The Culinary Tales Week 10: Baaad Energy Invades the Kitchen
Week 10 brought us veal, lamb and pork. And what a week that was!
As usual, we started with our usual weekly quiz, covering the topic from the week before. Usually, our quizzes consist of two pages’ worth of questions, and at the end we have a product ID, in which there are 10 products laid out on a table and we have to identify. It’s not that hard really, assuming of course you can tell a pickle from a rat’s ass.
But sometimes it’s tricky, because some products look and taste alike especially if you haven’t used them in a while (i.e. certain wines, vinegars, semolina vs. cornmeal, etc.) I botched the product ID; even after tasting it, I wrote down balsamic vinegar instead of Worcestershire sauce (knowing full well at the time that the balsamic tasted “funky” and therefore had to be something else.) I couldn’t tell the difference between baking soda and baking powder (chef alluded that he might toss in some cornstarch to throw us off) and still got it wrong even after tasting a sample (the look on my face generated a chuckle or two from neighboring classmates). Then we had another knife cut practical.
It was always interesting whenever we worked with meats I had never cooked. I just made my first pork tenderloin not long before school started. Pork, like chicken, is really easy to cook, but even easier to overcook. At least I had experience with it, but veal and lamb were totally foreign objects to me – sure, I’ve eaten them, but cooking was a whole other story.
After Monday’s slate of tests, stock making and lecture, we got up close and intimate with a lamb carcass. Chef had hung it from the ceiling in the center of the kitchen while we got our “chores” done. Then he butchered it as he taught us the different parts of the animal and what they were used for (large chunks of meat and bone such as chuck and rounds are referred to as “primals”; smaller chunks – “sub-primals” – are where you get your various cuts, most of which you might be familiar with from eating at restaurants: tenderloin, St. Louis rib, rack, etc.)
Veal comes from roughly month-old cows. The meat is tenderer because it’s so young and hasn’t had time to develop muscles. So on the surface, veal should be easier to cook because tenderer meat shouldn’t take as much work to cook as older meat, which you have to slow cook to break down tough tissue.
Considering my inexperience, I did pretty well. I was on a roll: made my windows and got great feedback. We made lamb kabobs and roasted lamb rack, veal meatballs and veal scallopini (a classic Italian dish), grilled and roasted pork. I learned my lessons from beef and chicken weeks (with this fast track style of learning, it was imperative to catch on quickly – something that I could immeasurably be better at if I didn’t have the distraction of work.)
We ended the week with kind of a freebie day on Friday. On the menu were roasted garlic and baked potato potage (in plain English: garlic and potato soup… SOUP!! AGAIN!) and fried chicken with mustard & collard greens, black-eyed peas with ham hocks, biscuits and gravy. The fried chicken menu was a group effort and I took on the black-eyed peas, mostly because it seemed easy, and because for a food I actually like, I had never made it before. I haven’t done too well with our bean dishes (mostly because they’ve been in SOUPS) but I really wanted to take a crack at it.
As a bonus, lobster was added to the menu. The purchasing head messed up on our order for the lamb racks so to appease our chef, he let us order anything we wanted (we asked for ahi and lobster and surprisingly got both.) Chef cooked the ahi one night, so it was a nice treat to have a tasty dinner that we didn’t have to make (or destroy.)
We each had to make the potato potage on our own because that was a dish that could potentially show up in our final, and I actually turned in a nicely done soup. The trick was that I had a lot of time to work on it. When I wasn’t rushed and had the opportunity to thoroughly make a dish – constantly taste it to see what it needed and just plain give it tender loving care – I can produce a great plate of food. The soup was a home run. But, as I’ve said before, time is a luxury I didn’t always have and I couldn’t expect all my dishes to be winners.
I also learned to deal with seasoning issues. Quite often, my mistake was not salting the food enough. I had gotten used to not putting too much salt. For a while, I avoided eating/using too much salt for health reasons; then it was for weight reasons (it helps bloat you up, you know, with all that retained water.) But salt is HUGE in the culinary world. And when used correctly, it makes food taste that much better.
I still think some chefs ask for a little too much salt than should be needed. I got it down to a science where I salted my food enough to the point where I liked it, and then added just a tad more for the chef. Seemed to work. Of course, you had to play a little game of figuring out what the chef’s tastes are first.
The only real blemish to the week was the addition of some students from other classes. Usually, if you missed a class, you can attend one of the other classes to make up for your absence. This week, we were visited by three “slackers.”
See, there were three tracks at my school: A – the morning group, which had class from 6 – 11 AM, B – which had class from 12 – 5 PM, and C – the evening group, which had class from 6 – 11 PM. Most people in groups A and C had jobs either before or after class, and it was well known among instructors that these students tended to be harder workers. Then there was the B group, known to be the slackers who liked to sleep in and usually had no time to work after class.
Our guest students that week were from the B group, and as soon as they identified themselves, we just rolled our eyes and tried to stay out of their way. Unfortunately, they couldn’t stay out of ours. They piped in with their (unsolicited) opinions all expert-like on how to cook something, and when someone asked chef a question, they would butt in with their own answers. As if that wasn’t annoying enough, they were disrespectful, chatty Cathies and proved to be a distracting nuisance when all we wanted to do was get our work done.
Don’t get me wrong… our class was tight and we had our social moments, usually during breaks or before/after class. Occasionally, we broke into song or Yo Mama jokes while we cooked, but we had the good sense to quiet down and focus when we needed to. But there are people in the world who do not understand their place nor know when to shut up. And it’s those moments when you just have to breathe really deeply, remind yourself that killing people is wrong, and take the high road.
The high road sucks sometimes.
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