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!

Fish Stock/Fish Fabrication/Simple Fish Soup (Roley Poley Fish Heads)

After yesterday's confrontation with my lifelong culinary nemesis, nothing could get me down today -- not even copious amounts of rainbow-colored fish guts and dark-red fish blood. Well, maybe it could if you made me eat that stuff...

The morning lecture reviewed stock, that magical stuff you get from simmering bones and vegetables until it becomes enriched with intense nutritive yumminess. Stock is a foundation of good sauces, soups and braises, and is full of gelatin from bones -- all the boney soft stuff and cartilage is actually all protein. The fish stock we were to make typically only takes 90 minutes (whereas a stock with big ol' bones, like cow, can simmer and reduce away for a few days).

Chef M drew typical 'flat' and 'round' fish on the board to discuss their physiology. Flat fish like sole and flounder tend to be on the small and mildly un-fishy flavor side, while round fish like salmon, cod, tuna, and bass are all sorts of sizes, colors, and flavors. The basics of checking for quality (good smell, clear eyes, firm flesh, etc.) were bandied about, the differences in wild vs. farmed (wild will always be tastier) and the proper way to store in ice (standing on its belly with packed ice on all sides, with drainage so the fish is never sitting in water) were discussed...and then out came the fish.

All 14 of us got to "fabricate" 3 fish apiece -- a bass, a sole, and a mackerel. Chef M gave us pretty detailed demos, then let us at them. Funny, the second I got that first fish in front of me, my mind went blank. Its corpus wasn't abstract anymore, like a picture or a demo; it was right in front of me to be dealt with right now. I put on the plastic gloves, then paused to take a picture with the camera phone. I looked to see what everyone else was doing -- oh yeah, that's why I forgot. (Vegans, hungry or otherwise, might want to skip down to the addenda about now.) I ran the blade of the boning knife in one long stroke along the belly and out flopped the guts. I stuck my fingers in to pull out whatever bits I missed and a few fleshy sacks popped eggs and blood over my hand. Kind of gross but cool. I almost reached into my pocket to take a picture but thought it better not to stand around for the next three hours with a pocketful of fish guts and an unpleasantly fishy phone.

I followed the Chef's direction from memory: Slice from the dorsal (front) fin to the top of the head at an angle, then peel off the fillets with the long thin boning knife. Cleave off head and tail, but the meaty bones into the stock pot. Clean up fillets, pluck out pin bones with pliers, wipe down, and check for scales and more bones. Cut into three portions each, stack flesh to flesh, skin to skin.

For the mackerel, the fabrication was a little different: Saw away from the top of the head to the dorsal fin at an angle. Then you put down your knife, grab the head with one hand and the body with another, and yank them apart -- all the guts come out, attached cleanly to the head. It definitely called for a karate-like "HeeeeeYAA!" as I tore the fish head off.

After cleaning up, we fried up some garlic, onion, parsnip, and leeks; diced up potatoes in olive oil; added salt, fish stock, and crushed tomatoes; and then set to boil. Brought down to a simmer, we placed out fish fillets on top of the liquid for 5 minutes and viola, our simple fish soup arrived into this world, ready for the eating.

While we were finishing the soup, four beautifully plated desserts appeared; the pastry class just finished practicing, and their labors were our pleasure. In return, Chef M sent thema gallon of fresh fish soup. We all ate well.

After class, I stopped in on the Dean of Student Affairs to discuss volunteer opportunities and career trajectory. There is a lot of stuff out there, and I have a short stack of organizations to read up on before I start making calls and setting up visits. Next week should be interesting.

ADDENDA:
After having my ice cream keep me up all night, I decided to try it for breakfast. Now that it's set, the coffee flavor is much stronger than the chocolate flavor. In the 20 minutes after eating it, B mentioned that I was buzzing around the apartment -- I was totally caffeinated. I hopped on the bicycle and made it school in record speed. I felt like I should have pulled my shirt over my head and proclaimed, "I AM THE GREAT CORNOLIO!!" Caffeine, it's a hell of a drug.

At the end of the yoga class I attended today, there was about 5 minutes of meditation. The teacher asked to internalize a mantra to repeat in our heads or under our breath, and suggested we take one of the Sanskrit chants from the distributed guide if we liked. Very quietly I chanted, "Not my mother's scramble. Not my mother's scramble." Not peace, bliss and happiness, but something like it.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, apple, small cup of chocolate espresso ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 9:30am, small piece of french bread, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM TASTING: 11:30am, bites of various gourmet creamy desserts, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
A pastry class sent up some beautiful tasty desserts for us to snarf down at the end of class.

LUNCH: 12:45, 3/4 of a quart of fresh fish soup, piece of french bread, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
In Madison Square Park. B came and visited me, then the HVS did a run-through. Very satisfying to eat a fresh self-made meal made at a higher level of skill while surrounded by people scarfing crappy Shake Shack burgers. They think they're eating great stuff, but I got the real thing...

PM SNACK: 5pm, superhippy grilled cheese sandwich with morbier and onions, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Another cheese introduced to me in class -- it has a line of vegetable ash through the middle, a softer firm texture and a stinky rind. Because of its excellent melting ability and strong flavor, used less cheese than usual and still was great.

PM SNACK: 6:15pm, 1 slice streetza, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9:45pm, stone rice bowl with bulgogi, assorted appetizers including radish kimchi, fermented fish, mungbean pancake, pickled nuts, water 2.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Danny & I caught a quick dinner after a movie, at a Korean place in Koreatown. Oddly enough, they closed at 10pm, turning away several patrons -- what kind of place closes early on Friday night when there is a demand? Must be family-run or something.