The Storm Settles

I apologize for my lengthy absence from the blogosphere. It was primarily due to 1) the fact that the last couple of weeks at school were fairly uneventful and 2) I've spent enormous amounts of time ensuring my life is in order before I enter a black hole called A Real Restaurant Kitchen.

Our last days with The Chef were fun and memorable. Hard, for sure, but it seemed like we were finally getting the hang of it all. Our lunch service consistently went out on time and the final market basket was proclaimed, "Zhee bhest I've tasteed en zhee easetorhee of zhee skghoul" by The Head of Everything.

I was most thrilled by the final market basket because my fiance attended! At 12:30, exactly one hour and thirty minutes after he began his journey into the suburbs on public transportation, he popped into the tasting room, eager and excited to see if the chefs, the students and the experience were everything I promised. My partner and I were first (and the appetizer was 100% mine) so he immediately saw a round of Me vs. Judges.



Our first secret ingredient was ahi tuna. Everyone was going Asian, and since I'm already Asian, I didn't want to go there. Instead, I went old fashioned tuna salad. I pounded the tuna thin to make a carpaccio, served it with onion and mayonnaise mousse, pickled celery, garlic croutons, and a mustard vinaigrette.



"Zhis deesh is zhee clowsist tu phearfict yhou can geet," commented The Head of Everything. I was THRILLED! My peers later told me that I couldn't stop jumping up and down and smiling. Brian reported I even executed a few fist pumps after The Head of Everything spoke.

We took our Phase II final last week and since then I've been tying up loose ends at my part-time consulting gig. As I walked my final commute this morning, I evaluated the differences between my life now, and my life 6 months ago. Back then, I was organized, independent, stable, comfortable and well-paid. Now, I am frantic, nervous, anxious, tired and totally broke. Am I happier now than I was before? The jury is still out on that. However, I believe I'm certainly more satisfied.

Today, maybe for the first time, I truly realized what I've done to my life; I've done IT - taken the plunge, broken ground, gotten the ball rolling or whatever you want to call it. And, so far, doing IT has been one of, if not the most difficult storm I've ever weathered. To ignore logic and accept uncertainty is plain old uncomfortable - in every way. It takes unadulterated faith.

As I thought about where I was and where I am, a wave of serenity and satisfaction hit me. I remember smiling, a big toothy smile, not at someone I knew or because I saw something funny, but at myself. I had finally found the calm after the storm.

Tomorrow, when I start my externship, a new storm will begin to brew; I'm okay with that. Without a storm, there is a complacent, anticipated, everyday kind of calm. The ordinay calm can be nice, but the calm after the storm...it is far more breathtaking.

180 Minutes, 12 Courses, 6 Hungry Women

One thing I adore about the women in my class is that like me, they love to eat. I mean really, really, really eat. For the first time in my life, I've been surrounded everyday by women who eat, and eat, and eat simply because it tastes too good to stop. I've already explained what a danger this is to the size of my body; praise the kitchen gods who made it so a chef must work on his or her feet, as quickly as possible, in extreme heat.

Like their appetite, my female peers' enthusiasm for competitive cooking is also healthy. This made the six of us an unstoppable force in the infamous Twelve Course Tasting Menu Challenge.

We were directed to serve three canapes, a soup, a fish dish (using lobster), a granite, a meat course (using lamb tenderloin), a cheese course (using goat cheese), dessert (using pears) and three mignardise. Mignardise are similar to canapes, but come after the meal and leave your diner with a final impression.

We had 24 hours to plan a menu and 3 hours to cook enough to serve 6 guests. The menu was served course by course, alongside the boys' dishes to a table of two award winning food critics, two James Beard award winning chefs, The Head of Everything and The Chef.

This is what we cooked up:
Canapes
Duck Pate Mousse, Fried Potato Spiral and Granny Smith Apple
Smoked Salmon, Pickled Fennel and Herbed Cheese
Watermelon, Fried Feta, Honey and Fresh Mint
Soup
Tomato Bisque, Grilled Cheddar and Dill Crouton
Fish Course
Butter Poached Lobster alongside Scallop, Roe and Tarragon Mousse, Beets two Ways and Orange Buerre Fondue
Granite
Pomegranate and Lavender Granite
Meat Course
Lamb Tenderloin Medallion, Sauteed Wild Mushrooms, Sweet Pea Puree
Cheese Course
Goat Cheese Timbale
Dessert
Pear Tart, Pear Ice Cream and Cranberry Coulis
Mignardise "Napoleon"
Vanilla Bavarian Cream Puff
Chocolate Almond Biscotti Bites
Strawberry Shortcake Tart

I was responsible for the canapes and the lobster course. The lobster was a challenge. Its not a protein we had worked with in class and I'm most familiar and frankly quite content with just steaming the damn thing. This was one of the most difficult dishes I've had to conceptualize and execute at school.

I was shocked how many people were concerned about the crustacean's "slow death." Seriously?! Its a f**king LOBSTER! To get everyone to shut up, I agreed to spear their skulls with my chef's knife before boiling them.

If you boil a lobster for about 1 minute, the meat remains uncooked but peels away from the shell. This way the meat can be removed, cleaned and prepped for poaching, searing or whatever. I poached the meat in butter, an Orange Beurre Fondue to be exact. Beurre Fondue is an emulsified butter sauce, which is a pain in the ass to make, but creamy, delicious and totally worth it. I infused mine with orange zest and poached the lobster tails in the sauce over a double bain marie. It took about 20-30 minutes to cook the tail, which is very slow by poaching standards, but necessary as the sauce must be held only warm to keep it from breaking.

I served a piece of the poached tail over a paper thin slice of golden beet, alongside a cylinder shaped piece of scallop, tarragon and lobster roe mousse. (I shaped the mousse into a log using plastic wrap and poached the entire thing. Once the mousse was cooked and firm, I cut it into pieces. When the pieces are turned so one of the flat ends is down, they look like cylinders.) It was topped with fried red beets (cut into thinner-than-angel-hair noodles using a Rouet machine), orange zest and a spoonful of the Orange Beurre Fondue.

I knew the canapes were delicious and well executed; it was the lobster dish I was worried about. A wave of relief washed over me as the judges tasted my dish and offered only three comments:

"The mousse is a little salty."
"The sauce is out of this world."
"Zhee lubstuher es pearfictlhee kooked."

I can certainly live with salty mousse.

After the food was consumed and the points were tallied, the girls came out on top - by a whopping eleven points! It was one of the most exciting moments I've had at school to date. Never mess with 6 hungry women.

The Homestretch

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. People are exhausted (and therefore have been crying, yelling, swearing and screwing up) and people are anxious and eager to begin life as an extern. The drama associated with securing an externship is astonishing. The Dummy, of course, tried to get a job without telling the chef he was a student, hoping for an extra dollar or two above minimum wage. He was immediately dismissed when he whipped out the externship contract for the chef to sign. The contract requires the chef pay us fair market value ("fair" - a funny way to describe our compensation), work us at least 40 hours per week (another silly contract clause - most externs work 90 hour weeks), and provide written reports to the school about our progress. The chef, enraged that he had been fooled, told our classmate to "get his ass out of the kitchen." What a dummy.

In an effort to get hired, The Big Hawaiian staged for 2 weeks at one of the busiest spots in town.. We'd previously heard the chef at this joint is a huge dick. This was confirmed when the chef returned the Big Hawaiian's contract, signed, with the addition of a handwritten clause "duration of externship is a minimum of 18 months." The Big Hawaiian politely told the chef he was unable to make an 18 month commitment, and the chef told him "sucks for you" and "forget about getting paid for the two weeks of work."

School got exciting last week when The Little Accountant showed up with a dead deer. "Zhees eez geauing du be a guud day!" The Chef proclaimed when he saw the freshly skinned carcass carted into the walk-in.

"Ooh wheel du zhee boochairing?" No one volunteered, except for me. "Wheatknee, pearfect!

Although I didn't really know what I was doing, it went pretty damn well. A deer is much easier to butcher than one would think. The hardest part was maneuvering the thing. Positioning and holding a dead deer carcass on a cutting board is a far cry from a whole chicken. I started by sawing the entire thing in half right below the ribs. I couldn't get a good grip on the thing so I kept getting whacked by flailing hind legs which whipped back and forth as I sawed. Once Bambi was in two pieces, getting the meat off the bones was straightforward. Our meat lectures with The Head of Everything kept popping into my head; he always said "Fhalow zhee bones wis zhee blhade of yor nyfeh."

The second hardest part was hacking up the bones for stock. For a woman, hacking bones is not a particularly becoming activity. It takes a hefty upswing followed by a strong downswing and a thunderous pound onto the cutting board. If you hesitate, it simply won't work. I discovered this when I would take an upswing, close my eyes (making sure my free hand was behind my back!), and lamely strike the bones with the cleaver. "Neau, Neau, Neau! Why yeau deau eet zhis whay? Zhee momint yeau leeft zhee cleaveur, you most comeet teau whaking zhee bone as ard as poseeble!" The Chef demonstrated for me. I noticed at the top of his upswing, he was on his tiptoes. Using every ounce of his 4'2", 110 lb. body, this little french man shot the cleaver into the deer and yelled "VOILA!" He cleanly sliced through the bone it was impressive and entertaining.

I loved the venison. We marinated the meat overnight prior to cooking to decrease the gamey flavor of the meat. We used olive oil, rosemary, garlic, oranges and onions. We also marinated the bones in red wine to flavor the wine for our Sauce Grande Venuer (a classic venison sauce made with red wine and currant jelly).

Venison should be cooked exactly like steak, but is much leaner, so be careful not to overcook it.

Our eight course tasting challenge looms (the last class had Michele Richard as the head judge!). I was snooping around again and eyed some paperwork indicating it may be a girls vs. guys showdown. YES!