Day 3 in the life of a culinary student:
I usually leave around 8:15am and get to school and pull in at 8:35 or so. I walk up the stairs to the second floor reception hauling my knives and my duffle, and fish for my key card to open the door that leads to the offices and dressing rooms.
I weave down the hall to the girls dressing room where I have to whip out my key card again to get in. There are usually 4 or 5 of us in the locker room. I quickly change into my checked pants and jacket, and tie on my neck kerchief like a pro. Unlike day one when us new girls were glancing around checking to make sure we were doing it the same as everyone else. I then struggle with the top button of the jacket, which I swear is bigger than the rest, pin on my name tag, then stuff my hair in the toque and slip on my shoes. Grabbing what I need for the day (knives, apron, key card, recipe cards, pocket notebook, pen, phone and water bottle), I stuff my bag in a locker, put the key in my pocket and head to the kitchen on the 3rd floor. I usually stop in the student lounge to fill up my water and meet with at least one of my classmates struggling with the coffee maker.
Once in the kitchen, I go to my station. Throughout the room are stainless steel work tables. 2 people per table and 2 tables facing each other. I put my knives and water bottle under the table, locate a hand towel, and tie on my apron (always in front). Tucking the towel into the ties at my waist, I wash my hands. Then I grab two paper towels and wet them a little. I fold them each in half and lay them on the counter at my station. I walk to the front of the room and grab a cutting board and several bowls while I'm up there. Back at my station I lay the cutting board on the wet towels so it won't slip and place my bowls above the board. In the left bowl will go your unpeeled veggies. In the middle (possibly on the cutting board) a bowl for scraps, and last a bowl for the prepared vegetable. In the center of the two tables are ingredients like butter, oil, salt, etc. and a bucket of sanitizing solution with a rag that either my station partner or I have to fill up. To the right of the cutting board, I lay out the tools I need for the day. All this is to be done by 9:00am. This set up is part of what is called mise en place or "putting in place". It's like what you see on cooking shows where all the ingredients are laid out in little glass bowls ready to go. A well set up station makes a more efficient cook.
Chef then begins his lecture. Day 3 was on product identification. We talked about vegetables, fruits we call vegetables, spices and herbs. Stuff like: what part of a plant spices came from, how a brussel sprout is part of the cabbage family, a potato is a tuber, that green, white and black peppercorn are from the same plant, but harvested at different times, etc. We then had a little identification quiz. To make it fun chef had a rack of spices labeled 1-24 and bowls of herbs 1-11. We had to try and identify as many as we could by sight, smell, or taste (if you were wanting). It's important for a chef to make a memory of what things taste like, so you can have a taste index to refer to when thinking up recipes and flavor pairings.
We then got started on our first recipe of the day: Roasted beet and goat cheese timbale with apple vinaigrette. Chef had us start with the vinaigrette. All sauces have a fat, a salt, and an acid. It's the trifecta of tastiness, and all three should be present and balanced in order to have a good dressing. Mayo: you've got your oil, vinegar, and salt. Hollandaise: butter, vinegar & lemon, salt. Dill sauce: cream, lemon juice, dill. You get the point. Now to be balanced doesn't refer to amounts, but flavor. You need to taste all three, but not one more than the other.
Chef had us mix only the olive oil, white wine vinegar, and salt used in our dressing to help us develop a taste for the right balance. Ignoring the recipe (since we have no idea what 70g of oil is) my partner and I guestimated amounts. First go, ours was too acidic so we added more salt. And more salt. And more. We went around the room tasting others, and chef came by to taste ours. "How are you doing?" he asked. "It's still to acidic," we responded. He nodded in confirmation. We then added a bit more oil. As we whisked, the mixture seemed to come together. After a taste, we decided it tasted pretty good. Chef came by and tasted it again, then asked again what we thought. "We think it's right?" "Well, can you taste the acid?" "Yes." "Can you taste the salt?" "Yes." "Can you taste the fat?" "Yes." "Do you think it tastes good?" "...uh..." "Well?" "Yes." "Then it's good." He explained how you could see the consistency had changed and wasn't separating as much and wasn't so clear anymore, and had everyone come look at ours compared to their own. Team Caroline and Kristina for the win. We then chopped and added the shallots and herbs to our vinaigrette and set it aside.
Next, we interrupted our chopping to watch chef demo the plating, before heading back to our stations to do it ourselves. We got our roasted red and yellow beets, and apple and cut them into macédoine. We softened our goat cheese, then added chopped herbs because we thought the recipe would be better that way. We trimmed our frisée and we were soon ready to plate.
To plate the dish involved using a 3" ring mold or a timbale. We put the mold on the plate, spooned in the red beets that we'd tossed in the vinaigrette, followed by the yellow, and topped with the herbed goat cheese. We crossed our fingers and removed the mold and were left with a very pretty beet and cheese tower. We tossed the frisée in the dressing, artfully put a handful on top and sprinkled a little parsley for good measure. Last we attempted to add a swoop of dressing to the plate and sprinkled the apples around and voilà! Lunch. We scarfed down the salad--which was really good, if I say so myself--and headed to family meal.
Family meal is served in one of the other kitchens, buffet-style. The chefs take turns preparing it. Chicken wings, arugula salad, french fries, and carrot soup were on the menu among other things. Family meal usually incorporates whatever leftovers we have, hence the french fried potato scraps, and pureed carrot shaving soup, both of which were made from leftovers from kitchen one (our class).
After lunch we got started on our second recipe: Ratatouille. This mainly involved cutting vegetables into macédoine and reinforced the cuts we learned on day one. Chef demoed how to disgorge our eggplant. Disgorging is done with either salt or water. Salt will cause the water to leach out resulting in a firmer vegetable (useful if said vegetable will be stewing awhile). If you had a veal bone, you can let it sit in water and the impurities will come out. The demo was almost unnecessary, since all it involves is putting your eggplant in a colander over a bowl, and tossing it in liberal amounts of salt. Easy-peasy.
Chef then demoed how to add the vegetables to the pot in a certain order in order to layer the flavors, as opposed to letting it all cook at once and taste like a lot of vegetables in a stew. There are cameras set up, so we can see what chef is doing on 2 television screens, but we still mostly crowd round his station to see. First he sweated the onions, then added the peppers and some salt. Next went in the tomatoes, that had been freed of their skins by a seconds-quick boil and an icy dip, followed by some garlic, more salt, watered down tomato juice, and a bouquet garni (a little bundle of herbs and spices in a cheese cloth; usually thyme, bay leaf, parsley stems, and peppercorn). This was left to simmer, and in the meantime we started chopping vegetables and sweating our onions.
Next chef had us look up as he sautéed his zucchini and then his eggplant and added it to the pot. We went back to our chopping and stewing and soon had ourselves a ratatouille. Which we then sampled. Once everyone finished we put everyone's together to serve at the next day's family meal.
Finally, we cleaned up our stations, packed up extra beets to take home, and put dirty dishes on the rack for the dishwashers to clean. Yes, the school hires dishwashers, so we never have to clean anything except our knives. It's beautiful. With 30 minutes until the end of class. We lectured again. Mainly reviewing the vocab and techniques we learned and reviewing a few things for the next day. Finally chef dismissed us and we were free to change into our street clothes and head home. And that my friends is a day in the life.
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