Chef Pro III: Week 8: International--Southwest

I'm a big fan of southwestern cooking. I have all of Bobby Flay's books after all, and a freezer full of Hatch green chiles I bought back in August, and many spices from the Santa Fe School of cooking in my pantry, along with bags of red chile powder, dried posole, and masa in the freezer. You'd think I was a freaking expert in southwestern cooking if you looked around my house. So why is it then that when Chef Loy tells us to create 5 southwestern dishes in the next 2 hours and 45 minutes I have such a hard time? Is it because mid life hormones have destroyed my memory? Is it pressure? What the heck is it? I did manage to make some pretty decent dishes but I could have done much, much better given my knowledge and experience. I did study up on some more complicated things such as tamales and sauces so I could make them from memory. Ever try to make tamales from memory??? Here are my dishes:
Chicken tamales with green chile sauce--I made masa with masa harina, corn, stock, and spices, filled with with a chicken, jalapeno, spice mixture. Ambitious project for the time but they turned out pretty good according to the Chef Loy.
Chipotle corn chowder--Chef Loy had to run to the store to buy a can of chipotles in adobo and I'm glad he did because my corn chowder turned out very nice. Corn, chipoltles, stock, cumin, cream, finished with a little grated cheese.
Quesadilla--open faced with the homemade flour tortilla and peppers, goat cheese, and a roasted tomato sauce I made. Not that great
Huevos rancheros--New Mexico style, with black beans, flour tortilla, green chile sauce
I liked it but the chefs weren't too crazy about it. What do they know about New Mexico?
Guacamole--last minute crazy thrown together dish with literally 5 minutes left til the presentation window closed. I threw an underripe avocado in the processor, some of my roasted tomato sauce, ran to the fryer and deep fried a corn tortilla (homemade), put the guacamole and chips on a plate and ran to present it. They loved it. Figures.

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Capstone Project Progress: Chef Julia Personal Chef Services

I'm getting excited about launching my real culinary business, Chef Julia Personal Chef Services. I have created several menus, recipes, and price lists, have business cards and am researching websites. I will have brochures made soon. The big project for our final semester has been to write up our business plan in a very detailed format. I am almost finished with the project and ready to move on to actually having a client one day, or teaching a class. I believe I will be more than ready when the time comes. Look for details on this blog and a link to the Chef Julia webpage once I construct it.

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Chef Pro III: Week 7: Advanced Nutrition

I felt pretty comfortable with the subject matter of this class. I am very interested in nutrition and read a lot about it, particularly eating for health. I am also very aware of special diets for people with health concerns after being around my mother, who was diabetic and then later on a renal diet. Then there's my son with the nut allergy who has made me cautious about using cashews in anything. He never had a reaction until he ate a cashew blondie, then started swelling and itching like crazy. He had to go to the Emergency Room for treatment!
We studied various diets for celiac disease, heart disease, gastric bypass, diabetic and others and then were given our assignment. We were given a role on the line and then Chef Kurima would give us a ticket. The ticket would specify the type of dietary restriction. We took turns being the executive chef, sous chef, line cook, and prep. Our first order was for a child with celiac disease and lactose intolerant. We made risotto with peas and corn and some pieces of chicken.
We were told that children don't like their food touching and we should have made chicken nuggets. I was under the impression that we were in an upscale restaurant so I didn't think about making a fast food type dish. Besides, my children all loved rice dishes with any number of added ingredients, but then they grew up in a Japanese/American household. We were given a variety of different tickets with low carb, heart disease, gastric bypass, diabetic, etc. You get the picture. We were not so great but not terrible either. At least we didn't kill anyone and we were able to come up with a dish for every order. The final order was a dish for a customer who was blind, a smoker, had only one arm, dentures, and high blood pressure. At least chef has a sense of humor. Chef Ray volunteered to help us out by being the executive chef and we made shrimp and grits. His idea was to make a shrimp mousse served in a demitasse cup after it was baked in the oven. You can guess what happened when chef closed her eyes and tried to sample the food. Of course, she touched the demitasse cup and said, there you go--a lawsuit for my burn. So, even Chef Ray is not immune from the bad idea. Overall, a fun class and good learning experience. Not too stressed out for a change.

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Chef Pro III: Week 6: Food Trends

Food fads come and go but a trend has the potential to become a long term influence on the market. A few years ago I thought the whole "tapas" trend was silly but I've come to accept it and actually like the idea of sampling small plates instead of one large entree. Some current trends include:

Snack Attack--bar snacks, meze plates

Barbeque--wood smoked everythingBeer--steamed mussels with Belgian beerFarm fresh

French cuisine--making a comeback

American Cheese--not the yucky orange stuff, but cheese made in America

Noodle mania--kobe short rib teriyaki lo-mein or chap-chae Korean noodles

Fruit--used with savory dishes

Dolce!--Ricotta polenta pie, ricotta & hazelnut torte

Our assignment was to made 5 dishes representing the above trends. No other instructions, no specific ingredients. We could present our dishes at 2 different time periods, each lasting 30 minutes.

This was a tough class for me. I just could not think of anything great to make and the ingredients we had to choose from did not inspire me. I made some Thai chicken wings in fish sauce but the wings were old and tough and the fish sauce was old and smelled even worse than fish sauce usually smells. I made Chiang Mai noodles for noodlemania but it was "flat" and not great. My pork and brie slider with raspberry sauce was a flop--seedy and thick raspberry glop was more like it. I made a shrimp skewer with a chipotle orange sauce for the fruit trend and that sauce was actually good, but the shrimp was old and stringy. I didn't even make a 5th dish, just ran out of time. We had the same issue with long waiting periods to have our dishes evaluated so I should have made quicker dishes.

Not a favorite class. I am anxious to move on and start cooking without criticism. I am capable of making great food but culinary school sometimes makes me feel insecure about my abilities.

A few days after this class I hosted a brunch at my house for some church friends and made some trendy foods. Open-face quesadillas covered with farm fresh peppers from my CSA box, migas with Hatch green chile sauce I made with the August crop of Hatch peppers, brown sugar chile bacon, cream cheese filled pumpkin mufffins and Mexican hot chocolate. My friends enjoyed it and I had to admit I had a much easier time pulling it off after my year + of culinary school. I am a lot faster and more efficient in the kitchen and my imagination and creativity has improved (at home anyway!)

Brunch with friends

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Chef Pro III: Week 5: Timed Cooking

Chef Waier showing us how to clean squid

Dread, dread--timed cooking. Have you ever seen the show Chopped? Well this class is similar.
Chef Waier gives us an assignment and we have 20 minutes to execute it. We had 45 minutes to set up mise en place, then we were told to prepare an amuse bouche in 20 minutes. Of course my mind is blank--no notes, no recipes, no instructions--just use anything we had available.
The amuse bouche is a small bite, one bite, intended to wake up the taste buds and given at the beginning of the meal. I took a won ton wrapper, cut out a small circle, fried it, then topped it with a very thin cucumber slice, crumbled feta cheese, a few cranberries which had been hydrated in apple juice, some herbs, sea salt, lemon zest and balsamic vinaigrette. It was actually pretty tasty and decent looking.
Next assignment: Make an appetizer using spam. Yuck! Spam is salty and nasty. I decided to saute it and combine it with onions and cabbage and make okonomiyaki, a savory Japanese pancake with aioli and steaksauce. I undercooked the pancake slightly and it had a bit of a doughy taste but it wasn't too bad.
Next assignment: Make a soup using strawberries. Hmm--we made peach soup in CPI but I sure didn't remember how. I asked one of the students what she thought was in it and she said yogurt. I found some vanilla and plain yogurt so I combined the yogurt, some cream, sugar, mint, lemon zest, vanilla and used the immersion blender to puree it. It was actually good.
Next assignment: Make an entree using pork. Did I mention I had worked at the Sunday brunch from 7-3 today on the line making pork chops? Also, I was physically and mentally exhausted by this point and could barely think straight. I decided to make a Thai curry with coconut milk, carrots, zucchini, onions, cumin, coriander, mace, turmeric, reduced by half, then added the sauteed pork with ginger and garlic. I served it with rice. Not bad for 20 minutes!
Next assignment: Make a dessert using thyme. I could not find anything that I thought would go good with thyme. I wanted peaches but could only find oranges and apples. I did what I saw on Chopped--put the cut up fruit in a pan with sugar, brandy, thyme, cinnamon and cooked it. I had made crepe batter earlier so I decided to make an apple thyme crepe with chantilly brandy cream. My crepe was a little too thick but the crepe stuffed with apple was not too bad. Not great, but for 20 minutes I can't complain. First time I ever made a crepe too.
Last assignment: Make a sandwich and side dish. Oh my, so tired and ready to go home. I made a Monte Christo sandwich with a fruit salad. It was pretty standard but I thought it was yummy. Not really too creative, but heck I was happy to be able to make anything after 13 hours on my feet. After all, I'm not a spring chicken (an expression my father used to use for "old" people).
I decided that the next time I work the Sunday brunch I will go to the Tuesday class!

My amuse bouche

Strawberry soup

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Chef Pro III: Week 4: Classic Recipes

Chef Waier delivered a fascinating lecture on classic recipes including some history of haute cuisine, epicurian, Escoffier, Nouvelle cuisine, and fusion. We studied this in CP I so it was more of a review. The class tonight was intended to test our skills in actually preparing the classic dishes. Our recipe packet consisted of:
Pork Piccata
Chicken Kiev
Veal Cordon Bleu
Carpaccio
Gratin Dauphinoise
Duck a l'Orange
Quiche Lorraine
Beef Consomme
Risotto Milanese
Mulligatawny Soup
Bananas Foster

I was assigned to prepare consomme and Bananas Foster with homemade vanilla ice cream, presented table side. I have never made either dish before and read all about how hard it is to make good consomme in Michael Ruhlman's book. I managed to make the consomme right and it was clear enough to read a dime at the bottom of the bowl. I prepared a cart with all the ingredients for the Bananas Foster and wheeled it out to the dining room where I made it for the Chefs Waier and Ray. I read up on the history of Bananas Foster because my instructions were to talk throughout the presentation. The flambe was dramatic and overall the dish was very good as well as the homemade French vanilla ice cream. I was pleased that it went so well and am looking forward to making some at home--although I think I will add a slice of golden butter cake.
The other dishes were very well prepared by my classmates. I sampled beef carpaccio for the first time and really liked it.

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Chef Pro III: Week 3: Organization & Admin

Capstone project information was the focus of this class with no actual cooking, just lecture and discussion. We learned about menu development, food costs and cost controls, equipment issues, public health concerns, food purchasing, labor costs, and a lot of discussion on menu develpment. It's important to understand the technical details because the idea of having of food related business for many of us is just a fantasy and based on some general information we've read about or been told about by someone in the business, but not based on the reality of today's food prices and client behaviors. If you haven't already noticed, people are having trouble paying their bills so eating cheaply is a trend right now--just like the article in October's Oprah magazine about saving money by coloring your own hair, people are cooking at home more.
Highly unlikely lines will be forming to sign up for a personal chef service charging even more than restaurant food. I'm relieved I don't have to make a living as a personal or private chef right now but that was really one of my original plans. I also want to teach people how to cook, classes, privately, or for the food bank. Our class today is a wake up call for making a profit from the dream business. Time for me to get to work writing up my menu, equipment and supply list, and costing and pricing draft. For the capstone project I am using a sushi class as an example of a class I will teach. I will price out the menu for this one class, but I'll develop menus for several other classes. For research I have been attending Central Market cooking classes this year (and I attended a few starting in 2007 since I've had this idea for a long time). I attended Sushi 101 last year, and then on October 1, 2009 I attended Sushi 2. It was good to observe the instructor and note the equipment and supplies used. I spoke to the instructor after the class about my interest in teaching classes on Japanese cooking, my attendance at the culinary school and she actually asked me to teach a class at Central Market! This would be an awesome experience as well as an opportunity to market my Chef Julia business, so I am working on some ideas to give her.

My signature dish, sukiyaki

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