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