Diary: September 1, 2002

[Malawry]

Thursday, August 29

There’s a bit of a holiday mood at school, because we’re just about to embark on a long weekend. Chef Peter actually left shortly after lunch today for a short vacation, so he was cheerful. “You can’t upset me today,” he said this morning in between joshing around with Melanie and Chin. “I’m not gonna think about any of this over the weekend.”

Today’s menu included veal sweetbreads, yet another variety meat I had never sampled. We braised them with mirepoix and veal stock. They looked fleshy when they came out, and I didn’t think they tasted so good, though I’m not sure I can describe why clearly. Something about the soft texture did not agree with me.

When teams were called for lunch, I was placed with Kristin and Chris F. All three of us happened to work in pastry yesterday, so all three of us already had a chance to work with puff yesterday, and we all used up most of the puff we’d made when we did so. Today’s menu included a napoleon, which naturally requires puff pastry. Nobody seemed to want to go into pastry and find somebody else’s puff to use. I volunteered just to be nice. I asked Chef Somchet and she pointed me to some trimmings I could use, so I rolled them out and baked them and then whipped up some crème patisserie. (I can make crème patisserie in my sleep now, and I can’t believe that some people buy mixes for the stuff.)

Once my puff pastry was baking and I had crème patisserie in the walk-in, I worked with my team on lunch. Le menu included ceviche, and Kristin was behind on cutting all the julienned vegetables she needed to add to the raw shellfish. Somebody pulled my puff out of the oven when it was ready and set it aside, so later I went in to cut the sheet into thirds for layering. I cut it and left it to finish cooling, and was just about to chiffonade some cilantro for the ceviche when Chef Somchet came to get me. “Rochelle, your puff is not cooked right.” I went to look and sure enough, it was damp and doughy instead of crisp and airy in the center.

Chef Somchet helped me make an emergency sheet from other scraps and we got it in the oven quickly, but I’m afraid my napoleon experience did not recover well. I was the last one to finish the job, and the writing chocolate I was using the decorate the fondant on top of the dessert had hardened, so when I used a knife to draw decorative patterns in the chocolate and fondant it looked like a kindergarten-aged child had done the job I didn’t have time to let my puff pastry cool completely before assembling, and as a result it melted some of the crème patisserie down and the whole contraption slid around and oozed when I tried to slice it. It’s frustrating; I regard myself as fairly good at pastry work, and I knew what the problems were but felt powerless to affect them. The finished dessert tasted great but did not look especially attractive. I should have just covered the top with 10x sugar and not bothered with the fondant and writing chocolate.

We all spent our break scrubbing away…I tackled some of the racks from the convection oven with degreaser, and helped sweep and mop floors in the main kitchen. Nobody has any intention of staying later than absolutely necessary tomorrow, and we managed to finish the major cleaning before the afternoon demo. Chef Somchet took an hour to show us how to make pad thai late in the day. She told us that we’d all make our own tomorrow for ourselves so we could learn.

Friday, August 30

Many people came in early enough to complete a substantial amount of mise en place for the pad thai before class officially began at 8am. I was one of these people; I set up everything on a tray and was almost done with my slicing and dicing when Chef Somchet rang the bell to get us to class. I quickly wrapped my tray in plastic wrap and set it in the walk-in before hurrying to my seat.

Le menu included the pad thai and a pineapple dessert with black pepper, caramel-orange sauce and a scoop of bourbon ice cream. Chef Somchet demoed the dessert, a recipe that came from Jean-Louis Palladin. (We made a shallot soup earlier in the week which was also a Palladin recipe.) Chef Somchet talked to us about Palladin and also Gerard Pangaud (the only chef in DC to have achieved three Michelin stars, and an adjuct faculty member at L’academie). She said they were both mean in the kitchen but that they both were generous with those who could stand the pressure.

She also told us a story about when Chef Pascal (brother of Chef Francois and formerly the lead instructor of the culinary career training program) was teaching her. “I was cooking some potatoes and I didn’t have my pan hot enough and so it got all furry, you know, breaking up. And right in front of everybody he said to me, ‘Somchet, you want to know how to cook potatoes, you call me, ok?’ And I got so embarrassed I cried. But you know what, now I never cook my potatoes until my pan is hot enough. That’s how I learned.”

After the demo, she suggested we each tackle a dessert of our choice in addition to making our own pad thai and pineapple desserts. I decided to make eclairs again, because I am planning to make them for a special event I’m catering for my partner’s choir. I wanted another opportunity to practice the skills involved. So I banged out a batch of pate a chou and baked it up, and I made some crème patisserie (yet again) flavored with coffee paste. I ended up running low on time and not being able to finish the eclairs properly…the fondant I mixed up was too thin, and I couldn’t decorate the tops with chocolate glaze because I couldn’t find the chocolate glaze anywhere.

My pad thai came out okay. I made mine with shrimp and tofu but no meat or fowl, and I served some to Maria (who works as a sort of janitor at L’academie, and who does not eat meat). She seemed to appreciate it. We served lunch around 11:30am, and had everything cleaned up and packed off by 12:30, at which point we were dismissed.

[mamster]

Great installment as always. What seasonings and flavorings went into the phad thai?

[Malawry]

Here is what went into my pad thai:

1 pound pad thai noodles

2 eggs

Peanut oil

1 tsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp chopped onion

3-4 tbsp vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 pound shrimp

Chicken stock

1 tsp pickled sweet radish

1 tbsp fried tofu

Sweet paprika

Cayenne

Sea salt and white pepper

1 cup bean sprouts

2 tbsp ground toasted peanuts plus extra for garnish

1 cup scallions and garlic chives

1 tbsp nam pla

Jalapenos

Lime slices

Soak noodles in water for at least 30 minutes. Beat eggs. Heat pan with oil. Add eggs. Cook without moving until half done and then move to pan side. Add onion and garlic. Add vinegar, sugar and soy sauce. Add shrimp. Add noodles. Add stock if needed and toss. Add radish, tofu, paprika, cayenne, pepper, and salt. Toss. Add half of sprouts. Toss. Add peanuts and most of scallions and chives. Add fish sauce. Toss and remove from heat. Plate with shrimp and scallions on top. Garnish with jalapenos, raw bean sprouts, lime slice, peanuts, and spring onions.

The pickled sweet radish is a little stinky in an intriguing way. I think it adds a lot of the mysterious quality that a good pad thai has...that strange flavor you can't quite place that's intoxicating in the best and worst senses. Everything else is fairly standard Asian cookery.

[Fat Guy]

Malawry, I for one would love to see more recipes. Are you typing them up anyway for school purposes?

[Malawry]

I'm fast, but I didn't type that pad thai recipe in the five minutes between Mamster's question and my response. It came from my notebook. Most of the recipes in my notebook don't have proportions or particularly complete directions. (See the onion soup and kung pao chicken recipes for examples of this.) Pastry recipes are more complete, since they rely on more exact proportions.

I had considered putting a recipe in each entry in the diary as a part of each post's "style," but decided against it since I didn't think culinary school style recipes would be as useful as something more...complete. I'm always happy to provide what I have in my notebook upon request, and recipes that are particularly interesting may appear more often in future posts if that's what the masses desire.

[Rachel Perlow]

From your August 11th diary:

As lunch was wrapping up, Chef Francois wandered around the kitchen. We’d been talking about tofu at my table, so I asked him if we learn any tofu at school. I meant the question jokingly, but Chef Francois took my question very seriously. (He takes all food-related questions seriously.) “Well, you know how to saute, right? You know how to fry and how to poach. So you could do these things to tofu. What else is there to learn? Unless you want to know how to make tofu, that is.” I told him I’d actually love to learn how to make tofu. He shook his head. “We don’t teach that here. It’s not classic French.” He wandered off. I’m going to have nightmares about somebody serving me tofu poached in a court-bouillon for weeks now.

Recently you wrote about making Kung Pao Chicken and this week it was Pad Thai. I suppose I'd be the troublemaker in class and bring up his comment about only teaching "classic French" at the school. Has anyone else inquired about why you are learning to make Chinese and Thai dishes? Not that I think it is bad for you to learn it, it just seems contradictory to the school's raison d'être.

[Fat Guy]

Great minds think alike, Rachel. I was wondering the same thing, thinking back to those dismissive comments about tofu and umame.

[Malawry]

You have a point, and I had noticed the disconnect between words and actions at L'academie myself. Several of my friends have also pointed out these conflicts to me verbally.

I suspect Chef Somchet has a lot to do with our Asian cookery lessons (she is always the one to demo such dishes). She keeps telling us that these items appear on so many restaurant menus, we should have a grasp of how to prepare them. She's right.

The whole "we teach French technique" vs "we teach what we think you need to know whether it's French or not" comes up in other ways. We've learned to make American foods like brownies, for example, and we've done American pie crust for American apple pie. We also learned key lime pie. And then there's the whole squash thing...I gave Chef Peter a hard time about learning butternut and spaghetti squash, which the French apparently do not eat and which are not in season in the mid-Atlantic region in the middle of August when we learned them.

I find this disconnect more amusing than irritating, which is why I don't become a gadfly about the issue. The opinions offered don't change my mind about whether or not tofu is important to learn, or whether or not umame is an actual taste. The fact is, I want to know how to make pad thai, kung pao, egg rolls, brownies, pie crust, and all the rest. As long as the information comes, I don't care much about what accompanies it.

[Jinmyo]

Um, except, um, that's not really pad thai.

[Malawry]

It's what's usually sold in America as pad thai. None of the Asian recipes we have learned smack of authenticity. I'd be interested in learning about more authentic pad thai, but I doubt we'll learn much about those things in school...after all, it is a French school. For that matter, I think a discussion of bastardized ethnic cuisines could be very interesting, and would gain a lot of interest if posted in the General forum.

[mb7o]

This is a fascinating series, though I admit not having read all of it.

It's not suprising this is an americainized version of pad thai (but no ketchup ). Anyway, is there any discussion in your course where recipes come from? Was this described as a classic authentic thai dish, or as a dish popular in American (or French) restaurants? Simalarly, is there any discussion of the heritage of the traditional dishes?

[Malawry]

Chef Peter has something he calls his "fairy tale book" which is a small booklet detailing the history/mythology of some classic French dishes. He reads entries from it periodically. If a dish has an interesting history then it might be discussed. As for the pad thai, Chef Somchet did not talk about the differences between what she made and a more authentic version. She did talk a little about the low food cost of the dish and how popular it is in her native Thailand, and how it's cheap street food around there.

There will not be a pop quiz for those of you who have not read every diary entry.

[magnolia]

I have to say, I'm really impressed not only with your lively descriptions and dedication to posting regularly - but with the fact that the curriculum is so varied that it includes "ethnic" foods as well as the standards. Maybe I'm living in the dark ages, but until now I had the impression that cooking schools still concentrate on the three "F's" - French, French, French - and maybe some Italian. You'll come out of there with the ability to cast your net much more widely.