Chef Pro II: Week 3: Flavors and Flavorings

I know this doesn't look very appetizing but the point I wanted to make with the photo is to show the wide array of foods we tried in this class, and this isn't even all of it. We are working hard on developing our palates and learning to recognize and use a variety of herbs, spices, nuts, oils, vinegars and condiments. We also conducted an experiment that demonstrated how cooking methods alter the flavors of food. Each person was assigned a different way to prepare raw onions. We all sampled each type of onion and here are my observations:Raw onion: pungent, strong, stingsRaw onion soaked in water for 15 min: milder, less of a sting than rawRaw...

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Chef Pro II: Week 2: Garde Manger 2

Week #2 of garde manger. We started out the class by tasting 42 different herbs and spices and attempting to identify them. This is not easy to do. Next week we'll have to not only recognize them but also be able to describe them, i.e., sweet, bitter, pungent, woody, etc. After an interesting lecture on tea sandwiches and appetizers we broke into groups to start preparing our assigned dishes. I can't even remember the last time I made a tea sandwich but it's been years. We had a long list to prepare in groups of 3 at 4 tables. Each group was responsible for making a type of sandwich and then we would each create a platter of the different sandwiches....

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Chef Pro II: Week 1: Garde Manger

Chef Pro II is the second course of the four courses required for a culinary diploma. Chef Pro II is 14 weeks long and covers areas such as Garde Manger, Flavors and Flavorings, International Cuisines, American Regional Cuisines, Advanced Sauces, Healthy Cooking and Seafood.Going back to school after a month long break was rather hectic, to say the least. My class in from 5:30-10:30 on a week night now. I get up at 5:30, work 7:30-4:00, then head off to culinary school. For the first couple weeks we are studying "Garde Manger". Literally it means, "keeper of the food" but more commonly today it means the taks of preparing and presenting cold...

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New Year's Day dinner

Happy New Year! I usually make tamales every year around New Year's Day so this year I decided to make them for our dinner. My favorite tamales are Reata Restaurant's tenderloin tamales with pecan mash and sun dried tomato cream sauce. A couple years ago I found their recipe and made their tamales a couple times. I did modify it by using sirloin instead of tenderloin and I changed the pecan mash. The pecan mash is a mixture of pecans, peppers, cilantro and garlic. I make it with very little oil, toast the pecans and hand chop everything instead of processing it with a bunch of olive oil. The sun dried tomato cream sauce is too good to modify...

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January 2009: Preparing for Chef Pro 2

The next class starts on January 15, 2009. I have been cooking with a new attitude. Recipes as guidelines, not instructions, and trying to develop my own philosophy about cooking and what it means to me. One day I plan to use my culinary school education to work with food, so in the meantime I want to cook with passion and creativity, not copying what others have done.Whenever I eat something really wonderful I try to figure out how it was made so I can make it for myself and my family or friends. One such dish is tenderloin steak with pepper sauce.I have been eating at a local restaurant, Cafe Soleil, in Azle, Texas and the chef, Paula Ambrose,makes fantastic food, including her special tenderloin steak with hash and pepper sauce. I asked her about the sauce and she said it was "just...

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Week 14: Final Exam

December 13, 2008The week we've all been waiting for--final exam. I studied my notes and practiced knife skills every day for a week. I cut an entire 10 pound bag of potatoes, pounds of carrots, and many, many onions to work toward the goal of julienne a potato, brunoise a carrot, and small dice an onion in 5 minutes or less. I was also worried about the cooking part of the final exam. We had been told we would be given chicken to breakdown, roast, grill, saute, fry and stew, as well as rice, macaroni, mushrooms and carrots. The actual final exam day was not so bad after all that worrying. I felt good about the written exam, completed the knife...

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Sunday Brunch: Internship hours

December 7, 2008Part of the requirement for cooking school is to complete approximately 24 hours of internship at the school. The Sunday brunches, held the first and third Sundays of each month, are the typical way to meet this requirement. I had already worked two events so this was the final one for me. I arrived at 7:00 AM for the 8 hour day. I was given a variety of assignments from slicing bread to dicing fruits and vegetables, slicing and cooking potatoes, cooking bacon, and cracking lots of eggs for omelets. By 10:00 assignments were given out and I was assigned to the "front". The internship consists of working both in the kitchen and in the "front", the dining room. Working in the dining room gives the culinary student an idea of how diners receive their food and the importance of...

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Week 13: Mystery Basket

December 6, 2008 The dreaded "Mystery Basket" class. Imagine your own personal Iron Chef experience, except you don't have a list of possible ingredients ahead of time and six months to prepare. Seriously,I recently read in the new Food Network Magazine that six months before taping begins, producers picked a season's worth of secret ingredients and issued the Iron Chefs and their challengers three potential choices for each battle--the contenders discover which of the three is the final ingredient while the cameras roll. Many chefs, including the Iron Chefs, practice beforehand, preparing for any possible scenario.We were told that anything...

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Week 12: Wine Class

December 1, 2008 Our instructor for the wine class was Jon Bonnell, of the nationally acclaimed Bonnell's Restaurant. Bonnell's has won the "Award of Excellence" from Wine Spectator the past four years and was rated one of the Top 10 DFW metroplex restaurants by the 2006 Zagat Survey. Jon Bonnell has been on local and national TV shows in recent years and is a big local celebrity chef so it was a true honor to have him teach our class. I have been to Bonnell's Restaurant several times and the food is out of this world. Recently my staff at the federal prison took me there for lunch on Bosses Day and my husband and I had dinner there in November....

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