I'll be your Ratatouille, if that's what it takes.

So it begins again. For the first class, I stuck close to the original lesson plan, so I won't go into too much details (you can get all the recipes and nitty gritty here.) We had a group of 9 students, including 2 from the last session who are graduating soon, but wanted to hang out and relive the memories. One was in class for the first half of the program, but dropped out because of personality conflicts with another student. I'm glad she's back, she's clearly very intelligent and motivated, but socially a little awkward -- I hope she makes it through this time, and I'll lean on her a little to be a little bit more responsible for things.

First was the lecture about contamination -- physical, chemical and bacterial. Had to inform two girls with long-ass fingernails that they had to either lose them and wear gloves during class, another had to remove her big hangy earrings, others had to tie hair back and put on a hair-covering. A brief explanation of how bacteria travels (contact), and how this understanding was revolutionary -- doctors used to cut people open and use unwashed hands, leaving behind all sorts of bacteria.

I could tell at points during the safety lecture I was starting to lose the interest of the students, but was able to pull them back in with personal, mostly humorous, anecdotes. In speaking of knife safety, in how you must announce yourself while travelling across a busy kitchen with a sharp knife, you must say "Sharp" as you pass. At the last restaurant I worked, a very sweet Afgahni fellow with a limited use of the English language pronounced it as "Shark", and it seemed there was a killer fish wandering around the kitchen whenever it got busy.

We got into the kitchen, washed hands, then I set up a station -- cutting board at the edge of the counter with a wet paper towel under, two knives at twelve o'clock. I showed how to hold a knife properly, then demonstrated on each veg how I wanted them cut for salsa -- tomato, onion, garlic, jalapeno, cilantro. It went well, I went around correcting their grips and consoled the two students crying over cut onions. The best I could recommend is not to hunch over the cut onions, keep your eyes out of the line of fire.

The students from last session jumped in and helped the new kids with knife skills, and helped direct them how to clean up. Surprisingly, the turning over of the kitchen from salsa to smoothies went lickity split -- we turned over, i.e. washed down our stations and reset up, to prevent cross-contamination. One blender walked away, so we were on one blender for 9 students. I demoed one smoothie, and then made a big goof. I wanted to show the importance of salt in increasing/improving flavor, so I divided my smoothie into two cups -- one with salt, one with out. Unfortunately, I way over-salted and it ended up tasting oddly briny.

As the kids got their mise together, they immediately started cleaning while waiting for their turn at the blender. As they produced them, I tasted each, asked them what they thought and why, and commented on salt-level. Some didn't follow the recipe closely enough and made them too thick or too thin, and only one student straight-up disliked their smoothie.

I had my experienced students prep the 10 cheeses for tasting, chop bread and a new student was shown how to slice an apple correctly. (Half it, take out the top and bottom stems with a paring knife, then remove the seeds with a melon-baller) The kitchen was cleaned and we sat down to eat by 5:30, earlier than usual, but gave us time to talk and really get into the cheese tasting.

The cheeses were sharp cheddar, smoked gouda, buffala moz, pecorino romano, morbier, tallegio, brie, marscapone, roquefort and stilton. I explained how the stinky cheese taste much better than they smell, and for the truely foul ones, eating it with a sweet fruit like apple changes everything. As I explained my own experience discovering the delicious smelliness of tallegio, then amping it up by eating it with apples, one student guffawed "Ratatouille!" and a bunch chimed in in agreement. I guess being compared to a food-loving cartoon rat is a good thing. There was a lot of hesitation to trying the cheeses, but when I explained that the smoked gouda kinda tastes like bacon, everyone tried it and all loved it. One kid said it tasted like a Bodega meat stick/cheese stick combo wrapped into one. There was uniform scorn for the blue cheeses, but a few kids liked the ashy wine-subtle smoothness of the morbier, which made me VERY happy.

It was a good start to the session. Next week, more focus on knife skills. We'll make the whipped potatos and vegetable stock, though I may mix it up with the chard, we'll see.

First time teaching, nobody died or stabbed anyone!

Today went by in a flash. Woke up to a good fishy breakfast with sable I got from Russ & Daughter's yesterday. I spent the morning writing my first lesson plan and revising two recipes to fit the content of what I was teaching. By the time my momma-in-law came to take over Baby Birdie, I was getting nervous.

I shoved down a piece of rugellah then rode the bike through 50mph winds to a far corner of Brooklyn -- reminded me of the day in my cross-country trip riding through Kansas -- except those winds were steady across a plain, and I had to ride 50 miles through it, not 3.

I arrived early and helped the supervisor load in today's produce, which he got at a discount from a local market based on a list I gave him a few days earlier. A kid volunteer (not in the program) washed the bowls and utensils for me while I set up and checked things, then showed the kid how to use a wet stone to sharpen a knife. Soon, the kids arrived, I sat them down in the dining room, got them in aprons, and off we went.

The class went by in a quick fashion -- I had piled a little too much into our agenda, which meant constant activity....which, based on the feedback from the kids at the end of the class, was probably their favorite part of the whole thing.

We started with a lecture about food and kitchen safety: the definitions of physical, chemical, and bacterial contamination; and how touching a keyboard, a door knob, your face, your hair, or your ownbutt were all ways to get sickness into the food. So maniacal handwashing it was. The kids wanted to get into the thick of it, not hear a lecture, so I kept this lecture mercifully short.

Into the kitchen, basics of kitchen safety -- announcing yourself when passing behind someone, sharps, hots, how a hot pan should exist on a stove top (handle in, towel on handle if handle is hot). Everyone washed their hands and I noticed a bunch of dirty paper towels on the counter and floor. I had to channel Chef M, my mod 1 instructor, and barked, "I don't care you dropped the towels, but someone has to pick them up RIGHT NOW." And just stared at everyone until it happened. That's about as hard as I had to get.

First I demo'd a smoothie -- the basic flow of the class from here until they get comfy is: Me, doing a demo; then everyone mimics me. The curriculum had a horrible smoothie recipe involving juice and ice, thus I substituted my own:

FRUIT SMOOTHIE

Yield: 1 pint

Banana, ripe one
Mixed fruit* 1 cup
Greek yogurt ¼ cup
Whole milk ½ cup
Vanilla bean, scraped ½ bean
Salt to taste

1. Peel banana, break into 2”pieces and drop into blender
2. Drop fruit into blender
3. Add yogurt, milk, and vanilla to blender
4. Return lid to the blender jar and puree the fruit and liquid until very smooth
5. Season to taste
6. Serve immediately

*Use frozen fruit. If using fresh fruit, freeze the recipe’s ½ cup milk in ice cube tray

I had them all taste the smoothie before salt and after salt, and right there I saw I blew most of their minds. I think I won their trust at that point. All the kids used different combos of fruit; each smoothie came out differently. Using only two blenders for 9 kids, this took some time and cooperation, but I quickly got the idlers on dish and cleaning duty. Everyone was happy with their smoothies and when the supervisor came down, he said that compared to last cycle, these smoothies were vastly superior! I don't know if he was blowing air up my butt, but I'll take it!

After a bit of fiddle faddle tasting each other's smoothies, I went over knife safety -- how to hold, how to pass, how to carry, how to cut, then demo'd a simple salsa cruda.

SALSA CRUDA

Yield: 2 quarts

Tomatoes, chopped 2 ½ pounds
Jalapenos, minced 8 ounces
Garlic, minced 2 cloves
Yellow onions, diced 12 ounces
Cilantro, minced 1 ounce
Red wine vinegar 1 fluid ounce
Tomato juice 8 fluid ounces
Salt to taste

1. Mix the tomatoes, jalapenos, onions, cilantro, red wine vinegar and tomato juice.
2. Season to taste

This was a bit tricky to demo because though I requested one we had no scale. Salsa being a forgiving recipe, I eyeballed everything -- it was really about the knife skills anyway. By then we only had an hour left, so I put the hammer down. Two kids to dice tomatoes , 2 kids to dice onions, 2 kids to mince jalapenos, 2 kids to mince garlic, one kid to mine cilantro. I went around and corrected each as they went and approved each batch before being put into the communal bowl. I added tomato juice, red wine vinegar, salt and poof! Two gallons of fresh salsa.

After cleaning, I got the kids out into the dining room for chips n' salsa, as well as a cheese plate of 10 different cheeses, everything from Parmesan and mozz and cheddar to morbier, camembert and tallegio. Had them eat it both with french bread and a crisp, sweet apple. A few of the kid's minds were blown once again. Got a lot of compliments from both the kids and the supervisor, who popped in from time to time to see what was happening. Good times.

The kitchen is clean but a bit lacking in equipment. Though tighter in space than my culinary school kitchen it's a heck of a lot more space than any kitchen I've worked in. All the kids were pretty psyched to be there, and still seemed psyched by the end of class. Everyone helped with the clean-up, and a few just started sweeping and cleaning surfaces even though I didn't specifically ask any one to do those tasks. After the kids split, the supervisor and I finished putting the room away. Then we talked about how the first day went. He seemed really happy -- he was around at the end for the tasting, and was really pleased to see all the kids asking me questions, getting involved eating the cheeses, and sticking around even though we were 20 minutes after the ending time.

Next week, vegetable cookery, maybe some sweet fruit cookery too...

Cost Control / Cheese tasting (Cheese, Tasty and Nutritious)

Sorry for the skipped day, I did go to class on Monday but pretty much had to put toothpicks in my eyeballs just to stay vertical. Didn't take notes and in retrospect, should have stayed home and slept -- the restaurant is kicking my ass, in a good way. Opening week, I put in 83 hours. Today, however, I took off to attend a Passover Seder.

Since we're off tomorrow for the holiday, we started off with an abbreviated In the News, oddly all pizza-related. The Bruni reviewed Co. and gave it a single star, which is quite good for the low expectations that pizza brings to the table. Another article, from the past Sunday, was about how Cobble Hill's South Brooklyn Pizza is hosting a gay disco on the night they are closed. Insert perverted pizza joke.....here!

The next part of class was a continuation of the discussion of food cost control. It starts with a standardized 'recipe' -- what you need, how much you need it, and how much it costs per serving. Computer programs like "Chef Tech" will tie in to a point-of-sale system that the servers use to register sales and calculate how much is spent to generate exactly how many sales. No fuss no muss.

After a talk about weights and measures (which was also covered in Culinary Arts), we discussed inventory control. Capacity of your storage (refrigerated or not), perishability, vendor delivery schedules, savings on quantity, the potential harm of a stock outage -- all are part of puzzle that comes together to keep a restaurant running profitably. Par level, or the build-to level, is the amount of stock you want to achieve your minimum -- when you go below, you order more. Some is easy; dry goods like flour and sugar are "stores" (that can be stored indefinitely), and you can seek the absolute lowest price via quantity. Something like fish, however, has to be of the moment; no matter how good the price, ordering too much will probably be wasted.

"Spec" was discussed -- what exactly should be ordered. You can call a purveyor and order a loaf of bread, but unless you specify exactly what your looking for, what you get could be almost anything -- how large, what kind of style, how thick the slices, etc.? Providing specs (everything for quantity and style to grade and use) means less waste and less wasted time in inventory.

The second part of the class was dedicated to the series of silly videos above, and a taste of a variety of cheeses, from plain cream cheese to stinky Maytag blue. This was all stuff we hit up in culinary, only in culinary, Chef M did the ordering and got us some fantastic things (I'm still a fan of tallegio due to that day.) The aged goat cheese was surprisingly tasty, the cheddar too ordinary, and the blue way too strong, though pairing it with a fortified, sweet port proved the power of a good matching.

Nutrition/Herb Identitification/Cheese Tasting (Talegio, where have you been all my life?)

The morning's lecture was about nutrition, a good deal of which I was familiar with from prior readings. Chef M was blunt: we're probably spending a little too much time talking about nutrition because most restaurants don't care. Unless the specialty is healthy food, the main concern of a food establishment is safety and well-presented good-tasting food. A steak that is about 7 times the recommended serving size is obscenely unhealthy, but a steak house that doled out the correct serving size would soon be out of business.

Restaurants are for special occasions. The fact that people are eating at McDonald's 5 times a week and consuming 2 to 3 times the recommended number of calories is horrible, but in Chef M's opinion, not our problem at c-school.

The nature of energy foods (protein, fat, carbohydrates) and non-energy foods (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals) were laid out in detail. Corn's predominance in our diet has caused the balance of omega 3 and omega 6 acids to go from a 1-5 ratio in the '50s to 1-250 today. ADD, autism, and a host of other problems have been linked to this shift. Grass-fed organic animal product is an excellent source of omega 6s.

We were all given small quantities of 14 fresh herbs, all organic and grown on a single farm in South America. Included were bay leaf, oregano, thyme, sage, chives, chervil, mint, curly and Italian parsleys, marjoram, basil, rosemary, cilantro, dill and taragon. Tasting them raw and alone was weird -- some (mint) were absolutely wonderful with a pleasantly bitter aftertaste, others were face-scrunchingly overpowering (bay leaf.) Monday will be our first quiz on IDing these items by sight and smell.

Then the knives came out. Oranges, apples, cantaloupes, strawberries, mangoes, pineapple, and plums all fell to our chef's blades and paring knives. No fruit was left intact.

The cheeses were cut, the proper way of assembling a cheese plate was discussed (always a variety from each group: fresh, firm, hard, blue/moldy); then we tucked in to the cheeses -- cow and buffalo Mozzarella, Marscapone, Ricotta, Feta, goat Chevre, Edam, Monchego, Cheddar, Parmesan, Pecorino, brie, Pont Leveaue, Fontina, Morbier, Cabrales, Roquefort, Stilton and Gorgonzola. According to Chef M, firm Bel Paese is a joked about by the Italians as for export-to-America-only, as it has no flavor. Additionally, according to the French, Stilton is the only good thing the English have contributed to food culture. French bread and fruit salad joined in the end-of-class meal. The soft and firm cheeses were pretty familiar to me, and the blue cheeses were as unappealing as ever, though I hope to change my palate in the next 6 months.

However, the soft runny aged moldy cheeses.....oh my. Some of these cheeses still had the sticker's from Murray's Cheese on it -- $35 for a half pound! And they stink like my bike shorts after a century ride!! However, once you break through the rind and the creamy soft cheese underneath is....mellow, strong, and assertive like a hug from a beautiful woman who just happens to be a competitive weight lifter. In particular, the Talegio -- wow. Wow wow wow wow! Strong notes of red wine were unexpected, especially after getting a whiff of the sweat-socky rind. It just tasted right: a thousand years of cheese-making skill and experimentation lead to that moment of my risking putting that stinky mess in my mouth and getting rewarded with fantastic wave of flavor happiness.

We stood around and chatted with each other and Chef M, who seems to have had cooking experience in a full third of all kitchens in NYC. In the locker room, I invited a fellow student from out of town (along with his wife) to a home-cooked dinner with B & me. The networking starts now, and what a better place to start than with my fellow students?

ADDENDA:
First week of c-school down, 30-odd more to go! I'm really looking forward to shopping in the farmer's market at Wholefoods with my new taste for stank-ass cheese.

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

AM WATERING: 9am, a few cups of ice water

AM TASTING: 11am, assortment of cheese (see above) plus thin slices of french bread, .75 bowls, hunger 4/5
We also had fruit salad that we spent the morning chopping up, but the cheeses were too interesting.

PM LUNCH: 2pm, class-made salsa with tortilla chips, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
B fed me as I drove the car up state

DINNER: 6:30pm, vegan jumbalia with spicy TVP mince, carrots & cuce, water, 1 piece of ww bread with butter, water, 1 cup apple juice, 1 large brownie, 3 bowls, hunger 4/5
Up at the Omega Institute with B and the HVS. The veg/vegan dining buffet was surprisingly tasty and well-presented.