Learning curve

In the morning session, Chef Vyhnanek demonstrated the prep work for making brown stock, fish stock, white (chicken) stock, and Court Bouillon. This included a very brief lesson in knife use and handling as well as techniques for cutting onions and carrots. It was my first time viewing a chef in a demonstration room, and it was definitely helpful to see what the process would look like from my own perspective (looking down). The demo seemed to finish fast and we took our lunch break. Yesterday—our first class—we were spoiled with a catered lunch from South End Formaggio, a Boston gourmet market. Today’s homemade sandwich couldn’t compare to a charcuterie platter, cheese platter, Middle Eastern and Spanish spreads! My point is, it’s a good thing they feed us well because I am quickly becoming the world’s poorest grad student (and that’s saying something).

After said sandwich, we donned our whites and such for the first time and went into the kitchen to cook. Chef divided us into two groups of four and we each settled into our stations. Chef assigned a sous chef for each group. It was at this point I determined the first of two major flaws I have when it comes to working in a kitchen. I am not a team player. I spend 99% of my kitchen time alone and I very much like it that way, primarily because it means that I am in charge and I can do things my way and in my time without having to worry about compromising or even having to broach the social awkwardness that is inherent in group work. We were given very vague direction, none of which was written down. Chef huddled with the two sous chefs and gave them more detailed information. The student sous chefs did their best to be the go-between, but it was really difficult to function cohesively. My habit, when forced into team situations, is to step back and be directed. It works super well when the group leader is explicit about the process and what we are expected to do. It works poorly when no one is quite sure what’s happening. So that’s me—not a born leader.

My second major kitchen flaw became apparent shortly after we began cooking. I have a Math Block. Numbers literally make me anxious and I freeze up and cry and can’t function. It turns out cooking, at least with specific recipes, requires a lot of math-y thinking. For example, I was assigned to prep all the celery needed for the three different stocks for my group of four. The group of four split so that half of us worked on one stove and the other half worked on the stove across the way. Each side would make half a recipe. Each recipe required different amounts of mirepoix, the vegetable trinity I wrote about yesterday. The only fixed quantity was the 25% celery per batch of mirepoix. The white stock required 2 lb of mirepoix (translating to ½ lb celery). Do you know how to translate lb to oz or cups? I didn’t. I mostly still don’t. The fish stock required 1 lb of mirepoix, which meant ¼ lb of celery. The court bouillon called for 1 lb and 8 oz of mirepoix. Way to throw a wrench in things, you evil, outdated, recipe! Anyway, you get the point that it required a lot of premeditation to even be able to pick out the celery hearts, never mind cut them properly. I did not cry, but I did require several people’s assistance, some of whom had to repeat the same information and even at that point I didn’t really get it. Thankfully, stock is forgiving and it wasn’t the end of the world if the chopped celery was 1/8 lb too much or too little. But still…you can bet I’ll be consulting my conversion charts and next class’s recipes over the weekend! I love that as challenging as this is for me, I still find it fascinating. I guess that is the gift of finally knowing what you are passionate about. Graduate school is awesome like that.

I did learn very fast that I know next to nothing about proper knife usage. Apparently I rely too much on brute force and only use the tip of the blade. I am now cutting very slowly, but very properly. Yay! Hopefully by the end of the semester I can be as fast as I was while still employing proper technique. I’m glad I bought the Global chef knife. It feels better in my hand than the Wusthof santoku I’d been using at home.

We did a tasting once the stocks were done. First we tried the stocks as is, then we tried them again with salt. (Stocks should never be salted because they will become overly salty when reduced and made into sauces.) Chicken stock tasted like chicken stock. The fish stock was plain but good. The court bouillon was jarringly acidic, but I think would be marvelous with a Thai spin. The brown stock was AMAZING. I’ve never tasted anything like it. Perhaps because I’ve never tasted veal? I was surprised to note that it was reminiscent of a Ritz cracker. I mentioned it to the chef and he said it’s likely because both are browned. Heat is a magical thing! Brown all the things!

Random facts I learned today:

·         A melon baller is really a “Parisian scoop.”

·         A “mother sauce” is a base sauce from which you can create other, more complex, sauces.

·         The term to “86” something (to throw out) originated in the Navy in WWII, when “86” referred to the bottom of the ocean. When Navy cooks had a burnt piece of food or a spoiled item, they would use the slang term to imply that it should be tossed overboard and be fed to the ocean floor.

·         Roux was initially popular because it was cheaper. Adding a roux to stock thickened it up quickly, whereas the only way to make a stock thicken on its own is to let it cook down for a very long time. This would yield much less sauce at the end of the day.

·         Halibut is the best fish ever to use for fish stock.

·         There is a distinction between a stock and a broth. A stock uses only bones (some with bits of meat and cartilage remaining), whereas a broth uses the flesh of the animal as well. I now know that when I’m making Grandma’s chicken soup, I’m creating a broth, not a stock.