this week's wrap up: soups, sauces, and pasta!

I once agian appologize for not updating this week. Anyhows, i thought i'd give you an update of this whole week, cause boy did A LOT happen! Lets start with the chef instuctors. Chef Woodstock still has a stick up is...ahem....but i am kind of appreciating it now. He's hard on me, but it makes me want to do better, to outsmart him and to be honest, i think he likes me because i talk to him during break about stuff that he does in his life(always get to know your teachers on a more personal, one on one level. college taught me that at least!) like this buddhist retreat he did where he only ate vegan food at this remote place in Carmel for a month. He's also given me a good credit on most of my dishes. Which brings me to the dishes....monday is usually a lecture/demo day so no actual cooking. We learned about soups and sauces this week and man, i had no idea they can be that complex! With that, we had to make a number of soups this week like potato parmentier (the french name for potato leek soup), carrot ginger puree soup, spicy black bean, and vichysoisse (which is nothing more than potato leek soup chilled!). I usually am in love with potato leek, but i actually preferred my spicy black bean! It had only like four ingredients and it was SO simple to make, i am suprised i never thought of it before! sauces were a bit strange. we did the classics like roux (butter/flour mixtures) based sauces like bechemel, veloute (basically like gravy), and hollandaise (yuck!) as well as carbonara pasta and prima vera. We made out own pastas which sounds cool but i hated it, he had these terrible pasta crankers that were falling apart on us so it took me forever. All i wanted to do was get a box of barilla and be done with it! Can i just say that i HATE holladaise! the taste, and even more the process! first of all it's concentrated cholestorol with egg yolks, a bit of water and lemon juice, and most importantly clarified butter. for those who dont know, clarified butter is butter heated just enough that most of the water evaporates, it like fattier butter. We made batches of the clarified butter the day before and combined it into this huge plastic tub. I sat next to sit, inhaled the fattiness, and thought, "By god, this is like an atkins dream and susan powder nightmare!". Anyhow, back to the holladnaise, you need to wisk the clarified butter into the egg yold mixture gradually over a towel with heated steam water in a pot underneath. But you have to wisk FAST or else the butter wont combine. Its about 8 min of constant wisking. yes, my arm is sore. Not to mention, i think it tastes awful.
As far as the other students, i am slowly getting a better feel of who they are. some are very naive and litterally just fresh out of high school. and then theres those who blow me a away like this girl, i'll call wanda (cause she reminds me of wanda sykes) who has a full time job, a two year old, AND does this culinary school. There are a few people who keep very quiet and i try to exchange a word or two from time to time to spark converstation, but i think they mostly want me to leave them alone. Its sorta funny because some aspects of the social scene are very high school. there are those few that actually do the reading, you know, the types that get 100 on all the quizes and make you feel a little lazy. there are the social butterflies that cant keep their mouth shut and need to talk about something or someone all the time. the nerds who interject to say what they want to correct you when you were really doing it right all the time (its just this one guy in particular). I was never in any "group" in high school, so i am not sure where i fall here, but i am doing alright i guess. anyhows, more culinary school gossip to come...