The Culinary Tales Week 16: To Catch a Thief
There’s a reason for the saying “Easy as pie.” And despite that, my first attempt at baking one was during Week 16 of culinary school.
Pies and tarts are made from three basic dough preparations: “American” pie dough for crusts for our apple and berry pies, pate brisee (translation: broken dough) to make the crust for chicken pot pie and quiche, and pate sucree (sugar paste/dough) for tarts.
And of course, they had to squeeze in another savory practical and this time it was a veloute sauce. Veloute, you might remember from Intro 1, is one of the five mother sauces. It’s made with a blonde roux and was the base for our chicken pot pie filling. Chef called my sauce “gorgeous” and though I forgot to add the peas into my pie, it still turned out so well that my classmates judged my pie the best. I liked it so much that when I ordered my favorite chicken pot pie from Daily Grill the following day, I decided I like mine much better (less milky.)
We also learned all about the “creaming method” – which means tossing some butter and sugar into a mixer and letting it go for about 15 minutes, creating air tunnels for a light and fluffy, crumbly product. (If you bet $5 that I would end up with a broken mixer AGAIN, then you have won $3. Not very good odds. For ME.)
We made scones, muffins and pound cake this way. My muffins didn’t turn out because I disastrously forgot to add the cream. I had already scooped the dough into the cups when I realized I was missing the cream (something felt awry when the dough felt way too hard) but I made a deliberate choice to bake as is to see what would happen. (I’d never made muffins or cupcakes prior to this either. And as for pound cake? Sara Lee, baby.)
I heard that pound cake gets its name because it contains a pound of butter. That’s only partially true. Its French name is “Quatre Quarts” which means “four quarters.” Technically it is supposed to mean that it’s made up of 4 main ingredients of equal parts which total a pound. For our recipe we used 8 oz of butter, 8 oz of sugar, 8 oz of flour and 8 oz of eggs. That actually adds up to 2 pounds. (Trust me, I took culinary math.)
We closed the week out with back-to-back tart nights. We made enough pate sucree for the fresh fruit tart, chocolate raspberry ganache tart, poached pear frangipane and lemon curd/Italian meringue tart. My tart shells turned out a little too thin for the fruit and ganache tarts, but I was still able to save them. I made sure I saved enough dough for the other two, and thank goodness I did because Sweet Momma ended up having her dough stolen.
Chef Satan had told us stories of how students were notorious for stealing other people’s stuff – not just equipment, but actual product. He even had a student whose work turned out so horribly that he stole the chefs’ demo dish. We hadn’t had an issue of missing products before, but it had become a bonafide problem.
First, I lost my bowl scraper (unsurprisingly.) Since the start, I was prone to losing things – usually, one towel a night. But I had also lost measuring cups, spoons and other miscellaneous tools. It wasn’t uncommon to pick up an item that you thought was yours, and then finding it to be someone else’s.
Advertising Buddy held up a wayward ladle looking for its owner, and this kid I’ll call Creepy Guy claimed it with a look that gave away the truth. I realized the next day that the ladle was, in fact, mine.
Let’s pause for a second to talk about Creepy Guy. Creepy Guy was one of three new additions to our class. Two weren’t so bad, but Creepy Guy was a lurker and always got in your way when you were in a rush to get to the oven. Step back and all of a sudden, you feel his shoes under yours. He never said “Behind you” or gave you warning that you are about to collide paths.
Did you ever see Charlie’s Angels 2? Do you remember Crispin Glover’s creepy character who stalked Drew Barrymore as he caressed a lock of her hair against his face? That was Creepy Guy. I was a little scared that he’d show up next to my car caressing my bowl scraper.
Anyway… on muffin day, one of my classmates found that her muffins were missing. It turned out that someone took them. A bunch of people saw CG taking her pan but no one thought to out him to the chefs. Chef Satan always saidhe didn’t care if you screwed up the assignment – it was part of learning.
“Turn in a shitty product, but at least turn in your own.”
That’s why I kept my sorry-ass muffins. I knew they sucked, but it was a live-and-learn moment. And I had no qualms about trying them again if I ever found any down time.
On Friday, Sweet Momma discovered that her pate sucree had been missing. Fortunately I had plenty of extra dough (my tart shells ended up a little too thick, but at least they didn’t crack or come apart easily) to give her and another classmate who ran out of dough. Chef Giggles also had some extra dough to spare. But the chefs had to admonish the entire class and warn that if this happened again, the WHOLE class would have to do it over.
Unfortunately, the thief was not in the room.
People cheat and lie and steal all the time. I don’t. OK, maybe a few white lies here and there. And I speed like there’s no tomorrow. But I’m extremely comfortable admitting mistakes. “Sorry” is a constant in my vocabulary (just after “shit.”) I don’t get stealing other people’s work; it goes against my belief in authenticity. The whole idea of school is to learn, and there’s no better learning experience than making a mistake.
How else are you going to learn to ride a bike if you don’t fall down? There’s a scar on my chin from when I first learned to rollerblade. And you know what? It reminds me of when I learned how NOT to fall.
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