Cooking with Scissors

When I packed up my bag at the end of class today, I realized that the only tool I'd used all day was my kitchen shears, and I asked Derrick, "What did I do all morning?"

Let's see. First, I sliced deli meats -- about two pounds each of two-way loaf, genoa salami, and ham. This went on a sheet tray along with pistachios and dried fruit (cranberries, cherries, and apricots) for Chef Al's forcemeat demonstration. He showed us how to fill the boned chickens and ducks from yesterday with forcemeat, garnish it with the deli meats, nuts and fruits, and roll it up into ballotines (trussed and baked) and galantines (rolled in cheesecloth and poached in chicken stock). We also made terrines with the forcemeat, decorated with figs or asparagus, and baked in a water bath. And I stuffed five boned quail with forcemeat and fruit, and Andrea included them with the other meats she smoked in the kitchen's smoker.

I went up and down several times to attend to the upstairs smoker -- we use it for hanging items, which today were duck and two tiny chickens, all of which will be centerpieces for this week's buffet presentations. I rode the elevator with Chef Stazi on one trip -- he was heading up to his wine class with a milk crate holding a half-dozen bottles. "You always look so happy," he said. "I love this stuff," I replied, getting out on the second floor. "Ciao, bella," he called.

I roasted some bones, which will also be display pieces, and I had to use my scissors to cut strips of foil and vinegar-drenched paper towel to wrap the ends of a complete lamb rack, so they wouldn't burn. I put away today's delivery, and I did tons of dishes. It was just one of those days.

"You can make mistakes but don't do anything stupid."

We congregate at a large round table in the back of the Careme Room before class starts. I usually arrive first, and I read the sections of the paper that I bring with me (Datebook every day, Food on Wednesday, Wine on Friday), and do the sudoku puzzle. Derrick comes next, then Alex and Nico, and Andy, and Andrea, and Silvia sometimes arrives before class starts, but she usually walks in just as Chef begins taking roll. This morning, Alex announced that after today, we don't need our thumbs any more, when counting down the days, and he held up four fingers on each hand.

Chef Al came and sat with us this morning, with his cup of coffee. It's the first time that's ever happened, with any of our Chefs.

Because yesterday was an off-day, we had an extra-heavy load of work in the kitchen today, in order to complete our products in time for Friday's buffet. We're now the Meat group, and our list of protein to fabricate was lengthy: deboning 3 ducks and 3 chickens (keeping the skin intact; tomorrow we'll stuff them with forcemeat); butchering two rabbits; cutting apart a breast of veal; deboning a veal rack; and trimming two pork tenderloins, two racks of baby back ribs, and two lobes of foie gras. We made 5 gallons of poultry brine and 5 gallons of meat brine.

Before we left class, we ground about 30 pounds of meat: the veal, and some lamb, and a couple of roasted duck livers. Actually, we put them through the grinder three times, using progressively smaller grinding dies. Then we made forcemeat, mixing the ground meat in a 20-quart Hobart mixer (in two batches), adding seasoning salt, then ice water, then cream, then back fat. We cooked off a patty of the mixture to make sure it was juicy and well-seasoned. Yum. The big tub then got stashed in the walk-in, and we'll put it to use tomorrow.

In the middle of the morning, Chef's voice rose above the ambient noise in the room. "Why are you cutting that apart?," he said to a member of the Charcuterie team. "That's your pork leg! See the skin on it? That's supposed to become ham, not cubes!" This obviously qualified as "stupid".

Intro to Internship

No class today! (Instructor's In-Service Day.) Which means I got an extra 2-1/2 hours sleep, and still got up before 8 am.

On Saturday, I spent the day at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, site of my upcoming twelve-week internship. I'd emailed Sarah, my supervisor, that I'd like to come to the market on Saturday to check it out, as I'd never been. Part of the farmer's market experience means shopping locally, so I've visited the Montclair market on Sundays, as well as the bigger Jack London Square one. Sarah's reply included my schedule for the day, and she booked me fully from 6:30 am until 2 pm. Jumping in with both feet, as it were.

I had to wait outside the Rockridge BART station until the attendant opened the grill at the top of the escalators, and I was on the first train westward. I came out of the Embarcadero Station to a flurry of activity, with vendors on both sides of The Embarcadaro setting up tents and tables. I spent the day in CUESA's exhibition kitchen, which is at the north end of the Ferry Building just outside of Taylor's Refresher restaurant. The kitchen area is under the building eaves, in between the arches, and the equipment is all stored behind big mural-covered barn doors that slide open. Inside, there are four portable stainless steel work tables and two propane stoves on wheels, a dish sink, several refrigerators, and a bunch of lockable cabinets which hold dry ingredients, tools, and supplies. I sanitized work surfaces, set up cutting boards and chairs, then set out with Sarah to "shop".

She had a list of the produce we'd need for the day's demonstrations, so we set out to peruse the market. We traded goods for receipts -- the farmers are reimbursed monthly for the foods they provide, and we ended up with four arm-loads of squash, pears, apples, and vegetables for stock.

It was about 8 am by that time, and I was instructed to cook! First, I made a simple vegetable stock, which was the basis for my next project, butternut squash-pear soup. I worked at the demonstration stove, in front of the 20 folding chairs set up for the morning's chef's demos, and in my head, I narrated my progress. I'd told David the night before that I wouldn't be the kind of chef who uses the Royal We when talking through a recipe: "Now we're sauteeing our onions in olive oil..." but that would be an easy trap to fall into.

Anyway, the chefs on Saturday were Jay Foster of farmerbrown restaurant, who demonstrated a couple of salads, and Louise Fong Bonham, who produced the Presidio Hill School cookbook. She made yet another salad, and the butternut squash soup, and my batch was used to feed the assembled hordes. Well, really, about 30 people.

There were lots of activities this Saturday: CUESA was also hosting an apple-tasting and a butter-churning demonstration (using heavy cream, glass jars, and marbles). Sarah was busy organizing volunteers, who did everything from slice and offer apples to dishes and clean-up. After I made soup, I helped serve samples and make sure the chefs had the supplies they needed, then helped deconstruct the kitchen, bag up the leftovers, and sweep. The day flew by and I felt like I belonged there. I'm looking forward to really starting my internship, two weeks from tomorrow.

Seafood Down, Meat & Charcuterie To Go...

Friday is a wonderful day in Garde Manger, the day that all the preparations of the week come together into beautiful displays for the Grand Buffet. This morning, Chef Al provided us with a "bacon tasting" (which also thoughtfullly included scrambled eggs and cheese and English muffins) before starting us on the display work. All the "boards" (2-inch thick maple boards, about 28" x 40" in size) are due out in the dining room at 11:15, so we had plenty of time to get our creative juices flowing. Each of us prepared one or two boards with lots of assistance from Chef Al, who moved all morning from table to table, slicing and placing terrine here, sliding over a line of cheese there, then draping an aspic'd lobster with seaweed.

My first board includes steamed green-lipped mussels, salmon terrine, mousseline-stuffed squid, smoked sturgeon, seared ahi, and lobster and crab aspic.Andrea's tray featured smoked oysters. We had lots of garnishes to play with: pineapples and melons, lots of greens, red and green endive, cut into "flowers," tobiko caviar (red and green), pea and onion sprouts, and lots of edible flowers.
I used Silvia's decorated Arctic char ss the feature item on this tray. I was especially pleased with the "checkerboard" trout (strips of fish with the skin removed from alternating pieces) and the flowing movement of the cold-smoked char slices.

According to Chef Al, his Advanced Garde Manger class is "the most difficult course in the curriculum." There's no question that it requires us to use virtually the skills we've accumulated thus far. And the stakes will get higher as the weeks progress: while today, our trays benefitted from Chef's critical eye and advice, next week, they're worth 30 points each towards our final grade. And the following Friday, they'll be worth 60.

Geometry: Real-Life Applications

There were no calculations involved, but we moved the axis and the centerpoint around a lot. And there was discussion of flow and balance and, yes, "scooch" is a technical term. In Garde Manger, anyway.

We had two competencies today, a tray presentation and vinaigrette (both "single-handed," to use the nautical racing term. Next week, we'll be doing tray competencies in teams of two, or "double-handed".) Chef Al first demonstrated the creation of meat, seafood, and charcuterie trays -- actually, he did the charcuterie tray first, and we ate it, with toasted English muffins, while we watched the rest of his lecture. He's all about the diagonal, and the loop and the double back, and ensuring that our results are not "too Safeway". We had an hour to prepare a tray and mix up some emulsified vinaigrette. In case you need to know (and I'm speaking from personal experience here), you can repair a broken (unemulsified) vinaigrette by starting over with about a tablespoon each of dijon mustard and white vinegar in a mixing bowl. Add the broken dressing gradually, whisking all the while, and it should all blend together beautifully. It worked for me, anyway.

Another class requirement of Chef Al's is actually a gift, as far as I'm concerned. We have to prepare a binder for review on the last day (worth 35 points!) that includes the class syllabus, recipes, related articles, and our class notes. I've been keeping my notes in a series of composition books (I'm on book number six now), but I've been meaning to organize the recipes and other reference materials that we've received during the last year. So his assignment is motivation to get started. I'm already referring regularly to Chef Rhoda's recipes when I make dinner, especially the spicy shrimp and the dan dan noodles, and I made Chef Patricio's cornbread just a couple of weeks ago in the Careme Room.

And undoubtedly, Chef Al's head cheese recipe will become part of my regular repertoire.

Or not.

Things Change, Things Remain the Same

Changes: I had my hair cut today and told my guy, for the first time in a year, that we're growing it out. The hat days are soon to be behind me.

Same Old Same Old: Even though we're in the very very very last class of our "senior" (advanced) part of the program, we've got a classmate who seems way out of her league. She's taking Advanced Garde Manger for the second time, but she's apparently missed quite a few days between here and there. I think there's some disability involved; I get the feeling that her vision is not 100%, which is a scary thing. And English is not her first language.

She started this morning taking the poaching jobs (oven-poaching of our salmon terrine; stove-top poaching of the squid bodies and the roulades), but by 9 am, she still didn't have anything in hot water yet and Andrea was the one getting heated. We switched gears and instructed her to slice zucchini in preparation for grilling. She told me she'd never used the slicer, so I went through it with her, stressing the use of the guard and other safety features. I mentioned to Chef Al that I was unsure of her abilities, and he said, "She's paid for an education just the same as you have." But the slices ended up grilled improperly; she can't seem to follow even the most basic instructions.

While trying to monitor our under-achieving teammate, and without Derrick, who didn't show up, Andrea, Silvia and I managed to get everything accomplished. In addition to the poaching, Andrea made mushroom salad and cold- and hot-smoked all the fish we'd prepped yesterday: salmon, sturgeon, trout, monkfish, oysters, and scallops. Silvia made a many-layered terrine of aspic, avocado, lobster, crab, and caviar. I skinned three monkfish and a big piece of tuna. The monkfish were dressed with truffle oil, saffron, lemon peel, and some of Chef Al's "special seasoning," then poached. I peppered and seared the tuna, then started on a marinade for the scraps, which will show up on Friday as ahi poke.

Andrea has correctly identified one of the main frustrations of this class, despite the ongoing presence of unqualified students: Chef Al gives us a list of tasks every day, but there's little reference to what we're actually trying to accomplish with each step, or what the end result would be. I mean, we know that we'll be building Friday's buffet, but it would have been nice to know where the seven salmon would end up when we were fabricating them (one cold smoked, one gravlax, one ka-su [an Asian-style cure], and the rest as roulades). Or that the fish stock we made yesterday with prawn shells would ultimately become aspic for the lobster-crab terrine. Maybe some people find it easier to work a step at a time. But some of us can handle the Big Picture.

Mostly Mousseline

While we had plenty of projects on our list today (oven poach salmon, clean three more salmon and two Arctic char (they have pink polka-dotted skin!), clean the lobsters and clams we poached yesterday...), most of the day was spent on mousseline. Mousseline is a type of forcemeat, a preparation of ground fish, panada (an egg-bread mixture), and cream, and we made several basic kinds and a number of variations. The first was scallops and sole, and we included some chopped parsley in some and some chunks of prawns in the other. The second was prawn, and we left some plain and added parsley to some. The third was salmon, and we colored some of it with our food dye that we made yesterday from spinach, beets, carrots, and saffron. After a lot of work with the grinder and the robot coupe, we had an ice water bin full of with mousseline-filled pastry bags.

Then the fun began! We piped and piped. On salmon, skin still attached, to make a galantine (a galantine is a roll of forcemeat with skin on the outside). We made roulades, rolling several kinds of mousseline inside of pounded salmon. We made terrines, lined with salmon skin. And we filled giant squid bodies with bi-colored salmon mousseline. All of our rolls, bodies, and terrines will be gently poached off tomorrow.

Silvia's joined our team, hurray.

Next Tuesday is looking to be a crazy day. First, Monday is a holiday for us so we'll have to accomplish our Monday butchery along with our Tuesday tasks. Plus, we'll all switch protein teams so there will be strangeness involved. But most of all, the restaurant will be closed and will be the site of a private lunch event for Barbara Boxer, and we will be providing cold food platters for 150 people.

Playing With Protein

First, an update on the weekend's Amuse-Bouche competition: well, I didn't win. But my compatriot, Andrea, did -- so big hugs and kudos to her.

I think she was very surprised to have won. I worked at the table alongside hers, and she seemed rushed and unsettled during the two hours we had to cook. The blender blades weren't very sharp, so her parsley oil did not turn the vivid green she had hoped for. Most significantly, she received Spanish Valencia rice (used for paella) instead of the arborio she'd requested, and she fretted as she stirred her risotto, determining that she just didn't have enough time to begin again. "It is what it is," she said, resigned, but she gave a big cheer for the Valencia once she was announced the winner. Here's her entry, marsala risotto on sautéed wild mushrooms, with a parmesan crisp: For the record, I prepared a pear-tuna tartlet with a lemon-pepper goat cheese filling.I was really pleased with my results, and it was a lot of fun. It's especially nice to know that some of the school administrators know our names. They always seem to be engaged with the "problem children."

Two of the other entries were based on duck confit, one on a parsley root chip and the other in baked wontons. The final entry was an over-the-top "deviled egg," quail eggs stuffed with crab salad and topped with tobiko caviar and a bit of gold leaf.

This morning, we started our final class at CCA, Advanced Garde Manger. Chef Al, our instructor, seems to love both his work, and teaching. The pace is delightfully different than Restaurant Production. Much of our work is the result of many days of effort, and the big action is not "Fire, one salmon!" from the expeditor, but carrying out a platter filled with beautifully arranged food to the restaurant buffet tables.

Early on, Andrea and I agreed to work together on several 2-person projects we'll have to accomplish during the next three weeks. That already gives me a good feeling about how the class will progress, because I'm working with a winner, don't ya know. The class is divided into three teams: seafood, meat, and charcuterie, and we'll spend a week working with each product. Andrea and I are working with Derrick (another great team member) and a girl as yet unknown to us, Flor. She's a question mark, though: she asked Andrea how many ounces were in a quarter-cup. Silvia and Sam are supposedly in our class but not present today, and either of them would be welcomed.

Each day when we come into class, Chef Al has written the list of daily activities on the board for each group. Today, the seafood team did the following: scaled and filleted four salmon; filleted twenty trout, one sturgeon, and one monkfish; cleaned 5 pounds of scallops and 5 pounds of shrimp; cooked 2 crabs and 2 lobsters; brined the sturgeon, trout, and monkfish; brined a quart of oysters; prepared 3 different cures for salmon; and made food dye from fresh carrots, beets, spinach, and saffron.

And, distressingly, we have to do our own dishes.

"You May Bounce."

When push came to shove, we in Team 1 held our own. For the final buffet of class, we served up some damn good food. Miggi made an exceptional pumpkin custard, starting with baked fresh pumpkin that was puréed and blended with eggs, cream, and spices. It was just peppery enough to lean towards the savory side, and she topped it with toasted coconut at the end. More than one guest asked for the recipe ("Do you have it in a book we can buy in the giftshop?") -- and so did I.

The next chafing dish held jambalaya. "Utilizing the rondo," I sautéed the "trinity": onions, celery and green pepper, then added andouille sausage, garlic, chopped tomatoes, cayenne pepper and Tabasco. About 45 minutes before service, I added chicken stock, brought the whole pot to a boil, stirred in 4 quarts of rice, covered the whole pot with aluminum foil, and stuck it into the oven. Twenty five minutes later, the rice was cooked perfectly. Sara sautéed boneless chicken slices, shrimp, mussels, and clams, then mixed the seafood into the rice.

We had turkey again this week, whole breasts on the bone that were brined for a couple of days. We made a bread stuffing and served slices of turkey on top of the stuffing, surrounded by carrots, the whole thing napped with some chicken velouté. We told our guest that they could practice for Thanksgiving.

Then we had a chafer filled with duck confit, glazed with orange sauce. That's the dish that everybody in the kitchen kept picking at -- and I mean "picking" in the best possible way.

And we served soup: white bean with pork sausage and spinach. Add the duck, and you'd have cassoulet. The food looked and tasted delicious, our team worked together, and it was all good.

Chef Glenn said he was sorry that he only had us for three weeks: "A couple more weeks and we'd be producing some decent food." And then he excused us. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Quiet But Deadly

Today was the last day of the "mystery basket" menu competitions, and Silvia and Andy were in the spotlight, preparing four dishes in 90 minutes. On Tuesday, Andy showed me his secret weapon: a 2" high "toy" box grater, to be part of his amuse-bouche plating. He put together an "interactive" plate of plain toasts, a small spoon filled with diced and seasoned heirloom tomatoes, a shotglass of kalamata tapenade, a chunk of parmesan cheese, and the grater -- a "build your own" crostini. "I'm thinking big," he said. "I want to break the 90 point barrier."

And so he did, scoring a 91. My real hero, though, is Silvia, who came out of nowhere to score a stunning 94 points. Chef Glen was especially impressed with her hot appetizer, which was required to include a poached egg. She presented hers in a hollowed out tomato, along with some spicy tomato sauce. Her entrée plate was also impeccable, perfectly cooked steak, potatoes and hollandaise. "I'll tell you a secret," she said. "I dropped one of the cooked potatoes on the floor! And I picked it up and used it. Of course," she clarified, "I washed it off first. But I was afraid that was going to doom me." Far from it. She should drop a potato every day. I'm serious. I'm going to be looking her up in a couple of years when I need a southern California caterer.

Today was our last day of a la carte service in the restaurant, and tomorrow is our last buffet, at least from the kitchen. Next week, we start our three final weeks of class, and we'll be in Advanced Garde Manger, producing cold buffet items. Chef Al popped in to our morning planning session to tell us that we need to bring all our knives on Monday, and they need to be sharp.

Duh.

"If you measure, you have no feeling."

Today was pasta day, in a big way. I started this morning by rolling out the reserved dough for the two dishes our team has on this week's menu: an appetizer called "liquid ravioli," which is pasta filled with braised oxtail meat, a cube of glace de viande, and a little morsel of foie gras; and sautéed chicken with fettuccini, in a sauce made with chicken velouté, tomatoes, capers, and lemon. Miggi brought in her motorized pasta maker, which turned out to be the life-saving gadget of the day. But first thing this morning, I wasn't thinking about gadgets. I was thinking about Grandma.

My grandma was the kind of person who needs to keep her hands busy, and when she came to visit us when I was little, she was often mending. Mom would toss holey socks and shirts missing buttons into a laundry basket, and Grandma would settle into a chair with the basket at her side. One of the first lessons I learned from her was about threading a needle. While it may seem expedient to thread on a really long length of thread, so that you don't have to do it again for a long time, you inevitably end up tangling it and you spend more time trying to unravel your mess than you've saved. Rolling pasta is much the same. You may think you should start with a big lump of dough, but each successive pass through the rollers makes the dough longer and thinner and that big lump turns into a strip of dough too long to handle. It's a big mess. Resist the urge.

I ended up rolling and cutting six more batches of fettuccini. Turns out the kitchen was responsible for "tasting plates" following today's special guest lecturer. The CCA hosted a visit by Lorenza De'Medici, a noted cookbook author who showed us how to make fettuccini and "ravioli gnudi," or spinach gnocchi. She's a lovely woman in her 70s, able to roll out pasta by hand without getting a spot of flour on her lovely purple silk shirt, chatting all the while. She definitely comes from a different place and time. She told us that she learned to cook by sneaking into the kitchen and watching the family chef. And after she married, she often called that same woman to learn how to make certain dishes, so that she could instruct her own chef. So I guess the teaching comes naturally. After watching her roll out the dough, methodically turning and flouring it, I was certainly glad we had "the machine."

That's What It's All About

The Careme Room was transformed overnight, and now instead of 2- and 4-tops, it's filled with long banquet tables that look like they'll each seat about 80 people. Preparations are underway for tonight's first Alumni Dinner, with an expected 320 CCA graduates in attendance. When Derrick arrived, he said the room reminded him of Hogwarts. All we need now is a naming hat on the dais (made from chocolate?)

Just before we were excused for the afternoon, Chef Weller came into the kitchen and called for our attention. He's the Executive Chef of the school and he's usually walking into class with a clipboard, ready to have a chat with a student about a disciplinary matter. He's a shoo-in for the "jolly old elf", except he's way too young and has no hair under his toque. Actually, he may be a Deadhead at heart -- I've seen him before class in a tie-dyed t-shirt, and he has a multicolored chef's coat hanging in his office.

His visit today was not related to academic matters. He wanted to "share part of his day" with us, with a teacher's intuition about finding the teaching moment at every opportunity. He entered the kitchen carrying a dinner plate, a bread-and-butter plate, and a tall skinny shot glass. The dishes have been rented for tonight's event, and he began by describing his dilemma. "When I left last night, my F&B manager told me that we'd be plating our entreés on this" (holding up the large plate), "and that we'd be using these" (he picked up the small one) "for appetizers, salad, and dessert." The assembled group of students groaned audibly: the plates are maybe five inches in diameter, and not the dish you'd select to make a dramatic statement with your food. And drama is important. Chef described tonight's audience, culinary professionals returning to their alma mater, with high expectations of being wow'd: "a tough crowd, indeed."

Chef informed us that he'd lost sleep last night over this plate issue, and he was only partially relieved when he was advised this morning that there were enough larger plates to accommodate all the dishes. "I needed to see for myself," he said, and he discovered that there were enough for three out of the four courses. "This is how great things happen," he said. "When an obstacle forces you to think creatively and you end up with something better than you'd imagined." He described how the salad course, a "deconstructed cioppino salad", would be served on the small plate: a swirl of caesar dressing ending in a small pile of microgreens; tomato water in the shot glass in the center of the plate, topped by a crostini spread with tomato-zinfandel jam and a dollop of crab salad. "It's a dish that has to be pre-set," he said. "A waiter could not carry it two feet. But our guests will come down from the mezzanine, where they've been enjoying cocktails, into a room set with hundreds of these 'sculptures'. It'll be awesome." His excitement was palatable. "That's what I love about this job," he said.

Scratching Things Off the List

Chef Glenn's grading requirements include 80 points of skills competency: we have to dice and sauté onions, make rice, poach eggs, make hollandaise, turn potatoes, make consommé, and make pasta. At the end of last week, I still had rice, pasta, and consommé to do. I knocked the rice out first thing. It's just like on the package, except I used a paper cartouche instead of a lid. Nothing fancy like pilaf, just basic cooked rice. I've been avoiding the consommé and the pasta, because they're not things that I make very often, but in retrospect: piece of cake.

Consommé is well-clarified and seasoned stock, and we have gallons of stock in the refrigerator. I started with 2 cups of chicken stock and 3 cups of veal stock. The stock is clarified by use of "clearmeat", a combination of ground meat, mirepoix, egg whites and tomato. Beat three egg whites until frothy. Add ground beef and mix the eggs whites thoroughly into the meat. Stir in the mirepoix and tomato, and add this mixture to your cold stock. Bring the stock to a simmer, stirring just a bit at the beginning to make sure the clearmeat is not sticking to the bottom of the pot. The clearmeat forms a "raft" on top of the stock, catching the impurities in the liquid as it gently simmers. After about 15 minutes, carefully ladle out the stock and pass it through a strainer lined with a coffee filter. If life is good, your stock will be clear and ready for seasoning. Today, life is good.

I rarely make pasta dough from scratch, so I left it to the very end. But seriously, it took less than 10 minutes to combine 3 cups of flour, 5 eggs, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon oil in a large bowl, stir it together with my hand, and knead it until smooth. Then I wrapped it in plastic and refrigerated it until tomorrow, when I'll roll it out, cut it, and cook it up. Then I'll be finished with everything in this class, except showing up every day, and taking the final on Friday.

Today was a prep day, as the restaurant's closed on Monday. I made a big pot of ratatouille, which will be served tomorrow with lamb chops. There wasn't a whole lot of work for our group today. Sara braised oxtails, which will become ravioli filling tomorrow, and Miggi made pasta in quantity, and Kristina worked out tomorrow's sandwich, a salmon BLT. Cho was involved with cutting mirepoix for most of the morning. At one point, he was chopping onions with two parallel knives, Benihana-style, and Chef Glenn told him to chop the way he learned in skills.

Chef Weller joined our class at 7am to announce that two of us have made it to the finals of a $10,000 scholarship contest being conducted at the CCA. We had to submit a recipe for an amuse-bouche, as well as a 500-word essay describing how the appetizer was appropriate for the CCA's 30th anniversary. The winning recipe will be the starter at a big school fund-raising dinner. Five finalists were selected based on the recipes and essays, and we have to produce 10 portions of our appetizer at a competition on Saturday, when the winner will be selected. I am super-excited to be a finalist, and so is Andrea.

Cooking Up A Storm

Chef Glenn walked through the empty dining room this morning, where I sat reading my paper. He paused next to my table to chat, an unusual occurence. "I love this kinda weather," he said. "It makes me feel like cooking. Do you ever have those days, where you just wake up and think, 'I'm gonna cook today'?" "Yes, Chef," I said. "That's why I'm here.

We scoured the walk-in refrigerators and came up with a game plan for buffet. Andy's team worked on paella, with Chef Glenn's 3-foot pan. Silvia started out with tamales but I have the feeling that they morphed into shepherd's pie, though I never really made it down to that end of the buffet. My team got our strategy together pretty quickly: smoked beef tenderloin with mushroom sauce (all week we've had big boxes of wild mushrooms, kinds I've never seen); scallops wrapped with bacon; roasted fingerling potatoes with green beans, kalamata olives, and feta; roasted baby carrots; and turkey breast stuffed with pesto and pistachio dressing.

The last dish was my project, the result of having tasty stuffing left over from yesterday's "torchon" experiment. We received tied boned turkey breasts from butchery, and I cut them open and pounded them slightly. Then I covered the meat with pesto made from basil, pistachios, garlic, parmesan, and olive oil. I topped that with a thick layer of stuffing with some additional pistachios mixed in, then rolled it up and tied it. After family meal, I seared them off -- there were three -- then finished them off in the oven, brushing on a glaze of reduced orange juice. Then I stood at the carving station, slicing off pieces and offering them to our lunch guests.

I was gratified to have family and friends "in the house" today, some of the people who've been part of my "rooting section" through this process. Fitz was the maitre d' today, and he chatted with everybody as they entered the kitchen, and after service he said, "You have some solid folks standing behind you." Today's classwork felt more personal -- more like "home cooking," if you want the truth -- because I knew it would be eaten by people I love.

WWAD?

Andy's always multi-tasking, to the point where his teammates have threatened to tie him to his station. So the answer to the question, "What would Andy do?" is "Something else."

The restaurant was closed today for two private parties and it was really a lot of fun. Each work station produced part of the meal, assembly-line-style, and I was recruited to add beans to the mashed potatoes that Sam scooped. Then Derrick added turkey scallopini (for the first party) or rib eye steak (for the second), and Andrea added sauce and garnish. Fitz was at the start of the line, wiping plates clean, and Sara was at the other end, passing them to the counter for the wait-staff to pick up. The two other stations provided salad and a couple of gnocchi dishes, and soup and fish. Chef Glen gave us an A for execution, at least on the first party; he had to attend a meeting before we were finished with the second. In his absence, Andrea gave us an A+.

Before service, I spent a long time on a pet project of Chef Glenn's, a "stuffing torchon" to be sliced and added to the turkey plate. I made bread stuffing with sautéed shallots, onions, and celery, moistened with some chicken stock and some fresh applesauce, and seasoned with sage. I formed the stuffing into rolls, encasing it in clean napkins tied at the ends with kitchen twine. Then, I steamed them. We had a long discussion about including eggs in the stuffing: Fitz and I wanted to do it, but Chef said no. When we sliced the finished product, it was looser than "the vision," and the slices didn't hold together. So Chef 86'd them from the plate. "You should have added eggs," he told me.

What Do You Want From Life, Dance Mix

I can see why some people get into the adrenaline of back-of-the-house kitchen work. It's full of near misses, thinking on the fly, drama, and noise. Chef Glenn has his "Five P's" (different than the Marketing P's): "Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance." We were doing fine up until he totally changed the plan on us. Then, we needed to call in some favors.

Sara didn't show today, which was a problem because we needed to make more spaetzle, and she made it on Monday, and we needed to make more Red Bell Pepper Salsa, and she made it last week. Chef Glenn doesn't like to repeat himself. And Cho showed up today, after a four day absence. He was a pariah in our group, and nobody was particularly glad to see him today, including the Chef. So he was assigned his menu competency, which essentially kept him out of our hair but not out of our way, as he took up half the stove and one of our two counters with all his preparation. I don't know what he was thinking, but he put maraschino cherries (with stems!) on top of his amuse-bouche. And he was at least 20 minutes late with his final plate. Once he was finished, we had him transport dishes and clean shrimp. Anything else was just too risky.

But as I said, we were all set as we came to family meal time at 10, with only two beurre blanc sauces and mashed potatoes left to make before service, along with getting our station in order. Naturally, Chef Glenn dropped two small incendiary devices on us. First, we had to prepare an amuse bouche before service (with 45 reservations, that meant at least 60 individual appetizers). Then, he said he wanted onion rings to garnish our tenderloin. "Have Cho do it," he said. "He ruined them last week, Chef," I said. "I want onion rings," he said.

So I baked off some puff pastry circles, and Andrea came to the rescue with some herbed goat cheese. Nick and Andy got to work on the onion rings, which was handy as they're at the fryer station this week. But Andy severely oversalted the first batch of seasoning flour, which wasn't discovered until Chef Joe ate one and complained. So that bowl of rings was dumped, and they began again.

The saving grace of my team is Fitz, who has a mellow attitude and strongly positive energy, in kind of a cosmic Jamaican way. He (like many of my classmates) looked a little under the weather this morning, but about 11 he said, "I'm feelin' it!" It's all good.

Right before the doors opened, I finished piping the puff pastries and topped them with little heirloom cherry tomato halves. Chef Glenn watched over my shoulder. "Those aren't maraschino cherries on there?" he asked, and he winked.

Can You Take the Heat?

Actually, this situation in the Careme Room is, despite the advertisement, somewhat unrealistic -- most restaurants keep a pretty regular menu for a season, or at least, for a week. This week, we're cooking one menu today and tomorrow (with a separate "soul food" menu today for a prospective client); on Thursday, we have two parties of 50 each, (different menus for each event); and on Friday, it's the Grand Buffet, something completely different yet again. So, rather than being a "typical" restaurant experience, we have what's more like a "condensed" experience. But as we've learned, you got to watch the pot carefully -- if you reduce it too much, you end up with burnt stock.

Sara took her menu competency today, so she was gone for a couple of hours this morning, and both Kristina and Miggi were under the weather, though present. But we held things together and erred in only a couple of things (that we'll be able to fix tomorrow): we started the lobster mashed potatoes way too early, and I didn't make enough porcini beurre blanc. Actually, I made plenty, but I spilled a bunch. It was an accident. I'll try really hard not to repeat that one tomorrow.

Actually, the best thing that happened today was the cornbread. Chef Glenn asked yesterday for a recipe (for inclusion in the aforementioned "soul food" menu), and I brought in the one that I made in Chef Patricio's class. I used Chef Glenn's special cast iron skillet, and it turned out perfectly. One of the waiters told me after service that he'd asked the guests if there was something that they'd particularly enjoyed about their meal, and they said it was the cornbread. I told you -- it's a winner!

Like Opening a Fortune Cookie

Mondays are prep day for the week's a la carte menu, and our team is working on a scallop appetizer with porcini mushroom sauce, smoked beef tenderloin with lobster mashed potatoes, honey-peppercorn salmon with spinach couscous, and spaetzle with roasted mushrooms. I just barely got started making brine for the salmon and vegetable stock for the spaetzle when I was selected (with two other classmates) to do the "mystery basket" competency, so for the next hour and a half, I worked solo.

Our challenge was not a "mystery basket" per se, where you get a selection of ingredients to make into something specific. Rather, we had to make two portions of an amuse-bouche, a hot appetizer, risotto, and rib eye with tournéed potatoes, hollandaise sauce, and "vegetable du jour". We had 90 minutes before our first dish was due, then each following course was due 10 minutes later. We took the dishes out to the dining room as scheduled, then returned to the kitchen to keep working. Chef tasted and graded, then we each sat down with him at the end for an evaluation. The competency is worth 100 points of our 300 point total for this class.

I took a few minutes to walk through the refrigerators, carrying a big bowl, and collecting ingredients. Then I spent a few minutes outlining my meal: deviled eggs to start, followed by seared scallops on Asian slaw, then parmesan risotto, then green beans as the accompaniment to my steak. I put water on to boil for the eggs, then made the slaw: sliced Nappa cabbage, grated carrots, slivered shallots, some rice wine vinegar and a pinch of celery seeds. I tucked that into the refrigerated drawer under my work station, then sautéed some bacon. After the eggs were cooked and cooled in an ice bath, I cut them in half (not the long way, but around the shorter "middle"), and cut a bit off the ends so that they would stand up. The filling was made from yolks, dijon mustard, creme fraiche, minced shallots, cornichons, and bacon, and I stuck a nice fat piece of bacon crosswise on top. I filled four, then set them aside in the drawer, as well.

I started the risotto by sautéing shallots in olive oil. I added the rice and stirred it until well coated, then gradually added chicken stock until the rice was cooked, a process which took about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, I grated some parmesan, made tomato concassé, cut some basil into chiffonade, and seared off the steak, so that it had pretty grill marks on both sides. I peeled the potatoes, tipped the beans, clarified butter, and made hollandaise. I put the hollandaise on the back of the stove to stay warm, covered with foil. After I delivered my amuse-bouche, I put the potatoes into boiling water to cook. I seared the scallops, then made a quick sauce with sweet chili sauce, butter, and lemon juice. I tossed the scallops in the sauce, plated them atop the slaw, and delivered the second plate. I stirred parmesan and creme fraiche into the risotto, garnished it, and delivered the third plate. I rewarmed the steak, cooked the green beans, sautéed the potatoes and the beans separately in a little butter, thinned out the hollandaise, plated it all up, and delivered the final plate. Time for a glass of orange juice (we missed family meal) and a quick break.

I thought Chef might dis my eggs as "housewifey", even though I've seen photos recently of deviled eggs from upscale restaurant kitchens. I was okay with the scallops. I thought the risotto looked PERFECT. I was afraid the hollandaise was too tangy, and I was wary about the doneness of the steak, which he had ordered medium rare. Turns out, he LOVED the eggs ("I'm a pushover for deviled eggs," he said), but they could have been more zesty. The scallops were perfect. The risotto was bland. "There's nothing there. It's perfectly cooked, though. But you should have used some of those porcini mushrooms, or some herbage. Some love." And the entrée was marred only by some slightly undercooked green beans. I received 84 points, which he said was "fantastic". Of course, the voice in my head says "100 would be fantastic," but I'm just glad it's behind me.

"You're fun to work with and you're a good cook," Chef Glenn said. "You'll be successful in this business."

Disaster Narrowly Averted

We spent the morning preparing food and setting up the kitchen for today's Grand Buffet. On Friday, the dining room is filled with platter after platter of beautifully arranged food from the Advanced Garde Manger and Baking and Pastry classes, plus the kitchen is open and we prepare a selection of hot dishes. Today's options included blackened ahi tuna, salmon wrapped in puff pastry, and sautéed scallops. My team was responsible for prime rib, stuffed pork tenderloin served with slices of braised pork belly, mashed potatoes and acorn squash, wild mushrooms, and veal parmesan. And everything needed to be in place, chafing dishes lit and filled with water, at 11 am.

I worked on tomato sauce for the veal, peeled potatoes and squash, and kept an eye on the beef, sizzling away all morning. At one point, Chef Glenn walked by and said, "When you have a chance, light the fryers." I replied with a snappy "Yes, Chef!" and before too long, Fitz and I were sitting on the floor while he showed me how to light the pilots. You need to crank the knob half-way, stick in a lighted match, and hold for 15 seconds, then turn the knob from "light" to "on". Of course, the knob and the flame are behind metal doors, about 7 inches off the floor. The second fryer was especially recalcitrant, and refused to light about 4 times before it finally "took".

Not long afterwards, we broke for "family meal," everybody sitting around in the dining room (careful not to disturb the perfectly set tables) with plates of leftovers from yesterday. I headed for the ladies room, and when I returned, I watched as Chef marched Fitz back into the kitchen, where they stood next to the fryers. I joined them, and Chef pointed to the right fryer, smoking hot but empty. "It's like driving your car without oil! You could have burned the place down!" I joined Fitz's apologies, already in progress, and he told us to get out of his kitchen and finish our lunch. A few minutes later, I approached him and said, "Chef, I'm very sorry about the fryer. I made a mistake, but it'll never happen again." "You're damn right," he said. "Those are the lessons that last you the rest of your life." Then he told me about the time he burned his eyebrows off.

I was all set to help Fitz carve prime rib, but Chef put me on "maitre d'" duty. I stood at the entrance to the kitchen to smile and invite people in. I had a good view of the dining room for two hours, and the chance to talk to many of today's guests, including the school's executive staff.

When we cleaned up after lunch service ended, several Chefs gathered in the front aisle of the kitchen, laughing and joking and clearly shooting the breeze. Andy walked past me and said, "That's what I want to be: the Chef who stands around joking while everybody else works." Isn't that everybody's view of management?

I am falling into an all-too-common trap by failing to mention the people who are making our life SO much easier this week: we have stewards who do our dishes. They are wonderful. We give them the good leftovers.

At the end of the shift, Chef Glenn called out "Bring it in," and gave us his feedback. He pointed out the areas that we should concentrate on next week: having our tools available and sharp, being more precise with the timing of our cooking, and "taking it up a notch." As always, he said, "OK, you don't have to go home, but you do have to leave my kitchen." Which we did. I thanked him as I left the room, and he said, "You did good."

Lessons From Someone In The Know

Well, Cho didn't show up today, but Sara did, and it was clear that yesterday's absence was due to illness -- she looked a little green around the gills, but she was a trooper, and stuck it out. And Chef Glenn assigned Fitz to us for the day. "You just tell me what to do, and I'll do it," is his attitude.

Speaking of attitude... Chef Glenn has sensed some, and he's not shy about verbalizing his feelings. He's called Alex on it a couple of times: "your body language says you're not taking this seriously," "I see you smiling but this is not funny." Alex is one of the few students who's been employed in a restaurant kitchen, full-time for the last several years (and he's just coming up on his 21st birthday), and so he does have a lot of experience with the way things work in the Real World. And I think he's tired (like the rest of us) of some of the "pretend" aspects of being in school, and he'd just rather blow them off. But Chef Glenn will have none of it.

I had the fryer station today, and though I immediately needed to cleanse my face when I got home, after standing over the deep fryer for two hours, I love having a big vat of hot-enough oil to cook in. One of the real challenges with home frying is reaching and maintaining the heat. A constant temperature of about 360° is what this unit is putting out, and stuff cooks evenly and quickly.

Too quickly, as it turns out. After I fired my third batch of Crab Rangoons, and delivered them to "the rail" (a shelf covered by heat lamps, where the servers pick up the food), Alex came over from his station and stood in front of me. "I'm not meaning this to be in any way negative, but you need to pay attention to what else is ordered on the same ticket with your food. You just put an appetizer under the heat lamp and mine isn't gonna be done for two minutes. That would never happen in my restaurant. The goal should be for all the cooks to deliver their part of the order to the rail at the same time." Hey, it makes sense to me. I thanked him for his feedback and told him I appreciated the instruction, since I'd never worked in a restaurant before. "I know," he said, "and that's the problem that I have with some parts of this program. They're not teaching us some of the really basic things that make a restaurant run smoothly."

I paid attention to the entire orders then, as Camille called them out, and I made it a point to delay firing when necessary, in order to deliver my dishes at the same time that the rest of the appetizers were ready.

Now that we've gotten used to our menus and our stations, it's all gonna change. Tomorrow, we contribute to the Grand Buffet, with carving stations and in other ways which are not yet clear to us. And on Monday, we start working on a whole new menu, and each group will change positions in the kitchen, with different equipment and areas of specialization.

"I will not let you fail"

Today, we had our regular lunch customers in the Careme Room (perhaps 45) and a group of ladies who came on the bus from the Opera House, is what I overheard -- but at any rate, 6 eight tops, with a set menu, beef temderloin, honey-green peppercorn salmon, or chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese. My group, team 2, was responsible for the tenderloin: two slices, each the width of two of Chef Glenn's fingers, plus two triangles of rosti potatoes, two sautéed "teenage" (slightly bigger than 'baby') carrots, and two onion rings, sauced with some gorgeous Jack Daniels/veal demiglace.

Sara didn't show today, so it was Kristina, Michi, Cho, and me, and I have to tell you that Cho just doesn't move all that fast. And he seems to need to make everything over. He had to start from scratch on the onion rings (onion rings!!) because he screwed up the batter, and the rest of us have been inclined to just ignore him and let him do his thing, but that comes back to haunt us as the morning runs down. As I left class this morning, Kristina said, in an aside, "It's not like I complained or anything, but Chef says if he's not performing, we can just tell him to get his ass in gear."

The kitchen today, during service, was a wonderful and scary thing. (Please forgive me if you've worked in a restaurant kitchen before; this is all new to me.) When the order is received, it's either "ordered" (get ready, and we'll tell you when to cook it), or "fired", which means "cook it now". I was on veal milanese today, a sautéed and breaded veal scallopini topped with mixed greens, some chopped heirloom tomatoes, with some pickled red onions as garnish. This was Sara's post yesterday, and she made about two all shift; today it was a hot item and we had 10, and ran out. There's a little beurre blanc sauce garnish, with some capers, and we neglected to make the sauce -- fortunately, Silvia made some for her salmon dish and shared -- so I owe her big time. And Chef suggested that we deep fry the capers, but Cho was (slowly, methodically) hogging the deep fryer, so they were not fried when they were placed on the plate. Chef called us on it, and you just have to say, "Yes, Chef. No, Chef. Sorry, Chef." There's a crazy amount of adrenaline. Your goal is to make each plate identical, and fast, and he's yelling, "Now Now Now! You're killing me! Where's that gnocchi? I need soup on the rail! I got four salmons all day!" and then people are eating your food and saying they loved it and man, what could be better?

As I said, we screwed up in multiple ways, and Kristina was sure that we were gonna get a nasty lecture from Chef Glenn following service, but, after two "A minus" days in a row, we got an "A for effort, C plus for execution." We talked through the lunch adventure, he gave us some tips about tomorrow's prep, and he told us to leave. "Get out of here. I'm sick of seeing you people."

I thanked him as I left the classroom, and he said, "You did really well today. This is a strong team. I'm really encouraged." I demurred, thinking about our various slip-ups, and he said, "I will not let you fail."

Man, what more can you ask?

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

You know how you have those moments when it just hits you that life is good? A few days ago, I was driving home from my externship interview and I had a clear remembrance of just such a moment.

It was a Sunday, noonish, mid-summer, 2002, and I was walking from the parking garage by the train tracks to the Jack London Square farmer's market. Strolling along, my empty shopping bag in hand, I phoned my son in San Diego. It being well before midafternoon, and he being a young man in his early 20s, I woke him up with my call. He roused himself sufficiently to converse with me about my brother's late summer wedding in Denver: we'd offered to throw his rehearsal dinner in the backyard of his home, for about sixty-five people.

After I hung up the phone, that's when I had the "moment": a pang of love for my son, my brother, his lovely fianceé, and all our family and friends who would soon be gathering; and excitement and eagerness to plan an event far away from my home, in a strange town and in a strange kitchen. And the sun was shining on the water and on the piles of beautifully ripe fruits and vegetables, and people were milling about, happily shopping, and I felt really, really happy.

So you might understand the way I feel about my externship, a strong confidence that it's the right place for me to be. I'll start work there the week of November 12, further details to be determined, through February 1, at which point I'll be really and truly finished with culinary school. Fortunately, though, there are only 28 more days on which I need to wear the silly hair-destroying hat.

I have to say that my first time experience in a restaurant kitchen was a bit tweaky, and it's my own damn fault. Yesterday, I drove home after seeing the movie "Across the Universe", an over-the-top extravaganza that just oozes with the talent, energy, and creativity of the people who made it and who perform in it. I thought about how this class is like my opportunity to perform, to demonstrate my personal talent, energy, and creativity, and that I should be excited and anxious to show my stuff. And then, when I got to class this morning, the first thing I did was burn the bacon.

It all worked out swell. I took Andy into the "office" (that's the walk-in refrigerator) and asked him how I should prepare myself for the first day on the line in a restaurant kitchen. He said, "Just get everything you need all around you, in case you can't move for two hours. Have clean wet towels. You can do this."

Today, I worked the salad station, what's typically called "pantry" in a commercial restaurant. I plated the Cobb salads, and added the salad garnish to the veal. And when all was said and done, we had two orders for Cobb, and four orders for veal. A little anticlimatic, but now I've done it. There's no going back.

Working for the Coach

More than any instructor we've had thus far, Chef Glenn is a coach. We're running a restaurant, he's in charge, and he's always looking out for us. He's brusque, sarcastic, and committed to excellence. As he was talking about what we can expect tomorrow, when the dining room is open and we'll be working the line, I could feel the pit growing in my stomach. I've never worked in a restaurant before. I'm trying hard not to act like this is all new to me. And then he said, "But hey, if we make a mistake, what the heck! We're students! When some old duffer in the dining room starts complaining about how long he's waiting for his entrée, I remind him that he's eating in a teaching establishment. Then I comp his dessert."

We've been broken up into three groups, each of which is responsible for about 5 menu items, and a dish for staff meal. The menu changes weekly, and on Friday, there's the Grand Buffet. Basically, it's constant work from 7am til 2pm, with 20 minutes for staff meal about 10am. I'm in a group with two women I know slightly from Advanced B&P, and a woman and a man who I've not worked with before. At the end of today's shift, it was obvious that Cho, the guy, is the slow cog in the mechanism. He spent about three hours making marinade for chicken satay. Gratifyingly, Chef noticed, and called him on it. We'll have to keep that in mind when we divvy up jobs, going forward.

Our group is making the aforementioned chicken satay, with peanut sauce (Cho only got that part-way made today), and crab rangoons (the Trader Vic's creation) with sweet chili sauce. We're also responsible for veal milanese (pounded thin, breaded, and sautéed, with a green salad on top), mahi mahi with roasted red pepper salsa, and cobb salad. Today, we did whatever prep we could do: made the rangoons and the chili sauce, pounded the veal and made the vinaigrette, fabricated the fish and made the salsa, and cooked the poultry for the cobb salad, and made blue cheese dressing. I made two quarts of mayonnaise by hand, and roasted and peeled a dozen bell peppers, and skinned and portioned fish, and folded wonton wrappers around crab filling. Among other things.

It's great to have some new classmates. Miggi apologized early in the day for her English; she's only been in the US for three years and Mandarin is her first language. Her husband is Caucasian, based on her last name. She's planning to work at The Inn at Spanish Bay for her internship, and she teaches ballroom dancing. She's tall and focused.

Of our original 15, there are five of us left in this class: Andrea, Andy, Silvia, Derrick, and me. I feel like the ghosts of our classmates past sometimes join us; I could have sworn I heard Tashana in the student dining room last week.

Before we left class today, Chef Glenn reviewed our performance today: "I'll give you an A-. You worked quietly, there wasn't too much joking, and everything got done." He did call us "a herd of turtles" while we were sweeping and mopping, though. And he's already got some preconceived notions: "I don't know why none of you seniors can make mashed potatoes," Chef said. "You haven't tried ours yet," I said. Andy looked at me and gave me the thumbs up. "Please, prove me wrong," said Chef. That's on Group 1's list of things to do for tomorrow.