Kitchen Academy Blog

Week 4, Day 3: Mass Prepping

We spent the bulk of today prepping for our first big catering event, a breakfast buffet for some select invitees taking place at the school tomorrow. The chef divided us into different teams and each team was responsible for working on a certain portion of the breakfast. Catering seems to primarily be a huge process of preparation. Huge quantities of food are stored away in anticipation of a mass unleashing. I was placed on the crepes Mornay team. I spent the morning on a variety of focused tasks; sautéing onions and spinach, and filling these big pans with the crepes and cheese. Following this flurry of activity we had quite an inspiring speech from the chef about handling the event tomorrow.

She has an incredible amount of experience doing catering events under her belt and it was fascinating to see how she manages the whole process. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it all comes together. We also decided on a theme for the buffet tomorrow and agreed to go with the color red. So naturally, we will be dressing up the dining area in all sorts of red things.

Overall it was a pretty light and fun day! We were even given a special treat in the middle of the session. We got to taste some of the food from the 4th quarter class! They had a Mexican style buffet. Tri tip beef, rice, beans, all consumed at the ripe hour of 8:30am! And despite the awkward timing, it was very delicious. How can one resist such scrumptious gifts?

Week 4, Day 2: The Crepes of Life

Today we continued our preparations for Thursday’s buffet. Crepe Suzette was the main breakfast item on our itinerary. (Insert theme song from the Patty Duke Show: “Where Cathy adores a minuet, The Ballet Russes, and crepe Suzette!” Anyone?) Well, imagine having this song stuck in your head all day over the backdrop of a very packed cooking schedule. The crepes were quite an undertaking to prepare. A lot of delicate workmanship went into making the crepes themselves. Mastering the art of getting them paper-thin and folding them in just the right ways. We also stirred up an orange liqueur sauce as the dipping component as well as learning to cut the oranges for the garnish. It turned out to be a lovely dish, except for the overload butter and sugar. I don’t know how anybody can eat that for breakfast! My station partner Dallas is diabetic and after having a small taste, she found herself with a racing heart! Just one bite and she was sweating and struggling with the sugar content.

Dallas sort of reminds me of Mrs. Garrett from Facts of Life! She is happy, laughs a lot, and is really darling to be around. She hails from Oregon, has two children, and drives around with a license plate that reads “alimony!” Yes, one can deduce correctly that she is recently divorced! On the heels of said divorce she decided to take herself to cooking school and loves it.

The last items we constructed were quiches. Florentine and Lorraine, to be exact. We also made a Mornay sauce to be used later this week for another dish. A pretty packed and rewarding day…

Week 4, Day 1: All Eggs go to Heaven

Today was an extremely light day, perhaps the lightest one yet. Despite having to deal with a very stiff neck that started its croon at the break of dawn. Now that my back is all healed up my neck decides to follow in its lowly footsteps, working in cahoots to attempt a full body overthrow. But alas, I was able to manage and disrupt any inconspicuous collaboration...Anyhow, today was an all-out egg day. We learned to make them in several different styles: over- easy, over-medium, over-hard, and sunny side up. Each student got a tray of eggs to start because we needed to practice our egg flipping. This is something the chef guaranteed us we’d need a lot of practice on and she was right. It does take some tries before mastering the quirkiness of gravity. For example, my first flipped egg disappeared like magic up to egg heaven! After cooking it a bit then flipping it up it vanished. Eventually it was spotted between a couple grills in the distance. Sacrificed for educational purposes. Anyhow, I did eventually catch on and am now able to freely fling my eggs with swift confidence. After mastering these initial egg-forms we moved on to omelets.

First we made a French omelet, which is very light in color and folded twice. Then we cooked up a western omelet, which is brownish in color and folded in half. Following the omelets we continued preparing batter for tomorrow’s crepes. Crepes will be one of the foods that will be served at our Thursday buffet day, a chance for some invited guests to come down and sample our cooking. We’ll also be making some quiches for this event.

The day’s tasks completely wrapped up by 10am, which allowed for some lecture time. We also got our report cards from last week. As mentioned previously, I’m sticking to my guns about not looking at grades and today was no different. I basically just threw the report card away with not even a slight interest in peeking. I’m just going to take my time and have fun with this class. If one of my food creations goes unfinished then let it be! I’m not going to worry about how it reflects as a grade…Time to put some ice on my neck!

Week 3, Day 5: Ups and Downs

I’ve got no images to share today because there weren’t many picturesque moments for me in the kitchen! Rather a series of unfortunate events led to some ill-fated dishes. A domino reaction where one thing set off a succession of convoluted events…

Our first creation was chicken consommé, a very clear chicken broth soup with burnoise carrots. It’s a delicious soup with a very meticulous preparing process. My first flub of the day was in the early stages of making this soup. We were supposed to mix all the ingredients in a cold pan then bring it to simmer and cook it for an hour and a half. For some reason I missed that one little detail and cooked it over a flame. This completely ruined the stock! I tried to rescue it from its condemned future but this was to no avail…

Next we made a basic pie shell called pate brisee. This didn’t turn out very well for me either. Our hands have to be really cold (almost chilled) during preparation. Otherwise the heat on our hands melts the butter and affects the whole dough. As you can deduce from the tone of today’s entry, my hands were not at their proper temperature and my dough was sacrificed to the misaligned stars above!

Following this we did some boiled eggs. Ah yes, a simple cooking process with no possibilities for…explosions? We all witnessed, in slow motion, the giant eruption that resulted from placing my eggs in the water. The off-kilter energy I was dealing with was surely having its way with me.

Eggs benedict and Florentine were our last dishes for the day. I was to make a Hollandaise sauce for that. As I was stirring the sauce it sort of turned into a jello-like consistency. The texture was wrong, the temperature was wrong! I don’t know exactly what happened but there came a point where chef Martinez walked by, looked at my stuff, and said: “Its okay, let it go and go with the flow. Sometimes we have a bad day in the kitchen.” And a bad day it was. Luckily I was able to shrug of the frustration early in the game and not let it get to me too much. There are highs and there are lows. I’m really looking forward to next week where I can start fresh and not let this annoying energy have any say…

Week 3, Day 4: Grilling With Gusto

Today we focused on the art of grilling vegetables. First we made a balsamic vinaigrette marinade and let the veggies have a light swim before grilling them up and exposing their delicious essence! Bell peppers, asparagus, and delicious mushrooms were only some of the foods that took part in our pristine mélange. This proved to be quite wonderful, easy, and healthy! It also enabled us to call on our creative muscles, figuring out ways to arrange the various morsels in our own styles. Some of the designs that came from this experiment were beautiful. My station partner and prior Sushi school grad Mark had his vegetables arranged like a fancy array of delicate Sushi! This whole process was just a lot of fun. The scent of the roasting peppers in particular gave me lots of pleasant flashbacks from my childhood. I remember those scents emanating from my Mom’s kitchen, as she would often fire up some peppers and eggplants in the summer sun. So that was a really nice counterpoint to the experience...

We also learned to make bruschetta, which is basically tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette sauce with garlic, shallots, herbs and spices, served on baguette toast. Finally, we dabbled in some white rice? Which had nothing to do with grilling vegetables but they sort of stuck it in the lesson today due to some leftover time. In this case, nothing was really too new for me. That was about it, we finished cleaning by 10:30am and spent the rest of our time chatting with the chefs. Tomorrow is Friday and we expect to have a very heavy-duty workday. We’re making eggs Florentine and Benedict as well as chicken consommé, dishes that are essentially time consuming…

Week 3, day 3: Split Peas (Are Made of This)

Today we made some traditional couscous! In my life this food has been experienced in extremes. Either its been cooked straight from a box (never again!) or from the seasoned hand of my brilliant grandmother, whose secretive, time-honored family recipe has many fans banging down her door. Learning how to approach the food myself has been a lovely treat. We prepared it with some brunoise cut vegetables using carrots, zucchini, and onions. It was cooked in a tad of olive oil as well as chicken stock, which was a new revelatory addition to me. The end product was a wonderful and subtly flavored dish.

Following this we made split pea soup. I personally love split pea! Though I enjoy it best the vegan way. The recipe we were using called for bacon chunks, bacon fat, and ham hock, something I hope to seldom encounter in the future.

Our next food creation was compound butter. This is basically flavored butter with herbs and spices. Lemon zest and garlic paste were some of the main components. It was served over steamed vegetables and actually turned out quite delicious. An accurate two-word description of its flavor could simply be “lemony butter.”

The rest of the class was focused on baby artichokes. First we fabricate them; cleaning them up, trimming the top, and peeling their outer leaves. Then we braised them with white wine. We are keeping them for tomorrow where I think they will have a major part in a grilled vegetable platter. And thats about it for today!

Shown below is a photo of my current weekly station partner, Mark. He is half Filipino, half Chinese. He has already gone through an intense Japanese/Sushi cooking school, which was an intense 7-month program out in Little Tokyo. So he is a pro when it comes to fish! I’ve been learning a lot from him this week and he's a really nice guy.

Week 3, Day 2: The Rice Is Right

Today’s class was primarily concerned with rice, one of the world’s most popular and versatile mini-grains. We produced three rice dishes. The first was a rice pilaf using long grain rice and wild rice. This may have been the healthiest dish that we’ve made in class thus far. It was butter and cream free! I think I’ll be making it quite often at home. Next were 2 types of risottos: Parmesan (your basic traditional recipe,) and mushroom (cooked with an authentic mushroom stock that we created in class.) It was a fairly easy day for me as I’ve been cooking rice pretty much my whole adult life. So this felt more like a refinement of my own personal rice cooking techniques. Anyhow, my risotto came out superb! The teacher proclaimed that it was “excellent!” (And I’ll have to concur after having a taste myself!) This dish presented me with the highest grade to date. And while we’re on the topic of grades, today we received our weekly report cards…

I got an 87 out of 100 for all of last week. I spent some time trying to decipher why points were being ducked but this proved futile. It was unclear how they arrived at that specific number. Anyhow, I’ve given it some thought and I’ve decided that grades are not something I’m about to stress over. So I won’t be looking at my grades at all! At least until the end of the term. Many students seem frantically fixated on their marks but I really don’t feel that its something I need to worry about. Especially since I will be giving it my all despite the grading system. And a big part of me is also at this school to just have fun and enjoy the learning process. The added tension of getting graded just isn’t necessary!

PS- The secret to making really fluffy rice is by letting it drain in very cold water for a few minutes before cooking. This washes away the starchy coating, leaving it at just the right softness. On the flipside, making risotto calls for cooking the rice straight away, without soaking. This is because the resulting sticky and mushy consistency is the appropriate texture for that particular style of dish…

Week 3, day 1: Would You Like Some Potatoes With Your Butter?!

Today was all about potatoes! Mashed not withstanding. But also including some more refined dishes such as Pommes Anna, Pommes Dauphinoise, and Potatoes Roesti. Pommes Anna have a particular aesthetic charm to them, sliced paper thin and arranged in a shell-like pattern. But regardless of the various ways we treated our potatoes, one common ingredient was shared across the board: butter! Literally pounds of it were infused into every potato-cooking scenario. Thick and fatty cream came in second. And although I uncomfortably entered into a alternate fat-filled universe, my potato adventure was pretty successful. I had really good seasoning. The chef even gave me an esteemed “wonderful!” after tasting it. (Its only week 3 and I’ve received my first “wonderful!” Definitely a good sign.)

The class actually ended pretty quickly today. We finished cooking and cleaning by about 10am. Then we had about a half hour of review for our weekly test happening tomorrow. The teachers then sort of stretched out the last section of our time with a lecture. (This is because we are obligated to stay in the class until 10:50am no matter what.) Also, I had a meeting with the externship director today. Even though my externship won’t happen until 6 months from now, it felt good to start preparing and making sure I’m pointed towards my desired career path. Ultimately what I want to do is teach (and have my own cooking show, of course!) I was able to get some good feedback and start kicking around ideas for my very own cooking curriculum…

Day 10: Clean Cuisine

I can’t believe it’s already been 2 weeks! Time is really starting to fly by. Today was a great day. The students are starting to gel together nicely and there is an overall spirit of camaraderie and support in the air. I’ve almost forgotten how people in big groups tend to quickly adapt to each other when there is such a strong shared experience. And best of all, students are actually starting to clean as they go! This resulted in all the dishes and the entire kitchen being spotless by 10:45am. This was a new record for our classroom. And because of it we got out of class at the proper time (11am.) Its nice to see people starting to be more proactive and thoughtful, a trend that I hope continues daily.

Today we assembled some handmade ravioli, which was really cool. We rolled the dough and created these really thin sheets of pasta (it sort of reminded me of rolling ceramic dough when I was taking ceramics class a couple years ago.) We then formed the raviolis and stuffed them with the mushroom and cheese mixture that was made yesterday. The chefs made some fabulous basil pesto for us too, which we used as the sauce. We also baked our lasagna from yesterday (see day 9!) and it came out spectacular. All day long my stomach was eagerly anticipating revisiting it at dinner. Towards the end of the class we started working with polenta…

Polenta is something that is fairly new to me. I’ve never really had it growing up in my family’s home cuisine. We created fried polenta cakes, which were actually delicious. We served them with some of our leftover Bolognese sauce from yesterday. We also cooked up some regular polenta, served with mash potatoes as its side dish. In this case the consistency was thinner and runnier, not necessarily to my personal liking. I don’t think its a dish I’ll be exploring at home in the future. Though it is definitely good to know how to work with this type of food as a reference. And that’s about it! Its Friday and I’m really looking forward to the weekend! See you on Monday…

Day 9: Salt to Taste

Week 2 is in the homestretch! Before I begin today’s blog entry you should be warned that I’ve spent the whole day in a wash of back pain and subsequent pain pills. This has been going on since Tuesday and has served as a stiff backdrop to an otherwise frantic and demanding set of days. Luckily, I’ve been able to handle it pretty well and stay focused. And nothing could have deterred me from the pure enjoyment of making homemade pasta from scratch!

This morning we used yesterday’s bulk pasta dough to form lasagna layers and fettuccine. The latter was used to make fettuccine alfredo and pasta carbonara. And again, many incarnations of fat were the staples of those dishes. I also realized something about my own palate today. When I personally find that a dish tastes perfect, it is perceived as not salty enough by the chefs. So I know to add a lot more salt on the plate before the teacher samples it. Today I received high accolades that my seasoning ratio was just right, proof that the internal salt meter is a handy tool. Though if I were served that exact same plate in a restaurant I would have it sent back for being too salty!

After we finished the two pasta dishes we prepped the lasagna. We joined all the ingredients together and stored the tray in the fridge to be baked tomorrow. I’ve learned that it is really good to do this the day before cooking because the ingredients have time to bond together into a delicious union. Which makes sense because lasagna always tastes better on the second day.

The class wrapped up about a half an hour late today because people are still not keeping up with washing their dishes as they cook. They continue to form tall piles of dishes that by the end of the day create a bottleneck and unneeded hysteria. I’m hoping people will start to clean as they go and not get accustomed to the bad habit. This, amongst other things, made me realize just how important organizational skills are at this school. We basically get 3 hours to cook all the dishes that the chefs demo for us in the morning. This means we must be able to manage our time efficiently. For example, by 10am today half of the class was not done cooking yet. (I of course was! My partner and I smoothly handed our food to the chefs and were good to go.) But a lot of folks don’t organize their tasks well and end up just not doing their stuff correctly or on time. This seems to not really be an issue with me. And I think this is yet another instance where my experiences in the design world and running a business have really kicked in for my benefit.

And that’s about it for today! Making pasta was definitely the highlight for me. And apparently for another student, who proclaimed that his newfound dream was a lifelong career in it. I wouldn’t go that far, though there is no doubt in my mind that homemade pasta tastes a lot better than what you’d buy at the store. I am definitely rushing out to get a pasta maker this weekend…