Lovely example of a mirror presentation - we did these in class but this is not mine!

I have been extremely busy and apologize for my unexplained hiatus. I have a job now! Yay! I’ve been working at Freebird World Burritos since about the middle of January and I’m still in school at Texas Culinary Academy.

We finished up Proteins class then we had Bake Shop for 3 weeks in February with Valentines day falling right in the middle of it. So Brian got a chocolate box with chocolate truffles inside as a Valentines day gift. Unfortunately, I had food poisoning the week before that, so I didn’t really get to enjoy Valentines day or much of Bake Shop for that matter. We are now finishing up Garde Manger which is a class about cold foods such as salads, dressings, and sandwiches as well as the old techniques of  charcuterie or food preservation of the pre-refrigeration era.

Yesterday in Garde Manger, we did a skills assessment exam or speed drill. This exam was identical to the ACF’s Certified Culiarian exam. The exam consists of:

• fabricating a chicken and presenting one bone in, skin on, airline chicken breast, one skinless, boneless chicken breast, one wing, two thighs, two drumsticks (I presented the two tender loins but I don’t think it’s necessary)
• presenting batonnet of carrot and julienne of carrot
• presenting one pound mirepoix
• using the mirepoix and carcass to make chicken stock,
• presenting a composed plate of sauteed airline chicken breast, rice pilaf, and carrots au beurre.
• The exam must be completed in 2.5 hours.

poultry cuts

I really enjoyed this challenge and using Chef Banks’ method of fabricating a chicken, which he refers to as the “Quart of Blood” method, made this exam very easy. I’m incredibly happy to have learned this method I think it will help me tremendously in my future. It was nice to take an assessment that matches the ACF exam and see that I can do all of that and not feel flustered at all. The only problem that I ran into was the physical space we had to work in was very limited, but that’s pretty representative of industry kitchens from what I hear.

Unfortunately, we have recently learned that because our class is a certificate program and not an associates program we will not be eligible to take the ACF exam. We will be lacking a nutrition class and a management class as well as a specified number of hours of college credit as well as the exam which is not included in our curriculum as it is for the associates degree students. So in order to become Certified Culinarians we will need to take the two classes and the exam on our own (and pay for them ourselves), hopefully my bachelor’s degree will count for the hours of college credit even though they aren’t related to food. The news was pretty discouraging to several of my class mates, but I see it as just one more hurdle that I will get over.

In other news I now have a new job which I haven’t started yet. I will be doing prep cooking at AMF bowling. It sounds a little silly, but it’s a very large bowling alley that hosts large corporate parties as well as public play. Their patrons are taken care of by servers just like at a restaurant, but they get to bowl as well. I will hopefully begin work there this week, and I’m planning to keep my job at Freebird because I enjoy working there tremendously. Hopefully working two jobs and going to night school won’t be too crushingly demanding. I only have two and a half more months of labs at school then we start our externships in May. It’s almost over! I think I can make it!

Sauteed Chicken Breast with Rice Pilaff and
Carrots au Beurre

For Chicken:

• 1 skin on, air line chicken breast (wing up to first joint still attached and frenched)
• 3 oz canola oil
• as needed – kosher salt
• as needed – fresh cracked black pepper

For Rice Pilaf:

• 4 oz long grain white rice
• 2 oz onion small dice
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 2 oz butter
• 8 oz. Chicken Stock (or pipe stock…err…water)
• as needed – kosher salt
• as needed – fresh cracked black pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig thyme

For Carrots au Beurre:

• 4 oz carrot batonnet (1/4″ X 1/4″ X 2.5-3″)
• as needed – flat leaf parsley finely minced
• as needed – kosher salt
• as needed – fresh cracked black pepper
• 2 oz butter

1. In a medium sauce pan sweat onion in butter with salt. Do not saute, you don’t want any color on the onions. Sweat until translucent, add garlic and rice. Coat rice in fat and stir until rice becomes translucent. add bay leaf, thyme sprig, and chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover with lid or aluminum foil. cook on low heat or in 350 degree oven for 13-15 minutes. I cooked mine on the stove top because I would forget about it in the oven, but the French guys insist you do it in the over because it’s gentler, surrounding heat. after about 13 minutes check for doneness and seasoning, adjust if needed.
2. While your rice cooks on low on the back burner, heat the canola oil on medium in a medium size saute pan with sloped sides. Season skin side of breast with salt and pepper. When fat is hot saute the airline chicken breast skin side down, season skinless side with a pinch of salt, baste the skinless side using a large spoon. The technique works well if you put your chicken on the side of the pan opposite from the handle; this way you can tilt the handle side toward you to make the oil pool, scoop it up with the spoon and pour evenly over the breast. Remember though that as you poor the fat over you have to set the pan back down so the skin side cooks as well. It becomes a constant fluid motion. Also, with a bone in chicken breast try to focus your pouring around the bone side because it’s thicker and will cook slower. you don’t want enough oil to completely cover the small side of the breast; if it is covered in fat when the pan is flat the small side will over cook. continue this technique until breast is fully cooked but not over done. If you have doubts use a meat thermometer to measure; after carry over cooking the breast should read at 165 degrees, so take it out of the pan and allow to rest on a rack around 160 or so.
3. When breast is about half way cooked, cook carrots in a small saute pan just covered with water and about 1 tsp salt on medium heat. Cook the carrots until aldente (tender with a slight crunch) when they’ve reach the proper doneness, if the water hasn’t evaporated completely strain and return to the pan. Check for seasoning. Add butter, a pinch of pepper and salt if needed. this part can be done on low heat, the butter should just melt and coat the carrots, you don’t want the carrots to fry, they will become rubbery. once melted and coated remove from heat and toss in a pinch of parsley, if there is an excess of butter dry slightly on paper towel. you don’t want butter to run out on the plate.
4. For plating build a little mound of rice pilaff (minus bay leaf and thyme stem), I used a ramekin as a mold. pile carrots to the side of the rice all going in the same direction, not criss-crossing. Slice chicken breast on a bias starting with small side and working toward the wing bone, position in the same order as sliced in front of rice and carrots on plate, skin side up bone in the back (away from the diner). They should see the chicken first, the rice behind it then the carrots to one side.

Sorry I don’t have any pictures; I hope you can visualize my description.

I start school tomorrow. I’m beyond excited and nervous and any other emotion you can think of. In preparation this weekend I’ve been doing homework. I got my books last Wednesday, so I’ve read and taken notes on chapter 1 of Professional Cooking, and I’m going to read chapter 1 of Serve Safe. I want to have two chapters from each book finished by the end of today. Does that make me a huge nerd? Ya know, I don’t really care if I’m a huge nerd or a know it all. This is what I love to do, so I’m going to get ahead and do my best, and my best is really good.

I just hope that all this work pays off. I’m not doing the Culinary Arts Associates degree program because I already have a bachelors degree in print journalism. Instead I’m doing a Culinary Arts Certificate program, which they’ve only had for about a year at Texas Culinary Academy. I asked if they had any statistics about the marketability of the students who did the associates degree versus the students who did the certificate. Unfortunately, because it’s so new they didn’t really have any statistics about that yet. So in an effort to make up for the name of the thing I’m working for (certificate not degree) I have set incredibly lofty goals for myself.

Expecting Culinary Excellence

I expect to be, and have set the goal of being an ‘A’ student. To me there is no reason I can’t be exemplary. This is what I want to do, and I want to be the best that I can be. This is something that I can physically practice if I don’t do it perfect the first time. I suppose I could have practiced journalism by continually writing stories, or web development by using things like javascript every day, but those things are more abstract. There isn’t a tangible end product that can be compared to the one that was previously made. I know some people are so passionate about reporting that they’re always thinking of stories to write, but I was just never that into it. But when it comes to cooking I do what journalists do, I constantly think of new recipes. I don’t have to try to get the creative juices flowing either, I just slip in to day dreams about things like the difference in flavor of parmesan, asiago and romano cheeses and which one I should use as a funnel shaped receptacle for my avocado ceviche…?

Getting My Money’s Worth

I also want to have exemplary attendance. TCA doesn’t want students to skip classes, but why would anyone want to? In college I skipped classes probably more than I should have. I think I skipped because I was never very excited about class. A four year university is so drawn out and long I think that many students lose sight of their goals and lose the passion for education that they may have had when they started. I started to forget why I was getting a degree, I just knew I needed to get one. When I finally did and it came time to get a job, I didn’t really want to be a reporter nor did I really want to be a programmer, but I was going to have to start paying back loans pretty quickly and needed an income. After working as a web developer for over a year, I now know what I want to do, and I’m going to do everything I can to do it perfectly. Since I’m only in school for 7 months I have to make the most out of every single class. I can’t skip if I want to stay ahead, not only that, but if you have 98% attendance you get red ropes to wear at graduation. I want those red ropes!

Activities and Involvement

Aside from good grades and perfect attendance, I want to get involved. I want to be a part of the community of the school. I plan to join the Bleu Print, which is TCA’s online news letter. I’ve read it over the last few months, and it’s not bad, but it could be improved so much, and I think I could help. It’s a PDF, and I’m not sure what program they’re using to create it, but I could help by using Adobe InDesign to clean up the layout a bit. They’re also using a scanned in image for the Le Cordon Bleu logo when they could just take a screen shot of an online version of the image if the don’t already have a vector graphic version. A made for web version would look so much better than a scanned in version. Also, I do have a journalism degree, I might as well use it; I would love to write stories about food. Food writing might be a direction I want to take my career eventually, so I think getting a start while I’m in school is a good idea. There are a few other student clubs that I would love to join like the American Culinary Federation (ACF) which hosts competitions and participates in certification exams, but I just don’t know if I’ll have time since I’m still working 30 hours per week. I think they would both be a lot of fun and would look great on my resume.

Presenting the Winning Dishes

Not only am I going to try to do all of those things, but I also want to get this whole thing paid for with scholarships if possible, so I’ll continue to compete in recipe competitions. There is no recipe with today’s post because I’ve been working on recipes for the Chilean Avocado recipe contest. I don’t want to give away my recipes before the contest is over, but these pictures are of some dishes that I will be submitting.

Starting tomorrow, I have a long and hectic 7 months ahead of me. The end result will be well worth the work, and I can’t wait to get started.

What You’ll Get

These are my stories about life, food and the pursuit of happiness. You’ll frequently see recipes in addition to a story, all of which are original unless otherwise noted and usually quite delicious. Please feel free to try out any recipe and let me know what you think.

Culinary School

I graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts – Austin in July of 2010. Culinary school not only taught me the tips and tricks to creating gastronomic delights but also made me realize my life goals and what I am personally capable of achieving through hard work and will power.