Now that I'm on school break...

...I can make time to update this thing.

What with everything that's been going on in my life, I have neglected this blog, which is a shame. A lot has happened during my three months in culinary school.

I've completed my Food & Safety, Foundations I, and Foundations II classes, receiving an A in each, which is great. Not the highest grade in my class, which the competitive side of me hates. But, great grades do not make great food, right?

Right.

At times, I wish I'd been able to attend a 2-year culinary school. I don't know what a 2-year program is actually like; I know that there are several management classes that students have to take. I can only imagine that students have more time with actual culinary lessons; instead of spending a single day on, say, fish butchery, I wonder if students in a 2-year program get to spend a couple days learning and improving their skills. Perhaps this is a false assumption, but it is an assumption that stems from being enrolled in what is what one of the chefs has called an "accelerated curriculum".

In Le Cordon Bleu's accelerated curriculum, we learn a lot of things in each 28-day class. In Foundations II, my most recent class, we:

• made stocks, sauces, and soups
• reviewed and applied saute, braising, roasting, grilling, poaching, and even poele
• trussed a chicken
• butchered a chicken and fish
• learned egg, rice, potato, vegetable, and basic protein cookery
• learned about salads
• exercised a line cooking scenario

While, to the uninitiated, this may all seem like basic stuff you can learn at home, I can tell you that a) you're right, and b) you're wrong. With each lesson there are certain techniques employed that is meant to help the cook be more efficient, which you need to be in a professional kitchen. And, with each lesson and recipe, there are what my recent chef instructor called "competencies" - several smaller skills that you learn while making each recipe. Then there's the food science part of it. Salads, for example, may seem easy but within learning about different salads (and there are different classifications), we learned about temporary and permanent emulsions, proper blanching and shocking procedures (according to the chef), basic composition, seasoning (who seasons a salad? Everyone should!), and dressing... little things that most people wouldn't consider but, upon reflection, all make sense now that we've had those lessons.

And, of course, through it all, practicing our basic knife skills every day.

But the problem with the accelerated curriculum is we don't get to spend enough time in school practicing the larger lessons that we've learned. The smaller lessons get practiced almost every day, but the bigger ones are the more difficult ones to learn and become competent at. Of course, I could go out and, for example, buy a whole chicken and butcher it, but it's nice to be able to do it in school so that I can ask questions and get feedback. Thankfully, the logistics of the bigger lessons have been learned and at the very least I can practice at home so that the application side of it becomes more competent.

For our final, we had to make four plates consisting of protein, starch, vegetable, sauce, and garnish (the last item not being too important to our chef). We split the four plates into two days. The first day was Escalope of Veal and mushroom cream sauce with browned, glazed pearl onions, carrots, turnips, and wilted lettuce and a pan fried potato cake, and poached salmon with Beurre Blanc, rice pilaf, and sauteed tourneed zucchini.

During our practice day, the day before, my potato cake came out great. The chef told me not to change a thing. So what happened? During the final, my potato cake basically melted in the pan. Too much butter. What came out were bits of fried potato that looked like hashed browns. I was, obviously, pretty upset. But, the rest of the food was pretty decent and I got a good grade otherwise.

The second day of finals was grilled pork chop with a veal, dijon, gherkin juice sauce (it's good, really) and pureed potatoes (essentially mashed potatoes), and lamb stew with a side of polenta.

I finished my plates for the day in good time and was pretty proud of the way I'd plated everything: I ensured that my sauce didn't run into my potatoes and my stew (with veggies cooked separately - a modern practice) looked great. Then, as I was and one of the end sinks cleaning up, I heard commotion. I looked over and heard, "Whose is it?"

"It's Phillip's."

I came over and my suite mate told me that the student across from us had knocked my plated down from the shelf onto the counted. I looked and my pork chop was flipped off the plate, my sauce was all over, and my potatoes in a slump somewhere next to the chop.

Needless to say, I was pissed.

In the end, the associate chef told me to just show what I had; the chefs knew I'd done the work so all they needed was to taste the food. My first thought was, "Ew." My second thought was, "There's hardly any sauce left." My third thought was, "I'd better not get a bad evaluation or I'm going to flip out."

My pork chop was, essentially, perfectly cooked. Slightly pink in the middle (yes, PINK!) and juicy. The potatoes were good and the sauce, though he couldn't really judge consistency because there wasn't enough, was good; the associate chef, who evaluated my food) could tell all the components were there.

My polenta was good, and the chef really liked the color and flavor of my stew, which was, as he described, a dark, dirty sauce with intense flavor. Excellent. I could've cooked the turnips just a bit longer, but overall my dishes turned out well.

Before culinary school, I really liked cooking. Often, I loved it, especially when I was making something different and made the time to actually cook something substantial (you know, as opposed to eggs and frozen hashed browns for breakfast). Now, I love it more and more. I find that going to culinary school and cooking everyday has really made me love the act of cooking. I find myself wanting to cook at home, even though I spent all afternoon cooking (I can't say the same about the dishes, though).

I still don't know what I want to get out of culinary school other than the ability to get a job that I believe I will like. I don't know if I want to own a restaurant, become a private chef, get into catering, or what. This is one of the few times in my life where I have entered a field without knowing what I want from it in the end. I do know that I want to share my skills with my family and friends, at the very least, and I think my education will help my wife and me to eat better overall.

I'm looking forward to Foundations III, where the chef seems like he'll be a hardass (yes, I'm looking forward to that). Plus, I need to start work on my resume because the time to begin applying for an externship is coming up.