Week Four - Ten

Week Four

Got Milk? 

• I hope you're not lactose-intolerant because this week is all about dairy and all the functions of it! From 2% to ricotta, we learned about how different products effect enhance the thing we eat. 

This tastes like the cow got into the onion the patch. Yesssss!

-Napoleon Dynamite 

Mushy Rice

• Grain day in class today. We learned how rices and its brothers need active care in order to be delicious. We were taught to imagine the rice as a delicate thing, and to treat it as such. And finally....! After what felt like years, we got to cook again in class. 

#gif #chefmark #thatwaterfallthou #cascade #risotto #yumm #928bound #naudemokitchen #turnup #iseeyoukaty #lookaflickadawrist 

• There was a rice and grits dish that we got to prepare in class that day. My squad of chefs-in-training got a recipe called Jacks Grits (recipe in Recipes). I have made grits before, but this is the most creative and fun I ever had making them. 

Jack be Nimble, Jack has Grits

• With our dish, I learned a new technique called raining. It is when you sprinkle your food in little by little while stirring your concoction. 

• After cooking out all the liquids, we turned off the heat and added cheese and and salt and pepper to taste. At the end of it all, we made a quite delicious dish. 

OMG Moment of the Week

1. This week was more informative - I mean like, yeah, we learn something new every week - but it was more of a preparation informative. This week was mostly spent talking about how we are preparing for our tastings. (I will explain this more a little later) 
2. Making cheese is a process that can get you paid. Millions of dollars from wheels of cheese. Like how is that possible. 

Side Note* Some time between Week 4 and Week 5, Chef said the phrase
"Gelatin, Coagulate, and Melt"
I really wanted to make this a title for explanation but blanked.
I'm sorry that you will miss out on this educational and most likely hilarious segement

But look here's my squad

NOW on to Week Five...

Week Five

Stock in the Name of Food

• Today in class, we learned about the elements that go into making a delicious stock. From the the veggies your choose to the soup or meat you want cover it in, stock is a food product that demands attentions.  

                         

Cut, Chop & Slice

• Like I said, the vegetables or meats you choose are one of the keys to a successful stock.* But, more importantly, it is how they are prepared for the stock.
• First you have to pick your ingredients, for a more traditional vegetable stock, you would use some onions, a couple of carrots, and a few stalks (ha! pun) of celery. Precisely, 2 parts onion, and 1 part carrot and celery.
• Next come the fun, the dicing of each ingredient, and there are many ways to do it...

• It is major that you have the same size chopped up vegetables because 
• if some are too big than the others,you will have to sweat your veggies longer for those ones to cook through which might cause the normal sized ones to burn
• OR
• if some are too small than the others, then those will cook way faster than the others and turn into baby food mush. 
• So, after learning some tricks of the trade, me, my squad, and squadmates of chefs-in-training, went to work and we weren't playing around

• As you can see, everyone is focused on making their cuts precise and perfect, and in time, will be doing this at lighting speed for 50 gallon stocks instead of one.

*In Honor of DJ Khaled - The Keys

• At the end of the day, we made our mirepoix (million dollar culinary term) for the class' vegetable stock
• Mirepoix - /mirˈpwä/ (noun) - a mixture of sautéed (sweated) chopped vegetables 

BONUS : We got a visit from Ms. Acosta

And Chef actually smiled in a picture that I took of him knowing I was taking a picture

Day Roux-ened

• After Chef Mark dangled roasted meat in our face, he dumped it all into a pot and covered it in water. I have never felt so much pain in my life. It was like slipping hot sugar on your leg or dropping cooked roux on your hand, which is what class was about today. Not the third degrees burn and hospitalization, but actual roux

• Roux is a thickener, one of the OG thickeners. Roux is made with some kind of flour and some kind of liquid. 
• I'm being very vague because their are hundreds of different types of rouxes, but for explanation purposes, I will use just wheat flour and vegetable oil.
• When you add the flour and oil together, they start to combine to make this play-dough, oatmeal lookin' substance. Then when golden, like the sun rising over my bed in the morning to awaken me to another day, you add it to soup or stock to make it thicker.

• This is the product from starting to cook to practically burning a roux. I say practically because every shade of roux on each one of these plates can be used in some way. We don't waste food in this kitchen.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Now, also this day, I volunteered to keep time and terrorize my squadmates by screaming various times and "PULL"  at them for the roux diagram in the picture above. So I don't have many pictures of the progress. But please enjoy this video of one member from my squad as he stirs our roux

Simmer not Boil

• At the end of class, we got to use the veggies we cut up in the previous class day to make our own vegetable stock. 
• First we sweated our vegetables in vegetable oil
• Then, once caramelized, we added water
• SIMMER the water
• Finally at the last five minutes we added peppercorn, thyme and a bail leave

• But not everyone had an enjoyable experience

OMG Moments of the Week

1. First off, broth is a lie. It is just a wannabe stock who trying to get with all the stocks friends. 
2. Everything you do in the kitchen matters. From chopping equally sized veggies to just making roux, no job in the kitchen is just grunt work. So yeah, you might be peeling onions and crying your eyes out, but know, your tears are helping make a delicious stock
3. Roux can go from smelling like popcorn to death real quickly.
4. I did not notice how much I can get hurt while cooking. I mean I could burn myself with our roux, or get burned by somebody else's roux. A pot could graze me by accident or I could drop a full of simmering stock on myself. Like, wow.

Week Six

Maccin' Cheesy Jokes

• Today's class is brought to you by the letter C, for Cheese. We made maccin' cheese in class along with two famous sauces - hollendaise and beurre blanc. We learned about temperature control and the patience that goes into making a well cooked meal.

Maccin'

• Like I just typed, Chef Mark showed us how to make some decent maccin' cheese. We first learned about the noodles
• Gomito Maccheroni - or more commonly known as elbow macaroni or just plain macaroni - is famously and internationally used to make maccin' cheese. but why? Well chef-in-training, it is because the shape.
• The bent tube shape is great for this oven baked entree because it can suck in the cheese sauce and keep it inside the noodle. This makes every bite more enjoyable because you get cheese on the outside and burst of more cheese from the inside

• Next is the the cheese! Now, some of you may just add shredded 3-mixed blend to your maccin' cheese and some milk and butter and call it a day. I do too, but that was until I saw cheese sauce.  
• As is cascaded down as some sort of golden waterfall from the heavens of Cheesetopia, a tear fell from my eye as I realized I lived in a world that has cheese sauce. 
• To make it you start by heating milk and butter, then you add your cheese of choice - I think we used cheddar, I don't know for sure, but I think we did - then you do as Chedda Da Connect* says and flick da wrist by combining the milk, butter and cheese. Then my friend you have liquid diabetes.

*I am not making this up, I did not plan this, but the fact that Flicka Da Wrsit is sung by a rapper named Chedda Da Connect is priceless

#gif #cheesy #newmessage #dax #thatlookshellagood #corey #gumbopot #lookaflickadawrist

Holla-diased and Brah Blanc

• Imagine you are living in the life of luxury, brunch is set and you are about to part take in a serving of Eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce; now come back to reality where you are in crippling college debt, lack of sleep, and $7.62 bank accounts. Beautiful ain't it?
• But seriously, hollandaise and beurre blanc sauce sound classy and elegant, and may seem to be this complicated dish that the elite order - but trust me it's not. Actually, they are quite easy to make.

• Let's start with Hollandaise - and only Hollandaise because my squad had this recipe specifically. (Recipe in Recipes along with Beurre Blanc)
• The main part of this recipe is not the ingredients, but the cooking technique. 
• After you add the egg yolks to the bowl, you actually cook the eggs over stream. You use indirect heat to thicken the yolks (this is called double boiling), then you drizzle a thin line of melted butter into the yolks then you whisk

             

• The whisking is so important to this because if you don't keep moving and breaking apart the eggs, they will start to coagulate 

• Finally, you have to test it. Chef taught us that if you want to see if your hollandaise sauce is correct, you have to blow roses. You do this by dipping the back of a spoon into your sauce, then blow. You should actually see roses

Welcome to Wishie Washie's Dish Pit

• I know we  are on week 6, but this is the first time my squad and are sister squad had gotten the dish pit. I was so sad because we were betting on how long we could have gone without getting it. And after that experience, I can see why fate hadn't given it to us before.

Prep Day!! Savvy Soups

• So I told ya'll I would explain more of what's going on so here it is
• Prep Day is the day that all 8 squads in the class have to finalize and prepare their meal for the Tasting. Each Tasting has a centered theme. This one is called Savvy Soups, which means every squad will have a soup to make. 
• Prep Day is literally a short, sweet version of Do or Die Time. This is the last day you can make sure that whatever food you need cooked, cut, sliced, baked, broiled, grilled, or froze is ready to go for Tasting.
• Now, this wasn't like a war zone, it was more like a demo kitchen filled with college students with their heads cut off. 
• We is here! The day before our first tasting. It was amazing. My squad had minestrone and we worked hard to make it delicious.

 

Bring it Sister!

• For our first event, we are actually in a competition. Our squad is battling our sister squad to see who makes the better minestrone. And, I tried to sike them out before the big day. I came here to win.

I never said I was good at it. Haha!

Dax pt.2

• So, the day was filled with alot of cooking and different squads trying to make sure that their soups were ready for Monday. So, I tried to respectful and not get on anybody, but Dax was asking for it. 
• He knew that if I saw him cooking his squad's veggies after he just burnt them the last time, I had to get another video confession.

My OMG Moment of the Week

1. I didn't know how simple hollandaise sauce was to make.
2. I will never trust Dax to cook vegetables if his view point is his own skin tone. 

Week Seven 

Allez Cuisine

• It's groovy baby! Welcome to Sweet Home Arizona, are 70's theme, hippie loving, only vegetables restaurant. We believe in that love is the secret ingredient in all food and that veggies will always be a better choice than our fuzzy friends.

• And though, we might have been in a competition, but we love our sister squad

I promise you guys that will take more pictures of the following events. I got so caught in this one that I completely forgot to capture the memories - because I was living them - next time guys! 

But here are some things that happened.

• I had a dance off with the sister squad
• Danced with a Beast
• Sang some song
• Heard Ally (my squadmate) sing a lyric or two
• Talked like I was in the 70's
• Pranced with some reindeers
• Took a trip to Italy

I would like to take this time though to have a moment of silence for a dear friend

Rest in Pieces Ally's Bob Marley Lava Lamp

You were the Buffalo Soldier of our Squad,

The True One Love,

and because of you accident

One Woman Did Cry

Drawbacks

• So, today we got our feedback from the Tasting. It wasn't - in my opinion - that great. I take tried not to let it get to me but it did.
• There were two comments I wanted to talk about that really suck to me. One being that "our theme wasn't creative" and the second being "we need to take our tastings more seriously"
• So the creative comment hit me because the 70's hippie theme was my idea. And I based it on the idea that since we were making an all vegetable soup, we should based our theme around the food itself and not the origin of which it came from because I felt like every year, Chef has seen an Italian theme. So, I felt like I let my squad down, I lead them down the path less traveled and it blew up in our face.
• Now, the second comment I took personally to heart because I felt like it had to be directed towards me. Like I stated earlier, I was dancing and singing and talking like I was in the 70's. I was having a great time and so were my squad. But, if you looked at us, you could have obviously seen I was doing alot. The tasters looked like they were having a good time, but I guess they thought that my theatrics were too much or "too serious enough".
• I was just being myself, and myself isn't that serious. I wouldn't have mind if this comment was just me, but it's not. It effects my whole squad, and because of my actions at tasting we lost points. Everyone worked so hard to make our tasting happen, and I'm sad that my personal actions got us bumped down.  

Hey guys, sorry for the deep moment here, there is still alot of Week 7 to talk about. But if this has put you in a saddened mood

Please look at this picture of my homies

Now continuing Week 7....

What a Hack pt.2 : Chicken Edition

• We back at it again, breaking down dead animals for consumption. But what is it this time, a chicken! So let's get started.

Don't Call It A Comeback

• I usually don't dedicate segments of my blog to people (let's all laugh) but this one is special. My squad had recently lost a member due to unknown circumstances, but they are back and better then ever - as they have so claimed. So, I would like to give a shoutout to the return of the majestical "No Mo Mess" Majestic

*Update: He is gone again. 

Hyper-extend the Joint

• For a quick summary of how Day 2 went, here is a quick video

• Yes my fellow chefs-in-training, we had to slightly gut (I say slightly because we only took out the kidneys) and then butcher a whole chicken. This lesson was one for the books for the fact that I have never seen a more disgusted group of people in my life. From the demo in the front to actually producing the product, you can see a sea of grossed-out faces across the room.

• There were quite a few of difficult techniques to consider, but to me, I felt that finding the wish bone and joints were the most challenging of the day
• First, before we did any deep cutting, we had to find the wish bones. Now. some may think these bones are harmless and are a fun thing to find at Thanksgiving, NO! I did not say it was difficult for my health. 
• These for stupid bones are small enough to hide in thick cuts of meat and strong enough to pierce straight through the roof of mouth into your nose. So you can see why the expedition of these make me mad

• Second part of this process was dealing with the joints. Now, chickens don't have people joints, they have chicken joints. Sadly, I do not hang out with enough chicken to know what muscle they use to know where their joints are. (I do know a few chicken heads, but that's a whole different story) 
• One thing I loved about today was learning what hyper-extending is. It is when dislocate the joint from its socket - or another joint - by pulling it in the opposite direction. 

• It was a fun and exciting for me. I like learning new things and I am a hands on learner, so today was perfect. But for my squadmates......well

      

OMG Moment of the Week

1. One thing I learned this week is feedback is to help you build, not break you down. I was personally effected by the comments made, but now I see what I have to do to get a the best results.
2. Apparently, a whole chicken can take down the strongest of them. Haha. 

Week Eight 

First, before we get started, I want to give a shout-out to Chef Mark for giving a bottle of Jerk Seasoning Rub. It was delicious and I recommend everyone try it!!

Now on to Week 8...

Baby Got Back

• Ribs!! Barbecue!! Rubs!! Week eight started with a bang as we learned about smoking. When you decide to smoke meat, you have a few things to keep in mind. I am only focusing on two (because I can't remember others at the moment ;-) )

Aye, there's the Rub

• The rub is second to the most important part to smoking. The rub is what gives the ribs, or brisket, or chicken, its bark -Bark : (n) the seasoned skin that got overly caramelized with rub goodness. 
• The rub is the only thing keeping your meat fully seasoned for hours on end. Unlike stove top cooking, you do not physically mess with meat. You just let it do its thang until its ready to come out.

• On a complete side note. I swear that the rub Chef used smelled exactly like taco seasoning. And not just any taco seasoning, I'm talking McCormick Mild Spice Taco Seasoning. 

[*insert wood pun title here]

• The most important part of smoking is the wood. The type of wood you decide to set on fire can either cause delicious or hellish outcome.
• The smoke from the wood seeps into the meat to it a little extra Ugh! 
• You can't use any kind of wood either. You need like apple, maple, hickory, and cherry (don't these just sound delicious) because their smokes are less earthy. But if you want to use a pine wood, you will be eating a rib that will remind you of the time you face planted in the soccer field at recess. 

Basting and Braising (*my title game is getting weak)

• Later this day and that week we learned about basting and braising chicken. 
• Basting chicken is when you make a sauce for your bird in the pan at the same time that it's cooking. Then, when you sauce and seasonings are all on the same page of poppin', you start laddling it over the chicken

• Braising chicken is making soup, basically. You slightly cook your chicken, you just want all the sides b rown. You take it out, then you make you mirepox base. Then you add the chicken back in and fill it up just barely over with chicken stock. Then you just wait for the rest of the salmonella to cook out.

I would like to apologize for this weeks entries for being straight forward and not very funny. I have a busy week and couldn't come up with puns and jokes as thoroughly as I wanted.

But thank you for laughing at my previous material  

Week Nine

Prep Day!! Meat Madness

• Meat Madness is here and we are about to get crazy. We have Mexican Chorizo and we decided to serve it with eggs, homemade tortillas and horchata. (Yes, HOMEMADE. Like from scratch) Now we didn't do much today because we literally made everything the day of event day for peak freshness. But don't be sad chickadee, I do have some pictures, but they are completely unrelated.

Eggs, Bacon, Grits, SAUSAGE!

• So before we could get prepping for one of the events that could make or break our grades, we had to learn could sausage! Sausage is ground meat - pork for this one in particular - and spices that are then stuffed into a casting. 

• After twisted into their individual links, they are then hung from a stick and put into a smoker to smoke. 

Well, that's was all for today... Prep Day!!

Allez Cuisine

• Hola mis amigos. Beinvenido de Calavera! Today we are serving chorizo and egg scramble on a homemade tortilla with a drink pairing of horchata. (Can you hear my classy voice.)
• But seriously, me and my squad had a Day of the Dead offering table theme restaurant for our Meat Madness event. We had a traditional mexican carne, and decided to stay on that route for themes and decroations

Now I know I promised yall lovely people last event that I would take more photos and videos, but I was the chef this event. I couldn't snap pics and record videos while frying up chorizo.

  I mean look...

I was rocking the chef hat with the bandanna under. I was looking fresh and ready to work.

• But all fun aside, we did do alot of improvements from our last event.
• For one we talked alot more (I say we but I stayed mostly silent and only said things like 'Hello' and 'Goodbye' - last event comments got to me)
• We had name tags
• The food was cooked a la minute - made to order - so it was fully heated
• And cleaned up much more

OMG Moment of the Week

1. I have never been so stressed out before in my life. Making everything we needed for event day on the day we had to serve it. I was all types of messed up, but we pulled through and we learned from our new mistakes today
2. Dax is a terrible cowboy

Week Ten

Bubble bubble

• Here we are, Week 10 and Happy Halloween! Today in class we learned about a sous vide cooking (Chef's favorite). I personally do not like this method but it's amazing to say the least.

• For starters, a sous vide is a machine that heats and circulates water to a certain preset degree. Why is this Chef's favorite you ask? Well, that's because the sous vide will stay at whatever temperature you set. Say WHAT?!?! You read that correctly, it will not heat up any higher than what you tell it. This means you can perfectly cook anything without fear that it will burn or dry out.

Suck it Up

• You can just drop what ever food you want into the water, true, but we got to season are food. So, Chef demonstrated how to use the vacuum suction machine to penetrate your seasonings into your food. Then you just drop it into the water and wait

Basic and Sour AF

• So today, Chef had us test to see how some vegetables react at different acidic and basic levels. But before we get into that, I want to give a shoutout to Dax, he tried his hardest to be a good leader, but he just ain't 

What's that smell?

• So, I don't know if Chef planned for this to happen on this day, (like some sort of cruel Halloween trick) but he made use smell the gnarliest and rankiest food I have ever smelled in my life.
• It smelled like death and decay
• Sadness and depression
• the struggle
• dirty garbage filled with diapers
• my cousin's foot after workout
• Basically it was terrible
• But what was it you say? It was the natural fermentation of cabbage with vinegar to make sauerkraut. Apparently. it needs to be weighed down and keep from human life to die twice before it was done. It bubbles, IT BUBBLES   

Happy Halloween!

• Finally, to end this week, we had to test acid water (water with vinegar) and basic water (water with baking soda) and see what happened to different food we dropped in it. 

• As you can see, as in life, being basic is hard on you. It turned the red cabbage blue. I don't know what science to explain here - I truly don't - but I'm going to assume that acidic liquids like form a protective cocoon around food and keep it lookin' how it originally looks. And basic water was breaks you down and ruins your life 

Before I go

Here are the answers to the You Slippin' Matching Game

OMG Moment of the Week

1. I thought the sous vide was a cool tool to have in the kitchen. You know, when you ain't trying to fully cook but don't want Top Ramen. Suction seal a potato and a steak and call it a day. You don't have to worry about it drying out or nothing
2. There is nothing pleasant about fermentation. You food cooks itself and I don't trust inanimate objects to handle my food.