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.