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...

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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...

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Week 7: Meat Fabrication

This photo is not from the culinary school. I didn't take any photos during the meat class, just got busy and didn't take the time, however since we studied meat I wanted to display a the tenderloin steak I got at Lonesome Dove last night. It is a great example of a perfect steak.Not that we made steaks at school. It was a weird day. First of all, five people were absent and we had a person join us from another class.Then, although we were told last week that we would be studying poultry, the class handout indicated "meat fabrication". I couldn't believe it.I thought maybe I heard wrong last week but a few others had thought the same thing. To...

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Week 6: Vegetables

You would think cooking a few vegetables wouldn't be too hard, wouldn't you? Well, you're wrong. I'm finding out more and more that all the cooking I've done since age 10 (that's 44 years) didn't prepare me for vegetable class. I couldn't recognize jicima, kohlrabi, or celery root when Chef Heather held them up in class. I was praying that those particular vegetables wouldn't be in my "mystery basket", an assignment in which we would get 3-4 vegetables to prepare, sight unseen. Guess what our mystery basket contained? Yes, kohlrabi and jicima, red Swiss chard, fennel (which I hate), and cauliflower. Our instructions for the day were to...

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Working at an event: Sunday Brunch, October 5, 2008

One of the requirements of culinary school is to work between 22-28 hours during the 14 week course. I signed up for 3 different events, the first one being the brunch, Oct 5, at the school. People can call in for reservations or just come to the school. I showed up at 7 AM, not really knowing what to expect, although I knew from looking at the sign up sheet for the event that a dozen students signed up, all but 2 from Chef Pro 1, a the other 2 from Pastro Pro 1/2.I figured we might be in trouble, but what did I know? When I arrived I saw a full kitchen of people, and was relieved to see Chef Heather, Chef Nona, and a couple chefs who were graduates...

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Starch Cooking

Week 5October 4, 2008Who knew that after sampling 22 different starch preparations that the preparation of various starches makes a big difference in taste.I learned that mashed potatoes made with steamed yukon gold potatoes taste much, much better than mashed potatoes made with boiled Russet potatoes. Steamed corn is more flavorful than boiled corn and roasted corn tastes better if the silk is removed (to me, anyway).After all these years of cooking I never knew that "mealy" potatoes, such as Russets shouldn't be used for everything. No wonder they fell apart when I tried to use them occasionally to make my mother's famous potato salad. My version...

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