Stewing (Cheekalicious)

Today's lecture was simply a few notes about the recipes before we started stewing. Stewing is simply braising, though with small pieces of meat or veg, fully covered in liquid rather than half way.

Yesterday's beef cheeks came out of the refrigerator and back in the oven to braise for another 3 hours, then the team set about assembling the mise for Coq Au Vin (chicken stewed in red win), Banquette de Veau (veal stew), Provencale Lamb Stew, Ratatouille and egg noodles.

Not much to report here. One thing that Chef has underlined in the last few days is that the difference between a professional cook and a home cook is that a professional knows when a recipe is right or wrong -- a home cook just blindly follows a crappy recipe over a cliff then doesn't understand why the food comes out craptastic. As professionals, our #2 responsibility is to know the recipe. In fact, Chef implies that we should not be referring to our recipe cards (which we write up ourselves, copied out of our xeroxed lesson plans) but commit them to memory. This would be apt advice if we were in a restaurant cranking out the same dishes 50 times a night, 6 nights a week. Our #1 responsibility, however, is to know and follow the method.

Particularly, when a recipe breaks from method, the cook has to make a judgement call, based on knowing why the method does what it does. Some of our braising recipes called to deglaze the mire poix with a wine then 'reduce by half'. The method is to reduce a sec (reduce to dry and syrupy). The reason to reduce a sec is to concentrate the flavor of the wine -- what is being reduced is water alone. The moisture content can be added in the step of adding the braising liquid, which in turns means even more flavor.

Another example is a recipe that calls to sweat the mirepoix, despite the fact it is not a white-colored recipe. The point of sweating mirepoix is to keep in pale colored, so to keep with later ingredients like clear chicken stock and clear white wine. To brown and caramelize the mirepoix will make for bigger, better flavor, and if it's not going to muddle the color, there is no reason not to in a braise.

In short, a balance of being able to follow directions and being able to be an independent thinker is key to cookery, as it is to being a fully functional member of a healthy society, I suppose. But I'm over-reaching in a typically bloggy way, I guess, he he.

N, St and Sp worked well together, though Sp's enthusiasm effected his focus, and I had to snap at him a little to get him in line. St had to be asked on a semi-regular basis what he was doing, and every other time he'd answer, "Nothin'. What do you want me to do?" Grrrrr. N, however, has his stuff together and set out on assembling the complicated bits without any oversight, no problem.

Like braises, stews do not really appeal to me, and did not appreciate the saucey stringiness of the chicken, lamb or veal. The Ratatouille, vegetable stew with a tomatoey base, was ok but unexciting. We cooked up egg noodles (from dry noodles) which was as simple as you'd expect it to be, but then we took the long-cooked beef cheeks, shredded them with a couple of forks, and mixed them into the buttered noodles. Each little shred of beef cheek was, yes, a little stringy, but so flavorful that it would just fill the mouth with pleasant beefiness and tanginess that danced around the noodles. No joke, those cheeks.

Tomorrow, we continue stewin'.

ADDENDA:
Today was a long day. My close friend E has a friend, M, who is mulling a career change into some aspect of the local food movement. So even though we haven't met, tonight we planned to cook a meal for E and M's boyfriend. I woke up early because I was exhausted when I got home last night, and just went to bed. I had to make the batter for tonight's ice cream (which must be cooled fully after cooking the half and half and the yolks), and still had to write my recipe cards. The tiny amount of chocolate I ate (taken in little gift bags from the JB Awards) hit me hard and helped me get through the morning.

After class, I took my fellow classmate Dirty Kim on the back of my tandem down to God's Love We Deliver, where we boxed marble cake, depanned a ton of baked fish, chopped crates of bok choi and cubed a barrel of jimica. From there, I rode over to the Union Square farmer's market to scour the market with M. It was fun chatting with someone I've never met before about what we were looking at, our motivations for being there, etc. The red cipolini onions looked intense, and -poof-, that was our roasted veg side dish. The rhubarb was in season, and -poof- a nice amuse bouche after dinner in the form of rhubarb soup, which I saw demoed at a workshop at school. We got some organic grass-fed beef steaks, popped into Wholefoods to get some stock, and we made our way back to my kitchen.

I set M up peeling and mandolining potatoes, prepping asparagus, and pretty much showing everything that was set up and why. Oddly enough, I found myself repeating a lot of what I've learned in school (and wrote about here), surprising myself with how much was coming back to me as I acted on it. Once E was over, I showed them how to trim silverskin and seam the meat, which they really seemed to get off on. The rhubarb soup got on the fire first, since it had to chill to be served. Really easy, it was 4 and half cup of water boiled with a half pound of sugar for about 5 minutes, then the rhubarb (peeled, cut in 2 inch pieces) was dropped in and boiled till completely disintegrated into strings. A teaspoon of vanilla, then into the fridge till cold. Hit it was a tiny pinch of salt at the end.

The french fries were a bit frustrating, and I think it was because of the uncalibrated thermometer. The first fry bath took literally 30 minutes till the bubbles slowed and the temp started rising. I walked away to do other things, and when I came back the thermometer broke into the oil -- the temp got so high, it exploded. I quickly cycled off to the market for new oil and a new thermometer, so we'd be ready for the final fry bath right before dinner.

I sauteed the steaks, testing them with my fingers for doneness, rested them appropriately while I made the pan sauce. However, them came out closer to rare than the medium rare I wanted -- my pan was a little too hot and the meat a little thicker than anticipated. Between salting the meat and throwing salt into the sauce without tasting it, it was was horribly briney tasting. So I didn't bother reducing to nappe, and spooned only a little over the meat. However, the maitre d'hotel butter I made in the beginning of the session went on top nicely.

I think I learned that sea salt definitely acts differently than kosher salt, delivering a much more intense salty blast of flavor due to it's smaller grain. I must be careful of that in the future. I also learned that upping the fat content in the ice cream (I used more cream than half and half rather than equal parts because that's what I had on hand) allows the mix to take on more air in the churning machine, making for a lighter, fluffier ice cream, but with a less intense flavor. Next time I do a higher-fat version, I'm going to up the extract and the sugar a little.

AM SNACK: 4:30am, 6 tiny pieces of organic chocolate, hunger 2/5

BREAKFAST: 7am, banana, hunger 3/5
As I was leaving, I hugged B and she brought it to my attention that my stomach was growling, so I shoved this banana down.

AM TASTING: 11am, bite of veal stew, bite of lamb stew, bite of coq au vin, bowl of beefcheeks on egg noodles, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2:45pm, piece of marble cake, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
On break at God's Love We Deliver. Wanted it to be better, but it just wasn't very good. When you have to make literally a ton of cake, corners have to be cut, I guess.

DINNER: 8:30pm, asparagus risotto, sauteed rib steak with roasted red cipolini onion and home made fries, rhubarb soup, french vanilla ice cream, 1 glass prosecco, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5