Culinary Arts Day 2

While I am taking more classes than just Culinary Arts and Baking and Pastry, I’m going to spare everyone the details of my lecture only/online classes.  Introduction to Hospitality is interesting to learn about, but not as interesting to talk about, although if anything interesting happens, I will post about it.  And my Certification in Sanitation class would just turn everyone off of eating at a restaurant ever again.  Something about leaning about all the possible bacteria, parasites, toxins, fungi, and viruses (only 2 transmissable through food, Hepatitis A and Norovirus) just kinda made me a little paranoid.

So, last night was my Culinary Arts class.  I have to say that I’m really enjoying my classes.  I have made some friends.  Some other career changers like myself, and a few young’uns just out of high school.  Last night’s lecture was concerning Kitchen Equipment, Knives, Knife Cuts, and Measurements.  We got a very good introduction to the different heavy equipment in the kitchen, including how to light the pilot lights on everything.  Very important to know if you don’t want to blow up your kitchen.

We learned the basics about our knives, what each is used for, how to sharpen them, and how to hone them.  Much of this I already knew.  I have sharpened tools before, including putting a razor sharp edge on some chisels and a butterfly knife I use at home for various things like opening boxes.  And I have honed kitchen knifes before using a steel.  I must say, if you don’t own a steel, buy one and use it.  It keeps your knifes ‘sharp’ between sharpenings.  It doesn’t actually sharpen the knives, it just straightens the cutting edge.  And if you have a decent set of knives that you use often, either sharpen them using a whetstone/oilstone or better yet, have them professionally reground around once a year.  Its not too expensive and sharp knives are not only safer, but will save you tons of aggrivation from trying to find a knife sharp enough to use.

We then learned the different knife cuts that we were going to practice that evening.  Simple at first.  Matchsticks and dice.  Our work in the kitchen last night was to dice 1/2 an onion and cut a carrot into batonnets and a small dice.  A batonnet is a matchstick cut 1/4″ x 1/4″ x 2-2 1/2″.  From there, we can cut the small dice, which is a 1/4″ cube.  I successfully diced my onion without crying, and cut my carrots fairly well.  My problem is that I don’t really have a good idea what 1/4″ actually looks like.  My cuts were a bit smaller than they should have been.  I have good technique, but need to practice judging size.  I figure a few hours of disassembling carrots and onions this weekend should be sufficient to become a better judge of size.

We learned the basics of measurements, volumetrically that is.  Cups and pints and teaspoons and tablespoons, etc.  How to convert from one to the other.  For example, if you have a recipe that calls for 1 teaspoon of an ingredient, but are making it on a much larger scale, say 15 x the recipe, you don’t want to measure out 15 teaspoons, that’s time consuming.  Instead, convert the 15 teaspoons into 5 tablespoons, or better yet 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon.

At the end of the class, after cleanup, we had a kitchen scavenger hunt.  The chef gave us each a card or two with the name of a piece of kitchen equipment on it, and had us locate and bring it back.  My cards, gotten randomly, were tongs and a sauce pan.  How much easier could that have been?  I’d have much preferred something more of a challenge, like a chinois, sautoir, or piano whisk.

Now for my one complaint.  I took a whole bunch of years of French in grade school through high school, and even a semester of French 101 in college for an easy A.  All of that gave me excellent pronunciation skills.  My chef, however, does not have those skills.  He is butchering the french language.  For example, he referred to a brunoise as a broon-wah, instead of a broon-wahz.  The e on the end makes you pronounce the s.  Also, he pronounce bain marie as bane marie instead of ban marie, or the more correct baa marie. (Not bah, like a sheep, but like ban without the n.)  Its just a pet peeve of mine.  I’ll get used to it, and undoubtedly I will refer to items with the correct pronunciation, and hopefully he will take notice and attempt to learn to pronounce the equipment properly.

All in all, I love my classes.  Next week, in addition to more knife practice, we will be learning about taste.  We will be sampling a variety of different salts to learn to appreciate the subtle differences.  We will also be having some pasta with different herbs, one set of pasta using dried herbs, and one using fresh herbs to show the differences between the two.  I’m not 100% sure, but we may also be making caramel, which will be very interesting.  I’ve always wanted to try making caramel, but never actually did it.