Sugar All Around

Today was the first completely new lesson of this round. The semester was two classes shorter last time, and we dedicated two classes to Thanksgiving. While one could argue this lesson deviates from our mission to teach how to cook with nutrition in mind, one also must be a realist -- we eat sweets, even if our bodies don't need them to live, because they are delicious. Better to eat sweets that are made by your own hand than by the industrial complex.

Cheesecakes take a long time to bake -- after baking off and cooling the crusts, the filling must go into a hot 475 degree oven for 10 minutes before being turned down to 200 degrees for two hours, then sitting in the turned off oven for another hour. Why? It's all about getting all the eggs in the recipe setting without getting tough, to get that unbelievably silky cheesecake texture, rather than bits of cheese sitting in little granules of scrambled eggs...

NEW YORK CHEESE CAKE

Yield: 3 Cakes, 48 servings

Butter, melted 2 cup
Graham cracker crumbs 4 cups
Sugar ¼ cup

Cream cheese, softened 5 lbs
Sugar 3 ½ cup
AP Flour ¼ cup
Eggs 10 each
Egg yolks 4 each
Vanilla 2 tbsp
Orange zest ½ each
Lemon zest 1 each
Heavy cream ½ cup

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 3 10” spring form pans, line with parchment. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
2. Make the crust: Combine butter, graham cracker crumbs and sugar. Spread to the edges of the pan. Prick all over with a fork, bake 15 minutes. Allow to cool.
3. Increase over to 475 degrees. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, flour, whole eggs, egg yolk, zests and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add cream and mix only enough to blend.
4. Place boiling water in a pan that will fit on the bottom of oven. Pour filling over crust and bake for 10 minutes at 475 degrees. Reduce temperature to 200 degrees and continue to bake for 2 hour. Turn off oven and leave cake in for another hour. When done, it may look a little jiggly in the center.
5. Chill overnight.

So when the kids arrived a little after 3, instead of waiting until 3:15 to lecture, I grabbed them as they came in and started them on the cheesecake. The first tow just did the crusts, greasing pans, processing cookies, melting butter, cutting parchment and getting it into the oven. I had two teams of two each make a half batch of cheesecake batter in the mixers. It's amazing that even though the recipe is basically throw everything in the mixer EXCEPT the cream, I had to catch one of the teams about to throw the cream in before turning the thing on. During this lesson, when asked simple questions, a lot of the time I said, "The answer is in the recipe, you just need to read the recipe before touching anything."

While the crusts baked, we quickly cleaned then sat for a lecture. And being that today was about sweets, the lecture was primarily...a chocolate tasting!

To paraphrase Tropic Thunder, we were in danger of going "full retard", but I stopped myself from serving 100% baking chocolate, which is bitter and painful to eat straight. I put out a spread from 86% down to white chocolate, and two milk chocolates -- a Giradeli and a Hershey's.

Chocolate is made from the cocoa bean, the seed of the fruit of the cacao tree. It must be 'conched', or processed by grinding into a paste called "chocolate liquor". This is pure chocolate, which can be processed into bars. 100% chocolate liquor is baking chocolate, and as you add sugar, it becomes dark chocolate. A 65% chocolate content means that the bar is about 35% sugar. Chocolate liquor is basically made up of two things, the cocoa which can be processed out into a dry cocoa powder (good for drinks, deepening the flavor of baked goods) and cocoa butter, the fat of the liquor. White chocolate is not actually chocolate at all, as all the cocoa (the flavor of the chocolate) is all removed -- it's just cocoa butter and sugar.

The kids hated the darkest chocolates, too bitter and it made them screw up their faces. The darkest most seemed to like was the 50%. The two milk chocolates were a revelation for them -- they were all used to the Hershey's style of slightly sour-milk flavored chocolate, but when they tasted the other high quality milk chocolate, I really got them talking about why it was better. It melted smoother in the mouth, it was less sweet and more chocolaty in a mellow way. One put it, "It just tastes more elegant!"

As they gobbled the rest of the not-too-dark chocolate, I spoke to the importance and reasoning behind creaming butter and sugar, when a recipe calls for the butter and sugar to be put into a mixer and paddled until it's, well, creamy. Creaming allows the fat of the butter to envelope every grain f sugar, while taking in millions of tiny air bubbles that will end up in the final product. When all these millions of air bubbles get into the oven, the air expands and makes everything more light n' fluffy.

To take in air, the butter most be soft at room temp, not hard and not melted. Sugar firms it up, by just beating the butter alone you'd get very very delicate bubbles that would dissipate with the addition of other ingredients. Using vegetable shortening will get you a lighter, fluffier product because unlike butter, it's 100% fat, but then you won't get the great flavor of butter.

From here I had two students do the donuts and glaze, and two teams of two do the chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were the standard Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, and yet the two batches came out quite different...

CLASSIC CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Yield: about 16-24 cookies

AP Flour 2 ½ cups
Baking Soda 1 tsp
Salt 1 tsp
Butter, softened 1 cup
White sugar ¾ cup
Brown sugar ¾ cup (firmly packed)
Eggs, room temp 2 each
Vanilla extract 1 tsp
Chocolate chips 12 oz

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl.
3. In a mixer, beat butter, white sugar and brown sugar until creamy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in vanilla.
5. Turn off mixer. Gently beat in flour mixture and chocolate chips with a spatially until just combined.
6. Spoon rounded tablespoons of dough on a parchment lined baking sheet, a few inches apart. Bake 9-11 minutes until golden brown. Cool for 2 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

After I blathered in my lecture about why we cream, why creaming is important, etc etc, one of the two teams added an egg to the creaming butter and sugar. To the left of the pictures are light, cookie-looking cookies. To the right are smooth rock-like orbs, much tougher due to the egg-proteins developed into long strands.

I had never made donuts before, and teaching students how to make them is not the ideal situation to learn, but hey, whataya gonna do -- I don't typically bring a few gallons of hot lard to scalding temps in my kitchen to make many dozen donuts...

CINNAMON SUGAR CAKE DONUTS

Yield: 24

AP Flour 4 cups
Sugar 1 cup
Salt 2 tsp
Baking Powder 2 tbsp
Cinnamon 1 tbsp
Nutmeg ½ tsp
Butter, melted ¼ cup
Milk 1 cup
Eggs, beaten 2 each
Oil for frying
Sugar enough for dredging
Cinnamon enough for dredging
or
Vanilla glaze enough for dipping

1. Heat oil in appropriate vessel to 375 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix in butter until crumbly. Stir in milk and egg until smooth.
3. Knead lightly, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll or pat to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with a doughnut cutter, or use two round biscuit cutters of different sizes.
4. Carefully drop doughnuts into hot oil, a few at a time. Do not overcrowd pan or oil may overflow. Fry, turning once, for 3 minutes or until golden. Drain on paper towels.

VANILLA GLAZE

Yield: about 2 cups

Powdered sugar 1 ½cups
Milk 2 ½ tbsp
Salt ¼ tsp
Vanilla extract ½ tsp
Butter 1 tsp

1. Melt butter then add rest of ingredients. Mix until creamy

A gallon of peanut oil met with a few pounds of solid beef lard and with a thermometer, got it up to about 400 degrees (the donuts would bring the temp down to 375). The dough of the donuts were pretty straightforward to make, and rolling and cutting was simple. The frying, on the other hand, was a bit tricky.

The quarter inch rounds pretty much expand into donut-shape pretty quickly, then you go for the color you need. We did about 3 minutes on each side, and it was clearly over-cooked -- very crunchy, almost no chew in the middle. The finesse of this procedure is to make the donuts the right size consistently (we were using a combination of round cookie cutters, and getting all sorts of shapes) and a consistent heat of oil.

The sugar was fine, but we didn't make enough glaze, which was the most popular. By the time we sat down to eat cookies and donuts with milk (the cheesecakes were cooling, will have to be for next week), the kids were coming down from the chocolate high and weren't that hungry, he he he.

Next week, another new lesson -- explorations in Asian cuisine.

Teaching, Cycle 2

Hello, everybody! I was at the high school today, recruiting student's for the second semester of culinary classes that I'll be teaching starting in March. Again, I whipped out a batch of brownies based on this recipe, and put them side-by-side with some bodega-purchased Lil' Debbie brownies.

Again, I put this info sheet out:

Spoke to about 15 interested kids. Talking with the supervisor about coming back in a couple of weeks to do a meatball demo class to further recruiting.

Basically, I'll be basing this round of classes on the curriculum I've developed, based on the C-CAP literature, but take it a step further. Now that I've done it once, I kind of know what works and what doesn't, what can be done in how long, etc. Should be interesting!

Student's Choice/End of Semester

To close out the semester, the students suggested what they wanted to make. One said pork dumplings, another said fried calamari, the third suggested brownies, to which I steered to the next step up in elegance: flourless chocolate cake. One three students suggesting 2 appetizers and a dessert does not a meal make, so I rounded it out with a dish I wish I had hit up on grains day: risotto.

First up was making the cake. Flourless chocolate cake was trendy a few years ago, but now that everyone has taken a crack at it, people have recognized it for what it is: an extra dense brownie that doesn't have much chew.

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

Yield: 16 small serving

Semisweet chocolate 4 oz
Butter ½ cup
White sugar ¾ cup
Cocoa powder ½ cup
Eggs, beaten 3 each
Vanilla bean, scrapings 1 each

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease an 8” round springform pan, dust with cocoa powder.
2. Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Remove from heat, stir in sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla.
3. Stir in eggs. Pour into prepared pan.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes, turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

This is a VERY chocolaty and rich dessert, requiring something to compliment and mute it's strength. Vanilla ice cream (which I made at home and brought in -- not enough time and not enough equipment to make it at school) is a nice, straightforward companion, but a fruit sauce is also pretty classic.

RASPBERRY SAUCE

Yield: 2 cups

Raspberries 1 pint
White sugar ¼ cup
Orange juice 2 tbsp
Cornstarch 2 tbsp
Cold water 1 cup

1. Combine raspberries, sugar and orange juice in a saucepan. In a separate bowl, whisk cornstarch into cold water until smooth. Combine cornstarch mixture into the sauce pan, BTB RTS
2. Simmer for 5 minutes or so until the desired consistency, constantly stirring. Note: sauce will thicken further as it cools.
3. Puree in blender. Pour through fine metal sieve. Serve warm or chilled.


Fried calamari is as simple as simple can be. I didn't really do any deep frying in class because it doesn't take much skill or talent to do it -- monkeys run the deep fryers at fast food restaurants. But if we were going to do it, I'm glad it was squid -- I got a student to take whole squid and take them apart. And unlike somethings, calamari only needs a minute in the fryer. Our first few batches came out perfect, but the last was a flop -- the temp of the oil dropped, and instead of coming out light and crisp, the last calamari came out heavy, greasy, overcooked and nasty. Mistakes are a learning opportunity.

FRIED CALAMARI

Yield: 16 small appetizer portions

Peanut oil 1 gallon
Squid, tubes & tentacles 2 lbs
AP flour 1 cup
Plain cornmeal 1 cup
Salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste

1. Place oil in appropriate vessel. Bring to 375˚, measuring with fry thermometer.
2. Combine flour and cornmeal in a mixing bowl.
3. When ready to fry, in small handfuls, dredge the squid in the flour and cornmeal mixture and shake off the excess. In batches, gently lower the squid into the hot oil. Cook for 1 minute. The squid will not be browned, but lightly golden in color. Remove the squid and transfer to a cooling rack turned upside down set over a newspaper-lined sheet pan. Season with salt and pepper, as desired. Repeat until all of the squid is cooked. Make sure to check the temperature of the oil before each batch to ensure it is 375 degrees F. Serve immediately.

Dumplings at their core are meatballs wrapped in dough. In this case, a Chinese-style pork dumpling involves pureeing the pork to make a mouse, spiked with a variety of Asian flavors like ginger, scallion, garlic, sesame, soy sauce and rice wine. We didn't have time to make the dough, but the premade goza wrappers were pretty good.

The dipping sauce was made on the fly, mixing ingredients from the recipe (soy sauce, sesame oil) and spiking it with a bit of vinegar.

PORK SHAO MAI

Yield: 60 dumplings

Pork, ground 2 lbs
Gingerroot, minced 3 tbsp
Scallions, mostly green, minced 4 each
Rice wine 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Soy sauce 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Sesame oil 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Egg white 4 each
Cornstarch 3 tbsp
Fresh water chestnuts, fine dice 2 oz
Thin round dumpling skins 60 each

1. Hand mix pork, ginger, scallion, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, egg white and cornstarch. In batches, place mix in a food processor. Pulse to mix further, then puree.
2. Once the entire batch in pureed, fold in the water chestnuts. Chill until ready to use.
3. Place approximately 2 tsp of the filling in the center of a wrapper. Bring sides up and push/pleat sides together so that the dumpling has an “Empire waist” and some of the filling pushes out the top. Place the shao mai on a cookie sheet and cover with a damp cotton towel until you are ready to steam them.
4. Place enough water into a wok or pan so that it comes up to inch below the steamer basket. BTB. Open the steamer and arrange the dumplings in the steamer basket with space between them. Steam until meat is cooked through, about 5 to 8 minutes. Serve immediately with dipping sauce.

Risotto is a very interactive method. Once you have sauteed the aromatics and the rice andcooked off the wine, it's all about stirring while adding small portions of the liquid, to bring out the starch in the rice to make that thick sauce between the grains. Finished with lots of fatty things, it doesn't take a lot of add ons (in this case asparagus) to make a loud flavor.

CHICKEN ASPARAGUS RISOTTO

Yield: 14 servings

XV OO ½ cup
Onion, medium, dice 2 each
Garlic, minced 1 tbsp
Asparagus, peeled, diced 2 bunch
Asparagus spear tips 2 bunch
Rice, Arborio 3 cups
White wine 1 cup
Chicken stock, hot 16 cups
Butter, cold 8 tbsp
Parmegano-Regiano, grated 1 cup
Mascarpone 17.5 oz
Parsley, minced 3 tbsp
Chicken breasts, large dice 6 each

1. Sautee cubed chicken until medium rare. Set aside. Deep fry asparagus spear tips for 1 minute in 375˚ oil, set aside.
2. Heat oil in a large rondeau, add onion and asparagus, sweat until translucent. Add rice and cook until toasted and opaque, 3-4 minutes.
3. Add wine and cook until alcohol smell dissipates.
4. Add 1-2 ladles of stock at a time until absorbed, constantly stirring. Keep adding ladle by ladle, absorbing fully each time, until all is gone.
5. Remove from heat. Add butter, cheeses and parsley. Stir 30 seconds. Season. Add cooked chicken. Garnish with more grated cheese, parsley and fried asparagus spears.

And that was that. My wife and child came to the school, a few extra staff joined us, and rather than do family-style, I did some plating with the students, using garnishes to decorate appropriate sized portions.

After eating and clean up, I thanked the students, and told them that they were better than the other 7 students who dropped out over the semeseter -- in their professional lives, just being consistent and showing up will be a large part of what proves them to be successful, more than the flakes and the fakers.

There was some talk of starting a new semester in March, perhaps twice a week -- we could get through a lot more recipes and methods, and drill much deeper into theory and directed experimentation. So until then, have a happy new year!

Cooking in Quantity

I really don't know what this poster in the school cafeteria was about. My supervisor didn't know, either. Something tells me I really don't want to know. Yum-o, I say. Yum. O.

The syllabus was all about stock and sauces, but we also needed to cook for PTA parent-teacher conferences tomorrow. Rather than be capped at 3 hours, we took 4 and a half to get it all done.

We started with a short lecture about mother sauces and the danger zone. The danger zone is 60 through 140 degrees -- the zone where bacteria will grow and multiply if given the three elements it needs: protein for food, moisture for environment, and low acidity. Stock has all three.

Bechamel, veloute, espagnol, tomato, hollandaise -- today we were making bechamel -- warm milk thickened with a roux. Roux is equal parts fat and flour, whisked while cooked to turn it into a paste. The darker it goes, the bigger flavor it'll have. This would be the base of our Mac n' Cheese....

MACARONI & CHEESE

Yield: 30 servings

Elbow macaroni 5 lbs
Butter 1 ½ cups
Flour 1 ½ cups
Whole milk 1 ¼ gallon
Salt & pepper to taste
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Cheddar, cubed 1 ½ lb
Mozzarella, cubed 1 ½ lb
Monterrey jack, cubed 1 ½ lb

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Warm milk, but do not boil. Grease 4 large hotel pans. Bring enough salted water to a boil. Add pasta, cook until very al dente – 2 minutes shorter than package suggestion.
2. Melt butter and stir in flour to make a roux. Whisk in warm milk a ladle at a time to make white sauce. BTB RTS. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Remove sauce from heat, stir in three cheeses. Combine with pasta and stir well. Pour into baking dishes.
4. Bake 45-60 minutes, or until top is desired crispiness. Rest 20 minutes before serving.

I had the kids taste the cheese sauce before and after adding salt and Worcestershire, really bringing home the importance of NEVER forgetting seasoning.

This was my own recipe -- the syllabus had a horrible recipe involving mustard powder. The teacher who lead this program the last two cycles stopped by and ate with us, and confided that the first time she taught this program, she stuck closely to the syllabus and all the kids pretty much were grossed out by the mac n' cheese. This recipe is pretty solid, except this was the first time I was using the ovens in this kitchen -- they ran hot, and they ran uneven. The final product was a little over-done, but still very edible, very rich and decadent, if not as loose as I would of liked.

Before class, I got chicken stock on the fire. We just had too much to do and this is a 4 hour affair, and I got whole chickens that had to be broken down without fuss or drama.

CHICKEN STOCK

Yield: 1 gallon

Chicken bones 8 lbs
Cold water 1 gallon
Salt 2 tsp
Mire poix, medium dice 1 lb
Sachet d’Epices 1 each

1. Rinse bones, place in stockpot, add water and salt.
2. BTB RTS
3. Simmer 2-3 hours
4. Add mire poix and sachet, continue to simmer 1 more hour, skimming scum as necessary
5. Strain. Use immediately (degrease by skimming if necessary) or rapidly cool and store for later use.

The mac n' cheese was done in one huge batch broken into three hotel pans. Once into the oven, I demoed the brownie recipe. One kid asked why we didn't use a double-boiler to melt the chocolate -- an excellent question. Because we were melting it with butter, it was protected by the water content in that fat. As long as we didn't boil it, we were safe over an open flame.

FUDGE BROWNIES

Yield: 12 servings

Butter 1 cup
Unsweetened chocolate 4 oz
White cane sugar 2 cup
Eggs 4 each
Vanilla extract* 1 tsp
Salt ½ tsp

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease a 9x13 baking pan
2. In a 3-quart saucepan, met butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly until fully melted and incorporated.
3. Remove for heat, stir in sugar. Allow to cool slightly.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.
5. Add vanilla and salt, stir well.
6. Fold in flour, mix minimally. Spread batter into pan.
7. Bake 30-35 minutes. Brownies are done when toothpick is inserted into center and comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack.

*Can be replaced by scrapings of 1/2 vanilla bean

Since there is only four burners that are accessible at once, we broke into four teams and they made the brownies, with me looking over and giving guidance as we went. Soon enough, five trays of brownies joined the mac n' cheese in the oven.

Two students took on the Caesar Salad, and four students got to work on the green salad. The Caesar was pretty straight forward. First step was making the croutons...

CROUTONS

Yield: 1 lb

White bread 1 lb
Butter, melted 4 oz, or as needed
Salt 1 tsp, or as needed
Black pepper, ground ½ tsp (optional), or as needed

1. Remove the crust from the bread if desired. Slice and cube the bread into desired size. If bread is fresh, dry out cubes in over for 5 minutes before continuing.
2. Toss the bread, fat and season together on a sheet or hotel pan.
3. Bake at 450˚ until lightly golden, 8 to 10 minutes

The great thing about this was that it was super simple, and the end result was INSANELY better than the crap you buy in a box, industrial croutons that are designed to be shelf-stable forever and taste like weird chemicals. The student who I was directing to flip and stir the croutons said she really did not like croutons. I picked one up and put it in her mouth by hand, and I could see the lights turn on in her eyes. THIS is why we cook from scratch and not buy a box. Sure, it's cheaper, but the real reason is that it is so much better. Rather than an industrial interpretation of what a crouton is, here she had the REAL thing for the first time, just as they were made when they were invented. True dat. Hollah.

CAESAR SALAD WITH CHICKEN

Yield: 10 appetizer servings

Romaine lettuce, chopped 1 lb
Croutons 12 oz
Sliced chicken breast 25 oz

Garlic. minced 1 tsp
Anchovy fillets 5
Salt ¾ tsp, or as needed
Black pepper, ground ½ tsp
Egg yolks 2
Lemon juice 2oz
Olive oil 10 floz
Parmesan, finely grated 6 oz, or as needed

1. Separate romaine leaved. Clean and dry thoroughly. Tear or cut into pieces. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
2. Prepare croutons and hold at room temperature until ready to serve
3. To prepare dressing, mash together garlic, anchovies, salt and pepper in a bowl to form a relatively smooth paste. Add egg and lemon juice and blend well. Gradually add olive oil, whisking as it is added to form a thick emulsion. Stir in Parmesan. Adjust with salt and pepper as necessary.
4. Pan-sear chicken right before service. Slice when rested.
5. For each serving, combine 2 oz greens with 1 floz dressing, tossing gently until evenly coated. Garnish with a few croutons. Top with 2.5 oz sliced chicken.

The dressing's key is to mash the anchovies and garlic until it is homogeneous (a word I had to define for my student, which was cute!) before making the emulsion. Because of a student allergic to seafood, we had to serve the salad with the dressing on the side.

The other four got to work on the tossed salad for the meeting tomorrow. A lot of knife skills involved here, and I demoed how I wanted each element. I had them peel the celery, just like my wife likes....

SIMPLE GREEN TOSSED SALAD

Yield: 20 servings

Boston lettuce, chopped 3 head
Romaine lettuce, chopped 3 head
Carrots, peeled, rounds 2 lb
Cucumbers, peeled, sliced, quartered 4 each
Red onion, diced 2 each
Red peppers, diced 2 each
Celery, peeled, sliced 1 head
Simple red wine vinaigrette 2 cup

1. Toss all vegetables together in a large bowl.
2. When ready to serve, pour vinaigrette over, toss, serve immediately

We made the vinaigrette almost as an afterthought, and the student muffed it, with too little seasoning....

SIMPLE RED WINE VINAIGRETTE

Yield: 2 cups

Red wine vinegar 4 oz
Dijon mustard 1 tsp
Olive oil 2 lb
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Sugar to taste

1. Combine vinegar and mustard in an anchored bowl.
2. Whisk in oil gradually.
3. Season with salt, pepper and sugar.

We didn't have time to muck around with it, but will remake it tomorrow when we prep for the event.

The class ended with the four burners given over to saute pans. I demoed how to butterfly a chicken breast by cutting it length wise but leaving the two halves attached, so it could be opened like a book. Uncut, the cutlets would be too thick to cook all the way through and would have to be finished in the oven, which we just did not have time for.

SAUTEED CHICKEN BREAST

Yield: 1 serving

Chicken breast, boneless, skinless 1 each
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Vegetable oil ½ floz

1. Season chicken cutlet with salt and pepper
2. Heat sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add oil
3. Saute cutlet for 2-3 minutes per side or until done.
4. Rest ½ the time of cooking before serving or slicing.

The magic moment is when you turn the meat over and everyone sees the browning. A typical home cook will keep on moving the meat and no browning happens. It's a sexy "ooo" moment. Every one cooked at least one breast, and another student sliced the meat, to which I had to hold her up as to not cut unrested meat.

I dashed out a bit of whipped cream to go with the brownies as the kids cleaned up.

WHIPPED CREAM

Yield: 16 servings

Heavy cream 1 cup
Vanilla extract* 1 tsp
Confectioners sugar 1 tbsp

1. In a large bowl or mixer with whip attachment, whip cream until stiff peaks are just about to form.
2. Beat in vanilla and sugar until peaks form. Make sure not to over beat, cream will then become lumpy and butter-like.

*Can be replaced by scrapings of 1/2 vanilla bean

We sat, ate with the supervisor and last year's teacher, and everyone seemed pretty happy with the food. I didn't like the over-doneness of the baked goods, but in the end, every one dug it so I didn't want to disrespect the student's efforts. Just because I'm hard on my own cooking doesn't mean I should be a spoilsport. Tomorrow we reconvene to make sandwiches, dress the salad, reheat the baked goods, plate the food and try to impress the parents...

Introduction to Chocolate (Temper, Temper)

They say chocolate is addictive, I say it simply tempts the glutton in a person. The class started with a silly 5-question quiz (which I scrambled to study for 5 minutes before, as I was absent yesterday), then a lecture about chocolate. The cacao tree, cocoa beans and nibs, which produce cocoa solids (like cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. Chocolate as we know it is mixed with sugar to make anywhere from semisweet (61% cocoa solids and butter) to unsweetened (99%) Mix in milk powder and you got milk chocolate. Being that chocolate has so much fat in it, if you were to add liquid milk, it would never solidify. We tasted everything form baking chocolate to white chocolate, which isn't actually chocolate, but cocoa butter mixed with sugar. It doesn't taste so much like chocolate as it does like fat.

The main activity of the day was making chocolate truffles, so named because they kind of look like the rare fungi of the same name. First step is to make the ganache. Simmer 1 part heavy cream with a shot of light corn syrup. (Weird to cook with this ingredient that I find synonymous with crappy industrial food, but it works to prevent sugar in the chocolate from crystallizing.) Add 2 parts chocolate and melt. Once melted, throw in some solid butter and stir. Keep stirring, occasionally putting over ice till it gets thick but not lumpy.

Put into a plastic pastry bag with a metal tip, squeeze out onto a sheetpan in the shape of small balls. This was a little bit tricky, piping out with the right twist of the wrist to get an orb-shape that doesn't have too much of a nipple.

Those were put on the speed-rack to get solid, and then we prepared chocolate to cover the ganache. To melt chocolate that will resolidify when brought to room temperature, it must be tempered. Over a hot water bath, chocolate is melted and monitored with a chocolate thermometer (a thermometer with every number on it for finer measurement) till it hits 115. It is then poured on a cold marble slab and moved around with bench-scrapers till it measures 85 degrees. Once cooled, it is placed back un the metal bowl and placed over the hot water till it reaches 91. It is now ready to be used to cover the ganaches. As it cools, the chocolate becomes as solid as it was before melting. Chef G said that this is usually done by a machine, rarely by hand -- many variables, room temp, humidity, air movement, can all randomly affect tempering.

We dipped the truffles in assorted nuts and cocoa powder, and I ended up eating enough to get buzzy and nauseous, to the point where I forgot to take pictures of the final product. It didn't help that the ones that Norbert and I made were extremely lumpy and misshapen, due to our chocolate-induced ADD.

ADDENDA:
All the sugar in the morning made me feel weird, woozy in the stomach. No meat or heavy proteins appealed to me in this state.

BREAKFAST: 5:30am, smoothie, hunger 4/5

AM TASTINGS: 8-12noon, chocolate pieces, chocolate ganache, melted chocolate, madelines, biscotti, chocolate covered madelines, chocolate covered biscotti, 1 bowl of chocolate, hunger 4/5 to 2/5

LUNCH: 2:15pm, braised wheatgluten sandwich, spinach dumplings, stick rice, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 3/5

DINNER: 8:30pm, falafel platter with hummus, baba, couscous, seltzer, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Still feeling woozy from this morning's sugar bomb.