Apricot Custard

Making stock of things

So, I had a funny flashback in the locker room before tonight's class: as I was putting on my chef's whites, I had a vivid memory of 30+ years ago when I was an altar boy (!), when I'd be in the sacristy putting on my cassock and surplice to get ready for serving mass.   Just something about the ritual of dressing in a uniform for work ...

Ok, so tonight's class.  Stocks are the foundation of French cooking - so many French dishes require a sauce based on a stock, or there'll be a soup or stew with a stock base.   The base of almost all stocks are animal bones, which give the stock flavor and body.   Various aromatics, including herbs and vegetables, are added to provide even more layers of flavor. For our third class made stock - several as a four-person team in smallish quantities, and a couple which we done by one of our chef instructors,  with some input by the class.

I'd made stocks at home a few times, usually chicken stock (I usually start with a full chicken at home, instead of bones, and then use the meat for sandwiches).   I'd also helped by mum when I was a kid - she'd taken a series of Cordon Bleu classes and one of the first things she started doing at home was making stocks:  I remember trays of bones going into the oven to be browned, and then we'd spend a couple of hours skimming the stock as it simmered.   But it is one of those things that is best done in a large quantity, because of the time commitment, and a professional kitchen is well-equipped for that. 

We start cooking!

Day two.  Most of today's class was about food safety.   The main hazards that we need to keep out of our food are biological (bacteria, toxins), chemical (pesticides, cleaning agents), and physical (glass, hair, staples).  We learned about our sanitizing solution that we need to keep at our stations for clean-up, and we calibrated our meat thermometers.   The lesson stressed how important it is to ensure that food is kept safe at every step in the "flow of food": the purchasing, receiving, storing, preparing, cooking, holding, cooling, reheating, and serving.

Today we were also shown two techniques for cooking vegetables.  First, we julienned some carrots and did a macedoine of turnip.   These were the same cuts we did on the first night, and ones I want to keep practicing at home.  The equipment I used was a peeler for the carrots, and my 9" chef's knife.  Before we begin prep we set our stations up with a cutting board, set on a damp paper towel to prevent it slipping, and a bowl for peelings and a bowl for trimmings (carrot trimmings are kept as aromatics for stock).  

My station

First Day of School

It was just a small nick - a little bubble of blood, didn't really hurt at all, but I still felt pretty stupid! A quick trip to the first aid kit took care of it - a band aid and a rubber finger guard - and I was back to my station and resumed practicing my knife skills.   First day at cooking school and we're learning all the basic knife cuts for using on vegetables.

Tronconner.

Emincer.

Ciseler.

Jardinere.

Macedoine.

Julienne.

After a tour of the kitchen and all the cooking equipment, we were presented with our knife kits (apart from cookware, most of our cooking equipment will be personally owned and maintained, such as our knives, our spoons, our spatulas, our whisks, and our pepper mill).  Our chef demonstrated various methods of cutting vegetables, or taillage, and we grab a bowl of carrots, turnips, and onions and start working on cutting our own vegetables.    We did emincer (thinly sliced) and ciseler (fine dice) on the onions, julienne (6-7cm x 1-2mm strips) and brunoise (1-2 mm x 1-2mm, cut from julienne) on the carrots, and jardinere (5cm x 5mm batons) and macedoine (5mm x 5mm cubes, cut from jardinere) on the turnips.   We also skinned tomatoes by scoring, blanching, shocking, then peeling them (process known as monter), and did a simple rough cut called concasser.

All set!

Three chef's hats.
Three chef's coats. 
Three pairs of black & white check pants. 
Three neckerchiefs.
Three aprons.
Three side towels.
One pair of Dansko clogs.
One water bottle.

Note to self:  pick up a small notebook, index cards, and some sharpies. And a lock for my locker.

Cooking school starts tonight.

Can't wait!!!

Taking the plunge

Tomorrow evening I'll walk into a kitchen with 23 other students, and begin the nine month Classic Culinary Arts program at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo. 

(via Flickr)

Learning to cook professionally has long been a dream of mine, one that even earlier this year I wasn't sure could become a reality.  Certainly the time commitment was quite substational, as were the fees.   It is also well-known that a newly-minted chef can expect to work very long hours for very little pay.   Yet, this was something I kept coming back to - from age about 10 and first considering it an career option, to seriously pondering it ever few years in the following decades.  So, not wanted to be mired in regret a few years down the road, I took what was really my only option to fund the course, and did an early withdrawal of my IBM savings account retirement plan, and enrolled in the Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday evening classes.

Each of those nights I'll be in school for five hours, and there'll be a mixture of (mostly) practical hands-on kitchen work and some time in the classroom.    Every student has "Total Immersion" (that's the official FCI term, and it is service-marked!) during the training program, and has their own station in the teaching kitchens.   Later in the program, at Level 3 I believe, we'll work as a brigade in a more restaurant-like situation, so that we can take our individual basic skills and learn to apply them in a kitchen team.  

Overall the are six sections, or levels, and 600 hours later when I'm crowned with my toque I'll be ready to work in the kitchens of New York City and around the world. During my schooling I'll also have gained experience working at the school's restaurant L'Ecole, and hopefully have spend some time doing a stage at a restaurant or two around the city.

I hope to blog regularly about my time at the FCI, and I hope you'll join my on this adventure by reading my updates.   Let me know what you think, and if you've any questions.

More information about my course from the FCI Web site.