Fish & Shellfish

Lesson 12: Fish

Finally, we got the chance to cook some protein. We learned a bit about heat transfer and what it does to proteins as they are heated to higher temperatures. Fish are classified as lean, medium, or fatty. Fatty fish would be salmon/tuna whereas lean fish would be considered sole or trout. Chef taught us how to choose fresh fish (shouldn't smell "fishy," firm flesh, scales in place, bright eyes not sunken and cloudy, shiny brilliant appearance, brightly colored gills) as well as how to store fish (upright with fillets not touching any ice once they've been removed from the body). Finally, we got the chance to fillet two fish (trout and sea bass).

This was the first time I'd successfully filleted a fish. I remember about a year ago, I bought some Spanish Mackerel from the market and tried filleting it to no avail. I got so frustrated that I just ended up throwing the fish away which was a huge waste. Removing the pin bones from the trout was a huge pain in the ass since they have more than your typical fish, and they're really small which makes it really easy to miss one. I also learned that after you fillet the fish, you should always store the fillet to fillet instead of fillet to skin since that can damage the flesh. We made two different dishes: Poisson en Papillote (fish baked in parchment paper) and Filet de Truite a la Grenobloise (sauteed trout grenoble style).

The Poisson en Papillote had four different components: the fish, the tomato fondue, the duxelles (mushroom/shallot mix) and the veg garni. All that had to be wrapped up in a heart shaped package (I kid you not) where it was to be cooked first on the stove and then in the oven. Usually this dish is served in the package in which it was wrapped. Mine unfortunately didn't come out looking like it should have, though chef said it tasted good, so I didn't take a picture.

Grenoble Style Trout was easier to make. Simply pan searing the fillets after flouring skin side down till brown. Then making the butter, shallot, caper sauce and then serving with a side of cocotte potatoes and handmade croutons:

Potatoes

These last two weeks have been errmazing. Class has been great and I've been doing really well on the exams. We even got a new instructor for the rest of Level 1 who is really good. I'm getting a little more acclimated to the city which is nice and the weather is finally starting to get a bit warmer. My cousin was in town last week and it was really nice catching up with her since we hadn't seen each other in about 2 years. We planned a dinner at L'Ecole (the restaurant at the school) with two other friends. Overall the food was pretty decent. Four courses for $21 since I was able to use my discount. Afterwards we stumbled into a really awesome dive bar that had a bunch of guys playing the piano and singing show tunes. The place had a very vaudeville feel and I felt like I had traveled back to the 20s. The next day my cousin and I met up for lunch at a restaurant called Marea and opted for their 5 course Prix Fixe menu. The restaurant was really nice and considering I had my test on fish/shellfish later that afternoon I'd say that it was appropriate "research" =P.

First Course: Assaggio Di Tre (Tasting of Three Crudo, sliced raw fish/shellfish)

Bigeye Tuna, Oyster Cream, Crispy Sunchoke

Marinated Razor Clams, Fennel, Peperoncino

Long Island Fluke, Lemon Thyme, Olio Nuovo

Second Course: Astice (Nova Scotia Lobster, Burrata, Eggplant Al Funghetto, Basil)

Third Course: Spaghetti (Fresh Cut Semolina Pasta, Santa Barbara Sea Urchin, Basil)

Fourth Course: Spigola Nera (Local Black Sea Bass Alla Piastra, Beluga Lentils, Puntarella, Hazelnuts, Red Pepper Soffrito)

Fifth Course: Caramello (Caramel Custard, Valrhona Chocolate Cake, Caramel Crispies, Buttermilk Sherbet)

Overall the meal was alright in my eyes. Some of the highlights were the Razor clams (perfect light way to start off meal) and the Sea Urchin Pasta (something I've only had at one other restaurant). I didn't care so much for the Lobster or Sea Bass (although the burrata and beluga lentils were delicious, respectively).

Okay, enough on dining out, now for school:

Lesson 11: Potato

An entire lesson devoted to the potato? Yup. I didn't realize there were so many different ways to preparing the potato just with French recipes, but sure enough we tackled eight different ways of making potato in one night.

So there are two different types of potato: waxy and starchy. Waxy potatoes hold together when cooked which are good for gratins, potato cakes, soups and salads (Red Bliss, Yellow potato, Yukon Gold). Starchy potatoes are denser than waxy potatoes because they concentrate dry starch in their cells, so when they are cooked, the starch expands and separates, creating a dry, fluffy texture. These guys are better suited for fried, baked or mashed potatoes (Idaho, Yukon Gold, Peruvian Blue).

We also learned a bit about smoke points since we were going to be deep frying for the fist time in class. Some of the things we need to be aware of when deep frying: don't use oil when it foams up, or has an off smell; don't mix used and new oil; don't salt food before frying. There are three different techniques for deep frying: 1 step, 2 step, and 3 step. In 1 step, the potato is fried at one temp (350-375 F). In 2 step, the potatoes are poached at 300 - 320 F with no coloration and then they are finished in fryer at 350 - 375 F. In 3 step, the potatoes are cooked briefly in oil at 280-300 F until they begin to bubble, then cooked at 350 F but no coloration, then finally deep fried at 350-375 F.

The first thing we made in class was Pommes Gaufrette, or waffle cut chips, We had to use a mandolin to make the cuts, which was pretty scary since I've heard some horror stories of people slicing off parts of their hand using the damned thing. So I made sure I had a towel as a barrier between my hand, the potato, and the mandolin. I definitely didn't want to make a trip to the hospital. The basket came out okay, a little burnt on the bottom, but that's cuz I wasn't moving it around when I was frying which I think is the trick to achieving an even brown all around. Chef told us that these baskets went out of fashion in the 90s, which made me wonder why we were still learning how to make them. We also made Pommes Puree (mashed potato) to go along with the basket. It was the first time I had used a food mill to mash the potatoes which were surprisingly easy to make with that tool. Here's a picture of the ridiculousness:

We also made Pommes Pont Neuf (French Fries), Pommes Duchesse (Duchess Potatoes), Pommes Darphin (Essentially shredded has browns), Pommes Croquettes (Logs) and Pommes Anna below:

I was so sick of potatoes by the end of this lesson......

Tournage, Stocks, Sauces, Soups & Salads

We had our 10th class last night, which means that we're halfway done with Level 1. It's crazy since we've learned so much in such a short period and it feels like we just started yesterday. I've been too lazy recently to update, so bear with me as I do a two week recap of what we've learned/made in class:

Day 4: Tournage

One of the most frustrating if not the most frustrating class to date. We learned how to tournage (turn) vegetables into faceted oval shapes. So we ended up practicing with carrots, turnips, and potatoes. I just couldn't get it down in class and two weeks later still struggling with it. Chef actually came up to me and told me to relax because I was getting super frustrated with trying to make these cuts. We apparently need to be able to make eight cocottes out of a potato in 20 minutes which I definitely have to practice in the next coming weeks. I kept thinking to myself how useless this skill is going to become after I leave school, but you never know. We cooked the potatoes using a method called rissoler, which is essentially the same as A'L'anglaise except that you're adding a touch of sugar at the beginning and you're letting the potatoes air dry after blanching them. One of the other things we did was take apart an artichoke with a paring knife, something we also need to do for our practical at the end of level 1. We just all our veg for something called Garniture Bouquetiere which is essentially a dish composed of various vegetables. Here's a picture of it below:

Day 5: Stocks

The foundation of many aspects of professional cooking, stocks take a while to cook, with the exception being fumet (fish stock) and vegetable stock which take 20 and 45 min respectively. You never add salt to a stock, always cook it uncovered, frequently skimming, and strained after cooking. We also learned about the Maillard reaction, which is when the sugar and protein molecules undergo a chemical reaction after they are heated above 250 degrees to create that delicious golden crust on your steak. All the stocks we made were saved and used for the following class.

Day 6: Classic Sauces

Today was a pretty good day. We made 3 different "mother" sauces in addition to a white wine sauce and a wine & mushroom sauce. Veloute, Espagnole, and Bechamel. We made a roux for all the sauces to act as a binding agent so that they would actually thicken. Chef was really impressed with all my sauces which made me feel really good since he said that being a good saucier is one of the keys to moving up in the kitchen ranks.

Day 7: Emulsified Sauces & Sabayons

We had a new chef today, and I must say that I honestly miss the old chef we had because he kept us on our toes all the time. An emulsified sauce is made with two liquids that don't normally mix, such as oil and vinegar. So we ended up making Mayonnaise (the first time I'd made mayo from scratch), Beurre Blanc, Hollandaise and Bearnaise. We also learned how to rescue broken sauces such as adding hot/cold water, or taking the sauce off the bain-marie (hot water bath). Overall the sauces I made were pretty good, the beurre blanc ended up breaking because the heat was too high, so I was kinda pissed about that.

Day 8: Soups and Consommes

Soup day was one of the toughest to date. You'd think that soups would be easy, throw the ingredients in and let them sit for however long, but the French have to go ahead and make everything more complicated than ever necessary. We learned about clear soups (consommes and broth based soups) as well as bound soups (bisques, shaped veg soups and pureed soups). With all the different soups we made, we got to practice our taillage for the 4 different soups. We had to do a bunch of different cuts for the Farmer Style Veg Soup (Cultivateur) as well as the Beef Consomme. The two soups took up so much time that the chef had to move split pea soup to the next lesson, and ended up doing the French Onion soup as a demo. I have to admit though that the potage cultivateur was one of the best soups I've ever had, and definitely the best I've ever made.

Day 9: Food Preservaton

When I was reading for this lesson, I kept wondering what we were actually going to make in class since most of the stuff needed to be kept overnight to develop the appropriate flavors. On the menu: Gravlax (super excited for this!), Duck confit, Pickled Jardiniere of Veg, Brandade, Preserved Lemons. We also needed to complete our split pea soup which actually came out to more of a puree than a soup for us. Chef lectured about the different methods of food preservations that were developed centuries ago such as: dehydration, pickling, fermentation, smoking, pasteurization, and even canning. We ended up making all five of the items, practicing taillage yet again for the jardinier of veg. Preserved lemons were pretty simple, just making the brine and slices the lemons into quarters. Gravlax ended up being a demo while we got our first taste of butchering with making several incisions on the duck legs for the confit. The confit ended up being a demo as well. However we did make the Brandade (cod & potatoes), which wasn't my favorite dish since it's supposed to taste dry and chalky after you make it. The structure of chef's class was so scattered that for the first time, I was really glad that class ended on time. I just couldn't take his monotone voice anymore.

Day 10: Salads

Going back to the soup lesson, who knew that salads would be so difficult to make. Leave it to the French to make life more complicated than it needs to be. We had a different Chef instructor yet again, and we were slated to make all of our salads individually: Niciose, Cooked Veg, Sweet & Bitter Greens. Seems simple right? Once you look at all the components of the 3 salads your head is swimming. For the Cooked Veg salad we had to make another mayonnaise from scratch, macedoine 4 different kinds of veg, and make a tomato fondue. This is the finished product:

I liked plating this dish a lot, although slicing the cucumbers and making the ring was pretty time consuming.

Nicoise Salad was not very fun, partly because I personally don't like eating the salad to begin with, so I knew off the bat that making it wouldn't be very enjoyable.

My plating for this salad was terribly ugly. I was having a pretty bad day already, so I just wanted to slug through class, and this salad was towards the end so I didn't really care so much.

Sweet and Bitter Greens Salad with Tomato/Herbs

I'm glad that I have these next two days to recharge my batteries. Next week is gonna be a lot better, especially since we start fish.

Ratatouille & Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Timbale

I've officially finished one week of school and I have to admit that it's been one of the most challenging weeks of my life. That isn't to say that I'm not enjoying the process; in fact at the end of the day I find myself with a smile on my face cuz I love what I'm doing. I'll give a quick recap of what we've learned the first three days of class.

Day 1

The first day was probably the roughest I've experienced in a while. The chef instructor introduced himself and right off the bat, the entire class could tell that he was going to ride us pretty hard. We went over general kitchen hygiene, how we were supposed to come to class dressed every day, our toolkits were given to us, two more books (one solely devoted to desserts), first aid, preventing cuts, the kitchen brigade hierarchy, the layout of the kitchens we'd be working in, the equipment we'd be using and how to take care of them, all the french names of pots/pans (really confusing), setting up our proper mise en place, how to properly wash and peel vegetables, learning all the different names of the cuts we'd have to learn and master, and finally chef demo-ed two ways of cooking vegetables: a langlaise and a letuevee. A l'anglaise is where you cook the vegetables before dinner service and reheat them later. A l'etuvee is when you're cooking the vegetables to order. We get served dinner every night at 830. Tonight we had meatloaf and mac & cheese. I was starving by the time dinner rolled around so it was pretty rough. To make matters a little worse, we had to practice our taillage (technique for cutting vegetables) which I screwed up on since I started to get panic that I wouldn't finish on time which made my cuts un-uniform. I was pretty pissed off too at my partner cuz he wouldnt share some of his veggies and wanted to cut the everything on his own (selfish prick). Having chef constantly yelling at us to keep our station clean while we were cutting didn't help either. So to summarize the entire day was pretty rough and we ended class late which meant I wasn't going to catch the last bus that dropped me off at my uncle's place. My old roommate gave me a call after class ended and it was a nice morale booster to catch up and vent a little bit about how the first day went.

Day 2:

It was a lot better today since we had a different chef for most of class. We were going over Servsafe (kitchen safety/sanitation stuff/safe food handling practices) that we would need to know at the end of level two. This guy was pretty hilarious and even allowed us to grab chairs and sit down while he lectured. We had a break in between where our regular chef came back so that we could practice some more taillage while we critiqued us individually. Sadly, my cuts were not up his standards and I think I got pretty low marks for them. In a way I guess it's good to have a chef who's really hard on you because most chef's in the field aren't going to baby you around once you graduate. But at the same time my morale gets so low when he doesn't have anything good to say about the work I did. It took about 20 minutes to get changed and pack up, so I wasn't able to catch the 1130 bus again. I worked out system with my uncle where he leaves his car two towns away from the house since there's another bus that can drop me off later than 1130. So I drove home for the first time with ice on the roads which was pretty scary since I was sliding around when I was trying to brake. I got home around 1am and by the time I showered and ate something it was already past 2.

Day 3:

I've been getting to the city about two hours before school starts, that way I give myself plenty of time to grab a bite to eat and get down to Soho so that I can change and get ready for class. On Tuesday, I went back to that 99cent pizza place on 43rd street next to Grand Central. Their $2.75 combo (2 slices of pizza and an arizona tea) is pretty much one of the greatest deals I've ever seen. Sure it's not the best pizza I've ever had, but for 99 cents a slice I'm not complaining. Today I went over to Totto Ramen on 52nd street since a friend had recommended it. What they're known for is their chicken broth ramen which pretty unorthodox since most Japanese ramen is usually made with miso flavored broth. The ramen was pretty good overall, broth wasn't too salty like it usually is which was nice, the seared Char Siu pork was a nice touch since it didn't lose it's crunch in the broth. Noodles could have been cooked a little bit more tender which would have been nice. $10 dollars for a bowl of ramen isn't too bad considering its NYC. It was finally sunny today even though it was still freezing. It's really sad when I think 40 degrees is warm and even sadder when I look at the temperature back home in LA.

Alright, so for class today we made Ratatouille and a Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Timbale with Granny Smith Apples and vinaigrette. Absolutely amazing! Chef demoed the two recipes for us before we were to make it on our own. The Ratatouille was something we'd tackle as a team (2 people) and the Goat Cheese we'd do individually. For the Ratatouille, chef was telling me to lower the heat because I was burning the onions and I also took some heat (no pun intended) for cutting the zucchini so that the skin was nonexistent. However, once we finished the dish and presented to chef, he liked it a lot, which put a smile on both our faces. The Goat Cheese dish was the first time I would be working with a mold for a dish which was a bit daunting because after I prepped everything and put it together in the ring, the cheese on top was sticking to the ring which almost collapsed the entire thing. Luckily, I used chef's trick of heating up a paring knife and running it along the side so the ring would come out cleanly. The dish came out looking better than I expected, although chef said be careful to not drown the lettuce in oil so that it becomes limp. After dinner, chef gave a lecture on vegetables, spices, and herbs and called it a night. I was getting better at knowing where to get on the subway so that when I came out of the car, the entrance to the bus station would be right above me. I got home around 1am again with some leftover Ratatouille I made which I heated up for a midnight snack before going to bed. Delicioso!

First Week in New York

Staying at my Uncle's place has been really great so far. I'm getting to spend time with family which is really nice. I couldn't imagine having to go apartment hunting in 20 degree weather right now. We got over a foot of snow earlier last week, which was really cool when it first started, but not so much after it ended and the streets of New York were covered with black ice and puddles that came up to your ankles. I bought these things from Big 5 that you slip onto the bottom of your shoes, kind of like snow chains for your shoes, which have become pretty useful for trudging through the snow the past week.

My birthday was on Tuesday and I was able to spend it with two friends from high school at a restaurant called Ippudo in the East Village. It's apparently one of the hottest restaurants in New York right now, with a reputation of having to wait at least an hour to get a table since they don't take reservations. What they're known for is their Akamaru Modern Ramen which is essentially a traditional hakata ramen with garlic oil and miso paste. I ended up getting a bowl of that as well as some Agedashi Tofu and pork buns that the 3 of us shared. Was it a good meal? Yes. Was it worth the money? Probably not. The trick to getting a table here is apparently telling the hostess, before the crowd arrives, that you have a party of (whatever) coming at this time and then by the time your party arrives you're at the top of the list for the next table. For dessert my friend snuck off to use the bathroom and tell the waitress that it was my birthday, so the entire restaurant staff came out and sang to me which was really embarrassing but also made me laugh at the same time. We ended up with a Matcha Green Tea Creme Brulee after all the singing was done which was pretty delicious, something I'll definitely have to try making on my own sometime.

I haven't been going to the city every day just because it's way too cold to walk around for too long and I want to spend more time with my cousins when they're home. I still haven't been to Central Park yet, something I want to do by the end of next week if it warms up a bit. The 99 cent pizza place I discovered last time I was in New York was still there, so I ended up going two different days last week. I also ate at Sakagura again; got their Thursday Chirashi special this time. Also gave Lombardi's a try which was alright, nothing too special about their pizza, would much rather go to the 99 cent a slice place.

Everything in New York is too damn expensive.

My First Few Days in New York

I arrived in New York on Saturday afternoon after being in transit for most of the day. I hadn't slept much the previous night because I was a bit anxious about leaving LA in the morning. My dad drove me to the airport and we said our goodbyes before I headed through security. I was able to snag an exit row seat on the flight to Chicago where I met a lady who ran a vineyard with her husband. When I arrived in Chicago it was around lunchtime, so I wandered around the airport and found a sandwich shop that had a pretty good meatball sub. Outside it was 10 degrees and covered in snow. I was hoping that my flight wasn't going to get delayed which it thankfully didn't. The flight to New York didn't seem very long and we actually touched down a bit early. I ended up having to get a cart for my luggage cuz there were so many pieces. My uncle came to pick me up and then we dropped off the luggage at the house before going to watch my cousin play her tennis tournament. I'm still amazed that there are indoor courts where you have to pay to play, something completely foreign to me. I did actually bring my racquet so I'll have a chance to play with her once the weather starts to warm up. We got home around 9pm and I was starving by then. My aunt had cooked up a steak for me which was really nice. I was able to unpack a little bit and start to get things in my room settled.