BOH lingo!

It's been a week of back of the house saute station action for me. Its kinda fun going to school and not having formal classes anymore, i am thrown into a real cooking environment. Its like when i was in high school, i always sat in my boring pre-calculus class, and thought, "I god, when i am i ever going to use the practicality of this seriously! i mean i know how to add and subtract!". But here, we are put in the real world, shown that what we learn IS valuable in real life. I must say i was lucky to be in the back of the house, my peers that got in the front of the house told me its kinda boring, and that there are sick of smiling at people and getting them their lattes. And apparently, the saute station is the most sought out for because the chef asked who wanted to work next week and everyone jumped to it. As hard as it was on busy nights, i must say it was fun. I think the chef put me as a runner next week which i am not to happy about, but we'll see, at least its not front of the house (or FOH). speaking of which (pun intended), theres a whole set of words i picked up this week. If any of you have ever worked in a restaurant or cafe kitchen, you may be familiar with the terms. I don't like them all, but here they are (Merriam Webster, shame on you for making EVOO an official word):
-"all day": i got yelled this a lot from the sous chef who was expediting. when i got slammed with orders he'd yell out, "yo, you got 4 Alfredo's all day". Its basically how many dishes i needed to get out total. So if table 12 orders two orders of salmon and table 19 orders four orders of salmon, that's "six salmon, all day."
-"on the fly": usually, yelled not by the sous chef but by the chef. This could be a special order, or maybe an order that got messed up and needs to be replaced ASAP. When i did orders, i did them in the order they were issued, but "on the fly" had first priority to get made.
-making a dish "sexy": this term is relative, sometimes it means to make it look really nice by adding s nice garnish like chopped parsley, this was the case in my station. but sometime, people use it when they add some kind of really indulgent product like extra cheese, bacon pieces, or truffles. hmm which is sexier bacon grease or parsley???
-"Mise en Place": Essentially, it means everything in its place, very crucial to have your mise set up so you have everything you need handy so you can bust out dishes as they get ordered.
-cambro: its a large plastic bin when i throw in used saute pans once i finished with them, the runners then bring the cambro to the dishwasher (yay, i dont have to do dishes!)

these are just SOME terms, i only listed those we actually used A LOT because some "official" terms are just not used, at least not in our kitchen.

Back of the House!

so the first day of my first rotation began. Each rotation is three weeks. So i was placed at the cafe. I was a little disappointed i was placed there becuase i figured it would be like working in any old joint or starbucks. Thankfully, its really not so bad. My chef put me at the saute station which is basically just the pasta station. there are three pastas on the menu: alfredo, mariniara, and grilled veggie penne. I wouldn't call what i do real cooking because the sauces are sort of alread made. I just need to reduce the cream and add cheese and seasonings to make alfredo, saute some garlic and heat up the marinara sauce, and caramelize the veggies for the veggie pasta. I thought i might need ten pans at most. Boy was I wrong. I must have went through 20. The cafe opens for dinner at 6:30pm and oddly enough, it got busy in my station right away. I must have gotten five different orders for pastas in a matter on seconds. I messed up a lot, i felt a bit like Lucy in that famous epissode where she boxes chocolates like in an assembly line. Because there were a lot of steps i needed to complete for each order. heat sauce, re-boil pasta (thankfully they are already part boiled and portioned), season the sauce, toast the barlic bread, heat up the plate (hot food must always be served on a hot plate), plate the pasta, add the garnish (cheese and parsley) and slice the garlic bread on a bias and place it on the side. To-go orders are a hell of a lot easier (no plate heating). At first, my chef asked me if i was ok at the station alone and i was like "o yea, i can handel it!". I wanted to seem all macho because i was already happy he put me, a girl, the cafe's most active part of the kitchen. But i just couldn't handel it alone, i got like ten orders in a matter on minutes, so another girl jumped in to help me. It was cool then, i think we worked together nicely. Which brings me to another thing, the people are not all from the class i was in before because the rotations are all mixed up. So i met some really nice people and most seem cool and collected. I had dinner with this one girl that said, "for so pretty, you should be on T.V." and "wow, your such a tiny person, but you have such a big ass personality". To be honest, i dont take complements well, and i haven't gotten one in a while, so i sorta shrugged it off and said, "are you kidding, i am in my ugly phase right now, i haven't done my eye brows, i am not wearing any makeup, my hair is greased up under the chefs cap we wear. But as i drove home, i thought, "why didn't i just say thank you". I dont think i am pretty, but i am glad i made an impression on someone, that she thought i had a true soul and personality. maybe i should give myself more credit, i could sure use the confidence boost because the lack of it can bring me down. So tomorrow, i am going to bust out those pastas and i'll now know how to handel seven or eight orders better, and i am going to thank that girl and say "thanks, you very pretty too!".

My fairy godparents

I know, this is a little unrelated to cooking school per se, but I was pondering this yesterday. There are some people i just feel inspire me but also give me a sense of safety and positive energy. Thinking of them brings my spirits up when i am down and really serve as sort of "fairy godmother" to my Cinderella side. heres the list:

-Julia Child: also one of my heroes, but whenever i mess up in the kitchen i think of Julia that despite her culinary brilliance, didn't take herself too seriously and embraced screw-ups. Plus, i think she actually COULD turn a pumpkin into something magical, maybe not a carriage, but soup perhaps???

-Carson Kressley: famous for being the fashion guru on "Queer eye for the straight guy" and his new show "How too look good naked", I truly this guy could get me out of a beauty/fashion/body slump. He's helped so many women learn to love the bodies they were born with and I think his efforts are revolutionary in the body acceptance movement. I also think every straight girl needs a bff of sorts. Tim Gunn (from "Project Runway") seems nice, but he always wears the same thing! I know Tim's got a good eye for fashion, but shouldn't he practice what he preaches? Carson always dresses different, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy. That, and I don't think Tim would like my enormous collection of sweats...

-Morgan Freeman: I dont know if he in genuinely i nice guy, but he's such a fantastic actor that he sure puts on a great, grandfatherly image. That and I am in love with his voice (as you may well know, he narrated numerous documentaries and books on tape). If he came out with a cd where he reads the dictionary, I'd probably buy it! Being Jewish, i never really had a memory of a Santa Clause type figure, but I'd imagine Morgan Freeman would suffice.

-Rivkah, my second grade Hebrew teacher: yes, i went to a Jewish elementary school so we had to take Hebrew and Jewish studies course. When i was in second grade i switched to a new school and was terrified. But from the first day of class this lovely, smiling woman welcomed me. She was more than a teacher, she really connected with her students. another girl in the class had a piano recital (not connected to the school) and Rivkah not only came to show support, she offered to take me. she had this cupboard in the class room where she held "prizes" for when you did well on a test or something. bizarre but cute prizes like alphabet soups, glitter tooth paste, and silly putty. kinda odd but practical, fun things. I don't know what she's doing now, we actually kept in contact but last i saw her was about a year after my mother died. she was fairly old, i hope she'd still alive, but my mom and I both loved her.

there you have it, my list of fairy godparents, who's yours?

The final!

I didn't talk much about the final, but this was a very simple one. I actually didn't do as well as I had hoped, given that it was a breeze compared to our other finals, but i ended up getting an A in the class which is all i really cared about in the end. I had a day of prep and an hour and a half to turn in a soup (mine was hot and sour soup), an appetizer (mine way chicken and peanut satay), and an entree with a starch and veggie (mine was osso bucco with risotto and rapini). Most everyone had a different menu combo, but i definitely thought i got a harder menu. Osso bucco is a "low and slow" type of Italian dish. I remember when i visited Italy when i was in ninth grade with my friend whose family was Italian (and in the mob mind u, but i didn't care, i wasn't on their hit list so they just fed me and were happy that i ate what they gave me!). anyhow, her grandmother spent all day tending to her osso bucco. we had only a day of prep and then an hour before service the day of. Hence i was left with a fairly over-braised veal shank in the end. The chef liked my peanut satay which completely strayed from the recipe, but that's what i liked about this class, you didn't necessarily needed to follow the rules, but it just had to simply taste good. It was really cute in the end, i needed to use cucumber and red onion as a garnish so i made a cup out of the cucumber and used it as a vessel for the satay. My soup was "good but too sour" according to the chef. I agree with him, i knew it was sour, i tasted it many times, but i honestly never had hot and sour soup very often so i figured it was supposed to taste like that. next time, i'll go easy on the vinegar. anyhow, i've been working on my resume for my externship search which is a bit strange. I begin to reflect about all my previous education and odd-ball job experiences. I've worked and interned nearly everywhere. I was a movie set P.A. (very cool actually, i met Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning), a fashion house assistant (a horrible experience, i was an intern and not paid, but you could say they basically fired me. i think they didn't like my outspoken-ness...but i still wonder why they asked me not to come back...), a barista, a baby/dog/house/fish/hamster sitter, etc. what odd ball jobs have you had? share them, i am sure some of you could out do the next. (BTW, the picture here is actually of the very first dish i made in this course, my "steak au poive" practical quiz which i actually did well on, i didn't post my final pictures because as you can imagine, i was too busy worrying about getting the dishes out on time).

Useful info picked up in my international class!

l.b. mentioned i should post some tips of the Latin cuisine i delved into last week, which got me thinking, i picked up a lot of useful info in this course and i'd be more than happy to spread the love! here's some key things i learned:
-most countries have their own "salt" medium. In the U.S., for example, salt is usually used to give items some taste. but say in south east Asia, they use fish sauce which is a good medium if your sick of using plain old NaCl (sodium chloride or salt, for those unchemistry oriented folk). Italians tend to use salty cheese like Parmesan or peccorino. The french like sea salt and items like capers. But try not to use too many salt sources in one dish. If you make a Parmesan risotto, don't add salt, or at least go easy on it. And i suggest trying sea salt. it might seem like a minor difference but don't think so, i think it gives this nice, fresh taste. Now that its summer, there really is nothing like biting into a fresh heirloom tomato with some sea salt (strange, but i swear, delicious!).
- just like every country has a preferred salt medium, they also have a preferred fat medium. In the U.S. (unfortunately) we tend to use a lot of criso and shortening. But in France they use really good quality butter, but they are also big on using the animal's own fat to cook a product (otherwise known as the "confit" method). In Greece, Spain, Italy and other Mediterranean countries, they use olive oil. In Mexico they use pork fat (aka, lard) and in Asian countries, they use nut oils like sesame or peanut oil. So when your making a dish, think about you fat medium. Don't think all oils are healthy. In South America they use Dende oil (or palm oil) which is actually very bad for you. I like flavorful fats, so i try to avoid bland ones like shortening. I prefer butter to crisco any day, even for the flakiest of pastries. Also, and i didn't really pick this up from class, i like to use naturally fat fill foods to substitute for stuff like butter. For example, i like to make cookies with 100% peanut butter or avocado.
- There are sooooo many ways to thicken sauces and soups! We made a very nice sauerbraten sauce when we did Germany and its made with prunes and thickened with ginger snap crumbs! for the Indian dishes, we used chickpea flour (mind you a very good substitute if you need a thickener and want something healthier than white flour). For my final menu, i need to make a hot and sour soup (although its also knows as egg drop soup) which is thickened with a slurry (a teaspoon of cornstarch and water poured in). So you see, thickeners can very so try a different thickener to give your dish another dimension.
-cooking methods really differ from region to region. I noticed a lot of the south east Asian dishes were made very quickly (e.g. pad Thai ). Most of the cooking time is just prepping the ingredients. Italians i think prefer the "low and slow", like osso bucco (also on my final menu) which requires a braise of a couple of hours. I think its pretty neat how Indians use the tandoor (a clay oven) to not only cook chicken but also their bread (naan which is actually pictured, its from the buffet so i didn't make it myself, but i can atest it was very tasty!) which they stick on the outside of the oven like a magnet.
-degreasing soups. ahh well i should have posted this in the beginning way back in intro I where i first learned how to make consomme. a good consomme is grease free and as we all know, water and fat are not friends, so when fat falls in the pool, its easy to spot. Although the method of making consomme does a good job of degreasing the broth and concentrating the flavor, sometimes grease still gets there. Even after to strain it through a coffee filter, you might still spot some grease so here's what i do when this happens: at this point, the soup is already nearly grease free so i would not recommend this if your soup is really greased out. take a couple strips of parchment and just run them through the soup very quickly. If you let it stay in the soup to long, the grease come off the parchment, initially, it sticks right to it so do this a few times very swiftly.

so those are some tidbits i picked up this term. I interviewed my chef so stay tuned for the quick Q and A i had with him!

catching you up...

i know, i haven't updated in a while, and so much has happened. too much to cover in one post, so real quick I'll just first explain that today was my last day at my International, the last day of the term where all we do is clean the lab (or kitchen as normal people might call it) and get our final grades and such. so yes, this was finals week, but you missed a hell of a week last week so I'll fill you in about that week now.
Our lovely chef had a family reunion and was out for all of last week. We knew this when we first started the class but didn't think much of it. We've had substitutes before and they've been nice enough. Hmm, maybe we got spoiled. The sub was the chef that teaches our class but on a different schedule (as you may remember i do the "c" schedule which runs from 6pm to 11pm, she teaches from 12pm-5pm). A friend of mine in class (yes, believe it or not even after the whole class finding out about my blog, some people apparently still think i am cool enough to talk to) told me her boyfriend had that particular teacher and that she was scary. how bad could it be???
I guess bad, real bad. On the surface, she was quite friendly. But she ran the class in such a way that EVERYONE was getting upset and angry. and angry and negative atmosphere is terrible for an effective. She was super strict, which i suppose is good, but I've had strict chefs before and there was this unfriendly aura about the way she followed "the rules". She spent a lot of class time lecturing about the recipes which really didn't need it so we got out very late. She would not let us really venture out of the recipe. Our regular chef told us before, i don't care how you make it, but make it taste good. This is our last formal class in the program so we're fairly advanced, this should be our time to glance at recipes to get an idea, and sort of build our dishes on our own. Everyone, and i do mean EVERY student in the class was very unhappy with this teacher. the class seemed like work or a boot camp and the joy of cooking that we had before was gone. As a result, people started to get snappy, no one was relaxed and everyone could have used some Prozac (me included). I didn't actually go on the last day she was teaching (last Thursday) which is rare because I've never missed a day of class throughout the whole program. Apparently, people got so on edge that there was a actually a physical fight between the students! i wasn't there thank god, bu i know enough simply from this blog not to get into peoples business so i am forever going to stay on the sidelines when it comes to personalities clashing.
The animosity aside, the theme of the week was south America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. this is my dish from our south American day, its a achiote marinated pork chop (which the chef referred to as so overcooked that it was "dead")with grilled cactus (not so bad tasting, and apparently very rich in vitamins!), and rice. the one good thing she said about my dish was that the rice was nice. And i suppose that was good enough for me. If you may remember, rice was the first dishes we learned way back in our Intro I class and people forget how to do it right. And its fundamental, i think every eatery serves rice of some sort. anyhow, more about finals week in my next post. thanks guys, for those still reading this!

South East Asian!

There are quite a few South East Asian students in my class, actually they make up about half the class i think. this is cool, but when we did South East Asia last week, i was so freaked out because clearly, they were in familiar territory. Case in point, the lumpia. its a egg roll, of sorts, but i asked a few of my classmates to show me how to roll it properly because once i hit the fryer, it sort of came apart on me. Actually, its quite simple to make, but i suppose there is a magic "southeast Asian" touch i lack. I served it with a hot sweet and sour sauce. I dont think my chef actually tried all of them, thats a lot of lumpias to try, but he said mine ok. I have loads more to dish about this week, it was a whirlwind like no other!