Baby Animals are the Tastiest

If you are one of those people who prefer to think that meat is a tidy little item that comes from the grocery store de-boned and wrapped in plastic you may wish to skip the first half of this post.

Yesterday we had a special seminar on butchery.  We got to butcher and de-bone whole lamb.  Now THIS is the fun stuff I was waiting for.

Larger mammals, whether they walk on four legs or two, are pretty similar in bone structure, so butchering a lamb is pretty good practice for any other mammal – pigs, cows, goats, deer, etc. It actually helps to picture human anatomy while you are doing it – well, maybe don’t dwell on that too much.

The only tools you need are a boning knife, a cleaver, a hacksaw, and a trussing needle.   You might also be well advised to strap on a chainmail apron – putting a knife into your femoral artery is a good way to make a terrible mess and bleed to death in about seven minutes.

The Chef, with characteristic humour, began the class saying “Ok, so they are still alive.  We’ll have to kill them.”  Haha.  Very funny.  Slaughtering animals is not on the curriculum.

The Chef demonstrated how to separate the shoulder, saw off the neck, separate the coffre (ribcage structure) from the saddle, and separate the legs.  We were then let loose on a few more carcasses.

I was surprised at how easy it was.  Butchery seems to be about understanding the anatomy/bone structure and learning how not to waste or otherwise destroy perfectly good meat.  Almost every part can be used in some way, right down to the bones for making stocks and sauces.  And lamb is such a tasty meat – nothing at all like mutton, its adult counterpart which I think smells like wet wool mittens drying on a baseboard heater.  If you don’t like lamb, you’ve likely been eating older lamb/mutton.

Today’s demo was by the “other Chef” (I think I’ll just call him Chef 2 for now).  This is the same Chef who supervised our “Travail de L’Entremetier” workshop last week. He, like all the other Chefs, is VERY French.  His English isn’t as fluent as some of the others, but he has a wicked sense of humour.  He even swore a couple of times when he realized that the oven wasn’t on at one point.

The dish for today was Côtelette d’agneau Maintenon, essentially lamb chops with a mushroom, onion, breadcrumb and Sauce Béchamel mixture on top.   In and of itself it’s not very difficult, so to spice it up we had to prepare three sides – Carottes Vichy (Vichy-style carrots), Gratin de Chou-fleurs (Cauliflower gratin) and Pommes Boulangère (an unremarkable potato dish with onions and chicken stock).   And, of course, because it’s the Cordon Bleu, you’ve gotta have a sauce – in this case Sauce Périgueux (lamb bones/Madeira/veal stock/black truffle).

I didn’t find this practical overly difficult.  I did have a minor panic attack when I realized I was confusing the Sauce Soubise for the cauliflower with the sauce to go in with the breadcrumbs.  I realized I’d made them in the wrong order and was about to pour the wrong one over the cauliflower.  My brain completely froze, so I set everything down and washed my hands.  I’ve discovered that this is a very good way to take a few seconds to get my mind back on track and hey, it’s never wrong to give the hands another scrubbing.

Chef 2 seemed quite happy with my efforts.  Like in the workshop, I was a little weirded out by the lack of criticisms.  I even mentioned that I have a tendency to over-reduce and over-salt my sauces and asked if there was any sign of that today.  Nope.  Trés bon travail.  In fact, Chef 2 wrote on my Student Evaluation Journal “Bonne étudiante.  Trés serieuse.”   Not sure how to take the “very serious” part – perhaps it’s Chef-code for “She didn’t smile once during the whole class.”

So as I’m writing this, I’m gnawing on lamb bones.  This was a good dish.  Baby animals are the tastiest.

Mid Term Evaluation: I Don't Suck

This afternoon was my mid-term evaluation with the Chef.  While it’s hard to believe that it’s already the middle of the term, it’s actually not far off.  We’ve completed eight of 25 lessons already, and it’s right around this time that most people are starting to ask the great question:  “Do I suck at this?”

Apparently, I don’t suck.  I’m understanding the techniques and concepts being demonstrated and my knife work is decent.  I need to work on my sauces and tightening up a bit on process, but those will come with practice.  In fact, there’s nothing I really need to work on that won’t come with practice and, in my estimation, I’m doing pretty well for someone who took a two year break after Basic Cuisine. Considering that I've spent my whole adult life dealing with politics and public affairs where a big screw up can send a government into the weeds for days if not weeks, a minor critique of my sauces does not exactly keep me up at night.

I did express a little frustration about Friday's workshop, and how I felt like that Chef had been a little too helpful, particularly with some crumbling pastry.  While I am always reluctant to say that someone else on my team made a mistake, the pastry wasn't my fault because I didn't make it AND I realized the problem immediately, but the Chef didn't give me the chance to re-do it on my own. Let's just call it a lesson learned.

On a rather amusing note, the Chef mentioned (first thing, in fact) is that he’s been reading the blog, which doesn’t really come as a surprise.  Countless people have documented their Cordon Bleu experiences in books and blogs and I’m sure they make some entertaining reading for the Chefs.

So what’s for dinner on this snowy night in Ottawa?  What I will simply call “wreckage pot pie” – pot pie made with my practice puff pastry and my practice carrots, onions, celery and mushrooms, plus a few things I dragged out of the fridge.  And yes Chef, I did taste my sauce – not too acidic, not too much salt, but maybe a little heavy on the thyme.  Don’t worry though – I’ll keep practicing.

Week 3: Puff Pastry, the F*cking Pheasant, Coquilles Saint-Jacques and “Le Travail de L’Entremetier”

Is it really the end of week three?  Time is really flying now, and I just haven’t had the time or energy to blog this week, so let’s get caught up!

Remember how I said that the dishes were going to start getting a lot more difficult?  Well, no kidding.

Perhaps I should re-phrase that:  the dishes aren’t getting that much more difficult in terms of technique, but they are much more hectic in terms of organization.  Instead of focusing on one or two techniques like in Basic Cuisine, the dishes now have several things going on at once, all of which need to come together with the right timing. 

A perfect example was Monday’s dish, Coulibiac de Saumon Frais et Fumé (Fresh and Smoked Salmon in Puff Pastry).  It’s an interesting presentation with layers of rice, mushrooms, salmon, onions, hard boiled eggs, and parsley in a puff pastry crust. 

After the demo on Monday morning, I had a break of a few hours before the practical.  I decided to be a keener and go home and make a batch of puff pastry.  It’s not a difficult thing to make, but I don’t have a lot of use for it at home, so I rarely practice it.  I baked a few pieces and it turned out perfectly.  Yay me!

Famous last words.

When we got into the kitchen for the practical, the room itself was an oven.  It was hotter than the surface of the sun.  The other Intermediate Cuisine section had just finished their practical so ovens, flat tops and burners had been on for hours.  Every surface in the kitchen was warm, and puff pastry demands cold but softened butter.  You can imagine what started to happen.  Rapidly melting butter was squishing out the ends of my pastry every time I tried to roll it.  I ended up throwing the thing in the freezer to get it to firm up just a little.  I chilled my hands before working with it, chilled my rolling pin, etc.  But every time I touched the dough it got messy.  I said some very bad words.

Fortunately, my dish turned out mostly okay, but I spent far too much time praying over the pastry and could have been done, with a better dish, a whole lot sooner.  Lesson learned – if there’s puff pastry, make sure the sous chef brings a bin of ice to class.

This week we also made Ballotine de Faisan Farci (De-boned stuffed pheasant).  I simply call it The Fucking Pheasant.  If you are unfamiliar with pheasant, once it’s stripped of its colourful plumage, it’s a scrawny little game bird (think over-grown grouse).  It has lots of delicate little bones, a zillion tiny nerves and tendons everywhere, and thin flesh and skin.  And it has to be de-boned completely without ripping it to shreds.  Arrrrggggghhhhh…….

And if that weren’t frustrating enough, we also had to make a farce fine, similar to that from the Chartreause de Riz de Veau last week, but with fun additions like cooked barley, chicken livers, peeled pistachios, and pickled ox tongue.   Then roll it up, tie it, pray that it cooks, glaze it, and somewhere along the line prepare some artichokes and onions and a sauce from the pheasant bones.  Two and a half hours?  Yeah… right. My pheasant was undercooked, but it wasn’t a wash-out.  I came home, threw it in the fridge and studiously ignored it for the rest of the evening.

The other dishes this week were a little simpler, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t go spectacularly wrong.  On Thursday we made Coquilles Saint-Jacques à la Nantaise (Scallops), and Petit Marmite Vendéenne (basically a mixed seafood dish).  But the catch is that, for the purposes of the practical class, they are prepared together.  And much of the preparation is so similar (searing scallops, steaming mussels, etc) that you can completely lose track of what dish you are working on and what goes on which plate. 

And the Chef (who, like most other Chefs) has a mildly sadistic streak, came around at the beginning of the class and asked us what time we would be ready to present our dishes.  The guy at the station next to me, who is pretty fast, said he would be ready at 8:30.  When the Chef asked me, I said 8:40 – I figured if I could keep a good pace and allow an extra few minutes to screw something up/lose my shit, I would probably be okay.  When the Chef shouted “Sarah, 20 minutes!” I looked at what seemed to be several dozen pots on my flat top and thought “Okay Fudge – you can do this.”

I think I plated close to on time, but I had a serious problem – my sauces started to break.  If you’ve ever heard the term but don’t know what it means, it’s when you have an emulsified (fat being combined with liquid) sauce, and the fat starts to separate.  If you have time, you can often get them back together with a whisk and some elbow grease, but once it’s on the plate, you are more or less screwed.  I was sorta screwed.  But, at least I put the right sauce on the right plate, unlike at least one of my classmates, and I didn’t cremate my scallops under the salamander (broiler).  In fact, the Chef thought my sauce wasn’t browned enough and stuck it back under the broiler just long enough that I thought I was going to burst into flames. 

Friday was our first workshop class – Le Travail de L’Entremetier.  It was a five hour class designed to test our ability to work in groups and to prepare and serve a variety of dishes on time.  In the kitchen brigade, the Entremetier usually prepares dishes like hot appetizers, soups, eggs, etc.  Our group prepared Quiche Lorraine, Pommes Dauphine, Mousseline de Celéri-Rave, Gratin de Courgettes, and soft boiled eggs with spinach and Sauce Mornay.  Not especially difficult, or shouldn’t be by this stage.

The Chef we had for the workshop was not our usual Chef.  This Chef had a very different, much more hands-on style that I found instructive on “the right way” to do things, but too helpful in many ways.   When he saw someone struggling with something, he would snatch it out of their hands and pretty much do it for them, even though there was lots of time on the clock.  I found that very frustrating – that’s not how I learn.  Maybe he just wanted to get home at a decent hour like the rest of us?

I also expected a few curveballs in the workshop, but none came.  No requests for dairy-free or gluten-free.  No special orders, no last minute requests.   I would have thought for sure they’d find a way to make a simple menu a little more difficult, just to see if we could handle it.

We plated on time, and other than our Mousseline being a bit cold, he liked all our dishes.  No criticism at all.  Usually there are at least a handful of comments about plating style, taste, etc.  Maybe I don’t get enough positive reinforcement in my life, but I was a bit weirded out.  On the other hand, I’ll take a good grade when I can get one because the next workshop may not be so easy.

So what’s next?  Tomorrow is our mid-term evaluation with the Chef in the form of a 15 minute sit-down to talk about how we’re doing, what we need to practice, etc.  I’m not anticipating any surprises, but wish me luck!

There Will Be Blood

And burns, and scrapes, and more near-misses than you can imagine.  But every culinary student eventually cuts themselves.

It was a running joke in Basic Cuisine that I never cut myself.  In fact, one of my fellow students even scrawled “NO CUTS” on the sleeve of one of my jackets (that I’ve kept as a souvenir) while we all commiserated in a bar while waiting for our final exam results.  It took until Practical #6 of this term, but yesterday I drew first blood.

Somehow, I managed to slice the back of my right pinky finger. I didn’t even realize I had a cut right away.  I must have done it while cleaning up because I’m sure I would have noticed it while plating my dish.  It’s a nice match for the burn I still have on the heel of my hand from Practical #2.

A kitchen can be a very dangerous place if you don’t follow the rules.  While some home cooks can blissfully fry bacon while naked, a commercial kitchen is essentially a small and crowded industrial site full of slip-and-fall possibilities, trip hazards, screaming hot surfaces, deep fryers, water, natural gas, electrical equipment, countless sharp objects, and people going in every direction.

Some of the most important rules:

1. Keep your knives sharp.  It’s a myth that sharp knives are more dangerous.  Sharp knives are precise, dull knives catch on things and then slip.  If you don’t believe me, try dicing vegetables with a butter knife.
2. Keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold.  I know that sounds like the jingle from the long-since gone McDonald’s “McDLT” burger, but it’s important.  When you are working at the counter, the stove is behind you.  Keep hot things on the stove and don’t bring them over to the counter.  It’s good food safety practice anyway, and it will help keep you from grabbing a 400F pot handle with your bare hands. 
3. Let other people know where you are and what you are doing.  You always see chefs on TV shouting “BEHIND!” as they walk behind their colleagues.  This is not for TV – this is real.  Kitchens can be crowded and not everyone has a sink, garbage can, etc near their work area, so people have to move around.  Imagine a person whipping around to add some ingredient to a pot on the stove, just as someone walks six inches behind them.  Best case scenario is that it’s raining vegetables, worst case is someone goes face down on a hot flat-top.  Other important phrases?  “HOT POT COMING THROUGH” and “OPEN OVEN”.  And your kindergarten teacher was right – don’t run with scissors, and don’t wander around with a knife.  If you have to take a knife with you, make sure EVERYONE knows that a knife is on the move, and carry it safely, not only for you, but for everyone around you.

As for my wound, it could have been a lot worse.  One of the students in another class yesterday cut her hand very badly and had to go to the hospital to get patched up.  So I’ll wear my new “pinky ring” with a little pride, and as a reminder to keep safe.