Ending/Beginning

I never really wrote about graduation from the Culinary Management program for two reasons, really. 1) The excitement of having a new baby was just too much and 2) graduation just didn't feel very exciting. The ceremony was very nice, but uneventful. But, fortunately, the blog is not ended on this off note, for starting in a couple of weeks, I am going back to culinary school....this time, on the other end: teaching!

A month or two ago, I interviewed at a public high school in Brooklyn looking for a teacher to head up a weekly culinary program for a group of 10-15 students. Starting in early October and going for 12 weeks, the curriculum will be based on CCAP materials, but I will have a free hand to structure the class in terms of content, recipes, pace and style. We'll be starting with knife skills, safety, and tastings of staples (funky cheeses, anyone?) and tackle some projects, like a big Thanksgiving meal for a large group of community members.

Next week, we'll be interviewing kids who applied for the program, and classes kick off the following week. I'll be blogging the classes here, and as I prepare lessons, I suspect I'll be referring to my notes in this blog to help get things together.

Today, I was at the school to drum up a little interest to increase our applicant pool. I manned a table in the cafeteria, and presented two trays of brownies for sampling. One were some seriously crappy brownies bought from the supermarket, the other made the night before in my kitchen riffed off this recipe (forget the walnuts, replace extract with the scrapings of the real thing, fold minimally instead of mix in the flour and let the batter rest to absorb the flour and prevent gluten formation.) The kids were happy to see brownies, as the lunch served looked both relatively healthy and like the kind that is more prepared and shipped in rather than cook-cooked. I laid out a little chart (above) listing the ingredients of each brownie, and showed how despite using a lot of expensive, organic ingredients, the homemade were STILL less expensive than the packaged, industrial stuff.

The overwhelming consensus were the homemade were really good and Lil Debbie's really whatever, but I guess I set the bar pretty low. This was my first opportunity to talk to the kids at the school, and it was a lot of fun vibing off their bubbling energy and some of their enthusiasm for the program (and my brownies, he he.) I guess I initially had some trepidation about interacting with the kids -- I ain't hep n' happenin' with whatever these young whippersnappers are "down with" nowadays, but it all seemed pretty natural and smooth. Will this be a "To Sir, With Love" minus the accents situation, or perhaps "Lean on Me" minus the redemption?

I remember in c-school, we had a few hours with a 'career advisor', and we went around the room announcing what we wanted to do with our futures. I think I said something like, "Cook superior pizza, have my own place eventually." I think it was Dora the Explorer, easily the worst cook in the class, the dirtiest working, who barely spoke English (she spoke Portuguese, which meant even the Spanish speakers couldn't really communicate with her), she actually said that she wanted to teach culinary. Yes, there was some eye rolling. Who would go to c-school just so they could teach? He he he. I guess I should eat my eye-rolling about now. I have a new baby, I can't do the 70+ hours a week for little pay that I was doing at L's restaurant, at least until the baby is a bit older. For now, I think this will be a good outlet to keep a finger in a working kitchen, keep my skills sharp, and heaven forbid, maybe learn a bit from these kids I'll be shepherding.

On a final note, here is one bit for those who've followed for a while. This is a video that was part of my PowerPoint presentation for my final project in management. It really didn't have much to do with my project, but I had been telling Louis stories all year, and this was an opportunity for a bit of entertainment to close out the class.

Grand Buffet (Graduation)

Today was the final day of class, a double day from 8am to guest-arrival at 5:30. Everyone prepared two hors d'oeuvres, and Norbit cooked off a bunch of roasts for a carving station. As usual, I put my head down and got my work done.

I finely chopped onion, garlic, Thai basil, parsley, and cilantro and mixed it in with yesterday's chopped vegs. Folded it into the batter made yesterday, then into the fridge. I reserved a handful of purple basil and zucchini for garnish.

I prepped the pizza topping -- thin slices of plum tomatoes, tiny dots of fresh mozz, cooked off and chilled a long link of school- made sausage, chiffonaded Italian basil. By this time, it was 10:30, and didn't want uncooked topped pizza to sit all day, so I jumped in and helped other students whose chosen preparations were a bit more involved. Dirty Dave had meatballs to shape, Natasha had mango sorbet quennels to shape, the Long Island Lolita had bacon masa dough to ball, Stalker Kawalski had mini eclairs to eat (damn, they were good!)... By 1pm, Dirty Dave helped me roll dough and cut it with a ring, to which I oiled it, topped it, and refrigerated it.

With some extra mini-pies, I baked off a bunch to see how they were. In the name of efficiency, I actually left all the little pies on the aluminium sheet tray, and placed the tray on the stone in the oven. In 10 minutes, the cheese started to brown nicely, and out it came. The crust was pleasingly cracker-like, and the tomato had cooked nicely, bonding with the fresh mozz for a pizza-like experience. The dough didn't char at all due to the pan and the relatively low temp of the oven -- had I added a little sugar to the dough, it would have been much more visually satisfying.

The pakora fritters involved deep frying. At 3:30pm I went to fry off about half the batch and keep them in a warming oven for service. A lot of liquid leached out of the vegetables into the batter, giving off a lot of little bits when it hit the hot oil. In retrospect, just throwing in more chickpea flour would have made this a much more efficient dish. I got off 60 pieces, though maybe 15 worth of bits went into the trash.

At 5:30, Chef A called for the hot food to plate, and my pakoras were out in a jiff. Two trays of pie went in, and they were out in another 10. My best friends, my wifey, my HVS, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my girlfriend-in-law, and my Ilsa all came to snack and give props -- it was really nice, though it took me a few minutes to unwind from 10 hours of work culminating in that one moment. That's the cool thing about cooking in a professional way, when the food is fired and leaves the kitchen to the person receiving your work, it's a culmination, a high point, a place to go, an orgasm, a reason to keep going. It's great when the food is good (the pakoras, fresh tasting, veg came through, spiced right), kinda sucks when the food is bleah (the pizzas needed more heat, a lighter crumb) but that's just being persnickety.

The director of student affairs gave a little speech, Chef A said a few words, and Chef M from Mod 1 and part of 2 was there, which was cool. Students were called up one at a time and given a book (of French recipes, of course), crowned with a toque, and a whole lot of back slapping and picture taking, it all felt a bit goofy. A beer definitely settled my mind, though all the food I had been popping in my mouth all day guaranteed a lack of hunger.

A few friends and the wifey got together and got me a 10" Global chef's knife -- one of the most notable things from school was when I took a knife skills tutorial, using a longer heavier knife was so much easier than a shorter, lighter one. As long as it's balanced and you're holding it correctly and your stroke is just right, you can let its weight do a lot of the work for you.

This coming Tuesday, my externship starts. A lot to think about. This weekend, I will conclude this blog with my final thoughts and discuss some plans for the future. Stay tuned!

ADDENDA:
All you mystery readers out there, feel free to leave comments and congratulate me! ;) Judging from the meter, there are about 10 regular readers and maybe another 20 occasional indulgers. Thanks for reading!

Slept poorly the night before, maybe getting 5 hours of sleep. When I got home around 9pm, it felt like 4 in the morning. I slept like a baby, with visions of mini eclairs and pizza dancing in my head.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, a large portion of homemade vanilla ice cream, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5
Not a healthy breakfast, but needed a sugar kick to get moving.

ALL-DAY TASTING: 8am-7pm, including several pakoras, a handful of mini pizzas, handfuls of chocolates, mini-eclairs, a few mini burgers and meatballs, shrimp cocktail, a beer, a slug of Guinness, chicken sate, almond cookies, a few bowls, hunger varying all day