Week 2 into Week 3

As I go into Week 3 of culinary school, I noticed a couple of interesting things:

1. According to our ServSafe book, people will deliberately attempt to contaminate food, including (number one on the bulletpoint list), terrorists. The page dedicated to purposeful contamination was at once funny and paranoia-inducing.
2. Many culinary students are squeamish about "strange" foods, such as brains and cow hearts. I don't understand this squeamishness coming from any student studying food and the preparation thereof, but I apparently it happens.

I find that I'm pretty good at most of my cuts (Chef Bruno seems to think to), but I still need to get the hang of the tournee, the 7-sided (sometimes 5-sided) football-shaped cut. I will find out this week that I probably failed a conversion quiz because I didn't know about one of two equations I was supposed to use. Thankfully, I know about the formula now which is beneficial in the long term.

Oh, and we got our culinary kit, complete with KNIVES! Woo hoo!

We now have the Internet at the new home. Hopefully, as things get set up here at the house, I'll be able to blog about my experience at culinary school more often.

Culinary School, Week 1

...Day 4.

The plan was to write one of these everyday. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), starting culinary school at Sacramento's Le Cordon Bleu coincides with moving into a new home. Our phone and Internet gets turned off tomorrow, so this blog comes to you during the hours between Day 4 and 5 of my first week.

First up is Food Safety and Sanitation and Culinary Foundations I, both taught to us by Chef Bruno Caccia. We've been given 7 books (!) that will serve as our texts during our entire time at the school. The culinary/knife kit comes next week (supposedly Monday).

It's a little weird; Chef reads the SafeServ book to us. Yes, he also provides his own anecdotes and elaborations, but having been out of high school for 15 years, it's weird to be in a class where the teacher reads the text aloud. As we learn more about foodborne illnesses and prevention measures, I fear the class will do the opposite of what I'd hoped it would do; I'm obsessive-compulsive - a "germaphobe" - and I was hoping that learning about food safety and sanitation in the professional kitchen would help me to realize how far is too far when trying to be clean in the kitchen. So far, my paranoia feels heightened, like Spider-Sense except not as cool.

Day 2 put us in uniform, complete with checks (pants), chef's jacket, white neckerchief , hat, black socks, and slip-resistant shoes. No earrings, though, which meant taking mine out (and losing one). We have uniform inspection everyday, during which we line up in alphabetical order as the chef inspects our fingernails, our shaven (or unshaven) faces, and our uniforms.

Day 2 also saw us jumping right into learning classic knife cuts. In doing so, I became subjected to the confusing world of French culinary terminology. A diced potato, for instance, is called "macedoine", no matter the size. However, a "macedoine" for vegetables, however, is a larger dice, while a smaller dice is a "brunoise" and an even smaller dice is a "brunoisette".

Oh, but wait. There's more. Cutting a vegetable - say, a carrot - into a 1/2" x 1/2" x 2" stick is called a "batonnet". But if you do the same cut with a potato, it's called a "pont neuf". Sigh.

Today, Day 4, I cried in class. It was the onions. Imagine 32 students cutting shallots, garlic, and onions in fairly close proximity to each other. There was a lot of crying and sniffling. I'm surprised I didn't see any ex-newbies watching us through the hall window. It's funny to look out and see students who were probably newbies six weeks ago watching the new newbies as if we were zoo exhibits. I would've expected that today, with all the tears and snot pouring from our faces as the fumes from the onions took their toll, the ex-newbies would have looked in on us, the expressions on their faces saying, "I remember that. Ha. I bet we never looked that funny."

My class is a hodge-podge of people. Some are older, some younger. Some look like they're the pirates described in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Some look like they came from a ghetto. Others from nicer areas. Some have professional kitchen experience. Some, like me, just love food and want to learn. As I look at the faces of my classmates, I wonder how many will quit before it's over and how many will graduate. You just can't tell because the food industry is full of so many different kinds of people and you really can't stereotype what a foodie is supposed to look like or how they're supposed to behave.

Day 5 is up next, then the weekend. Hopefully the major part of the move to our new home goes well and I'll actually have some time to get some homework done.

Orientation at Le Cordon Bleu, Sacramento

On Saturday, 9-18-2010, I had my first official day at culinary school at Sacramento's Le Cordon Bleu. It turned out to be part self-help class, part orientation. I felt like I was five years old until the chefs got up to speak.

I assumed orientation would let incoming students know how to prepare for their first week of school, where to go, what to bring, what to wear, when we'd get our uniforms and equipment. And it was. But a lot of this basic information was preceded by talk of how to deal with your personal issues while attending school; of where to go for support; of encouraging everyone to help each other and to ask for help.

Don't get me wrong. This is all useful information for people that have never worked together in a kitchen before, for people who are changing careers, for people who haven't been to school in years. But delivery is a powerful thing. They way you say it has a lot to do with how one takes it.

And I hate it when people talk to me like I'm five.

I'm mature enough to handle my responsibilities as an adult and to handle myself in public in a manner that, hopefully, isn't embarrassing to me and to those around me. I think I can get that much right. But I'm also immature enough to like potty humor, to watch cartoons meant for kids, and to act like a five-year-old when I'm trying to cute and/or funny. But when administrative members of a school get up in front of a room filled mostly with adults, please don't talk to me as if you're trying to communicate to a five-year-old.

You can use humor. You can as rhetorical questions. It's all fine. I do the same thing when I teach drumlines. I talk about asking for help and helping their peers. I ask for group answers to my questions. I use humor to help get my messages across. But I talk to my drumline members, who are mostly high school students, like young adults. It's less patronizing, which leaves the listener more open to what I have to say.

Thankfully, when the chefs got up to speak, the communication got better. I feel pretty good about entering a classroom and having the chefs talk to my class. School starts in a week and I'm nervous and excited.

I'm looking forward to it.

Fake Claypot Rice?

I watched an older episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations last night. In 2007 he went (back) to Hong Kong. At the time of watching, I'd had two slices of leftover pizza to eat that day... about noon. That was it. No other form of sustenance except for a bit of water entered my body. The time of viewing? Oh, about 10:00 PM. I was pretty hungry but had little to cook in the house and little money to justify getting take out that late.

So perhaps my state of hunger had something to do with how big of an impression this particular episode had on me.

(In contrast, the night before I'd watched the Shanghai episode and, though everything looked spectacularly delicious, I was so not hungry that the episode was hard to watch)

One dish in particular reminded me of a few things I did have in the house to eat and would have cooked if it wasn't so late. Claypot Rice. Basically, a steamed rice dish in a small claypot that was accompanied by various "toppings", such as Chinese sausage ("lop chang", or however you want to spell it), duck, salted fish, chicken... basically a one-bowl rice dish. It's something they apparently eat in the winter.

I knew I'd be making some version of that today for lunch.

I had leftover rainbow chard (about 12 days old, but still a lot of healthy-looking leaves), eggs, leftover rice, and lop chang. A bit of canola oil, soy sauce, water, and crushed red peppers and I was ready to go.

Oh, but wait. I don't have a claypot. What to do?!

1. Canola oil went into a medium-medium high heated nonstick pan. After it was hot, I threw in the lop chang, which I'd cut into medium-sized pieces (for its size).
2. Once the sausage had browned, I threw in the chard until it wilted. Then, in went the rice. I tossed it with some crushed red pepper. Then, about a 1/4 cup of water to help steam the leftover rice.
3. After most of the water had been absorbed/turned to steam, I cracked an egg over the top. I drizzled soy sauce over everything and put a lid on it. After a few minutes, once the egg had cooked through, it was ready to go. The results?

Excuse my funky mug, but the webcam was the only thing available. Pretty obvious that I'm happy though, yeah?

It was pretty damn good, cheap to make, and didn't take long at all. Usually I make fried rice with my leftovers, but this was a bit different. Fluffier, really, and the dish overall seemed to be a bit more incorporated whereas fried rice is usually a mish-mash of ingredients that still seemed separated in the dish. This could've been more incorporated had I used more liquid, but it was good the way it was. The bottom of the rice dish was crispy because it had fried while the rest did not. This led to some pretty intense flavors.

A small variation on a one-bowl rice dish, to be sure, but one worth exploring with your leftovers.

Let's get something straight about culinary school

Two months from today, I shall be a student once more, this time wearing a chef's jacket and wielding a large knife.

That's right. I took the leap and enrolled in culinary school. I shall be attending Le Cordon Bleu affiliate here in Sacramento for their 12-month Extended Certificate program.

As I await the start date of my new adventure, I want to make a few things clear to the general public - to those thinking about attending culinary school, to those with opinions on culinary schools, and to those with delusions influenced by the food entertainment we see on TV.

1. I have no plans to abandon comics or music. Let's just leave it at that. But I need a job, preferably one that I like. I've already done my time with the job I hate so I can come home and work on the things I love, and it didn't work out so well. I've been thinking of going to culinary school for at least five years, give or take. I always dismissed it as a fleeting dream, something I would save for the age of 35 or so if I wasn't successful in the other areas of my choice. Currently, I'm not unsuccessful. I teach drums and write music for a living. It just doesn't pay very well, and that's gotta change. Like I said, I'm not leaving music behind, but in my search for a dayjob that I like, I revisited the notion of going to culinary school. People, in any economy, continue to go out to eat, yes? I love food and cooking, yes? It seems like a logical choice. While I have no idea what the future will bring, I hope that my acquired skills will help find me a job, which in turn will afford me a comfortable living once again. I understand that working in the food industry will probably mean a commitment of many, many hours and that other things in my life may have to sit in the proverbial back seat, but I'm willing to take that chance for a career that looks like it will satisfy me, both personally and financially.

2. I do not know what will happen beyond graduation besides me seeking employment. I want to try working in a professional kitchen. It looks like fun. It looks like hard work. It looks satisfying, creatively. I could be dead wrong. I won't know until I reach that point. What I do know is that I have no delusions about the glamourous career television makes the professional kitchen out to be. I have no plans to become the next celebrity chef, or the next owner of a national chain of restaurants. I have no plans to become the next guy who will travel the globe eating all sorts of stuff we're no accustomed to in America. Would those things be nice? Sure. I'm prone to daydreaming. But I'm not going into this with those goals in mind. My goal is to learn technique, methodology, efficiency, and ingredient interaction, all of which will help me be better cook. From there, my goal will be to seek employment with my new skills. Where that takes me remains to be seen. I won't know until I have some experience in the field.

3. I will be attending Le Cordon Bleu affiliate in Sacramento. After much research - though, admittedly, there's always more research I could have done - I decided this would be the logical choice. My criteria:

• Money: I don't have a lot of it and I can't take out too much in student loans.
• Time: I can't spend two years in school, as much as I'd like to. There are other things in my life that need attention.
• Location: we can't relocate. We can't afford it. That ties in with the money issue, except in this case relocation would impact my wife. As much as I'd love to check out the Culinary Institute of America or Johnson and Wales, it's not feasible.
• Externship: I want to do one. I want part of my graduation requirements to include working in a real, fine dining restaurant.

There isn't a whole lot of choice here in Sacramento. We've got Le Cordon Bleu, which is an affiliate of the Paris school, but not run by the same faculty. We've also got the Art Institute and the American River College culinary programs. ARC, though I've heard they have a fine program and would be considerably cheaper than LCB or AI, was off the list because an externship isn't part of the program. Instead, students work in the school-owned cafe. This is fine, but it isn't what I want. The program offers a certificate and an Associate's Degree (two years) program, and each program requires students to take classes in hospitality management (food costs, restaurant management, etc). I have heard that people really like the program, but the cooking half of the curriculum didn't seem like what I wanted and the lack of an externship was the deciding factor.

The Art Institute's program also looks very good. Half of it is hospitality management and the other half - the cooking half - looks very appealing as well as diverse. They offer a certificate and an Associate's Degree, and program does include an externship. If I attended this school, I would want to enroll in the two-year program, but that wouldn't be feasible. The one year program would be a good choice, too, but in the end the decision was based on cost... and they want a ton of money.

The Art Institute's total tuition for the diploma (about one year; 5 quarters) is $32,093, and their two-year program is $58,691. I'm not sure what is included (ie. are the application, enrollment, lab, and student activity, and other fees included or separate from tuition?), but if this is the base price to go on, wait until you read about Le Cordon Bleu's tuition.

Le Cordon Bleu has an application fee of $50, which you pay at the time of enrollment. Then, tuition is $18,971 for the 9-month program or $22,380 for the 12-month program. So the Art Institute wants $10,000 more than LCB, and there are other fees that need to be paid on top of that? Yeesh.

Le Cordon Bleu only offers certificates and there are no hospitality management classes, but that means there is a large emphasis on cooking. While it's always good to know the business side of things, I figure I can learn that as I gain field experience or I can take individual classes at American River College. According to the admissions representative, the basic classes (Foundation I, II, and III, Food Safety and Sanitation, and Baking and Pastry) are comparable to the basics curriculum at the Paris school. The extended program, in which I've enrolled, offers three more classes and the earned certificate is issued from the Paris school (the regular certificate is not).

For my money (loaned money) and time, Le Cordon Bleu is the logical choice.

4. An admissions representative from the Art Institute talked with me the other day and she did not seem to hold Le Cordon Bleu's program in high esteem. This was probably part of her job, but since I have no evidence to the contrary, I can only take her words at face value. I did some poking around on the Internet to see if anyone had any opinions about both programs. I mostly found people commenting on Le Cordon Bleu, the CIA, and a few notes here and there about Johnson and Wales.

Without getting into detail, let me say this: I've never known an organization where 100% of it's members were great. I'm sure a lot of incompetent people go to Harvard and a lot of smart people go to California State University, Sacramento. Just because a student attends the CIA, doesn't mean he or she has the makings of a three or four star chef. Just because a student attends a community college program doesn't mean he or she has inferior cooking skills. I'm willing to bet that, no matter where a student goes to school, most of the student body don't work hard, aren't interested in learning, and basically waste the money required to attend their school. It's the relatively small percentage that do work hard and do want to learn that actually have any desirable skills and knowledge after graduation.

I have read statements and blogs from students that have attended other Le Cordon Bleu campuses that have enjoyed their time at the school and learned a lot.

The truth is, I don't know what the school will be like. Any school will teach you something, but you also get out what you put into it. I think there will be a lot to learn by attending the Sacramento campus. I think the curriculum promises a large culinary education. Will they deliver on that promise? As with any school, I'll find out when I start classes.

I can also tell you this: I'm not interested in the actual, paper certificate itself. I'm not interested in any sort of prestige a school may or may not have associated with its name. I am interested in learning and acquiring good cooking skills. Sure, a certificate and a school's name may look good (or bad, depending) on a resume, and that's how the world works, but when it comes right down to it I want a potential employer to assess me for my skills, my knowledge, and my personality, not the name of some school I went to.

* * *

I'm excited for school to begin. I will learn what they have to teach me and I will work hard at being a good cook. We'll see where my adventure in professional cooking takes me from there.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries - Sacramento

Like many, I'm always on the lookout for a good burger.

Where I live, here in Sacramento, we've got a number of places that offer good burgers. What is close to my actual home, however, is limited. Here, we have an In-N-Out. Other than that, if we want a burger that's nearby, we've got Carl's Jr., McDonald's, and Jack-In-the-Box. If we don't want a fast food burger, we've got a BJ's and a Chili's. Otherwise, we have to venture much farther away from home.

So really, near our home, we have an In-N-Out.

Now, we have a second choice, and it's the east coast staple, Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

I was excited to try it. According to my wife, this place was supposed to be all the rave on the east coast. Later, while reading reviews online, I found out that this is the burger place that President Obama likes. Not that that had anything to do with my want to try the place, but that's an indicator of how famous this place is on the other side of the country.

Before I continue, I should probably divulge to you my criteria for rating burgers. Firstly, it's gotta be good. That's a given. What's a good burger? Well, the meat must be tender and it must taste like meat. Normally, I don't want it to taste like anything other than meat, though there are sometimes exceptions: I've made chipotle burgers; my dad likes to put onion soup mix in his. So yes, I make exceptions for burger patties with some variety, but more often than not, I want a well-seasoned (not to be confused with over-seasoned) hamburger patty that tastes like beef.

Then, there's the bread. Is the bread stale? Is it cheap? Does it goes well with the patty and the fixings? Is it generic, cheap-tasting bread that is absolutely the opposite of the great things I'm tasting inside?

Construction: my rule of sandwich construction is that if you put it in a sandwich, you should be able eat it with the sandwich. In other words, I don't want all my fixings to fall out.

Then, last but not least, there's value. What am I paying for the burger, and is it worth it? For instance, is the $9.00 I'm paying for a restaurant burger worth the dry, tasteless burger I received?

Now, then. On to Five Guys.

It's a very good-tasting burger. Their regular burgers are double-patty burgers. Want a single patty? You'll have to order the little burger. I got a cheeseburger with mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickle. The wife and I shared an order of small fries; originally, we ordered a large, but we were told it would feed three-to-four people, and the small would be good enough for two. So, two it was. And there were, indeed, a lot of fries.

Burgers and dogs come foil-wrapped. When I opened my burger, it was hot and ready to go, until I realized that there were no onions. This, coupled with the fact that our friend, who'd accompanied us, didn't get cheese on his bacon cheese dog, was not a good first impression. At the counter, I got the onions for my burger but they were roughly diced, not sliced as they did not offer sliced onions. This led to a violation of my sandwich rule: as I ate, onions fell from my burger repeatedly. Annoying, since I wanted to eat them with my burger, not pick them up and reinsert them; not pick them up and eat them separately.

Enough about the onions. How was the burger? Very good. To be honest, it reminded me of a very good homemade burger you'd get at a family gathering. Except this one came wrapped in foil, like at a fair.

Which leads me to my wife and our respective opinions of the bun. She didn't like it, thinking that it was too soft for the burger, thus making it too thin as she held it. I didn't mind the bun. I had read that many people thought it was too soft or to doughy, but I didn't mind it as its softness complemented the texture of everything else; with the melted cheese, it was quite a gooey burger. The resulting thinness of the bun also put more of an emphasis on the patties and the fixings.

Tip: If you want to retain the fullness and firmness of your bun, don't wrap your hot burger in foil. All it does is the steam the bun. If that's what you want, then great. But, some people will complain about the result.

As for the meat, Five Guys like juicy and well done. To me this is a contradiction because well done basically means to overcook the meat until it's drier than Stephen Wright's humor. I can tell you that the burger seemed juicy, but it certainly wasn't overflowing with juices. The melted cheese and slathered mayo certainly helped, but it wasn't the juiciest thing I'd ever eaten. I wonder if there was high fat content in the meat to help retain some juices while cooking it to well done. Speaking of well done, as you might expect, the meat had a firm, mealy texture due to it's dryness. But, the patties did taste like meat. Not really well-seasoned meat, but then, perhaps it didn't need it what with all the other stuff on the burger. However, without all the fixings, including cheese, I wonder just how dry and season-less it would be.

The fries? What I want in a French fry is a fresh, clean, crispy outside and a hot, mealy inside. I personally don't like fries that are too thick because potatoes, by themselves, are pretty bland. The remedy for this, of course, is a dipping sauce. However, this being a burger-stand style place, the only dipping sauce for the fries was ketchup. No thanks. The fries weren't bad. Considering the fries on their own terms, they were thicker than shoe-strings but thinner than steak fries, well-seasoned and tasted alright, but they weren't consistently crispy - in fact, most were soft - and in the end weren't anything special.

My cheeseburger was $5.69, and the small fries were $2.39. I personally thought the burger was worth $5.00, and while this was only a $0.69 difference, to me that $0.69 brings me closer to paying $6.00; it was like the burger was trying to stretch its value. It was certainly good, and I would return to eat here again, but coming that close to $6.00 is pushing it. As for the fries, it seemed as if we were paying for quantity, not quality. While the fries were not bad, they weren't anything special. The volume alone makes the price worth it, I just wish the fries stayed crispy and had a bit of a cleaner taste.

So, the results?

	The east coast is dominating the west coast burger scene. Deal with it.
	Let's see... this place or a good ol' Sacramento staple... what to choose, what to choose...
	Gooooooooooooooooood. Very good.
	Meh. did I just walk into a McDonald's?
	Hey, look, they're selling burgers they found in the trash! Yum!

I give Five Guys Burgers and Fries 3.5 stars. The burger was very good, but, though I've only eaten here once, it didn't impress me enough to make it one of my first choices in Sacramento. It's certainly a choice, however. In fact, it's a serious consideration, especially so close to home. I personally would skip the fries next time, however, and save the money. Perhaps my subsequent visits will have the burger win me over more. Time will tell. But yes, I will return.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

4630 Natomas Blvd.

Sacramento, CA 95835

(916) 419-4109

www.fiveguys.com

Fresh pasta

I've been away from the blogosphere for a little while. I've been pretty busy with a couple projects that have taken up a lot of free time here at home. That doesn't mean I haven't participated in the act of food eating and making; I've gotta eat, you know. But these projects have actually taken up so much time that my routine for the past month (yeesh!) has been project, work, eat, wife-time.

So, a couple weeks ago, when I spent a 3-hour-plus stretch in the kitchen making fresh pasta for the first time, it was a nice break that resulted in something simple yet incredibly satisfying.

My wife and I have tried to find ways to cut back on the amount we spend on food, including making larger meals so that they can be eaten throughout the week (which reminds me that I have slow cooker on the counter keeping me waiting). I'm hoping that one day she'll start making bread at home. We're trying to find ways to grow certain things here at the condo so that we don't have to buy them. So the act of making fresh pasta made sense economically, as well.

Oh, and I did it all without a pasta machine.

The pasta was quite satisfying, both to make and eat. I did some research on pasta recipes and found 3 basic ones:

flour, egg, extra-virgin olive oil, and salt

flour and eggs

flour and water

I tried the first. I wanted something flavorful and knew that the first had the potential to deliver more flavor. In the interest of time, I used a food processor to make the dough. Provided I make the time, I'd like to try everything by hand next time (using the flour "volcano" method). In any case, once the dough was kneaded, I let it rest for 30 minutes.

Upon my return, I cut the ball of dough into quarters and proceeded to roll out some pasta. With a rolling pin. For the next hour.

I know a pasta machine would make things much easier. But I don't want to buy a pasta machine. We already have a rolling pin at home and don't have that much counter space. A pasta machine would be an unnecessary expense and then I'd have to figure out where I'd use it. So, the rolling pin it was, and though my time in the kitchen was longer than the time it took to eat the pasta, I did it anyway.

I was excited. I was excited that the pasta we were going to eat that night - the pasta that we would have otherwise purchased from the supermarket, the pasta that would almost certainly taste and feel different from what we were used to - was going to come from my hands, from ingredients that were cheap to purchase and could be stocked in our home for a long time without the need to replenish.

And I was excited just to be in the kitchen making something from scratch, making something that I knew would satisfy both our bellies and our taste buds. Excited to do something I love while getting away from what had become my new daily grind.

I ended up making wide-noodle pasta, about half the length of fettucini. I made a pan sauce with butter, extra-virgin olive oil, minced onions and garlic, and crushed red peppers. I served this with a side of sauteed asparagus with salt, black pepper, and minced onions and garlic.

Unfortunately, kitchen time is something I have to make time for, but as the project comes to a close and I can return to my more regular daily routine, and as my schedule changes for the summer, hopefully my presence in the kitchen will be more frequent.