Carr's Culinary Class freshman year

So we finally made homemade pasta, or as homemade as you can get in an industrial kitchen. It was really quite good but my favorite part was the risotto. It had mushrooms in it and I LOVE mushrooms so just those made my day. Anyways, the pasta was kinda disgusting to make because we made it with the flour bowl and eggs and that was very messy, but it still came out really good and I got to bring home all the leftovers because my partner didn’t want any of it YAY ME.

So this week we got to make breakfast, which of course made everyone excited. We each had a separate station to make, pancakes, waffles, french toast, and meats. My partner and I got to do the pancakes, which by the way, isn’t just water and flour. It’s a ton more ingredients including buttermilk, which isn’t milk with melted butter…. It is pretty much rotten milk. I made it by adding a tablespoon of vinegar for every cup of milk, and let it sit for a bit. But back to the pancakes. When you make them out of the directions in the text book, is says that you can use melted butter or oil. DON’T use butter. The melted butter, when it hits the cold mixture, will start to solidify into the tiny butter pieces and will burn on the pancakes. But the pancakes still turned out pretty good, even with the cups of extra flour we added to thicken up the batter.

Next we went through all the different stations and cooked all the rest of the foods. But after that we got to make eggs. I was actually able to flip an egg, with the epically awesome coaching of my partner. Just a tiny FYI, poached eggs have to be 160-185 degrees when they are cooked. We also made one of the best mother sauces there are (that goes on eggs….hint) and made an omelet. And that’s about it for this weeks lab.

Today, we learned how to make many different types of potatoes, but first we cut a million more tournes. well really just another 16, but it felt like way more. Chef Backus-Foster clarified some butter, which is where you melt whole butter and separate the impurities, or depouillage it(you get ride of the nasty white gunk floating on the top of the pot). She also caramelized some onions and roasted some garlic in olive oil. It was interesting that to caramelize onions, you don’t have to add any sugar to it because onions naturally have sugar in them so the sugar is brought out of the onions from the heat of the pan and caramelizes them. The olive oil for the garlic was chosen because of the taste, rather than plain veggie oil. The oil was about to the top of the garlic, but there was a bit of garlic showing over the top of the oil.

Next we learned about potato purees, which start with cold water. Each potato was cut near evenly, and simmered in water. We kept them cooking until the potatoes pasted the “fork” test (you can stab a fork into the potato easily). We separated 2/3 of the riced potatoes(cooked potatoes stuffed through a ricing machine that basically mashes them for you) into a different bowl, and added a heavy cream, milk and butter mixture to the original bowl (the one with 1/3 in it) along with salt and white pepper and made mashed potatoes. The 2/3 bowl got melted butter (not clarified), egg yolks, salt and white pepper, and nutmeg. The egg yolks helps to keep the potatoes together, while the nutmeg brings out the natural taste of the potato. Then we took half of that bowl and piped it on to a cookie sheet and baked it in the oven. The other half got rolled into thumb sized cylinders and breaded for baking. We covered them with flour, then more eggs, then layered a bread crumb mixture on it.

We also made dauphinoise. We used a mandtooline (a french slicing tool) to make slices of pealed potatoes. We layered potatoes, white pepper and nutmeg, and gruyere cheese, in that order, where the potatoes overlapped a tiny bit. At the end, we added some heavy cream and baked the individual dauphinoise in the oven, until there was a pretty golden brown on the tops of them. We had to make sure to rotate the food around the oven, however, because of the hot spots in the ovens.

So this is my first installment of a semester long class being taken at SUNY Delhi for Culinary Arts Laboratory 1. My teacher, Chef Backus-Foster, intimidated me a little when I first met her, I mean I was in the presence of a true chef, but when I arrived at class, 20 minutes early I might add, she made sure I at least had eaten before our 3 hour and 45 minute course starting at 8 in the morning. There are 9 of us in the class and the first thing we did, after the safety tour, was learn different ways to chop carrots, potatoes, and onions, and honestly, the carrots were the easiest of the 3. All that we did was cut the carrots into Batonnet, which is 1/4 by 1/4 by 3 inch boxes, julienne, which are 1/8 by 1/8 by 3 inch boxes, and change those down into small dice (1/4 inch cube) and brunoise (1/8 inch cube). We also did 2 more “classic cuts” but unfortunately they are not counted under the classic cut list so I don’t remember what the name of those cuts were so I shall ask Chef next Tuesday and update this then.

Next, I decided to work with the potatoes rather than the onions, which by the way I hate, because I am a huge crier when it comes to onions (just ask any of the other people in my class). I cut that into paysanne, which are 1/2 by 1/2 by 1/4 inch boxes, which in turn were turned into triangles by chopping down the diagonal, like grilled cheese. And next was the infamous Tourne, An evil 7 sided cut that is supposed to be 2 inches long and all even sides that curve like a football. Lets just say that my Tourne looked more like a french fry.

Anyways, on to the onion…yay. Most everyone around me had already finished, or at least started their onions, so my eyes were already tearing up a little, but when I started my own onion, well, let’s just say it was a little harder to see. I had sliced the onion root to top, which is completely opposite than what I did at home, but the onion stayed together way better than at home. The hard part came when I had to chop the onion parallel to the cutting board. That I’m not so good at. But I can honestly say I didn’t injure anyone, including myself, trying that! Anyways, slicing the onion is a lot easier than dicing it.

And then we were finished and we got to clean up for the rest of class. It was quite fun for the first class, especially compared to the rest of the “first” classes I have had this week and I can’t wait for the weeks that I actually get to eat what we make. One more thing that I should put because I always forget, even as I sit here looking at my notes that I took after class, always keep the point of the knife down on the board!! There is no need to lift it up when cutting smaller objects. So for this week, This is Sarah. Have a good week and blog to you next one.