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!
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