My Day as MOD

            So a couple of days ago I was MOD for my soup stocks and sauces classes. We were working the Pacific Northwest region and I was extremely nervous about giving my presentation. Lucky for me my presentation was the last thing that needed to be done besides clean up.  We started the day like we have pretty much every other session. Came in did our mise and knife skills and got started on our recipes. 

            Prior to class I had realized that the original timeline had Amanda, a classmate of mine, doing the blackberry yogurt recipe which was actually my M.O.D assignment, in addition to a soup.  There also was no specific amount of time allotted to my demo prep.  However Amanda and I got to speak before class and decided that I would still make and attempt to do the mussels, in addition to the other two soups I had, but would likely need some help.  And I did.  Thankfully I had an amazing team who were able to pick up right where I needed them to and help finish the dish on time.  Now that the food was done it was time for the demo.

            The nervousness I felt before class had subsided quite a bit having spent a couple hours cooking and therefore keeping my mind off of it. But now it was time and I felt my nerves trying to get the better of me.  They would not prevail! I gave my presentation and then did my demo of a salmon chowder (which ran a bit longer then expected).  Whew! I survived! Now all that was left was cleaning.

            At the end of it all I really enjoyed being M.O.D. I think with  practice presenting to groups will undoubtedly become easier.  I had already known how important it was to have a strong team but today, when I needed help, I really saw just how important it was.  Another thing that was definitely reinforced in my mind was the need for proper planning , making sure the appropriate time is allotted to a project by practicing at home before coming to class. Overall it was a smooth sailing experience that couldn’t have been successful without the help of my wonderful team!

Floribean Cuisines

In my soups, stocks and sauce class I was M.O.D, which is manager of the day. I was responsible for making sure that everything was done in the alloted time which was 2 hours. We had to prepare a consomme, which is a beef or veal broth. Once you mix all the ingredients together you put it in the pot to simmer and form a raft on top.I put my pot on and began making another recipe not realizing that it had begun to boil which broke my raft. It still turned out okay but my broth was not as clear as it could have been. I now know that I have to pay closer attention and watch how high I have my fire up.
We made recipes from the Floribbean cuisine,shrimp ceviche,roasted pork tenderloin cuban style,mango chutney,mojo and white bean mesclin salad. Our Chef prepared wonderful conch chowder.I was assigned the task of making the pork and the mojo.The mojo a form of salsa, had mango, cilantro,jalepeno peppers and orange juice.It had to be cooled before serving and I did not realize it was still in the cooler untill the last 15 seconds.It made it on the plate and turned out very nice. The cuban pork on the other hand,well lets just say I had a few issues.I began to cook my pork earlier than I should have and as a result it was done before everything else.I pulled it from the oven and assumed that as long as it remained covered it would be fine and still hot by the time it was ready to plate. Chef brought it to my attention that it would not be hot. He informed me that as long as I had the oven temperature set to the same as the internal temperature of the pork it would be fine. I still took it out of the oven several times after that, I guess fearing that I would not have time to slice and plate in time.I will have to use better judgment and time management next time.
In spite of a several mishaps, we managed to get everything finished on time. Bieng M.O.D is alot of pressure and a great learning experience. It has made me aware of some of the things I need to work on.I need to read the recipes completely before class and have a better game plan so that I am more organized and can make more efficient judgment calls.

Southwest Cuisines

I learned that the Southwest is more complex and unique than I originally thought.  One can never dig deep enough into research to fully understand a region and its cuisine.  I also learned that most people’s view of Southwestern food is skewed by franchise restaurants and vague information on the internet.  I guess the best way to learn about food is to travel and I definitely want to go to the southwest someday, particularly New Mexico.  There are also more major differences between Southwestern and Tex-Mex than I thought.  I now know why people get them confused.  The enchiladas I made, although a Colorado recipe, are probably considered more Tex-Mex.  As far as the production of session 9 last night I thought everyone did a great job.  I think it’s a great opportunity to work in a small group like this.  I could always be more vocal (communication is very important in a kitchen).  I thought I could have taken more on as far as recipes go, but I do think we were all very organized.  All the food tasted great.  I enjoyed Amanda’s stuffed peppers with roasted salsa, Cynthia’s knife cuts were amazing, and Bethany’s quail was very tender.  Next time I will remember to get the fat out of the soup with a paper towel.  If I could change a few things about session 9 I would have gone into detail about some authentic recipes from New Mexico, and I would have been more vocal.

Brown Mother Sauces

This session I admit we were a bit unorganized.  I learned that it’s hard to get everyone in a kitchen on the same page all the time, but it is completely necessary for success.  I was in charge of the tomato sauce and I thought they were going very well until the end when I mixed the Peterson's and the on cooking tomato sauce together.  The final product still turned out but the point was to compare the two and a miscommunication caused me to combine the two at the end.  So, we are going to do them again next week.  There were only three of us in class today and we were doing the Mid Atlantic and Demi-glace.  All the demi-glaces turned out, but I think one was a little scorched on the bottom of the pot and affected the entire taste of the sauce.   Overall the sauces tasted good and were rich in flavor. Through out the night I would do time checks and ask if anyone needed help.  This isn’t always enough.  We must come prepared and work as a solid team.  Everyone must take initiative at some point during the night.  My two favorite dishes were the braised short ribs and the spicy crab soup.  I believe the soup could have used more spice, but I still really enjoyed it.  The Navy bean soup was good as well, but it was not my favorite recipe.

California Cuisine

Yesterday I was MOD for the second class session. I felt like things went a little smoother than last time. We had all of our ingredients so that made things easier. I felt like we were well prepared for our recipes. The timeline was a little off because we had budgeted for my presentation to be at the beginning instead of the end. I feel like it worked out alright though. I made the sautéed duck breast. I do not usually do the entrée for class, so it was a good learning experience. I have never worked with duck or even tasted it. It is pretty easy to cook if you know what you are doing. The demo helped a lot. I was afraid I was going to undercook it, so after I seared it I put it in the oven where it got a little overdone. I loved the taste. Even the more gamey ones tasted great to me, they were just a little tougher. The sauce I made was a rushed, but I liked the taste of that also. The sweet really complimented the duck. As a group I feel like we are much more in sync overall. We know what to do and where to go when we have down time. It did take a couple class sessions to get there, but we are really meshing as a team in my opinion. I also was nervous about my presentation, but I felt like that went alright. There was so much information; I had a hard time covering it all. I loved listening to Chef talk about his experiences in California since I am going in a month.

Food of the South

Today we made food from southern cuisine. This included Hollandaise, hoppin John, Smothered pork chops, southern fried chicken with cream gravy, and frogmore stew. I was nervous about today because I still feel like I know less than some of my classmates, so it is harder for me to take a leadership role. I was unable to attend our schedule meeting to discuss the timeline and plan everything out, but my classmates were able to do that for Wed and Thurs. This is the first class we came in knowing what recipes we were doing, and when we needed to start them. Since we knew what knife cuts we needed to do, we were able to prep a lot better. There was a lot more talking in the kitchen. We did not stay exactly on the timeline, but we got out on time, cleaned as we went and did everything in the order they needed done. Chef Brown did a demo of Hollandaise and the four of us made one for him to taste throughout the class. This went really well. All of our sauces turned out. The one big thing that went wrong was we were missing a lot of ingredients. We were given turkey wings instead of chicken, and veal chops instead of pork chops. Chef Brown looked around for the right meat and we had to thaw it out to use. We also didn’t have the right kind of wine. We made it all work there was just a little bit of confusion at the beginning of class. Some things I learned were how to make hollandaise. I have never seen that done or tasted it. I was also nervous about being MOD, but if we work as a team it is not that bad. I need to lead the class, but we are a team and work together.

The Most Important Tool is Communication

In the second session of class, we further explored the white mother sauces and experimented with some of the different thickening agents. This was quite a feat, since there were only three people in class. We had to work together and improve the communication from the previous class or it would have been a complete failure. Before each step, we discussed who would be doing which task and set our expectations. I believe that we improved 100% from the previous night. Not only did we achieve all the items assigned for the session (with Chef’s help), but we also finished early.

We used each of the four stocks that we started in the first session to make chicken soup. As we strained the stocks, we found that the one made in the steam kettle was almost clear, due to the low even heat releasing fewer impurities from the bones. The stock made in the tilt skillet had a lot of spume on top and was still rather murky when it was strained, since that piece of equipment is not capable of retaining the lower temperatures. The aluminum pot with the spigot also had very clear stock, due to draining from below the spume instead of pouring it through a chinoise. I was also curious if this pot would give the stock a slightly metallic taste, but we did not taste the straight stocks. It was not noticeable in the soup. The stock made in the stainless steel pot was not as clear as the steam kettle.

Each of our chicken soups was made with a different thickening agent. The soup using reduced chicken stock had a very powerful chicken flavor. The soups using the roux and the corn starch slurry did not have quite the chicken flavor, but they were both acceptable in flavor and mouth feel. This is just further evidence of the argument that has been going on for over 100 years that a roux is not necessarily the best thickening agent out there. The soup using the chicken base was rather fake tasting, like a condensed soup out of a can.

Overall, I think that we improved greatly from the previous session, and I can only hope that we continue to improve!

I’m a Midwesterner, but I spent sixteen years in the west, ashamed of the giant block of cheese and butter cow of state fair fame. Ah, the state fair, where every foodstuff is served “on a stick” as if that were a regional translation of a la carte.  But the state fair is a microcosm of Midwestern cuisine: we joke about chocolate-covered bacon on a stick while we buy enough to make it a caloric homerun. It also demonstrates our sense of community and food.  We work together, we eat together, and in the company of our neighbors, we modestly accept our blue ribbons.

This cuisine we love is called “comfort food,” a predictable warm quilt. Rather than look at this cuisine quilt as fatty squares of ethnic food, it makes more sense to me to divide our cuisines into two sides, the plain side loved by the country mouse and the fancy side favored by the city cousin.

 In this fable, I’m solidly country. I grew up in the poorest county in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula where “eating local” and “farm-to-table” did not exist as labels for the hunter-gatherer behaviors in which we engaged. I grew up eating more venison than beef because the former was essentially free--free but for our Midwestern labor…another source of our self-effacing pride.

The change of rural seasons meant labor in the form of strawberry picking, blueberry season, blackberry pie, and apples from homesteads that my grandmother found though they’d ceased to exist years before I was born. As a child, my canning season job was to count the pop of the sealing jars, and all summer, to weed a row in the garden before going anywhere.

And now, back in the Midwest, I go to the state fair, eat the whatever-on-a-stick,  and am modestly proud that we were a community before slow food was cool.

The Case of the Missing Butt

Session 8 (Barbeque) has been and will more than likely be my favorite class in soup stocks.  Unfortunately I had to name the session “The Case of the Missing Butt” because we could not locate the nicely seasoned port butt the when class started.  To this day (several weeks later), it still has not reappeared.  Amazing!

Team 2 or AKA Team Woodchuck (Christina, Greg, Linda, and myself) started class as we normally do. 

The first 15 minutes of class we use for preparation for the class.  Linda obtained all/most of the equipment, Christine started cutting the necessary vegetable, Greg retrieved the cold storage  items and I retrieved the dry storage items.

Around 5:45 or so, the class gathered for presentations.  This day, Christina and I both were presenting and I must say that hers was the most interactive and entertaining.  You will read more about Christina’s presentation in her blog.  As for my presentation, I began my lecture with the origin of Barbeque along with the different meanings of the word.  The next topic was about the different types of meat and the regions they were most common for barbequing.  I ended my lecture by listing the many types of wood used for barbecuing, the proper temperatures, and the proper way to setup a grill or smoker for barbecuing.

After the presentations we started cooking.  The menu for Team Woodchucks was Caldo De Res, Carolina Pulled Pork, Lower Carolina Barbeque Sauce, Cole Slaw and Team 1 (Kay and Kelly) prepared Tortilla Soup, Memphis BBQ Pork Ribs, Memphis BBQ Sauce, French Fries.  Both teams finished and presented their food to be critiqued to our alternate Chef for the day as Chef England wasn’t able to be with us.  Too bad too because the food pretty darn good. 

Last but not least, we all prepared our plates and gathered around the family table for Chef to describe and explain the many dishes and then we were entertained with the video of the BBQ song for us.  I must say that it was a pretty nice way to end a meal and a class.

Taste is all about the Tongue



The tip of the tongue is where you taste the flagpole.



What an exciting day we had class in yesterday! We learned about New England cuisine and made some delicious food to go along with it.  The class really seemed to learn a lot about not only the cuisine but also about working in groups.

Yesterday Team 1 was in charge of making New England clam chowder, marinated tomato and zucchini salad.  Team 2 made coleslaw, cod cakes, and tartar sauce to go with it.  All the food turned out delicious and I was very surprised in the ways Chef England had us try the food.  I had never put much thought into the actual down right taste of my food.   Chef first showed is a picture of tongue and all the different spots on the tongue where we taste these flavors.  The five flavors we sense on our tongue are: bitter, sweet, sour, salt, and umami. He had us try things in a certain order and also to taste the food with another food with to get a completely different taste. I was shocked at how different the coleslaw, cod cakes, and tartar sauce tasted when ate them all separately and when you ate all three together.  Also same with New England chowder, we first tried the chowder plain, and then we added Worcestershire sauce and that really brought out an umami flavor. Next we added Tabasco sauce and the chowder yet again tasted a lot different then the first time.  It was really neat to understand tasting food this way.

While we had a little ups and down during the day with our team, we are slowly but surely getting the hang of how this class goes.  Teams are working well together and getting things done, mostly in the nick of time.  All we need to remember is a mess on our table equals a mess in our mind. J