Week 4; Semester 2
Posted 09-19-2008 at 01:07 PM by Stewey
For Aromatics, we finally did some cooking--get us used to the restaurant kitchen. Next week, we will do a dry run of the restaurant. Then the week following, we will go live and prepare meals for the school's restaurant.
I didn't know what to expect for cooking this week as we were not given menus in advance. In fact, we were asked to volunteer for stations the morning of our cooking. My team volunteered for the soups. My particular soup: Black Bean.
Now, if you have had previous experience working with beans, you would know that for the most tender beans, you need to soak them for about 12 hours or so--some beans requiring even more time. Further, even with that long soak, the beans need a good long, slow simmer to become tender. But we were given roughly two hours to create our dishes.
Well, apparently, the beans were soaked overnight for us, but even at a fast boil, two hours is NOT enough time to make tender beans. Likely, at a fast boil, the beans would break apart.
But as students, you do what you are told right? Who am I to question? Right? (arrrgh!)
But when I saw that the recipe called for FAR too little liquid, I couldn't keep silent anymore. Playing the student role, I sheepishly asked the chef if the recipe was correct? It seemed like it might be a bit too little liquid.
"Yes yes. Its fine...it will be fine."
"Um...but 7 cups of liquid won't bring us near to the 1 gallon of soup we are trying to produce."
"Yes yes. but look at all the veg and ingredients we are adding. It will be fine."
"But the beans need liquid to..."
"It will be fine."
So back to work I went. After the soup was on for a while, chef comes up to me: "We are going to need to adjust this recipe. It needs more liquid."
But probably the most interesting part was trying to get the beans tender in two hours while strictly following the recipes we were given.
The recipe was basically this: render some bacon fat, add some garlic/jalepeno (brief cook), add the veg (brief cook), then add the beans and liquid and simmer until tender.
In other words, ACCORDING TO THE RECIPE, before the beans could be placed on the stove, everything needed to be prepped first.
If we students were allowed to break from the recipe, I would have started simmering the beans ASAP in the liquid and get them tender while prepping everything else. THEN in a separate pot, I would have rendered the fat, and added the veg. THEN, when ready, I would have added the beans to the cooked items and brought back to a simmer. Makes sense to me! But again..."students follow the recipe."
So when two hours were complete, and the beans still weren't tender, of course comes the analyzing. But really...what can one say? "I followed the recipe."
Butchery, on the other hand, was fun as always. We cut up lamb. Chef showed us lamb porterhouses, and showed us his way of doing lamb racks. He even showed us a way of cleaning the bone by tying a piece of string to our tables, then wrapping the string around a rib bone--AND PULL! The bone came out squeaky clean! No scraping needed. Great trick!
Our bones didn't come out as clean as chef's, but it was still a great tip to learn.
One hitch was a fire alarm going off while we were in the kitchen. Apparently the sugar arts class had placed some sugar in the oven that started smoking and set the fire alarm off. So the building was evacuated. All of us still had lamb guts all over our hands. We didn't get back to the kitchen for a good half hour--enough time for the gaminess to set in. I tell you, my hands smelled like lamb for two days!
As for the career change, the economy is finally hitting home...what that means exactly, I don't know. What additional changes we will need to make...I don't know. But changes for us will be happening soon. Hopefully, I can stay on the culinary track. We'll see!
Below are the pics from the butchery class:
Whole Lamb
Whole Lamb Upright
Lamb Rack Whole
Lamb Rack Cut 1
Lamb Rack Cut 2
Lamb Rack Cut 3 (forward cap off)
All the waste and trim
Lamb Porterhouse
I didn't know what to expect for cooking this week as we were not given menus in advance. In fact, we were asked to volunteer for stations the morning of our cooking. My team volunteered for the soups. My particular soup: Black Bean.
Now, if you have had previous experience working with beans, you would know that for the most tender beans, you need to soak them for about 12 hours or so--some beans requiring even more time. Further, even with that long soak, the beans need a good long, slow simmer to become tender. But we were given roughly two hours to create our dishes.
Well, apparently, the beans were soaked overnight for us, but even at a fast boil, two hours is NOT enough time to make tender beans. Likely, at a fast boil, the beans would break apart.
But as students, you do what you are told right? Who am I to question? Right? (arrrgh!)
But when I saw that the recipe called for FAR too little liquid, I couldn't keep silent anymore. Playing the student role, I sheepishly asked the chef if the recipe was correct? It seemed like it might be a bit too little liquid.
"Yes yes. Its fine...it will be fine."
"Um...but 7 cups of liquid won't bring us near to the 1 gallon of soup we are trying to produce."
"Yes yes. but look at all the veg and ingredients we are adding. It will be fine."
"But the beans need liquid to..."
"It will be fine."
So back to work I went. After the soup was on for a while, chef comes up to me: "We are going to need to adjust this recipe. It needs more liquid."
But probably the most interesting part was trying to get the beans tender in two hours while strictly following the recipes we were given.
The recipe was basically this: render some bacon fat, add some garlic/jalepeno (brief cook), add the veg (brief cook), then add the beans and liquid and simmer until tender.
In other words, ACCORDING TO THE RECIPE, before the beans could be placed on the stove, everything needed to be prepped first.
If we students were allowed to break from the recipe, I would have started simmering the beans ASAP in the liquid and get them tender while prepping everything else. THEN in a separate pot, I would have rendered the fat, and added the veg. THEN, when ready, I would have added the beans to the cooked items and brought back to a simmer. Makes sense to me! But again..."students follow the recipe."
So when two hours were complete, and the beans still weren't tender, of course comes the analyzing. But really...what can one say? "I followed the recipe."
Butchery, on the other hand, was fun as always. We cut up lamb. Chef showed us lamb porterhouses, and showed us his way of doing lamb racks. He even showed us a way of cleaning the bone by tying a piece of string to our tables, then wrapping the string around a rib bone--AND PULL! The bone came out squeaky clean! No scraping needed. Great trick!
Our bones didn't come out as clean as chef's, but it was still a great tip to learn.
One hitch was a fire alarm going off while we were in the kitchen. Apparently the sugar arts class had placed some sugar in the oven that started smoking and set the fire alarm off. So the building was evacuated. All of us still had lamb guts all over our hands. We didn't get back to the kitchen for a good half hour--enough time for the gaminess to set in. I tell you, my hands smelled like lamb for two days!
As for the career change, the economy is finally hitting home...what that means exactly, I don't know. What additional changes we will need to make...I don't know. But changes for us will be happening soon. Hopefully, I can stay on the culinary track. We'll see!
Below are the pics from the butchery class:
Whole Lamb
Whole Lamb Upright
Lamb Rack Whole
Lamb Rack Cut 1
Lamb Rack Cut 2
Lamb Rack Cut 3 (forward cap off)
All the waste and trim
Lamb Porterhouse
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