Day Ten

Our primary instructor, Chef, is a good teacher. Chef is critical, helpful, experienced and easy going. He moonlights as restaurant critic (with a regular column), so his communication skills are generally above par. I say generally because everyday, usually toward the end of his demonstration, he will suddenly get derailed from his clear and eloquent lecture by major brain fart.

"Um, um, oh boy, um....." Once he realizes he is truly caught in a senior moment, he quickly starts talking again. EVERY TIME he gets back on track, one of the first fifteen words he speaks is a vocabulary word, used incorrectly. It reminds me of my consulting days when I interviewed nervous college seniors.

Today he was demonstrating how to de-bone a chicken. "You want to find the backbone and angle your knife slightly toward it. Um, um.....um....um. Oh yeah, okay, so slice downward behind the breast and when you hit the cervix bone, stop you knife."

First I thought, 'Do chickens have a cervix bone?' Then, I realized they definitely do not. "HA," I laughed, loudly out loud. Oops.

"What is so funny?" Chef asked me.

Thank god for my classmate Little Accountant Man. Taxes were due last week and since then he's been having late nights and late for class mornings. Still happy from five o'clock yesterday he blurted, "Chef, you said cervix!! Did you mean, the collarbone?" Turns out, he did mean the collarbone. Why his brain selected the word cervix in lieu of collarbone is a mystery to me. Maybe I'll understand when I'm a crazy chef one day.

One thing I hate making at home is rice. Its boring and finicky. This is the most exciting, versatile and fool proof rice recipe, ever. Even Little Accountant Man who has been burning, under cooking and spilling like a pro, got it right. I'll write the recipe in the format suggested by the Head of Everything, "Eef you whant to grahdooate." I will add all the useful information in parenthesis.

LA RIZ PILAF
Ingredients:
1 Part Converted Rice (Uncle Ben makes a good version. 1 cup of rice will easily feed four people.)
1 ½ Parts Liquid (Stock gives good flavor, but water works too.)
Fat (You should use butter or olive oil.)
Onion (Finely chopped - use about 1/2 as much onion as there is rice.)
Boquet Garni (Fresh thyme, fresh parsley and a bay leaf bundled together. Using cheese cloth isn't imperative, but doing so keeps floating bits from invading your pilaf.)

Methods:
-Sweat onions (Over a medium heat, put about 1/2 Tablespoon of butter in a pan and add the onions. Stir until onions are translucent.)
-Add rice, liquid and boquet garni (You can get crazy with the liquid. Chef suggested using apple juice if you're serving this with pork.)
-Bring to boil
-Once boiling, immediately cover and bake in oven for 17 minutes (The oven should be at 350 degrees.)

(After 17 minutes, remove the rice from the oven and season with salt and pepper. You can get super creative and add exciting things such as fresh herbs, zest, dried fruit or small diced vegetables.)