Week #5

This was an "interesting" week. I have been trying to stay positive about my basic class. But I think I finally need to vent a bit.

In Basic this week, we were to learn about and make three shades of roux, and the 5 mother sauces. I was really excited, because (for various reasons) I had REALLY been wanting to make espagnole. I had made the others before, but espagnole was my elusive critter. The sauces turned out generally well. And I finally had the espagnole under my belt.

But before we made the sauces, we had to clarify butter (which we were supposed to have learned about and executed last week). I was also excited about this because I had read from Baking with Julia, that you could just boil butter and avoid the whole skimming and careful pouring-off of the butter. But Julia Child's book did not give any details on how to do it. Fortunately, our instructor demo'd the process and showed us the two color changes that you look for.

However, when it came time for us to clarify the butter....I don't know...I really don't want to complain, because I feel really fortunate to be in classes. But sometimes our instructor has a tendency to be unprepared--which then leads to a lot of frantic running around--which leads to poor results and loss of time. And the lack of preparation really shows (such as not clarifying butter LAST week).

So back on point, while my team's butter was proceeding great...our instructor tells us that it is done and that we need to let it cool. We all knew that it didn't look right yet, but she was certain that it was ready. While it was cooling, we went back to work on other things. About 10 minutes later, our instructor comes back but this time tells us that our cooled butter is not ready and that it shouldn't have come off the stove yet.

Rest of this long story short, bringing the butter back to a boil resulted in overbrowned butter. It was not bad, but it was enough for the instructor to then lecture us on why we really needed the un-browned butter to create the best mother sauces possible.

Things only got "better" as our instructor tried to demo hollandaise but couldn't do it. She explained the jist of the process and sent us off to make our own. While I was beating my yolks, our instructor saw mine, told me it was looking good and then started pulling me down the line so the others could see what she had previously tried to demo. Halfway down the line, she notices that the chef instructor from the other basic class is about ready to demo hollandaise. So she makes us all put our stuff down, and re-watch a hollandaise demo.

Then when that demo was over, she tells us that we now don't have time to make the hollandaise and that we will probably make it a few weeks from now when we do vegetables.

So now class is about out of time, and she wants us to serve up all of our sauces. However, she never demo'd the sautee'd chicken breasts that we were going to use for our sauces. But no problem...while we are wrapping up the class, we can easily put the breasts in the oven, right? When the breasts all came out extremely dry, we then got lectured on how you can't just throw something in the oven and forget about it. (Well then you should have demo'd how you wanted it and/or let us sautee them like we were supposed to).

So now class is really out of time but now she wants to discuss mother sauces--nevermind that another class is going to be using our kitchen shortly and we have an extreme amount of dishes to be washed AND that the other class using the large kitchen is in need of some of the pots that we STILL hadn't washed yet.

And the final kick to the teeth that day....after all the missteps for the past few weeks; the lack of preparation(including giving us a 20 question quiz in which 3 of the questions were printed twice and in which a few other questions were from previous chapters); the not staying on task; the repeated loss of time; and the failure to demo recipes; ....after all this our instructor then lectures us on how WE need to come to class with a game plan and that if WE were fully prepared, we would not be running late. This is on top of the repeated accusations that we did not read the recipes or chapter for the week. UGH!

I have no problem coming with a game plan IF YOU LET ME STICK TO IT.

Whew...thanks for letting me vent. I am not a young pup...I don't expect things to be perfect. And I am done with all my formal edu...so its not like I am having a rude awakening as to schooling. Rather, I look at it as this: "I would have been reprimanded or fired from my other jobs if I had been so unprepared." But again...I just needed to vent. Next week will be better...somehow

PS: Garde manger went GREAT! Simple Salads this week (pics posted) and composed salads next week.