Chip in

So, Today my  car broke, and since I have no money to buy one right now, I'm asking to a small on, to those who wants to colaborate, I will be so thanksful, and will give you a ride for sure,

Thanks

Week 7 upadate!!

It's been quite a while since I updated my blog.. but let's say I've been kind of full, a lot of homework and stuff to do during this final week of the quarter. .

I will now talk a bit about the the stuff we cooked on

On week 7 we learned how to roast chicken and beef.

The thing about roasting a chicken is all about how you truss it!Unlike this next video of how "The" Chef Thomas Keller explain how to roast a chicken, during class we roasted in the roasted pan, and added Mirepoix inside the chicken and in the pan, just enough to use it for the pan gravy.

After you season and truss the chicken the process varies a little, specially if you are going to cook the gravy afterwards, in our case, we preheated the oven at 350 degrees and put the chicken there for about 25 minutes, later we added the mirepoix and let it cook for about 1 hour more.

The pan gravy is made by caramelizing the mirepoix as we deglace the pan with white wine, added chicken stock and roux.

Remember the bird juices will give that flavor we are looking for, that's why we use the same pan
we used for roasting the chicken.


The main course was served with a piece white and dark meat, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes and steam green beans. Just delicious.. The pan gravy, which was phenomenal was added just to the meat.




During Week 7 we also learn how to prepare roast beef. Chef Bill taught us how to tie a roast beef, this has to be done before seasoning, it's a similar process to truss a chicken, as well as the preparation process and the gravy is basically done the same way, but in this case instead of using chicken stock, we used Veal Stock and red wine for deglazeing.

Week 6: Potato, Patata, starches and grains.

This week we learned everything we needed to learn about potatoes and starches! This vegetable is one of the most important guest in our kitchen, there are thousands of recipes in where Potatoes are more than welcome. 

Besides its enormous nutritional value, the potatoes are cheap, the amount of nutrients in a potato is so high that is one of the most complete meals there are. 

Potatoes originated in South America, most historians attribute it to Peru, even tho, by the time Europeans arrived to the New World, Potatoes could be easily found throughout the Americas, from The United States to Uruguay. Throughout Europe, the  most important new food in the 19th century was the potato, which had three major advantages over foods for the consumer: its lower rate of spoilage, its bulk (which easily satisfied hunger), and its cheapness. The crop slowly spread across Europe, such that, for example, by 1845 it occupied one-third of Irish arable land. 

I'm pretty sure you all have heard of the Great Irish Potato Famine, a lack of genetic diversity from the low number of varieties left the crop vulnerable to disease, in 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-lke oomycete Phytophthora infestans spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western ireland, resulting in the crop failures that led to this problem, and this is why thousands and thousands of Irish families came to America.

Anyway this are some of the things we did on Potatoes and starches week:

Mashed Potatoes 

Duchess Potatoes 

Croquette Potatoes 

Potato Gnocchi 

Potato Dauphinois 

Baked and Twice-Baked Potatoes 

Roasted Red Potatoes 

Rice Pilaf 

Risotto 

Polenta

You all have cooked at least one of the things from the list above, my two favorite are Mashed potatoes and Potato Dauphinois when it comes to potato base dishes, and Risotto when it comes to rice base dishes. 

The secret about mashed potato is the cream, a good mashed potato is a creamy mashed potato, in class we were taught to add heavy cream and butter, enough to make it creamy, you can add parmesan cheese if you want, or any other cheese you feel like. 

I personally follow this 3 steps: Boil, smash and season, besides adding heavy cream and butter during the smashing step, it is as easy as that people. I hope you enjoy. 

Potato Dauphinois, beautiful name right? was a discovery to me, I had never tried it, I guess I'm just not a frequent restaurant visitor, LOL, but believe me, it is delicious. 

Dauphinoise is the French method of baking potatoes in milk, cream and cheese. In the French region of Dauphine, every home cook has her own formula for preparing this gratin. 

You first need to make potato slices, very thin that you will later consecutively put one over the another, making like a flowery design, for each cap, you add cream and spread shredded gruyere cheese, or parmesan cheese, or any cheese you want, plus salt and pepper, and then repeat the process until you fill the bowl. To finalize place in the oven until gratin, you can let it rest, but before you serve it, put it back in the oven for at least 5 minutes. 

Risotto, Risotto, Risotto! Yum, we all love Risotto, I Heart Risotto, I really do, and the great thing about this is that you can cook any kind of it, veggie risotto, beef risotto, seafood risotto, the list is endless. 

Week Five Update: Vegetables!!

Time definitely flies! my trimester as from today is almost over! I must admit I've learned a lot! pretty much more than I had expected before beginning this course! 

Week 5 was all about Vegetables, yes, yummy vegetables that we either hate or adore! in my case I love vegetables! except for 1 or 2 that I've been terrorize to eat since I was a kid. 

The noun "Vegetable" means an edible plant or part of a plant, excluding most of the time seeds and most sweet fruits. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant. 

According to some culinary experts "In a non-biological sense, the meaning of this word is largely based on culinary and cultural tradition. Therefore, the application of the word is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. For example, some people consider mushrooms to be vegetables even though they are not biologically plants"

Some vegetables can be consumed raw, some may be eaten cooked, and some must be cooked in order to be edible. Vegetables are most often cooked in savory or salty dishes. However, a few vegetables are often used in desserts and other sweet dishes, such as rhubarb pie and carrot cake. 

During week 5 of Fundamental's class we cooked Bake Acorn Squash, Braised Collard greens, Steamed Vegetables such as broccoli, Artichoke Bottoms gratin, Grilled Vegetable Skewers, Tempura Vegetables with dipping sauce (I must add I had the initiative of preparing a delicious dip, that could be eaten with literally anything), Savory glazed carrots, Glazed beets with lime (This is one of the vegetables that unfortunately I don't like) and Pan-fried Eggplant with tomato sauce (My favorite). 

So, lets talk about the process of cooking of two of my favorite dishes from week 5 at school; Artichoke Bottoms gratin and Pan-fried Eggplant with tomato sauce.

I must begin with telling the process of peeling an artichoke:

Cut off the stem of each artichoke, leaving up to an inch. The stems tend to be more bitter than the rest of the artichoke. With kitchen scissors remove the pointed ends of the bottom row of leaves and trim the top of the artichoke by one-third. Pull off any smaller leaves toward the base and on the stem. 

In class we did it a bit different, we used our Chef knife instead of kitchen scissors, and we went all the way to get to the bottom and get the artichoke heart, which is the most tender part of it, this video sums it up. 

This is a recipe you will enjoy cooking and eating, I found one specially for you online, in the Martha Stewart webpage, http://www.marthastewart.com/313465/artichoke-bottoms-au-gratin 

I hope you enjoy, but before here's a tip:

The artichoke bottoms and the bechamel sauce can be prepared the day before you need them, then assembled and baked just before serving.

Pan-fried Eggplant with tomato sauce, one of my favorite meals of all time, it's actually a very simple recipe and a fun one too.

Trim the ends from the eggplant. Remove strips of peel, lengthwise, with a chef’s knife, leaving narrow strips of peel between the cuts. Cut into round slices 1/4 inch thick. Sprinkle both sides of the slices of eggplant with kosher salt. Place in a colander or on a rack to purge excess moisture and bitterness for 30 to 35 minutes. Rinse off the slices and blot dry with a paper towel.

Warm the Fresh Tomato Sauce to 165°F (74°C). Bread the eggplant using a standard breading procedure

Preheat a 10-inch sauté pan. Add 1/4 inch of vegetable oil to the pan. When the oil is hot, pan-fry the eggplant slices until golden-brown, then turn and cook until the other side is golden-brown, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove and drain on clean paper towels or a rack.

Arrange the slices  and top with warm Fresh Tomato Sauce, Parmesan and Mozzarella cheese and place in the oven until gratin. 

Serve hot.

See you soon readers. I hope you enjoy my cooking tips.. but before, here are some pictures of some other things we cooked this Vegetable week. 

Week 3 and 4; Soups, Creams and Eggs !!!

As I've been blogging my experiences through out this course, week 3 happened, in fact. it happened 2 weeks ago, No I have not been lazy to write, Yes I was very busy doing important paperwork regarding my school status. Anyway, week 3 and 4 happened recently and I decided to make an entry to talk about what I learned and did during those dates. 

During week 3 (Each trimester lasts 11 weeks) I learned how to cook Soups, Consommes and Creams, I must said I loved it, first, because I've never been a fan of soups, and from that day on I'm sure I'll change my mind a bit, I guess when you are a little kid and your mom pleases you by cooking something else cause you hate soup, you cut the possibility of ever trying it, unless of course you go to Culinary School like me. 

So, soups, let's talk a bit about soups, I love the anthropology and history of foods, it makes it really interesting to cook something when you know the process it went through history for you and I eating it today. 

Soup is generally a warm food! yes! and it's made by combining ingredients such as meat and vegetables with stock, juice, water, or another liquid.  The word soup comes from French soupe ("soup", "broth"), which comes through Vulgar Latin suppa ("bread soaked in broth"). Evidence of the existence of soup can be found as far back as about 6,000 BC. Boiling was not a common cooking technique until the invention of waterproof containers (which probably came in the form of clay vessels). Animal hides and watertight baskets of bark or reeds were used before this. To boil the water hot rocks were used. This method was also used to cook acorns and other poisonous plants. (Wikipedia Source). 

 During week 3 of Class, we cooked French Onion Soup, Consomme, Split Pea Soup, Mushroom Cream and Chicken pot pie. (This last one will be as since that day my favorite Soup Ever) 

French Onion Soup is an onion and beef stock or broth served with croutons and cheese. Making French onion is very easy, you need to have Veal stock of course, this is the base for this soup. 

First, the sliced onions must be caramelized, this is the most important step, as the brown caramelized onions will color the characteristic brown of it, which is also enhanced by the natural brownish color of the beef stock.

The caramelization process in this case, is the procedure in which the onions are cooked slowly until the melting sugars approach burning temperature, becoming brown. In the final stages of cooking, red wine is often used to enhance the caramelized onion flavor and to deglaze the pan.

To finalize the cooking process of French Onion Soup, we have to brown the bread (Plain Bread can be used) and this is done by putting it into the oven til' is brown and crusty, after this, we put the soup in a heat resistant vessel and place the crouton and later sprinkle cheese on top, Gruyere cheese should be used in this final step. 10 minutes in the oven to melt the cheese and Ta-ran-tan-tan, one of the most delicious soups ever invented will be ready to eat.

You are probably used to eat consomme to fight a cold, at least I am, but is actually a very nice simple soup each one of can make in a litle time and drink during a cold night. Consommé is a type of clear soup made from richly flavored stock or bouillon that has been clarified usually through a fining process. A consommé is made by adding a mixture of ground meats, together with mirepoix tomatoes, and egg whites into either bouillon or stock. Guess what as you might imagine, after you bring this to a simmer, for a considered amount of time, or as of before the raft forms. you drain it and get the liquid. It should be really clear.

Consommés are usually served piping hot because they tend to cool down more quickly than other soups. They are most often served with garnishes, which vary in complexity from a simple splash of sherry to cut vegetables.

I must add my least favorite soup is split pea, first, it is kind of a process to cook and second, I'm just not convinced by the flavor of it yet, peas are very healthy tho, and a big source of protein I must add. The thing about this soup is that it can be made completely vegetarian and that's great news for vegetarians out there, cause most soups are based on animal stock. But if you are a big fan of this soup, then you have to try making it at home, whether you use Vegetable or Animal Stock. Since I'm not that big fan of Split peas, you my dear readers can check any of the thousands recipes available on the Internet (lol). I'm just kidding. But for real, split pea soup is probably your grandmother's favorite and I'm pretty sure she holds a very easy and delicious recipe.

Cream of Mushrooms is my favorite cream ever, it's so delicious and learning how to cook it really made my day. But the true highlight of Soups Week was not only learning how to cook but also learning about the existance of Chicken Pot Pie, I swear I had no idea about the existance of this unbelievable delicious dish. I read that The Chicken pot pie gets its ancestry from the Greeks and Romans, where the Greeks cooked meats in open pastry shells called artrocreas however it was the Romans who added to top crust making the first pot pies. But this dish just never entered nowhere near Venezuelan borders hahaha.
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Week Four was all about eggs, wether you believe or not, there are thousands of recipes for egg cookery, in fact, we depend so much on this particular product, that we probably take for granted the fact that is in most of the things we eat, just to name a few; pasta, cakes, mayonnaise, bread etc etc etc.

Do you think you can live without eating bread, or cakes? I honestly don't think so! and I'm pretty sure most vegans (Vegetarians who don't eat any animal product) probably don't know this.

So let's talk about eggs, during week 4 we mainly focus on this recipes

Fried Eggs 

Poached Eggs 

Eggs Benedict 

Hard and Soft Boiled Eggs 

Scrambled Eggs 

Rolled Omelet 

Crepes

Eggs benedict are one of my favorite breakfast dish, it consists of two halves of an English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce.

Apart from being a popular ingredient, eggs can also be prepared in sundry ways that make it a stand-alone meal. Whether it's heated, beaten or mixed, an egg's consistency and appearance is a result of denatured proteins. Egg white is made of globular proteins suspended in water. When heated, the globular proteins become agitated and unwind to form a stiff network throughout the surrounding water. Eggs cooked at high temperatures for a longer period of time will develop more bonds and acquire a rubbery texture. But heat isn't the only force that can denature globular proteins, beating also alters their structure with the incorporation of air bubbles. This effect is seen is dishes like meringues or soufflés, where egg whites are beaten to form tight networks around air bubbles which remain after the bubbles pop. The protein in yolks also helps eggs combine with other ingredients. Egg yolks can be mixed to form emulsions because they contain amino acids that repel and attract water. When combined with oil and water, some amino acids will adhere to the water while others will adhere to the oil. Foods like hollandaise sauce and mayonnaise are made from egg yolk emulsions.

Week 2 ...Sauces!!!

Second week is here and we learned how to cook sauces, it was really nice learning the whole process and anthropology of it as well.

The Five mother sauces, as they are called are: Hollandaise, Bechamel, Classic Tomato, Spangnole and Velute, they are called mother sauces because they are the base to many small sauces, like for example many cheese sauces are made out of béchamel plus cheese. This five sauces of French cuisine  were designated the five "mother sauces" by Auguste Escoffier in the 19th century. One of the fathers of french cuisine.

To cook some sauces we had to learn how to make Roux.

Roux is made out clarified butter and flour, and its used to thicken.

But first I want to tell you about the history of this simple blend of flour and fat: quite a history for something with just two ingredients. Roux has been thickening savory dishes for centuries. Its first incarnation was in France, and made with butter and flour. This mixture is only heated for a few minutes—just enough time to cook the flour—and is the base of many sauces (including white or béchamel sauce) as well as soups and stews. Butter is the fat used, as butter is typical in French cooking (rather than the lard or oil used in Cajun roux).

A butter-flour roux is most often used as the base of a sauce to which milk, cream or broth is added, and cooked for only minutes as butter would burn if cooked at a high temperature, or for a long time. The butter-flour mixture can also be made ahead and kept in the refrigerator to use whenever a dish needs to be thickened.

A brief History of Roux....

As far back as 1651, François Pierre La Varenne wrote a cookbook in which he mentioned liaison de farine which was made with flour and lard. He called this mixture “thickening of flower,” and it later came to be known as farine frit, or roux. La Varenne’s recipe:

                “Thickening of flower. Melt some lard, take out the mammocks; put your flower into your melted lard, seeth it well, but have a care it stick not to the pan, mix some onion with it proportionably. When it is enough, put all with good broth, mushrums and a drop of vinegar. Then after it hath boiled with its seasoning, pass all through the strainer and put in a pot. When you will use it, you shall set it upon warm embers for to thicken or allay your sauces”.

In the mid-1700s, the mixture was called roux de farine, employed butter rather than lard, and was cooked to a light creamy color. One hundred years after that, many French chefs thought roux de farine was relied upon too much, while others (including Antonin Carême) felt differently. Carême believed that any good chef considered roux indispensable, “as indispensable to cooks as ink to writers.”

 Clarified butter which I learned that day what it was, is actually a process that helps you drain the milk out of the butter, you basically separate the fat and the milk. As wikipedia says: 

"Is milk fat rendered from butter to separate the milk solids and water from the butterfat. Typically, it is produced by melting butter and allowing the different components to separate by density. The water evaporates, some solids float to the surface and are skimmed off, and the remainder of the milk solids sink to the bottom and are left behind when the butter fat (which would then be on top) is poured off."

After learning what clarified butter was, we started making the roux, there are 3 types of roux, the white, the blond and the brown. Depending on what type of sauce you want to cook, that’s the type of roux you’ll make.

The roux is made 50% Fat, 50% Flour, Therefore, 1 pound of Roux is enough to thicken 1 gallon of Milk. 

For Bechamel, it has to be of course, White roux, and the colour of the roux will depend on the time you cook it, brown roux for example, which is what you use for Velute sauce has to be in the fire until it practically burns and start smelling like peanut butter. 

 Onion pique is the most fantastic thing, My grandma is gonna be so happy from now on, back in Venezuela, most people use chopped Onions to flavor bechamel, so I never used it before. it is a half of an onion sliced a bit on the side , so a bay leaf can be placed and 1 clove buried on the other side, this is use to flavor the milk of the béchamel before adding the Roux. It’s a very professionally gourmet way of flavoring a sauce gently.

To end here's a brief review of the use of each sauce:

Bechamel: s one of the mother sauces of French cuisine and is used in many recipes of Italian cuisine, for example lasagne. It is used as the base for other sauces (such as Mornay sauce, which is Béchamel with cheese).

Hollandaise:  is an emulsion of egg yolk and butter, usually seasoned with lemon juice, salt, and a little white pepper or cayenne pepper. Hollandaise sauce is well known as a key ingredient of eggs Benedict. 

 This classic Tomate Sauce It's also the starting point for making the traditional Spanish sauce, Creole sauce, Portuguese sauce or Provençale sauce.It is similar to, but more complicated than, the basic tomato sauce that is commonly served with pasta. Some versions of this tomate sauce recipe use a roux to thicken the sauce, but this isn't really necessary. The tomatoes themselves are enough to thicken the sauce.

Spangnole: Espagnole has a strong taste and is rarely used directly on food. As a mother sauce, however, it serves as the starting point for many derivatives, such as Sauce Africaine, Sauce Bigarade, Sauce Bourguignonne, Sauce aux Champignons, Sauce charcutière, Sauce Chasseur, Sauce Chevreuil and Demi-glace. 

Velute:  In preparing a velouté sauce, a light stock, such as chicken, veal or fish stock, is thickened with a blond roux.  A light chicken, veal, or fish stock, and salt and pepper for seasoning. Commonly the sauce produced will be referred to by the type of stock used e.g. chicken veloute, for example is made out of Chicken Stock.

As usual we cooked dinner by the end of the class, Mac and Cheese the first day and Pizza the second day.. using of course the sauces we previously prepared, in this case; Bechamel and Classic Tomato. 

My First Week @School

It's amazing how time flies, 3 months ago I had absolutely no idea I was going to be in Culinary School, the feeling is incredible, not to mention how cool the School is, and the Chefs and the other students, an overall great experience.

On April 3rd and 4th I had my Fundamentals of Cuisine class, this class is intended to teachthe fundamental concepts, skills and techniques involved in basic cookery.

On the first day the Chef introduced himself and each one of us introduced to the rest of the class, talking a little bit about the reasons that drove us into culinary school as well as discussing some guilty pleasures for food we had.

The Chef mentioned all the rules, he talked about how we were going to be graded, the system and structure of the class itself, and the rules we had to follow, he showed us videos of some Chefs talking about the importance of the professionalism in the Kitchen, as well as how we should wear our uniforms.

After a while we started talking about Stocks, the different types of it, and the importance it has to the Haute Cuisine.

The Stock is a flavored liquid obtained by simmering bones, vegetables and species. it can either be made by chicken bones, beef or veal bones, fish bones, shellfish or Vegetables. The stock can practically be made out of any kind of bones, depending on the final usage it will have. Besides bones, the mixture of vegetables will be absolutely necessary, this is called in french Mirepoix, and is consisted of 3 types of vegetables, Mirepoix is a combination of chopped carrots, celery and onions used to add flavor and aroma to stocks, sauces, soups and other foods. The proportions (by weight) for making mirepoix are 50% onions, 25% carrots and 25% celery.

We cooked white and brown stock.

For the white stock we used chicken bones, mirepoix and species. Making white stock seemed like an easier job, we submerged the bonesin the stock pot with cold water, and added the chopped vegetables (Mirepoix), plus the aromatics.

Note: It is important to know that the size of the mirepoix will depend on the time the stock will be cooking, if the stock will be in the pot simmering between 4 and 6 hours, we should cut big pieces of mirepoix.

The aromatics can be poured in the pot or they can be placed in a Sachet D'epices, which in french is also called Bouquet Garni. (Use cheesecloth to make thesachet).

For the brown stock, we used Veal bones, Veal bones contain more connective tissue than Beef bones, and this means they have more collagen, which when simmered form gelatin, the more gelatin there is in the stock, the more body it will have.

We roasted the Veal Bones in the oven until they reached that toasted appearance, the smell was absolutely incredible, for the Brown stock we also had to caramelize the Mirepoix, and we did so by sautéing it in the same pan where we roasted the bones, and added tomato paste into it until it browned a little, then we added all the ingredients into the Stock pot and let it simmered for about 8 hours.

To finish the Chef taught us the usage of the knives and we learnt some basic cuts (Julianne, Bromoise), we chopped vegetables (Onions, carrots, celery, parsley, garlic, tomatoes, among others) and the Chef cooked and amazing pasta with tomato sauce.

Until next week.....

Chef Ronny