Malawry

Hey, Suzanne F, I realize now that my post may not have been clear about what I did and didn't know about the facility in advance. I found out all that I could about the facility without visiting before working the event, and while I did not know how much space there would be, I did know that there was refrigeration and a stove. I had the ability to take an electric plate and a cooler if this had not been the case. Nobody got poisoned. I just completed my sanitation course and understand how easily it can happen. I did not visit because frankly it's so far out of the area where I live, work and play, it did not seem worth a trip...I am of course a very busy person. I could and did ask others who HAD visited about the information I regarded as essential. I would probably not make a policy of catering without on-site visits in advance, but for a dessert reception I felt perfectly comfortable with it.

Thursday, September 26 I baked my first French bread today. We learned how to make baguettes in a demo on Tuesday, and Chef Somchet said if we wanted to actually make it ourselves we’d have to come in early and do them before class begins. So I made it to school first thing this morning and whipped up a batch of dough. I volunteered to work in the pastry kitchen when we were divided into teams for lunch service, because I wanted to keep an eye on my dough. I baked my three baguettes off right around noon so they were piping hot for lunch service at 12:30. About three other students came in early to bake baguettes today, so all the bread was baked together. We all tasted one anothers’ breads to compare. We were all working from the same recipe and used the same technique, but the breads looked and tasted quite different. My bread was the prettiest, with perfectly domed tops, uniform color, and attractive opened vents…but it tasted somewhat flat. I didn’t add quite enough salt, so the yeast was able to work harder (salt inhibits yeast) but the end result was just not as tasty. Zoe’s bread had a more rustic look to it and I wanted to eat a whole loaf it was so delicious. She had added more salt than I did. This exercise showed me clearly why most mass-produced baguettes suck when they look so fetching on the shelf. They’re undersalted so they will look as pretty as my bread did. I’ll try to mess with the salt proportions when I bake baguettes over the coming weeks and see what happens. Friday, September 27 I have mentally dubbed today “cheese day.” Le menu included a cheese souffle (our first ones in class), a mozzarella roulade, veal milanese with fresh pasta sprinkled with cheese, and for dessert tiramisu. The roulade was especially fun to make (I had to lobby Drew to get to make it, because he wanted to do it too). We used purchased cheese curd, and I followed Chef Somchet’s technique for ladling in hot salted water and carefully stirring the cheese together. I packed my roulade with proscuitto, fresh basil, cracked black pepper, salt, and garlic before rolling it up. The resulting stuffed cheese was fresh and flavorful. I stayed after school to bake palmiers and make crème patisserie for tomorrow’s event. Several students stopped by to wish me luck with my event, which I feel sure will go quite well. Saturday, September 28 I had the luxury of good planning on my side today; I was able to sleep in, take my time getting things together, and do some things around the house before departing for L’academie around 1:30pm. Edemuth came with me. I whipped together a salad and some sandwiches for us while Edemuth worked on cutting holes into all the pate a chou profiterole and éclair shapes. After eating she went to work on cutting Chefette’s brownies (which cut cleanly as anticipated, and looked quite fetching with the ganache stars we added later), and then she cleaned and cut all the fruit for the fresh fruit tarts. I ran about filling disposable pastry bags, cleaning the dishes we were using, and so on. I had intended to fill the eclairs with coffee-flavored crème patisserie, but I couldn’t find the bottle of coffee paste anywhere. I tried flavoring a little bit with some cocoa, but I decided it was too difficult to eliminate lumps and that it wouldn’t hurt anybody to eat eclairs filled with plain crème patisserie. Oh well. One of the choir members, Meredith, came by around 4:30 with her SUV and packed everything off for us. Edemuth and I finished cleaning up and then drove out to the event site in Northern Virginia. We found the place fairly easily and went in to check out the kitchen. One of the strange things about catering is that you never know what you will find in terms of facilities when you show up for a job. Fortunately, this place (a clubhouse in an upscale apartment complex) had a stove and a refrigerator plus a microwave. There wasn’t much counter space, but there was enough for two or three people if we each stuck to one small area. By the time we cased out the kitchen and unloaded the supplies I’d left in my car, Meredith showed up and we unloaded the rest of the goodies and got set up. Edemuth and I went to work on filling the pate a chou and filling the prebaked pate sucree shells with the various goodies. I discovered quickly that using disposable pastry bags may not have been the best move: my brand-new star tips gouged some of them badly, and if I hadn’t brought extras I could have been in serious trouble. Also, the ganache was hard to pipe, and would have fared better in a cloth pastry bag which can take a lot more pressure than the disposable plastic ones. I also learned that it’s handy to have several sizes of brushes available, even if you’re only brushing one substance. We were using apricot glaze to protect the bottoms of tartlets, plus we were brushing some over the tops of fresh fruit tarts. The tartlet shells were different shapes, and the large brush I had couldn’t reach the corners of the smallest ones too well. It worked okay, but a small brush would have been much better. Oh well. All the trays went out on time, assisted by my friend Eliza who came out to help me. I was quite surprised to discover that one of the choir members has a mother who is a graduate of L’academie. She had come early to offer help where needed, and once I heard that she had a culinary background I set her up on squirting ganache into tartlet shells for chocolate tartlets. She was quite handy in the kitchen, which was a pleasant surprise. Everything was set up 20 minutes early, just enough time for Edemuth and I to change into our party clothes. The event went just as planned; I slipped into the kitchen a few times to refresh trays but was able to hang out and schmooze most of the time. Everybody loved the food, especially the lemon curd-filled tartlets which I’d decorated with candied lemon zest and some musically-themed chocolate décor that Chefette had given me. I had some people offer me leads on future catering jobs (which means I may have to decide soon whether or not I want to do this more seriously). I had tried as best I could to help with selecting wines for the event. I compared prices at a liquor store in the District and made some suggestions, based in part on what people recommended on eGullet. They ended up going with sparkling wines available at a bulk warehouse since they offered the most competitive prices. They served Friexinet brut, Cook’s brut, and a big-label Asti. I’m grateful that this event is over. I haven’t really had time or energy to mull it over yet, but I really enjoyed both planning this catering job and working so intensively with pastry for the past few weeks. I relied quite heavily on Chefette’s expertise as I planned, baked, and timed things. I felt prepared to handle it on my own when I volunteered to do it but I didn’t realize how much I hadn’t considered until Chefette made suggestions. Thanks, Chefette. I also relied heavily on Edemuth for moral support and for assistance. It’s always a joy to work with her, and I’m fortunate that she made time to come assist me.

If you are the butter queen, I am the buttah goddess. Worship me and my food of choice.

Thanks for the excellent comments and advice. KimWB, it will suck getting home after working at my externship no matter what. This is because my neighborhood has no finer or even upscale-casual restaurants. (It has many many other qualities which make up for this, of course.) But you have a point, and transit is definitely one of the questions at the top of my priority list when deciding where to go. Oraklet, I used the same largish wire whisk for my mayo as I would use had I made a big batch. I wouldn't bother to make just a tablespoon...too annoying, and besides the smallest quantity really should be 1 egg yolk's worth (which was what I made, and the finished sauce was about 2/3 of a cup). You really need a whisk because you need to break the oil into very small droplets using multiple tines quickly or the sauce won't emulsify properly. I imagine using a fork might work if you insisted on making less than 1 yolk of mayo, but again, it's not worth the bother. I used a medium-small bowl so that there'd be enough density of the sauce at the bottom to allow me to move the whisk around deftly. I've found that how you hold the whisk is less important than the tension of your grip on the whisk. If you grasp tightly, especially if you extend your index finger while doing so, you will fatigue quickly. Hold the whisk firmly but without squeezing. I usually hold with my index finger and thumb grasping the shaft, but sometimes I switch my hand to the far side of the bowl and rest the handle against my open, upturned palm. (George showed me this posture, and it's helpful when you're whisking something for a long time.) Steve, many chefs and owners in the DC area are quite familiar with L'academie, and most of the upscale restaurants in town will accept the right extern. (The most notable exception is Citronelle, which never accepts externs. The Inn at Little Washington currently has a L'academie extern on-site.) Externs ARE employees, they are paid by the restaurant and usually stay on as an employee after the externship ends. Most students trail a few places before making a decision (of course, it's a mutual decision between the student and the chef of the kitchen the student wants to extern with). Trailing usually involves showing up and either helping or staying the hell out of the way for a night while checking out what the vibe is like at the restaurant. I've trailed before, but not much. I haven't experienced the "stand in the corner and don't talk to ANYBODY" type of trailing but I might in the next few weeks. Swissmiss, I had considered setting up an internship with a print publications, but I probably can't do it until after I graduate. I really need the kitchen experience, and the school is there to give me a kitchen oriented education, not a writing experience. I haven't asked if I can extern at a publication's offices since I don't think it's what I need to be doing in December.

Tuesday, September 24 The program at L’academie involves six months of classwork and six months of paid externship in a restaurant. The externship phase begins in December, and during the externship we will be coming to school only on Tuesdays. Now that we’re past the halfway point in the program, my classmates (including me) are starting to think about the externships constantly. We are asking one another, “where are you thinking of externing?” Everybody has places in mind, but nobody feels especially secure about sharing those places with one another. As I think about externing, it’s easy get overwhelmed. It seems unbelievable that I could handle being in an actual kitchen fulltime, and when I think about all the stories I’ve heard I don’t feel much better about it. At the same time I’m so eager for the level of learning and the activity of being in a kitchen fulltime, I can hardly wait. I know that the decision of where to extern is an important one. Going with a big-name chef’s restaurant in DC may mean working a restaurant where the big-name chef is never present. I do want to work someplace challenging and creative, but I don’t think I can handle being yelled at constantly. I’m worried about transit; many of the dining areas around downtown DC have minimal parking, and Metro closes early enough that I’m concerned about getting home after a late night in the kitchen. I don’t know what my highest priority should be. I’m not as concerned about externship placement in a career-building sense in that I don’t think I will become a chef in the long run, but I am concerned in that I want my education to be serious and thorough. I talked to Barbara Cullen, L’academie’s director of admissions and the woman who facilitates the externships, about these issues after school today. She spoke to my class about the externships in a general sense yesterday afternoon and had suggested we come talk to her about them individually to help us with our concerns. She encouraged me to consider some of the restaurants in Bethesda to do an end-run around the transit issues, and mentioned Persimmon, Black’s Bar and Kitchen, Addie’s, and Grapeseed as possibilities. She also talked to me about some of the downtown kitchens, and said I should consider trailing in a few. Once this catering gig is completed this coming weekend, I hope to trail somewhere one night each week until I can narrow down my options in early November. The only way to figure out how to respond to my own concerns is to go live it for a night and see what it’s like. Hopefully things will become clearer once I actually get started. Wednesday, September 25 Sanitation classes came to a close today with our ServSafe exam. Chris came to proctor the exam for us. I didn’t study at all or read over any materials in advance. I know I will pass and that I understand the basics from sitting through the classwork, and that’s all I’m worried about. I do look forward to doing something besides sanitation classes on Wednesday afternoons, but I think I’ll miss Chris’s insane enthusiasm for microorganisms. He’s entertaining in a strange sort of way. He says he’ll be back in a few weeks to start the new pastry students on their sanitation course, so we haven’t seen the last of him. I’ve worked extensively with chicken two days in a row now, and I am finally starting to feel a little more adept at working with the flesh. Yesterday I took chicken legs off the carcass, deboned all but the bottom of the drumstick, carefully cut away all the flesh, and then stuffed the skin with a chicken mousse made by another team. I wrapped the leg skin closed with caul fat (another new thing, it looks and sounds disgusting but it works well at keeping the stuffed legs shut and moistening them as they cook) and baked it. Today I cut supremes (breasts) off of a few chickens to make chicken Kiev. Chicken Kiev relies on the breast tender being in decent shape and I only mangled one of the tenders, so I felt pretty good about the job I did. It helps that I am working harder at keeping my knives sharp. I received my midterm practical grade today: I scored a 92. I am pleased with my grade since I felt I performed at a high level and finished in good time, but I admit I was hoping for something a little higher. Since I finished so early with the sanitation exam, I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon doing more work for this Saturday’s catering job. (I spent several hours at L’academie on Sunday with Chefette again, so I was in pretty good shape.) I zested some oranges and lemons, julienned the zests, and candied them for garnishes. I made a big batch of lemon curd and a batch of ganache. I finished up by warming and sieving apricot jam for glazing the interior and exterior of the fruit tartlettes on the menu for this weekend. It’s nice to feel like I’m on the home stretch. I’ll stay after class Friday to make crème patisserie and bake the palmiers, and then all that’s left will be cutting, finishing and transporting the goodies. Most of the people at school have figured out that I’m doing a catering job, and I’ve gotten all sorts of interesting questions and assumptions as a result. Catherine (the receptionist) asked if I’d worked in any food service pastry type jobs before, and lots of people have asked me if I’ve catered a lot in the past. (I’ve helped friends with the food for their parties many times, but I’ve never attempted something like this event before.) I’ve made statements here about not particularly caring for catering in the past. I like it more now when I am in control of the event, but I’m still not sure I like it. Somebody connected with the choir has already suggested that she might pass my name on to some people she knows who entertain regularly. I wonder if I will find myself in the position of being approached for these types of jobs, and if so how I will handle these offers. When I got home from school and the gym, I made a quick sandwich for my dinner. We are out of mayonnaise at home, and since I wanted some mayo for my sandwich I just made some quickly by hand. It took me maybe all of two minutes, and the resulting spread was fresh-tasting and sharpened from extra mustard and lemon juice (which is as I like it). As I ate my sandwich I realized that I would have made a big production out of making scratch mayonnaise just a few months ago. I always made it in a machine because I thought handling a whisk was too much work. But real mayonnaise is super easy; if I can make hollandaise by hand then mayonnaise by hand is a snap. Amazing how obtaining one skill like handling a whisk can make a job so much more approachable.

I am astonished at the care with which so many of you set your tables. It's inspiring! At my place, we use Williams-Sonoma's everyday restaurant ware in plain white for everyday and for casual entertaining. The dishes are amazing. They take a lot of abuse, and believe me I'm hard on them. I take them from oven to table to dishwasher and they get banged around a lot, but they never so much as chip. I love 'em. We use my esteemed housemate's simply-patterned stainless for flatware most of the time, and we drink from cheap Arcoroc tumblers and old-fashioned glasses. Wine is served in a simple, inexpensive swirly-balloon shaped wineglass set from Crate and Barrel. On nicer occasions, or just for us sometimes when I'm in the mood, we use my partner's family china...Royal Hostess "Connie." It's white with blue flowers and silver rims. We registered for Williams-Sonoma's Croisiere stainless flatware and we use that when we entertain. I like how big and heavy the forks are especially. We always have a tablecloth on the dining room table, and it's the only place we eat in the house with rare exception. (There is no kitchen table.) There are two fairly generic tablecloths with a paisley-type pattern embossed, with matching napkins and some pretty leaf-shaped napkinholders. I have a gorgeous sheer white leafy-patterned cloth I use sometimes for dressier occasions. I have something like 20 cheep Ikea votive holders which I sometimes set out on the table. The table itself was inherited from my deceased grandmother and it's gorgeous, but since we eat on it daily we keep it covered with the table pads I also inherited plus a cloth. Sometimes, we eat on the bare table just for effect. The table came to me with a tea cart which is in poor condition and which serves as a bar, and an etagere (sp?) which holds assorted serving pieces. The dining room also has a china rail, where we display the aforementioned Connie pattern.

The blisters on my thumb and pinky all but disappeared by Sunday. I think my hands are hardening up a little. Chef Peter advised me to not pop the blister. I probably would have popped it because I'm like that if it had stuck around through the weekend. There was no blister on my palm, fortunately. I spent the whole written test with my left hand in a deli cup of ice while I wrote with my right hand and I think this may have helped my rapid recovery. The floating islands are quenelles of gently poached French (cold) meringue atop a pool of creme anglaise. When we learned the dessert we topped it with toasted almonds and then made a hard caramel to pour over the top. This time we did the ladyfingers instead of the caramel. I was a little disappointed since I had fun playing with caramel earlier in the week, including trying my hand at spinning the sugar for the first time. It looks like hair, woo! Thanks for the suggestion, Lesley, perhaps I will try it the next time we do ladyfingers for a charlotte or some such. Then I can do a side-by-side comparison with my classmates' fingers which will use the recipe I gave.

Thursday, September 19 When I arrive at school, I normally proceed directly to my usual seat in the demo classroom and unload my notebooks before going to my locker to retrieve my knives. Today, Chef Peter was writing the menu on the whiteboard in the demo kitchen when I arrived. As soon as he saw me, he said, “I have a bone to pick with you.” “About what?” “Your damn diary. I couldn’t stop reading it last night. I kept saying to myself, ‘just one more entry.’” Heh heh. Several students overheard our exchange, so those who hadn’t yet learned about the diary got the URL from me for eGullet. Greetings to any new readers that have come here as a result. I stayed after school with Zoe and Brett to go over information for the midterm tomorrow. We went over our notes together for about an hour and asked each other questions. I’m still lagging on the meat information; Zoe and Brett were not only able to rattle off the primal cuts, they knew where each cut comes from on the animal’s body. I tried to cover up for my lack of knowledge by teasing them that they’ll be patting themselves up during tomorrow’s test if they can’t remember everything. One thing I’ve forgotten to mention: my class has shrunk yet again. Chris G. had to leave, apparently due to family concerns with relatives in Kansas where he lived before coming to school. Chris was one of the quieter members of the class. He’s passionate about animals and has raised wolves in the past. He’s kind, but he doesn’t take crap. (He is the student who expressed concern when I cut myself twice in one day early on: click to see) I will miss him quite a bit. We were on three-person teams all this week since we are now down to 15. We go down to 2-person teams soon, maybe as early as Monday. I’m eager. There’s almost too little work for 3 people; if we didn’t have to make stock and so on there would be a lot of idle time some days. Friday, September 20 Today was our midterm. I was part of the “early” group this time, meaning I started my practical at 8am and took the written test in the early afternoon. I was mentally prepared for today’s test and was verging on eager to have at it. When the menu went up at 7:50 I had staked out my table and was all ready to go. Here is what appeared on the test: Puff pastry rectangle filled with asparagus and hollandaise Flounder in vin blanc sauce Glazed julienned carrots Chateau (tourneed) potatoes Floating islands with ladyfingers We all immediately went into the pastry kitchen to start making puff pastry at 8am sharp. My practice last weekend with Chefette definitely paid off; my puff came together quickly and looked quite even. My classmates agreed together to do ladyfingers next. I’d picked up all the materials needed for all pastry items in advance, which helped me save a few minutes. I never made ladyfingers in class; I never was the one in the pastry kitchen when they were on the menu, and I didn’t feel unsure of my ability to produce them properly so I didn’t practice them on my own. Indeed, the cookies came together properly and quickly, and after they were baked they were perfectly dry and golden. I set some meringue mixing and whipped out crème anglaise while the meringue was going, and then poached quenelles of meringue. I finished in the pastry kitchen at a little after 9am, with only one double turn of my puff pastry left to do. I zipped back to my spot in the main kitchen and looked over my list. Chin handed me some extra asparagus while I collected my thoughts. I made a quick agreement with Amy, who was sharing my table, to share the flounder she was working with (we each got half a fish to use for our entrees). Then I went to the walk-in with a half-sheet pan to collect all my vegetables and fresh herbs for my menu. While I was in there, Zoe walked in looking for a piece of fruit (she was part of the “late” group, so she wasn’t working on her test yet). I was humming as I collected lemons, parsley, and carrots, and she commented on how unharried I looked. I told her that it wasn’t a bad test, and I actually was enjoying myself. I felt organized and together and focused, and it was fun to be in charge of a full and challenging menu. I don’t remember much of the next hour and a half. I wasn’t ever thinking about what I was doing in the moment, I was thinking about the coordination and the different jobs I needed to keep an eye on as I worked. My potato tournees and carrot juliennes were quite good and didn’t take me a lot of time. The puff pastry rose on schedule, and was appropriately cooked in the center. The only bad moment was about 10 minutes before I was ready to serve, when I grabbed the handle of my pot of clarified butter and burned myself badly. The pot had been sitting on the stove off of the eyes, keeping warm. I’d instinctively grabbed it using a side towel (I always grab items off the stove with one) and placed it on my table. When my egg yolks reached the sabayon stage I touched the body of the pot briefly and found it warm but not too hot. So I grasped the handle and immediately burned myself; the handle had been over a rather hot bain-marie and had gotten scaldingly hot as a result. I had no time to tend to my thumb and pinky, which got the brunt of the heat and which ended up blistering. I had to finish with my test, so I tried not to think about it and kept going. At least it was my left hand (I’m right-handed). I had everything plated and ready only a few minutes after the 11am deadline. (Some students took a good 15 to 20 minutes after 11am to finish. I was the first one without much kitchen experience to finish in my group.) There were a few minor issues with the food, but overall I’m pleased with how quickly and efficiently I put everything together. This is the first time I felt really good after a test. Once I finished cleaning up my station, I started icing down my left hand and took a break. Marta and I went together to the nearby bagel shop to grab lunch (nobody wanted to eat their test food, which usually seems to be the case) and we hung out with those who finished the written test comparing notes for a few minutes. At 12:30 we took the written test. I’d heard there were 100 questions on the midterm test, but it turns out there were 170 or so. (Some of them were along the lines of “list the ingredients in pate a chou” and counted as multiple questions, but still.) I think I did fairly well, and only totally missed it on one question (a meat question, of course). I finished in a little over an hour, reread my responses, and turned the test in. I left tired and happy. Ladyfingers 8 egg yolks 3oz sugar 2 tsp warm water Vanilla Lemon zest French meringue: 8 egg whites and 4oz sugar 7oz all purpose flour Combine yolks and sugar. Whisk over bain marie until lukewarm. Mix in mixer with whisk attachment on high speed. Prepare French meringue. Sift flour. When yolks are creamy and pale, fold meringue in, alternating with flour. Add zest and vanilla and fold. Fill pastry bag with large round tip with dough and pipe fingers. Sprinkle twice with 10x sugar and bake at 375 degrees until golden.

Last night: Homemade egg rolls Soup made with fish stock, seaweed, shiitakes and miso served with quail egg, scallions and enoki in the bottom of the bowl Americanized pad thai Stir-fried gingered veggies: asparagus, baby bok choy, red bell pepper, more shiitake And for dessert? Pocky for Men.

Fat Guy, I went to a birthday party recently for a child and her father. There were two photocakes on hand from Baskin-Robbins to celebrate the occasion. They weren't dreadful (which is about the best I can say for it) plus they looked pretty cool. Surely there's still one or two Baskin-Robbins outlets in Manhattan? obTJs: I love Trader Joe's. Most of the frozen meals and canned goods in our house come from there. I also really like their tortilla chips. And of course I buy all my Plugra butter there for $3/lb. Can't beat that price.

Sandra, when Chefette mixes a ganache, she stirs only from the center of the bowl using a spatula until the ganache starts to come together. (Chef Somchet taught us to do the same thing, but wasn't as patient about it as Chefette is.) Then she uses an immersion stick blender to continue to smooth it out. She's careful not to let the blades rise above the surface since she doesn't want to incorporate air. It really was supersmooth. Loufood, about the diamante: Just take your time with it. Use parchment paper and a bench scraper to pull the tube tightly and evenly. I rolled it periodically to reduce the inevitable air pockets along the surface. I didn't do a great job but they looked better than they would have without Chefette's help. I think sometimes there's no substitute for having literal hands-on interaction. I learned how to hone my knives by having a chef stand behind me, put his hands on mine, and physically demonstrate the proper technique. (This was before I enrolled; I took a knife skill class from L'academie's recreational program a year and a half ago. The chef-instructor there was the one who did this.) I would not mind if Chef Peter or Chef Somchet or Chef Francois touched my hands to teach me a technique. I don't generally differentiate between men and women touching me in a learning context. But then, I don't feel like I am harassed at school. If you are, that sounds like a bigger problem than the already big problem of not getting the information you are paying them to provide you. I don't know your personal situation, but you shouldn't be afraid to ask for instruction that you need, and if you feel you can't ask that for some reason you may want to consider addressing the problem directly. I mean, why are you going to school if you can't feel comfortable learning there?

Sunday, September 15 I spent a long day at school today with Chefette and Edemuth. I was preparing for the special desserts and champagne reception I am catering, and L’academie was kind enough to allow me to use their facilities. I started my morning by making puff pastry and pate sucree, and by the time Chefette appeared I was rolling out tubes of diamante cookie dough. She came over and showed me how to turn the cookie dough into very long, very narrow even tubes. Watching the way Chefette worked was informative to say the least. She showed up with all of her own equipment despite the fact that she was coming to a fully equipped school. I was impressed with her foresight. She knew that she’d be able to work with familiar equipment and have what she was accustomed to at her fingertips without asking me to hunt everything down. Some things the school owned, like pastry tips, were locked away where I couldn’t get at them over the weekend (small items are typically locked in the office Chef Peter and Chef Somchet share), so I relied on her to provide those items. Chefette works very cleanly. She doesn’t dribble flour across the counter like I do. (I was embarrassed to compare my work spaces to hers.) She’s organized and, like all professionals, she’s much faster than I am. She tolerated my million annoying questions and only once took exception to my frequent explanation that we were taught different things in class than she was doing. Among other things, she showed me how she makes the smoothest ganache possible. She put her hands on mine and showed me how to pipe miniature eclairs using pate a chou. She taught me how to candy nuts, the sort of candied nuts sold on the street in New York City. On many levels, I doubt I could pull this event off without her advice and assistance. Edemuth came up in the early afternoon to join us, and Chefette set her up on filling macaroons while I made us some brunch. Later, they both helped me clean up and took charge of packing everything off into the freezer. Due to their assistance, I am mostly on schedule for my event, and have every confidence I will get everything done on time. Wednesday, September 18 I have had very little time to write this week, as I have been getting my notebook together and studying for the midterm on Friday. As usual, the rumor mill has been churning on what will be on the test. We’ve given up on asking the second session students what will be on tests. “Oh, I think there was some kind of fish, and maybe something with a hollandaise or a bearnaise sauce…” I do feel sure there will be some form of puff pastry on the test, but after making two batches of it on Sunday morning I don’t feel too worried about my ability to produce a good dough. Several people have asked me about the flambe technique since I started school. “Have you set anything on fire yet? I mean, intentionally?” I’m pleased to report that we started with our first flambeed sauces late last week, and this week I made a textbook steak au poivre…with flambeed cognac. I flamed the alcohol by tipping my saute pan towards the heat on the gas stove, and the flame was out almost before it got going. Just one tremendous flash and impressive orange flame and then a small whimper and it was gone. I am astonished by the power of this technique and can hardly wait to flambe something else. (No, I doubt I will become a flambe junkie or anything.) I don’t think it has a huge impact on flavor over, say, cooking off the alcohol slowly over heat, but I thought it was fun to do just the same.

The reason why North Carolinians don't make sweet tea with sun tea is that you need the tea to be HOT if it's to absorb the stupid amounts of sugar local tastes demand. This is also why I sneer at those who suggest I can add sugar to cold unsweetened tea at the table if I want it sweetened. Not the same! It probably gets hot enough in Texas to make little difference, though.

I hate it when I'm served cold bread. Especially since it usually comes with cold butter, which I hate even more than cold bread.

I like the dim sum at A&J Restaurant in Rockville. It's in a shopping center across the street and a block south of Best Buy on the Pike. Plenty of wheatfree options. Let me know when you want to go and I'll gladly join you there. If you like vegetarian Chinese eats, check out the best in the region: Vegetable Garden, also along the Pike, close to Nicholson Lane. All vegan mostly organic. Just don't order the gluten-based dishes. I'll also gladly go there any time.

The only iced tea that interests me (with rare exception) is Southern style sweet tea. I grew up in North Carolina, and while people make sun tea as Jaymes described, nobody makes sweet tea with sun tea. I worked in a food court Italian joint in high school that used Sysco tea and people came to us just for our tea even though they were buying their food elsewhere in the court. I have adapted the method I learned there to what follows. I was a big aficionado of sweet tea for a long time but haven't made it in a few years, and rarely order it when I'm with my folks in NC. I think my palate might not appreciate it as I've gotten older and know more about my food. Here is how I make sweet tea at home: Use tea bags. Cheap ones are fine. Nothing frou-frou, fruity, herbal, fancy, or unusual. Just standard tea. Get about five of them together. Take a medium saucepan of water and put in the tea bags. Simmer for about 8-10 minutes. Do not boil. Remove the tea bags and use a whisk to add a LOT of sugar. Like, too much sugar. (I do this by taste, and it really depends on the tea type and how much water you used.) You want the sweetness of the sugar to overcome the tannins in the tea so that the whole thing tastes smooth. I whisk it really hard and there's usually a fair amount of froth when I'm done. Let the mix cool for a few minutes and then pour into a large ice-filled pitcher. Drink a gallon or two. Chill any leftovers. I don't put lemon in my iced tea. I like sweet tea and I like lemonade, but I don't like them together. Perhaps I'll make some of this soon. It really has been a long time.

Cabby, I thought of you when Chef Francois addressed ortolans. He said they are very illegal and that he has had them a long time ago in France but not in the US. He did say that if you can find somebody who knows where to get them, you won't get them to admit to where they got them, and chances are they ate them in a hidden back room of a restaurant where the chefs played ignorant about the subject matter even as they prepared the birds. He joked that the cloth over the head is partly so nobody knows you managed to nab an ortolan. So, I have no ortolan-tracking tips for you. And there wasn't much more info given on them than I just shared here. Very sorry I cannot assist. The dude at Fresh Fields said that you should scale your fish in a few hard, sure, long strokes, five or six per side. He has his staff hold the tail and scale toward the head on a counter rapidly. I watched one of his staff members do this, and brought up the subject because every time I've scaled I've gotten them all over the place...and this guy looked fairly clean about the job. At school we either scale in a sink or scale in a trash bag. The trash bag works well but of course you can't really see what you're doing which is a little annoying. Good luck to you, KateW. It's not easy to make time for something as ambitious as several posts a week, and if you can keep it up more power to you. I checked out your thread and it sounds like you are doing great so far, especially since you're not only starting school but also moving to a new place and settling into dorm life. I can hardly imagine having my whole life be new like that. I did it when I got my undergraduate degree but it seems impossible now...and I respect you for doing it. Congratulations on getting started!

Thursday, September 12 Despite my distaste for duck a l’orange, I am starting to find duck is a mostly agreeable meat. I think the worst thing about it is the fat on the breast, and as long as you render a lot of that fat off or avoid it altogether the flesh is reasonably tasty. Today’s lunch included a seared duck breast with green peppercorn sauce, and I managed to eat almost half the breast since it was cooked until almost crisp on the fat side. My major contribution to today’s lunch service was carpaccio. Despite my squeamishness about cooking meat, I have minimal issue with the concept of eating raw flesh. I have always enjoyed raw fish, such as sushi, and the chemically cured sort like gravlax or ceviche. As a child, I enjoyed eating hamburger meat whenever there was any around, and I picked at meatloaf mix sometimes when Mom made a meatloaf for dinner. The carpaccio wasn’t something I’d choose off of a menu, but I liked it just fine. But then I didn’t plate a large amount for any of the people on my team. We happened to be serving Chef Peter and he whined about the small “vegetarian’s portion.” I told him to never let the ex-vegetarian plate the carpaccio if he wanted to be served the butcher’s plate. I was more interested in the arugula salad than in the beef, and my plating reflected this attitude. Chef Peter mentioned the diary to me today sometime between the carpaccio and the duck breast. “How’s that coming?” I told him it was coming well and asked if he had looked at it. He hadn’t, so I gave him the URL. This is the first entry I have written while thinking about him looking it over. Chef Francois taught us about furred and feathered game this afternoon. He told us a long story about how several years ago a young deer was hit and injured seriously but still alive near his home in Potomac. A policeman was working on getting the deer killed and moved from the road. A hunter happened upon the scene and offered to shoot it for the cop, and Chef Francois offered to take it home and eat it. The cop decided to allow the animal to be shot by the hunter and then taken home by Chef Francois. Chef Francois told us about how he hung the animal to relax and age it in his garage, and how it was some of the best meat he’d ever eaten. He also told us about the tiny, illegal ortolan bird, and how their digestive systems get acidic from their berry-based diet. He explained that they’re eaten with a cloth over the head to capture the aroma. He said ortolans are served hot and eaten whole, and they are so hot that you have to gasp in cool air while you eat them under the napkin. He gesticulated and gasped to get across his point. These two stories felt almost archetypal. I am really enjoying the stories Chef Francois tells about food he has enjoyed (they're far better than stories about food he disdains). Friday, September 13 Chef Somchet had those who worked in pastry yesterday bake carrot cakes, and today we were assigned to send one person per team in to fill, frost and decorate the cakes. This is the first time we have made a frosting, and the first time we have worked on cake decorating of any sort. She showed us how to work with marzipan to dye and shape it, and she used a plastic tool to mark ridges on the orange-dyed candy. I ended up being the one on my team to go into pastry and decorate. Marta described making the marzipan carrots as “like therapy,” and I think she’s right. It certainly felt a lot like childhood messing-about. My carrots were pretty cute, and the finished cake looked good. Saturday, September 14 The lunch entrée yesterday was goujons of flounder (basically a fish stick type cut) tossed with batons of potato and artichoke and topped with another beurre noisette meuniere type sauce. I’ve been thinking about this dish off and on since class on Friday. It tasted fine, but it didn’t look too good on the plate. I mean, part of the point of cutting all those goujons and batons is supposed to be so everything looks uniform on the plate. But the fish gets banged around a lot in the pan (it’s sauteed) and so of course the pieces curl and shrivel a little. The finished plate looked like a pile of random things surrounded with a small pool of brownish clear sauce with flecks of parsley. It’s not that pretty. Chef Peter’s plate looked the same way, so I don’t think Jonathan executed it poorly or anything. I think it’s just not a plate that can be dressed well. I don’t see much point to it over, say, filets of flounder plus round artichoke hearts and turned potatoes on a plate together. This afternoon, I went out to buy a flounder so I could practice butchering a flat fish. I’ve cut round fish a number of times now, but have not yet taken apart any flat fish, and I’m concerned that there may be a flat fish on next Friday’s test. I want to be prepared. I went to Cameron’s Seafood Market, but the only whole flat fish they carried was butterfish. Butterfish are tiny and seemed too annoying to try and filet, so I went to the nearby Fresh Fields/Whole Foods Market to see if they had anything. They had a whole monkfish, but didn’t appear to have any other whole flat fish on display. The monkfish was on ice in a bucket out in front of the fish counter. I asked the guy behind the counter if they had any other flat fish and he said they didn’t, unless I wanted the monkfish. I didn’t think I’d have use for so much fish, but I wanted to see it so he came over and we chatted about it. I patted the fish with my fingers, and mentioned that the cheeks seemed large enough to be eaten. When we were done chatting he offered to let me behind the counter to wash my hands since I’d touched the fish, and he went into the back and found a whole tilapia which he offered to sell me. He weighed it and told me the price and asked if I wanted it fileted. I said I really wanted to take it apart myself. “Why don’t we do it together?” I was surprised, but I agreed and put on some gloves and joined him at the cutting board behind the counter. He cut half the fish and I cut the other half, and then he skinned both filets for me. He asked me questions about school, and I asked him a lot about the fish and about his work. He explained to me his method for scaling fish without making a huge mess, talked about methods of removing bones, and so on. Turns out he’s the manager of the fish counter, and he said he’d never allowed a customer behind the counter before. After we finished handling the fish, he wrapped the fish in paper and gave it to me with a sticker labeled “sample.” “Here, it’s free. I enjoyed talking with you.”

Dad, is that you? I'm the girl with the long dark curly hair and the catseye glasses. Actual pics can be seen on my personal Web site, www.malawry.org. There may be pics coming here in the future, so hang tight.

Thanks again for all your comments. I'm glad to hear that you all are interested in the day-to-day, since that's most of what I've written to date. Welcome to eGullet, Loufood. Re: your questions about how I deal with my vegetarianism... I started phasing meat back into my diet several months ago in anticipation of attending culinary school. I knew I couldn't make it through without eating it. (I wasn't a strict vegetarian before; I was a lacto-ovo veg for many years, and I phased fish into my diet about a year and a half ago.) I reconcile it because I felt my vegetarianism was holding me back as a food geek...I wanted to be familiar with all types of food, and not eating meat was definitely a problem there. I had gotten to the point where my vegetarianism was more of a habit than a strong personal belief anyway. So it's not hard to reconcile. It's much harder to get over my long-ingrained distaste. I don't know if I will ever be a big meat-eater. My partner, and several other people in my personal life, have asked me whether or not I will revert to (pesco-)vegetarianism when I complete my formal education. At first, I assumed I would do so. But now I don't think I will. When I think about the opportunities I would have to refuse...not eating the amuse in a top-level restaurant, not understanding what most Westerners consume on a daily basis, and so on...I'm not appealed by being a veg. Just the same, I don't really want to prepare meat and fowl at home, and we maintain a meatless kitchen. I still order fish and meatless dishes almost exclusively while dining out, but now I'll eat them with bacon or ham or whatnot rather than avoiding those items. I rather like a lot of meat, especially cured meats. I bet I'll like a lot of charcuterie. Even when I didn't eat it, I had a minor meat fetish, and I loved reading about preparing meat and asking questions of people while they worked with meat in front of me. It's oddly foreign to me. But I am still quite anxious about preparing meat, and I go through the whole mental gymnastic exercise almost every morning as described in my post. For more information, you oughta check out this old thread: What are vegetarians missing? I think it's the first thread I participated on here on eGullet, actually.

Hey Steve, I don't mind new questions in old threads at all. I know next to nothing about Asian cookery, and can't offer much advice for your kung pao tofu. I also don't much care for Cook's Illustrated, and my experience with their recipes is that they're okay but not as outstanding as they're hyped to be. I should have mentioned that the Thai chiles we used were dried. These are not the tiny superhot ones, they are sweet and mildly hot, about 1/2-3/4" wide, and long like a fresh lima bean. They sound like the dried version of what you purchased at the Takoma market. We used a LOT in the dish, and you probably need a lot of the fresh just like we did of the dried. In my experience, tofu needs a lot more than 10 minutes in a watery marinade to take on some flavors. I've had better expreiences with rubbing tofu than marinating it, and if I marinate it I use a very strong flavored mixture. Try pressing the tofu to drain it overnight, tossing on a strong marinade in the morning, and then following your written procedure in the evening when you're starting dinner. I think sugar helps. Also "sweet rice wine vinegar" is helpful and a great favorite of Chef Somchet's. She also told us that the best kind of plain rice wine vinegar to use is labeled "seasoned." When we made it at school, the finished dish was definitely sauced but not drenched in sauce as you mention. It wasn't super-hot and it had a sweet aspect from the sugar and hoisin and so on. I hope this helps. You may want to take your question to the Cooking forum, where people who know a lot more than I do about Asian style cookery and Kung Pao in particular can give you some advice.

Thanks for your responses. Just to reassure you, note that I am not considering reducing the frequency of my posts. I'll be here for the duration of my classwork. If I get really stressed I reserve the right to take a brief hiatus, but I don't think I need that anytime soon. The reception I am catering is sucking a huge amount of my time and energy right now, but if I wasn't working on it I'd probably start going out into the field in the coming weeks to learn more in restaurant kitchens and other interesting food venues. (Jin, I hadn't considered learning with a butcher, but that's an excellent idea. Thank you.) As I do these things, I may be posting about them instead of about actual school events since my experiences will very much be a part of my culinary education. Dana, you're not the first one to request more recipes. To that end, here is my recipe for duck a l'orange: Whole duck Sea salt and white pepper Mirepoix (rough dice of 40% onion, 40% carrot, 20% celery) Fresh Thyme Oranges: zest, sections without pith or seeds, and juice Peanut oil BG Brown stock, preferably duck but veal is ok Lemon juice Whole butter Remove wishbone and excess skin from duck. Prick skin around neck with fork to encourage rendering. Season interior and exterior. Fill cavity with mirepoix and thyme and orange zest. Truss so legs are tied together and winglets are tucked under bird. Sear in very hot peanut oil in a deep, lidded pot until nicely browned. (The duck will lose some color during the braising process, so get a good color while you sear.) Remove duck and color mirepoix in the pot using more peanut oil if needed. Add duck neck and wishbone to pot. Place duck atop mirepoix and bones. Add brown stock to cover up to bottom of duck, a generous splash of orange juice, and about a teaspoon of lemon juice. Cover tightly and bake at 400-425 degrees for 35-45 minutes. Julienne and blanch orange zest (one time is enough for this recipe). Remove bird from pot after baking. Rest bird briefly and cut off string and remove thighs. The thighs take longer than the rest of the duck, so put them on a metal plate and finish in oven. Strain off the liquids in the pot into a saucepan, boil them, strain to remove some of the excess fat, and reduce until barely too thick to be a good sauce. You can add some grand mariner while you are reducing and some of the blanched zest if you like. Adjust the texture back to sauce consistency with some orange juice. Add a few chunks of cold butter and shake the pan until they are melted and incorporated (monte au beurre). Slice duck breast and legs. Plate. Ladle sauce over duck. Garnish with blanched zest and orange sections Steve, what kind of puff do you use? I've only tried the super expensive stuff at Fresh Fields and the Pepperidge Farm sort. Both are adequate, but I felt that homemade puff was a. easier than I thought it would be b. much fresher tasting and c. way cheaper than what I'd purchased. But then I haven't ever used a "professional" type product.

Wednesday, September 11 A year ago, I was still thinking of culinary school as an abstract, possible future. I was working at a job I’d been at for a couple of years that had grown somewhat old, and I had only recently given up on the idea of going to law school. After the terrorist attacks, I caught a ride home from a coworker and spent much of the day watching CNN and attempting to load washingtonpost.com onto my computer. Today, I got up early, went to Giant to buy the Washington Post and the NY Times, and drove to school. After the morning demo, I went into the pastry kitchen. I made cookies from le menu for my team, and then since the menu was short and there was plenty of time I experimented with linzer tarts. I am planning a dessert buffet for my partner’s choir, a spread of small one- and two-bite treats, and I had considered putting miniature linzer tarts on the menu. I found small tartlette tins, made a batch of the dough, and got some of the dough chilling to line the bottom of the tins. I kept half the dough at room temperature for piping on top of the tartlettes once they were formed and filled. I experimented with different ways of getting the dough to the right size for the tartlette tins, including using cookie cutters and just pressing some of the dough in and forming it with my thumbs. Then I experimented with piping, but found the dough way too stiff for the small piping I needed to do to correspond with the small tarts. I tried working the dough with my hands into little snakes and using the snakes to form the lattice on top, but the snakes were hard to make even. The dough was too soft, and the results looked amateurish. Chef Francois walked by while I was making snakes of the dough and suggested I chill the snakes, roll them again to make them even, rechill them to stiffen, and then carefully lift them and place them atop the tartlettes. I agree it sounds like it will work, but it’s too much work for the time I have to invest in catering the buffet. I plan to come in early tomorrow to reroll the snakes, and then finish and bake the tarts on my post-lunch break. I found the work with the linzer tarts to be satisfying, and I learned a lot about the dough as I worked with it. I am considering other ways to make the dish work, and may try tomorrow to make a small sheet-shaped linzer cookie for cutting into bars to see how that works. After class, I exercised, drove home, ate dinner, and came to eGullet. A year ago, I would not have dreamed of spending a day focusing on linzer tarts, practicing piping cookies, studying sanitation, reading the food sections of the newspaper, and then writing about the experience for a Web site. Some may consider my life to be shallow in its narrow focus on food, but the events of September 11 helped me to realize that I need to pursue the things that are most important and interesting to me. I’m grateful I have the opportunity to do so. I’ve been reflecting upon how my attitude towards food and cooking has changed in the few months since I enrolled in culinary school. I’m just as passionate about food as I was before, and in some ways I wish I could skip being evaluated so I can focus on just learning. (How’s that for an ironic statement?) I think about food more than ever, and wish I could spend more time working with it. (Right now, I’m wishing I was in my kitchen, making a sauce out of the tomatoes I picked up at the farm market this weekend.) Just the same, my attitudes have shifted. I think a lot more about what goes into a dish in terms of effort than I used to. I’m more specific than I was before I started school about ingredients, and I make a lot of things that I would have bought without second thought in my former life. (There’s fish stock in my freezer right now, and I don’t think I’ll buy frozen puff pastry again unless I’m in a real bind.) I try to bring enthusiasm to the meat studies at school, but I still have to force it quite a bit. I shy away from preparing meat almost daily, and I’m even more lost than most of the students when it comes to butchery. Every morning I vow that I will volunteer to cook the meat, and almost every day I don’t do it. I only do it when I have gone so long without handling meat that I think it will become obvious to others how much I shy away. For example, we made duck a l’orange this week. I asked Chef Peter which of the various duck innards I should pack away and which I should add to the mirepoix on which the duck rests. He told me which parts went where, but I have no sense of what a duck heart or gizzard looks like, and I didn’t do it right despite asking for clarification. I couldn’t tell where to send my knife when I cut up the bird, and the resulting pieces didn’t look nearly as clean as the ones Chef Peter produced during the demo. It was a typical experience. I’m told the bird and especially the sauce were delicious, but I don’t know how they’re supposed to taste. I feel like I cook with one hand behind my back when I handle meat or fowl, and my lack of confidence with the food grates on my teammates when I force myself to take over. Other things come more easily. I have found I’m reasonably good at pastry work, and I’ve enjoyed learning about fish and vegetables as prepared by the French. I like learning about how to dress up a plate, something with which I am unskilled but enthusiastic, and I appreciate the more abstract demos about cooking methods and flavoring ingredients. (I’d like to do more of the comparative demos we did early on, such as the tutorial on thickeners or the fat tastings. I think comparative demos are one of the best ways to learn.) As for this diary, I’m concerned that it has become somewhat rote. I didn’t intend for it to be a laundry list-style chronicle of culinary education. Expect some changes down the road, including entries like this one that aren’t written as “here is what I did today.” To that end, I’d like to ask you: what would you like to see here? Interviews with people around the school? Analysis of food-related issues through the lens of my educational experiences? What do you want to read?

We've made beurre noisette-based sauces a few times at school. Unlike the directions given here, we were taught to make it quickly over high heat. Dice and chill your butter and get a pan very very hot. Test with a small piece of butter, if it starts to sizzle loudly and move around right after you add it then the pan is hot enough. Drop in your butter and shake the pan to melt it all quickly. Add salt and pepper and watch the large bubbles. Swirl the pan occasionally to see what color the butter is. (Don't do this in a dark pan where you can't see the bottom.) Once it's light brown, come off the heat and squirt in some lemon juice. Add parsley for a basic sauce, or add capers or almonds or whatever. Very very good on sauteed lightly breaded fish.

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