Brownie FAIL

Today was the first half of a two-fer: tomorrow is Parent Teacher Conferences, so we cooked in preparation for setting up a buffet tomorrow. It spring instead of fall, so rather than exactly repeating last semester, we're skipping the mac n' cheese in favor of a lighter pasta salad. (Though now that I think about it, I think I'll do mac n' cheese next week to demonstrate sauces.) Today we finished our vegetable soup, made mayonnaise and Cesar salad dressing, then 3 different kinds of brownies. Recipes can be found earlier on the blog here and here.

We started the class with a little lecture about the brigade system, the traditional organization of the kitchen roles, from Executive Chef to commis (trainee), but I could see the kid's eyes glazing. I did a demo of whisking oil and vinegar alone, and watching it separate, then whisking with a little mustard, and watching it stay set -- a simple emmulsion.

The kids set about processing a whole host of vegetables for the stock we made last week to make vegetable soup, including the the blanched, shocked peeled and scooped out tomato concase. We turned over, and I demoed mayonnaise before setting the kids out in teams to make it themselves. Some of the kids are sharper than others, and when I tried to get them to set up their mise-en-place before I demoed, one kid didn't understand the concept of pouring two oils into the same measuring cup, and didn't understand that mise didn't mean dumping everything into one bowl, but grouping stuff together in a way that makes sense -- the oil and everything else must be in two containers, as the method of making mayonnaise involves a lot of whisking while pouring oil slowly into the bowl.

I had two students that I had last semester go nuts on the Cesar salad dressing, making an evil mash of garlic and sardines, before making the emulsion that would be joined with a lot of Parmesan. Both the mayo and the dressing would be held until tomorrow.

We reset and I broke the class into two teams. One would make normal fudge brownies, one would make a batch with macadamias and chocolate chunks. I demoed with a third batch -- mint brownies. I never tried this method before, I just made it up, and I suspected it would fail, though I wasn't sure how. I replaced the 2 cups of sugar with 2 cups of mint simple syrup -- Boil two cups of sugar with one cup of water, then place a bunch of mint and let it steep for about 30 minutes. The problem is you are adding a cup of water. We tried the brownie immediately after and while it tasted good, it had the tough consistency of jello -- despite minimally folding the flour in, the extra water really developed the gluten to make it very non-flaky and weirdly elastic.

I demoed how to make powdered sugar, simply by putting normal sugar in a blender for a few minutes, and added a few drops of food dye to turn it green, green to sprinkle over the mint brownies and green because it was St. Patrick's day. We sat down to eat the soup and the inferior brownies, and we went around the table discussing what was good and what was bad about today's session. Most mentioned the brownies as a highpoint, despite it tasting inferior. Many mentioned that the soup didn't have enough salt, though it tasted salty to me -- it gave me an opportunity to talk about salt -- it's easy to add more, but impossible to take it away without a lot of complexity. That's why you have salt on the table of restaurants -- it's left up to the customer to season to taste.

Tomorrow, we bang out salads and sandwiches....