Chicken and Starch

Jennifer Tillou: On my way to becoming a chef.

This week at school was a lot of fun. I'll start by telling you about my Monday classes. On Mondays I have Food Sanitation class and an hour later, is Menu Design. Food Sanitation class is really boring to me. At least until your teacher comes in and tells you that someone shit their pants upstairs and there are  two piles in the hallway. The smell traveled down the stairs and almost got to our room until we shut the door. CLOSE CALL! I haven't laughed that hard at school in a looooooong time. It was just so funny.

Anyways, then I went to Menu Design. Every three weeks in that class, we get to work in the kitchen learning how to fabricate meats. Yesterday was our third week and so we learned how to fabricate a whole chicken. Meaning, we each had a whole chicken and had to separate it into 8 pieces: 2 wings, 2 thighs, 2 breasts, and 2 legs. I had a lot of fun doing this. I got done with mine fairly quick. I had to ask the Chef a few questions but otherwise, the others around me were asking me what to do and if they were doing it right. It made me feel good that so many people were asking me how to do it. I helped three people and when they asked the chef if they did it right, he said it looked perfect. That made me SO happy! When it comes to cooking and the kitchen, I soak that information up like a sponge.

Me and my partner had to use the thighs and make a recipe from the book. It was a creamy vegetable sort of sauce. My partner made that and I worked on our vegetable. With every dish we make, Chef gives us a vegetable that we can cook how he tells us but we can put whatever we want in it. Our vegetable this week was Belgian Endive and Spinach, which had to be sautéed. My partner and I wanted to incorporate bacon so I rendered some bacon and put the bacon bits on a paper towel to soak up the grease. The leftover bacon grease that was left in the pan was used to sauté our spinach and julienned endive. I threw in a little salt and basil that I chopped with the chiffonade technique. Chef liked it. And my partner who hates spinach had some and actually really liked it! He ate his spinach!!! That was a proud moment for me.

Today, in Food Science, it was a carb-loading day! 

Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes! 

We had to make mashed potatoes (one regular batch and the other half however we wanted), rice pilaf, and risotto. We also had to choose to either make gnocchi or candied sweet potatoes. I don't like gnocchi so I chose to do the sweet potatoes because I LOVE POTATOES! Today we could either work by ourselves or with a partner. I worked by myself but there was another lady at my station too. She was really chill and I enjoyed working with her a lot. She asked me a few questions but it wasn't overwhelming. We had 3 hours to get all of this done. 

Candied Sweet Potatoes

We started our sweet potatoes first, using the books recipe (which I did not like). We both messed up our first batch. The potatoes still tasted good anyways. Then we did our second batch and we both had the best looking sweet potatoes in the class. I then started my rice pilaf which was actually a lot easier than I was expecting. That turned out really well. I started boiling my potatoes for my mashed potatoes. I stuck a fork in one of my potatoes and it fell apart. So I thought they were done. They were actually under-cooked. I had told the whole class before we got in the kitchen that I LOVE POTATOES! The Chef said that he loves a woman that loves to eat (not in a creepy way). He also asked the class if any of us liked lumpy potatoes. Me and another girl raised our hands. He said, DO NOT MAKE LUMPY POTATOES! And that was when I told my class about my love for potatoes. <3 

Blue cheese ones on the left. Regular on the right.

I started making my regular mashed potatoes that turned out really really good! I told him that I accidentally messed up so my mashed potatoes would be lumpy. I gave him a spoon of my potatoes and said, "Now tell me those aren't the best lumpy potatoes you've ever had." He said, "they were some of the best lumpy potatoes he's ever had." And gave me a fist bump! I was beaming. The other mashed potatoes I made were blue cheese and sour cream mashed potatoes and those were really good too! I LOVE MASHED POTATOES! 

I made my risotto last. It turned out a little salty because of the chicken stock. It still had really good flavor though. I haven't made risotto in a while so it was a little tricky today. 

Rice Pilaf

At the end of class, we all had to go around and tell everyone what we did really good at and what we didn't do so good at. I told them that I didn't like making the sweet potatoes because the recipe was too complicated. I also told them that at Thanksgiving, when my family makes sweet potatoes, we throw a SHITLOAD of butter and brown sugar on them. Chef asked if SHITLOAD was a cooking term and I just told him that he'd learn about it in some of the later chapters. ZING! I also told them that my LUMPY mashed potatoes turned out really well.

    

Risotto

I definitely had a lot of fun this week at school. So far i'm loving the culinary program. I also went to the first Epicurian Club meeting on Monday. They might have the club on Thursdays so I may have to start going on Thursdays but we'll see. I also JUST BOUGHT MY KNIVES! I'm really excited! I've wanted Wusthof knives for a few years now and I finally bought them. 

I have no where to go except up. :)