Mature and Elegant

Chef Lorriann has left us with a crazy man. Chef Alex is the CCA's version of Jacques Torres: theatrical and charming and over the top. He likes to have a "dessert station" as part of the buffet, with live people preparing dishes "a la minute". Today, Andrea and Sam were the "victims", assigned to make crepes and flambé poached pears in front of lunch guests. Chef Lorriann says he likes the stations because "he's lazy": you don't have to do as much work in advance, and it doesn't have to be decorated and plattered. Nevertheless, Andy's cookie tray made it to the buffet table, along with big bowls of fruit salad and quite a number of little cakes.

I escaped the madness for the most part: today was my team's day to provide individual plated desserts as a competency, and Chef Lorriann returned at 11:00 am to evaluate our work. After many sleepless nights (I was already awake, so I thought about dessert: it's not like the thought of this project kept me awake), I settled on olive oil-semolina cake (a simple sponge), with white chocolate toasted almond semifreddo. Semifreddo is in the category of "still frozen" desserts -- still as opposed to churned. This one is really delicious -- creamy and smooth, with salted nuts. I got the recipe from Epicurious.

I also made a little cup out of melted white coating chocolate molded on the end of an inflated balloon, a trick I actually did learn from Jacques Torres, when his show "Dessert Circus" was on PBS. The cup held berries, which were garnished with candied orange peel, and the plate was drizzled with orange syrup. Chef Lorrianne gave me complete points and called the dish "mature and elegant", and that's really what I'm striving for in life, so it was good praise.

Now we're off! The CCA is on vacation until September 4, the Tuesday after Labor Day. My only plan is to awaken at my leisure. I'm sure there will be some culinary adventures. I'll keep you posted.

Triple Chocolate Mousse.

And by "triple", I mean three days in a row.Does this look familiar? We decided to go "simple and elegant" with the mousse today, garnishing with white chocolate and strawberry halves.

Andy plated his cookies, commenting that his Danish relatives would be pleased with the results of his efforts. His mom is in town; he took her to lunch at the Careme Room yesterday, and Chef Glen saw them eating and comp'd their lunch. They skipped dessert, though. Perhaps it's like sausage-making -- once you've seen it done, you're not so sure you want to eat it.

I again spent the morning getting ready to plate desserts. Not that there was much to prep for the mousse. I sliced a banana-pecan cheesecake that somebody else made earlier in the week, and pondered possible garnishes. Chef Lorriann suggested a tuile cookie of some kind. "Make a stencil," she said. "It will make you happy."

At her suggestion, I cut a rectangular piece from the side of a clean half-gallon cream carton -- a great stencil material because it's pretty thick, plus it's wax-coated and relatively durable. I sketched an abstract palm tree shape and started to cut the inside portion out, using my kitchen shears. The starter hole was the hardest part, and I was just thinking that I should use a different tool to make my initial puncture when the point of the scissor went through the paperboard and through the skin of my left index finger. I tagged it good, and it bled freely.

Chef Lorriann helped me clean and bandage it tightly, and sat me down on a chair with a glass of water and my finger up in the air. She phoned Executive Chef Weller and asked him to drop by, based on the amount of blood I had leaked, which was strictly a CYA move on her part. He strolled in a couple of minutes later and I told him that I'd live. "Was it a serrated knife?" he asked. "No, it was a pair of scissors," I replied. "Oh, don't tell anybody that," he suggested.

Wedding Cakes: It's a Business

We began class today with a wedding cake demonstration and lecture. Chef Lorriann assembled a three-tiered cake made from layers that Derrick made on Monday, using buttercream icing, talking all the while about the basics of wedding cake construction. It's one of those things people might expect you to be able to do, now that you're a culinary school graduate, and you can certainly do it for love, but if you do it for money, make sure you get enough. And don't forget to add on a delivery charge. Plus an "annoyance fee," if the bride or her mother are especially difficult to work with.

With Anthony absent today, I finished the nectarine-blueberry crisp he began yesterday, making crumble, dishing them out, and baking and plating them. I did some "experimental" sugar work for garnishing, and my first batch of caramel had to be dumped, because I wasn't prepared with an ice bath once the caramel began to color. So the caramel kept cooking in the pan, becoming too dark and burning within no time at all.I plated the second batch of triple-chocolate mousse. These didn't have quite the same "issues" that aggravated me yesterday. Sarah and Silvia plated these lovely baked lemon puddings, sort of a Valentine's Day theme but hey, we pay to practice all kinds of stuff.Before we left class today, Chef Lorriann announced that she won't be with us next week. She's leaving the CCA to take a job at Laney College, the community college in my very own 'hood, where she will not only be well compensated and receive generous (public school) benefits, but she will also have the summers off, with pay. As a single mom with a seven-year-old son, she relishes her personal time, and there's not much vacation built into the CCA schedule. She was referring to the wedding cakes when she said, "It's all about the money. I need more of it, so I can have more free time to spend with people I love." Amen to that.

Did I tell you about the guy....?

There's a guy in our class who's taking it for the second time, having failed the first time around. He's both clueless (he asked Andy if he could use his quarter teaspoon three times, for a recipe that called for 3/4 teaspoon...) and bossy ("That pizza sauce was made with no love. You can taste it." Andy said, "You're talking about my friends there. Better watch it."). And apparently he gets on Chef Lorriann's last nerve, as well. Chef told him that if he presented her three "perfectly plated" desserts by Friday, he wouldn't have to attend the last week of class. Then she excused him, telling him to go to the library and "do research." As he packed up his knife bag, he announced, "I'm going to make a savory dessert. There's no law that says that dessert has to be sweet. A great chef is someone who can put together something that sounds totally disgusting and make people want to eat it."

That's not my definition of a great chef.

After he finally left the kitchen, Chef Lorriann came in and urged us to finish our projects and clean up. "I'm sick of you people today. I want you to go home." Said with a smile, of course.

First thing this morning, we practiced some competencies, things we should know before we graduate: making little cones out of parchment paper (12 per full sheet, for piping), making a "cartouche" (a circle of parchment paper, folded and torn, to line a baking pan), and piping chocolate: "Happy Birthday" and our name, and the alphabet. Andrea won the contest for neatness. Chef encouraged us to make the cartouche by folding and tearing the paper, not (as many of us do) by drawing a circle and cutting it out. "Whether you know it or not, people are watching you. Your friends are watching you. Your chef is definitely watching you. If you do it this way, you look like somebody who knows what you are doing." When she caught Jason tracing around a cake pan later in the morning, she said, "That's the wrong method. That's the method of the person who missed the lecture."

Before being urged to leave, I spent the morning tempering chocolate and making garnishes for my triple chocolate mousses. Today, I plated the conical ones, "Madonna Mousse" as Derrick called them. The mousse, turned out of the silicon liner and propped up on the cake layer, looked pretty damn dismal, but once I got finished garnishing, I'd turned the proverbial pig's ear into a silk purse. It was appetizing enough for a Careme Room guest to order it served at the start of her meal, before her appetizer.

Sometimes you gotta just start again.

I'm on plated desserts this week, which means I have to prepare a competency plate for Friday. Time to start planning something creative and challenging and wonderful.

In the meantime, the seven of us who showed up this morning practiced making 1-spoon quenelles with whipped cream (like the ones on these chocolate custards). Dessert quenelles are usually made with one spoon, while savory ones (usually made from forcemeat or savory mousse) are made with two spoons. With 2-spoon quenelles, you're aiming for three distinct sides, and they're often poached before serving, but for dessert, the goal is pointed and shiny. Use two metal spoons, alternating them in a glass of hot water. If the spoon is too hot, the quenelle slides right before you get it shaped. And if it's too cool, the quenelle won't come off at all. We practiced until we could make ten acceptable ones.

I began my plated desserts to be served tomorrow through Thursday: triple chocolate mousse cake. First I made two sheet pans of chocolate chiffon cake. Then I made a big batch of creme anglaise (using 32 egg yolks) by scalding half and half, tempering the egg yolks (which had been beaten with sugar), then cooking it until nappé (until the custard coats the back of a spoon.) I added softened sheets of gelatin, then poured the warm custard over three bowls of chopped chocolate: white, milk, and bittersweet. Then I folded in a pint and a half of whipped cream.

When it came time to fill the molds, I realized that my white chocolate mixture was "broken": somewhere along the line, something happened and the mixture was grainy. The other two batches were perfectly smooth, so I think the problem may have been with the chocolate I used. We often save leftover chocolate and what I used was just that -- chunks of white chocolate that had been melted and rehardened. Chef tried a couple of "fix" methods: adding some fresh cold cream, and adding some fresh warm cream, but neither attempts produced anything acceptable. So I filled the molds with a layer of dark chocolate mixture, then set about remaking the white custard, with fresh chocolate this time. The broken stuff went right down the sink.

That's a hard/good lesson to learn. I grew up in a household where my mother ate burnt toast so often that she grew to prefer it. But our goal is to serve excellent food, and if it's not working, bite the bullet, start over, do it right.

No lecture. Just work.

We "pushed it out" today, as Chef Lorriann said. Each member of the plated dessert group had three and a half hours to prepare a single plate for competency evaluation. The bread group spent the morning making pizzas for all, and delivering a couple of them to Chefs throughout the building. For those of us on the buffet team, today was the culmination of our week's efforts.

The CCA restaurant has lunch buffet on Fridays, and it's quite amazingly elaborate. Our class contributes the desserts. I started out today with my cheesecakes and mousse cakes, piping them with whipped cream and decorating them with berries. I unmolded the creme caramels and fancied them up, as well. My challenge of the week -- I kid you not -- were "tuxedo strawberries", dipped once in melted white chocolate coating, then dipped again, twice, in melted dark chocolate to make the "coat" -- a process that I could not master cleanly. It was slow-going and messy, and I had to stop several times to remelt the chocolate. Finally, I piped bow-ties and buttons, using a folded parchment paper piping bag. It was a series of "Breathe deeply. Wash the chocolate off your hands. Begin again."Our buffet table included dozens of cookies that the bread team made earlier in the week, as well as the chocolates we made on Wednesday.In the middle of the table, we arranged a marble slab covered with little two-bite cakes.I left class with a fabulously messy coat and apron (this week's laundry will definitely require a pre-wash soak), and a great feeling of accomplishment.

"Dessert can smooth anything out."

Chef Lorriann is used to dealing with culinary students who don't see the benefit of learning baking and pastry. Just like Robert Irving on last night's episode of "Dinner: Impossible", they claim "I'm a chef, not a baker", so she must begin by persuasion. (As for me, my kitchen training began with baking, on the other side of the counter from my mother, so I don't need convincing.) But the Chef has rationales of all kinds (economic, competitive, hospitable) as to why it's important for a chef to know how to properly measure, weigh, and keep time. For example, if you end a meal with a weak dessert, it spoils your whole dining experience, but a poor meal can potentially be saved by a wonderful plate of something sweet. For example, when my wool coat was "dampened" by the burst pipe in Postrio's cloak room, the expansive dessert platter did much to ease my distress. And they had the coat dry-cleaned, of course.

It's all about the multi-tasking. I made the custard base for the creme caramel that I began yesterday, then baked them off; they'll be part of our Friday dessert buffet table. I cut Monday's cheesecake into little diamond shapes, and glazed Tuesday's mousse cakes and cut them into small disks. All will be garnished for the buffet table, also.

Chef Weller stopped in and I told him my idea. There's a school-wide culinary competition in three weeks, for teams of three, and prizes include as much as $2000 per participant towards tuition expenses. The catch, though, is that we need a team member from each of the three programs: Culinary, Baking & Pastry, and Hospitality & Restaurant Management (HRM). But none of our classes overlap, and it's especially hard for those of us who live "off campus" to know any of "them". We need to have some sort of a mixer -- a "speed dating" kind of event, perhaps -- so that we can find some likely teammates. Chef Weller thought it was brilliant. Meanwhile, Andy chatted up some of the HRM girls today who came in to get sample dessert plates prior to service. They weren't interested in the contest, but they introduced Andy to Sean, their "awesome" classmate, and now they're two-thirds of the team to beat.

For dessert this afternoon, you could select the tiramisu with chocolate-dipped biscotti.Or perhaps you'd prefer the sticky toffee pudding cake. Some of us thought the piped whipped cream was a little on the Halloweeny side. "It's not a color found in nature," Andrea opined.And Andy went all out with his peanut-butter mousse. There's a layer of crunch inside, and it's covered with ganache, drizzled with caramel sauce, and garnished with candied peanuts. He took one home for his girlfriend, lucky girl.

Dreams walking in broad daylight

First there was a little earthquake. Then I dreamed that my car was missing... no, stolen! And, in the weird way of dreams, I was driving around in the very same car I was searching for, over by the McDonald's near the Oakland Coliseum. Then it was time to get up, and I did, and I can't tell you how certain I am that I will not be taking a job that requires a 5:10 am wake-up call.

Once I reached school, I sat in the Careme Room (now that we're "seniors", it's the hip place to hang out before class), drinking coffee and reading the Food section from the Chronicle. A guy I don't know, dressed in his uniform, plopped his knife kit down on the table between us and said, "Damn. My car was stolen last night."

Then there's the shoelace. One of my heavy duty shoe laces (from my heavy duty shoes) is fraying. It's my life's goal to get through culinary school without having to replace the laces. I'll certainly never be wearing the shoes again after November 9th.

It was Chocolate Day in Chef Lorriann's kitchen, starting with a tasting and a lecture and demonstration on chocolate tempering. Then five of us tempered our own chocolate and made candy and garnishings, while the other groups worked on cookies, cakes, and bread.

If you're going to melt chocolate and use it for coating, dipping, or molding, you need to temper it. Tempering gives chocolate snap, shine, and durability. I've always found the whole process really intimidating, but Chef Lorriann explained it concisely. Tempering means heating the chocolate to 120°, then lowering it to 88°, then using it. You can temper in three ways: with a fancy, pricey machine; by spreading it out on a marble slab and working it back and forth until it's evenly cooled; or by "vaccination": melting half the chocolate, then stirring in as much as 100% more until it's cooled to the proper temp. A digital thermometer comes in handy ($70 in our on-campus store; $16.95 at Amazon.com), and patience is required.

I tempered three pounds of dark chocolate (Callebaut 811), melting it in the microwave to start. You can melt the chocolate over a water bath also, but avoid water. Any water in the chocolate will cause it to sieze up and become grainy and there's no coming back.

After my chocolate was tempered, I made mendiants, Italian-style confections that serendipitously also figured in the report I wrote on Provence for Chef Alain -- they're part of the Christmas dinner tradition. Mine were decorated with orange peel, pistachios, almonds and dried cherries. Chef Lorriann showed me a neat trick with the pastry bag for portioning the chocolate: you hold the cut tip end of the bag between a thumb and forefinger, making a little valve that you squeeze open and shut as you move the bag over the parchment.

Meanwhile, Sarah made chocolate bark, and Kristine made chocolate haystacks, using coconut and slivered almonds. Anthony made multi-colored letters, using colored cocoa butter that comes in a squeeze bottle (who knew?), and Meghan spent the entire morning making rocky road, including marshmallows from scratch. A production brought on by an extreme case of the munchies, definitely.

Later, I prepped for tomorrow, making caramel and lining two creme caramel molds, and cutting up the bread for tomorrow's bread pudding. We're starting to organize ourselves more efficiently, with the goal of leaving the classroom by noon. Chef Lorriann seems content to let us set our own pace (apparently, she's not in a hurry to leave), but the rest of us are, and today, we almost made it.

And something about hearing the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" on the radio just flips my mood switch to "Really Good."

How to make a $10 plate

It's all about the garnish.

Chef Lorriann showed us some sugar tips today. First, she made caramel by melting sugar and water together. She cautioned against using too much water, because you need to boil it all away, and the more you have, the longer it takes. You should make a slurry (regardless of what the recipe says) of just enough water to coat every grain of sugar. And once it starts boiling, NEVER stir it, but wash down any crystals that form on the side of the pan, using a wet paint brush. The caramel will continue to cook well after you remove it from the heat, so pull it off just when you begin to get some color.

An alternate method of making caramel involves no water, and lots of stirring. Just pour the sugar in a pan and heat it over a low flame, stirring all the while. It will clump at first, then the whole mass will melt. It's fun. But a word of warning: melted sugar is VERY VERY VERY VERY HOT.

Chef demonstrated making some twigs and curlicues and other fanciful decorations, and she used a nifty sugar tool to make spun sugar, like cotton candy. Then she made some of the same decorations using isomalt, chemically modified sucrose that melts clear, so you can add food color and go crazy. It comes with a warning label, though, for some potentially unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects.

The whole episode reminded me of a Saturday afternoon when Adam was still at home, a young teenager, and we watched Jacques Torres make wispy domes out of spun sugar. Adam was determined to decorate our dessert with similar constructions, and so we did. That same evening, while David entertained Cassandra and Gabriel in the living room, Adam and I poured all the different kinds of alcohol in the liquor cabinet into little dishes, and tested them with matches to see which would ignite. Science in action.

Today's kitchen work was much more pleasant and organized than yesterday, to my great relief. And I can see what kind of a class it will be: we each get an assignment, and then another one, and then another one, until it's time to clean up. If you're inclined to do one thing all day long, that can happen. If you want to do bunches of stuff, that can happen, too. Today I made red velvet cake (somebody will decorate it later in the week), then worked on some middle steps of a layered mousse dessert. I melted dark chocolate, then spread it thinly on a sheet-pan-sized piece of chiffon cake. Oh, but first, and this was cool: I rubbed off the top surface of the chiffon cake, using my fingers -- it all sort of beaded up -- which is just what it would do if I tried to spread chocolate on it, so you take it off first to avoid that problem. The chocolate layer will be the bottom of the creation. I covered the chocolate with parchment paper, then flipped the whole piece back into a sheet pan, then covered the other side of the cake with mousse -- half of the cake with raspberry, half with mango. The whole thing went into the freezer, and tomorrow somebody will continue the construction process.

I helped pleat some pie dough over rhubarb-strawberry filling for tarts, then joined most of the class in assembling today's three plated desserts: first, saffron pannacotta with poached apricots and a honey tuile.Then, chocolate tower cake, filled with chocolate ganache and coated with chocolate and mocha glaze.Finally, the tarts, with a crumble topping. We plated the desserts and left them ready for today's wait staff to pick them up as ordered during lunch service.

59 days left. No, wait: 58.

Thanks to the Labor Day holiday, Advanced Baking and Pastry is shortened to 14 days, then three more rotations of three weeks each, and we'll reach the finish line, at least as far as the in-school portion of the program is concerned. It's interesting, a year ago at this time I was counting down the days, too.

Chef Lorriann is our instructor for this rotation, and our goal is to "feed the dining room": make the bread and pastries that will be served to diners in the Careme Room, our on-campus restaurant. There were nine of us in class today, six from our original 14 (Andrea, Andy, Derrick, Silvia, Jordan, and me); Alex, who joined our track back in Wine One, and two new "kids," Anthony (he has big holes in his earlobes where the bling goes) and Kristine, a "mature" woman like myself, both of whom are returning to class after taking some time off.

Chef gave us the typical day-one lecture (where to go in case of a fire drill; how grades will be calculated), then a brief review of flours (six big rolling bins in this kitchen, plus smaller containers for specialty flours) and chocolate (five types, plus cocoa powder). Then she gave us a bit of her own history (City College in SF, seven years in Europe, a long stint as pastry chef at the Mark Hopkins) which segued directly into a pep talk. Apparently she knows how burned out we're getting as we come into the last "semester" of school. "You cannot give up!" she said. "Your mother has told everyone what you're doing and they're all talking about you. She can't possibly go back and tell them now that you've quit." Even more: "You had a dream. That's why you're here. Make it happen!" She's sweet natured but tough, and enthusiastic, and as we adjourned from the lecture, Andrea said, "That's just what I needed."

What we didn't need, though, was the next hour and a half, which we spent cleaning out the contents of the large refrigerators. We've normally been assigned to clean our kitchens on the last day of class, so that the incoming group starts "fresh," but that convention was obviously not followed last week. We pulled out trays, bowls, and bins unlabeled, mislabeled, moldy, and disgusting, and any sense of enthusiasm we had quickly evaporated as we dumped, scrubbed, and mopped, before making a single mess of our own.

Eventually, though, we started working. I made a half sheet pan full of cheesecake, with graham cracker crust and sour cream topping. Chef Loriann handed me the recipe. "I've tried lots of versions but this one, from the back of the Philadelphia cream cheese, is just the best," she said.

Once that was done, we did the dishes. Again.

"Utterly breathtaking": words to live by

In the event that we end up catering large functions, hosting private events at our establishments, or living on student -- or teacher -- salaries, Steve provided the following word of wisdom: (No, not "plastics"!) "SPAIN."

If you need a sparkling wine, for a wedding or a Sunday morning mimosa, think "Cava." Spanish sparkling wines are only a dollar or two more expensive than Cook's or other horrible swill made by the odious "charmat" method, and the improvement in quality is appreciable. Cordoniu, Frexienet, and Segura Viudas are good bets. "You can buy this stuff at Long's!"

If you're looking for a house white, think about an Albariño from the Rias Baixas area. This medium bodied dry white wine is lighter than chardonnay, but heavier than Italian whites. It's more like sauvignon blanc, actually, but without any of the grassy quality of SB. Spain makes tons of this wine, and you'll find plenty of it in the $10 range. (In terms of other Spanish whites, "If it's not from Rias Baixas, I'm not interested.")For red wine, look no further than Rioja, one of the oldest growing areas in Spain, where the grape of choice is tempranillo, a varietal with cabernet sauvignon-like characteristics. Again, you can find lots of this wine at stores like Cost Plus or Trader Joe's, for less than $15 a bottle. The bargain of the week, though, was the extremely drinkable Viña Alarba from Catalayud, made from grenache grapes, a wine you could easily serve alongside a grilled steak or some white beans and chorizo. I kid you not, $6.99! According to Steve, Spain is home to "the best red wine values in the world today."We quickly toured the rest of the world, before test taking and tasting. Australia is not just Yellow Tail or Rosemount. The more specific the place name, the better, as we've seen again and again, so look for more than just "Southeastern Australia." The claim to fame is Shiraz (aka Syrah), and Australia is taking a page from the Rhone and making big, juicy red wines. About New Zealand, Steve had two comments: "Sauvignon Blanc" and "Marlborough". The one we tasted was full of the clean scent of green bell peppers. Amazing. Steve quickly mentioned Chile, which was the recipient of intense US investment in the 80s, during the second California phylloxera infestation: big consumer-oriented wineries needed to keep the pipeline full of inexpensive wines during their replanting. Unfortunately, the production is no longer needed in the US -- there's a wine glut here, these days, and the Chilean economy is not flush enough to support the local winemaking economy. Their neighbor, Argentina, is more fortunate, with a prosperous meat-eating middle class able to afford the fruits of the vine. In Argentina, the hot spot is Mendoza, where world class wines are being made with Malbec, usually considered a blending grape for Bordeaux-style reds. The big name here is Catena, and most other wineries are staffed by Catena "graduates". Apparently Senor Catena is the "Robert Mondavi" of Argentina.

In reference to South Africa, Steve yawned.

Our tests today were challenging and comprehensive: six labels to dissect, a wine list to properly organize, a lot of short answer questions, some multiple choice. I missed the obvious question "What grape is used in 'Dolcetto d'Alba'"? Any wine in Italy called "something di another thing" is made from the "something" grape. In general, though, I am pretty amazed by the sheer volume of knowledge that Steve taught us in Wine I and Wine II. He presented the material in a way that's memorable and useful when you're standing in the aisle at BevMo or reading through a wine list. His classes have been the best 50 hours I've spent at the CCA.

Malmsey. Isn't that a great name?

It's madeira made from Malvasia grapes. Madeira is an interesting wine -- fortified with brandy, it was often shipped long distances in adverse conditions (pre-steamship days) since it's grown and fermented way off the coast of Portugal. Fortuitously (this goes along with the "who ate the first artichoke?" question), somebody discovered that the kegs of fortified wine, rolling around the hold of a sailing ship, actually improved in flavor and quality. Apparently Thomas Jefferson and his fellow founding fathers were big fans of madeira. Now, it's the only wine that's produced by storing the barrels in heated conditions.

We talked about, and tasted, fortified wines today: along with madeira: port and sherry. Each (though it has dim imitators from California and elsewhere) is the name of a specific place (Oporto is in Portugal, sherry is made in the Jerez region of Spain.) They are alike in two significant ways: each is fortified with brandy, bumping the alcohol level from about 14% to 20% or more, and you buy them (like fine French champagne) by the maker, the brand if you will. Each of the prominent makers has a developed "house style," usually made by blending several vintages for consistency, and you will rarely see a vintage-dated sherry or madeira. There's an exception with port.

Despite the similarities, these three beverages are so very unlike one another. Sherry is crisp and lean, the classic wine for tapas. The Manzanilla Fino we drank started off sharp and dry ("like a dirty martini," Steve said), but opened up when we tasted it with almonds and olives. By the way, Manzanilla is a specific kind of Fino port, made exclusively in the town of San Lucar de Barrameda. Drink it ice cold. That's how the Spaniards do it.The amontillado, by the same maker and using the exact same grapes (the "palomino"), smelled like butterscotch. It didn't taste a bit like butterscotch -- sort of that same bait-and-switch you got as a kid with vanilla extract. It's nutty. Think mushrooms. French onion soup.One sniff of Madeira and hey, there was fruit in the glass again. This smells like it's old: raisiny and burnt, almost. It's sweet and tangy, and you wouldn't go wrong using it with veal stock as the basis for a luscious sauce. The Malmsey is a fruitcake wine. Or turkey gravy: Steve is not a big fan of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, he claims, but if he makes a delicious madeira gravy, all's right with the world.

Port. Yum. We had a Fonseca "Bin No. 27" Ruby Port that gleamed, rich and fruity. I'm ready to try this with a puff pastry tart base sprinkled with stilton and toasted walnuts, and drizzled with honey.

By this time, I had to get up and get myself a glass of water. We had a nice assortment of snacks but fortified wines are, well, fortified. Chef Stazi came in, sniffed and swirled, and pointed his finger at me. "What are you doing to that woman?" he asked Steve. I can't help it. My face gets red. I'm blaming it on genes.

But we all soldiered on, finishing up with the Fonseca Tawny Port. Some drinks don't really need food. As Steve said, "You just gotta sit and pay attention to the wine." This one's in that category. But I wouldn't turn down a piece of nicely aged Parmigiano Reggiano. As I mentioned, there are vintage-dated ports, made from grapes of one vintage, then barrel-aged for three years. Then they're bottled, without filtering, and released about 3 years after the grapes were picked. Here's the rub, kids: They won't be worth drinking for at least 20 years. So you gotta be patient, and bring them with you every time you move.

Germany: All Riesling, All the Time

Today: a brilliant explanation of how to decipher a German wine label.

Well, not surprisingly, the Germans have a system. {"There will be order. It will be maintained."] The predominant wine is Riesling -- so much so, says Steve, that it's the number one wine, and numbers two through five, as well. That's all they're doing, really, and they're doing it in an area not much bigger than the Napa Valley: the five districts (bordering French Alsace) of Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Nahe, Rheingau, Rheinhessen, and Rheinpfalz. Wines are quality-rated, the best wines falling in the Qualitatswein Bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA) or Qualitatswein mit Pradikat (QmP) levels (clearly stated on the label). The QmP wines are further distinguished by a designation which indicates the relative sweetness and quality: starting with Kabinett and progressing through Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, and Eiswein.

Germany is the coldest place on the planet with a wine tradition. "If wines are stressed anywhere, they're stressed in Germany," Steve says, with short growing seasons and soil that in some cases is more shale than dirt. While Germans have been making well-crafted wines for hundreds of years, wines that at the turn of the 19th century were considered the best in the world, the desire for German products of all kinds dropped precipitously during the 20th century, for obvious reasons. Only in the last ten or 15 years have German wines experienced a resurgence of popularity in the US and elsewhere.

They're great "fusion" wines, actually. They carry residual sugar in increasing degrees, but well-balanced rieslings have enough acidity to keep them from being cloying. The Kabinett, Spatlese, and Auslese designations are wines with sugar levels that complement entrées, especially food that has sweetness (like fruit salsa) or perceived sweetness (like Dungeness crab).

We talked about food a lot today, though we didn't eat any. But these are all dishes that work well with riesling, for future reference: chicken salad with grapes. crab cakes. pork with almond cream sauce. coquilles saint jacques. chicken curry. lion's head meatballs. And when you get to the sweeter, heavier wines at the top of the sugar scale, that's when you just sip.

Wines with Seriosity

I sat through the lecture for you. Let's move directly into tasting.

We're still in Northern Italy, because that's where the action is. The Veneto area of northeastern Italy is known for two highly drinkable wines, Soave (white) and Valpolicella (red), and while both of them have suffered from some bad press in the international market, there are ways to ensure that you're getting a good one.The "classico" designation on an Italian wine means that the wine is from a specific geographical area within the named place: sort of like saying "the financial district" in SF: you can narrow it down to a few blocks, or miles. One rule of thumb that Steve reiterates: the more specific the location on the bottle, the better it will be. If you get the name of a vineyard: that's the best.

The Soave is a wonderfully drinkable white: the kind of wine you can drink all afternoon. Unless you prefer a red, in which case you'd head for the Valpolicella, a blended wine with personality but little depth, another "cute" wine that's soft, fruity, and fresh.

Next, as an abject lesson for which Steve apologized repeatedly, we tasted the wicker wine, the main reason why Italian wine has a historic bad rap in the US: Chianti. Bring on the drippy candles. This wine is, well, horrible. The scent was compared to "a damp basement in Nebraska," and that's putting it nicely. It only got worse as it breathed.I realized that the whole of last September's Italian vacation was spent in the Chianti region, and that the grape of Chianti is sangiovese. Chianti Classico has the advantage of being from that particular defined neighborhood, and we tasted a "Riserva," aged for an additional two years before being released, a further sign of quality. To top it off, the bottle had the Rooster Seal on the neck, an indication of the winery's membership in the Consorzio di Chianti Classico, a trade group with even more stringent requirements than those of the Italian government. This was a complex wine, with concentrated cherry flavors, but enough acidity and little enough tannin to make it amenable to pairing with tomato sauce. The perfect marinara wine, in fact.We followed the Chianti with another Tuscan wine, a "Super Tuscan." Contemporary winemakers have been pushing the limits of the prescribed federal guidelines for the Chianti territory, and are producing wines that can no longer be called "Chianti," or use the DOCG designation. These are blended wines, based on sangiovese with the addition of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, or other varietals, and while they can't command an official "guarantee," they do command incredible prices. The Super Tuscan we tasted, the Campaccio from Terra Bianca, was a "wine with seriosity," as Steve joked, and my tasting notes are full of phrases like "bacon/sweet," "new oak barrel," and "antique furniture." It's definitely not the kind of wine you drink all afternoon. It demands your attention.Steve told us to wave the previous five wines goodbye as we moved into the high-potency category: "There's no going back." We tasted two Amarones, wines made from the same blended grapes we tasted in the lightweight Valpolicella. These wines, though, were made from dried grapes, almost-but-not-quite-raisins, and the concentrated fruit brings additional sweetness, or alcohol, or both. The Speri was an immense wine, chewy, with blackberry jam notes, and Steve thought it would go well with an elaborate cheesy moussaka. The second wine, a "more classic amarone," was thick and porty, the kind of wine you'd want with some edgy cheeses at the end of a meal.
Andy and Jordan went trolling at break and came back with a cheese plate and some water crackers: definitely needed if only to wash away the taste of that wicker wine.

Dolcetto: "Really cute but not that smart."

We began a second intense week of wine studies with Steve Eliot. He taught us Wine One, not the normal state of affairs, and he claims we'll have a big advantage (more wine, and more wine) over classes taught by mere mortals -- I mean, by other instructors. We did a slam-bang review of labeling conventions (name of place, name of grape, generic, or proprietary) and of the French system of vineyard grading, which is copied extensively throughout Europe.

According to Steve, only France and Germany have had fine wine traditions of any duration. Even though Italy, for example, has been growing grapes for thousands of years, it's been more of an agricultural commodity and a source of sustenance than an artistic endeavor. The success of California winemakers in the 1970s proved hugely inspirational to a new generation of Italians, many of whom came to study at UC Davis and have subsequently adopted many new techniques and methodologies. Steve said, "Oldtimers may tell you how horrible Italian wine is. The fact of the matter is, thirty years ago, they were right. But they learned fast."

Today, we began in the north of Italy. We started in Piedmonte, one of Italy's great wine growing regions, where the influence from France is most significant and the tradition of growing excellent wines is long, by Italian standards. Steve talks about wines that will be significant to us from a culinary standpoint: not necessarily good (though we get those) or affordable (and we get those also), but wines we're likely to read about, see on a high-end wine list, or be offered by our wine vendors, always with the assumption that we will be People In The Food Industry, once we're done with school.

We had a scheduled fire drill mid-morning, which required walking down and then up five flights of stairs. Then we began drinking.

Our first wine was a sparkling wine ("spumante, metodo classico") from Franciacorta in Lombardy, a Bellavista Brut that Steve said would probably fool him in a blind tasting, where he would swear it was vintage Champagne. "If you told me ten years ago that Italians would make sparkling wine like this, I would have laughed."

We followed that with a Tiefenbrunner Pinot Grigio, an "archtypical" white Italian wine. (Italian white wine comes in one style: "light, fresh, dry, white". You can arrange the words into any order.) "White wine as cocktail," Steve said.

The Dolcetto is a light red, "fruit forward," like "beaujolais with an attitude." An afternoon barbecue wine.
One sip of this Barbera and I was immediately reaching for a fork, with food on it. It's fairly high in acid and definitely gets your juices flowing -- not a cocktail wine, by any stretch. But it works with tomatoes because of that acidity. Tomatoes have to be off the menu for this Barolo, a chewy wine with big shoulders and tongue-coating tannin. A plate of grilled lamb would do just fine, thank you. We ended the morning with a juicy sweet moscato -- step one on the slippery slope to alcoholism, because you could drink this all day long. "Even people who don't like wine, like this one," Steve said, and, at least our classroom, that proved true.

"It's a little bit sketchy."

For our business plan presentation, Andrew had the task of describing our location to Chef Larry and our classmates. He began by saying, "Well, the neighborhood is a little bit sketchy. I mean, there's a food bank right across the street." We told him afterwards that he's supposed to start with the good stuff, and we'll have to rehearse thoroughly before giving our presentation to potential investors.

All in all, we put together a well-crafted plan. Our team was a solid one, and by today, we were basically ignoring our non-functioning member. He arrived in class at about 8:30, as the second group was wrapping up their oral report, and he frantically asked Andrea for direction. [He doesn't ask me, you'll notice. It's been a while since I've given a piece of my mind to a kid who needs to shape up, but I'm sure I'm not too rusty.] She told him to write up whatever he has and give it to Chef. It's not incorporated into our final report. As we walked to the garage, she fumed, vascillating between options. "Should I have stayed and helped him? But then I would have had to edit his work to make sure it was coherent and ..... I'M DONE. I've been here every day!" I figure that Chef could possibly mark us down for not making more of an effort to include him, but, as Andrea said, we've been watching this play out since last November and it's really gotten old. And besides, Chef himself told me that we shouldn't enable him.

So frustrating! But our team ran like a clock except for that aggravation, and you sure couldn't say the same about Team 2. Silvia rolled her eyes while Meghan butchered the pronunciation of the Spanish-style dishes, and Jordan announced that their club/tapas restaurant was projected to make over 30% profit. He admitted that he still had some numbers to "adjust." Chef Larry asked how much they were paying their head chef. Jordan: "About thirty grand. But we'll have a bonus plan in place." Chef Larry: "You'll never get a chef to work for thirty k if you're doing a million and a half and making forty percent." Sam: "We'll keep the numbers secret." Meghan: "We're only hiring illegals, anyway."

As I left today, Chef said, "I haven't gotten such a cogent response to question 58 in a long time." That was the essay question on the final. I knew I nailed it. Sorry. Shouldn't boast.

Monday, we head up to the fifth floor for Wine Studies 2 with Steve Eliot. Last time, we focused on France and California. Next week, it's Everywhere Else.

Final-ly

We had our Culinary Business final this morning, quite a lot of math plus an essay question. The question was along the lines of "You are investigating an urban restaurant location built in the 60s and to accommodate your concept, the kitchen would need extensive remodeling of fixtures and equipment. What options should you investigate? (Do not say, 'Change locations.')" I filled up a page with ideas (hire kitchen consultant to generate new ideas; slightly adjust concept to better utilize space; convince landlord to make improvements which will increase the value of the property; take advantage of enterprize zone or other tax breaks; recruit additional investors... I know this stuff. (A lot better than I know Asian Cuisine, apparently.)

It's time to start thinking seriously about my internship, which will take place between November and next February. Unlike most of my classmates, I have no desire to work in a restaurant kitchen, and I'd like to get a placement that will be a stepping stone to my post-school career. Ideally, I'd have a job just like my last one, executive director of a trade association, except involving food or wine instead of computer technology. I'd like to travel, and I'd like matching funds for my (401)k plan. We're brainstorming here, but I've been thinking about corporate food service, like Bon Appetit or Guckenheimer. Or ChefsBest, a product rating company (primary for products used in the industry, rather than consumer goods). Or Saveur magazine in NYC. And I've heard that Pixar has a fantastic on-site cafe.

Numbers Numbers Numbers

These are the kinds of details you remember for a lifetime. In analyzing a word problem today, Chef Larry scoffed at the huge inventory the restaurant was carrying: about $21,000 for $700 worth of monthly food costs. "That's outrageous!" he exclaimed. "At most, they should have an inventory about 20% of monthly sales," in this case, about $600. Inventory should equal +/- 20% of monthly sales. Anything more are just frozen (maybe literally) assets.

I have to admit, I'm not even speaking up in class anymore when we're doing budget calculations on the board. No need for me to demonstrate my grasp of the material. Chef knows that I know. When he reviewed our labor schedule today, he said, "Looks like you've done this before." Yes, but never for a pretend restaurant.

About that labor schedule: Jim didn't come to class today, so he's been cut completely. That kept me from having to implement an across-the-board reduction in wages for the salaried staff (that's us, the Core Four), because I want to show a decent profit on our projected income statement. After some discussion with Chef Larry about our kitchen plan and flow and timing, Andy was able to reduce the hot line by 4 feet, thereby saving us $8000 in hood costs. Chef gave some allowances for whimsy -- Andy's circular staircase would never pass inspection, and the whole idea of having the back door open directly into a two sided elevator is both imaginative and expensive. Sort of "Get Smart"-like, actually. In fact, we could retool the whole concept and open a spy bar. Menus in code, and that sort of thing. A "cone of silence" over the two-tops.

At any rate, we'll break even at week 33, assuming I did the math correctly.