Entries tagged with “techniques of fine cooking 1”
This was the last class and the chef threw us for a little bit of a loop…when it came time to cook, she told us that we wouldn’t be allowed to look at our recipes…she would post a list of ingredients and we would have to mix them based on experience and taste. I’ll go into why that is almost the worst thing Chef could have done to me in another post, but for now, I’ll just say that I went into this class with an open, but cautious, mind.
The lecture portion included how to make a marinade and why certain ingredients are necessary in one depending on what type of food is being prepared (i.e. chicken, lamb, pork, beef, etc.), how to make mayo and when you should versus using store bought, how to properly carve London Broil, and how a restaurant broiler is different than the average home kitchen broiler.
Today was egg day! Everything we learned revolved around eggs in some way.
The lecture portion started off by going over some of the technical ways to cook the items we were going to be cooking later in the class, such as the temperature the water should be to properly poach eggs, how to properly peel hard-cooked eggs, and how to make clarified butter.
Chef then demonstrated how to peel tomatoes, how to add eggs to water to poach them, how to scramble eggs (in a sauce pan, of all things), how to make omelets (both American and French style), and how to separate eggs whites and yokes.
This lesson was all about braising, shellfish, and heavy cream. We got started with the lecture and Chef told us all about the how and why of braising, how to check shellfish to make sure they’re still alive, how to deglaze and reduce, and how to make mousse. She also showed us how to prepare leeks, endives, peppers, carrots, and bliss potatoes for the dishes we’d be making.
Then we started making.
We dove right into the class lecture this week both because there was no general introduction to go through and because we were roasting chicken and making chicken stock so we needed as much cooking time as possible. Lesson two was all about stocks and roasting and the chef described how to truss a chicken, what aromatics to cook it with as well as what aromatics to use when making stock. She also gave us her six or so rules to making good stock, which was quite interesting because all of them made sense after being explained, but I would have broken almost every one of them if you asked me to make stock on my own.
She then showed us a few ways to cut a pear and use a melon baller to remove the core nicely. Then she moved on to how to roast garlic and stuff a tomato. Then she opened up a package of pork belly and to prove that it really was from the actual belly, she showed us the nipple that was still on it. With the pork belly she showed us how to cut it in different ways and how one group would be using “lardons” for their salad. She then showed us exactly how to prep a chicken for roasting by removing the wishbone, tucking the wings, cutting some fat, placing butter between the skin and the flesh, and finally, how to truss it up properly.
Last night was the first class of the five, and to make sure that I wasn’t late, I left work slightly early to make sure I had enough time to get downtown and find the school, and by “slightly early” I mean that I left at the time that I officially work till as directed by the employee handbook and my job description.
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been having amazing luck lately when it comes to the subway. It seems that I either arrive right as a train is pulling in, or about to pull in. During rush hours, I never need to wait more than two minutes for one. And yesterday afternoon was no exception. As I was going down the stairs to the N/R/W tracks, there was an empty train pulling in. Within 15 minutes, I was at 23rd and 5th, getting rained upon.
For many, many years, I’ve been threatening to take a cooking class to improve my confidence in the kitchen…and if the class prevents me from poisoning myself, well, that would be a bonus.
Well, I’ve stopped threatening and I’m taking action. I’ve enrolled in a recreational fine cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education. For the next five weeks, I’ll be attending the class one night a week from 6pm-11pm and learning about knife skills, sauteing, roasting, braising, grilling, and cooking shellfish.
As I prepare to embark on the first phase of Josh 2.0, I wonder what exactly I’ll take away from this class. After enrolling I started to wonder what it would take for me to think of this class as being successful and worthwhile. Maybe I’ll find some hidden talent that I didn’t know I had, or maybe I’ll fall in love with a food I wouldn’t normally find appetizing (like asparagus—yuck!), or a way of cooking that I didn’t understand. Maybe I’ll walk away with the confidence to not be intimidated by complicated recipes, or maybe I’ll have the ability to find something in a grocery store and be able to understand how to cook it and shop for sides without having to go home look up a recipe and go back to the store to pick everything up.
It wasn’t until today that I think I found a good line in the sand that will define whether the class was useful or not. If, after the class, you ask me what the most important utensil is in my kitchen, and I don’t answer, “the fire extinguisher”, then it will have been a success.
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