Reading, Writing, and Using Recipes - Part 1: What The Heck Is A Recipe?

One of the things I hate most about recipes is reading them.

You read that right. I hate reading recipes. Well, most recipes. They're generally a list of ingredients with amounts, sometimes with minor instructions (eg. 2 cloves garlic, minced), underneath of which are further instructions, sometimes written in paragraph form, and sometimes the steps are numbered.

In some of the books I have, the ingredient list and instructions are side by side and sectioned off so that a batch of ingredients correlate with a set of instructions, then the next section will have another batch of ingredients correlating with their instructions.

And it's all so... wordy.

Before I started culinary school, I learned to rewrite recipes before cooking them so that a) I could understand, in my own way, what needed to be done, and b) I could format them in a manner that was easy to follow during the chaos that could ensue during cooking.  This is important because before you cook you have to understand what you're doing.  Unfortunately, recipes often tell you what to do but not necessarily how to do it.

What does that mean?  Well, when a recipe tells you to saute mushrooms on medium high heat for two minutes, do you know what saute means?  Let's get rid of the word saute and place it with cook.  Okay, now we have a more generic term.  We'll cook the mushrooms on medium high heat for 2 minutes... except the mushrooms are burning and they've only been cooking for a minute-and-a-half!  So, let's change for two minutes to until brown.  Well, not all mushrooms brown, are they?  That's just a generic term cooks use to describe caramelization and the Maillard reaction (another post, another day, folks).  So let's change that to until dark.  How dark?  Um... twice as dark?  Really dark?  And what if it takes a really long time?  Perhaps the burner you're using doesn't have high enough heat, even though it's on medium high.  Can you bump up the heat?  Or is it supposed to take a long time?  Well, it's supposed to take two minutes, right?  Oh, wait, we changed that...

Yes, that's kind of a worse-care scenario.  Not everyone gets that confused while following a recipe, but then again, some people do.  I have met people that are learning how to cook but following a recipe is still confusing to them; I met two girls who went shopping for a casserole recipe that stated six stalks of celery were needed.  Not being cooks, and therefore not necessarily being familiar with cooking or food terminology (or plant terminology, for that matter), they didn't know what stalks were... so they bought six bunches of celery instead of one bunch with six stalks.  That is a lot of celery left over!

Following a recipe can be difficult for people learning how to cook, or inexperienced cooks.  Even experienced cooks can probably have a difficult time following a recipe if it is written in a complicated manner, and yes... I've seen some complicated recipes.

The thing is, a recipe can't necessarily teach a person how to cook.  They're not technical manuals; they can't - or rather, don't - teach technique.  It can state what to do with food in order to cook it, which should result in a specific dish, but it doesn't explain the subtleties of a saute and how to make adjustments.  It doesn't explain what a braise is and why you need to do it for a particular piece of meat and why you shouldn't substitute another particular type of meat.  There are technical things that are left out of a recipe that help keep the text of a recipe shorter than it otherwise could be.

So... um... what is a recipe then?

A recipe is, quite simply, a set of instructions designed to instruct the user how to assemble a dish.

Think of a recipe like a map or GPS.  If you have your driver's license, you know how to drive, right?  (We're not going to debate the quality of your driving here...)  But, just because you know how to drive, doesn't mean you don't necessarily know how to get to every destination you need to drive to.  Thus, a map or a GPS can provide some sort of guide or instruction designed to provide you a route from where you are to your destination.  This is a recipe.

There are two words of note: assemble and guide.  Just because you're told or shown how to assemble something, doesn't mean you have the technique behind the methods to assemble the dish that will result in awesome, blow-your-mind food.  Or even to assemble it well.  Or, in some cases, assemble it so that the outcome remotely looks like edible food.  The recipe also acts as a guide because recipes are generally written in a step-by-step manner where the the steps are (hopefully) arranged in a chronological manner so that each task is presented in an order that allows efficient assembly.  For example, if making pizza, you wouldn't necessarily want to prep all your toppings and then start your dough, because the dough needs time to rise and rest.  Prepping beforehand would just make the entire process longer.  A good recipe will have you make the dough first, then prep your toppings, then instruct you to stretch the dough, assemble the pizza, then bake.  Think of it like this: You wouldn't want to be lead around in circles all over town by a GPS when you could have made a right, two lefts, and a final right, would you?

So, whether you're an experienced or inexperienced cook, it's a great idea to rewrite recipes before using them.  And, if you're intent on teaching yourself to how cook using recipes, one of the best ways to start is to rewrite them.  We'll get into how and why next time.

Genetic Fabrication - Meat in a Petri Dish?

It's been awhile, I know.

But don't worry. I've got ideas.

Since my last post, I've completed several classes and I must say, I can see how much I've learned and how much I've improved since day 1. Sure, not all of the lessons are as academic as I thought or hoped they would be, but many, many little lessons culminate into larger competencies.

Academia does enter the picture often, though. In my current class, Contemporary Cuisine (which, the instructor, Chef Eric Veldman Miller, said should be renamed "Play With Your Food"), the Chef started class with a discussion on the topic of what I refer to as "genetic fabrication", that is, the creation of meat from stem cells. He opened up the floor to student opinions, and the comments were quite diverse. Some thought it scientifically interesting but were worried about what the food would taste like. After all, an animal's diet influences the way it tastes. Then there were questions about how far such a practice could go; someone asked about growing humans in a petri dish and went so far as to mention cannibalism (I couldn't really hear the comment, but wow... but a leap!). There were questions of muscle development, to which the chef responded that electricity was run to the "meat" to stimulate the muscle in the absence of exercise. I even asked about fat development: if one grows meat in a petri dish, will there be fat development? It was postulated in class by almost everyone, including the Chef, that if muscles don't do any work, it starts to turn to fat (however, a quick Q&A here at Shape Magazine's website determines that, no, muscle cannot turn into fat. They're two different types of tissues. Thus, I would be skeptical about fat development from petri dish meat). Then there was the moral question of, "Just because we can, should we?" Someone even brought up how such practices would affect food costs in restaurants.

I then took a turn at offering my opinion. My initial reaction was that, scientifically speaking, it's pretty amazing and if meat could be produced this way, a lot of hungry people around the world could be fed. However, I would fear a loss of appreciation for where our food comes from and for the food itself. If we can produce meat without raising it, would we appreciate how it was raised, how it was cared for, what it ate, and would we respect the animal by using it in its entirety (something we don't do much here in the US, but certainly is done more in the Old World - the Eastern Hemisphere)? I fear not. I fear that we would take meat more for granted than we already do. Mass produced meat in a petri dish would mean more readily available meat and would only promote gluttony (ever see Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs?).

The Chef, who I find extremely smart and is as curious as me when it comes to finding out how things work, posed a question as Devil's advocate: wouldn't raising meat in a petri dish be more environmentally friendly? We wouldn't be using natural resources to raise and feed the animals, thus preserving more of Earth's bounty. My response was this: if we don't learn to raise our food - animal or vegetable - in an environmentally friendly and responsible manner, we don't teach ourselves to live harmoniously with the Earth. In learning to cultivate food in balance with what the Earth provides, we can teach ourselves how to sustain our land and live with it, not against it, which is how I think we're supposed to be living anyway.

My opinion above was based on in-class discussion. I just read this article at npr.org (previously linked). And now that I've read it, my thoughts on electrical stimulation have been confirmed: it would be costly. After all, electricity has to come from somewhere, and natural resources would therefore be used, correct?

Also in the article is mention of how environmentally friendly petri-dish meat would be. After all, 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock. Then, of course, there's the need for water, feed, and land. As global population increases, we'll need to raise more livestock and therefore need more resources because, dammit, people want their meat! And then there's animal treatment. Commercial farms are known for treating their animals poorly. Force-feeding, small living spaces, brutal deaths...

The notion of raising more livestock, to me, just supports gluttony. Yes, I love my meat. But should I eat it every day? No. Should we eat it every day? NO. The article also dismisses the slow-but-steady rise in interest in organic and humane farming, where the production is smaller, sure, but the quality of animal life is much better and, allegedly, the quality of resulting food is better. Proof? Go seek out a show called Cook It, Kill It, Eat It and you'll see the difference between commercial farming and humane, sustainable farming. Are natural resources being used? Yes, but not in a wasteful way provided the farm is sustainable.

And really, is lower production such a bad thing? Or wouldn't it help us to learn how to eat within our means. Actually, a more accurate statement would be to re-learn how to eat within our means. After all, that's where humanity came from. We ate what was available to us. Therefore, if less meat is available to us, perhaps we should vary our diets to include, oh, I don't know... vegetables? Fish? Hell, even insects (dead serious). I'm not saying we shouldn't export or import food. Sharing is caring, right? But in terms of production, there is more food available to us than just beef and pork, however wonderful they may be. Smaller, natural, humane, and sustainable meat production could teach us to once again be more judicious about what we eat, how much, and how often.

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.

I'm Certainly In School Again

I find myself concerned with grades.

Geez.

It's been awhile since I've had to worry about grades. Since I graduated college 10 years ago, my experience with teaching drums has put a large emphasis on learning for the sake of learning and performing (oh, and competition, too) with no real concern for grades. With drumline and private drum lessons, grades are not a factor and lessons are given with almost pure education in mind. I entered culinary school with this same mind set until points started being given along with quizzes and practical application exams. Argh.

The other thing that reminds me I'm in school is an unfortunate reminder: instead of feeling like I'm attending a culinary "college", I feel like I'm in high school again. I've mentioned this before, but now I know I'm not the only one to be concerned with the students who are both distracting and detracting from the lessons. It's ridiculous, really, and we did mention it to Chef Bruno, who understands our concerns.

Chef Bruno is an extremely nice guy and is very open to his students' questions and comments. He's patient and seems to always have a good attitude about everything. Hopefully he'll be able to address the rudeness in the classroom as we finish up our last week.

My last week will be difficult. I'll be missing school Friday and the following Monday, which means I'll be losing points (which I hate), thus lowering my grade (still with the hate). It also means that I have two reports to turn in early, practical exams to make-up (if necessary; I'm still not sure if the schedule has changed), and a ServSafe test to take the day after the rest of my class takes theirs. This means a lot of studying on my pre-planned vacation. Thankfully, the studying is for a subject that I like.

Perfect!

A perfect score on my mayonnaise! Yes!

A perfect cherry on the top of our sundae, the run-through of our knife practical. Chef Sandra added 8 cuts to the original 4, having us try to do 12 cuts in 30 minutes. And yes, I finished! Most of my classmates did. I wanted to finish earlier, but unfortunately took longer to do a simple task: block a potato. I needed to get three cuts out of a russet potato but because it was longer than fatter, I needed to be choosey about which parts of the potato to use for which cuts.

The good thing, though, is that I blazed through the two tournées of red potato. The tourée is my worst cut, but following the tips given to me by Chef Bruno and the desire to finish all 12 cuts before time was up, I blazed through them and, thankfully, I think they turned out pretty nice. They were, in fact, my best tournées to date.

To change the subject, all week I've been wondering why certain students are attending this school. I'm not going to talk negatively about anyone, as everyone is pretty nice to each other and we all try to help each other out. But some students just don't seem to want to be there. They don't take notes, they talk during lectures, they dismiss rules regarding the uniform... it's a shame really.

Remove the fact that these folks are paying anywhere between $18K to $22K to attend and essentially what you have is a group of people who are learning how to cook professionally by choice. Everyone is choosing to be there yet some students are squandering their time by not making the most of the education they're choosing to get. Granted, the lessons thus far are basic; we're learning the fundamentals of food, food science, methodology, and knife skills. Some students have culinary work experience, some have attended culinary school before, and others just love food. But no matter the background or the amount of existing knowledge of a given student, there's always something to learn from these basic lessons.

I've been teaching drums for about 15 years now and I teach a lot of basics to a lot of students, basics I know like the back of my hand. Yet I still continue to learn basic things, whether it's how to improve my technique, another way of learning something, another way of looking at something, or another way to approach something. I've found similarities between drumline and what I know of the professional kitchen. I know there are also similarities between the craft of drumming - music in general, for that matter - and the craft of cooking. It stands to reason that there's always something fundamental to learn or to improve upon, no matter how much one knows or how technically proficient one is.

I have to wonder how long some of my classmates will last.

Late and Heart Attack on a Plate

I was late for the first time today. Not happy about that. However, Chef Sandra, who is Chef Bruno's teaching associate and is teaching the class while Chef Bruno is in Las Vegas for some training, gave me all my points. Thanks, Chef Sandra. Still, I did not like being late and I will need to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Today, Chef demonstrated how to clarify butter and also showed us that, if you heat it too much, you might as well make gi*, an even more clarified butter except more brown in color. From there, compound butter was made. Let's just say Chef Sandra likes strong, strong flavors.

Next: more mother sauces; yesterday, she showed us veloute and Bechamel, and secondary sauces you can make from them: Sauce Supreme and Mornay, respectively. Today, it was Hollandaise. Yum. She made what I would consider an "enhanced" Hollandaise by also adding an herb-infused white wine reduction. From there, she made a Bearnaise (add tarragon, according to Chef). Yes, we got to try them, over an English muffin and some Canadian bacon; with the Bearnaise, she made poached eggs. They were pretty strong but tasty.

Next, mayonaise! I've never had anyone serve me personally-made mayo before. I'm sure I've had in-house mayo at restaurants, but this was the first time someone made a batch of mayo and I tasted it fresh. Chef likes her salt! It was a strong mayo. We then tried a batch of pesto she made earlier (damn spicy with the garlic!) before she had us taste them combined: pesto mayo!

Tomorrow, knife skill practice and a test of equipment names.

Before school started, but after I'd already enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu, Sacramento, I got a (late) call from the Art Institute. One of the arguments the admission manager (as she called herself) told me was that they get a lot of transfer students from Le Cordon Bleu because the program wasn't what they were looking for, stating that LCB has a lot of book learning.

I can only imagine what they're learning over at the Art Institute if they skip the "book learning", because, so far, our books are helping us to learn some fundamental things like kitchen structure, the history of the modern kitchen, food safety and sanitation, basic procedures, etc. The Art Institute supposedly concentrates more on the artistic side of food, which is fine, but I'm pretty happy with my books. I feel like I'm getting an actual education instead of being taught how to play with my food.

Maybe that last statement isn't fair to say. After all, I didn't visit the Art Institute, and I am certainly not taking any classes there so I don't know what their actual curriculum is like other than whats described on their website. But, if the admissions manager told me there's less emphasis on book learning at the Art Institute, then I do have to wonder if the basics are being taught through pure lecture or maybe taught along the way.

I can safely say, however, that I like my books.

*update: 12-22-2010 - "gi" is actually spelled "ghee". I didn't find that out until later...

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.