Instant Karma, Bakery Version

I think David will be pleased that I brought nothing home for him to taste. Too much of a good thing, and all that.

Today was Day One of cakes. We had our choice of orange or chocolate chiffon, flavored as we wished. Chiffon is sort of a "hybrid" cake. It's made with fat (canola oil, in this case), like devil's food or pound cake, but it's mixed like a low fat cake, such as angel food or genoise. I added cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger to mine. The technique is straightforward: mix dry ingredients; mix egg yolks, oil, and flavorings; stir it all together. Beat egg whites with sugar and cream of tartar; fold them into the egg mixture, and pour the batter into pans. Once they were in the oven — two nine-inch pans — we moved on to Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

Yesterday, we learned that there are three kinds of meringue: Italian, the most stable, where you make a hot sugar syrup and pour it into egg whites; Swiss, where the egg whites and sugar are warmed, then whipped, and French, the least stable, which is the simple mixture of whipped whites and sugar. We started our buttercream today by warming two cups of egg whites (about 16, which you'll remember from yesterday) and two pounds of sugar in a bowl on the stove, beating constantly. Once that was "too warm for a hot tub," we poured it into the 8-quart mixer and beat it forever. Can't be overbeaten, Chef Judy says. Once it was glossy and cooler, we added two pounds of butter, and lo and behold, fabulous buttercream, to flavor as you like. I added orange extract and orange flower water to mine.

We had free rein on filling, as well. I made a milk chocolate ganache flavored with orange liqueur. By the end of class, we had assembled our cakes, using only half the cake recipe: cut the layer into thirds and brush each layer with syrup (mine was marmalade, thinned with more orange liqueur and orange juice). Then pipe a ring of buttercream around the top edge of the bottom layer. You do this if your filling is not buttercream, to keep the filling from coming into contact with the outer icing. Then I filled the center with ganache, and repeated with the next layer. The top layer went on, all was adjusted and smoothed, then I wrapped it all in plastic and refrigerated overnight. Tomorrow, we'll frost.

I may have previously mentioned Jeff, who's joined us for Baking and Pastry and hopefully for nothing else. He's a couple of months ahead of us in the program and he's sort of a dorky obnoxious guy. He acts like he knows Chef Judy better than the rest of us (since he had her class for four full days last fall, before he had to drop out), and he makes weird comments during lecture. Like, she'll say, "And now the cream is fully whipped." He'll say, "Yay!," like a five year old. He leaves class spontaneously and comes back eating food. Yesterday, it was a hot dog at 10:30 am. "Hey, man, take it outside," Andrew said. "I have to leave right after class," Jeff said. "No excuses," said Andy. He doesn't make them, and he doesn't accept them either.

So today, we're all gathered around a big mixer while Chef is pointing out the various stages of buttercream. And behind her, Jeff is wearing a pair of oven mitts, and using them as hand puppets, making them talk while she is talking. If I was closer to him, I would have jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. Totally rude. Later on, he was finishing up his cake while Rudy was putting away a mixing bowl, which slipped from his hand and smooshed one side of Jeff's cake. General sounds of distress and apology followed, but Tashana sidled up to me and said, out of the side of her mouth, "That's karma for the hand puppets, right there."

The Weight of a Yolk

Chef Judy said she likes today's lesson, because it's all completed by the end of the period, with no carry-over to another day.

We made pâte à choux, unusual among doughs in that it's cooked. It's essentially a roux with a lot of eggs added in (greatly simplified by the use of a mixer). We formed "buffet" (small) eclairs, and then whatever else we wanted to make. About half of the class made churros, deep-frying the dough, then rolling the crunchy strips in cinnamon sugar. We also had an abundance of cream puffs, filled with sweetened whipped cream. And a couple of us made gougères. I added grated cheddar and parmesan to my dough, along with chopped fresh thyme and a pinch of cayenne, then piped the mixture into little rosettes. Yummy.



We also each made a batch of pastry cream (crème patisserie), a cooked custard flavored with vanilla (and rum, in mine), to fill the eclairs. And we saved half the pastry cream to use in tarts that we'll be making later this week.

Today we used a new tool: the induction burner, a nifty table top burner (our kitchen has "only" two six-burner stoves, so lining us all up at once is impossible). Chef Judy encourages us to use the stove, and the balance beam scale, but I like using the techie toys.

We dipped the eclairs in melted chocolate, and sprinkled powdered sugar on the cream puffs. The gougères need no topping. They'll be better with cocktails.

Along the same lines, Derrick ate an eclair, then opened the refrigerator and removed a half gallon of milk. He filled a plastic pint container about half full, then began drinking. "Don't have a cup. Need milk," he said. "Don't let the sous chef see you," Andrew advised. "Oh, who's sous today?" Derrick asked. "That would be me," replied Andrew, laughing. Needless to say, eating (or drinking) out of the school's refrigerators is not included in the tuition.

And furthermore. We're starting three days of cake tomorrow: baking Wednesday, frosting Thursday, decorating Friday. Chef Judy told us that we're welcome to take home our cakes on Friday, "all but the little slice I cut in order to grade you." She said, "You can buy a cake box in the chef's office for eight dollars — highway robbery — or you can plan ahead and bring your own container."

And an egg yolk weighs about .67 ounce (2/3 ounce), and a white is about one ounce. A whole egg is about two ounces, including the shell. And it's "housewifey" to separate your eggs by shuffling them from shell to shell. There's that word again. Use your hands.

My Mother's Higher Education: A Story

My mother did not teach me how to paint my toenails. The most she ever said about my hair was, “Please use a comb before coming to the breakfast table.” As for boys, well, I was left to fend for myself, with her occasional urgent admonition to “Be careful.”

My mother did teach me how to make pâte à choux. But first, she taught herself.

My Grandma Mayer was far from accomplished in the kitchen. Her signature dish was the “crumb cookie,” a molded concoction of leftover sweets that reflected her depression-era upbringing. She could reliably roast any cut of meat to uniform greyness. The most fascinating things in her kitchen were the serrated grapefruit knives and the little TV in the corner so you could watch Joe Garagiola on the Today Show while you ate your grapefruit. Grandma taught my mother how to play Pinochle, but not much about cooking.

In a photo dated 1965, my mother is incredibly, unbelievably thin, chic in a simple sheath, holding the bundle that is my sister Jenny. She has just delivered her fifth baby in eight years. In the photo, there is little sign of her growing personal rebellion. While she cared for her numerous small children and kept house for her traveling salesman husband, she was quietly and steadily pushing beyond the bounds of her high school Home Ec class (where, it must be said, she obtained the recipe for the ultimate Pineapple Upside Down Cake).

My mother was reading the Rombauer.

Before Martha, before Julia’s show was available in Chicago, before there was a store other than Sears that carried kitchen utensils, there was the Joy of Cooking. Mom had the 1964 edition with the light blue cover, and she used it like a correspondence course. I remember spending hours looking at the table settings and the other charming and instructive drawings. My mother was poring through the pages, as well. How else was she coming up with Yorkshire Pudding? Crêpes Suzette? Beef Bourguignonne? Black Bottom Pie? Coq au Vin? Even her recipe for Tuna, Noodle and Mushroom Soup Casserole (“an excellent emergency dish”) was out of the Rombauer.

Mom obviously grew to trust Irma’s sage and encouraging voice because she loved to make pâte à choux. The preparation might seem intimidating, especially the first time: you make the dough in a pot on the stove. For a while, it looks like it will never work. The whole process is a leap of faith. But Irma is a cheerleader from the start, beginning the recipe with, “Please cease thinking of this basic, quite easy paste as something for adventurous moments only.” Her instructions are detailed and clear, using four trademark “pointers to success” icons to highlight critical steps like “the eggs must be at room temperature” and “do not move the tube.” She highlights the little details that ensure an elegant finished product: “The little point left when you lift the bag can be pressed down with a moistened finger.” When I helped in the kitchen, that’s the job I always wanted.

From Irma, Mom knew to cut open the shells and remove any damp dough, and let them dry out before filling them. Sometimes we’d have éclairs, with bitter chocolate icing; sometimes little profiteroles with ice cream. Mostly though, she’d make cream puffs, big ones the size of baseballs, and she trusted the Rombauer for the recommended filling: sweetened whipped cream and “a flawless ripe strawberry.”

So, I grew up with nail polish on my cuticles, but with no fear of pâte à choux. It’s not a preparation that I make often, but it’s like riding a bike, right? When my good friend mentioned that her French husband had requested a croquembouche for their 25th wedding anniversary, I jumped at the chance to make it for them. I should have hosted the party, because getting the dessert to their house in the car was the really scary part.

Dusty Shoes

For the last several weeks, our cars have been covered by a thin persistent coat of yellow dust, from the neighborhood acacia trees.















After class today, the tops of my shoes were similarly dusted, but with white flour. Baking can be a messy business.






Today we utilized the three methods of making quickbread: biscuit (where cold butter is cut into the dry ingredients), muffin (where the fat is added to the dry ingredients in a liquid form), and creamed (where the butter and sugar are beaten together, and the dry ingredients are then added.) We're working alone this week, and we have a fair amount of flexibility as to what we'll be making, using the recipes provided by Chef Judy as a baseline.

So I made apple crumb coffee cake, blueberry muffins, and chive-parmesan biscuits. All of these products go together very quickly, much of the time being taken up by traipsing across the kitchen to get ingredients, bringing them back to the work area to be weighed, and then returning the unused ingredients to their rightful places. You have to be pretty focused so that you don't forget what you've already measured, or what you've already added to the bowl. Tashana held up a small bowl at one point and asked, "Is this baking soda or baking powder?" You've gotta just dump it out and start over. If you guess wrong, you're screwed.

Aaron showed up today, after missing all of last week. Four of our other classmates were absent. Apropos of nothing, in the middle of the class, Andy said, "Is Nadeen stuck in traffic?" We haven't seen her for two full weeks.

Chef Judy was one of the judges in an on-campus Extreme Bakeoff competition over the weekend. She came to class this morning with a list of things that the competitors did incorrectly, and with "a renewed commitment" to make sure we receive the proper training. She said that overwhipping was rampant. Nuts burned in the oven. Caramel burned on the stove. Too much heat was applied everywhere, in an effort to hurry up the process. She posted a checklist, "Success in Baking and Pastry." It should be made into a poster and displayed in all of our classrooms, but certainly in Basic Skills.

Success in Baking and Pastry
1. Use effective recipes.
2. Read and understand the recipe.
3. Use quality ingredients.
4. Choose correct ingredients.
5. Measure accurately.
6. Add ingredients in proper order and at correct temperature.
7. Follow directions as written.
8. Employ proper techniques of mixing, makeup, panning, and decoration.
9. Bake or cook in specified pan, at correct temperature, "until done."

A. Read the recipe all the way through.
B. Gather necessary tools and ingredients.
C. Prep the pans.
D. Read the recipe again.

Consistency. Speed. Efficiency. Teamwork.

I've been researching recipes in preparation for our final project, to be produced a week from Friday. We've received a list of flavors, two of which must be incorporated into our item(s). Here's the list: blood orange. black currant. passion fruit. litchi. praline paste (hazelnut). orange flower water. rose flower water. tangerine. kumquat. seeds: anise, fennel, etc. saffron. curry. cherry (dried). prune (dried). fig (dried). cheeses: brie, blue, feta, boursin. gianduja (chocolate w/hazelnut). coconut milk. tamarind. green tea. crystallized ginger. balsamic glaze. chutney. pernod. cassis. port.

I was thinking of doing an elaborate cake but I'm reconsidering, and leaning more towards a more complicated yeast bread. In my real life, I have more inclination to make bread than fancy cakes. I'll consult the book and see what fits the bill. Maybe a saffron/feta kind of thing.

Post #100. Wow.

Wow. Today we should have been issued pink bakery boxes for our take-home items. Chef Judy wasn't kidding when she said we'd be amazed at our output.

We started the morning with a demonstration, as usual. Chef showed us how to make croissants, plain and filled. With the same dough, she made "pain au chocolat", and she told us, "I see no reason to ever make 'chocolate croissants.' The correct way to use chocolate and croissant dough together is in the 'pain au chocolat.'" She also demo'd "morning rolls," which are filled with cinnamon sugar smear (i.e. butter) and baked in muffin tins. After they're cooled, roll them in more cinnamon sugar. Wow.

Then she made bear claws and butterhorns out of the danish pastry dough. The butterhorns are filled strips, laid next to each other on end, and covered with streusel, making a long pull-apart pastry. She told a funny story about her husband, Chef Robert, who came home raving about "Chef Holly's bear claws." She expressed some professional jealousy until she uncovered the secret, which she passed along to us. In addition to the filling (almond/crumb/cinnamon), there's a strip of jam. Wow.

We got underway, making pastries. Tashana made the plain croissants. Mine were ham and cheese. Our pain au chocolat is picture-perfect. I blew it on the morning rolls, giving her the wrong dimension for cutting them, so we invented a Plan B and then followed it, resulting in a circular pull-apart cinnamon coffee cake topped with cream cheese icing. Wow.

Once the croissant dough products were proofing, we began playing with the danish dough. While Tashana made the bear claws (chocolate/raspberry and vanilla/strawberry), I asked Chef Judy for a recommendation on cheese danish. One of the best things I have ever eaten in my entire life was a cheese danish. It was handed to me, in a white paper bag that also contained an orange, by an usher as I left Winterland following a Grateful Dead concert. Almost nothing has ever tasted as good.

Today's cheese danish were a different beast altogether. I started by spreading half the rolled out dough with cinnamon smear, then folding it in half, rolling it together a bit, and cutting it into 3/4" strips. Then I twisted the strips, then formed them into figure eights. Those went into the proof box to rise. Before baking, we filled the indentations with little dollops of cream cheese filling on one side, and a fruit filling on the other side. Some were strawberry, some lemon curd. Wow. Dava unfortunately smashed three of them when she was moving trays in and out of the oven, but we had more. She apologized about twenty seven times.

We also made savory cheese twists and sweet cheese rolls from purchased puff pastry — so we'd have the opportunity to try our hand at that dough, as well.

There was a bit of post-baking garnishing to administer, in addition to the cream cheese icing. All the danish get brushed with clear glaze (sugar, corn syrup, water), then drizzled with white icing. The pain au chocolat get a drizzle of coating chocolate. The puff pastry cheese rolls were dusted with powdered sugar.

Needless to say, the kitchen smelled wonderful all morning and we had several chefs "drop in" to see what we were up to. We asked Chef Joseph (who is teaching Basic Skills adjacent to our bakery kitchen) if he wanted anything, and he requested three full trays. I remember having a lot of warmed-up pastry in his classroom so I know he'll be putting some of it away for next week. We all took generous amounts home, and still ended up wheeling a cart full of sheet pans down to the student dining room. Chef Judy asked us if we minded if she took home some of our cheese danish, and hey, it's an honor.

[As expected, I got 20 out of 20 on my weights and measures test. And, I'm happy to report, an "A" in Garde Manger. That sound you hear is me, patting myself on the back.]

Wow.

Nothing's Better Than Bread

Today was a very satisfying day in the kitchen. We began making two of the three kinds of laminated dough. The dough is interspersed with layers of fat, and the steam in the melting fat is what causes the dough to rise when it's baked. We made danish dough (sweet, with eggs and cardamom) and croissant dough (no eggs), both of which are yeast doughs. The third laminated dough is puff pastry, which is made without yeast. Chef says we don't make that one in class because it's the same process, only more so.

We mixed the two basic doughs and chilled them each for 30 minutes. Then the butter was "locked in": you actually roll butter with a rolling pin into a thin sheet and encase it in the rolled out dough. Every thirty minutes or so, you roll out the dough and fold it again, chilling in between, so that you're creating exponentially more layers. The blocks of dough will be refrigerated overnight, then we'll be making a plethora of products tomorrow, which Chef Judy promised would "delight and amaze" us.

Besides some of the meat-cutting we did in Butchery, laminated dough is one of the only things I've done in culinary school (so far) that I haven't ever done before. Tomorrow will be the true test, but today's production was fun and I loved doing the work. Chef Judy's manner is very conducive to successful learning. She strips all of the mystique and "old wife's tales" away from the process in order to help us understand what we're actually trying to accomplish.

In between making and folding our laminate doughs, we made some of the mise en place for tomorrow's pastry construction. Tashana and I made bear claw filling: hers was vanilla, mine was chocolate. It's almond paste, butter, crumbs and cinnamon, mixed together until it's stiff enough to hold its shape. Other groups made clear glaze, "flat icing," streusel, cream cheese filling, and cinnamon sugar.

I have a funny story about cinnamon sugar. When I was a senior in college, a bunch of us were hanging out late in the evening at Matt Stankey's house and we (inexplicably) developed the munchies. We began a reconnaissance of the kitchen to uncover any edible items. We found bread, and someone quickly decided, "Toast!" And then we searched for possible toppings, and Matt straight-facedly informed us that we couldn't make cinnamon toast, because "we're out of the mixture." I thought that was hilariously funny, as cinnamon toast in my house was constructed using the sugar bowl, a spoon, and the cinnamon with the shaker top. But it turns out that Matt Stankey has been vindicated, at long last. Chef Judy advised us that cinnamon should always be mixed with sugar prior to apply it to a surface, because the burst of raw cinnamon that you could otherwise get is "not pleasant. It's nasty actually." Matt knew what he was talking about. I was the heathen.

We also baked our baguettes and epis, which are baguettes cut to represent wheat sheafs. We used the top two decks of the oven, because they have the "burst of steam" feature (which you can replicate at home with a spray bottle).

We learned today that if your baked goods are browning too quickly on the bottom, you can slide another pan under your product, thereby providing an extra layer of insulation. If they're browning too quickly on the top, don't use my solution, aluminum foil. ("That's a housewife method," Chef said. "It's expensive, and it's a pain.") Instead, use one of the remaining 993 pieces of parchment paper purchased at the restaurant supply store.

The breads came out beautifully. I brought home a baguette and an epi. Because nothing's better than bread. Except bread with butter.

Word of the Day: Hygroscopic

Today, we talked about the "building blocks of bread": flour, water, salt, and yeast; gluten development and yeast fermentation, which are the principles of yeast bread production; and leavening methods (yeast, chemicals, air, and steam).

We learned that when you "punch down" the dough (and you really don't want to take a swipe at it — be gentle), you are accomplishing a number of things: you're expelling carbon dioxide, relaxing the gluten, and evening out the temperature of the dough.

We learned that bread stales six times faster in the refrigerator than at room temperature, so you should eat it, or freeze it.

And we learned that sugar is HYGROSCOPIC: it attracts and retains moisture. So it's hard to work with meringue on humid days, and your sugar sculptures would be prone to melting if you refrigerated them.

And we took another in a long series of weights and measures tests. I guess it'd be pretty embarrassing to graduate from culinary school and not know how many pints are in a gallon.

We baked challah and made soft rolls from the same dough, and mixed the dough and formed baguettes, which we'll bake off tomorrow. They're "retarding" in the refrigerator overnight. Jim showed up today and was working with Ryan, who also missed class yesterday and is taking the class out of sequence, for whatever reason. They were weighing the vegetable oil for the challah dough even though the recipe called for "6 oz. oil (volume)." I walked by and said "You should measure that in a measuring cup," and Jim said, "How do you know?" "Because it says 'volume' in the recipe," I pointed out, and he said "Well, what difference does it make?" I wanted to yell YOU WOULD KNOW IF YOU WERE IN CLASS YESTERDAY but I didn't.

If You Eat Hot Bread...

...you'll get a lump in your stomach. My father always preached this while my mother blithely cut the ends off freshly baked loaves and slathered them with butter. But, according to Chef Judy, it's true!!

She's serious and matter-of-fact, with a dazzling smile. She says she drinks milk out of the carton, much to the chagrin of her husband, Chef Robert, who also teaches at the Academy. She's worked all over the Bay Area, including at the much-loved Narsai's, back in the day, and at both locations of The Pasta Shop. She also taught at The Bread Project, an awesome not-for-profit that teaches disadvantaged adults the basic skills they need for entry-level food service jobs. She makes "celebration cakes" as a side business ("Everyone plans to do catering: that's how you make money.") and said that decorating a wedding cake with fresh flowers is the closest she gets to a religious experience.

Today, we made focaccia and got oriented in the baking kitchen. There's some different equipment: scales, both balance beam and digital; a four-level deck oven; proofing boxes; lots of 8-quart mixers; and a whole bin full of rolling pins. The first thing I learned: never use kosher salt in a baking recipe, unless the recipe specifically calls for it. Because of its flakiness, kosher salt is much lighter than table salt, so you'll always end up with an undersalted or "flat" product. Chef said she's spent a lot of time experimenting, in order find the right proportions in which to substitute kosher, but she finally made it a personal and class rule to always use (un-iodized) table salt.

Also: always dust your board with bread flour, regardless of the flour you're using in the recipe. Bread flour is "harder" than all purpose or cake, and does not clump up, so you won't have tiny lumps of flour on the board to interfere with the quality of your product.

And don't let waiters tell you that they work harder.

And "Yeast doesn't wait."

And "Anything that's labeled 'Raspberry Razzle Dazzle' and comes in a five gallon bucket is crap. We use real preserves."

The only things we're allowed to measure in a cup are water, eggs, and milk. Everything else will be measured by weight.

Chef also talked quite a bit about the realities of the kitchen vs. Health Department standards. For example, "every kitchen everywhere" keeps butter and eggs at room temperature, because "you always need soft butter and warm eggs, first thing in the morning." But it's a health department violation.

Four members of our fourteen member group were absent today, and rumor has it that Nadeen won't be rejoining us. We've also got a new classmate, just for baking and pastry: Jeff, who was sidelined by a car accident when he first took the class about four months ago.

Today, we worked in teams "of our own devising," and Tashana and I made our focaccia with minced rosemary and green onions. Everyone got full points for today's efforts. Ours was definitely not the most beauteous, not raising as high as some of the other breads. But hey, we had no control over that today: Chef Judy told us when it was time to move on to the next step. Anyway, it's delicious. I brought home a couple of pieces to have with tonight's minestrone. Another thing about Chef Judy — she said, "You pay a lot of money to make this stuff, and I know you're anxious to show it off." So we have permission to bring food home.

Another Mile Marker

Having finished Garde Manger, we're one quarter of the way through the school part of the program, and so today might well be considered our last day as freshmen.

By eleven am, there were only five students left in our classroom, everyone else having either not shown up (five) or left early (four). Andrea brought her iPod and the portable speaker dock, so we had cool music all morning, after Chef did one last watermelon carving. We paused at nine am for Eggs Benedict — Andy handled the eggs and I made a quart of perfect hollandaise, if I do say so myself. Chef Duffy said, "Chef Joseph would be proud."

This was a day of finishing up and tearing down and cleaning. I glazed slices of the country pork paté with aspic made from reduced chicken stock. It ended up on a large meat tray that Derrick put together. I took a break to put breakfast together, then did some knife work with a honeydew, carving out the same kind of flowers and leaves that I painted on my bedroom wall when I was in eighth grade. There was music, there was swingin' and swayin'.

After the core team cleaned up the kitchen, Chef Duffy presented us with "trophies": pints of Häagen-Dazs (Sticky Toffee Pudding flavor, appropriate as he's a Brit) and bags of Nestlé's dark chocolate baking chunks. "Thanks for sticking around to the bitter end," he said, as we took turns shaking his hand. "Isn't that what we're paying for?" I asked.

It's a beautiful day and the weekend forecast is promising, and Monday is a holiday. David was off today and when I got home, I told him I missed him, and asked if we could spend the weekend together. "I don't know," he said. "I have a wife."

Some Days are Better Than Others

When I got dressed this morning, I picked up the pair of socks from today's uniform stack and thought, "Oh, good. I love these socks." It occurred to me that I could feel that way every day, if I get rid of the ones with the holes in the (always left) toe. So I stopped at Target this afternoon and got a week's worth of really cool black and/or white socks.

I saw a San Francisco Muni bus this morning at 16th and Potrero with a destination sign above the windshield that read "Nowhere in Particular."

We took the Garde Manger final first thing (49 multiple choice or T/F questions, plus one fill-in: "Name the substance in egg yolks that enables oil to emulsify and become mayonnaise." The answer appears below, if you want to play along.) I'm feeling pretty confident.

The rest of the morning was low key and productive, without the pressure of yesterday's buffet expectations. Our team (all present!) separated the tasks and we worked independently but side-by-side. Andrea made ratatouille and then puff pastry cups ("bouches") to serve it in. Silvia made "black beans with salsa cruda on tortilla disks," but she said, "It's just nachos and they would have been done a lot faster if I didn't have to follow this recipe. And they would have tasted better, too." She's made cooked dried beans three times during the last two weeks and she definitely has a knack for seasoning them. She started cooking pintos for the taco salad that's will be tomorrow's "composed" offering. Travis made three gallons of different kinds of salad dressing: an orange vinaigrette, a chile/ranch, and a third kind that I didn't catch.

I made today's composed salad, "Rohkostsalatteller," (German Vegetable Salad). I think Joe would really like this one, because it's sour. It's basically five kinds of raw vegetables, in a variety of dressings: shredded carrot/horseradish/sour cream; shredded celery root/lemon/white pepper; sliced marinated cucumbers with dill; chiffonade of romaine with sour cream & chive dressing, and "1 tomato wedge," but I made tomato concasse instead. At Andrea's brilliant suggestion, I plated the salad by making a "stack" in a ring mold in the center of the plate: carrot, then celery, then a ring of cucumbers. That was surrounded by shreds of lettuce and a small pile of diced tomatoes and the whole thing was garnished with three dices of tomato on top of the cucumber. I asked Chef Duffy if I should lap the final cucumber slice under the first one, to make an interlocking concentric ring. "Not necessary," he declared. I made ten plates, all the same.

Chef Duffy suggested that I take a plate to Chef Joseph across the hall. His class is in day one of the two-day Basic Skills competency. He paused his supervision, though, to ooh and aah at my little plate, telling the students nearby, "Julia was in my class last December." He looked closely, then picked up his paring knife and removed the three diced tomato pieces from the top of the cucumber and set them carefully to one side. Then he slid the knife under the first cucumber slice to overlap it with the last slice. The resulting ring was slightly peaked in the center, adding some height to the plate. "See, then you only need one of the tomato dices," he said, placing it carefully on top of the cucumbers. He picked up a plastic spoon and took a bite. "Oh! Delicious!," he said, and pushed it towards the students closest to him, who had intently watched the entire procedure. "Try this!" And then he pulled a plate of salmon with rice pilaf and tournéed zucchini closer to him, and picked up a clean plastic fork, ready to evaluate. I went back to the Garde Manger kitchen and adjusted the remaining nine plates, as per his demonstration.

Chef Duffy suggested breakfast for tomorrow, so we're planning to make Eggs Benedict at break. Can't practice the hollandaise enough. Or egg poaching, for that matter. And there's also talk of a group melon carving exercise.

Thanks to my friend Sara, I received the following bit of wisdom today: "Nothing you want is up-stream."

Words to ponder.

And the answer to today's quiz: Lecithin.

Idle Threats

Chef scheduled the "class buffet" for today, the culimnation of our garde manger training. And seriously, we put on a pretty nice spread. We began work, some of us, about 6:30: that's what time I preheated the oven for the country pork paté. (Then I sat on a stool, did yesterday's NYT crossword puzzle, and read the food section from today's Chronicle, while I drank my Peets.)

We had to be ready for "company" at 11:00 am, which meant dishes done and floors swept, in addition to all the food prep. Silvia was absent today, but fortunately Travis was only slightly late. He worked on a fruit platter (made a wacky canteloupe/blueberry basket/"pirate ship" to accompany my fruit terrine... which actually turned out splendidly). I randomly put slices down on the mirror but Chef made us retray it in a more "organized" fashion, which meant even lines of overlapped fruit aspic. And of course he was right: it looked much better his (or, "The Cordon Bleu") way.

After I finished my coffee, I began Green Goddess dressing for the crudité (raw vegetable) platter. The recipe starts with two cups of mayonnaise, and that's from scratch, buddy. Then mix in sour cream, tarragon vinegar, and minced herbs, garlic, and anchovies. Then I did lots of vegetable cutting, but first I made "containers" out of red and green bell peppers, which also served as a platter garnish. The big red pepper held green onions and celery, and the green one was full of cherry tomatoes.

Andrea put together her antipasto platter, adding sliced salami, coppa, proscuitto and provolone to the vegetables she'd grilled yesterday. Then she worked on polenta circles with two toppings: mushrooms duxelle and caramelized onions.

Andy was late, after oversleeping apparently, so the Meat team was in a bit of a dizzy until he showed up. The erstwhile Seafood team had individual assignments and interestingly, you'd overhear them ask Chef Duffy if they could help one another when needed: "May I ask Jordan to help me with the won ton cups? He has made them before." "Yes, you may." The team member who yesterday threatened to boycott was in class after all. (But no sign of Nadeen.)

The buffet came together as planned: the Seafood team contributing sushi, a cheese platter, crab canapés, and shrimp ceviche; the Meat team donating, among other things, a stunning mirror with slices of paté en croute, ham mousse, pork forcemeat, and truffled duck liver paté (topped with bacon!) Several "neighboring" Chefs, including Chef Joseph, came by to look and sample. And Chef Judy brought over some cookies and the list of equipment we need to bring to class next Tuesday: she'll be our Baking and Pastry chef. She's sort of short, with a friendly but no-nonsense air about her. She admired our presentation and filled two big paper plates to take back to share with her current students.

After we ate, and carried the buffet remnants (replated, of course, to look wonderful and non-remnanty) down to the student dining hall, Chef concluded the class with a short review of the types of material to be covered on tomorrow's final (fifty questions, multiple choice. Hint: know the ingredients in Cumberland sauce [port/currant jelly/citrus/ginger: goes well with forcemeat]). Before the review, though, he made a few pointed comments about some people needing to leave the attitude at the door.

People packed up and left and eventually, it was just Chef, Andrea and I in the kitchen. We were packing our bags and he was doing his daily double-check of supplies and equipment. We were ready to walk out and said goodbye, then I added, "Thanks for putting up with us." He turned and said, "It's a total pleasure," then walked over to the work table where we stood and talked for about ten minutes, in a sort of round-about way, about the issues during this class. And we all agreed that you get what you give.

Andrea and I continued talking on the way down the elevator to the lobby, where we reminisced about the first day of school and the advice we'd gotten on the first day: "You are here by yourself. Don't worry about making friends. Don't worry about anybody else. Be completely selfish with your time. When you leave here, all you take with you is what you know. Don't care about what other people think about you."

Amen.

Activity on All Fronts

Lots of production, lots of drama.

We started with a "composed salad" video, very straightforward. ("Composed" as opposed to "compound." Potato salad is compound. An artfully arranged Chef's salad is composed.) Then Chef cut some more garnishes: a pineapple, a melon basket. During the garnish demo, Rudy answered a phone call and walked out into the hall. Chef stopped his demo and addressed the class in general: "What is he doing? Is he running a side business?" Apparently the two of them had words in the hall during our morning break, with Rudy reportedly saying "I'm pay fifty thousand dollars for this and I can do what I damn well please." Uh. No.

We had a lot of work to accomplish: 10 identical plates of composed salad, plus preparation for tomorrow's buffet. While my teammates worked on black beans and romesco sauce for appetizers (different ones) and ten plates of Salade Nicoise, I tackled two big projects: fruit terrine and country-style pork paté. For the paté, I combined equal portions of pork, lamb, and pork fat, and marinated it for an hour in a mixture of sautéed shallots, bay leaf, wine, brandy, and quatre epices ("four spices," traditional for paté: pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon). I also cut some batonnets of ham and veal to put inside the paté (it's still called "garnish," even if it's mixed in).

Meanwhile, I started the fruit terrine by making three kinds of fruit aspic: pineapple, coconut, and cranberry. (Pretty simple: fruit juice warmed up with gelatin powder mixed in. For the coconut, I used canned coconut cream mixed with heavy cream.) I made the first layer of the aspic in a triangular terrine by putting a line of blueberries in the pointy base of the metal mold, covering it with pineapple aspic, and refrigerating it.

To make the paté (a type of forcemeat, which means a ground raw product, as opposed to a mousse, which is a ground cooked product), I set up the grinding attachment on the Hobart mixer, which is just like my KitchenAid, only Much Bigger. I used the biggest die to chop the meat, with about 3/4" holes. After grinding the meat into the mixer workbowl (Tip: put a piece of bread through last to helps clean out the apparatus, and it just blend right into the meat mixture), I detached the grinder and used the mixer to blend in three eggs.

I spread a third of the mixture into a rectangular terrine, added some strips of veal, spread the next third, topped that with ham, then finished spooning and smoothing the filling. That went into the walk-in until tomorrow, when I'll poach it off, to be sliced and used on the buffet.

I finished the fruit terrine by adding a layer of coconut on top of the pineapple, waiting until it was somewhat firm, then adding a layer of halved grapes. After those were imbedded, I added the final layer of cranberry with suspended apple chunks. I'm not sure this will be one of my more successful efforts. It requires lots of patience and time and, well, I had neither. It may end up being a swirly psychedelic thing. We'll see tomorrow. Psychedelic triangles on the fruit platter.

While we were busy like bees, there was more ominous buzzing in other corners of the kitchen hive. When we started our morning work by getting together as a group to make a list and divide tasks, Chef was huddled with the members of the Seafood team who were in attendance today. He apparently reviewed the day's tasks and assigned them to each team member, who were told to work independently.

I walked out of the building at the end of the day with one of the team members. He said, "I'm not coming to class tomorrow. I'm showing up for the final on Thursday, and that's the last he'll see of me. He singled me out because I tried to help another team member: she was supposed to boil the crabs and lobsters and she didn't know what she was doing. When I went to talk to her, Chef reprimanded me and said we were no longer a team and couldn't work together." I made a noncommittal but sympathetic noise, and he said, "Well, it's okay with me. I'm reporting him to the Executive Chef, and I'm not the only one."

I'm sure Chef Duffy will be thrilled to see the last of us on Friday. Hard to say whether things will be better in Baking & Pastry next week.

What's That Sound?

The alarm went off this morning, for the first time ever since I started the program on November 13th. I did stay up late last night though: it was Grammy night.

As I was walking into the student dining hall, where there was (as usual) no coffee at 6:30 am, the thought arrived unbidden: Why am I doing this?

I spent all weekend working on cooking or writing projects, so much so that I was feeling "away from home" guilt even though I was here. David was kind enough to help me on the canapé practice in preparation for today's competency exam. I started by toasting circles of bread and mixing Stilton with some crème fraîche (to make it more spreadable) and some finely chopped walnuts. I also caramelized some red onions, a process that takes at least a half hour (remember that for the exam, we'll only have 60 minutes). And I cut some chives into equal-sized sprigs. After spreading the toasts with the cheese, I tried to figure out a way to make a small identical pile of onions on each one, even resorting to curling an onion string around a chopstick, and then sliding it off. I consulted with my in-home advisor and aborted the onion plan for a simpler one: one half of a red grape, cut side up, with the chive tucked in on one side. I made them; they looked good; we ate them: with vodka martinis. Of course, David, the purist, said "I'm having some trouble giving advice on this, because I'd much rather have plain Stilton on a cracker," but that's not a choice you get at a hoity-toity cocktail party.

We began the competency exam first thing this morning. I substituted some white pita for the sourdough bread that I used at home, which worked well: the pita is more dense and held its shape during toasting. The sourdough "warped," for lack of a more appropriate culinary term. And we had no chives in the kitchen, so I slivered up some green onion tops, and they worked well. We had to arrange ten identical canapés (on a lovely paper plate) and leave them in front of the Chef, who then examined them, picked one up and turned it over, and tasted one. I got full points for taste, consistency, and presentation, as did most of the class. We took two great big platters of canapés to Chef Joseph's class, and, in front of his assembled newbies, he asked us a few leading questions: "How important is it to use sharp knives? How important is it that you master your knife skills?"

Our plan today, after the competency exam and break, was to do today's production work (we're on the vegetarian team, so our task is to make salad dressings, in gallon quantities: two today), and meet as a team to plan this week's work. We're having a class buffet on Wednesday and need to prepare examples of everything we've done in class so far. Team representatives got together to divide the work load (I carried the banner for Team Vegetarian). We'll be making a fruit platter, an antipasto tray, a crudité tray, several kinds of canapés, and a compound salad (we'll make the wheatberry salad that we made in week one). While we were strategizing and making a grocery list (well, it's really a supply requisition), a commotion arose at table two where the seafood team was gathered. Dava's voice grew shrill and suddenly there was yelling. I looked over at Chef Duffy: he tucked his glasses into his coat, sighed deeply, and said, "Oh dear," and gathered them together out in the hall.

Of course, all the buzz inside the classroom was about what had just transpired, which was not really clear to anybody, except that there were various and sundry non-complementary personalities at play. As the hall meeting dragged on, we began cleaning the kitchen, doing dishes and putting supplies away. After about twenty minutes, the group returned to the classroom, and Chef demonstrated forcemeat.

After class, several of us stood around and did some noshing — there was pork chile colorado, and pinto beans, and bread pudding — à la the staff meal at restaurants. The only member of Team Seafood still around was Jordan, who was huddling with Chef over the plan for Wednesday, apparently trying to get organized. "You don't have to take the heat," Chef said to him. "I'll be the bearer of the news, and if anyone is upset, they can be upset at me."

Oddness in the Air

Chef Duffy seemed a little bit edgy today, and strangely, Andy seemed to irritate him. Andy, who's one of the class stars, always willing to do the extra chore. He was garnishing smoked duck canapés with large pieces of dill, and both Silvia and Derrick asked him about it, as it looked like the filling would be totally overwhelmed. Andy, in his enthusiastic way, said, "Try it! It really tastes good!" and kept going. When Chef passed by, he immediately made the same "going overboard with the dill" kind of remark, and Andy repeated with his earlier confidence. "You're doing it again, Andy, " Chef said. "You are not listening to me, and going full steam ahead just as you please." Andy instantly began dismantling his appetizers. Later, he tried get the Chef's advice on a piece of partially-cured gravlax, which he had rinsed and was holding in his hand. I'm pretty sure Chef said the same words, "You're doing it again, Andrew! Don't carry around food in your bare hands!" Andy grabbed a piece of parchment for the salmon and said, "I'm sorry, Chef, but I've never heard that instruction before."

Meanwhile, Nadeen, who's been in class approximately 30% of the time, actually asked Chef yesterday during lecture for the definition of a canapé. I so wanted him to say, "Well, if you'd been in class on the first day, you would know because we discussed it in the first fifteen minutes." But no, he reviewed that definition and several others. Today she asked if we'd be making fondue in class. "I like fondue," Chef said, "but it doesn't exactly fit into the definition of Garde Manger." "Well, what is Garde Manger?" she asked, and you could hear loud sighs from throughout the room as he back-tracked again.

Andrea is big into beets, like she is into confit. So today she spent the morning roasting and peeling beets and making bread-crumbed sautéed goat cheese disks for them to sit atop. Silvia assembled a fruit platter and a cheese platter, and the garnishings for each. I peeled and deveined and poached two pounds of shrimp, then poached a pound of sea scallops, and made canapés from each. The best ones were 1-1/2" pita bread rounds, toasted, spread with curry mayonnaiase, topped with a slice of scallop, a dollop of chutney, and a sprinkling of mint chiffonade. Then I sprinkled them with a bit of cracked black pepper. They were happy-looking. I also made shrimp on herbed goat cheese "toasts" (though Chef picked up one of the naked rye rounds and said, "Where I come from, we know toast, and this isn't toast.") And I mixed up a spicy sauce of garlic/chili sauce, honey, lemon juice, and fish sauce, and tossed it with the rest of the shrimp. Those went onto buttered dark rye bread (closer to toast this time), garnished with a sliver of pineapple and some really cool little onion sprouts. There were some shrimp left over, so I made it into a salad with chopped romaine and cucumber. Now the fresh seafood shelf is empty.

As class ended, several of us were obviously scouting the contents of the refrigerators in preparation for Monday's Canapé Competency. We have a lot of stilton and red grapes. I'm going in that direction, I think. On toast. With some chopped walnuts.

As I was emptying my locker after class, Andy came down the hall to gather his stuff. "Have a great weekend," he said. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Hey, it comes with the territory," he said. He's got the right attitude, and no obvious need to carry a grudge.

"What's your overall plan?"

We had a pretty short demonstration today, as Chef showed off some quick zucchini and endive garnishes (everything looks better — curly — after it's been in cold water for a couple of days). Then he took a small watermelon and began to carve. He took a disk off the bottom so that the fruit would sit flat on the table, then he peeled off the green skin from the top half, leaving the white of the rind. He used a circle cutter to make an incision right in the middle of the top of the fruit, down to the red flesh (sort of a depth gauge), and he began making swirly cut-outs on both sides of the circle, using a paring knife.

"What's your overall plan?," Andy asked. "To retire while I'm still healthy enough to enjoy it," Chef responded, without hesitation. "What's your overall plan for this melon?" Andy asked. "Oh, the melon. We're just playing it by ear." It turned out to be a gorgeous huge rose-like sculpture that Andy used on the "twenty-minute fruit tray" he built before the end of class. "I never know what's gonna happen when I start," Chef said. "It's a live show."

Sylvia, Andrea and I each made different platters today, but we were set up at the same table so it was a nice morning of working and talking. Silvia made dilled lobster salad while I sliced swiss cheese for the student kitchen, then she made crab spring rolls. Andrea made seared ahi canapés, with a base of sushi rice wrapped in nori. She cut the ahi into 1-inch square strips, seasoned it with salt and TONS of cracked black pepper, and seared it briefly on all sides, then cut it into 1/3" thick slices. Atop the ahi, she put a dab of wasabi and two crossed strips of chives. Chef Marcus, who teaches Basic Skills in the adjacent classroom, walked through our kitchen a couple of times and took pieces every time he passed her tray. She complained to Chef Duffy, who said, "It's a great compliment when a Chef Instructor wants to eat your food." "But he's messing up my tray," Andrea grumbled. "You just have to deal," Chef responded. "Pretend he's a customer with poor manners."

I spent way too long making the barquette shells for the lobster salad. I first cut pot sticker wrappers and fitted them into the little tin pans but after they were baked, they were too thick and hard to eat. So I found won ton skins, and who knew? They're about 1/2 the thickness of pot sticker wrappers, and they worked just fine. Way too much fussing, though, but I guess the point is to experiment until you find the solution, then make a million of them.

I filled the barquettes with a small spoonful of salad ("Not too much," Chef Duffy said. "It's lobster!") and topped each one with a little sprig of dill and a tiny sliver of fresh lemon. I used a big mirror for the display, with the lobster body Andrea saved from the poaching as the main garnish. Then I sliced up some of the seafood mousseline terrine (little squares with layers of pale pink and yellow, dotted with chives), and some of the salmon roulade, both of which Chef demo'd on Tuesday. The end result was really quite fancy.

We talked about the techniques we're learning this week, and Andrea and I agreed that we'd be unlikely to use some of them after school was over. "If I ever say I'm serving aspic," Andrea said, "I want you to shoot me." Chef was walking by then, and said, "I want you to be prepared to do anything your Chef might ask you to do," and of course, that's understandable. It's what we're paying for, actually. He asked if we'd thought about our externships yet. Andrea is hoping to find a spot in a high-end Napa Valley restaurant before she returns to Reno, where she wants to open her own place. I told Chef that I want to work at the New York Times, in the Food Section. He just nodded and said, "I knew you'd have a plan."

Sometimes It Tastes Better Than It Looks

Before we began working this morning, Chef carved radishes a dozen ways, then showed us how to make the ubiquitous apple swan. "I personally don't like it, but everybody wants to know how to make it."

We discussed the parameters of our Canapé Competency which we will have on Monday. We will have one hour to make 10 canapés, all identical, with what we have in the kitchen. It's a 15 point quiz, with 5 points each given for presentation, consistency, and taste ("And it's all or nothing. Five or zero. Either it's presentable, or it's not.") I'm thinking I'll make some mini-pie shells (a la Aunt Gert's little pecan pie cookies) with a savory filling. Maybe smoked salmon. I'll have to practice during the weekend.

We had a full team today. Sylvia sliced our two pans of cheese, then finished the marinated mushrooms she began yesterday, then peeled some roasted beets. Better her than me. Andrea made a sushi platter. Travis made some salmon mousse and we worked together on a salmon en croute using a sheet of puff pastry and a nice center cut of fish — it doesn't exactly qualify as garde manger but Chef encouraged us to experiment. Travis made it look like a fish. Fun with a rolling pin, with lots more to come as we'll begin Baking and Pastry the week after next.

I worked with the mousseline that we made yesterday: poaching and refrigerating the roulades and the terrine, to be unmolded and served tomorrow. Then I made quenelles. It was a mixed experience, mostly because the scallop/saffron mousseline that Chef Duffy made yesterday was very soft, so the quenelles ended up looking less like precise three-sided spoonsful and more like raggedy poached oysters, sort of jiggly and soft. But they were so delicious! Andy took a bite of one, just out of the poaching liquid, and said, surprised, "These taste like heaven!" so my goal was to make them look presentable on a tray. I made little rectangles of black bread and toasted them, then spread them with herbed goat cheese thinned with a bit of creme fraiche. I set a quenelle on top, then dabbed a bit more creme fraiche on top. I garnished half of them with a bit of dill and the other half with three salmon eggs. They were not amazingly beauteous. But they tasted like heaven.

No more so, though, than the chicken liver spread that Chef Duffy demonstrated mid-morning. He began by sautéing diced onions in butter, and adding salt, pepper, ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg and oregano. He added the livers, which had been soaked overnight in salted milk, spiked with brandy. When they were mostly cooked but still pink in the middle, he flambéed them with more brandy. He let them cool a bit, then processed them with cream cheese, and strained them through a tamis. Livers are definitely an acquired taste: Andrea had to go stand in the back of the room during the entire demonstration, at times holding a side towel over her mouth. Others of us were gobbling up little croutons thickly spread with the stuff. It really isn't good-looking in the least. But it's so good!

Prepping for Salmon-Fest

Chef Duffy posed the following question yesterday: "What's the culinary equivalent of returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown?" Dava immediately said, "Cutting apart 200 chickens." Chef said a previous Garde Manger class was given a couple of hours to provide "Welcome to the Building" platters for the new Citibank office downstairs, using ingredients that were on hand. Silvia worked a catering event at the CCA where the lead chef left, ill, the morning of the event, and several hours passed before the "new chef" showed up. In the meantime, the students carried the ball, as it were. You can't count surviving a night of "being in the weeds," because that happens all the time. It has to be really over the top.

Today was another day of prep for what sounds like an awesome seafood platter later in the week. Chef alluded to the typical kitchen schedule for facilities where there's a big weekend buffet: lots of steps are done early in the week and then everything comes together at once. Andrea sliced cheese, Silvia made marinated mushrooms, and I prepared the mis en place for Chef's mid-morning mousseline demo. And we poached lobsters, crabs, and prawns in the court bouillon that Andrea made yesterday, then cleaned them. The walk-in is full of little packets and containers that "belong" to the Seafood team.

A mousseline is like a mousse except that it's made from raw ingredients (today, salmon, shrimp, and scallops). The protein is processed to a paste, then egg whites, seasonings, and cream are added until the mixture is the right consistency in between thick and thin. Then you can go all sorts of ways: we layered the three mixtures in a terrine, which we will poach in a bain marie tomorrow, then slice. You can make quenelles or roulades: Chef made several, using fresh salmon filled with shrimp mousseline ("Bring forth the salmon!" he directed), which we will also poach tomorrow.

It's been a while and therefore we were undoubtedly due for The Lecture. Yesterday, four people were missing (including Nadeen, who called Chef to say that she was "stuck in traffic," a condition that apparently prevented her from ever making it to class either yesterday or today). Today, Chef had to remind Jim to remove his earring, Silvia was without her neckerchief, Rudy and Julian were whispering together during lecture. So we paused for a moment of gentle rebuke: "How long have you been in school here?" And we were told that we need to pick up the pace and work with an increased sense of urgency, and some people are not showing any initiative and acting like they want to be followers their whole lives, which is not acceptable. So should we switch up the teams? Silvia and Andrea and I looked at each other and said "NO!" Travis didn't vote as he was absent. Our teams are intact. We are not the problem of which he speaks...

Oh, except for the posture. I was standing stork-style, one foot on one knee, and Chef commented on my knife work, then added, "And another thing, your stance is all wrong."

If There's Hot Chocolate in Act I...

... somebody better drink it before Act IV. So I mentioned Ibarra chocolate. We did have it, as planned, on Friday morning, and it was lovely. There's more there there than in coffee. I think Chef's purpose in suggesting hot chocolate (besides keeping us warm, and well-fed) was to ensure that the milk in the refrigerator got used up before the weekend. We also completely emptied out the walk-in refrigerator before we started working, so that we could use, combine, discard as appropriate. It's a good habit, one that I could actually begin to use in my own kitchen.

I was telling some friends yesterday that I try hard not to ask the questions aloud that will further define me as a "housewife" (which is what Chef Allen said, snarkily, when he saw those poorly cut lamb racks: "That's housewife butchery!") I am constantly thinking about how this will translate to my kitchen, but in theory, we should be thinking about bigger kitchens, much bigger kitchens.

So then I went and undoubtedly further reinforced my housewife status by bringing in cookies this morning. They were actually leftovers from Super Bowl, but seriously, I can't have two dozen cookies in my house or we will eat them. I got these recipes from Epicurous.com (a great site even though they are usurping my blog idea, which is mine) and all three of them are keepers: Ginger Spice Cookies, Apricot-Orange Shortbread Bars, and Chocolate-Chunk Cookies (I doubled the cherries and skipped the apricots, because of the shortbread). Chef admired my cookie tin. I'm doomed!

Body Double for the Garnish

Interestingly, not surprisingly, much of garde manger is involved with using up little bits of things. If you have an end of cheese, or a couple of slices of ham, some random bread: make it into a canapé, a tea sandwich, a mousse! Which is what Chef demonstrated this morning: smoked salmon mousse. He combined cream cheese and some whipping cream in the food processor, then added the salmon (which actually wasn't leftover — it was from a brand new wrapped side of smoked salmon. But it could have been leftover.) He seasoned it with white pepper, white wine, dry mustard, lemon zest, minced dill, and a pinch of cayenne. Then he added 3/4 of an ounce of gelatin powder that had been dissolved in vegetable stock, then folded in a cup of whipped cream.

The resulting bowl of luscious fluff was piped onto little rye toasts (quickly, before the gelatin sets up) and the rest was smoothed into a terrine, for slicing tomorrow. You can suspend stuff in the terrine: unlike aspic, it's firm enough to hold an addition (like a row of cooked shrimp, or a checkerboard of cucumber slices) without having to set first.

Andy turned out the fruit aspic he made on Friday. It was really pretty — triangle shapes with three layers — but the white layer in the middle (made of coconut milk) was really rubbery. Too much gelatin. Or gelatine, as Chef Duffy does it...

Monday is sort of slow, production-wise, because you have to order most of your supplies for delivery later in the week. We're the Seafood team this week, and scheduled to make salmon mousse (as per the demo), crab spring rolls, lobster salad barquettes, and two salads: roasted beet with gorgonzola, and mushrooms "a la grecque". So today, I sliced the production (cheese this week — today was two trays of monterey jack and provolone) while Andrea made court bouillon (for cooking the lobsters and crabs, which we should get tomorrow). Travis handled the salmon: from the center cut of one side of fish, he made gravlax. He cured one end for sushi (Chef won't let us make sushi with any raw fish except ahi), and he poached another piece for our salmon mousse for tomorrow.

Then we set about creating a cheese tray. We used a big mirror, about 4 feet long by 18 inches wide, and started out by propping up some baguette pieces against some daikon radish chunks in the middle of the tray. Chef asked if it was our centerpiece, and we said it was a place holder — the body double — for the actual garnish to come later. We ended up with cubes of fontina, oblong slices of dry jack, triangles of gouda, a low crumbling wall of stilton, squares of Wensleydale Cranberry, and some wedges of gruyere. There was also a row of toasted baguettes topped by rosettes of herbed goat cheese and little pieces of walnut. The body double was eventually used as a foundation, so the centerpiece was some chunks of bread, an opened pomegranate, bunches of grapes, and a fan of yellow Delicious apple. We took the whole thing, along with a basket of bread and some more fruit, into Chef Joseph's classroom down the hall. His students were making kasha today — that was probably my least favorite day in all of basic skills, and definitely not one of the better days for eating. Cheese — anything not "miscellaneous grains" — was welcome.

We had a quiz this morning, too: product identification, fifteen items laid out on a table that we had to name. I misidentified the medium-grained rice as "short," and wasn't specific enough on "sesame seeds" — you need to say "white" or Purchasing might send you black ones.

Friday Follies

As we arranged our trays at the end of one long table, and began to clean up the kitchen, Andy said, "Just look at this stuff. We've only been doing this a week, and we're making such pretty food."

Tru dat. At the end of the day, our class had produced a large fruit tray, an exquisite tray of seafood canapés, and several large bowls of salad. We on the meat team contributed an antipasto tray, primarily of grilled vegetables (that was Silvia), won ton cups filled with Asian Duck Confit Salad (mostly Andrea), and Curried Turkey with Mango baguettes (I worked on those). Travis sliced, sliced, sliced, cutting the four trays of meat needed for student dining, as well as meats for the antipasto tray. All in all, it was a quiet, productive morning.

You know how one person can totally change the dynamic of a group? Well, Nadeen's back. If I told you she was the black sheep of our class, that might give you some idea as to her personality. She didn't show up for the entire last week of Butchery and by Wednesday of this week, we'd begun to refer to her in the past tense. But then who should waltz in about 10:45 yesterday morning? She's eager (when she's in class) and loud and inquisitive, which means she monopolizes the Chef's time as he repeats explanations and demonstrations that we all received days ago. She pushes the definition of "cigarette break," if you get my drift. She piles plates to overflowing with food and carries them home, covered with aluminum foil. Andy ("Bless his heart," my mother would say) is patient with her and shares his notes and tries to fill her in on what she's missed. There's some wild backstory there, no doubt about it.

This afternoon, I'll be practicing my canapé making and then most of the weekend will be food prep for Super Bowl, to be immediately followed by eating, drinking, and watching...

Before I left class today, Chef Duffy surreptitiously handed me three tablets of Ibarra chocolate and asked if I would please make hot chocolate before class starts tomorrow morning. I guess he wasn't kidding when he said he likes his students to be warm and well-fed.

Garde Manger is very self-directed — or, more accurately, team-directed. Ours is working together smoothly, whether Travis shows up or not. When he took roll this morning and marked Travis present, Chef looked closely at his attendance sheet. "Hmmmmmm. Absent, Present, Absent, Present. According to the pattern, should I mark you Absent for tomorrow?" Travis shook his head vehemently.

We had an aspic demo today, with fruit. Chef used canned pineapple juice as the gelatin base and we'll end up with several layers of raspberries and strawberries suspended in a triangular shape. We'll be cutting slices to add to fruit platters. He also demonstrated making neutral gelatin, colored with soy sauce or mayonnaise, to pour onto trays as a base for canapés (in lieu of doilies). You can embed shaped vegetables or seafood or anything, really, so that your tray becomes part of your garnish. He described all kinds of things you can do — cut out pieces with a cookie cutter, fill with another color gelatin — leading me wonder who will actually be preparing the food. There's clearly a certain personality type (not mine) who was born to play with gelatin.

During break, I melted the duck fat and put the duck legs into the oven to bake. A couple hours later, they were falling-off-the-bone done, and we'll be using them tomorrow in Duck Confit Spring Rolls.

Silvia and I worked together on the four trays of deli meats we needed to slice — ham, turkey, and salami — while Andrea smoked the duck breasts, and Travis grilled the marinated chicken breasts. We saved some ham and turkey and made a tray of tea sandwiches, using four different kinds of bread. Besides ham and turkey, we made salmon gravlax sandwiches, and herbed cheese and cucumber ones. After they were arranged on the tray (on the doilies), I sprinkled the whole thing with daikon radish sprouts and it just made you want to lift a cuppa, with your little pinky finger in the air, of course.

Travis and Andrea made a vegetable pasta salad, nothing really spectacular, and the same could be said for the wheatberry salad that I completed. But they looked good. I roasted two turkey breasts, some of which we'll use tomorrow to make "Curried Turkey with Mango" canapés.

We ended the morning by putting together the chicken satay canapés: cucumber slices topped by a swirl of peanut sauce, with a small slice of grilled chicken leaning against it, garnished with a bit of cilantro, a short batonnet of red bell pepper, and a sprinkle of sesame seeds.

Tomorrow, after hot chocolate, we'll be making the spring rolls and the curried turkey. That takes care of our five assigned dishes for the week. Chef also mentioned something about platters: cheese, fruit, antipasto. Andrea's planning to roast some bell peppers, first thing.

Despite our thousands of dollars worth of supplied equipment, we have no tool appropriate for applying mayonnaise to bread. So it was really necessary for me to stop after class at Economy Restaurant Fixtures (about three blocks from campus) to buy a spreader ($1.99 before my student discount...) And while I was there, I also got two new potholders, two half-sheet pans (they look SOOO small, but just barely fit into my oven), a 9x13 baking pan (before Baking & Pastry, I know, but I can use it for Super Bowl dessert), and the big score: a lifetime supply (or 1000 sheets, whichever comes first) of parchment paper.