Leaving Good Impressions

For the past few days I've been more than a little stressed out. I never really thought that losing one of my jobs would make me worry so much. Yes, I have more free time but the fact of the matter is, I don't know what to do. I usually just live day-to-day; just kind of praying that God gets me through to the next. I have no doubts. I know everything will work itself out, one way or another. But there is one place that I have wanted to work for 2 years and I JUST WANT IT TO WORK OUT! Anyways, everything will be fine. I just need to stop worrying and be confident. 

So this week, the ACF (American Culinary Federation) has been at our school. This federation sends 3 or 4 ACF chefs to check up on the culinary program at Blackhawk Tech. I had forgotten all about that. I didn't go to school Monday because I was up really late because I didn’t feel very good. I used that day to sleep and clean and do homework. On Tuesday, we were learning all about beef. Cows are females who are used mostly for reproduction. Bulls are not used for beef but for their semen. And steers are what we eat. The good stuff. We learned a lot. Some things I knew about like, good marbling in a piece of meat. And there were some things I had never known or had even heard about.

When we got to the kitchen, we got to choose which piece of meat or which part of the meat we wanted to use. I chose the strip. He told me and the other lady where our recipe was located and gave us a few pointers, as he did with everyone else. My recipe was Pepper Steak. I had to use a small sauté pan to crush black peppercorns on a sheet tray. He didn’t want us to coat our strip with peppercorns like they showed in the book. In the book, that piece of meat had a really decent layer of peppercorns. Mine was pretty perfect. I had to sauté my pepper steak in clarified butter on high heat making sure the butter didn’t burn. Once it had been sautéed on both sides to medium rare, you take the pan off of the heat and add cognac (we used brandy), count to five then put the pan back on the heat. I had to flambé the meat so that means it had to catch on fire. Once that was done, you let your steak rest but I put mine in a warming oven because it was undercooked. Then I made the sauce. You add heavy creamy and let that reduce. Then my teacher added veal glaze to give it a richer flavor. I added a touch of salt and mixed it up. Then the finishing touch was to add some cold whole butter (not clarified) and mix it around until it was all melted. The end result was rich and creamy and really good with my steak!

Of course, like the previous weeks, we had to also make a vegetable and a starch. 

The vegetable he assigned to us this week was green beans. We could do whatever we wanted to them. He wanted us to doctor them up. What I did was simple. I sautéed my green beans, added a few heirloom tomatoes for color, and to finish it I added a pinch of fresh lime zest. They were probably the easiest vegetable I had ever made and they tasted fresh and awesome.

Last but not least, I impressed the ACF chefs.

For our starch we had to make 5 tournet (tour-nay) potatoes. No one likes making these but it is a knife skill every good chef should learn. I was tourneting my potatoes and I was checking them out in my hand and my chef said, “Those are good, Jennifer.” I thought they looked awesome. Then one of the ACF chefs came over and was observing me and the two others working beside me. We were all tourneting potatoes and he said, “I’d give her a 20 dollar bill to do mine.” I was like, “Hell yeah! Give me 20 dollars and I’ll tournet your potatoes.” Then another one of the ACF chefs came over to me because they were talking about my potatoes and he checked them out. He said, “You’re using that knife and tourneting potatoes?!” I said, “Yeah, I haven’t bought my knives yet and I couldn’t find a pairing knife.” I was using a utility knife. Not a chefs knife but like a boning knife for cleaning meat. They were all impressed! I impressed the ACF chefs!!! This is a pretty big deal. I did all 5 of my potatoes in 30 minutes or so. I taught the girl next to me how to do it too and her potatoes looked almost better than mine! Her flank steak turned out awesome and I congratulated her at the end of the day! I was proud of her! I’ve worked with her before and you can tell that she is improving every week. She thanked me a few times for helping her with her potatoes. It was a really good day, overall. I LOVE SCHOOL!