I’m actually posting the day after class. I’m shocked too.
So last night was a lesson on heat transfer and cooking methods. The lecture started in a way I hadn’t expected, Pop Quiz! The quiz was on identifying kitchen equipment and their uses. Of the 10 items, 3 were knives, Paring Knife, Serrated Bread Knife, and Boning Knife. Fairly easy. There was a sauce pan, a sauteuse, a chinois, a bench scraper, a perforated spoon, a shallow full hotel pan, and one other item I cannot recall right now. It was an easy quiz.
We then had a lecture about the methods of heat transfer, the effects of heat on food, and the various cooking methods. Pretty standard lecture. Then it was time to hit the kitchen. We started with a demonstration of how to make caramel sauce. Then after setting up our work stations, we portioned out 2 4oz. hamburgers and 2 3oz chicken breasts. We were to grill one hamburger to medium rare and one to well done. While we were doing that we were to poach one chicken breast and boil the other. I must say, having a digital instant read thermometer was a life saver. I’m seriously considering buying a second for those times that I have two items cooking that I need to measure temperature of. I also plan on buying a oil/candy thermometer for monitoring the temperature of water when poaching. If it gets too high it turns into a simmer, and if it gets too low (under 165) you’ll never get your chicken fully cooked.
My grill marks on the burgers were beautiful. Nice little square cross hatching. Absolutely perfect. The medium rare burger was perfect. Juicy, flavorful, even with no seasoning. The well done burger was just kind of overcooked for my taste. My wife would have loved it, but I like my meat more on the rare side. That brings up an interesting discussion we had. There is an idea floating around called the McDonalds Principle. Basically, in this day and age, a lot of people like their steaks medium rare, but their burgers medium well or well done. This is because they are used to getting burgers from fast food restaurants where they are completely overcooked and dry. People are conditioned to enjoy those dry overcooked burgers, even when medium rare burgers are clearly superior.
The boiled chicken was bland, dry, and rubbery. The poached was moist, tender and had some flavor. It would have had better flavor if it were poached in a more flavorful liquid than water.
I want to add one thing. The girls in my class have dirty minds, while the guys are polite. Not one guy made any jokes about the meat. My two female lab partners made a “I’m beating my meat” joke and a “Want me to grab your meat” joke. I also heard a “playing with my meat” joke and a “I grabbed your breasts” joke from girls at another station. And we guys get a bad reputation.
After we were done with the meat, we made our own caramel sauce. We got to use judgment about when the caramel had reached a deep amber color. We chose well, our caramel was delicious.
Then after yet another review of how many cups were in a pint, we learned the most horrible knife cut of all. The Tournee!!! For those who don’t know, it is a seven sided, football shaped piece of potato or other vegetable. I personally have never seen a tournee on any plate of food I have ever received. I doubt I ever will.
While no chef will confirm this, I believe I have determined the origins of the tournee. A long time ago in France, of course, there was a chef. Now this chef was probably the personal chef of the Marquis de Sade, because this chef was a sadistic bastard. He was an accomplished chef so he was sought by many apprentices to teach them his skills. So he took on a handful of apprentices, who he loved to torture by playing cruel tricks on them such as “fetch me a bucket of steam” or “hand me the bacon stretcher”. One day, his sadistic cruelty had come to its ultimate level. I will get these apprentices to cut a shape that should never exist in nature. It will be shaped like an egg, but with flat ends, and I want it to have exactly 7 perfectly even sides. He chose 7 of course because he knew that a circle had 360 degrees and the only number under 10 that 360 isn’t evenly divisible by is 7. Yep, this chef was a prick. So, he gave his apprentices each a sack of root vegetables. Not even potatoes, something firmer like turnips (ooh, that douchebag). He described this heinously evil shape, and told them he wanted them each to spend the day cutting them because it was a very important standard cut that every chef should learn. This chef giggled with delight each time an apprentice sliced open his thumb with his paring knives. But at the end of the day, each apprentice had succeeded in making exactly one perfect tournee. Only one from a giant sack of turnips, because it is almost physically impossible to cut that shape. The chef was shocked that they were able to not only cut that oh so evil shape, but that they were still alive after the massive blood loss from their thumbs. So, he set them about this task again and again, until their thumbs had developed callouses and were as tough as thick leather and they could tournee a vegetable in under a minute. The chef was amazed at their determination and thought them worthy of his time. Those apprentices all became chefs, who did the same thing to their apprentices, and so on and so on. Now every culinary student has to practice cutting an absolutely useless shape. The End.
Its the only possible explanation that I can think of. Mine turned out misshapen, but a good first attempt.
Culinary school is the only place where you can spend an hour working on something, show your professor, have him say it looks good, then immediately throw it in the trash.
Next week, fruit and vegetable identification. Seriously. This is an apple. This is a banana. This is celery. … This is a persimmon. This is a quince. This is a rutabaga. … This is zucchini. (Oh yeah, I can name a fruit or vegetable starting with every letter but X. I’m awesome.)
