Thanksgiving 2008

We had a little break from Culinary School this week and last week and won't have class until Monday night. I have been very busy making things for people and Thanksgiving. Jesse McElreath, pastor and friend, hinted that "it was pumpkin season, wasn't it?" at church a couple weeks ago. I have been giving him pumpkin spice cakes with cream cheese and orange glaze for a few years now ever since I gave him some for Pastor Appreciation Month one year and he confessed he ate them all without sharing any with his wife, Darlene. He puts butter in the well in the center of the mini-bundt cake, heats it and then eats the whole thing. I made a batch of pumpkin bread for him, us, and brought some to work where it was promptly eaten and I was even asked for the recipe by the Warden.

For Thanksgiving dinner I started preparations a week ago by making homemake stock and drippings from the turkey parts I roasted were saved for the gravy. As usual, I made too much food, ate too much food, and now have too much food in my refrigerator! The menu was:

Crudites

Cheese tray

Spinach Dip

Herb Salted Turkey with traditional gravy

Ham with apricot glaze and cranberry chutney

Cornbread stuffing

Mashed Potatoes

Candied mashed sweet potatoes

Fresh green bean casserole

Cherry Jubilee salad

Homemade yeast rolls

Key Lime Pie

Pumpkin Caramel Pie

Pumpkin Tarts

My favorites are always the turkey and cornbread stuffing. I have memories of helping my father may Thanksgiving dinner, especially the stuffing and gravy. I wish now I had paid more attention to his instructions, but I do remember him saying how important it was to make a good stock, a proper roux, and brown everything going into the stock beforehand. His stuffing and gravy were always so delicious but I don't know what his secret ingredients were.

I make my stuffing as close to his as I can with bacon, sausage, celery, onions, cornbread and various seasonings.

My children all have their favorites and I have to include them in the meal. My daughter, Helen, who couldn't be here told me she misses the homemade rolls the most about our family Thanksgiving. She especially liked eating them the next day with turkey in sandwiches. My son, Glenn, likes green bean casserole. My other son, John David, couldn't be here but he has to have cranberry sauce, jellied, from the can and sliced. My daughter, Alexandra, has to have the cherry jubilee salad which she always calls, "pink stuff". Everyone got their favorites and we enjoyed sharing the meal together. Glenn's girlfriend, Jennifer, brought samples from her family's Thanksgiving dinner including her chocolate steamed pudding and cheesecake. I haven't tried them yet but I will.

For dessert I made Key Lime pie for the first time and I loved it. The crust was made of graham cracker crumbs, pecans and butter and I made it in a large tart pan so it looked really neat. I made a new recipe for pumpkin pie using caramel and I did not care for it. I'll go back to the regular pie next time.

Now, I'm off to put up Christmas decorations and start thinking about the dinner I'm making tomorrow night for Jennifer's parents. I will make a sukiyaki dinner.

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Week 11: Soups

Photos: Ray and Robert: Partners in crime and 4 of the 5 soups

I was looking foward to soup class. After all, one of the best parts of fine dining for me has been eating the soups. There is a restaurant in Fredericksburg, Texas, The Nest, where I always look forward to the soup as a first course. Even ingredients I don't normally like, such as mussels, taste wonderful in soup prepared by Chef/Owner John Wilkenson, a graduate of the CIA. Over the years I've had all types of creamy vegetable and other soups there that I have yet to find as good anywhere else in the country. Maybe I was hoping I could learn to make really, really good soup. I was therefore a little disappointed to learn we would be making the following soups:
Puree of Split Pea
Beef and vegetable
Vichyssoise (Cold Potato-Leek Soup)
Fresh Peach and Yogurt
New England Style Clam Chowder

Personally I am not a fan of cold soups. On a trip to Switzerland in 2005 we ended up in a restaurant with a menu we couldn't read and a waitress who didn't speak English, although she did say, "Oh shit!", and I ordered soup, expecting a nice hot bowl of soup. Instead I got a bowl of cold soup which was probably a vichyssoise, although I didn't realize it at the time. I did not eat it. So, needless to say, I wasn't to enthused about making cold potato leek soup, but volunteered to make it anyway, as a joint effort with Ray.
Fortunately Robert had practiced making split pea soup at home and volunteered to make it.
Split pea soup is another soup I could live without--the color is nasty to me. Ray said he'd make the beef soup, and I was happy to make the clam chowder, a soup I actually like. The clam chowder turned out very well and was not too difficult to make. Our other soups got good remarks from the instructors except for our not white vichyssoise. We used a darkish stock so it was not the right color and our peach soup had too much yogurt and not enough peach. Robert's split pea soup scored a 9 our of 10, and my clam chowder got positive remarks.
I brought the clam chowder home and served it for dinner with rave reviews.
New England Style Clam Chowder
Adapted from On Cooking, Fourth Edition

1 qt canned clams with juice
approx 3 cups water or fish stock
1 large potato, diced
4 oz bacon, chopped
1 large onion, diced
1 rib celery, diced
2 T flour
2 cups milk
4 oz heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
tabasco sauce, to taste
worcestershire sauce, to taste
fresh thyme, to taste

Drain clams, reserve clams and liquid. Add water to liquid to total 4 cups. Simmer potatoes in this clam/water liquid until nearly cooked. Strain and reserve the liquid.
Fry the bacon, add the onions and celery and sweat until tender. Add the flour and cook to make a light colored roux. Add the clam liquid, whisking to avoid lumps. Simmer for 30 minutes, skimming as necessary. Bring milk/cream to a boil in another pan, and then add to the soup.
Add the clams and potatoes, seasonings and cook at a simmer for a few minutes. Enjoy!

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Food and Wine Pairing for the Holidays: Internship Hours

We are required to complete 22-24 hours a semester working at the Culinary School as our "internship". I signed up to work at "Food and Wine Pairing for the Holidays", an adult continuing education course offered at TCU (Texas Christian University) in conjunction with the Culinary School of Fort Worth on November 14, 2008. People enrolled in this class paid $75.00 for the four courses pictured above and five wines. I sure hoped we didn't disappoint them. When we show up at the school we don't know what to expect in terms of assignments for the day. My first assignment was to slice baguettes for crostini with a student I've never met, Becky. Becky was very quiet at first but opened up after a while. She is about the age of my youngest daughter and from a very small town, Van Horn. In a way, it was like working with my daughter in that she glanced at her cell phone every five minutes! She is attending the school on a full scholarship. Becky and I were then assigned to make appetizer frittatas in mini muffin pans. There is a photo of these mini frittatas piled up. They were really quite delicious and people kept coming up and trying to snag them for a taste because the smell was irresistable!

Roasted Tomato Frittata
Cut tomatoes in half, drizzle with olive oil and roast at 400 until skins are brown and crusty.
After they cool, chop and put tomatoes and juice in a large bowl.
Add crumbled feta cheese, approximately 1/2 of the amount of tomatoes in the bowl.
Add minced garlic, basil (chiffonade), salt and pepper.
Add several well beaten eggs and mix.
Spray mini muffin tins with non-stick spray. Bake in oven at 375 for 12-15 minutes, or until brown and crusty on top.

I helped set up the appetizer table, pictured above by plating the frittatas and the risotto balls.
I thought the appetizer table was beautiful with all the different colors of fruit, cheeses, and pastries.
Later I was assigned to help in the final plating by putting sauces on the foods. A long assembly line was set up in the kitchen where every item was placed in exactly the same place on all the plates and handed to the students who served it to the guests. Keeping everything hot, moving quickly to get it all out at the same time, and getting the right sauces on the various foods was not easy. When it was over we got to sample the food:

Seafood Cake with tropical fruit salsa and smoked shrimp
Turkey Tenderloin with herbed stuffing
Apricot glazed ham with cranberry chutney
Ancho Cocoa rubbed Pork tenderloin with pumpkin seed mushroom pesto and sour cherry and fig compote

Too bad the wine was off limits! I'm sure the guests were not disappointed because everything I tasted was very, very good. In fact, I plan to add the Apricot glazed ham to my Thanksgiving menu.

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Week 10: Egg Cookery

It hasn't been a big week for culinary school practice. On Sunday I made some chili for a chili cook-off at work and grilled flank steak for the family. On Tuesday I started getting ready for a big lunch event I was in charge of on Thursday. I made the dessert, a white chocolate covered nut, pretzel, candy chex mixture. The chili cook-off was on Wednesday. My Santa Fe chili, a beef and pork chili with Hatch green chili, won 3rd place. Thursday was very hectic. I didn't realize that making wraps and sandwiches for 50-60 people would be so much work. Of course, I had to make chicken salad, tuna salad, egg salad, ham & swiss, beef and cheddar with garlic-herb spread, turkey and havarti with chipotle mayo, and a special roasted peppers and mushrooms with feta for my vegetarian friend. Whew! Good thing my son Glenn was there to help. I left the kitchen a huge mess so when Alexandra, my daughter, woke up and saw it she was not too happy. The sandwiches were a big hit. My favorite was the herb egg salad. Hard cooked eggs, chopped with dijon mustard, mayo, chopped tarragon, cilantro, pepper, celery, shallot, and a few capers. Try it on some whole wheat bread with lettuce and tomato!

Truthfully, I was burned out after Thursday so I was more than happy to go out on Friday night to Cafe Soleil, a restaurant in Azle, the town in which I live. Chef Paula Ambrose, a real culinary school graduate and experienced chef, has a very tiny restaurant in Azle, a very, very unusual place for this town. The only other restaurants are Mexican and country or fast food. There was once a great Thai restaurant but it went out of business because the locals did not want to try Thai food--too strange. Chef Paula makes the best tenderloin steaks around and charges less than half the price of the name restaurants in Fort Worth. Friday night she had a tasting menu of butternut squash bisque, wild mushroom salad, fig and goat cheese ravioli, tenderloin steak with crab and hollandaise, and a sugar scone with berries and ice cream for $30.00.

It was over the top!

I got up extra early Saturday morning to get some practice in with the 2 dozen eggs I bought just for that purpose. As you can see from the sheet pan of eggs I was not very successful but I did get better after flipping all those eggs without the aid of a spatula or any tools, just using the pan and my arm. It is not easy, believe me. I have new respect for the cooks I used to watch when I was working in my parents coffee shop, Mr. Ed's, in the 70's. I left a big pan of my practice eggs out on the counter and left the egg I accidentally flipped right out of the pan on the stovetop under the burner. When Alexandra came down to the kitchen and saw the mess she was not amused. She hates eggs! When I came home I knew she was going to say it and she did, "I hate you." We had a good laugh about the mess in the end and she doesn't really hate me.

At school we were lectured on eggs, safety of storing them, cooking temperatures, and all the other facts concerning eggs. Chef Waier demonstrated a souffle by making a berry souffle. I learned that I had been "folding" ingredients wrong all these years and now I know the proper technique. Turn the bowl as you fold. Our assignments for the day included spending a few minutes at the stove with the instructors while we cooked sunny side up eggs, over easy eggs, sometimes using 2 pans and both hands, no utensils, and lots of messed up eggs. We learned to make a 45 second omelet using nothing but the pan and our movements and it actually looked pretty good.

I was able to successfully flip a few eggs without breaking the yolks or overcooking them. It was a lot of fun in the end.

Our other assignments were: Chocolate souffle, grits and cheddar souffle, shirred eggs, Scotch eggs, and Champagne Sabayon. Penni made the chocolate souffle and shirred egggs, Robert made the grits and Sabayon and I made the Scotch eggs. I have posted photos of everything but the Sabayon. In case you didn't know (and I didn't), a Sabayon is made of egg yolks, sugar, wine/champagne, and cream. Very rich but maybe good with fruit. The chocolate souffle was made with orange juice and Grand Marnier. Very light and tasty and I will definitely practice making it at home. The photo is not of our group's souffle. Ray, from another table, made the best looking souffle of the day so I snapped a photo of it. Good thing because ours wasn't that great looking. The grits souffle was also tasty and an unusual way to prepare grits. Scotch eggs are hard-cooked eggs covered in raw sausage which has been seasoned with herbs, then covered in breading and deep fried. I guess you could also call them heart attack eggs. They tasted pretty good, though. My favorite was the shirred eggs.

A layer of parmesan cheese, a slice of ham, 2 eggs baked in a 325 oven for 8-10 minutes, longer if you like more cooked eggs, sprinkled with shredded swiss cheese and a tablespoon of cream at the end. Delicious! I will make this for breakfast today.

Egg class was more relaxed than some of the other classes and enjoyable without the pressure of plate presentation and a window of time to present our dishes, and I learned some new techniques.

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Week 9: Sauces

It's been a busy week for cooking but not just for culinary school. I started out last Sunday by making homemade pasta for the first time (not under supervision). Jennifer, my son Glenn's girlfriend, and my daughter Alexandra helped and were fast learners. We had fettucine with a homemade meat sauce. I intended to practice sauce making this week in anticipation of Week 9 but didn't have an opportunity until Wednesday morning. On Monday morning I made a pumpkin spice cake to take to Marie at Hairworks for being a great stylist and friend. On Tuesday morning I made a huge bowl of Asian Chicken Salad to take to work for a staff event. I also made another pumpkin spice cake. Finally, Wednesday I was able to practice making Hollandaise Sauce. It was a flop. Too thick, overcooked the yolks and didn't realize I could thin it by adding hot water. I tried again the next morning and was more successful by time 3.

On Friday, Oct 31, I decided to have a night of sauce making. I made Espagnole (brown sauce),

Hollandaise, and Bechamel. Along with all this sauce making I also made dinner for the family--mashed potatoes using the new ricer and Salisbury steaks and salad.

The sauces came out great, although I ruined the Hollandaise by trying to hold it over a pan of too hot water. Turned out that after letting it set while we ate dinner it thickened and after a few seconds in the food processor came out just fine (too late to eat it though). The Espagnole was delicious, although a little too much carrot taste from my unbalanced mire poix (carmelized mixture of onion, carrot, and celery). I know it tasted good because all I saw everyone trying to get every last bit of this sauce off their plates. The Bechamel (white sauce) was also a success.

I felt ready for anything at sauce class, however I was determined NOT to make any Hollandaise Sauce if I could avoid it. I hate to say it but I seriously dislike the stuff. I mean, anything made of egg yolks and lots of butter is on my list of artery-clogging foods to avoid. I actually went to Sam's where I could get cheap butter and bought a 4 pound package of it, now down to 1 pound after making 3 batches of Hollandaise sauce with it. So 4 sticks of butter, clarified, mixed with 3 egg yolks produces a relatively small amount of sauce. Yikes!

We got our class instructions and were divided into new groups. I was placed with Ray and Robert. I've been working with Robert and I know that we work well together. Ray is very competent and easy to work with as well. We had to make 12 sauces including all the Mother Sauces (Tomato, Hollandaise, Bechamel, Veloute, and Espagnole) and 7 other small sauces which are made from the mother sauces. Thank God, Robert actually wanted to make the Hollandaise!

Ray volunteered to make the Espagnole(brown sauce) and I made the Tomato and Bechamel, along with cream sauce and cheese sauce. The first sauce photo is the tomato sauce. I had never made it before but it was not too difficult and very tasty. Using the immersion blender was a new experience and I can predict that I will buying one for home very soon. Good comments from the instructors, just needed a little more salt & sugar, but good consistency and flavors. The next sauce is my cheese sauce. This was my best sauce, made from the Bechamel. It is Bechamel sauce with cheddar cheese and dry mustard and a dash of Wochestershire sauce. I learned that cooking the Bechamel sauce for 30 minutes, then adding the other ingredients results in a very velvety and good tasting sauce. I would make this again as a sauce for vegetables or macaroni. Yum.

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Cooking for my family

I spoke to my oldest daughter, Helen, today. She lives in Houston, is married to Andy, and has an almost 8 year old daughter, Grace. Helen said she had been reading this blog and was interested in getting some of my recipes. I hadn't thought of doing that but if she found it helpful I'll write some entries from time to time about things I cook and give the recipes. Last week I made Katsudon on Sunday (see photos). Katsudon is a Japanese dish of pork cutlet, breaded with Panko and fried, then simmered in a broth of dashi and soy sauce with onion and egg. It's served over rice. I made some really good tortilla soup on Monday, Cambodian Pork on Tuesday, and Poached Tarragon chicken on Wednesday. Helen said she was looking for good recipes for pork chops. The problem with pork chops is they dry out easily. A great solution for this is braising. Braising is something most of us have done, involving searing the food, adding liquid partially, though not completely, covering the food, then simmering it on the stove or in the oven for 40 minutes or longer. The most popular dish I've made at home that I learned at the school is Country Braised chicken.

For pork, try this recipe for stuffed pork chops:

4 large pork chops (8 oz each)

celery, diced (approx 2 T)

onion, diced (approx 2 T)

butter or oil (1/2 T)

fresh bread crumbs (1/2 c)

parsley (1 T)

salt & pepper

chicken stock (4 cups total)

olive oil (1T)

Cut slit in pork chops. Saute celery and onion in butter or oil. Add bread crumbs, parsley, and salt and pepper. Add stock to get the stuffing to the consistency you desire, but not too wet.

Alternately, you could use cooked wild rice as a stuffing. Use toothpicks to close the slits.

Sear pork chops in hot olive oil. Add stock to partially cover pork chops, bring to a simmer, cover and place in a 325 oven for 45 minutes. Remove chops, degrease the sauce and reduce it.

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Week 8: Poultry Fabrication

The photos are not from Culinary School. They are from Stephan Pyles in Dallas! More on that later.

I didn't know that I had been cutting up chicken wrong all my cooking life until today. When Chef Waier demonstrated the proper way I was amazed to see how much easier it would have been had I learned this many years ago (and a lot less dangerous than my haphazard method), so it's worth the price of school know the proper technique for fabricating chicken (pause....not).

Today we were educated about all things chicken (and other poultry) and given the packet of assigned dishes. I scanned the pages of recipes and didn't think it looked too bad. Should have read them a little more carefully though, but more about that later. My team today consisted of Robert, Julie, and I. We were given the following dishes to prepare:

Country braised chicken with sauce--Robert

Pan-fried chicken with spring mix salad and vinaigrette--Julia

Poached Tarragon chicken with simmered rice--Julie

Roasted bone-in chicken breast with Duchess potatoes--Julia

Our dishes were good and bad. Julie's was perfect and one of the best they had seen. Robert's braised chicken was great, although points off for having too big and uneven vegetables, my pan-fried chicken tasted good (my spice rub) but was a little overcooked on the bottom, thanks to the too-hot convection oven time, and the roasted chicken was a tad dry, but still good. Disaster was Duchess potatoes that I forgot to brush with butter and heat in oven. Not good to serve raw egg to the instructors. This is what happens when you don't read the recipe all the way to the end.

Live and learn. Also, I forgot to put the vinegar in the vinaigrette. I did put orange juice in it, but nothing escapes Chef Nona's palate and she caught it. I swear she can taste EVERYTHING.

Overall we did OK but I felt a little frenzied toward the end and started making mistakes, so lesson learned--timing is important, watch the ovens, and pay attention to details.

At the end the class got a big lecture on "hitting the wall", not being serious enough, people goofing off, and that we were not up to par for this stage of the program. It was pretty negative and not all that accurate for some of us. I take this program very seriously. I mean, who else in their right mind would get up at 5 AM at least 3 days a week and cook whole meals for practice!

Oh well, next week we are going to work on mother sauces. I will practice and be ready to go.

On a more positive note, my husband and I went to Stephan Pyles' restaurant in Dallas to celebrate our anniversary. I've got all his books and studied the creative and delicious looking photos for years so it was great to finally go. He even came to our table and talked to us for awhile. I told him I really enjoyed finally getting to try his signature dishes and about the culinary school. He asked several questions and seemed interested. Later he sent us a gift dish of chocolates!

Above, see the photos of some of the things we tried:

Ceviche sampling: tuna, salmon, and sea bass

Caesar salad: his version uses chipotle and tamarind in the dressing

Bone-in rib-eye on mushroom/bean ragout with onion rings

Heaven and Hell cake

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