CULA-confidential

Chicken Fricassee for the last time

Practical exams for advanced food prep were yesterday. I made chicken fricassee, a fresh potato/parsley hash brown and asparagus spears with walnuts and lemon. The meal was terrific with a couple of exceptions: my chicken fricassee was undercooked! I was mortified when Tom sliced into it and it was blood red. I wanted to take it away but the chef/instructors soldiered on. It seems that doneness is but one element of the three dishes upon which I was tested. The walnuts were overtoasted and bitter, not a good addition to asparagus.
On the plus side, my skills are solid. My sauce was perfect and the fresh potato/parsley hash brown blew the instructors away.
The meal was fine, nothing fancy, but it had good flavors and textural variety.
Unfortunately, I lowered my score by attempting the culinary equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. I put grated Gruyere cheese on the asparagus. The shreds of cheese looked like uncooked potato and the cheese added nothing to the dish. It seems that cooking is a lot like writing eliminate any ingredient (or words) that don’t enhance the finished product.
I probably scraped through with a high B.

Fresh hash browns recipe

CULA-Confidential
Fresh hash browns
Ingredients:
Whole potatoes (one per serving)
Parsley, finely chopped (one tablespoon per serving)
Salt and pepper TT (to taste)
Clarified butter or whole butter and olive oil for frying

Use any potato, waxy or starchy.
Scrub and grate one large potato serving. Yes, leave the skins on, they add color and nutrition density.
Rinse the grated potato in warm water until the water runs clear.
Dry the grated potato in a salad spinner or wrapped in clean towels or paper towels.
When dry, toss with parsley, salt and pepper.
Drop a handful of grated potato into hot oil.
Fry until done, about four minutes per side.

Chef instructor Chris Lalonde suggested sandwiching goat cheese between two hash browns, then serving in wedges.

Kayak company plug

A dear friend of mine, Mel Rice, has a kayaking company based in Northern Virginia. If you have ever wanted to learn to kayak, call her.
Carpe Diem Kayaking
Cheers!

Homework

I've spent the weekend preparing for midterm practical exams in advanced food prep and fun baking. In food prep, I know I have to make chicken fricassee plus a starch and veg.
I made chicken fric with lemony collard and turnup greens and hash browns. The chicken got a little tough which means I let it come too close to a boil. All in all a solid B grade meal.
For fun baking I have to make soft rolls and a lemon meringe pie. The pie is a bear because you have to make the crust, bake and cool it. Then the filling has to be cooked and cooled and the meringe whipped and baked. The rolls were very, very hard because I don't have a mixer with a dough hook so the ingredients had to be assembled and mixed by hand. Here ^ are the results.

Real Dover Sole

I’m so excited I can barely write this. In advanced food prep today we each got a whole Dover sole to butcher um, filet. Little El Centro community college gave us a $10 fish to play with.
What a kick it was to rip off the skin, and gently strip the filets from the bone. It was like removing the breast from a whole chicken, a little pull on the flesh and a gentle caress with the boning knife. It was so delicious.
I had better luck with the sole than the poor tilapia I butchered. Serves it right, it tasted like, well, tilapia. Kinda muddy.
Although no one will invite me fishing based on my ability to filet, I did all right.
We made sole bon femme – sole with a reduction of mushrooms, wine and fish stock. The tilapia was broiled and topped with sautéed leeks and lemon juice.

We got our assignments for midterm practical exams. I have to make chicken fricassee with a starch and vegetable TBD. The instructors will put out a table of choices and we’ll have to make our veg and starch from what’s provided. Then we have to cost out our entrees. What does that mean? Good question. Hopefully I’ll find out sooner rather than later.

Yeast dough production

We had a quizz this week in fun baking on ingredients and bread. The most difficult thing is memorizing the 12 steps of yeast dough production.
1 scailing (weighing ingredients)
2 mixing
3 fermenting
4 punching (releasing CO2)
5 scailing the product (cutting it into portions)
6 rounding (which forms a skin on the dough
7 benching (or resting dough on the work bench
8 make up and panning (further forming the product and putting it in pans)
9 proofing (placing the panned/made up product in the proofer to rise again
10 baking
11 cooling
12 storing

I didn't do so well on the quizz as I thought. I'll have to work way harder to get a good grade.

Tempering beurre manie

My group has reformulated. Mark-o is gone, replaced by Barbara who was in my lab group for basic food prep. She’s a great asset and should help bring Daniel out of his shell.
Speaking of Daniel, we made two spectacular chicken dishes last night; poached chicken breasts in a tarragon cream sauce and coq au vin. Both were made spectacular by temper. Not boo hiss angry temper but by tempering the blond roux for the tarragon cream sauce and tempering the beurre manie for the coq au vin. Roux is heated clarified butter with flour added, (equal parts), then cooked to the desired darkness. A beurre manie is the same proportion but not heated, just mashed butter with flour.
We tempered the butter/flour mixes by adding a little hot liquid from the poaching liquid to the roux and blending until smooth, then adding a little more, until the roux was almost thin, then blending it into the sauce. The same principal applied to the beurre manie but is more important because if added directly to the sauce, it’ll cause clumps. Tempering it softens the look of the sauce and makes it smooth and shiny. It was a wonderful meal.

Optical illusion

When grilling, make a product with grill marks on the diagonal, the diamond shape makes the meat look larger and is more pleasing to the eye.

Pre-cooked pie crust

Oddly enough this tip comes from Tom, the advanced food prep chef/instructor, not from fun baking. Half cook a pie crust by placing the dough in a tin and topping the raw dough with another pie tin. Invert the pie tin/dough sandwich and bake for eight-10 minutes. This method assures a flat, unburned crust.

Chicken tidbits

Basting a roasted chicken with stock will not give you a crispy skin. Only basting with fat (or not basting at all) gives crisp skin.
Cook poultry with the skin on, even if you’re dieting, and remove before serving. This way you get the benefits of skin without the fat or kcalories.
Free range chicken can be labeled as such if the chickens have access to the outdoors. Most chickens are (I’m told) quite lazy and rarely venture beyond the coop. Is free range chicken really worth the extra money?