Tanta Robina

In addition to the beef steak with Bordelaise sauce, yesterday we cooked chicken roulade. It was a hard day of intense cooking where we had to stay highly focused to finish all our dishes within the allotted time windows. At one point I thought I would not be able to deliver, but in the end I managed to present both dishes in time. It's all about planning and it's not easy – at least not for me – but I am getting better at it.

Mise en place for some of the roulade and the steak dish.

The chicken roulade starts with pounding a chicken breast until it's consistently thin. You have to be careful not to punch holes into it, though.

After pounding the chicken breast, you place spinach leaves on it.

Then you spread mushroom Duxelle on the spinach. To make mushroom Duxelle you sweat some minced shallot in a pan and then add finely chopped button or cremini mushrooms until you eliminate all liquid and they start to color.

Next, you add a few strips of roasted red bell pepper (roasted directly on a burner until charred, then wrapped in plastic wrap for a while and peeled) and a couple of asparagus stalks (blanched, shocked in ice and dried).

If you havent' already done so, place the chicken and other ingredients on a piece of caul fat. Caul fat is the lining of a pig's stomach and is used to wrap meat. It looks a bit gross, but most of it dissolves during cooking.

Once you've wrapped your chicken roulade in caul fat, sear it in a hot pan starting with the seam down, to ensure that the roll doesn't fall apart. Then sear all around until the roulade is a light golden brown. At this point, put it in foil wrap, keeping it slightly open, and place it in the oven at 375º F for 20-25 min.

This is your roulade when it comes out of the oven, ready to be cut.

Here it's cut straight, but you can also cut it on the bias.

This is the plating sequence. First the Port wine sauce, a reduction of shallots and Port wine, strained and put back in the pan adding brown veal stock until it reaches the desired consistency.

Then a few slices of the chicken roulade. By the way, this is meant to be an appetizer, not an entrée, which explains the small serving size.

A few pommes vapeur (steamed potato tournées) and voilà, the dish is done. The picture above is the chef's demo.

And the one below is my own. My potato tournés were a bit underdone, but the roulade was just right. :)

The first week of Intro 2 was all about poultry; this week is all about beef.

We started off yesterday with Hungarian goulash, served with Spaetzle, something I had never even heard of. Goulash is a beef stew seasoned primarily with paprika and spaetzle is a pasta dish made with eggs, flour and milk. The mixture is then placed in a Spaetzle tool over a pot of boiling salt water and the spaetzle are dropped in, quickly removed as soon as they come up, shocked in ice and then finished in a pan with butter and chopped sage. Quite tasty.

We plated the goulash and spaetzle with a dollop of sour cream in the middle and a sage leaf garnish.

Today's dishes included a top sirloin steak served with Bordelaise sauce, creamed spinach and twiced baked potato. The photo above shows our chef's demo and the one below my own dish.

I did well with the steak, sauce and potato, but my spinach were a little underdone. In case you wonder, the round garnish in the Bordelaise sauce is bone marrow.

And this is the cut of meat where the steaks came from.

Can you guess what I did without scrolling down to see the next picture?

Rewind to today's class…

Mondays are testing days and since yesterday was Memorial Day and there was no class, we had our first written test and practical for the term today. The practical consisted of trussing and then fabricating a chicken, followed by a cooking practical, quite unlike those we had last term. This time we were given some freedom and told to cook three of the chicken pieces we had just cut any way we wanted, along with a potato accompaniment of our choice, a sauce to go with the chicken, and either glazed carrots or sautéed spinach.

I went for mashed potatoes and decided to use my piping bag with one of the star tip attachments for a better presentation. After presenting the dish and washing the bag and tip attachment very carefully – Chef Gore had told us on more than one occasion last term about what can happen if you are not careful – I used a piece of paper towel to dry the star tip.

Don't ask me how it happened; I still don't know. I think the paper slid too easily into the metal tip and my finger followed. Before I knew it, my finger was stuck inside the tip and I was having palpitations and visions of surgery.

The miraculously unscathed finger, thanks to my chefs.
Chef Boyd sat me down and kept me calm as I was about to hyperventilate, then found some fish pliers for the metal surgery which was brilliantly and painlessly executed by Chef Gore.

I suppose they both have seen their share of kitchen accidents during their restaurant careers, because they were calm and helpful. If that had happened at home, I would probably have panicked.

You must be getting sick of hearing about my accidents and near misses, but I thought I'd post about this anyway, if only to help prevent the same thing from happening to someone else. I promise: no more accidents.

Ours is a geek household and we love gadgets. In recent weeks we've been shopping for kitchen toys, er… tools, so I can practice at home some of the dishes I cook in class. I am not talking about those unitaskers frowned upon by Alton Brown; who needs a pineapple slicer or an egg separator? I am talking about real tools that can be used for several preparations and really make life easier in the kitchen.

Well, with the possible exception of this one, but can you blame me? Shouldn't an aspiring cook be allowed to flame her crème brûlée? I haven't gotten around to try this yet because I've been cooking other things and even with a long weekend there never seems to be enough time to get everything done.

This little whisk is great for sauces. Not that I care for those classic French sauces, but I bought this one before finals last term to practice Hollandaise and Béarnaise. And after finals I used it to make my first mayo.

This strainer is a chinois. We use it almost daily in class to strain clarified butter, stock, consommé, ground pepper, you name it… if you want something strained as finely as possible a chinois is your best choice. For consommé we even put a couple of coffee filters inside it.

It looks a lot like a China cap, but its mesh is finer. This one is from Italy and I bought it at Sur La Table. There were two sizes, this being the the smaller of the two.

The pestle is a different brand but fits perfectly.

By the end of the year, our kitchen should be well equipped. :)

The dishes this term are so much more fun. The pace has stepped up and the second day had me worried, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of this.

Some major differences between this term and the previous one:
In Intro 1 we had 2h 30' to 3h to prepare a certain number of dishes that we could present in any order during the entire time. Each item was sumbitted for review separately whether it was a pasta dish, a sauce or an omelette.

In Intro 2, each day we prepare two dishes made up of several components that get plated together and we have two windows in which to present them. This means that we have to hurry to serve the first dish while holding some items for the second dish. For instance, today we cooked a chicken noodle soup of our choice (presenting between 3:00 – 3:15 PM) and then duck suprème with sauce fines herbs, Brussel sprouts Brunoise, and Pommes Anna as a single dish (presenting 3:30 PM – 3:45 PM).

Yesterday's tortilla soup. It was REALLY good.

For today's open choice on the chicken noodle soup theme, I chose a regional soup from Romagna (my area). The dish is called passatelli in brodo and you can see it in position #2 in the combo image above.

Our chef has been cooking for us at the end of the day. I love that. Our previous chef had been doing the same in Intro 1 but I still can't help feeling spoiled by it and invariably being surprised. While we students cook, we are so focused on our tasks and deadlines that I never notice what the chefs are doing. Today I noticed the mise en place on the chef's station only after I had already cleaned up all my dishes , pots and pans, cutting boards, etc. When I saw the lobster I didn't think it was for us.

It was a marvellous dish and I had to restrain myself or there wouldn't have been any left for the rest of the class.

Tomorrow we'll be cooking coq au vin.

Today, I fabricated a duck, roasted a chicken, cut the middle finger of my left hand with one of my very sharp boning knives, avoided killing myself on the drive home from school as I was reading Ben's post on my iPhone – yes, while driving –, rid the world of a very large bug (why, oh why, do these things have to show up the only night of the week that Ben is out?), ate a double portion of gelato, listened to Chega de saudade at least seventeen times in a row, and started this term's glossary for my notebook.
All things considered, it was a productive day; I even had a good workout this morning.

OK, enough with patting my own back; I know you are here for the food. First, le canard, a.k.a. the duck. For you interested in Italian, that would be l'anatra. I promise, the Italian lessons will resume as soon as possible.

As you can see, ducks have dark meat all over. My primary cooking text (Gisslen) says that dark meat is caused by myoglobin, a protein that stores oxygen for muscles to be used during times of great actvivity. This explains why chicken breasts and wings are lighter, since chickens don't fly and their breast and wings muscles don't get much myoglobin. Ducks, on the other hand, do a lot of flying, get more myoglobin and end up with dark breast meat.

Cutting a duck is about the same as cutting a chicken other than ducks don't really have oyster muscles on their back or if they do, they are not as prominent and you don't have to worry about finding them and making sure they go with the thigh cuts.

Other differences between ducks and chickens are that:

• Ducks are bloodier and you have to drain the blood after defrosting them (in the US, ducks are primarily available in frozen packages).
• Duck breasts are longer/larger than chicken breasts.
• Duck skin is much thicker than chicken skin and gets usually scored to help in rendering the fat during cooking.

After the duck fabrication demo, our chef showed us how to truss a chicken by tucking the wings and tying the whole bird with butcher's twine, really tight. Our plate for the day was herb roasted chicken with tourné zucchini and squash, roasted garlic mashed potatoes and pan gravy.

These images are from chef Boyd's demo.

Needless to say, his plate looked much better than mine. I messed up the gravy and my chicken simply didn't get the memo that it was supposed to be cooked after 45' or so at 400ºF. I must get better at passing on instructions to my birds.

Here is my side of the kitchen while we are all searing our chickens in a sauté pan before putting them in the oven.

Today we moved from Lab 7 to Lab 6, which is set up more like Lab 3, where we were last term. Luckily, since I am mildly claustrophobic, I was able to secure a good spot on the edge of the line.

Tonight I have to read a new chapter from the Gisslen book, answer a few questions in writing, prepare a production schedule for tomorrow, and find a few items that need to be added to my knife roll and school bag. If only I could remember where I put everything…

Hi, I'm Ben. The hairy one without the shirt on is Kelvin. We’re here for the food.

For the past few weeks, Francesca has been super busy and often too busy to post. I’ve been feeling bad for you kind, supportive, virtual folks out there on teh interwebs because she’d always come home with great stories to tell, fewer pictures than she'd like, and several Tupperware containers of wonderful, scrumptious, adventuresome French or Franco-Italiano or Franco-American-o stuff that she would let me devour while she pulled her hair out about her homework. It typically proceeds like this (note: French names are approximate. -Ed.):

Now, that might have been dramatized for effect, but I thought it was important to illustrate exactly why Francesca has lost 5lbs while attending cooking school, and I have gained those very same 5lbs. Also, it is worth pointing out that I am very far from minding. I think the act of saying all this stuff is important to help remember — reinforce the stuff done well, and remember how to avoid the mistakes. So I encourage it, and it’s more interesting than your average “How was your day, honey?” conversation.

So, why did I hijack her blog today? Easy. Everything that gets cooked also gets eaten at some point, so when things are really crazy for Francesca I thought I could keep you all appraised on what’s going on by posting about all the great stuff she’s bringing home. The photos won’t be top-notch like hers, and the food may be a day old, but if you’re game, I’m game.

Oh, and I’m also the one responsible for the technical side of this blog. So, if things are glitchy, you can’t comment or whatnot, that’s all my fault. Feel free to throw tomatoes my way. Ripe tomatoes. Maybe a little salt, some balsamic vin... mmmm.

Lunch time!

That's what deboning and cutting up meat is called in the industry: meat fabrication. Funny, eh? Well, it sounds funny to me. When I hear the word fabrication I think raw materials or basic elements (à la Lego) and some kind of building, but no, in the cooking world, fabricating is a whole 'nother thing.

Today marked the start of our second lab class – Intro to Culinary Arts 2 – which will be all about meat and fish, plus first and side dishes we learned last term. Our new chef is Chef Boyd, but our previous chef – Chef Gore – is in the same lab with us, and that is really nice because it provides a smoother transition. This term we are sharing the lab with another class and each class takes up half the lab. We are now on the second floor in a lab set up quite differently from the one we were in last term.

Our first day was all about chicken and we each cut up two chickens to practice separating wings, legs and thighs from the ribcage. We cut the breasts in two ways: suprème and airline. Then we cut a leg and thigh combo, separated legs from thighs, "Frenched" breasts, legs and thighs and cut a leg in a way called tunnel bone which means that we removed most of the bone inside the leg and thigh so we can stuff it later.

Various cuts demonstrated by Chef Boyd.

The airline breast.

Both classes also made chicken and brown veal stock, but as an entirely group project, which saves a lot of time.

And now, I'd better go do my readings and write my homework for tomorrow.

P.S. A little heads up: there may be a post from a guest in the next day or two.

Friday night we celebrated the end of my first term by going out to dinner and, in true LA style, we ate Cuban in Little Tokyo. Gotta love LA… where else could we do that?

Before dinner, we stopped at Kinokuniya to indulge my love of all things Japanese. A girl's gotta have just the right school supplies, don't you agree?

I always need refills for my favorite quaderno (notebook). I love the way this spine opens.

I also got a new, smaller notebook. Even though all our school handouts are in US 8.5" x 11" format, I like to take my notes on smaller paper.

After an uneventful dinner at Cuban Central (tiny, anemic and overpriced drinks and okay food), we noticed the signs of another restaurant from the parking lot. Three languages in one sign: English, Spanish and faux Japanese.

The writing in katakana is a clumsy phonetic transcription of English words that reads roughly: Mekishikan shiifuudo & baa. I'm guessing it means Mexican Seafood and Bar. Maybe we'll decide to live dangerously and try it out next time.

Intro to Culinary Arts 1 ended on Friday and I did better than I had expected. At the end of class, our next chef came by to give us the syllabus for Intro 2, the class starting tomorrow. I had been looking forward to a school-free weekend, but it turns out that we have to read a whole chapter of the Gisslen textbook for tomorrow. Friday night I went to Kinokuniya in Little Tokyo to pick up some paper refills and other stationery supplies (I am a sucker for Japanese stuff) and yesterday, I started the new notebook. So much for a no-school weekend.

This is the notebook I put together last term: 272 pages between recipes and other handouts we got in class and my own class notes and assignments. It bothers me that a lot of the work of assembling these notebooks is a useless waste of time and it's so highly codified. We have to place every single sheet of paper in a plastic sheet protector, number all the pages, create a general table of contents plus sectional tables of contents, and a bunch of other things that make this a time-sucking, frustrating endeavor.

The 3" ring binder. This term I bought a 2" binder in the hope that everything will fit.

Overall table of contents

Recipe topical sections. The first term was all about stocks, sauces, rice, potatoes, eggs, and vegetables.

An accurate list of all the handouts other than recipes and PowerPoint slides.

Four pages of glossary

Various assignments

Templates of knife cuts executed in class with the imprint of those potato pieces cut in various shapes and sizes: brunoise, julienne, batonnet, parmentier, tourné.

And last, my production schedules.

What can I say… we are a bunch of goofballs. Fortunately, because sanitation is such an uninspiring topic and today's first aid was not much better. We did get a good instructor who managed to make things as painless as possible, but still…

Our last sanitation class was devoted to first aid training and we got to practice bandages on each other as well as the proper position for back blows and abdominal thrusts (formerly known as Heimlich maneuver).

After that it was cooking, cooking, cooking, and I think I did well today. Tomorrow, after a deep cleaning session, our chef will talk to us individually and give us our grades.
And now for some mindless TV.

Yesterday I took my ServeSafe exam so there will be no more studying for sanitation class. Weeeeeeeee!

The lab portion of the day didn't go too well for me (I messed up a couple of dishes I've never had trouble with before), but today was much better and I am feeling confident about tomorrow.
So, what's with the title?

During the first half of our sanitation class, we did a last minute overall review of the main concepts plus a catch-all of random facts that had or had not made it into our regular lesson plan. One piece of information that had escaped until then was the topic of service animals and the rights of customers to have access to food service establishments together with their animal companions. No surprise there about seeing eye dogs, but who knew about anxiety monkeys?

At first, we weren't sure our instructor was being serious, but she was. Apparently there are patients affected by anxiety disorders that find comfort in monkey companions and if they show up at your restaurant with their primate safety blanket, you have to let both in. Anxiety monkeys? I'd get anxious if I had to sit next to a monkey… Give me a cat, a dog or a bunny any time. Very conventional of me, I'm sure.

Anyway, today was day three of our finals and tomorrow is the last day of cooking. As soon as I recover from dinner – a large comfort food affair with sauteed shrimps, roasted Red Bliss potatoes, and plenty of Italian red wine – I'll prepare my production schedule for tomorrow. Before lab, we'll have our last sanitation class which will be about first aid (shouldn't they have given us this lesson the first week?), then we'll get down to cooking. There's twelve of us left in class and we pulled four different menus on Monday. I got menu #2 and tomorrow I'll cook these dishes:

• Cannellini bean soup
• Ravioli with sundried tomato cream sauce
• Risotto ai funghi
• Chicken consommé brunoise
• Potage Parmentier

Friday will be deep cleaning (can someone give me a back massage before that, please?) and exit interviews. I was looking forward to my first weekend off since school started, but it's already starting to look like I'll have to deal with some business stuff plus some organization work for next class – Intro to Culinary Arts 2 – which starts immediately on Monday. I am looking forward to this class as the dishes will be more interesting. Next term will be all about meat and fish plus side dishes and accompaniments based on what we learned this term.

Next term, I hope to be able to post more regularly.

Yes, finals. I know, I've only been in school five weeks but our terms are short – six weeks each – so next week will be finals for Intro to Culinary Arts 1.

These past few weeks have been filled with learning, cooking, multi-tasking, performance anxiety, stress, bodily injuries, fun, exhaustion, questioning the sanity of my decisions and more. The first three weeks were so hard and the finger cut at the beginning of week two so bad that I had thoughts of quitting. It was that hard. And the multi-tasking is still the hardest thing for me; I never expected to have to do so many things in so little time. Me, the serial monotasker par excellence, doing this; who would have thought? And who would have thought that I'd lose five pounds in three weeks. Lose weight in culinary school?

At least now my body seems to have recovered from the initial shock of such a drastic change of pace and I am actually getting my act together. In the past few days I even managed to watch a couple of things on TV. This weekend is a whirlwind of studying and cooking in preparation for the next week's finals.

Monday is written finals, timed knife cuts, then we will be given our menu for the following three days and prep for Tuesday's cooking (making stock, etc.). The rest of the week will be cooking and Friday deep cleaning and exit interviews. For cooking finals we will be allowed recipe cards containing only a list of ingredients, with no amounts or methods. It doesn't sound that hard, does it, but no matter how many times I go over a recipe – and we have about 80 of them this term – when I am in class I still blank out on certain things, so I am doing my best to practice.

Last night I made French onion soup, but it didn't come out as good as it did in class last week. For one things I didn't have brown veal stock and used one of those commercial broths. (Nobody tell my chef, please). And then my broiler is no salamander and the browning at the end didn't happen properly. Oh, and we don't have Lions' head bowls so I had to use large bowls and the croutons didn't cover the soup completely, some Gruyère cheese fell in the onion soup, etc.

Today I made Velouté sauce and then spicy black bean soup, and now I'm going back to the kitchen to make some Hollandaise (yuk) and maybe Girondine (Hollandaise plus Dijon mustard). I really don't like those classic sauces, but when you want to learn a subject properly you can't just pick and choose, right?

And did I tell you about the notebook we have to put together for Intro to Culinary 1? It's a mongo thing you would not believe and it has to be put together following strict guidelines that half the time make no sense. Grrrrr.

Ok, enough with the blogging; back to the kitchen.

Restaurant Day came and went. Lots of energy went into it and we had to overcome some divergences of opinion in the planning phase and a couple of setbacks at the last moment, but in the end it turned out really well.

The print menu was one of my contributions.

All of us cooking or prepping. The industrial strength blender in the foreground helped with the mango-chipotle sauce.

Parmesan baskets used as edible vessels for the mixed green salad.

I was assigned to making the baskets and had some trouble with them at first, but after mangling a couple I more or less got the hang of frying, turning and shaping the little fragile things. By the time we ran out of Parmesan cheese I was doing really well.

The Parmesan baskets were filled with green mixed salad dressed with red wine vinaigrette and served between the amuse bouche (the shrimp cocktail) and the entrée. I still can't get used to the American way of serving salad as a starter as opposed to a side dish.

Raspberry lemonade with a touch of mint. Refreshing and in compliance with the no-alcohol school policy.

We went for a classic table set up, alas with faux silverware, but you can't have everything.

Our version of the shrimp cocktail. The shrimps were fried in tempura batter and the cocktail sauce filtered overnight through several layers of cheese cloth to give a clear cocktail with all the taste and flavor of the sauce in liquid form.

Kevin cleaned and fried the shrimp and Camille made the cocktail sauce. In addition to working on a particular dish or part of a dish, we all helped with prepping, cutting vegetables, washing dishes, serving, etc.

A mishap with the wood chips got us in a pickle from which we recovered well, thanks to a suggestion from our chef (Thanks, chef!). We were able to smoke and grill our salmon at the same time and then finish it in the oven. It was a rich dish served with mango chipotle sauce, black sesame seeds topping, a garnish of fried noodles and a side of rice pilaf. Thalia did a great job with the salmon dish.

In case you wonder about all the "V" signs, we are poking fun at our chef who always ends class with that sign and a "Don't do drugs!" By the way, a good 30% of our class is under age and in the US you can drive at 16, join the army, vote and be eligible for capital punishment at 18, but God forbid you have a glass of wine before you turn 21, which is why we had to resort to lemonade for lunch. Vive la difference…

Elvia made a fabulous crème brûlée, so good in fact that I proposed to her. Yes, I have a weakness for custard, panna cotta, crème caramel, crème brûlée…

Josh, sous-chef for the other team, who chose a Mexican theme for their dishes.

Kevin, Jeff (our team's sous-chef for the event) and Thalia. We were Team #2.

They (Team #1) served us corn chips and salsa, tortilla soup, stuffed filet mignon and rice pudding.

Throughout the day several friends and visitors stopped by. Chef George teaches Intro 1 in the lab next to ours and used to teach in tandem with our chef. He often stops by and sometimes brings us food.

Former students also come by with single dishes or large dishes to share almost regularly.

Our chef.

This was a good day.