoa powder to taste
• Up to 1 cup of mix-ins to taste, in small pieces, chilled.

Melt chocolate in double boiler. While melting, puree tofu, soy milk and syrup in blender. While blending, add melted chocolate (if it's not blending, the chocolate will solidify and create yukky chocolate powder in the batter.) Blend until no specks of chocolate can be seen. Add salt and vanilla. Taste. Add more syrup if not sweet enough. Add cocoa powder for a more chocolaty punch. Refrigerate 10-20 minutes to thicken. Put in ice cream maker according to it's directions. In the last minute in the machine, add whatever mix-ins you like -- make sure they are cold.

DINNER: 8:30pm, puree of spit pea soup, spinach salad with homemade vinaigrette, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
The lamb bacon pureed and garnished in the soup was both bacony and lamby, like a good lamb kabob. Really delicious, could be served in a high end restaurant no doubt.

Reheated the consommé with sliced carrots, onions and fresh pasta, with a few drops of basil oil for B, she freaked out because she said it was the best chicken soup ever. Huh. I hope she's not saying that just because she's my wifey...