Malawry

Yeah, I think this is the restaurant that former head instructor Pascal Dionot (brother of the now-infamous Chef Francois) left his teaching position to open. I'm quite surprised that his name is not identified as being at the helm of the kitchen, and had made a mental note to ask Chef Francois about it next week.

I think it's worth taking a class in knife skills if you can find one offered by a seasoned chef. I took one well before I started culinary school, and it helped significantly in my home cooking. My close buddy Jacques Pepin is a nice runner-up to taking a class, though.

I've cut myself many times with both sharp and dull knives. With a sharp knife, almost every cut was from not following proper technique...usually not keeping the fingers of the hand holding the object being cut away from the blade enough. With a dull knife, it's usually because the knife slipped because the uneven quality of the dull edge made it impossible to cut cleanly. Cuts from a sharp knife are deeper, yes. But they also heal much more quickly than cuts from a dull knife and scar a lot less.

Tuesday, November 27 Before we have taken previous holiday breaks from school, we have completely scrubbed down the kitchen before our departure. This week was no exception, and now that the 200 pies for charity are completely baked, packaged, and bundled, there was no excuse for not focusing on the project. I had planned to take tomorrow off for the holiday, so I felt a special obligation to work hard on cleaning things up. When we broke into lunch teams, I asked Chris F. (my teammate) if I could spend most of my time in the pastry kitchen cleaning up. He said that'd be fine, so I took care of our salad and our dessert and then started organizing, wiping and scrubbing. I managed to clean and organize the supply shelves and got roughly half the Kitchen-Aid mixers scrubbed down before going back to help Chris finish the last bits of lunch. We had oysters with a fennel topping as our first course. I scrubbed them down and worked with Chris on the filling. As we were finishing putting them together, I wondered aloud who decided to eat an oyster for the first time. It doesn't look like anything to put in your mouth. The batch we were using was particularly nasty, with barnacles all over and tons of mud and a few worms besides. Ick. The oysters themselves tasted fine. Lobster is another example...who decided to cook and eat one of those things the first time it was done? It doesn't look like anything I'd mentally identify as food. After we ate, we worked on our usual cleanup and then switched over to the more intensive tasks. I broke down the meat slicer for my part of the dirty work; I hadn't realized that the slicer was only used for shaving the fennel when I volunteered for the job, so I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't too nasty. (Meat usually gets pasted down along the edge of the blade, and it's a bitch to clean the thing. I used to work in a grocery deli-bakery back in college and I detested cleaning the meat slicers most of all tasks there.) After lunch, I delivered my oral report on Colorado Kitchen, and then Chef Peter let us go a few minutes early. I immediately hit the road to come see my family for a much-needed Thanksgiving break. From the car, I called Chef Scott at Ortanique and spoke with him about the externship. He said he had looked over his schedule and could give me a combination of days and nights, with mostly nights. (I had asked for this since I wanted to be able to be home at night occasionally.) We talked a little about pay and some more about what I will be doing there. He said he starts his externs on pastry plating to begin with, and he works them through garde-manger and eventually saute stations if they do well. He will also give me opportunities to learn about banquet work, plenty of chances to practice my knife skills with prep work, and peeks into the other jobs in the kitchen. I'd already mostly decided to go with Ortanique, and so I went ahead and told Chef Scott I'd be happy to join his crew in December. We arranged to work out the specifics of hours and sign paperwork next week. I then called Chef Gillian at Colorado Kitchen and declined her offer of an externship. She did not sound surprised, just a little sad. I'm a little sad, too, to be honest. I really like her kitchen. But they don't do as many things...the menu is not as long, the kitchen doesn't have space for much of anything, and the level of cooking (attention to plating, etc) is lower. I know Chef Gillian would work hard for me, but externing there would probably open less doors for me than Ortanique. I'm relieved to have the whole externship situation settled. And now I have a nice long break...my last until graduation in June...to mentally prepare for the serious shifts ahead.

Hi Snowangel, I know we tried at least two Wisconsin cheeses, and I will try to look over my notes as to what they were over the next few days. Most of the cheeses we tried were from New England or California, though. It's wonderful that there are exciting cheeses where you are living. I wish we had better cheeses at our farmer's markets. Keswick Creamery started coming to my local market this season (they were already at others in the area) but their cheeses are a little disappointing to me. Your advice on the externship is well-stated, and I appreciate it.

Mom is purchasing a turkey (which she has done for several years) and making a blueberry cobbler. Other folks are contributing a cranberry crumble, fruit pies, sweet potato casserole (with pineapple in it, it's always good), and my talented partner Erin is making his signature vegetarian stuffing. This leaves me to go crazy on the rest of the menu. I am making, with Mom's sous-chef assistance: A big relish tray with many olives, pickles, and other goodies A big slab o' home-cured gravlax, with brown bread, mustard, cukes, red onions, capers Mini dried cranberry and dried cherry scones Corn muffins Haricots verts with wild mushrooms and fried shallots Really good mashed potatoes Slow-cooked red cabbage Pecan-crusted trout with an apple cider reduction sauce (this is to sub in for turkey for Erin and I) I have also been enlisted to make my special pancakes one morning, while Mom will staff the waffle iron for our family "Oh Boy!" waffles. I plan to celebrate Friday (my birthday) by making other people treat me to meals out to thank me for all my hard work.

It depends on the usual factors: whether or not the student has experience, the size and budget of the restaurant, how desperate the restaurant is for help, what the student can negotiate, etc etc etc. I think most externships are in the $7-10/hour range, but people are private about what they earn so I don't know that for sure.

Thursday, November 21 Due to my late night, I never had an opportunity to talk about yesterday’s cheese presentation. Steven Jenkins, who does the cheese buying for Fairway in NY and has written a book called The Cheese Primer, came to present information about cheeses and orchestrate a cheese tasting for us. We were packed into the demo kitchen with the pastry students for the presentation and tastings. Steven is a somewhat grizzled man in his early 50s. He is clearly passionate and knowledgeable about cheeses, and wanted us to understand what a good cheese is like. He kept stating that cheese is not a fad food or “gourmet,” that it is peasant food. “I am a peasant. I have peasant virtue,” he repeated every few minutes. “Cheese has peasant virtue.” He discussed the history of cheeses and their importance in European cultures, and talked to us about how some of the cheeses we were tasting were made. He also talked about what not to do with cheese. He exhorted us to avoid “stuff with stuff in it,” cheeses with bits of vegetables or herbs mixed in, and disdained unimaginitive cheese plates with red delicious apples and table grapes. (We sampled our cheeses with a mild and a hot mango chutney, almonds, walnuts, pecans, several kinds of salami, figs, baguette slices, and pieces of currant-walnut rye bread.) All the 13 cheeses we tasted were American artisanal cheeses. One of my favorites was the Vella Dry Jack from California, a hard cheese with a chalky white pattern similar to that of parmegiano-reggiano. It was sweet and nutty. The Harvest Moon from Bingham Hill Cheese Company was also delicious, one of the best triple-crème type cheeses I’ve tasted. There were several blue cheeses in the tasting, including the creamy Bel Gioso Gorgonzola and the mild Hubbardston Blue from Westfield, MA. We haven’t had this sort of session in some time, where we taste multiple foods in a single category to learn how to discern their characteristics and appreciate their nuances. I wish we did more of these educational tastings, since I learn so much from them. Plus, they’re a lot of fun. Friday, November 23 Marta is involved in Food and Friends, a local organization that feeds people who are unable to leave their homes. She spoke to Chef Francois at some point a few weeks ago about having L’academie donate some pies for their Thanksgiving food packages. Somehow it came out that we were going to make 200 apple pies. We’ve been working on them all week. We started early in the week on dough, using a recipe Chef Somchet loves for “perfect pie crust.” We purchased buckets of sweetened apples from a supplier and used disposable aluminum pie plates. Just the same, the sheer quantity of work involved is overwhelming. People had to roll out bottom crusts, roll out top crusts, cut out vents in the top crusts, egg wash bottom crust edges, fit on top crusts, trim pies, crimp edges, egg wash and sugar tops, bake the finished pies, wrap them in foil, put them in boxes, and tie the boxes in bundles of 5. I spent most of my pie-making obligations on crimping, egg washing, and sugaring pies. We started out enthusiastic (well, somewhat) about the project, but then it got somewhat more boring. And then it got really old. Some people got better and more efficient about handling pie crust, while others got gradually more slapdash and careless. 200 pies didn’t seem that terrible to me initially but then it seemed overwhelming as I saw how much work it required, and we didn’t even have to make the filling. By this morning, there was little energy left for the project. We were on the verge of finishing, but the last few dozen seemed to take longer than ever. My hands were totally dried out from folding up cardboard boxes all morning, and the pastry kitchen was littered with pie dough and flour. I was happy to bundle up the last three stacks of pie boxes around 3pm. I’m pretty good at American pie crust by now, but I have no desire to see it again for some time. After class let out, I headed downtown to Ortanique for the purposes of trailing. The DC location of Ortanique is overseen by Chef Scott Houghton, but the executive chef is Chef Cindy Huston who mostly works at the Florida location. Chef Cindy happened to be on-site tonight, so I had the opportunity to meet her and say hello. I immediately liked her; she is friendly and knowledgeable. She spent some time hanging out in the kitchen chatting about football before going out to work the dining room. Chef Scott had me assist with various tasks related to a special event; the restaurant has an upstairs which can be closed for private events, and tonight there was some group coming over for finger foods prepared by the restaurant around 9pm. I plated prepiped pate on croustades and endive leaves with goat cheese in the basement prep area. Then I went upstairs and helped the garde-manger cook by cutting sections off of peeled grapefruits and oranges, slicing grape tomatoes in half, and dicing beefsteak tomatoes. I was allowed to go behind the line around 7pm and watch during most of service. Their line is large, and includes two fryers, a food washing sink, two very large ranges with ovens, a convection oven, two salamanders, and plenty of reach-ins and lowboy refrigerators. I stood near the garde-manger station, which is staffed by Ana and Kevin (who, like many people who work closely together in restaurant kitchens, seem to deserve their own sitcom). They plate all the cold food, handle some of the hot appetizers, and take care of all the dessert plates. Then Jaime, Zachary and some guy whose name I did not catch take care of the lengthy hot line. Chef Scott and Sous Chef Mathias (sp?) trade-off on expediting, depending on who is available. The food is beautiful and leans towards sweet-spicy-tropical flavors, including a lot of Floribbean type cuisine. Salmon in calypso sauce, West Indian curried crab cakes, whole fried snapper with Jamaican peas and beans, conch fritters, bouillabaise, and fried calamari salads were prepared over and over again near where I stood. I had the opportunity to taste a few things and everything was delicious, fresh and sparkling in flavor. When the special event started I helped to fry mini conch fritters, spicy chicken wontons, and wings and washed out sauce ramekins in the food wash sink behind the line. This was a very friendly and casual kitchen, and I enjoyed the mood. I was quite exhausted, though, and ready to go when the last few orders straggled in from 11pm seatings. I went and found Chef Scott and told him I needed to leave. I asked if he was interested in having me join them and he said from what he saw I had the right attitude and he could teach me the skills. He did admonish me to work on my Spanish (which I know is a serious issue, it was hard for me to communicate with Ana and Jaime especially) but said that he’d be happy to have me on board. So I am now faced with a decision: Ortanique or Colorado Kitchen? I am leaning towards Ortanique, though I need to see the logistics of what they could work out for me. Their menu is longer and more interesting, which would give me an opportunity to learn more different things while there. I suspect they can pay better than Colorado Kitchen can, plus the food is more challenging. Colorado Kitchen is so tiny that I’d be doing everything they have to do almost immediately, which has its own attractions; they are also closed on Monday and Tuesday which would mean a regular day off right before my Tuesday classes which is attractive. I hope to finalize details and set a start date this week.

Snowangel, the biggest thing you are looking for is an even, smooth, soft, unsticky rectangle of dough. Mamster is right that you need to flour a lot to begin with. At school, we were taught to use the machine to "knead" the dough. After we mix it up and let it rest, we run it through the machine on the largest setting many many times. After each run through we dust both sides, fold it in thirds, and send it through again. When it is soft and smooth and uniformly yellow we then start taking it down. It's partly a "feel" thing that's much easier to get if you see somebody do it and then try it yourself a few times. There's a significant difference between the first pasta I did at school and what I did last week. Last week's was partly better since it is cooler now, and the dough was therefore more cooperative. Sorry, DStone. I can't help it if I'm proud of my pasta. And Fat Guy, I always like to keep 'em coming back for more.

Monday, November 18 During lunch today, Chef Francois came to ask Chef Somchet (who was sitting at my table) a series of questions about the flours we use for pasta at school. We always use regular unbleached all purpose flour. Apparently he made pasta this past weekend for a special wine dinner and had a hard time getting it to turn out properly. He said he thought bleached flour would work better and asked Chef Somchet to make sure we had plenty in the future. She looked a bit mystified as he walked away but agreed to get some of the bleached stuff in on the next order. Pasta happened to be on the menu, and I happened to be the one from my team to make it. I also happened to be the one to serve it to Chef Francois, since he too was assigned to my team. Naturally, I made it with the regular unbleached flour (I’d made it before lunch service). I honestly think the pasta was the best batch I’d made yet, it was so thin and even and fresh, but I was still a bit nervous about serving it after the flour diatribe. Chef Francois brought back his plate completely cleaned, though, and complimented my pasta-making skills. I guess the flour is acceptable after all. After school, I drove down to Colorado Kitchen and interviewed Chef Gillian Clark for my paper due Friday. She was warm and kind, and seemed to enjoy chatting about where she’d cooked before and who has served as her mentor. She has worked with many of the important female chefs in the DC area, including Ann Cashion and Susan McCreight Lindenborg. She spoke frankly about why she situated her restaurant in that particular neighborhood, and explained some of the reasons behind choices like not offering takeout and not acquiring a liquor license. I thought I would be there for only a half hour or so but we ended up hanging out and chatting for about an hour. I asked for a tour of the tiny kitchen (the walk-in is so small I immediately dubbed it a step-in). She actually is short-staffed and interested in an extern. Despite the fact that the kitchen is so tiny and the menu so limited, I found myself thinking seriously about the possibility. I will return Wednesday night to trail and see what I think. Going there is an absolute guarantee of a positive work environment, a chance to try my hand at every single job in the kitchen, and an opportunity to prepare for many different types of services. Tuesday, November 19 I woke up in the middle of the night last night feeling sick to my stomach. Getting sick did not improve things much, and this morning I felt quite green-gilled and exhausted. I dragged my ass to school figuring I’d sit through the demo and then depart, but I couldn’t even make it through the whole demo. I kept having to go to the student lounge and lay down for a few minutes to regain my composure. I tried to choke down some tea but gave up after a few sips. I don’t know what happened to me, I felt perfectly fine when I went to bed last night and had been pretty much healthy by the end of the weekend from last week’s sickness. Today’s menu included raw oysters. I do not recommend working with them while nauseous. I had to ask that they be passed around me when Chef Peter sent them around. I left school around 9:30am and came home. Spent most of the day asleep. Wednesday, November 20 Mostly better today, good enough to attend a full day of school and trail at Colorado Kitchen afterwards. I just got home from the restaurant. I was trained on the garde manger station, which also staffs the fryer and does a few other assorted tasks for the other cook on duty. I’ve enjoyed things about all of the kitchens I have visited, but I think I liked this one the best of all. Chef Gillian spent much of the evening chatting with me, telling me amusing stories and asking me questions about the program at L’academie. I am still trailing at Ortanique on Friday, but I did ask Chef Gillian at the end of the night if she was interested in having me as an extern. She said she definitely was, if I wanted to go there. I promised to contact her early next week to talk about details. There’s more from today, including a really cool cheese tasting and presentation by Fairway’s cheese expert Steven Jenkins, but it will have to wait for Sunday’s post.

I have an Imperia steel hand-crank clamp-on machine. About half of the machines we have at school are the same model. I got it from Williams-Sonoma for about $50. It came with fettucine and angel hair cutters. Until I went to school, I had the same problem Dstone mentions of gummy, white pasta. It really is not the fault of the machine, it's a matter of technique. I made pasta at home on weekends sometimes now and it is a wonderful thing. It really makes a big difference over the dried, frozen and refrigerated stuff. I just made some this past Saturday as a first course and everybody was impressed with my thin, delicate, egg-y noodles. Definitely get a machine if you like to eat pasta. Which one does not matter so much.

Rachel, sorry for the confusion. Colorado Kitchen does ONLY sit-down full-service dining. They are the only food service of this sort in their neighborhood. The only other food nearby is either a carryout (the sort that serves Chinese food and wings from behind bulletproof glass) or a grocery/market with a sandwich counter (these places often sell more beer and wine than bread and milk). Colorado Kitchen does not offer any sort of carryout service partly as a counterpoint to the other options in the area. Dana, you flatter me so. Here is a recipe for the starter from last Thursday, which was an idea Zoe came up with: Vol-Au-Vent with Oyster Mushrooms and Leeks in Thyme Cream Puff pastry Shallots, fine brunoise Whole butter Leeks, cut to batonnet size Oyster mushrooms, cut into moderate slices Garlic, pasted with salt Thyme, fresh Sea salt and white pepper Heavy cream Prepare puff vol-au-vents: Roll puff pastry to 1/4" thickness. Dock. Cut with 3" round scalloped cookie cutter. Mark center with smaller cookie cutter by pressing the cutter into the dough, but not cutting all the way through. Bake as usual for puff pastry. When baked and dried, let cool and pry off the marked lids. Remove any doughy bits inside to form a shell. Sweat shallots in butter. Add leeks and sweat. Season. Add mushrooms and sweat slowly. Add garlic and thyme. Cook down. Add heavy cream and cook to sauce consistency. Remove thyme and serve mixture in warmed vol-au-vents; put have the mixture spill out of the shell onto the plate and set the lid at an angle atop the mixture.

Thursday, November 14 Another market basket day. These just keep getting more fun. Today we went down to two-person teams for the market basket. I was paired with Zoe. We started brainstorming ideas and came up with a menu fairly quickly: Vol-au-vent (puff pastry shell) with leeks and oyster mushrooms in cream sauce Seared duck breast with port wine-fig reduction sauce, potatoes Anna, haricots verts Lemon-ginger pound cake with lemon mascarpone cream Zoe wanted to work on the puff pastry and the dessert, so I agreed to help with the mise en place for the veg in cream sauce and got to work on the entrée. I took apart two whole ducks (I can’t believe how easy this is for me to do now) and trimmed down the breasts. I got my green beans blanched and ready to be finished. I went ahead and peeled the potatoes and got them tourneed into a roundish shape; I didn’t want to slice them before I started cooking them since I didn’t want them to lose starch to the soaking water. I then went and talked to Chef Peter about the figs; I’d never worked with them before and felt I needed more information on their preparation before getting started. I ended up cutting some of them in half and stewing them down slowly in port wine for use as garnish. I diced the rest for the sauce. I’m rather proud of my sauce; it was a mysterious deep purple color, with beautiful fig seeds looking like tiny stars floating about. I made the sauce by sweating shallots in the pan I used to sear the duck breasts, adding the diced figs, and deglazing with lots of port wine. I cooked the wine down until almost completely dry and then added demi-glace and cooked to sauce consistency. I strained the sauce, mounted it with butter, and spooned it into a puddle under the sliced, fanned duck. Everything I prepared was excellent. Each time we have had a market basket, I have cooked intelligently and with a lot of heart, and the plates I’ve produced have been the best ones I have created at school. There’s a lot of pressure with the market baskets to produce something really creative and top-notch. My ideas aren’t the most original ones, certainly, but they’re well thought-out and I’ve been able to execute them very closely to my pre-cooking visions. A nice feeling. Friday, November 15 Second to last test of the semester. Here is what appeared on the menu: Eggs benedict Quiche lorraine with dauphine potatoes (mashed potato-cream puff dough mix, deep-fried) Chocolate mousse with cigarette cookies I’m sorry to report that this was the first time I finished late. I’m embarrassed by this because the menu did not include any one technically difficult item (except hollandaise, which we’ve been tested on before), because I was the very last one in my group to finish, and because I didn’t plan well. I was unable to think clearly and dragging quite a bit from having been sick all week. I kept having to run back for additional items I’d forgotten, including at the very last moment when I remembered I needed chopped chives to garnish my eggs Benedict and had to race across the kitchen with them to beat Chef Peter to my table. On the other hand, I paid serious attention to every dish I made, and took my time to make sure my execution was perfect in every detail. I’m particularly proud of my quiche; the crust was thin and brown and crisp, the eggs attractively brown on top with flecks of green parsley, the filling an exact brunoise of onion and bacon. The cigarette cookies and mousse were spot-on as well; Chef Peter picked up the cookies and said, “Thin to win.” I lost a point on time and a point on using too many supplies (I boiled two potatoes rather than one for the potatoes dauphine), plus there were minor issues with my hollandaise (not enough salt) and potatoes (not enough pate a chou in the mix). Despite these shortcomings I think I may have my best score yet on a practical from this test. The written test was short and, for me, fairly simple. We were quizzed on lots of things we hadn’t talked about or gone over in a long time, like gumbo and charlotte royale. I think I did fairly well just the same. After I finished, I stuck around for a half hour and learned to crack lobsters (Chef Francois needed them for a wine dinner scheduled for tomorrow). There was lots more to do, but I was starting to feel lightheaded from exhaustion. I’d just cooked my heart out for two days and was completely run-down from sickness. I begged off and went home and slept for almost three hours. Phew. Sunday, November 17 I had told Barbara, who helps students arrange externships, that I would try to trail in a restaurant this Sunday. However, I was so exhausted and wrung-out that I couldn’t bring myself to call the place I was interested in checking out. I am still trailing at Ortanique on Friday of this week, but the deadline for finding an externship was technically this past Friday and I wanted to show a good-faith effort that I was working on the problem. At this point I am one of only two students lacking an externship, and it’s becoming a bigger issue than my internal struggle over working in a restaurant kitchen. I had a mini-breakdown of sorts last night on the subject, partly because I have a paper due on Friday that I had hoped to postpone writing until I found my externship. The assignment is to interview a local chef, and most people are naturally interviewing the chefs where they will be working. I had intended to do just that, but it clearly wasn’t going to happen in time for me to turn in the paper. I woke up this morning knowing exactly what I needed to do about the paper. I also felt energetic and eager for the first time in a week. I made a resolution to deal with the externship problem as thoroughly as I could over the course of this week, even if it means trailing several nights in several places. And I decided to visit Colorado Kitchen, a newish restaurant in a DC neighborhood close to my Maryland home, to interview the chef there for my paper due this Friday. I chose Gillian Clark of Colorado Kitchen because she is running a Southern-American type restaurant in a neighborhood with no sit-down dining whatsoever. There is little Southern style food in DC, and few people can find the resources to open full-service restaurants in underserved neighborhoods. I went at the very beginning of dinner service and sat at the bar and asked Chef Gillian if I could interview her, and she seemed flattered and agreed to talk to me tomorrow. I ate dinner and wrote the parts of my paper about the restaurant dining room and menu before returning home. I look forward to talking with her tomorrow, and feel good that I’ve at least done something about the paper problem. (By the way, I do not expect it is possible for me to extern at Colorado Kitchen. Their kitchen is so tiny that unless somebody quits, there’s no way to squeeze in another employee. I plan to ask her about it tomorrow anyway, though, just to see what she says.) Seared Duck Breast with Fig-Port Reduction Sauce Figs Port wine Sugar Sea salt and white pepper Duck breasts Shallots Demi-glace Whole butter Halve figs. Stew in wine, sugar and seasonings. Season duck breasts. Sear and finish in oven. Degrease searing pan and soften shallots. Add diced figs and cook down. Add port wine and cook a sec. Add demi-glace. Adjust seasoning and strain sauce. Mount with butter and serve with duck.

We're quite fond of the Santa Barbara Olive Company roasted garlic salsa in this household. I've been trying different chips lately, trying to find a new standard. I think my favorite of the brands available at the natural foods coop where I shop is the Bearitos. It's a little oversalted for some people but I had a hard time keeping my paws off the bag. The bag is huge too, which is a real plus. I also like Trader Joe's chips. I don't mind the Guiltless Gourmet baked blue corn chips, but they go stale the instant you open them and even I can't eat a whole bag at one sitting...so they are a poor value.

I cooked two lobsters for the first time last night, for use in a bouillabaisse I was preparing for friends. The first thing I did when I got the animals home was put one on a kitchen towel on the floor and see what my cats did about it. (Yes, the bands were still on the claws.) The cats sniffed around a little and then (surprisingly) acted a bit bored. Then I put on a huge pot of water to boil. I pulled the lobsters out onto the counter and talked to them. I really was sorry I was about to kill them, they were good listeners and seemed somewhat sympathetic to my vague ex-vegetarian guilt. My partner Erin came in briefly and said the one I'd put out for the cats to investigate was making noises, but I think it was just the rattling of the plastic bag by her tail. Once the water came to a boil, it was all over. I apologized as I plunged the wriggling lobsters into the water. Two minutes later I removed them, drained them, and extracted all the flesh. I added it to the bouillabaisse towards the end of the cook time and the flesh did not toughen at all. Quite delicious.

Fresh fettucine with leeks, wild mushrooms, and roasted red peppers Grilled pear and roasted asparagus salad Bouillabaisse, aioli croutons Lemon-ginger pound cake, lemon curd on top, ginger tea Assorted chocolates

Ehh, put on your walking shoes and hoof it from the blue and orange line Foggy Bottom Metro stop. I don't like to shop in Georgetown much, but there are a few places I like to visit there which are not duplicated elsewhere in DC (Dean and Deluca for goodies, Commander Salamander for clubwear, a few other places...) When I am there I usually pick up a few treats from D&D...the few cheap eats I've sampled in Georgetown have suck-diddly-ucked (Fattosh, Zed's, Saigon Inn, Bistro Francais, etc etc). Edemuth and I did make it to GSIM, and I am a total wanker for not messaging you about it. I hope you can forgive me. We did enjoy the fresh-killed kung pao, and one of the dishes from the TV series (the spicy pickled veggie one, forget the name).

There was a miscommunication about Ortanique. I interviewed there, but I did not trail...I will be trailing there next week. So I am home. I feel like somebody gave me a "get out of jail free" card. Now I feel sheepish about my short post. Guess I'll have to spend the rest of my evening preparing for Friday. Rachel, I keep annoying the other students with my insistence that the details of the gingerbread house be 100% accurate. The house goes on our holiday buffet, and then we donate it to a children's hospital. It's really the kids I'm thinking of...kids will notice every single error in the storyline as played out in the props for the house. I think I may be the only one working on the project who has seen the movie and read all four books. I think we are sticking to a storyline from the first book, but I have had all sorts of suggestions for things to put around the castle to make it look more realistic. I think the whomping willow may make a great addition, with or without the car, and I will try to bring it up tomorrow. Maggie, I get a teeny vicarious thrill that somebody out there is reading my entries.

Ten Interesting Things About This Week: 1. I peeled grapes today for cod veronique. I thought peeled grapes were one of those things somebody made up, that nobody actually did. I was wrong. (They’re actually not that hard!) 2. I finally turned out a perfect rice pilau, and the first perfect glazed carrots I’ve done since the first test. 3. I watched a video on Jean-Louis Palladin yesterday. He looked like “Weird Al” Yankovic and I immediately developed a simultaneous crush on him and feeling of sorrow that he is no longer with us and enlivening the DC culinary scene. 4. Corduroy is unable to commit to giving me hours for my externship. As a result, I am heading to Ortanique tonight to check them out. 5. I feel a little sick and accordingly sluggish. Many people also feel this way. Today two people were out and three people left school early. I am tempted to chomp on some horseradish root to clear my schnozz. Kristin is coping by eating more of the Thai chiles Chef Somchet grows than usual. She scares me. 6. I saw a durian at the Thai market yesterday. I visited with Chef Somchet during lunch prep so she could pick up a few items. I wanted to buy it but she kept telling me it stinks and the flavor isn’t worth the stink factor. I told Amy about it later and she agreed it was cool and she wanted to see what it was like. I’d rather open it up at school than at home, where I might have to live with the aroma. 7. I have a test on Friday and have barely had time to prepare my notebook, much less study. This is the second to last test we will be given. I am a little tired of the tests (perhaps bored is a better word to use?), but I am not at all ready to start externing. I just want school to last and last, even if it means I don’t get paid and I have to take a test every week. 8. I forgot my apron for the first time today. Kristin kindly loaned me one of hers. I’ve never forgotten any necessary item before. I think it’s because I’m under the weather. I’m embarrassed by this. 9. I will be assisting with a culinary student-pastry student collaboration: the annual gingerbread house. Every year, students get together, decide on a theme, plan the house, and build it out of entirely edible materials. (Well, you may not want to EAT things like pastillage, but they are technically edible. Just not very palatable.) This week, we picked our theme: Harry Potter. One of the pastry students has already sketched some general ideas, and we hope to decide more about who does what after class tomorrow. I hope I can make enough time for the project, and I look forward to learning more about marzipan, pastillage and sugar work through my contributions to the project. 10. For all of these reasons, I wrote this post in about 5 minutes before running out the door. I apologize for the brevity of my entry, and promise much more substance and detail on Sunday.

I detest Georgetown for a long and boring, over-worked list of reasons. If I was there and had to eat something, I'd probably try to buy some cheese and a baguette at Dean and Deluca and see if they'd let me sit in their cafe to eat it. (D&D, imo, is the only serious reason to visit Georgetown.) I've dined very little at the high end in the area because of my distaste for the neighborhood, but you didn't want higher-end anyway. After I ate my cheese and bread I might walk up to Thomas Sweet for ice cream on Wisc Ave. As for Chinatown: I don't like Tony Cheng's too much. I have heard terrific things about Burma, but have not been there personally. Chinatown DC is mostly dead anyway. You'll find better Chinese food in Rockville, perhaps in Arlington, or of course back home in NY.

Sandra, your lunch sounds terrific. WednesdayGirl, I sat on your questions overnight because I didn't have an easy answer for them. I'm having trouble deciding on an externship location partly because of my criteria. The single biggest one rules out many of the restaurants I'd be most interested in working at: The restaurant must be in a location that is relatively workable for transit. This rules out all restaurants in Northern Virginia, plus all of those in the DC neighborhoods of Dupont Circle, Adams-Morgan and Georgetown. I can't take being yelled at on an ongoing basis, drunken chefs who dump my mise en place five minutes before service, or other serious insanity from my superiors. (A certain degree of insanity is to be expected, in this industry.) I want a place where I won't be lost in a huge kitchen, yet I get a chance to prepare several kinds of food for different services. I want a place where the chef is on-site and accessible. Ideally, I'd like to not only learn something about working in a restaurant kitchen, but also something new about food. I am attracted to chefs known for mentoring women, like Ann Cashion of Cashion's Eat Plate, Susan McCreight Lindenborg of Majestic Cafe, and Ris Lacoste of 1789. But all of these are out of the question from a transit standpoint. I am attracted to the higher-end bigger-name dining in DC, but they have huge kitchens and don't take people without experience (for good reason, honestly). And besides, I haven't been much inspired by meals at restaurants like Galileo and Kinkead's (and Michel Richard Citronelle does not take externs, not even George-type ones). There's not a lot of "clear winner" choices left. My criteria have wavered over time, and the only ones I'm still adamant about are the transit and the yelling issues. I can't subject myself to a trying trip to and/or from work every day. I didn't do it when I was working as an editor and there are enough decent restaurants out there that I shouldn't have to consider it now. And there are enough somewhat sane chefs out there that I don't need to subject myself to being kicked around for sport daily, either. If I could go anywhere, without worrying about transit? I'd probably head for Cashion's or (if Jonathan hadn't already taken it) maybe Elysium. Considering transit and which restaurants are already taken and what I think I can stand? Stay tuned.

Wednesday evening, November 6 I trailed at Corduroy tonight in my continuing externship explorations. Corduroy is located in a hotel, and by the terms of their lease with the hotel they must be open 7 days a week, from something like 6:30am to midnight. They serve three meals a day, do all the banquet service for the hotel, and prepare all room service items. This means that while I was at the restaurant, there were people on the line preparing salmon with baby bok choy and an anise-scented fish broth reduction mounted with butter right next to a steak sandwich. There were several people, including myself, doing plenty of prep for upcoming banquet events even as service was going on. I spent most of my evening cutting vegetables. I started off with a fine brunoise of parsnips and carrots; my first test vegetables were too large but after that I straightened them up and produced some of the better-looking knife cuts I’ve done. This was the only item I prepared for the Corduroy menu, and it was a serious contrast with the other things I cut: sous chef Paul kept a close eye on my cuts for the carrots and parsnips, but then he had me cut up 8 or 9 large onions and said he didn’t care much how big they were as long as they were close to ¼” cubes. He barely glanced at them when I finished, and he didn’t look too closely at the 10 or so red bell peppers I cut up for him either. There’s a clear contrast in expectation between food for the restaurant and food for the banquets, to the extent that I found myself revising expectations for the banquet service food. I have eaten at Corduroy and I really enjoyed the food, and when I discovered that the same chef oversees banquet service I assumed the banquets were at a similar level to the food in the restaurant. I have not sampled finished banquet dishes, but they definitely don’t engender the same care as the finer cuisine at Corduroy…at least, not the particular banquets I was preparing for. This is not meant to say that the banquet service is slipshod; it’s just at a different level than the restaurant. I did have one major mishap. I was asked to defrost two solid blocks of shrimp for use in a banquet pasta dish. The shrimp were fairly small and the blocks were quite large. It took me a while to get them defrosted; I used a combination of running and still water, figuring this was the best approach for speed and food safety, and I constantly worked the edges of the bricks with my fingers to loosen up the shellfish. (This is a very cold, cold-fingered job. After a while, my bones ached.) At one point the water level in the sink got rather high, so I released the drain and lowered the level. Like most restaurant sinks I’ve seen, this sink had a gap between the drainpipe and the drain to prevent pressure backflow. I did not realize that the sheer volume of water coming out of the drainpipe and splashing over the drain would be too much for the drain to handle, and I didn’t notice that there was water all over the floor as a result. It hadn’t occurred to me to look until several minutes later, when an employee walked by and picked his way around the puddles. Before I could react, Chef Tom came by and did the exact same thing. I was quite embarrassed and asked the whereabouts of a mop; Chef Tom brought me a squeegee and I cleared the floor up. Still, it didn’t look too good. I have to have my externship sewed up by the end of next week. I liked Corduroy quite a bit. We’ll see what happens with Chef Tom over the next week or so. Thursday, November 7 Another market basket day. I was assigned to a team with Melanie and Brett. Melanie had also trailed in a restaurant last night, so we were both a little brain-dead and took a while to get moving mentally. The basket list was lengthier and less limited than previous baskets, except the animal proteins. We could use unlimited bacon and duck confit, up to 1 chicken, and either 6oz of tuna or 6oz of squid. We had to feed five people (the three of us plus two guests) and one chicken is not quite enough for that many people. Duck confit is more of an appetizer type treat than a good entrée in my book, plus I wanted to use it in a salad. And chicken doesn’t really go with tuna or squid, so they couldn’t be combined easily. After much discussion, here is the menu we came up with: A demitasse of butternut squash soup with pecan cream and a spiced candied pecan on top Salad of mixed greens with duck confit, roasted yellow peppers, dried cherries, and hazelnut-sherry vinaigrette Chicken-filled tortellini with sauteed mushrooms, artichoke hearts and asparagus in a rosemary-garlic cream sauce Caramel-phyllo ice cream napoleon with bitter chocolate sauce and sugared berries I really wanted to make the dessert this time, and I was emphatic about making caramel ice cream and using it as the focus of our dessert. I also came up with most of the salad idea, and said I’d make the salad myself. I went into pastry almost immediately to get started on the napoleon. I’m rather proud of my little napoleons. I had a thin caramel sauce on hand (cooked caramel + enough cream that the mixture is a little runny at room temperature) and I added it to a plain ice cream base immediately before packing it into the school ice cream freezer. I made some vanilla sugar and used it with clarified butter in between sheets of phyllo, and then I cut the stacked phyllo sheets into identical rectangles and baked them until crisp. I removed the ice cream from the freezer while it was still somewhat soft, spread it evenly in a half-sheet pan, and froze it in the walk-in near the compressor where I hoped it would harden quickly. An hour before service, I removed the ice cream from the pan, cut it into rectangles sized identically to the phyllo, and refroze it. I was nervous because the ice cream was a little tacky when I pulled it out of the freezer to cut it, and by the time I finished cutting it was starting to weep quite a bit. There wasn’t much I could do about it except plan to plate at the last possible minute. I went and made all the components for the salad, plus I put together the rosemary-garlic cream sauce for the pasta. I also made the chocolate sauce (73% chocolate ganache, thinned down with enough cream to make a thick smooth sauce) and sugared strawberries for the dessert garnish. I felt like I worked efficiently and quickly. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, we ended up being rather behind on lunch service. It was mostly the entrée that held us up; there wasn’t enough water set up for pasta-boiling, and our pasta was thick enough that it didn’t cook through before the chicken mousse filling was completely done. We ended up serving the pasta a little too hard, and the mousse had already turned a little rubbery from overcooking. We hadn’t realized that the balance could be so delicate between cooking the mousse and the pasta together. By the time we had our turn in the inadequate amount of pasta water and plated up, it had been almost an hour already. I scurried into the pastry kitchen with Melanie to plate up my desserts, but we barely had ten seconds to eat it before Chef Peter kicked us out of the kitchen. It’s really too bad, my desserts looked and tasted wonderful and nobody got a chance to enjoy them. Hopefully next week we’ll plan better. Friday, November 8 A short day for me; I left early to head to New York to assist the chefs doing demonstrations at the International Hotel/Motel/Restaurant show. I did have an opportunity to play with the cold smoker for the first time today, though: Em and I smoked some salmon. The salmon had been cured already, so we soaked some wood chips in water to give a woodsy flavor to the fish. Chef Peter instructed us to get three charcoal briquets out and put them directly on the gas flame of the stove until they were totally white. And then he showed us how to set up the smoker box and get the fire going. He added an ounce or so of brandy to the soaked, drained wood chips to help get the fire moving and to add some more flavor to the fish. We checked on the fish periodically (at one point the fire went out, so we had to reignite it with the use of the butane torch). Em left with Chef Somchet to run some errands, so I kept an eye on the smoker. When I thought the fish was done, I pulled it out and walked away from the smoke and smelled it. It smelled delicious: softly smoky and rich, like a good smoked salmon. I presented the fish to Chef Peter, and he pronounced it perfect. I then put out the fire and cleaned down the box. Smoking makes food so delicious, I’m having fantasies of doing Col Klink-style experiments with the cold smoker. Perhaps next Thursday’s market basket will have something nice and smoke-able among the options.

Using the salamander to cook anything is a big no-no at school. We use it to toast bread and to brown glazed dishes/things topped with cheese or breadcrumbs. Not for actual cooking. And the salamander is the closest thing to a broiler at school. Chef Francois told us that we should never broil meat very early on. It would not have met approval as a shortcut.

Tuesday, November 5 For a long time, I have defended vegetarianism as a lifestyle choice as well as a valid foodie diet. There’s nothing wrong with vegetarianism, and it is entirely possible to approach a vegetarian diet with the same passion for food as an omnivore. My vegetarianism led me to try different cuisines in order to diversify the food I knew, and the self-imposed restrictions led me to a degree of creativity that I might not have pursued otherwise. I’m now well into omnivorism. I can’t pretend any more. It’s been some time since I stuck to simply “tasting” meat and fowl; as my palate has become accustomed to the meaty and gamy flavors I find myself eating every scrap of many things. Duck breast, when seared medium-rare, is a new favorite. I adore confit. Any type of cured meat, be it sausage, bacon, ham, hot-smoked, whatever…I want to eat it. I like beef a fair amount and am starting to consider trying my first hamburger in over a decade. I am not too fond of chicken and rabbit, but venison was pretty good and I’m rather appreciative of veal. I enjoy the muskiness of lamb; last week I was pleased with the way lamb smells like lamb even before it’s been cooked. I still eat vegetarian at home, and when I dine out I generally consume fish and vegetable-based dishes, although I will order items like monkfish wrapped in proscuitto and shrimp and grits with tasso ham. I wonder how much meat will remain a part of my diet after I finish school. I don’t think I will be preparing it at home, but I wonder if I will order it out more when it’s not in my lunch every day. I do still eat fake meat sometimes; I think a fake chicken pattie is far less likely to contain something gross than a fast-food chicken pattie, plus it’s probably going to be better for me. Wednesday, November 6 Instead of having a demo and the usual lunch service, today we did a hors d’oeuvres buffet. There was no demo, we were just broken into teams and assigned three items per team. I was paired with Ivelisse, and we were assigned tuna tartare, tandoor-style chicken and Asian duck strudel. Chef Peter gave each team a more detailed list of assignments and suggested we get started while he went from team to team explaining how to make each dish. We’ve made tuna tartare before, so Ivelisse and I started with the mise en place for that while we waited for Chef Peter. The assignment sheet said we should plan to serve the tartare as quenelles on spoons. The sheet also explained that the duck strudel should be made with marinated, seared duck breasts and julienned vegetables and stuffed in phyllo dough. As for the chicken, the only real direction was to see Chef Somchet. After Chef Peter came by and explained the duck marinade, I found Chef Somchet and asked her about the chicken. She handed me a spice packet and told me to follow the directions on the back, thread the chicken onto skewers, and grill it until done on the small iron grill plate. Ivelisse and I decided that I’d take the chicken and she’d handle the duck, and we agreed to split the tartare tasks between us. I grated some fresh ginger, garlic and onion, found some paprika and salt, and added lemon juice and yogurt to the spice mix as indicated on the packet for the marinade. I added the chicken and got it in the walk-in fairly quickly. I then diced and minced various things for the tartare: chives, cilantro, and so on. I made a deli cup of Asian style marinated cucumbers and tried to figure out the best way to design the tartare servings and plate. We’d selected a white platter with a sort of swoopy reverse-Z shape to it, and Chef Peter had given us some new teaspoons to put the quenelles on. I decided the quenelles would look most fetching if I put two cucumber slices and the cilantro leaf on the spoons near the handle end of the bowl, added the quenelle, and then piped a zig-zag pattern of crème fraiche on top. Ivelisse agreed with my ideas. We were encouraged to dress up our plates in the best way possible, so we talked a lot about how to make our food look attractive. Ivelisse had decided to make a ginger beurre blanc for the strudel, and we decided together to squirt the sauce on the platter before adding the strudel. She decided to cut the strudel on the bias, which looked quite nice. I fixed some garnishes for the tartare platter: cucumber cut into large pieces on the bias, skin scored with a fork, center scooped out, and then filled with some scallion brushes. The tartare platter ended up being one of the more striking dishes on the buffet. The chicken ended up being a problem, though. I didn’t realize that one other person needed the grill plate; had I known this I would have grilled off the chicken far earlier and just reheated and finished it in the oven. I didn’t get access to the grill plate until 12:15 or so, and then I didn’t realize the chicken wasn’t cooked through so I ended up putting it in the oven around 12:50 when I realized it was a problem. (The buffet was set for 1pm.) The chicken was the last thing to go on the buffet, well after it officially opened. It was irritating since I’d actually given myself plenty of time to do everything, I just hadn’t known I needed to coordinate with somebody else…and she got to the grill plate first. We invited the pastry students to join us for lunch, so I had a chance to hang out and chat with some of them. Two of them are vegetarian, and they both asked me to guide them to the meatless items on the buffet. We talked about vegetarianism and why each of us is or was sticking to a meatless diet. We also chatted about some of the items on the buffet. After lunch, we met for a brief wrap-up and then were allowed to go home early. I came home to complete this entry, and am about to depart for Corduroy, where I am trailing tonight. Here’s what was on the buffet: Corn-dusted oysters on the half shell Belgian endive with goat cheese Hummus Lamb satay with peanut sauce Jerk chicken on a plantain chip Babaganoush Brie on brioche with a raspberry Quail scotch eggs Lazy susans (quail eggs fried in bread rings) Roasted fingerling potatoes stuffed with goat cheese Roasted tomato, basil, and black olive tapenade crostini Lobster and roasted yellow pepper crostini Artichoke blini with artichoke confit Tabbouleh Goat cheese pyramid (balls of goat cheese rolled in various things like chopped herbs, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, etc) Endive with citrus crabmeat Chicken tandoori Asian duck strudel Tuna tartare Crawfish profiteroles Crispy pork wontons Mini crabcakes Mini salmon en croute Duck confit in filo Frikadelles (Swedish-style meatballs) Tuna Tartare Peeled seeded cucumber Rice wine vinegar Sugar Tuna Shallot Ginger Chive Cilantro Lemon juice Cornichons Dijon mustard Sea salt and white pepper Seasme oil Tabasco sauce Soy sauce Crème fraiche Broccoli sprouts Toasted black and white sesame seeds Lotus root chips Combine cucumber with sugar and salt. Set aside to marinate. Combine tuna with shallot, ginger, chive, cilantro, juice, cornichons, mustard, seasoning, sesame oil, tabasco, and soy sauce to taste. To plate individual servings: arrange cucumber on plates and put mold on plate; fill mold with tuna and top with crème fraiche. Remove mold and top with sprouts, seeds and chips. Scatter soy sauce on plate and serve. To serve as hors d’oeuvre, form quenelles of tuna mixture. Arrange cucumber slices and cilantro leaves on spoons. Add quenelle and pipe crème fraiche decoratively on top.

Welcome to all new and soon-to-be students! I'd be interested in hearing why you chose the schools you chose, and what attracted you to culinary school. Haunted Chef, sorry I didn't respond to your question earlier. Here are a few thoughts: 1. Get good shoes. It's a huge part of this particular topic for good reason. 2. Take good care of your body. This includes #1, but also exercise, learn how to safely lift heavy objects if you don't already know how, get enough sleep at night, and drink plenty of water. 3. Make a decision as to how you will approach your studies. People go to culinary school for all kinds of reasons. These reasons change approaches. I work very hard at my program, but you don't have to in order to do well (depending on your personality). I make it hard on myself because that's what I want to get out of the program...knowledge and experience. 4. Make sure you have time to fulfill all your commitments: to being in school, to doing your homework, to practicing if you're the sort who needs to practice, and to taking care of your body. Don't forget time for the other people in your life and time for yourself. It sucks, but I have to schedule my "fun time" in...and I don't have to work my way through school like some people do (this diary is the closest thing I have to a job for now). Learn to manage your time now if you're bad at it. 5. Things may be scary and overwhelming at times. I remember the first few times I handled meat, I was petrified. Now I can tie and truss, sear and grill, trim and braise just like everybody else. Try to remember why you went to school when you feel this way: you wanted to learn, and you loved working with food.