i need to update!

Sorry about that! Things definitely did not slow down at school the past week and a half and I kept forgetting to update.

Week 3 was pretty fun but kind of a blur when I look back on it. It all is. Week 3 consisted of making both a veal and a white chicken stock and then using them throughout the week to make various mother sauces, sauces (some made from mother sauces, some not) and soups. This continued into week 4 till Tuesday.

The list, in case you're interested:

Espagnole

Demi-glace

Bechamel sauce

Mornay

Soubise

Veloute

Supreme sauce

Allemande sauce

Hollandaise sauce

Beurre Blanc

Bell Pepper Coulis (very tasty!)

Robert sauce

Chasseur (hunter's) sauce

Port and dried-cherry Demi sauce

French Onion soup

Cream of Mushroom

Egg-Drop soup

Veal Consomme (pretty interesting to make)

Vegetable soup

Puree of Black Bean soup

During all this I also had a practical on Friday of week 3 where I had to make mayonnaise and Veloute sauce marking the end of basics 1. My mayo got a perfect score as I got a bit of practice in at home but not so much on the Veloute. Overall I still had a pretty decent score.

Wednesday of week 4 we started getting into animals and their fabrication, starting with fish. Chef Sayre Demonstrated fabrication of some Salmon, Redfish, and Yellowtail Sole. Each of us ended up fabricating a Redfish and Sole and stored them for cooking on Thursday. Thursday was fun but seemed hectic going in because we were preparing 8 portions in total 6 different ways! We grilled, poached, baked, fried and sauteed filets breaded, unbreaded as well as skin-on and skin-off.

oh! I got my grades for basics 1.

I got 90%! Doing good but room to improve!

Tomorrow we work with shellfish!

Week two continued

Sorry for taking so long. School has been keeping me pretty dang busy and when i am home i am either practicing my knife skills, attempting some recipes, or just plain tired.

Tuesday we Made Mayonnaise which was used to make some american potato salad and chicken salad. We also made some German potato salad that was quite tasty.

Wednesday we continued with potatoes and made Potatoes Dauphinnoise, Duchesse Potatoes, and Potatoes Anna. The Duchesse Potatoes require the use of a Icing bag to pipe the mash onto a baking sheet and baking in the oven, definitely need some more practice there. The other two dishes were made of thin sliced potato that i had trouble getting thin enough so my seasoning wasn't too bad but it wasn't able to cook right.

Thursday we worked with rices. I made some rice pilaf, Risotto, and soft polenta. All of it went pretty well. Compared to the other days it was kind of easy considering there wasn't much prep or chopping required. We also made some Pasta dough in preparation for Friday.

Friday we made some baked penne in a classic tomato sauce, spaghetti tossed in a pesto sauce, and some fresh pasta in an alfredo sauce. Chef Sayre Congratulated me on making some really good pesto sauce! He even said I managed to season mine a little better than his!

Saturday I went in for some special practice towards a state competition for culinary students in late October, early March. Right now I have no idea how far I will get as the team will only consist of and it is some hard training but I am going to keep at it as long as I can. Oh, I managed to slice my thumb open about halfway through the day but bandaged it can kept going so I got my first little taste of the more painful side of cooking.

Week two, day one

Salads went well. We made basic vinaigrette dressing, Caesar salad with Caesar dressing, and a Spinach salad with warm bacon dressing. My Mise en place came together pretty well though I did miss a few things. Still, I managed to finish on time and did a decent job of each. my personal favorite had to be the Caesar salad since I got to learn how to make fresh fried croutons. very tasty!

During the classroom portion of my day we took a test on our first week of training. Thanks to some review the night before I managed to pull of a 92 out of 100 questions correct!

I forgot to mention the family meals in my last post. In short, they rock! everyone gets together sampling the dishes multiple classes have made and even our class has been able to supply some vegetable dishes already! Everything is served cafeteria style but it is still exceptional. tons of morning pastries, fish, chicken, pasta, soups, pizzas, cakes, creme brulee, and what i think was some type of bread pudding and its only been 5 day!

ok, I'm off to do some prep for tomorrow.

Week one

The first Day (Tuesday because of the holiday) was mostly getting to know our instructor, Chef Sayre, and what lies ahead of us. He went into detail about the coming weeks and what we would do the following day as well as what would be expected of us. It was a bit intimidating but i was pumped!

The second day was a big eye opener as to just how frantic it can be in a kitchen and all were were doing was learning knife skills by chopping different vegetables! Mainly what was causing the panic was us not knowing our way around the kitchen yet along with a shaky grasp of proper preparation before starting. The French phrase "mise en place", meaning "putting in place" is used to label proper preparation of both the ingredients and the chef that will be using the ingredients. If our mise en place isn't done correctly before we start things can go awry very quickly. Things did eventually get done but things were spilled, food was wasted, and I learned this wasn't going to be easy at all.

The third day we finally got to cook! In fact, we got to cook 3 different vegetable dishes at the same time! I was still struggling with my mise en place as all of the students scrambled to get ingredients and do initial preparation of the vegetables. We had prepared some minced garlic and shallots the day before but when i got around to collecting what i needed the containers were empty which meant i had to go get some more and prepare them as well. This lead to me running over my alloted preparation time so I had to prioritize some vegetables that needed to start cooking and finish the rest while they cooked. Because of this i couldn't concentrate on the vegetables cooking and came very close to burning a few things and did burn my cabbage but not so badly it couldn't be salvaged. Despite the challenges dishes did turn out edible but not perfect. the cabbage had the right taste but my knife skills were off and some of the cabbage was too thick too cook enough and didn't produce the right texture. Some other mistakes include forgetting to season one dish with pepper and salt and adding the finishing fresh herbs (finely chopped parsley) to the wrong dish! Fortunately, I didn't get discouraged as i knew that if i wasn't making mistakes i wasn't learning.

On day four my Mise en place came together a little better. the Fact that the recipes were simpler helped quite a bit too. We prepared some vegetables for roasting and others for grilling. For the roasted vegetables we were told to pair up. My partner and I misunderstood the direction to pick a fresh herb to season our vegetables with so we ended up with two herbs, rosemary and chives. As Chef Sayre performed the demo we realized our mistake and asked him how we should handle it. He said to come to an agreement between the two of us. so, after a smell test of the two herbs together, we decided to try both and just halve the amount of herbs we used. The Vegetables to be roasted were rolled in a bowl of extra virgin olive oil and our herbs and put into the oven. While the roasted for 30 minutes in the oven we had to go grill the rest of the vegetables. We only had one grill in the kitchen so there was quite a line. So, my partner got in line while i went back to our station to do a little clean up, begin preparation for blanching some broccoli and tried to keep tabs on the time. After 15 minutes my partner had managed to get his veggies on the grill and came back long enough for us to mix the roast vegetables a bit and add some salt & pepper which we forgot earlier. Back in the oven they went and back to work we went. I managed to take into account the time we had taken the roast vegetables out of the oven into the time needed and after a quick check decided they were done. I presented them to Chef Sayre and found I had cooked them quite well but Ii hadn't seasoned them enough with S&P so the heat and texture was right and the taste was there but it didn't have the pop of flavor that his demo vegetables did. After all this and a bit more waiting i was able to get my turn at the grill. I did well on my sliced vegetables and my bell pepper but failed on my green onion as i had them laying across a hot spot at their thinnest point and let them burn while I payed attention to the demo of the Blanching and shocking of broccoli. I let my grilled red bell pepper cool while i prepared for the blanching. once it was ready i put on some glove and began to peel the charred skin off the pepper. I was so amazed at the aroma. I never knew it could smell so good! After that I set to work on turning the broccoli into spears (removing leaves and odd edges to make it more visually pleasing) but I had a problem. I had put too much water in my pot and it was taking way too long to boil! After removing some of the water it still didn't seem to want to boil and i was running out of time so i put it in and hoed for the best. It turned out under cooked as i thought it would but i learned a valuable lesson from it. don't use more water than you need to submerge the vegetable! oh, and i forgot to season with S&P again...

That's it for now. Next week starts off with some salads and a written test.

First post!

Hi guys,

For those that don't know, I am creating this blog so friends and family that are interested in my journey through Arizona Culinary Institute can keep tabs on me at their leisure.