Roasting (Just Lardin' n' Bardin', son)

Roasting is a dry-heat cooking method in which the food item is surrounded by hot air. The item needs to be suspended above the cooking vessel to allow airflow and collect juices. Then, said juices can be used to make a pan sauce. The item can be suspended by a rack or by assorted roasting vegetables and trimmings.

Pan roasting is when the item touches the bottom of the pan, and is used for smaller, more tender cuts. Items in pan roasting must be turned for equal browning. Other than chicken and lamb, most roasts are huge; if a restaurant doesn't sell an entire roast in one day, the leftovers are a lot less saleable the next day.

Roasts are typically trussed for even cooking. Lamb rack is traditionally frenched (the ends of the bones exposed.) Chef M showed us a cool, easy method of frenching. Rather than scraping away all the fat and flesh with a paring knife, we hooked butcher's twin around our line cuts and pulled the excess off cleanly in one go.

Definitions: Larding is inserting or injecting fat into a lean piece of meat for a juicier end result. Barding is wrapping fat around the item to protect the meat from the heat of the oven (i.e., wrapping something in bacon or stuffing butter under the skin of a chicken). Basting is pouring dripped fat from the pan over the top of the item to promote even browning and to prevent blistering. Searing is whacking an item in a hot pan to brown the outside very quickly, similar to sauté, before placing in the oven. Au Jus is like a pan sauce, except shallots are replaced by mirepoix (onion, carrots, celery) and is thin, not finished with butter. Pan Gravy is like a pan sauce except it involves roux (flour is added to the fat).

Higher heat will cook a roast item faster, but will result in more water loss and a small item. Low-heat roasting will take more time, but will result in a higher yield, and will need to be seared to create any browning.

Our recipes called for specific oven temps, but Chef M had us turn all our ovens up to full blast. The ovens are notoriously inaccurate and with every time the doors are open, the temp will fluctuate. The important temp is the internal temp, taken with a thermometer. We calibrated our thermometers by measuring boiling water (212) then measuring ice water (32). I got mine to 212, but in ice it would only go down to 40. Close enough.

We skipped knife skills this morning and went straight into rough-chopping aromatics to stuff the chickens with (onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme stems, bay leaves) Unlike yesterday, DK was extremely quiet and snappy today, the first time since school started. Fortunately both DD and I are married men, and knew enough not to nag her about why she was in such a mood! DD & DK trussed the chickens and barded them; I hit them with salt & pepper; then we rubbed some dark brown sugar into the skins to make ours just a little bit different than all the other groups. Into the oven.

We trimmed some beets, coated in oil and whacked in the oven with a foil cover. We chunked out some sweet potatoes, added some aromatics and oils ( including orange zest), and into the oven they too went. Then we coated some fingerling potatoes with oil and aromatics; into the oven. Ditto the garlic heads, which were removed of their tops, oiled, salted, and wrapped in foil. The beets took a hell of a long time (despite the fact that Chef M par-boiled them for us before class started) and due to a lack of stirring, our sweet potatoes burned. Fingerlings were pretty rocking. The roast garlic was fantastic on french bread.

The rack of lambs were frenched, trimmed of the fat cap, feather bones and gristle, salted and then seared in a pan, exposed bones wrapped in foil then into the oven for 15 minutes, flipping once. Then out, coated with a mix of bread crumbs, roasted garlic, oil, thyme and parsley, then back in the oven till the internal temp reached 130. Most delicious.

There was a chicken in every pot, so to speak, but I didn't take any food home because I was doing a shift at God's Love We Deliver afterward. Seems there were no volunteers when I started, except for some weak-limbed people packing desserts. The surly chef put me to work placing roasted vegetables in huge 50-gallon containers, placing marinara and pesto on top with basil leaves, then mixing the whole mess with gloved hands. Then with a huge scoop, I placed 100 gallons of the stuff into hotel pans. I changed my gloves three times during this procedure, cleaning the food muck off my arms. While I was mixing through the cold mush, the fingers of the gloves would break. When I finished mixing, I took off the third pair and....my wedding ring was gone!

My heart sank -- a rather important symbol that I was supposed to keep by me forever might be lost to 100 gallons of ratatouille, with some poor cancer granny biting into a rather large white gold band and breaking her teeth. The GLWD chef suggested I check the gloves; into the garbage we went. Within 30 seconds, the ring was found--phew! I panned another 100 gallons of cooked kale and spinach and ladled BBQ sauce over it all before spending the last hour chopping yams. In the beginning, the chef seemed a bit stressed, but by the end he patted me on the shoulder and thanked me for doing a lot of work for him. I think he was a bit under the gun because I was the only volunteer there, and I ended up doing tasks by myself that usually a team of 4 or 5 do. Working with such huge amounts of food is pretty intense, definitely a different idea of cooking than what we're doing in class.

ADDENDA:
Tomorrow is a quiz. I recently got my report card for last module, my GPA is 3.81 - it literally would of been 4.0 if not for that damn lobster...

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, granola and good milk, banana, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 10:30-11:15am, handful of roast fingerling potatoes, half a roast chicken breast with pan gravy, 4 bites of roast lamb, piece of french bread, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3pm, slice of gram-cracker cheese cake, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
On break at GLWD, they had a ton of this in the break room. Urg. Too hard to pass up, I was hungry.

DINNER: 6pm, green salad, split pea soup with 5 grilled tiger shrimp, watermelon, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5
This meal totally ruled. Salad à la B, school-made soup, and big shrimp grilled in a cast iron pan would of made a top-rate restaurant meal. I marinated the shrimp in olive oil, minced garlic, a little salt and lemon juice, and man was it good.