The Culinary Tales Week 13: Hell’s Kitchen

June 16, 2014

“You’ve heard of Hell’s Kitchen, right? Welcome to Hell’s Lab.”
 

 

Those were the first words that Chef Satan greeted us with on the first day of Baking I. We had been forewarned. Teachers and students alike had warned us that Chef Satan was harsh and tough – some students switched tracks specifically to avoid having to take his class – and he was every bit as scary and intimidating as the legend dictated.

 

Chef Satan proceeded to go over rules in drill sargeant-like fashion.

 

Do not partake in illegal substances before or during class. Show up high and he’ll kick you out himself.

 

Oops, that deflated about 1/3 of the class.

 

Do not drink alcohol before or during class.

 

Oops, there goes another 1/3.

 

Heck, if we can at all avoid it after class, that’d be a good thing in his book. Chef Satan proceeded to tell us how he lost a son to substance abuse and he wasn’t going to watch any more kids do that.

 

Ah-hah… perhaps there’s a teddy bear underneath the tough-guy-he’s-so-scary-I-could-poop-in-my-pants exterior. (One of my fatal flaws, I admit, is that I see the teddy bear, or the “golden nugget”, in every asshole I meet, which is probably why I get along with so many of them.)

 

It turned out that we had a second instructor, which was a surprise because we were told they hadn’t had two teachers for Baking I in a while. It was Bad Cop-Good Cop all over again. Our second chef was an amiable Asian lady who giggled a lot. Class Buddy didn’t think he’d ever met anyone who laughed so much. It was probably a nervous tic more than anything, but I’d rather take that over a yeller any day.

 

I happened to be on Chef Giggle’s roster, which meant she would be grading me, not Satan. Of course, look how that whole first impression thing worked out during the first term and Good Cop ended up being the tough teacher. Chef Giggle might turn out to be a tough grader too (word on the street is that the highest grade Chef Satan ever handed out was an A minus).

 

Since I wasn’t much of a baker to begin with, I had resigned myself to coming up with a C minus for this class.

 

You see, people fall into one of two categories: they’re either BAKERS or COOKS. Or, as we fondly say in the kitchen, CUTTERS or BURNERS.

I was never much of a baker. During my teenage and college years, whatever baking I did was courtesy of Duncan Hines (brownie mix) and premade Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough. And I didn’t even bake that often. Which really is surprising to most people given my screaming-for-diabetes addiction to chocolate and other sweets.

 

Twice before culinary school had I ever baked a cake from scratch – my Mom’s specialty Chiffon Crunch Cake (I will share the recipe in a future post) which she learned in finishing school long before I was born and used to make a lot when I was younger, but abandoned when she discovered she could skip the work and buy a gigantic, delicious chocolate sheet cake from Costco for cheap.

 

I’ve always been surrounded by people who love baking, do it often and do it well so I never felt the need to get on the baking bandwagon. I’ll do the savory, you do the sweet.

 

So, this whole Baking ordeal made me feel like a fish out of water. I was leagues away from my comfort zone, and if that wasn’t enough, I had to deal with a chef from hell.

 

 

 
After Chef Satan went over his rules, we jumped straight into lecture, an overview of yeast and wheat – which makes up pretty much all the bread you eat (with some exceptions.) We proceeded to make French Bread dough which we had to “proof” overnight.

 

Proofing, in baking lingo, is the leavening portion of the baking process where the yeast “does its thing.” We had special proofing “boxes” to get this accomplished: large holding contraptions with which you can control temperature and humidity to allow the yeast to activate. Yeast needs warmth to survive – at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit  (but it dies at 138) and this is something easily done at home without one. (A muggy kitchen on a summer’s day is enough to do the trick.)

 

Chef Satan proceeded to end the night on a “I’m watching you” note, that it was imperative to follow (his) instructions. Apparently, somebody screwed up and that got him miffed. For a split second, I thought it was me.

 

Chef Satan patrolled the kitchen like a prison guard, and every time he got near my station my heart would beat so fast I thought I was going to burst. I avoided making eye contact (can’t get in trouble if he can’t see me, right?)

 

But, in all fairness, he was actually a good teacher. Despite the gruff, he was humble enough to know what he was there for: not to make people’s lives miserable, but to teach and help us be better cooks. And he was there on his own accord: he practiced law for 27 years before he giving it up to go to culinary school.

 

Both seemed like really good teachers – experienced, knowledgeable and credible (both went to CIA, the “Harvard” of culinary schools.)

 

I kneaded bread dough for the first time ever (which is a heck of a difference from kneading pasta dough), and I decided it wasn’t a totally unpleasant experience. But not without panic… all my baker friends had said that baking was easy, just follow exactly as the recipe says, boom. Easy peasy. But as I worked the dough for what seemed like forever, and was told that I was nowhere near close and had to keep going. I didn’t have time to proof the dough which was supposed to be completed before our first night was over.

 

I was told that my dough was going to have to cold-ferment. (Whatever THAT meant.)

 

With that first piece of dough, we produced two pieces of baguettes and an épi – which starts its life as a baguette, then you cut pieces off and form into what I can only describe as leaves, so by the time you’re done, it looks like a wheat stalk. The bread turned out as good as I could get it to turn out, considering it was my first time with bread from scratch.

 

 

 

 

We proceeded to make whole wheat dinner rolls, brioche, challah, pain de mie (or pullman), pretzels, bagels, pizza, foccaccia and pita. All in one week.

 

Challah – for those of you who don’t know, the “C” is silent, as in “Chanukkah” – is a Jewish celebration bread. It’s the one that looks like one big braid (there’s a system to braiding the six strands that compose it), and it looks hella pretty.

 

Our pizza recipe called for a potato-bread dough and it turned out OK despite running out of mozzarella cheese, so I had to make do with a cheese-less pizza. (Blasphemy, I know.)

 

Overall, it was a good week. Chef Satan may have scared the bejeezus out of us, but before the first night was over, I suspected it was all for show.

 

Now, my closest friends have been calling me “Shishkabob” for years. I won’t bore you with the details of how they got to that, but it has something to do with the loudest thing that comes out of my mouth being the most embarrassing.

 

As were leaving class that first night, Class Buddy realized he had left something at our station, to which I replied a little too loudly “JESUS CHRIST! On the first day???”

 

Class Buddy’s face froze, eyes bulging, and I slowly turned around in horror (picture the scene from Alien where the scary creature crept up to Sigourney Weaver) to realize that Chef Satan was right behind me.

 

Please tell me he’s not a Bible-thumping fundamentalist too. Please, please, please, please, please, please.

 

His stern face broke into a smile. “A woman with a potty mouth. I *like* that.”

 

See? I really do get along with assholes.

 

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