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Monthly Archives: October 2006
A Waitress, I’m not.
Essentials of Dining Service is over. My estimated grade is a B+ which is a bummer because I got the highest grade in the class on the written exam. And I did well on all the homework and quizzes. I must have been extraordinarily bad on the practical part of the class which kind of makes me feel like I was back in P.E. all over again.
I just can’t learn grace or balance or anything nearing athletic ability (laugh, but I’d say carrying heavy trays and traipsing around the dining room counts as athletic.)
While I’m a bit miffed about my B+ (and the end of my 4.0 GPA), I find solace in the fact that I have made A’s in all of my cooking labs — and that’s what really matters to me.
On the plus side, the group of classmates in this particular class worked as a very cohesive unit. There was some serious teamwork going on in this class and I had yet to experience that level of teamwork in any of my previous labs.
And really, serving wasn’t so bad. It was fun talking to the people at my table and going into the kitchens and seeing how they were running the lines. The napkin folds were fun to learn. And, we were the first people to get the chance to taste the bread when it came out of the oven. It certainly could have been worse.
Next week begins a new cooking lab — Traditional European Cuisine. Stewing and braising. It’s just the right time of year for that.
Posted in Culinary School, Recipe
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Red Bean and Rice Soup
I love red beans and rice. I love soup. So, I decided to combine the two and create this recipe. It’s fantastic on a chilly day. It’s also healthy. The beans are a great source of fiber and, with the rice, a whole protein. The bean puree helps to thicken the soup without adding any extra fat. Vegetarians can take out the sausage and substitute vegetable broth for chicken broth. Best of all, it reminds me of New Orleans cookin’ and that’s never a bad thing.
Red Bean and Rice Soup
Serves 6.
1 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1/2 large onion, diced small
1 red pepper, diced small
1 large carrot, diced small
6 oz. andouille or chorizo sausage, diced small
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1, 14 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
1 quart low-sodium chicken broth
1 Tbsp. Joe’s Stuff Cajun Seasoning (or your favorite brand)
1/2 Tsp. Chipotle Chili Powder
3, 14 oz. cans dark red kidney beans
3 cup brown rice, cooked
Drain and rinse kidney beans in a collander. Puree half of the beans in a food processor. You’re looking for a paste, but there can still be a few chunks of beans in the mixture.
Heat olive oil in a medium soup pot. Add onion and sweat for 2-3 minutes. Add red pepper and carrot. Sweat for another 2-3 minutes or until onion is soft and translucent. Add sausage and brown for 2 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook for another minute.
Pour in tomatoes (with juice), chicken broth, cajun seasoning, beans (whole and pureed), cajun spices, and chipotle chili powder. Stir together until the pureed beans are combined (i.e. there are no big globs of bean paste.) Taste and season with salt and pepper if necessary (some cajun spice blends have plenty of salt, so you don’t want to go overboard!)
Bring to a boil and then simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes or until carrots are cooked through and soup is thickened.
To serve, add a 1/2 cup of rice to a bowl and ladle soup over the rice.
Two down, two to go.
I’ll admit it. I’m not loving this dining room class. Yes, I know why I have to take it and overall, I think it’s important to know how the front of the house works. However, I’m not a graceful person. I’m the proverbial bull in a china shop which doesn’t bode well for carrying heavy trays of food.
Thankfully, I haven’t dropped anything yet, but it doesn’t stop me from being extremely nervous every time I pick up that serving tray loaded with hot food.
This Sunday, I started the day with two tables of four (two four-tops if you’re into the lingo.) This was not an easy task. Especially since the kitchen I was serving from seemed to be in the weeds. They were behind, I was behind, and I felt bad I didn’t have time to get dessert out to table number 2 (it’s not required we get through dessert, however, you can imagine it’s what most of the students really want.)
After the first service I was TIRED. I honestly thought I might fall asleep during lecture. I didn’t and lived to serve another round. Luckily, I had but one table and while the kitchen again seemed to be in the weeds a bit, it was a much easier service for me.
Of course, I am still having issues remembering my lefts from my rights (it’s mighty hard to make that “L” with my left hand when I’m holding plates.) I forgot to mark my table (marking is when you put down the silverware needed for the next course, i.e. soup spoon for the people getting soup, salad forks for people getting salad.)
The bad thing is that every time I make a mistake, I realize it too late and it’s not like I can say, “Ohhh, wait, give me back that bowl of soup, I forgot I needed to serve it from the right.”
I think I’m going to have to do a bang up job on the paper, quizzes, and test in order to get my A in this class. I guess I ought to get back to writing that paper then!
Posted in Culinary School, Recipe
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Seared Salmon Steaks with Creamy Tarragon Sauce
Here’s a recipe that seems high calorie and full of fat, but here’s the secret — it’s not. The creaminess in the sauce comes from a combination of chicken broth, dijon mustard, lowfat sour cream, and a teeny bit of corn starch (to help thicken it up.) You can use this sauce on all sorts of fish or on chicken if you don’t like salmon. It’s also a really tasty topping for vegetables.
Seared Salmon Steaks with Creamy Tarragon Sauce
2 salmon steaks (bones removed)
salt
pepper
2 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. butter
1/2 cup low sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup lowfat sour cream
3 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 tsp. corn starch dissolved into 1/4 cup cold water
1 tbsp. fresh tarragon, chopped
1/2 tsp. tumeric (optional)
Preheat oven to 400.
Use butcher’s twine to tie your salmon steaks together so that they are a solid mass and look somewhat like a salmony hockey puck. (I was actually able to get mine pre-boned and tied at the grocery store.) Season your salmon steaks on both sides with salt and pepper.
Heat olive oil and butter in a medium frying pan over medium high heat. Once the pan is hot, add the salmon steaks and let cook for two minutes then flip them and cook for another two minutes. You’re looking for a nice brown sear on each side.
Transfer the frying pan to the oven (if your frying pan isn’t oven safe, put the salmon steaks into an oven proof dish) and cook for about 12 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches about 140.
Once the salmon steaks reach temperature transfer them to a plate and cover loosely with foil to keep warm. Remove all but about 1 teaspoon of the leftover oil and butter in the pan. Put the pan back over medium heat and add the chicken broth to the pan. Whisk in the dijon mustard and sour cream.
Season with two small pinches of salt and about 10 grinds of black pepper. Bring to a simmer. Add the cornstarch mixture and simmer until the sauce gets thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Turn off the heat and whisk in the tarragon and tumeric (the tumeric will help give the sauce a bright yellow color, but is optional if you don’t have it lying around your spice cabinet.)
Plate by removing the string from the salmon steak (the skin will also come off pretty easily at this point if you’d like to remove that as well.) Top with creamy tarragon sauce.
I served this with some Kashi pilaf and steamed asparagus. If I was any good at plating, it would be one fancy looking meal!
Honey Lemon Vinaigrette
I mixed up this vinaigrette on the fly the other night as a dressing for a simple green salad with tomatoes and goat cheese that I threw together for poker night. I think it worked out well and it seemed that people agreed — there was no more salad left in the bowl at the end of the night!
A traditional vinaigrette calls for 1 part acid (vinegar, lemon juice, etc.) to 3 parts oil plus herbs and spices to taste. However, oil has a tendency to add a lot of calories to an otherwise healthy dish, so I wanted to create a vinaigrette with less oil.
To do this, I added some honey which helped to emulsify the lemon juice and oil, brought some sweetness to the party, and cut the acidity of the lemon juice without requiring so much oil.
Feel free to play with the measurments to your taste — you might like it sweeter or tarter or more peppery.
Honey Lemon Vinaigrette
1 part lemon juice
1 part honey
1 part olive oil
salt
freshly ground pepper
Squeeze the lemon juice into a small mixing bowl. Add honey and whisk to combine. Add a pinch of salt and several grinds of pepper. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking to combine. Toss over fresh greens.
Posted in Healthy, Recipe, Vegetarian
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Back to School
After a long hiatus (summer and then missing September classes) I went back to school on Sunday. It was tough. First, of course, getting up at 5:45 again was no fun. Second, the class I’m taking this go-around is Intro to Dining Room, i.e. waiting tables.
This meant carrying heavy trays of food, serving the plates just so (so. many. rules.), and wearing an even dorkier uniform than the chef’s whites.
It also meant starting another round of classes with people that I’d never met who’d all been in the previous class together. This is absolutely the most difficult part of culinary school for me. Every four weeks there’s a whole new class, instructor, and classroom to get used to and by the time I get used to it, everything is new again. So, as such, Day 1 of every class means I feel like an awkward kid again trying to make friends, please the chef, and figure out where everything is kept.
So, what do we do in this class? Well, it goes something like this:
1. Morning lecture about the front of the house. In this case we learned about different types of service, different rules of serving (serve from the left with your left hand, clear from the right with your right hand except when it’s liquid and you serve to the right; always serve the meat/main dish at 6:00 right in front of the diner; and well, tons of other things you’ll never see anyone doing at Chilis.)
2. Morning side work/dining room set-up. The culinary labs are set up to be similar to a working kitchen. Two kitchen classrooms prepare two set menus for two services — lunch and dinner. The dining room classes seat the guests (guinea pigs other students) in the dining room and serve them. Before the guests arrive tables must be set, napkins must be folded (aw, yeah, the napkin fold of the day), and anything else needed for service must be accomplished.
3. Morning service. Normally, I’d have a table, work in the dishroom, work at the bar, or as the Maitre D. However, for morning service this time around it was self service so I only had to worry about helping clean up at the end.
4. Afternoon lecture. This is more of the above.
5. Serving practice. This basically meant “serving” the chef empty plates as discussed in lecture (I was the worst in the class, by the way) and carrying big serving trays around the room to make sure we could balance them.
5. Afternoon side work/dining room set-up. See above.
6. Afternoon service. I did serve one table where I messed up horribly according to the rules — however, my table was quite pleasant, understanding, and helpful (they probably already took the class) so I didn’t worry about screwing up too much. The fun part of this service is that the kitchen I was working from was a kitchen that my first ever chef was teaching as well as a kitchen where many of my classmates from last year were cooking as such I felt very comfortable going in and getting my order (rather than being all nervous and shy about it.)
7. Clean-up and go home.
As you can see, quite riveting stuff. But it’s clear it’s also important stuff for anyone interested in working in a restaurant or, really, serving any customer/client. And hey, the best thing about this program is if I hate a class, it’s only four Sundays out of my life.
Posted in Culinary School
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Stuffed Turkey Rouladinis
I went to the store last week to get some things for dinner and I noticed a package of turkey “chops” which looked like thin boneless pork chops. I like cooking with turkey because it’s so lean but it’s a reprieve from eating chicken constantly.
After some thinking, I decided that I would make some sort of individual stuffed turkey chops — or rouladini as I call them since they are mini roulades and hey, if Rachael Ray can make up cutesy names for her recipes, so can I!
I chose to toss some toasted almonds and cranberries into my stuffing, but the great thing about stuffing is that you can put just about anything in the pan with some chicken broth and toasted bread and make it your own recipe.
I think this would also work well with pounded boneless porkchops or even pounded out chicken breasts (if you must go the boring route.)
Stuffed Turkey Rouladinis
4, 4 oz. turkey “chops”, boneless pork chops, or chicken breast fillets
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup dried cranberries, roughly chopped
1/2 cup onion, roughly diced small
1/2 cup carrot, roughly diced small
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. dried sage
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried oregeno
salt
pepper
2 slices bread, toasted (whatever you got on hand) and cut into 1/2 cubes
1/2 cup chicken broth
4 tbsp. goat cheese
1 tsp. butter
Preheat the oven to 400.
Pound your turkey, pork, or chicken breast into thin rounds (about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick). Season each side with a pinch of salt and several grinds of black pepper. Set aside.
Heat a medium frying pan and add the sliced almonds. Stir occassionaly until the almonds start to get lightly brown and toasted. Set aside.
Put the frying pan back on the heat and add 1 tsp. of olive oil. Add the onions and saute them over medium high heat until they get translucent and lightly browned about 2 minutes. Add the carrot and cook for another 2 minutes. Add a pinch of salt, several grinds of black pepper, sage, thyme and oregeno.
Add the toasted bread, almonds, and dried cranberries. Stir to combine. Add as much chicken broth as needed to so the bread soaks up the water, but does not make the mixture soupy. Stir the stuffing until all of the broth has been soaked up and the ingredients are well mixed together. Remove stuffing from the pan (and give it a quick cleaning — you’ll use it again in a minute!)
To stuff, spread one tablespoon of goat cheese in a line in the center of the round of turkey (pork or chicken). Take about 1/4 of the stuffing mixture and spread it over the goat cheese. Then roll into a tight cylander so there’s a seam at the bottom and none of the stuffing is leaking out of the bottom.
Heat your pan and add the butter and the last tsp. of olive oil. When the butter melts, put the rouladinis into the pan seam side down. This will help seal the seam and make it easier to flip.
Brown the bottom of the rouladini for about two minutes or until golden brown. Using tongs, flip over and cook for another 2 minutes.
Move the pan into the oven for another 8 – 10 minutes or until the meat is cooked through. This shouldn’t take too long since it’s pretty thin and your oven is at 400 (right?!)
Serve with veggies and mashed potatoes and this meal becomes a thanksgiving dinner you can have any night of the week!