mizchef

posted by admin on Jan 7

Last night was my graduation ceremony and dinner at the Natural Gourmet Institute. While it was a little sad saying goodbye to my classmates, there was a sense of excitement in the air. The kind of excitement that comes with knowing that there’s a whole new world out there waiting for you. The kind of excitement that lets you know that you’ve accomplished something wonderful and that will take you somewhere.

I always said, right from the beginning, that I wanted a culinary degree because I felt that it was the one credential that was keeping me back from getting the kind of job that I wanted, and I’m still hoping that it will open up those doors for me. But the truth is, I have absolutely no idea where I’m going to end up.

It’s exciting and scary at the same time. But I’m going to grab that piece of paper and wave it around for all to see, because if that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do.

I’ve got to complete my 100 hours of internship now. I have to start over because I had to bow out of the internship with vegan dessert instructor/author Fran Costigan. I felt terrible having to do that, but circumstances forced me. So I will now be interning at the James Beard House.

I’m almost there.

posted by admin on Dec 11

My practical exam for the Chef Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute is finally over. After stressing about it for weeks and really stressing for days and spending hours plating last Sunday (although I wish I’d done it more than that), it’s behind me.

The exam was taken on 2 separate days by the 2 Friday Night Dinner groups. My group (B) was up first because group A was gearing up for its Friday Night Dinner. We had to create an entrée incorporating 5 elements: bean, grain, green, sauce, and garnish. My plate was—

Grilled Portobello Steak
Grilled Sweet Potatoes with Cilantro-Lime Dressing
Herbed Polenta
Cracked Chickpea Salad
Sauteed Kale
Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Lime zest curls for garnish

My final plate

I did okay, but to be honest, my score was a huge disappointment. It wasn’t a bad score, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for. The instructor complimented my dish in many ways, but I got points off for numerous things. Here’s the rundown:

Bean: He really loved the chickpea salad. It was “sophisticated” with just the right amount of seasonings and heat. Not to little, not too much.

Green: The kale was chewy and not very edible. He said it was the nature of the kale they’d been getting at the school lately—tough. It lent itself more to a moist heat method of cooking, rather than the way I had prepared it, which was to sauté it in garlic and oil. I knew it was chewy, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

Grain: He loved the way the polenta looked. It was vibrant, and he could tell that I’d thrown the herbs in towards the end because it retained their fresh look. But it needed to cook a little more. I’m used to using a finely ground cornmeal, like my mother uses, and that’s what I practiced with. I should have been more aware of the fact that the school uses coarsely ground cornmeal as polenta. However, upon research, I learned that most people will call for” cornmeal” or “coarsely ground cornmeal” for polenta recipes. Yet, one of my classmates, who was born and spent part of her life in Italy, said that she was used to the finely ground kind as well. Anyway, I was a little thrown off by the coarse grind, but I stopped the cooking when I thought it was done. My instructor apparently did not agree.

Sauce: The sauce went well with the mushroom but there wasn’t enough of it. He had to scrape together what I had put on the plate to accompany one bite of mushroom. To plate that dish again, he said, pool some underneath the mushrooms and just hint at the sauce on top.

Garnish: No comment. I took this as neither good nor bad.

Plating: He was glad to see that I’d used techniques taught at the school, such as the fanning of the mushroom and sweet potatoes. However, he felt that there was conflicting movement on the plate. The school teaches students to plate food in some kind of geometrical movement, upward and outward or circular. The elements on my plate were “competing against each other.”

Other comments:

The dish needed more acidity. I put a cilantro-lime dressing on the sweet potatoes, which should have taken care of the acidity. But since my dressing came out better at home than at school and because the jalapeno was strong, I didn’t want to put too much, so maybe he didn’t really pick up on the lime.

It needed more crunch. I put raw bell peppers in the chickpea salad, as well as walnuts. I asked him if he hadn’t picked up on them. He said he hadn’t.

Overall, though, he said that my dish was something he would enjoy if he had it in a restaurant. Considering that he used to be a chef at Le Bernadin in New York, that’s a great compliment.

It was rather heartbreaking to learn that at least 4 other people (out of 8 ) had received higher scores than me, and I got the feeling that out of a class of 15, the majority will have gotten higher scores than me.

In the end, no one will ask me what I got on my practical exam, but I will know what I got. I will always know that, despite my years of experience cooking, I received a less than stellar score.

But I have to shake off the baggage that this is putting on me and move on. I have to remind myself that not every day will be a red-letter day. Not everything I do will turn out the results I want.

And that’s okay. A score is just a number, not the measure of my worth or a mark of my capabilities. It’s not the individual brush strokes that count but the entire painting. This is a personal demon of mine, one that taunts me at every opportunity it gets. It’s time I kicked it to the curb.

Besides, if the chefs on Iron Chef, Chopped, and all those other chef competition shows have to deal with blows to their creations–not to mention their egos–then I guess I have to, too.

posted by admin on Sep 5

This past Friday, I did my second Friday Night Dinner shift at the Natural Gourmet Institute. It was a lot more mellow than the last one I did, which was quite an experience (you can read about it HERE). On Thursday, I cleaned and prepped what seemed like an endless supply of mushrooms. We had portobellos, chanterelles, oyster, and cremini mushrooms. All of them were beautiful specimens. The oyster mushrooms were so huge, they were twice the size of my hand (see photos). By the time I was done cleaning and slicing, my fingernails were brown. Four days later, I’m still trying to get the brown out.

The kitchen was kind of chaotic and I think the students whose FND it was found themselves a little overwhelmed, which I can see happening. It is a dizzying situation when you’re trying to get everything prepared at the same time and get everything plated and ready to hit the pass in a smooth progression. In a really small kitchen, there are about 15 students, the teacher, 2 dishwashers, and, during service, servers coming in and out. It’s hot, it’s crowded, and it’s crazy.

Read the rest of this entry »

posted by admin on Mar 28

What kinds of tests do they give you at culinary school? Well, there are the written tests, such as sanitation regulations and naming the parts of a knife. Then there are the practicals, which involve actually preparing stuff. One of our practicals will be poaching pears.

A couple of weeks ago, I practiced poaching a pear. Everything went well until the very end, when I was making a juice reduction sauce. What happened? Let’s just say that there’s a very fine line between juice and burnt caramel. I walked away from the stove for one damn minute and when I went back, my juice had started to burn and I had caramel. That is not what I wanted. I went into a deep, deep, deep depression over this. Here I am, spending thousands of dollars on culinary school, and I couldn’t even poach a damn pear!

I’ve cooked all types of cuisines, made so many different things, from simple hors d’oeuvres to elaborate meals. I’ve made things that took days to prepare, like the Swedish sandwich cake called Smörgåstårta. But I’m not going to be tested on Smörgåstårta! I’ve cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 20, had dinner parties, holiday gatherings, barbecues, cooked for other people as a personal chef and I’m going to be done in by a freaking poached pear??!!!

Hell to the no. I tried it again…and it was gooooooooood!

posted by admin on Mar 11

Hi, all. It’s been a long, long week. I’m finally getting over a virus that knocked me on my butt for the last couple of weeks, so my head is clear for the first time in a while. This week’s classes were fun and informative.

Saturday, lunch and dinner were delicious. We got to roast up a lot of yummy veggies—including butternut squash, potatoes, parsnips, mushroom, and carrots, plus baked apples stuffed with walnuts and raisins. We braised shallots, fennel, and endive, and made some really good baba ganouj with seasoned pita chips. (We broke up into four groups to make all these items and, judging from the instructor’s comments, I think my group made the best baba!)

We also did an experiment with mashed potatoes. The four groups mashed up some potatoes, each group using a different implement: a hand masher, a ricer, a food processor, and a food mill. The rule of thumb about not using a food processor to mash potatoes proved true—that group wound up with gluey, nasty potatoes. All the others turned out pretty well.

On Wednesday, we had a food service lecture, which was an overview of place settings, how to serve, and the different styles of service. There are several different types of service: American, French, Russian, Wagon, Butler, Family Style, Buffet, and Fast Food/Cafeteria. The last three are obvious styles that everyone understands, but I didn’t know about the others.

These are the definitions of each style, in a nutshell:

American—Food is made completely in the kitchen and the server brings out finished food.

French—Food is partially prepared in the kitchen with final preparation done in front of guests.

Russian—Food is placed on a platter. Server then transfers the food from the platter to the guests’ plates.

Wagon—Server finishes preparation at the table. Almost like French but faster. Gives the illusion of French style. (Ex: carving the meat at the table, but no actual cooking). Also refers to the fact that food is brought out on a wagon for guests to choose from.

Butler—Combination of Russian and family-style serve-yourself.

Family Style—Large platters set on table; guests serve themselves.

Buffet—Food is prepared ahead of tine and served from steam tables.

Fast Food/Cafeteria—Self-service, pre-cooked.

Then we took a look at the different protein groups (where cooking is concerned)—that is, fish, poultry, ruminant meat (animals that chew their cud), non-ruminant meat (pigs), and dairy. It was a long night.

Anyway, I’m trying desperately to catch up on my sleep. Don’t ask me how or when I’m going to do that. So, that’s it for now. Have a great week.

posted by admin on Mar 4

Culinary School—Week 5

Hi, gang. I’m into week 5 of culinary school. It was rough for me because I was sick, but I was able to get through it because, fortunately, my classes were mostly lectures this week. That really helped me energy-wise. Plus, handling knives while hopped up on Dayquil is not a good idea.

So, this week, we had discussions about quality ingredients and some “science” of cooking, an herb and spice lecture, and grain identification, as well as our first quiz. The quiz was on sanitation—the hazards chefs need to worry about and food-borne illnesses, how they are transmitted, and the prevention thereof. (I got 100, by the way. Woohoo!)

Read the rest of this entry »

posted by admin on Feb 24

Hi, all. Report from week 4 of culinary school: The past two Wednesdays were our cook tech classes. That means that we actually got to do some cooking. Pretty basic stuff, but we’re getting into the fun part of things.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was one of the stewards for class, which entailed getting all the needed foodstuffs and prepping them. We get a list of items, which the school stewards check off as they place each item in a bucket, and the class stewards pick up the bucket from storage. We go through the list to make sure that everything we’re supposed to get is accounted for. That gets a little tricky for someone who may not know all their fruits and vegetables.

Now, I’m pretty good at identifying produce, so I pretty much took control of the list and checking things off once we got the items into the class. Included in Saturday’s class were cherimoyas, and when I called them by their name (as in, “cherimoyas, check”), my fellow steward asked me why I was there. She meant it in a nice way. In other words, if I know so much, why am I taking these classes? Well, because I don’t know a lot of things. I went into this subject in a previous blog, but I’m bringing it up again because I suspect that I will be humbled by these classes. In fact, I already have been.

One of the things that bothers me about “classic” French and Japanese cooking techniques is that in order to make perfect shapes, as those cuisines require, a lot of food is wasted. For example, to make matchsticks or julienne, you must cut away the vegetable until you get flat sides. All that is cut away gets tossed. To me, this is wasteful. I mean, who cares if my dice is perfectly square? Who cares if the strips of julienne carrot adorning my plate are perfectly straight? Sure, it makes for a beautiful presentation, but so does my way of cooking.

I just don’t cook like that, and neither do the members of my family. I cook rustic food, I use the entire vegetable (or whatever), and it still looks beautiful. I’m aware that this is part of my upbringing and background. I was taught that food is not to be wasted, and while I don’t believe in forcing yourself to finish a plate of food if you’re not inclined to, neither do I believe in willfully throwing away food because it doesn’t conform to an über-beautiful ideal of food presentation either. As the old cliché goes, there are starving children in the world, and it’s a shame to waste food. By the same token, I would never dream of just throwing out old clothes rather than donating them (unless they’re in really bad shape, in which case, we’re moving into different psychological territory). I think that it’s taking for granted what we are fortunate enough to have.

But, for now, I will practice my French knife skills, I will agonize (and I do mean agonize) over each and every cut I make, and I will strive to learn to make those perfect little cuts. I have to…I will be tested on it. I shall conquer zee batonettes!

Have a wonderful week, everyone.

posted by admin on Feb 11

This past Saturday was my first full day at culinary school. We got down to actual learning business: food safety, the parts of a knife, and French cuts. It was a really long day but at the end of it, I felt good. Tired but good.

In response to my cooking experience, someone said to me at the lunch break, jokingly, “So all that stuff this morning must have been really fascinating for you.” My response was that I was sure I’d learn a thing or two and that you can’t possibly know everything. And it’s true. No one can know everything about a subject. There’s always something new to learn.

Read the rest of this entry »

posted by admin on Jan 14

I’m the kind of person who keeps news to herself until such time that she feels it’s either necessary or safe to share the information. So I have some news that I’ve shared with very few people since it happened in November, but I’m ready to go public. In 2½ weeks, I start culinary school.

I’ve published a cookbook, been a freelance food writer and restaurant reviewer, and have had my own personal chef service. Now, as Emeril Lagasse says, I’m cranking it up a notch. I’m going for the degree.

Some might say that I’ve done this backwards, that I should have gone to culinary school first, then written a cookbook, started a food blog, etc., etc. But, then, I’ve never done anything the logical way. And when I have, for whatever reason, it never really worked out the way I anticipated.

Read the rest of this entry »

posted by admin on Sep 18

Hey, gang. This past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction my life is taking. Jobs are being lost every day and even though “experts” are saying the recession is over, it’s going to take a while to recover. And, in my opinion, the jobs lost are not going to be available again. The way I see it, companies that downsized and heaped the work onto the poor remaining souls have likely gotten used to paying fewer salaries while still getting the work done. They really don’t care that each employee is now doing the work of two or three or four individuals for no extra compensation. All they know is that they’re liking not having to pay all those salaries and benefits. Now that the recession is “over,” why should they rehire the people they let go?

Read the rest of this entry »