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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Chef Pro III: Week 2: Recipe Development

At the Zest Fest with Lisa Wright

I have spent the entire week working on recipe development. I volunteered to participate in the Pace Recipe Contest for this year's Zest Fest, held in Ft. Worth on the 11-13 of September. Every year the CSFTW and the Tarrant County College Culinary Arts Program compete against one another on the stage at the Zest Fest. Previous years it's been a salsa contest and the CSFTW has won both years. This year it was a contest to see who could create a recipe using Pace Salsa Verde. A few of us got together with Chef Kurima to brainstorm recipe ideas. I brought in Korean Barbeque with Salsa Verde Slaw served on a fried wonton, Lisa Wright brought pesto and Ray brought some homemade pasta. After a lot of discussion and tasting the idea for a pasta dish using the pesto won, primarily because the Pace website did not show any recipes for an Italian twist on the salsa verde, however there was a vinaigrette like the one in my slaw and marinade. We planned to get together Sunday morning, the day of the contest, and make the final recipe. We were all busy Saturday night trying to think of creative plating ideas and Annie Lebonati came up with one using the idea of tacos but instead of a tortilla shell she used habanero jack cheese in the form of a cheese crisp. The pasta with the green pesto then resembled lettuce. We decided to use some sauteed julienned peppers for color and taste and a grilled shrimp on top. We spent Sunday morning making all the components, made a couple test examples which tasted and looked very nice, then set off for the Zest Fest. Our team and the TCC team made the recipes for the judges who included a TV weather woman, (Rebecca Miller) and the director of the Central Market cooking school. Jon Bonnell tasted the food but could not be judge due to his status as one of our instructors. Sadly, we lost by 1 point. The TCC students made a crepe dish with different fruits and sauces so I guess the judges had a sweet tooth.
Who knows? But, Jon Bonnell ate the entire "taco" and said he'd put in on the menu at Bonnell's (his famous restaurant) so I don't feel so bad. All in all, good experience and good practice for recipe development (and a LOT of work).
After spending all day cooking and running around I still had class from 3-8 that evening. I was pretty tired when class started and knew that we had Chef Gwin Grimes for our instructor. I've been looking forward to having her as an instructor since school started last year. I buy bread from her Artisan Baking Company as often as I can and I think she is very talented, creative, and plain nice. I've taken two classes she's taught at Central Market as well. Our class focused on recipe development and how to write professional recipes. We were given written materials and good information on recipe development and then an assignment. It was like mystery basket all over again! We drew slips of paper with various ingredients and I drew tilapia.
My assignment was to create a recipe for an upscale fish house opening in Ft. Worth. We had one hour to complete the dish and write up the recipe. The next part of the assignment involved drawing one of the recipes the other students developed and making that recipe.
I made a tilapia tostada with creole aioli and smoked sausage cream sauce. It was pretty successful, a little too much dressing, but tasty. I drew Eric's dish, a cheeseburger and fries.
No problem with that and it tasted alright. I was so glad when class was over and I could go home and rest!

The Zest Fest entry for the Pace Salsa Verde Challenge

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Chef Pro III: Week 1

This is it--the final semester of culinary school. It's been one year since I wrote the first blog entry and I will continue posting until graduation. Week 1 was time for testing skills we learned in previous classes. We had knife skills--5 minutes to julienne a potato, brunoise a carrot, and small dice an onion. We had to make an omelet with no utensils and French onion soup within 40 minutes. Then we had the rest of the class to make eggs benedict (with Hollandaise sauce), chantilly cream (whipped cream by hand), pork with a pan sauce, and 1/2 cup of roux. My omelet was very good--but I have spent many messy times in my kitchen making Julia Child style omelets by shaking the eggs and turning them in the pan with no utensils. I also made good chantilly cream. The eggs benedict were OK and I felt good about making decent Hollandaise sauce (something I had practiced at home yesterday!) My French onion soup was fair--onions were not quite carmelized, and my pork was a little overdone and the sauce a little too thick. Overall, not bad but not great either. As usual, I was happy just to have finished everything and not too worried about the performance. I know I can make all these things well and need to fine tune my skills.
We are moving on to some interesting topics now including our future endeavors. We had a few minutes to meet with the chef instructors, Chef Kurima, Chef Waier, and Chef Ray about our plans. For now I have decided to do my "capstone project" on a business involving teaching cooking classes focused on healthy eating. I will need to really develop this idea and come up with 2 classes and the menu for each class.
I have also volunteered to be involved with the recipe development for a contest at the Zest Fest this week. We have to create a recipe using Pace Salsa Verde--more on that later.

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Pastry Pro I: Final Exam

The Pastry Pro I final was on August 19, 2009. I have been putting off entering this post for weeks. I had to leave for a week a couple days after class for business, then we had a week of vacation in Santa Fe. I'll make it short since I have now started the final semester and need to catch up on that one as well.
The pastry class final was hard. We were given a list of items we could make for certain point values and we worked in teams. My partner was Tela, who is very skilled and low key, an easy person to work with. I decided to make pie crust, blitz puff pastry, stirred custard, chantilly cream, and then create a chocolate cream pie and some type of turnover with the blitz puff pastry. Tela made a cake, muffins, and a few other things. Over all everything I made was just OK. My pie filling was a little undercooked and had a "flour" taste. I didn't fold the blitz puff pastry quite right and it was not even when it rose. The berry turnovers I made with the blitz pastry were a little overdone and the filling got burnt. I did manage to finish all my items but the quality was not what I wanted. One problem was the heat in the kitchen. August, ovens, people--all made for hot air. Trying to make pie crust in a hot room is very challenging.
We could have used the outer kitchen if we were thinking clearly--but we didn't.
I am glad pastry class is over and ready to move on to the final semester. I learned a lot of techniques and skills in pastry but I have been trying to move away from a lifestyle that uses a lot of the things we learned in pastry. As much as I love to make pies, cakes, and pastries it is not something I will spend a lot of time doing, although I will use what I've learned to make whole grain and healthier pasties, pizza crust, pie crusts, etc.

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