Sarah's Day Off

One thing that is really nice about school is that I sometimes have a little so-called “free time”.  However, it’s not like the “free time” I remember when I was in university nearly 15 years ago (oh God…)

Back in the old days, I was a smug and arrogant liberal arts student convinced, like we all were, that I was uncovering great and profound truths in the 15 or so hours a week spent in lectures like “Justice and Gender”, “Survey of Comparative Politics” or “Philosophy of Law”.  Like everyone else, I was probably an insufferable asshole pontificating about concepts like “postmodernism” and “cultural relativism”, while ignoring a hundred pages of readings over a pitcher of Labatt 50 in the campus watering hole. 

You can’t pull that crap in culinary school.

You can’t write 4000 words of bullshit the night before a deadline, squishing the margins on the word processor, typing in a 13 point typeface to eke out an extra page, and stuffing the footnotes with vaguely relevant economic indicator stats pulled from the back page of The Economist.  At the LCB, you have to produce something nearly every day, and you can’t fake it.  Either you plate on time with a decent dish, or you don’t.  And that means you need to practice.

So when I get a day off, or even part of a day off, I practice.

I practice my knife skills.  So far this term I’ve probably run through nearly 12 pounds of carrots working on my julienne, brunoise, and the always (for me at least) horrible turning (or tournage).  My knife work isn’t bad, but for some reason I feel like I’m all thumbs at turning.  Turning, I am told, is the bane of culinary students everywhere, and I’m no exception.

This is an example of what a properly turned turnip looks like:

This is what I did to a carrot:

I also practice butchery and sauce-making, which is a bit of an expensive endeavour.  Canada has cartels that control prices for products like chicken, butter, eggs, milk, etc.  Unless there is a sale on, a whole chicken is going to cost about $10… a good quality, organic chicken usually twice that.  Butter, milk products and eggs are scandalous rip-offs compared to prices in Ogdensburg, New York, just 45 minutes away.  Consumers in Canada, quite frankly, get hosed.  But when groceries are school supplies, you get on with it. 

So while the other section of the Intermediate Cuisine class had their Saucier workshop yesterday, I had the day off.   I got up early (like an adult!), and got to work on a batch of chicken stock, one of the most productive things you can do with the old chicken carcasses from the depths of the freezer and sad-looking vegetable scraps that might otherwise be headed for the rubbish bin. 

Bashing up the carcasses and bones with a cleaver is really one of the best forms of stress relief.  Bad weather?  Whack!  Friend who hasn’t returned my call?  Whack!  Barista who screwed up my coffee? Jammed printer?  Email spam?  Whack! Whack! Whack! 

Sweat the vegetables:

Cover the whole mess with water, simmer, skim and repeat:

Having few frozen bricks of stock in the freezer is a great luxury, making soups and sauces a whole lot tastier and less time-consuming, and leaves me feeling slightly better about paying an extortionate price for chicken in the first place (ok… not really).

I also like to practice a few other techniques and recipes that I consider essential – I won’t give away all of those because I know at least one of the Chefs reads this blog and I want to keep a few tricks up my sleeve.  But one I will admit to is my quest for the perfect frite. 

Who doesn’t love French Fries, Freedom Fries, chips, frites, or whatever you like to call them?  They go with (almost) everything, and few people really know how to do them well.  I am convinced, however, that Heston Blumenthal’s Triple Cooked Chips are the closest recipe to absolute perfection.   And of course, because I am mentally incapable of leaving well-enough alone, I’ve spent the last year screwing with nearly every aspect of the recipe and think I’ve figured out all the corners I can cut and still get a good result.  Never know…. It might come in handy sometime soon.

A well-spent day off, but a lot more work ahead this week.