3-Hour Chicken Salad

What to bring to a pot luck when your current status as a culinary school student has been widely advertised?

I brought a dish designed with 2 goals in mind: 1) help balance the menu, and 2) practice my knife skills

There was a lot of starch-heavy items on the menu and the hostess promised 3 different desserts (they were delicious!). I decided on a Brazilian-inspired* chicken salad that provided a lean protein that’s easy to eat in summer weather. But really, I picked it so that I could practice my knife cuts. It looked humble and dismissively easy to compose but it ended up taking me 3 hours to make.

What went in:

• small dice potatoes
• freshly shelled English peas
• small dice carrots
• small dice apples
• corn kernels from freshly shucked cob
• chopped (canned) artichokes
• chopped olives (not shown in the picture)
• quartered grapes
• chicken breast poached in a court bouillon that included fresh corn cobs
• freshly made mayonnaise

the court bouillon (poaching liquid) alone contained 8 ingredients and was reduced for >30min prior to use. Unfortunately I have yet to master the heat control on poaching and the chicken wasn’t as succulent and juicy as what I tasted during Foundations I’s demo. Will need to work on that.

Each vegetable was prepped and cooked separately then chilled.

I had a great time putting it all together and was making furious mental notes for my own education.

Response at the pot luck? I don’t know. There were quite a few impressive dishes. I may have just earned myself a little breathing room for the next gathering. I doubt anyone’s going to expect a superstar dish from me after serving a homely chicken salad, hehee.

*Brazilian-inspired: chicken should be shredded, not cubed. potato more likely in shoestring form, not small dice.

Torture Device. Found.

Just because I’ve said that my sharp knives are too precious to use in a stabbing doesn’t mean the whole tool kit’s useless.

We found a new torture device today. Sitting quietly in our knife kit the whole time.

Melon baller is already a name of disgrace (proper name: parisienne scoop), but to really give it street cred, we’re gonna have to call it Le Gouge.

What do you do when you’re making a fish stock from fish bones and need to discard any parts that threaten the clarity of the product? Get rid of everything bloody, inky, and smelly. For example, remaining viscera, gills, and eye balls. These perfect size scoops make eye removal a snap.

So watch out — if you still have your eyes — don’t go around messin’ with someone holding a melon baller.

Now, why doesn’t any of the demo’s end in frying up these tasty bits??

Range Virgin

First day on the range. Damn that stove is powerful!
Made a couple of things. Nothing burned, phew.

Mother sauces:

• Espagnole (from brown veal stock)
• Bechamel

Small sauce:

• Mornay (bechamel + cheese)

Things can get a little crazy. The space is limited and the heat is high. It really helps to have good teammates. We would grab stuff for each other, watch the fire, and work side-by-side in clean up.

I’m not sure how many picture moments I’ll be able to sneak in now.
Maybe will take a little bit of time to get in the groove.

A shout out to my awesome classmates (in no particular order) — Janice, Brian T, Dave, Jose G, Brian L, Frenchie, Tim, Geoff, Melissa, Tameka, Cisco, Robert.

I wanna taste your sauce next time!

And not so awesome today: Jose C.

Is it just me, or is it HOT in the kitchen?

Stages of Roux

It’s hot out on the streets.

It’s even hotter in the kitchen.

The heat is ON!

Everyone’s sweating bullets but the excitement of finally being in a kitchen is what really got me red in the face.

The class is now close to 4 hours long (as opposed to the 2-hr, lecture-heavy format in Foundations I). This means more time for long demos and time to actually get our hands dirty.

Roast veal bones? check.
Clarify 15-lbs of butter? check.

6 weeks of serious cooking. Let’s go!