It’s finally spring break! I’ve made it through two terms at Johnson and Wales University’s Charlotte campus, and am now officially a sophomore!
Our last cooking class of the term, and our next to last class of the term was Fundamentals of Food Service Production (FFP). This class reminded me a lot of New World because all of the food was really fun to make and really fun to eat. Also, it dealt with a lot of food that we were all really familiar with, but maybe didn’t really know how to make properly or didn’t know about all of the varieties. We did breakfast the first two days, and then moved on to baking and shallow frying. I’m not the biggest egg person, I can thank my mother and grandmother for that, so it was the first time that I had made an egg over easy. We also made fabulous biscuits.
We started this class on a Friday and over the weekend I went home right after class because my grandmother, who has been sick with Alzheimer’s for over a decade, was close to passing away. She actually passed away that Sunday, I had just left home to return to school because I had probably the biggest project assigned to us due in Menu Planning and Cost Control (I’ll tell you about this class later) the next day and I had to finish up my demographics information. So I found out when I got home, somehow finished the project, and had the go to school the next day, Monday, before the whirlwind wake, service, and burial on the other side of the state on Tuesday.
Here starts the second day that I cried. We have to take these math tests because a lot of what we do this term is really math intensive, and I wasn’t really paying attention on that Friday when I took the test and was pretty sure that I had done an entire section wrong (I knew the section, I knew what I did wrong, and I knew how to fix it), but I got called up in front of everyone and given my little green slip that said that they wanted me to go to this math class that was actually during my afternoon class and either way, there was no way I was taking actually going to waste my time taking it. Now, I’m not knocking the system, but when you know the who and what and you know h
ow to fix it and you already have a bachelors degree and have completed advanced calculus at a real academic college, you aren’t going to take this 18 year old centered, bad high school, 4x81=? type crap. Anyway the start of that Monday was getting this slip, so then we skipped lecture and started cooking. Our first step of the morning is to do our cuts, which we practice on potatoes. I had cut them all long way and was cutting them the other way when I got myself. I didn’t even really feel it, I knew I cut myself though, and I turned around immediately to go to the sink and then I saw some white down in my thumb—I cut the tip off! Shit! I wrapped it in paper towel and started squeezing because the blood was now flowing, went back to my cutting board, got the tip off of it, and went to the nurse. Oh my god did I get myself! They had to put this sulphur-ish powder on it to clot it and I swear it hurt less than the actual cutting of my thumb hurt…one of the few times in life that I’ve screamed the ‘f’ word. My teacher was so nice about it, maybe a little too excited because he wanted to see the tip, which we had already discarded because they weren’t going to try to reattach it or get stitches (it would have been my first stitches ever! (not counting surgery) I almost got them once over my eyelid but that’s a totally different story).
I got to a breaking point about two hours later because all they gave me was two ibuprofen tablets, and not even big ones, and I started to breakdown in dish pit. I found my out and sneaked out to the hallway and the tears just started to stream—right when my teacher is walking by returning to the classroom. So embarrassing!! I hadn’t even told him about missing the next day because of my grandma yet, so I sniveled that out, and he actually told me that I could leave and he wouldn’t count it off. I was pretty surprised because he was pretty hard-core, see, he had come from a strong restaurant/line cook/executive chef background, those guys are usually a little gruff and rough around the edges anyway—because they have to be. I think it was probably because I’m a girl, and on that same note, I didn’t leave partly for that reason, at least to prove myself, and mostly because if I was at home I would have just been sitting there looking at my TV, while all I felt was my heart beating through my thumb. Also, I had to turn in my Menu Planning project later that day, and I had to print everything out and turn it in (I literally handed the project to the chef in his office and was like, “My grandma died yesterday, I cut off my thumb this morning. Here’s my project, I am unable to make it to class today. Bye”. It was a bad day! Plus it got my group out of doing dishes everyday because we couldn’t get it wet. But the rest of the class was fantastic, I enjoyed all the lectures, I absolutely loved the cooking, and I really appreciated the teacher, not only for his teaching, but also because even to this day, a couple weeks after his class, he asks me every time I see him how my thumb is! We had a lot of practicals for this class, we had one for shallow frying, we had to fry catfish, veal, shrimp, cubed steak, and pork, and then present him a plate with one of each on it. Then we did one for baking, we got salmon, which was awesome because we got to break down the salmon, and then wrap it in puff pastry. The only problem with puff pastry is that you have to create a design on top—when I’m put on the spot to be creative I can’t do it. Or more to the point, I have no skill, so even if I had a good idea it would come out looking like plato designs of a three year old. Then we did a practical for sautéing and made a sauce to go with it, we had to do lamb with a yellow pepper red wine demi glace sauce; two of us would do it in front of the chef, who would just call us out of nowhere and you would have to drop everything and perform. I love the rush of all this, but I usually do something stupid that I wouldn’t otherwise do, like use too much oil to sauté my lamb in. We also had to do a French omelet, which was totally hard for me, it took me a minute to do one without any brown on it.
Our final class together was Skills of Meat Cutting. In this class we would start out in a classroom, and then go down to the basement where we had the Product ID class, into a refrigerator classroom ideal for dealing with meat. We started out with chickens, which I loved, because I’ve already taken to just buying a whole chicken at the grocery store and breaking it down to cook, or roasting it whole—its so much more cost efficient! We learned how to make them boneless skinless, and statler style, I actually just broke down one boneless skinless yesterday. You just wrap everything u
p separately and freeze them, its great
if you live alone. Anyway, on day 3 we came into class and had these huge hunks of beef waiting for us, and the next it was a whole pork loin. It was great—20 pounds to break down and I realized that I really enjoy breaking down a huge chunk of meat, or a primal cut, as I learned. I only wish that I had the opportunity to do it on a regular basis so that I knew all the steps by heart. It was great pulling out the beef and pork tenderloins, how freaking cool. Plus we got to fabricate baby back ribs, so yummy. This was definitely my favorite chef since I got here, he knows what he’s talking about, he’s liberal and anti-government/USDA, don’t get me wrong, it was just more that he would open your eyes to the standards that are in place in our country and the potential for outbreak, and try to inspire us to make changes. We cooked some of each, steaks, ribs, lamb, sausage, only with an addition of salt and pepper and it was so good. Especially when you’ve been up since 5:45am, you haven’t eaten anything, and its 10:15am—crucial. Then we did veal, which was okay, not as exciting, just a huge hunk boneless veal that we scraped the fat off of and then cut into roasts for stew or to be ground. All the while we got to make pork sausage too, our group made breakfast sausage, and some groups got to make things like chorizo and one group made a sweet sausage I think. We got to fill them in the casings and everything. Then we got to do a lamb rack and a lamb leg which was really great, it’s always good to get practice frenching. For our practical we had to break down two chickens, one statler style and one boneless skinless, pretty crazy. My chef decided it would be really funny to have a bullhorn in class and I ripped my oyster jumping from it—crap!
Throughout the entire term I had to take two afternoon classes, they were Sanitation and Menu Planning and Cost Control. Sanitation was kind of boring, but I really don’t think that it couldn’t be. Most of it was like 18 hours of an online program, so I’m not really sure why we had to go to class. Wow, these kids were pretty immature in this class, mostly freshman, mostly really young. I really liked my teacher though, she was so straight up; some kids really didn’t like here, but they are the type of kids that are told three times to do something, don’t do it, and then give lip back when someone gets on them for it. Did really learn a lot though, it is amazing how many evil things are lurking in and around a kitchen, or are brought in from an outside source. I did pass the test, and actually just today was sent my official certificate for Food Safety Management.
In Menu Planning we basically learned how to run the business side of a restaurant. I could write forever on this class, I learned so much. Cost cards, profit and loss statements, edible yield charts, on and on, it was a lot more math than I like to deal with, but it was all worth it. I didn’t take any sort of business classes in undergrad really so I was pretty ignorant about all this before taking the class. My teacher was a chef from New England, and I loved his accent! It was so Boston; my only regret is that I didn’t have him for a lab class. He really does have a knack for teaching math though, and he’s hilarious, could listen to him for hours. We did a project in this class where we had to create a restaurant, a concept, menu, location, research demographics studies, create cost cards for menu items, and even a profit and loss statement. Crazy! I actually started working on the menu part of it pretty early, I knew I wanted to do a Spanish/Latin restaurant, with common enough menu items not to throw anyone off too much, like empanadas and paella. I decided to put mine in Wilmington, NC, where I went to college, because there are absolutely no Spanish restaurants in that town, outside of your family style Mexican restaurant. I did really well on the project, the best part is that it’s basically a business plan to use for the future, and only has to be tweaked—good stuff!
Okay! New term, new group of people to spend 11 weeks with, six hours a day. This term I’m taking a 7am-1pm class (so early! waking at 5:45am) for lab classes and then two afternoon academic classes, sanitation and menu planning and cost control—so it’s kind of a long day. Our first class was Principles of Beverage Service, it was a really cool class. You know how cool the bartender is, we got to be that cool! :0 Anyway, I’m a total wino so I really enjoyed all of the information on wine, the different varieties and vineyards. Really handy information for a restaurant and just for wine drinkers in general, it has broadened my choices when choosing a wine at restaurants and in grocery stores. I really enjoyed this teacher too, she was inspiring, the kind of teacher that makes you want to fulfill your lifelong dream and trek around Europe for a year. She was also a chef, so she made really great connections between drink choices and food, as well as cooking with alcohol—great ideas for cooking with gran marnier. First impression of the class is pretty good, there are two older people, a man and a woman, and the rest of us are pretty much 20 to 27 years old, much older than my last class whose average age was 18.5. We’re not cooking in this class so we really don’t know how each other will be once we finally get in a kitchen. Felt pretty good about throwin’ the bottles around in this class, finally learned what a Manhattan and a Rob Roy and a Cosmo had in them—I’m such a loser all I ever drink is captain and tequila. Also, really liked learning about making beer (one of the guys from class brought in homemade beer), fortification of spirits, and food and wine pairings. We even had port and really expensive bleu cheese on Christmas Eve, and made bleu cheese stuffed green olives. For our practical we had to memorize and serve drinks, four of us went at a time, and our chef would call out a drink and you would make it and just hope that you remembered on the spot. It really wasn’t that bad, either way, you just had to make it look like you knew what you were doing.
Our next class was Purchasing and Product Identification; this was a really cool class, even though it was down in the dungeon of the school. We got to work in the storeroom that fills requisition forms for all of the culinary classes cooking upstairs. We got to learn what all these crazy spices, produce, and grains, just everything down there—it was great! I saw uncooked whole Japanese eggplant for the first time, and totally didn’t know what the names of all those nuts and seeds and lentils were. Another fabulous teacher, I keep telling my parents that each gets better than the next, but I think what it really is is that they are all great, its just that I keep expecting one of them to be like this one professor I had in undergrad that was literally the bane of my existence for two years. Even the rigid and tough teachers at JWU have redeeming qualities, and I’m not talking about tough on uniform teachers—they are just following the guidelines (and all this little kids that complain about it all the time are the same annoying little kids that are never going to make it because not only do they not respect authority and the principles of the school, but they 
are unable to uncomplainingly follow it. Its right there, its all written out, they knew that this was the way it would be, why complain?). Excuse my tangent…Anyway, great teacher, we weren’t cooking in this class, but our teacher was a chef (the teachers trade around classes a lot-god it would be so cool to work here!) who used to have a restaurant that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen, it was out on the beach here in NC and my mom’s brother has a house in the same little town—so it was a great connection. We did a group project on Habaneros, and I was in a group with the two 18 year olds of the class, so I wrote the whole thing, blah! I was like 13 pages! Johnson & Wales is a writing intensive school, were we have a writing project for each class. I, of course, love this because not only is it building my culinary portfolio, but also it keeps me up on writing. For our practical there were about 6 tables, each with like 8-10 products on them and a number and you had to identify each of them. Now this included liquids, and it was a pleasure smelling fish oil at 8am. I actually did better on this than I thought! She gave me a B+ though, and I’m not totally sure yet (because I’m waiting for final grades, but I’m pretty sure she’s the only one out of 22.5 hours worth of class this term that gave me a B L Either way, I learned so much in this class and have a lot of great resources left from it to look back on later.
We finally get to cook! We’re taking Nutrition and Sensory Analysis, which is kind of intimidating if you’re not totally up on nutritious substitutes for butter and cream! I’m in a group with a guy I’m dating now, and I don’t know what wayward demon possessed or convinced me this would be a good idea. He’s got so much more training and experience than me we shouldn’t even be in the same school; and he’s so used to working in a restaurant that he’s not really nice when working together in class. I keep trying to ‘get hard’ and I’m pretty hard most of the time, I can sling ‘em back or suck it up depending on the circumstance, but sometimes I just have to cry (which I’ve only done that once so far!), it’s a little harder to take when you’re sleeping with that person. Moving away from my personal life to the class, my teacher was great, she was very creative and inspiring. I found it difficult to cook nutritiously with what we were given, not the recipes, but the type of recipes. Positives, I wasn’t totally up on my poaching and this class has sparked my interest—you can poach anything in anything kind of, and I’m having a lot of fun at home trying crazy combinations (although poaching in a compound butter is not nutritious in any sense, it tastes amazing). I also wasn’t used to making healthy sauces, I mean I’ve made light sauces before, but this class was more like demi-glace sauce or a sausage gravy with no butter (oh my! Secret-I did use a little butter:) We had to poach an egg for our practical and turn in two plated dishes that our group made on two days of production.
Check back soon for Part 2 of the Winter Term!
I’m really going to try to add more posts during the upcoming term, but here’s a little bit to catch you up!
FALL TERM
During my fall term we took five classes, six hours of lab a day, we did each class for nine days in a row, and stayed with the same twenty-two kids for the entire time. I took a Soups, Stocks, and Sauces class first, my chef was a great teacher, could sometimes be a little tough, but you could see that he was a soft guy—no matter how hard he tried to hide it. I’m so glad he was my first chef because he considered his specialty to be knife cuts, and he quickly instilled in me a solidly based skill (definitely has helped with my knife cut grades in other classes). Also, I think understanding the primaries of making stock, its flavor and composition, and developing a grip on all the basic sauces are crucial to the cooking process. I made friends with this girl Lauren in my class, we were in a group together, which you would think would make us butt heads, but we actually worked really well together. I love to make sauces, stocks aren’t really that exciting, they totally can be when you get into some of the stranger stocks, but I love the magic of making a sauce. The timing, the ingredients, emulsifying, thickening—love it, love it, love it! We had to make a Hollandaise sauce for our practical which was intense, and also a roux and veloute, which were both pretty easy. It was also the first time I poached an egg, or ate a poached egg. I did really well in this class—A+!
Next we moved on to Traditional European Cooking. I was a history minor in undergrad so I really enjoyed seeing the tie between the food in this class and the state of the country that they evolved from. The incredibly variety of potato dishes, one of the easiest things for the poor to eat, but they adapted and created different ways of eating the tuberous produce. Processes like slow braising and stewing of tough cuts of animals, because the majority of the medieval European population couldn’t afford the better, tenderer cuts. As you can guess we did mainly braising and stewing of meats which I really enjoyed—intense for like twenty minutes and then get something else done while it simmers away in the oven. I loved my teacher in this class, he allowed us to develop new recipes based on the given ones, feeding our creative juices, while teaching us about why certain combinations work well or why the don’t. He would also explain the European influence of certain herbal mixtures, techniques, and meat products. I had certainly never worked with oxtail before. Its odd that so many of the male chefs here have a military background, I would love to hear the connections that all of them eventually made with food. Also our class was picked for service, so we had to be ready everyday to serve by 5pm—no matter what…it got pretty intense. See Johnson and Wales has two dining classes, an introductory course in service and an advanced course that involves more intricate processes like tableside service. So we got to work on our plating skills and got really good at plate presentations, and our chef was obsessed with us learning how to cut potato fondants, so I got really good at doing those too. We had to braise one day, and stew another for our practical, and I had to make braised rabbit. It was the very first time that I had ever broken down a rabbit, so that made things a little crazy, but otherwise they went great.
It was soon our turn to take the Essentials of Dining Room class. It was awful for me, I don’t know how to serve, much less how to serve in a fine dining establishment. I’m a little uncoordinated, so I spilled water, I knocked over salt and pepper, but I did not drop a tray with food on it! That was for sure the bees knees of the entire class, b/c not only did I get close a couple times, but I was notorious for it at my old job. Once again I loved my teacher, I turned 25 during this class and the entire class signed a card for me—even the teacher! I felt like I was in fifth grade again, it was great. JWU feeds us everyday, this was an afternoon class, so we got dinner and our class has officially been eating Traditional Europeans food for four weeks in a row—I have had enough! Can’t believe I made an A in this class, I had to do every bit of extra work possible to pull it off. Also, I am now a Certified Dining Room Associate for Fine Dining Establishment. It was good to learn about the productions in the front of house, continuity throughout the entire restaurant is key…I get it, moving on.
New World Cuisine was the fourth class of the term, and it was an awesome class. The concentrations were on gr
illing, roasting, and deep-frying. Which we all loved because, who isn’t already pretty comfortable doing this stuff? They are the techniques that most of us were raised on…I know for myself that I would have been excommunicated from the family if I didn’t know how to fry. Once again we had an amazing teacher, this guy is a dead ringer for Jeff Foxworthy, so much so that I’m pretty confident he could make money on the side doing appearances for Foxworthy. Amazing recipes in this class, brined pork tenderloin with a cilantro and garlic rub that we grilled, I learned how to fillet a snapper or grouper with my eyes closed, grilled steak everyday, fried fish, empanadas, and grilled corn, roasted chicken and pork—it was great! Besides the obvious welcome change from beef stew, I could cook and eat this food everyday of my life. We did three days of practicals, one where we roasted, one we deep-fried, and one we grilled. It was sweet, we all had times that our food was due, like exact minutes, so you were going by the clock in some occasions, and others you had a lot more time at first to work on other projects, depending on what you were doing. Obviously, people that were roasting went last. We also had to do it as a plate presentation, and everything that we did for the deep fry practical was snapper or grouper, which we had to break down and make a tarter sauce to go along with. It was great though; we did steaks, medium rare everyday for the grill practical-yummy! Another A, doing pretty well so far! I’m dreading my next class though!
Our final class of the term was Intro to Baking and Pastry, and it also had one of the hardest teachers I’d had since my teacher in soups, stocks, and sauces. I had a decent baking background from my mom, she baked the bread and made the dessert, I cooked the meal. But I knew that it wouldn’t be the same, I hadn’t really helped her making the bread, and had only made focaccia for myself thus far, and usually our cake decorating skills were only for family eyes anyway, so it really didn’t matter. We made sponge cakes, and challah bread, French bread, Italian butter cream…it was pretty great! My teacher German, and he was pretty hardcore but I really liked him, and I learned so much from him. He had a very strong background in food science, so all of that was really interesting—as long as you could keep up with him! We had to ice a cake perfectly for our practical, and we had never practiced it before, he just did it and we had to copy it for a final grade…intense.
The next day we had to make pastry cream for our practical and I had missed the day we did it in class because I had strep throat. The night before I had to make the pastry cream I stayed out a little later than I should have and was in a bar that was held up. We got shot at, yelled at, it was pretty damn crazy, and then we had to stay for hours to give the police our statements—and of course I was last to give mine! Needless to say, I was a little stressed out for my pastry cream practical, I knew it would be like making hollandaise sauce or something—timing and temperature would be crucial. My chef hovered over my shoulder while I was making it at the stove, followed me back to my table as I was finishing it. Al the while, I know I’m totally destroying it, something isn’t working, and he’s right there, not saying a word—because he can’t, and I just wanted to cry. I had slept like two hours the night before after all was said and done, and I never told him about it because I didn’t want him to think that I wanted any special treatment or anything. He finally leaned over to me and said, “We can go next door and get some powder that you mix with water that will be better than that.” Damn! That was the point I had to go into the freezer….I did remake the pastry cream perfectly though, sometimes it takes destroying something to perfect it. First and only B of the term. :(
I learned so much this term, I loved to cook before, I love the hub bub of a restaurant, I love high stress jobs where you look down and the next thing you know its 6 hours later and each class trained me for all of the things that I loved. I know its not near as stressful as actually being on a line in a restaurant, but I have learned the basic techniques, and some steps above the basic, and that is what is important to me. I feel like I can step in and perform any recipe, my cuts might not be as perfected as they will be after I brunoise a gallon of salsa everyday for a year, but that comes with practice. Our class had been though a lot too, like I said, we were with the same group throughout all of these classes, so once again, similar to a restaurant, but more importantly dealing with different people, ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities. We all had our fights, but we all came out united in a way. Like when you experience something life changing with someone, it creates a connection that you keep with you forever. Perhaps I'm being sentimental and nostalgic because it was the first term at school, but I don't care!
We started this class on a Friday and over the weekend I went home right after class because my grandmother, who has been sick with Alzheimer’s for over a decade, was close to passing away. She actually passed away that Sunday, I had just left home to return to school because I had probably the biggest project assigned to us due in Menu Planning and Cost Control (I’ll tell you about this class later) the next day and I had to finish up my demographics information. So I found out when I got home, somehow finished the project, and had the go to school the next day, Monday, before the whirlwind wake, service, and burial on the other side of the state on Tuesday.
ow to fix it and you already have a bachelors degree and have completed advanced calculus at a real academic college, you aren’t going to take this 18 year old centered, bad high school, 4x81=? type crap. Anyway the start of that Monday was getting this slip, so then we skipped lecture and started cooking. Our first step of the morning is to do our cuts, which we practice on potatoes. I had cut them all long way and was cutting them the other way when I got myself. I didn’t even really feel it, I knew I cut myself though, and I turned around immediately to go to the sink and then I saw some white down in my thumb—I cut the tip off! Shit! I wrapped it in paper towel and started squeezing because the blood was now flowing, went back to my cutting board, got the tip off of it, and went to the nurse. Oh my god did I get myself! They had to put this sulphur-ish powder on it to clot it and I swear it hurt less than the actual cutting of my thumb hurt…one of the few times in life that I’ve screamed the ‘f’ word. My teacher was so nice about it, maybe a little too excited because he wanted to see the tip, which we had already discarded because they weren’t going to try to reattach it or get stitches (it would have been my first stitches ever! (not counting surgery) I almost got them once over my eyelid but that’s a totally different story).
p separately and freeze them, its great
if you live alone. Anyway, on day 3 we came into class and had these huge hunks of beef waiting for us, and the next it was a whole pork loin. It was great—20 pounds to break down and I realized that I really enjoy breaking down a huge chunk of meat, or a primal cut, as I learned. I only wish that I had the opportunity to do it on a regular basis so that I knew all the steps by heart. It was great pulling out the beef and pork tenderloins, how freaking cool. Plus we got to fabricate baby back ribs, so yummy. This was definitely my favorite chef since I got here, he knows what he’s talking about, he’s liberal and anti-government/USDA, don’t get me wrong, it was just more that he would open your eyes to the standards that are in place in our country and the potential for outbreak, and try to inspire us to make changes. We cooked some of each, steaks, ribs, lamb, sausage, only with an addition of salt and pepper and it was so good. Especially when you’ve been up since 5:45am, you haven’t eaten anything, and its 10:15am—crucial. Then we did veal, which was okay, not as exciting, just a huge hunk boneless veal that we scraped the fat off of and then cut into roasts for stew or to be ground. All the while we got to make pork sausage too, our group made breakfast sausage, and some groups got to make things like chorizo and one group made a sweet sausage I think. We got to fill them in the casings and everything. Then we got to do a lamb rack and a lamb leg which was really great, it’s always good to get practice frenching. For our practical we had to break down two chickens, one statler style and one boneless skinless, pretty crazy. My chef decided it would be really funny to have a bullhorn in class and I ripped my oyster jumping from it—crap!
