Practical (Again, Plating & Portion is the Problem)

Today was the third and final Market Basket, as well as our final practical exam. The protein was Cornish Game Hen (which is just another name for "baby chicken," just a bit smaller). The pantry was stocked, and away we went.

After yesterday's trials and tribulations, I focused from the beginning. There was specialty equipment on hand to use, but no pizza stones -- no way was I going to bake on a pie in a sub 500-degree oven on aluminum, it would turn out gummy, no matter how thin the dough. However, there were pasta attachments for the mixers, so a bed of pasta it was.

Color: I didn't want a lot of white and tan everywhere, having to depend on garnish for color. So I blanched some spinach, blended it until liquid, and used that to bring the bread flour together. After some kneading, I had a nice green pasta dough. While I kneading, I thought of what could go on the plate. My plan: to sauté parts of the bird until golden, make a chicken stock pan sauce with a lot of wine to coat the pasta, simmer some elegantly cut mushrooms, remove various gills and the skins. Maybe even put in some diamond-cut some red peppers. Chef Al will like that, right?

So I dissembled the bird and frenched the legs for another 'elevating' touch Chef Al might appreciate. Sautéed it in peanut oil, salted well, looked nice. While the bird was frying, I broke out the dough and sent it through rollers. It was a bit loose, due to the spinach liquid on top of the eggs; but, I added a lot of flour until it got pasta like -- and saved the dish! (I've made too-loose dough at home and it was a disaster.) But this time, I was cool and calm. I patted myself on the back, what could go wrong?!

It was at this point I oopsed -- no water was on to boil. If you make pasta, the FIRST step should be to get a big honking pot of water on to a rolling boil. And here I was, with my chicken already cooked off.

So I finished my vegetable cutting, played with some fan action, then got the pan sauce going. Using the brown fond from the chicken and the fat it was cooked in, I hit it with some shallot, followed by a solid four ounces of white wine. Flambéed a bit; then, when near to dry, started ladling in the chicken stock. Water was not yet boiling...so I kept on adding stock as it reduced, adding more and more to an intense flavor.

When the water was finally boiling, I threw in about half my pasta, then the mushrooms and peppers into the sauce. Tasted it, needed just a pinch of salt. After three minutes, pasta out of the water, coated in a bowl with good olive oil for a nice sheen, and twirled onto a hot plate already ladled with sauce, with the veg pushed to the southern rim. Four pieces of bird stacked on top in an orderly way, two fans of pepper upper left to break up the uniformity, and off I went, confident that I was presenting a nice dish -- fun to make, yet certainly not oversimplified.

First comment from Chef Al: Way too much pasta. Not everyone is as large as I am, he said: nice! Fresh pasta is expensive to make, and even an entrée portion is about one third the amount I presented. The plate was too crowded, and the red peppers were making it too busy -- I could have used the peppers as an accent, but between the green pasta, tan sauce, and white mushrooms, that was quite enough. Needed white space. If he got that in a restaurant, he would not want to eat it, he would have sent it back. He asked me to fetch him a plate, to he could show me what he was talking about; as I did, I noticed him tasting the chicken. D'oh! It was dry, as it had been sitting on the rack for an extra ten minutes while I waited for that water to boil. He did credit me for going through the trouble of making a nice pasta, though; I suppose he felt bad for ragging on me so thoroughly. I got an 85/100, the lowest score in the class except for Speedy, who unfortunately showed up 2 hours late to class today.

As I went to my station to lick my wounds, I ate some pasta -- HOLY TOLEDO!! It was easily the best pasta I ever made -- it was toothsome in just the right way, and the rich flavor of the sauce was perfect, winey in the right way, just a hint of roasted garlic. That made me feel a bit better, knowing despite the f'd up bird and the poor presentation, I rocked it in flavor.

At the end of class, Chef Al asked each of us to write an essay -- who am I, what is my strongest food memory, why am I in culinary school. Tomorrow, a career lecture from an outside speaker, cooking continues on Friday.

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, good granola with the good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 10:30am, a little pasta with wine sauce, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:30pm, homemade pizza, seltzer, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Fun home cookin' with the HVS and the Ruf. Funny, Chef and all the students have nothing but scorn for vegetarians, but one of my bestest, closest friends is a vegan among vegans. I look forward to showing her off at graduation, like a rare, mystical evil unicon.

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, brownie
Small snack at a school function. I didn't think, it just jumped down my throat!

Market Basket (Fall Back Onto Noodle)

Today was the second day of Market Basket, this time with each student making one appetizer and one entrée, with one protein for each: sea bass and poisson (baby chicken). Again, lots of ingredients in the pantry for us to work with.

First thing was deciding on what to make. I decided to go as simple as possible: an appetizer of poached bass in court bouillon, and an entrée of roast poisson with rice pilaf and sauce Allemande. Gently poach fish in broth, roast chicken with fluffy buttery rice and a rich, chicken stock. How could I go wrong?!

The fish was dissembled and filleted, cut into 1 ounce tranches. The court bullion is simply vinegar, carrots, onions, parsley, bay leaf, cracked peppercorns, and thyme simmered for an hour, then strained. Poaching takes place right in the liquid.

While that was simmering, I made a simple rice pilaf. Sauté some minced onion in butter, toss in the rice, fry until translucent. Add 2x the amount of rice in chicken stock, a bay leaf and a bit of thyme. Bring to a boil, cover, into the 350-degree oven for about 20 minutes, until the water is absorbed.

Sauce Allemande is based on the mother sauce, sauce veloute. Veloute is simply taking a small amount of blond roux (cooked flour and butter) and whisking into chicken stock to thicken it. For the Allemande, shallots and mushrooms are sweated, the veloute added then simmered with some herbs, then strained. It is finished with laison (egg yolk mixed with heavy cream) right before serving for that extra mouth feel.

Fish done in a jiff, I was the first one out the gate to present a dish. To say Chef Al unimpressed would be a dire understatement. First, he told me that the portion was too small (1 oz of fish), the parsley I used as a garnish looked "childlike," and finally: One never presents court bouillon; it's a poaching liquid only, not a broth (which makes sense, as it tasted like vinegary ass)! Chef Al bluntly asked me why, if I'm going to spend x amount of dollars on culinary school and take the time, I came up with only this. I was told to complete the assignment again. To which I respectfully said, "thank you, Chef," and went back to my station.

Yeah, it was a lazy dish, and I should have known better about the bouillon, but I just wanted it to be done. After taking a moment to recover, I thought, OK, I already have poached fish, maybe I can put it on a bed of something that'll work well with a garnish. Something...fast! Nothing faster than rice vermicelli, drop it in boiling water, turn off the heat, and in 2 minutes, voilà: noodles.

In a small sauté pan I heated up some canola oil and dropped some ginger in to sweat and flavor it. Got rid of the ginger, dropped in the dried-off noodles, grated some ginger juice on top, added some soy sauce, quickly diced some red pepper for color. Put in in the center of the plate, put a trio of pieces of fish on top...and it looked like crap. It needed sauce. And time was running out. So I grabbed some soy sauce, put it in a pan with an equal part water, and tossed in a few pinches of corn starch. With heat, it turned brown and thick, sauce-like! Dribbled it around the border of the plate, dropped some olive oil droplets on to the fish to make it glisten, played with some small sticks of red pepper for visual interest, then back for round two.

This time, Chef Al's comments were mostly about visuals, and how a bit of green garnish, say, would have made sense with Asian cuisine (like cilantro). At least he didn't question my motivation for being there. So that was an improvement!

Still, I was unsettled by what had happened earlier. Roast chicken, rice n' sauce -- not the most earth-shattering choice, but I found myself too late in the process to change my direction. Rice was done, poussin was out of the oven and resting, all that needed to be done was finish the sauce. So I put a ring on a hot plate, pushed rice into it, propped up the half-bird on it, then finished the sauce. I drew a ring of sauce around the top two thirds of the plate to highlight the chicken, put some dots of finer-minced parsley for some green, and sensing it needed something more, added a little fan-triangle of pepper to the spot where the chicken met the rice. Didn't quite look right to me, but I didn't want to start second-guessing myself.

Again, Chef Al's criticism was about the plating. He did give me tips on how to place parsley powder on sauce with a knife tip for more precision. He thought the plate looked empty at the bottom, and the better approach would have been to place the chicken on top of a pool of sauce, with the rice to the north of it. He did compliment me on my pepper fan, and even grabbed it off my plate to illustrate to the next student how to decorate his plate.

Tomorrow is the third and final day of Market Basket, and also our final practical exam. I don't know what the protein or ingredients are yet, but I'm thinking something I've made many times at home....either pizza or ravioli!

ADDENDA:

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed so to speak, didn't feel hungry, and nothing but yogurt to eat anyway. As the food I made I geared towards presentation, didn't taste very good and I didn't bother eating, which was weird.

AM TASTINGS: 10-11am, a bit of prosciutto, a taste of bacon, quart of water

LUNCH: 1pm, spinach salad with carrot dressing, hijiki tofu patty, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM WATERING: 2:45pm, quart of water

DINNER: 6:15am, green salad, 3/4 of a frozen pizza, 2/3 of a pint of ben & jerries, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5
Did not eat enough today. Was at the market, wanted to get dinner, but didn't feel like cooking, so did some "research" by picking up some shee-shee brand of frozen pizza. It was ass. The crust was too thick and not enough chew, the cheese was layed on like a wet blanket, there was barely any tomato flavor to speak of, and the "herbs" were so tamped down to be non-existant.

Market Basket (Food, Like a Kiss from a Stranger)

Today was Market Basket, where we were given five ingredients that had to be used over two appetizers. It wasn't particularly difficult, as we were given a fully stocked pantry to work with, too. Really, it was too much choice.

The five ingredients were:

• Sea Scallops
• Slab Bacon
• Spinach
• Grape Tomatoes
• Shitake Mushrooms

Norbert and I teamed up, he went with a simple spinach salad with a bacon vinaigrette and sauteed scallops (with bacon fat as the lipid). I decided to go with a stir fry of vegetables, and brine and velvet the scallops.

Most of the work was collecting the mise and chopping the veg: oil, garlic and ginger to flavor the oil, sliced the mushrooms, carrots, red onion, devein the spinach, soy sauce mirin, sesame oil, a bit of garlic chili paste, a dash of fish sauce, fish stock.

I soaked the scallops in salted water for about 20 minutes, patted them dry, then dredged them in cornstarch. Got canola in the hot wok, moved around crushed garlic and ginger till it was browned and given up all it's flavor, then removed it. First, I placed the scallops (sliced into thirds) into the oil, saute about a minute on each side till a lovely golden brown. Moved them to the rack, then started stir-frying the veg: carrots, then shitake and onion, then the spinach, a dash of soy sauce goes up in a puff of steam, mirin a puff of steam, a little fish stock a smaller puff of steam then boils off. Taste, a smidgen of chili paste, a drop of fish sauce. A quick stir, then into a metal round on the plate. Topped with the three wedges of scallop, then off to present. From scallop in the pan to the plate, maybe 3 minutes.

Chef Al was not really tasting dishes so much as critiquing the plating in depth, more than any other chef has done yet - I suspect he may have some experience in food styling. His first critique is that I served him from the right, it should always be from the left, and it didn't get much better from there.

I served on a small plate, he felt that even though it is an appetizer, a large plate with some white space would of been more more dramatic. The dish looked dry to him -- no sauce. He made a comment, something like, "Food should be like a kiss from a stranger: moist, glistening and slightly salty." Eeeee! Anyway, my dish was not sauced, I did not make a sauce -- the stir fry was quite moist, but the sauteed scallops on top were 'dry'. He took a squeeze bottle of canola oil and dropped a few little droplets around the surface of the scallop, and indeed it popped to life. Maybe a few drops of reduced fish stock would of been the move.

The liquid off the veg ran a little when I moved the plate from my station to his table, which he found unattractive. I should of either made the veg a little bit drier or added liquid around the plate to make it look like on purpose.

Right before I brought the plate over, I looked at my station for garnish. I took a small leaf of spinach and placed it on top, it looked good to me. Chef did not approve of the garnish -- the spinach in the stir fry was dark and wilted. He though something like a small piece of fanned onion or a chiffonade of carrot would of added to the color and shown off more refined knife skills -- if you're going to pay $15 for an appetizer, you want to see the money on your plate, y'know?

At the end of class, after cleaning up the room, Chef ran through the different flavors (sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami), the different possible aspects of food (flavor, smell, texture, sound, temperature) and all the different possible textures -- smooth, crunchy, grainy, powdery, chunky, gelatinous, chewy, tough, spongy, squirty, greasy, slippery, and on and on, we rattled off words for a solid 5 minutes. Things to keep in mind when we continue with Market Basket tomorrow, with entrees.

ADDENDA:

The scale said 224 this morning -- does this mean I should eat McDonald's and Ben & Jerry's every weekend?

I have mixed feelings about today's exercise -- it's like telling a kid after using a pencil for the first time ever, to go draw something, and try to get depth and shading in there. On one hand, it's cool that it puts us in the mindset of using what's on hand -- at home, you have a dry pantry, and then you might have that bag of tomatoes from the farmer's market that'll go bad tomorrow if you don't use them right now. On the other hand, the pretense that any of us have the skills from the last 6-odd months to make something truly creative and good smacks of the school trying to make the customers (i.e. students) happy.

BREAKFAST: 7am, good yogurt with honey and raw cashews, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 10-11am, velveted scallops with stir fried veg, freshly made potato chips, Israeli couscous, quart of water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM TASTINGS: 1-2pm, a few bits of chocolate

Went to demo of a chocolatier making decorations and truffles, pretty over the top.

DINNER: 6pm, philly cheese steak, mashed potatoes, water, 3 pieces of fancy chocolate, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

Went to a diner with B, had this meal keeping in mind the divine steaks I ate in Philly. I thought the bread would be the worst thing about it, but that was pretty good -- the meat was sliced all wrong, too thick and in too big pieces, which totally altered the character of the sandwich. I could definitely make a better, more authentic cheese steak at home. On a side note, what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I on a shitty-food bender? The urge for salad in 3...2...

EVENING SNORT: 7-9pm, equivalent of half a glass of wine, a little cheese n' crackers
The sixth and final wine class, and wine still tastes like...alcohol and funky grape juice. Though I can detect 'oak' in wine. Woo hoo!