Plating (Coined here first: Manassholeger)

Today was the last day of plating. After a redundant review of the appropriate equipment to set up in a station (a water-filled bain marie for tools, a small pot of excess fat, a container of salt, etc), we got to it. Dirty Dave, Stalker Koslowski, Roundhead, and I were responsible for one dish: "wild" mushroom risotto. I put wild in quotes because the crimini, shiitake, and button mushrooms looked very uniform and cave-raised. At the last minute, Chef K threw braised napa cabbage at us, which DD cooked up off the cuff with shallots, garlic, and lardons (cross-sectioned hunks of slab bacon), which came out pretty kick-ass.

The risotto started with chicken stock, and we added all the mushroom peeling and trimmings to it and brought it to a boil, then let it steep for half an hour. It was then strained through cheese cloth and a chamois to remove all the dirt. Shallots were softened in butter and olive oil, then the raw arborio rice was sauteed for a few minutes. The pan was deglazed with maderia (Portugese fortified wine), then the mushroom/chicken stock was ladled in, adding another ladle as it absorbed. Once the right creamy consistency, the risotto was finished with sautéed mushrooms, marscapone, parmesan, and salt.

Presenting was easy: just plop the risotto in the middle of the plate, let it ooze to its shape, and hit it with some green chopped parsley. The rest of the plating exercises involved foods other groups made, a roasted top round of lamb with dijon-horseradish sauce with spaghetti squash pancakes and fondant potatoes and sautéed tournedos of beef (wrapped in bacon) with truffle coulis, potato-garlic pie and peas, and yellow snap beans. Dora the Explorer made the peas and beans; I only plated a few before throwing the rest out. (The director of student affairs was in today to speak to Dora about her tainted equipment, but it's still to be seen if anything results.)

The lamb today was larded -- strips of pork fat, cut from a slab fatback, then larded through the meat (a long metal needle with an aerodynamic roachclip at the end is stuck through the meat, which drags the fat right through). Damn cool, but I didn't get my hands on it. I'm glad, as each group will be making all the recipes, not just getting the majority of food handed off at the end of the class.

Again the class was very low energy, people aren't responding well to Chef K. Tomorrow, we leave plating behind and journey into the regional dishes of France.

ADDENDA:

Still weighing in at 222, which surprised me, I thought last week's two-pound loss was an anomaly. So that's 13 lbs I've lost since since starting culinary school.

I'm sitting in the school library before heading off to work-work. The person beside me is doing some excel spreadsheet, and whining to a classmate that there is too much 'entrepreneurial stuff' in the management class -- he just wants to learn to be a manager. He doesn't get that even if you're just a manager, you need a certain flexibility of mind to be really effective, the kind of flexibility that entrepreneurs thrive on. I guess he really wants to be a rote, by-the-numbers, follow-the-rules manassholeger.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, organic raisin bran with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 10:30am, mushroom risotto, small piece of roast lamb, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3:45pm, lamb with horseradish sauce, braised cabbage, spaghetti-squash and pine nut pancakes, a few roast potatoes, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Kinda forgot I didn't eat much today, but was carrying around food -- weird, walking down the street, realize you're really hungry, sit down three seconds later and you're eating a really fancy meal.

DINNER: 6:40pm, various dumplings, weird boiled beef thing, tiny cinnamon-y egg custard, 2 beers, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Dim Sum Go Go on East Broadway with a couple of friends. Didn't eat a lot, but very filling. Made me miss my parents -- Chinese food was very exotic to their generation, and we spent many a weekend afternoon going out to Chinese food in Chinatown together, to the old hoary spots that served 1960's style Americanized fare. This place had the usual spring rolls and stuff, but I would of loved to been able to feed my mom a chive-shrimp dumpling and a parsley cake, riffs on stuff vaguely familiar but oddly foreign at the same time.