Setting the Special

So I’ve been pulling double-duty working in the kitchen of a Zagat-rated and Michelin Star restaurant in the morning and then going to school at night; which is making for some pretty interesting exchanges with my classmates once I get out of work after about nine hours and head to class. I’m heading to bed…setting the breakfast special tomorrow: Orange French Toast with a candied orange slice (maybe, I haven’t decided yet). But, I’m still alive. Just wanted to let you know.

If You Don’t Want to Get Bit, Keep Your Hand Out the Cage!

I’ve already told you that I can rub people the wrong way, inside and outside the kitchen; but it manifested itself in a pretty pronounced way yesterday when we were making Beef Bourguignon. Apparently, sometimes I don’t let people get enough stove time or don’t let people fabricate meat the way they want to…but not fish or “icky” meats, because girls don’t want to touch icky meats. So as soon as we were ready, I took some beef tri-tip cubes out of the fridge and separated it into three portions for our teams and then started cutting the beef into forkable pieces. One of my classmates came over and took some beef off my board, telling me she wanted to cut some too, I said fine. Fast forward to the end of class when we were getting some butter noodles ready and I apparently usurped the butter noodle duties of one of my classmates who proceeded to fly off the handle. Suffice it to say, when I get into the kitchen, I don’t fuck around. I don’t sneak off to the back of the room to bullshit with people and steal wine from a fucking box because I need a little bit of a buzz to get through class or go down the hallway to hang out with work study students. I am always by the stove or by the table looking for things to do. Excuse me if I want things to work out perfectly. As I said to her and to many of my other classmates, “if you want to cook something, or if you want to get on the stove, just say so. That’s all you have to do, just say so.” But if you sit there and don’t say anything when I grab some black bass, or chicken or shrimp or ginger root or venison and start to fabricate it, then you can’t get pissed off when I don’t see something getting done and decide to jump on it…especially when the chef stood right-fucking-next-to me, put his hand in a Le Creuset pot and said, “put some butter in this and get the drained noodles in it.” Basically, I’m not going to apologize for my behavior in the kitchen when my shit comes out nice! It’s like I told my buddy last night, “I’m an animal in the kitchen, if you don’t want to get bit, keep your hand out the cage!”

I Stink Like Fish!

Well, things started off pretty well today. I got my grades back from the previous term, or rather, I got to actually see my project and my practical examination. I scored a 95 on my practical because my knife cuts weren’t sharp on my Pommes Persillade (basically hash brown-style potatoes, cut into medium dice served with minced parsley and garlic). The flavor profile was spot on, but I’ll admit the cuts could’ve used some work. I don’t know if this is a problem or not, that I knew I could afford to have less than perfect cuts because everything else was going to come out great. Nonetheless, I’ll keep working on my knife skills and plan on scoring nothing less than 100 on my third practical less than four weeks away. My project was to write four chicken recipes: Braised Chicken Rioja; Chicken Roulade, with Baby Spinach & Duxelle of Chanterelle Mushrooms; Sautéed Chicken Breast, with a Shallot-Cream Sauce and Pan Fried Sage & Chili Chicken. I knocked them out of the park, although that’s not saying much because most people got an A or close to it; but suffice it to say, I don’t think our previous instructor would’ve cloned too many of his other students...or basically said as much himself.

Things took a turn when it came time to make fish fume (stock) and I had to gut a couple pre-fabricated fish, rinse their heads out and prep them for a pot of stock. Our stock came out super-tasty, and the resulting soup was great, but rubber gloves or no rubber gloves, when you’re pulling the guts out of anything your hands aren’t exactly going to smell like lilacs and sunshine. Not to mention, I got into a bit of a “discussion” with our new (who was incidentally our first) instructor about the consistency of my dough for a tart…that was fun. So to sum up, got good grades, happy about that. Smell like fish and got into it with my instructor, not so happy about that. What the hell, tomorrow is a new day!

More on my four chicken recipes tomorrow and I’ll also tell you about my first foray into the world of marmalade.

Amuse-Bouche

We should probably set a few ground rules here, or I should at least tell you a little bit about who I am. I love to cook, I really do. Something about my wiring, I guess, means I don’t mind waking up at 7, a.m. on Christmas morning to pull a Capon out of brine or work all day and then cook at my friends house; and when I say cook at a friend’s house, I don’t mean boil some water for pasta, I mean putting sweetbreads through standard breading procedure, making a vinaigrette and blanching, shocking & pureeing broccoli to mix into risotto. This quality; that I find so wonderful is the same quality that can piss people off. My own mother has essentially banned me from her kitchen on any major holiday lest I repeat the actions of last Thanksgiving & Christmas when I refused any help from anyone even from something as simple as the assembly of salad, the mashing of a potato or even the making of a biscuit, which I refused to make from a Pillsbury tin. I’m trying to be better, I really am, but let’s just say I’ll help someone else out, who I know has more skill than I do, but I’m not exactly enthusiastic about having a sous chef.

As I sit here writing this, I’m getting ready to head to school and do a little cooking, god only knows what we’re doing tonight. I’m even going to take a picture of stuff we cook, show it to you guys and then I’ll probably critique it. So welcome, I look forward to our journey.

Oh yeah, a word about the name. The older brother of an old roommate of mine once dubbed me "the Sherpa" on account of my showing him the ways of New York City. My hope is I can be your food Sherpa.