40 cloves and counting

Last Thursday we had an extensive menu in class which included "Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic." I do not remember how it turned out in class Thursday so I thought I would give it a try the next day. I served it with some non-instant couscous flavored with some Meyer lemons and zest. I didn't get the couscous steamed very well so that part of our meal was so so at best. The chicken was just OK (my food critic described the taste as "a little dark") - I might try this again when the weather is a little more conducive for grilling the chicken before it gets braised. Also I think I may have been a little heavy on the amount of oil used to brown the chicken and the garlic cloves. So I see another 40 cloves in my future.

Yes, it was me

Yes that wonderful aroma of steaks on the 'barbie at 7:00 PM was created by me grilling USDA Prime rib eyes on my charcoal-fired Weber last night in the dark. Yes I know that the outside temperature was 20 degrees but the wind was non-existent so it only felt like 20 degrees. Yes I served those steaks with some Bearnaise sauce (the kind of Bearnaise Chef would say is for a "leetle girl") and Chef's creamed spinach. The steaks and spinach were pretty tasty. You know, sometimes in winter you just have to say, "What the heck." One of these days I'm going to make a real Bearnaise . . .

Damn it, Chef

First, it was "illegal" Chef bread. Now, the list has grown to include oatmeal cookies. I'm not much of a fan for cookies, especially any cookie with fruit in it. The recipe was modified to eliminate the raisins and dates - I substituted craisins, toasted pecans and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Damn.

Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde

Our menu today certainly wasn't one of my favorites for the quarter. Yet if I had to "sign up" for more sessions on this menu, I would be first in line. Today's menu is one of the reasons why I'm in school - to expand my culinary horizon beyond the the everyday type of things we tend to cook. Veggie burgers - I don't think so - but Brian's burger was really good and showed how someone with some skills and imagination can take some rather mundane ingredients and make them literally sing.

We had chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes with a side dish of quinoa pilaf for dinner - maybe I'm making some progress - who knows?

Meat, please . . .

Looks like we are having veggie burgers in class on Moday so to prepare myself for meatless Monday I tried a new recipe, Poblano Albondigas with Ancho Chile Soup (poblano meatballs). I though the soup was just OK and the meatballs were a little soft when cooked. I'm not sure how to make them firmer (perhaps more panko to firm them up or maybe cooking the meatballs a bit before putting them in the soup would have helped - the meatballs also had grated zucchini in them).

Score!

Every now and then it's rewarding to try something new and have it turn out well. We just consumed the ribs that I braised yesterday and this is the first time that I have prepared this type of meat where it has not been dry and overcooked. These country style ribs were moist and tender, their flavor reflected the braising liquid flavorings (onion, fennel, apple cider vinegar, apple cider, chicken stock, cinnamon sticks, red pepper flakes) and the sauce from the reduced braising liquid was very nice.

Win some lose some
Well the cake came out of the oven in good order but it didn't come out of the pan in a like manner - maybe next time . . .

The veloute turned out better, as did the mac & cheese. I'm still trying to find the "best" combination of cheeses.

The pork is braising away in the oven, uncovered at 350 degrees. We'll see how this goes.

The Braise

I was planning on using the same braising liquid from the short ribs to cook my country style pork ribs. However, the staining power (on the sink, cutting board, etc.) of the adobo sauce changed my mind. So I headed to the basement archives last night in search of some braising articles and recipes. An old Fine Cooking (March, 2002) had an article on braising in a section called "Cooking Without Recipes" written by Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (the picture of him is a scream - younger, skinnier and some hair . . .). These articles typically describe the technique and list a variety of ingredients - no real recipes. Looks like I may use onion and fennel for the aromatics; some cinnamon sticks, cider vinegar, garlic and red pepper flakes for flavor; and chicken stock with apple cider for the braising liquids.

No class today so I tried roasting onions at 400 degrees in a dutch oven instead of carmelizing them in a saute pan. This method supposedly is less labor intensive; however, the onions did not seem as sweet as the ones we did in class for French Onion soup. The soup turned out OK but I think next time I'll just carmelize them on the stove.

The recipe called for 1/4 cup of sherry

I have had a gift certificate (from my friend Ed) to the Corkscrew since last August. I've been in the store a number of times but haven't really found any wines that just jumped out at me (other than a label from Roshambo Winery which sold out shortly after I saw it but that is another story and I digress - see the attached photo). Anyway, it finally dawns on me that I should use this gift to add some additional spirits to my collection for cooking purposes. So today I picked up a bottle of ruby port, a dry sherry, some madeira and a bottle of marsala (chef said he thought this stuff would have a lengthy shelf life even when opened). So today was the day to fill this perceived void in my pantry.

Only "The Best" for birthdays

We had three birthdays last week in my Wednesday Protein Fabrication class so I think I will make a cake for our next class. The name of the recipe is "The Best Chocolate Bundt Cake" although I've made it a couple of times and maybe it is and maybe it isn't. The recipe says all that is needed on the cake is a dusting of confectioners' sugar but a nice chocolate ganache is really a tasty addition . . .

Veloute

Tomorrow is also veloute day as our family recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese uses this mother sauce along with mozzarella, white cheddar, Emmenthaler and Parmesan cheeses. I think this is a pretty good recipe.

We just finished off some Bananas Foster as I have vowed that my bottle of Creme de Banana is not going to evaporate faster than the time it takes for me to use it up.

The ribs were tasty and the sauce not too spicy but the arroz verde did not turn out as I would have liked. It had good flavor and I substituted some Hatch green chilies in lieu of some roasted, pureed poblanos. That change resulted in a much lighter color of green for the rice which in turn did not provide the visual contrast I was seeking between the ribs, rice and hominy.

Now I'm off to clean the kitchen - another technique which is being reinforced in spades at culinary school . . . you know one of the reasons I went to college was to avoid washing dishes . . .

After the ribs came out of the oven last night, I placed them in my blast chiller (AKA as my garage). I removed the solidified fat from the pan this morning and then reheated the pan in a low oven for about thirty minutes. I added some stock and a little lime juice to thin the pan juices. This braising liquid has a pretty good bite (I assume from the chipotles) but I think will make a nice sauce. I adjusted the seasoning of the liquid before returning the pan to the garage. Now I need to figure out what will accompany the ribs. I'm leaning toward yellow hominy and perhaps some arroz verde.

Yesterday I completed my first demi-glace in Soup & Sauce Cookery. I'm apparently roux-impaired as this was the second class in a row where I needed to add additional roux to get my sauce to thicken properly to - you guessed it - a "sauce consistency." Last week it was my attempt at bechamel and this week it was my espagnole sauce.

However, I eventually got to where I needed and my demi-glace ended up looking like a proper sauce - a milestone.


"Alice in Wonderland"
I'm guessing that class will be as close to a commercial kitchen that I'll get so I'm a little bit like Alice in Wonderland. For example, Chef told us to put our demi-glace in a small hotel pan, cool it down in the blast chiller and then transfer it to a plastic container for future use. So I placed my demi-glace in the blast chiller (which I hadn't used before) and then took a break with the rest of the class to eat our pasta and review what we had learned from today's lab. This took about half an hour. When I went back to retrieve my sauce and I was amazed to find a nicely solidified lump of sauce with little frost crystals all over the hotel pan. I thought to myself, "God, this thing really works ." and I showed three other classmates the pan. Funny thing, they all said the exact same thing, "God, that thing really works!" - and even Angel said the same thing (although she apologized for saying God . . .)


Fridays are always my day to catch up on my To Do List and to start cooking something. I ended up visiting Sur La Table to see their new sous vide machine - it's so new to the store that the store staff had no idea what it was. I walked out with a new 10-inch non-stick frying pan - a long over due replacement. I also picked up a stainless steel colander at Hockenbergs and ordered three more nested colanders from the Internet. (It's a sickness - I know). I then stopped by school to show my wife the old and new digs - her first visit to the ICA.


The trip home required several stops to find some reasonably priced ancho peppers - I needed about 4 peppers for a new recipe. Turns out that Baker's had a one pound package for about $9 with a Use By date of June, 2009. Hy Vee had one ounce packages for $3 - I guessed each one had about 3 peppers in it. I ended up at Wal Mart where a five minute search yielded the same one pound package like Baker's only it cost $5 - however, no Use By date . . .

I'm cooking Short Ribs Braised in Ancho Chile Sauce, a fairly straight forward recipe that uses ancho chiles and canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce along with onion, garlic, maple syrup, lime juice, the soaking liquid from the ancho chiles and some coffee for the braising liquid. I added some Hatch green chiles to increase the heat of the sauce. The ribs went into the oven at 7:00 PM. A note on the recipe says the ribs improve in flavor if braised two days ahead of serving so we'll eat these on Sunday or Monday. I am also hoping that the braising liquid will be good to reuse with some baby back pork ribs next week.

One thing about those chipotle chiles in adobo sauce - I chopped them up on a white plastic cutting board and it now looks like I have a permanently orange stained cutting board . . .

Practicals today. My three plates were a Fennel, Red Pepper and Granny Smith Apple Salad with Shaved Parmesan, Anise Scented Squash Soup and a Fennel Gratin - three simple and straight forward dishes. The salad turned out OK, Chef suggested leaving the skin on the apple so the julienne cuts would have some green on the ends and he also thought the pepper cuts should have been the same size as the fennel and apples. Chef said the fennel was not evident in the soup (I used a 1:2 ratio of fennel to butternut squash) so I'll use a little more fennel and add some fennel seeds next time I make it.

Some of my fellow students created some fairly involved plates with somewhat mixed results in terms of flavors, execution and presentation. Overall, it was hard to tell what Chef thought about our practicals since we had a lot of leeway in our menu choices plus the range of kitchen experience among my fellow classmates seems pretty wide at times. Chef made no comment about seasoning on my three plates - a first . . .

We had a new menu item for the second class in a row that I made but had no real reference as to the taste profile. Last week was Ratatouille; this week we had an Artichoke Barigoule. By the way, that burning smell in the kitchen was from a quarter sized spot on my seared duck breast and my right arm (after I brushed an oven during an demo).

One of my objectives of coming to culinary school was to expand my taste horizons and MCC has been certainly doing that. Unfortunately, I am running out of class time as this quarter is quickly disappearing.

I have been experimenting with fennel in a variety of recipes with somewhat mixed results in terms of the final product - both taste and presentation. My wife has been pleasantly surprised by the dishes as she was expecting a more pronounced licorice flavor. I have been surprised by the sweetness of the cooked bulbs.

Week 5, Winter Quarter, January 5

Practicals next week are all about Fennel. Found that Baker's has the best price on the veggie, $2.99 each (not per pound) - I took home three for practice.