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February 09, 2005

Ok, So I Skipped The First 4 Weeks

Skipping the first four weeks of this blog was due to many reasons.

1. The first two weeks I was still trying to get organized and settled into a schedule. This was especially hard since I had not been working since the first part of November.

2. Until Thursday of this week I had a blog on another website and although I am a computer geek, that website wasn't as user-friendly and since my schedule is already pretty crazy I needed the simpler the better.

3. The first three weeks were BORING, food wise. It wasn't until week four that our resulting dishes became dinner for most of us, instead of a wrinkled nose and setting it aside.

The first week we learned knife cuts and how to make stock. Stock is nothing but bones and mirepoix that has simmered for hours on end. Not much taste to the stuff at all, but it ends up being an essential part of just about everything.

To keep us a little bit entertained, the first week we made French Onion Soup on Thursday night and Friday night we made a Tomato Basil Relish that we used as a topping for some Foccacia bread.

Week Two was Soups. Of course, it was.. The hottest week since I moved to Dallas and we spend the entire week making SOUP. Beef Consomme, Puree of Split Pea, Minestrone, Vichyssoise and Cream of Broccoli were the end results of our soup lesson.

Week Three was probably the most boring of them all. We made sauces. Mother Sauces to be exact. Don't get me wrong, sauces are great to pour over something, or to dunk something in, or to add stuff to to make a soup or another sauce... But just to eat, sauce? nah, I don't think so. We made an Espagnole (Brown Sauce), a Bechamel (cream sauce), Veloute (thickened stock), Tomato Sauce, Hollandaise and Mayonnaise.

I guess they know they have to give us something to munch on every night... So that Thursday we made a Beef Barley soup from the Beef Stock that was already there as an ingredient for the Espagnole... And Friday night we made Macaroni and Cheese. We took two different bowls with a Bechamel sauce, one had cheese melted in it, the other had sauteed onions in it. Once they were done both were poured over elbow macaroni and that was baked in the oven until golden brown on the top. It was pretty good... not that $0.39 box stuff for sure.

And finally that brings us to Week Four. This was a fun week and our kitchen assignments started turning into a whole new aspect... DINNER. This was also the week that the entire class started finishing our assignments, washing the dishes & cleaning the kitchen and getting done anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour early. Its amazing the change in how we work when we are interested in what we are doing.

Thursday night we made potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes. Starting out with Steak Fries and Roesti Potatoes (basically potato pancakes), Scalloped Potatoes, Lyonnaise Potatoes (my mom's been making Fried Potatoes and Onions all my life, just didn't know they were called that), Duchesse Potatoes(potato mush piped thru a pastry bag into little pyramids and baked) and finally Potato Croquettes (the Duchesse potatoes, breaded and fried). As you can see, none of these lasted long enough to pose for a portrait for this website.

Friday night we turned our attention to rice and pasta. We had a classic rice pilaf, a brown rice pilaf with spiced pecans, spaetzle (weird dumpling things), risotto milanese (rice cooked by slowly adding liquid until its gone then adding more until its plump and done.. see picture), and lastly we made Buttered Pasta.

Ok, so now you are all caught up on the first four weeks of culinary school. Did you learn anything?

Posted by FutureFoodTVStar at February 9, 2005 12:00 AM

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