The Final Week

Last week represented the final week of the program and was primarily taken up with preparing two final meals. The week culminated with a festive lunch prepared by all of the students for their friends and family. But prior to this, we had our "final exam" which involved each student preparing "the perfect meal." The only restrictions to this meal were, it had to be three courses and it had to be prepared in the kitchen in three hours. We were allowed to bring our own ingredients and tools, but that was all.

Like most (all!) of the other students, I spent considerable energy and stress deciding what to make. Should I make something classically French? After all, much of the focus of the program was on French food and techniques. Non. That would be too predictable. Besides, French food is something that the judges--comprised of our core teachers (JJ, John, Michael and Charles), Kevin and Rebecca (the Directrice of the program)--all know a considerable amount about and you don't go tugging on superman's cape.

I decided instead to take the following approach: I would cook something that I might have cooked before the program, but do so through the lens of what I had learned over the previous four months. My reasoning for this was to make a meal that was both expressive of who I am and what I like to cook (and eat) while also displaying my newly acquired skills and techniques.

So, after bouncing ideas off of Aileen (she didn't get hurt), I decided to go with a Latin-American inspired menu. Here is what I decided to make:

Black Bean Soup
Pico De Gallo, Fromage Blanc, Tortilla Chips

Rotisserie Chicken
Five Spice Latin Dry Rub
Yucca Fries
Roasted Salsa

Chocolate Torta Fluida
Chipotle
Spicy Salty Mango Slices

It is a menu of dishes that I am somewhat familiar with, but incorporates some ingredients and techniques I learned during the course. For example, if you have been reading prior posts you will know that use of Chipotle in a chocolaty desert was a real revelation for me. So, here I took a desert we made this semester, and added Chipotle. I think it worked pretty well.

I think my meal turned out pretty well. In general, I received compliments on my approach, flavor and presentation. The one consistent negative feedback was that my food was not salty enough. It is a fair enough comment, but at the time I was sort of surprised by it since I didn't think my food was under salted.

After thinking about this some more, I realized something. I have recently started to use less and less salt in my cooking. This is due, in part, to health concerns, both Aileen's and mine. But, I think it is also due to a desire to explore other flavor profiles in my food. I think all too often salt is used as a crutch, a short cut, for adding flavor to a dish in lieu of highlighting other flavors. While it is true that salt helps to accent the other flavors in food, it is also true that too much can over power these flavors.

For me this is the challenge: develop food that tastes good without salt as a predominant flavor.

Jacques Week

The Discovery channel may have "shark week," but we, at the BU Culinary Arts Program, have Jacques week. Ok, Monday was a holiday, so we didn't have a full week. Nonetheless, we spent three pretty intensive days working with Jacques Pépin and Jean-Claude Szurdak, who have been friends and culinary cohorts for over 50 years.

Tuesday morning began with Jacques demonstrating to us how to de-bone an entire chicken while leaving the meat entirely intact. When done, you are left with a whole boneless chicken (the tip of the leg bones are left in for effect) which is ready to be stuffed, rolled, tied and roasted. After the chicken is roasted, you cut it across the body to produce beautiful medallions of boneless, stuffed chicken. It was cool.

Then it was into the kitchen and our turn to perform the same trick--and it is something akin to a magic trick. Everyone had the opportunity to de-bone at least one chicken. Needless to say, Jacques made it look a lot easier than it really is. Because the process requires making very precise cuts which need to be done the exact right order, I think everyone had at least one moment (if not more) of staring at a partially de-boned chicken trying to figure out what to do next. Fortunately, Jacques and Jean-Claude floated around showing us all what we were doing wrong. It was massively fun and, in the end, all of the two dozen or so chickens were successfully de-boned.

Jean-Claude gathered up all of the left over bones to make two stocks: one white and one brown. The brown stock became the base for a demi-glace sauce for the chicken, while the white stock became a base for a soup.

Meanwhile, Jacques gathered the livers and the soft fat from the inside of the breast to make a paté. The fat and the livers were cooked in duck fat (lots of duck fat) then pureed, strained and seasoned. The final product was completely decedent, but unbelievably good.

Both Tuesday and Wednesday culminated with Jacques doing a demonstration for 70 people of "Complete Techniques with Jacques Pépin." Each person attending got a sampling of food prepared by Jacques and Jean-Claude with our assistance. One thing about preparing food for 140 people, there are invariably some repetitive tasks that need to be performed: bread needs to be sliced, grapefruits need to be sectioned, carrots need to be peeled, etc. But this is how we learn. As a chef, you cannot really be proficient at something until you have done it so many times that it becomes second nature to you. The gap between Jacques' skill at boning a chicken and our skill at the same task is vast. But then he has done it so many times that he may literally not even think about what he is doing while he is doing it.

And this is where the classic techniques come into play. They are time-tested techniques that once mastered allow a chef to move efficiently but effectively through the kitchen. But, good technique is about the expression of skill versus the expression of talent.

Raw talent is undeniable, but good technique can be learned.

Think about it this way. Alex Rodriguez is the best hitter in baseball, this is in part because he has more natural talent than most if not all other baseball players. But, Alex probably hits hundreds, if not thousands, baseballs a day. This allows him to hone his skill, his technique. His talent is augmented by the continual development of his skill.

If you de-boned a dozen chickens every day for a month, you would get pretty good at it. The fact is, good cooking is in part a result of the familiarity that comes from repetition.

Anyway...

Jacques and Jean-Claude are both part of a dying breed of chefs who prepare traditional French cuisine with a stress on using classic techniques. You could say that they are "old School." In this age of globalization, cultural exchange and culinary fusion, it is admirable to see to someone who has essentially been preparing the same food in the same way for over fifty years. Classic, indeed.

The week ended with a $500 a plate sit-down dinner. The menu was created by Jacques, literally. Not only did he choose the dishes on the menu, but he illustrated the menu itself. (You can see my signed version at the left.)

The menu included:

Passed Hors D'oeuvre of:
Oysters Rockefeller
Clam Fritters with Tapenade
Smoked Trout with Scrambled Eggs

Dinner:
Potage Parmentier
Crispy Sweetbreads
Roasted Squab with pea and lettuce stew
Salade Santé with cheese and caramelized cashews
Chocolate tartlets with raspberry Sorbet and candied grapefruit peel.

Frankly, there is nothing on this menu that is startlingly original. But really, that is not the point. This meal, and really all of Jacques food, is about classic dishes prepared correctly. It is fun to eat food that titillates the mind, but really, it all comes down to whether it tastes good or not. This food tasted good.

Pastry, Pastry, Pastry

Three days of pastry: sugar, flour, butter, chocolate. Repeat.

The week started off with a continuation of last week's tour of foods of the world, with a stop in India (which I will come back to). But the bulk of the week was spent on pastry.

On Tuesday we made cookies and bars with Janine Sciarappa, who is, herself, a graduate of this very program. During the morning we explored the core ingredients of baking (e.g. floour, sugar, eggs, leavening agents, etc.) and what each contributes to the process (e.g. structure, moisture, flavor, leavening, etc.) It was a brief, but very interesting introduction to the basic elements of baking. For example, you might think sugar only serves to bring sweetness to the table, but in reality it can also contribute to structure and be a catalyst for creaming ingredients (e.g. eggs) and for leavening (e.g. yeast).

We made quite the assortment of macaroons, short bread cookies, graham crackers (yum!) key lime bars, and brownies. The highlight of the day for me, though, was the Chipotle brownies. Holy carp, were they good: spicy, smoky, sweet and chocolaty.

Next was two days of working with Cindy Salvato. Unfortunately I was not able to attend class on Wednesday. But, on Thursday we delved into the dark, delicious world of chocolate. In addition to learning all about the types and properties of chocolate, we spent Thursday morning performing a chocolate tasting. We tasted twelve different chocolates, evaluating each for appearance (color, shine, etc.), flavor (bitter, sour milk, spicy, sweet, etc.) and texture (hard, smooth, crumbly, waxy, etc.) It was quite interesting to compare the differences between the brands and to see just how much variance there really was. The range of textures (from waxy to smooth) and flavors (from sweet to bitter) was really eye opening. If you have the chance, I recommend doing a chocolate tasting, in addition to being enlightening, it is also fun.

In the afternoon, we took what we learned about chocolate into the kitchen and made all things cocoa. Among other things, we made molten chocolate cake and truffles.

Molten Chocolate Cake

Man are truffles a pain-in-the-behind to make. Not to mention, very messy. The most important trick was to try to keep the chocolate on the truffles:

Catherine's Chocolate Hand

Ok, now back to Monday. We started the week by working with chef Thomas John of Mantra restaurant in Boston. The menu was: Parantha (flat bread) with a spicy potato filling, Tandoori chicken, shrimp curry with coconut and lemon rice with peanuts.

Being that I love Indian food, this was an enjoyable day for me. I think if I was forced to eat only one type of cuisine for the rest of my life, it would likely be Indian. I just love the range and richness of flavors. Besides, I am a spice-head (both in the sense of spicy flavors and heat) and so I could feed my need in this regard. Anyway...

Even though I had not heard much about Mantra prior to this day, working with chef John was a real pleasure and the food was really good. One of the most interesting parts of the day was listening to chef John reinforce how much the style of cooking and the ingredients change between the various regions and religions of India. In reality, the food we think of as being "Indian food" is really the cuisine of only one region of India. It would be as if the rest of the world thought of southern food or TexMex as "American" food. These are certainly part of the American culinary landscape, but to us they are considered as regional cuisines rather than a national cuisine.

Tip o' the week: The next time you make brownies, add 3/4 of a teaspoon of Chipotle powder.

World Food Week

If I had to pin point a theme for this week's classes, it would have to be something like: food from around the world. Some might say that we explored national cuisines, but that wouldn't be totally accurate since some of the foods we explored did not belong to any particular nation. Besides, there are some who argue that the notion of "national cuisines" is a false one and that there are no national cuisines, only regional ones. I'm not sure I totally agree with this, but that is for another time.

On Monday we were visited by Ana Sortun from Oleana restaurant in Cambridge. I had heard really good things about Oleana, so I was excited to work with her. Ana describes her food as Mediterranean. In the current culinary vernacular, Mediterranean has come be short-hand for style of diet influenced by the ingredients common to some countries of the Western Mediterranean: mainly Spain, Italy, Greece, and southern France. But, the Mediterranean is vast and there are quiet a few cuisines that are not a part of this profile: for example, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, etc...

Witness this map:


So, for Ana Mediterranean food extends beyond olive oil, fish and legumes. It is also the flavors and spice profiles of some of these other cuisines. As Ana explains it, what she likes about these cuisines, is that the flavors come not from piling on the fat (butter) but from the particular and aromatic herbs and spices. The result is food that is pleasing to the tongue but does not leave one with an unpleasant feeling afterward. What was most fun, was that we worked with ingredients and spices that we don't normally work with: Aleppo Chiles, Sumac, Dried Mint, Kofte Spice, etc.

The dishes we made were really good and were, indeed, very flavorful without being too filling. I am even more excited about trying Oleana now. Ana taught us a very cool trick to mash garlic. Essentially, you "chop" the garlic clove using the back of your chef's knife, towards the handle which results in mashing the clove instead of chopping it. It is a little difficult to master, but a good trick to know.

In almost direct contrast to Monday, on Tuesday we worked with lots of meat and lots of fat. This day we did Alsatian food with chef Jamie Bissonette from KO Prime .

Among other things, we made two of my all-time favorites: Wiener Schnitzel with Spaetzle and Choucroute. As with Ana on Monday, I was really looking forward to working with Jamie because of the food I ate when he was still at Eastern Standard (one of my Boston favs). Most notable in this regard was the charcruterie which makes sense since Jamie is building a reputation for working with offal.

Jamie and his sous chef were very hands-on when it came to instructing us, and they were both very serious about their craft. It made for an intense but very instructive day. Must of my day was spent working on the Alsatian Apple Beignets (aka apple fritters).

On Thursday we worked with Carlos Rodriguez (left) of Orinoco. Once again (and maybe this was the real theme of the week), Orinoco is a restaurant I have heard good things about and is somewhere I really wanted to go to. But we got it even better than that, Carlos came to work with us! Carlos refers to his food as Nuevo Latino, which is a melding of various Central and South American cuisines (most notably Cuban, Peruvian and, in Carlos' case, Venezuelan). You might be tempted to call it "fusion" but Carlos would be quick to correct you. What's the difference? Bear with me here a minute. With fusion, it's more about influence and taking dishes that are not traditional to a particular cuisine (say Cuban) and giving them a twist based on that cuisine. For example, you might put Chipotle powder in brownies (which is REALLY good, by the way) and say that they are classic brownies with a Central American twist. With Nuevo Latino on the other hand, ingredients from different cuisines are combined in a dish. So, you might have pork prepared in a manner traditional to Cuban cuisine which is then stuffed into an arepa.

Once again, somehow, I was on dessert duty which is ironic since I don't particularly care for dessert. In fact, it is not unusual for Aileen and I to go out for dinner and not even order dessert. In this case though, it turned out to be not such a bad thing. I worked on a chocolate Torta Fluida which is essentially an undercooked chocolate cake. Eating it was like eating a rich hot chocolate in a semi-cake form. It was cake you had to eat with a spoon, it was really incredible.

I should mention what we did on Wednesday, even if it did not fit the "theme" of the week. In the midst of all of this world cuisine, we worked on pastries. Specifically, we worked with puff pastry. We made Mille-feuille (aka Napoleons) and Tart Tatin. Doing a twist on the classic Tart Tatin (which is made with apples), I made a banana Tart Tatin, which, if I do say so myself, was really quite yummy. See for yourself:

Banana Tart Tatin


To end the week in fine fashion, Lilly (who is in the program with me), Jason (her SO), Aileen and I went to Orinoco for dinner on Friday night. It was excellent and highly recommended.

It's been quiet around here.

I have some catching up to do. I decided to move to a weekly format from here on out. Trying to post daily was getting too hard.

Morimoto & Me

What do Morimoto and I have in common? We are in this picture together:


And that's about it.

Prior to today, I have cooked sushi a couple of times. It turned pretty well. At least I enjoyed it. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure I probably did most things wrong, like how I sliced the fish, for example.

Today we had the opportunity to work with one of the original Iron Chefs himself, Masaharu Morimoto. Morimoto has a new book and he did a demo at BU in the evening of recipes from the book.

I think the day started with people in the class feeling a little bit anxious, wondering what chef Masaharu was going to be like and how it would be working with one of the new breed of celebrity chefs. This was augmented a bit by the entourage of people who arrived with chef Masaharu (assistant chefs, promotional people and even some press).

But, I think chef Masaharu put people at ease pretty quickly. He was calm and demonstrated a quick sense of humor, despite the fact that English is not his primary language. (I always think humor is one of the more difficult things to translate across cultures and languages. And yet, laughing together is one of the quickest ways for people to bond.)

We quickly got to work, as there was quite a bit of prep work to be done for the evening's demonstration. We started with chef Masaharu demonstrating how to slice fish for sushi. I think most of us were in awe of his skills and technique. I know I was.

First off, I had knife envy. It is no secret that I have something of a knife fetish, I admit it. I also tend to prefer Japanese knives for their feel: they're balanced differently and they tend to be lighter than German or French knives. Chef Masaharu had a beautiful Japanese Yanagi-ba knife with handles made from deer antlers. This style of knife is unique to Japanese knives and features a very long and thin, but very sturdy blade. Additionally, unlike European style knives, the blade is only beveled on one side (or at least one side is beveled considerably more than the other). This knife if ideal for making precise and clean slices of fish for sushi and sashimi.

Second, to state the obvious, his technique was masterful. Each slice of the knife blade was as precise as the previous one and each slice of fish was precisely the same size and thickness as the previous one. This seems simple, but let me tell it is not. Moreover, the slices of fish were extremely thin. To produce this not only requires the correct technique but also requires a very sharp knife. If either of these things is lacking, you end up hacking the fish rather then slicing it. This is bad.

When it became our turn, I struggled with slicing the fish. After a couple of hacks, one of chef Masaharu's assistant chefs demonstrated the technique for me again. Seeing him do it while describing it made me realize why I was having such a hard time getting the technique down. It was almost exactly opposite of how I am used to slicing food. Let me explain.

Say I want to slice a carrot or a chicken breast. I will lay the tip end of the knife on the far right side of the item with the tip titled down towards the cutting board, and then push the knife forward and down, away from my body, to slice through the food. Additionally, my off hand will serve to hold the item in place while I slice off the end. Or put another way, my off hand is holding the item being sliced rather than the piece of food I just sliced off. The slices of food "come out" to the right on the other side of the knife from my off hand.

When slicing fish for sushi, the technique is almost completely reversed.

First, to slice the fish you lay the butt end of the knife on the fillet with the tip of the knife tilted up and away from you. You then pull the knife towards you and down, in a sort of semi-circular motion. In this way, the tip of the knife is the last part of the knife to pass through the food. Second, rather than using your off hand to hold the fish fillet as you slice pieces off of it, you use it to secure the newly formed slice of fish. So, instead of slices of fish coming off of the knife to the right (as with the carrot), they come off of the knife to left, into your off hand (presuming you are right handed).

Once I realized this, my slices did improve. But, quite frankly, I still wasn't very good at it. Somehow it felt unnatural to me, even though I could clearly see that this method produces beautiful pieces of sashimi. This is definitely an area that I can work on and improve.

I have to say, there are certain foods which I will happily pay another person to prepare for me, Sushi is one of those foods.

As I mentioned above, the day ended with chef Masaharu doing a demonstration for a group of about 70 or so people. The dishes he made were definitely not your traditional Japanese cuisine. There is no other way to describe what he did in terms other than to say it was "fusion." And, not just any fusion, but in this case, a fusion of Japanese and Italian cuisines. I know, that sounds like an odd pairing, but here is what he made.

First was Daikon Fettucine with a tomato-basil sauce. Here the noodles were not made from a dough, but from stripes of daikon radishes and were sauced with a very traditional Italian tomato sauce.

He also made a crispy tuna sashimi pizza and then finished the demo off with sugared salmon.

All in all, it was a good day and an interesting menu.

Day Ten: Garnish

What we Did: Played With Our Food (Some Would Call It Garnish).

Garnish is all about looks. But, if indeed we do eat with our eyes, then garnish has a roll to play in our world of culinary delights.

Of course, I am not sure that making a zucchini look like a flower makes me more hungry. As Jean-Jacques Paimblanc said, "less is better." That is all I am going to say on that topic.

If my attempts today are an accurate reflection of my skills in the field, I will not being doing much garnishing in the future. I am not sad about this.

In the afternoon we shared four hours with the health inspector. And, well, the less said about this the better.

Quote of the Day: "Think like the vermin!" (On what your approach should be in tackling the problem of pests in the commercial kitchen.)