Final exam plating: Can I make it 'suprême'?

The first of two platings for our final competency exam on Wednesday will be chicken. For the first time in the 18 weeks we have been cooking in school, we must plan, prep, cook and plate the dish without specific direction from the chef.

What he said is that it must be chicken -- use the breast from your chicken fabrication competency test was his pointed suggestion -- and the plate must include a sauce, a vegetable, a starch and a garnish.

My plan is to sauté a skinless, boneless chicken breast, slice it and make it the centerpiece of a plate that includes broccoli blanched and finished in a sauté of butter, potatoes turned in small ovals and browned, sauce suprême and a garnish of mushrooms.

If all goes well, it should look something like the photo above, taken from our textbook, Wayne Gisslen's "Professional Cooking."

Food presentation: 'art and theater'

Why such an emphasis on plating, that is, how food appears on the plate? my friend Catharine asked. She noted that not only do I mention it frequently in this blog, but she hears more about it now than in the past.

As Catharine poetically put it: " ... it seems to me that presentation has moved food from merely an art to art and theater."

My response was that in classic French cuisine, plate appearance has been an important element for a long time as part of the appeal to all five senses. "Professional Cooking," our main textbook in school, by Wayne Gisslen, includes a whole chapter on this topic, "Food Presentation and Garnish." Here are the first two paragraphs from that chapter:

   We eat for enjoyment as well as for nutrition and sustenance. Cooking is not just a trade but an art that appeals to our sense of taste, smell and sight.
   "The eye eats first" is a well-known saying. Our first impressions of a plate of food set our expectations. The sight of food stimulates our appetites, starts our digestive juices flowing, and makes us eager to dig in. Our meal becomes exciting and stimulating.

At the California Culinary Academy, plate appearance usually counts for 20 percent of the grade on any give project and overall in the cooking, pastry and baking classes. In cooking classes, that includes whether the plate is warm. If it is not warm, Chef will deduct one point.

The religion of cooking, the spirituality of creating

Cooking is religion.

To those who might call this blasphemy, I say that no other description fits. "Avocation" sounds like an add-on; "hobby" has a spare-time ring to it; "pastime" drops from contention by self-description.

Religion -- "an object of conscientious regard and pursuit" -- suitably describes how I practice cooking.

That fact established, then, "Professional Cooking," the sixth edition, by Wayne Gisslen, including about 1,200 recipes, is my bible.

In this bible, one can learn the ingredients and instructions for everything from Allemande Sauce to Zucchini Sauté Provençale. (Key to the technique of sauté: Don't overload the pan.)

The first six-week term at the Academy revealed that getting religion isn't a matter of learning just chapter and verse in those 1,200 recipes.

The chef/instructors consider the collection of recipes only an entry point for the techniques they allow us to carry out. This is the beginning of creativity, moving toward the spirituality of combining fresh, uncooked ingredients into something flavorful.

"The point of what we're doing is improvising," Chef Tony Marano told us in Culinary Foundations I as he taught the fundamentals of all seven Les Cuissons Francaise. "What we try to do is show you at a minimum the most basic steps. Then you go from there."

In our last class, Chef Tony set the charge for us: "It's been my desire to create a space for you to do great things. I hope I have done that."

You have, Chef. You have instilled the religious fundamentals in us, allowing a spirituality to emerge. And it will, over the course of the rest of our lives.

The simmer of professionalism

Passion is easier to recognize by observation than by definition, so when someone sees me in my kitchen, they recognize my passion for cooking without my having to find the words for it.

Chef Tony Marano of the California Culinary Academy defined the passion for me today in his class, in word and deed. Both ways fed my own passion and reaffirmed for me why I am in culinary school, eagerly absorbing all I can.

The cooking method called simmering is defined in our textbook, "Professional Cooking" by Wayne Gisslen, as "bubbling gently."

Simmering describes my passion for culinary arts, and by the same definition, one must conclude that Chef Tony's passion for his profession is simmering.

Chef Tony demonstrates it daily in Culinary Foundations I, the class that by all rights sets the tone for student achievement, success and, yes, passion. Today, his demonstration was most vivid and at the same time humble and modest.

We students asked Chef Tony today to tell us his background. He walked us through descriptions of a series of jobs that started at dishwasher and led to the pinnacle of culinary achievement, in the best of restaurants and in his current calling to teach the profession -- and bring out the passion -- for successor generations.

"This is not just a craft. It's not just art. It's spiritual," Chef declaimed in response to a question of how he came to build professionalism and pride.

Twelve other students and I sat in rapt, silent attention, probably more attentive than we have been in Chef Tony's presence since the start of classes four weeks ago.

He spoke of the feeling one has at preparing a plate of food for someone who is willing to buy it, consume it and express gratitude for not only the taste and the flavor, but for the very act that brought it about.

"When you are preparing a plate for someone, that plate is your universe. Nothing else matters," Chef said. "It is sacred. When you come to that understanding, you can call yourself a professional. It is humbling."

That understanding and feeling, that humility at being able to create something pleasurable for someone -- and have the privilege of making a living at it -- is why I am in culinary school.

Tourné or not tourné; that is the seven-sided question

Our "Bible", Gisslen's "Professional Cooking", ends its step-by-step instruction for the tourné by showing a photo of the finished product with this caption: "If perfectly done, the potato has seven sides." Then it adds in parentheses and somewhat wryly: "(but customers rarely count them)."

You can bet that the next time I am in a good restaurant and find tournéed potatoes on my plate, I will count the sides.

Tourné -- past participle of "to turn" in French -- is the knife cut that produces a little football-shaped potato, and it is the last of the 10 basic cuts learned in this, my first week of culinary school. In one week, we students in Chef Tony's Foundations of Culinary Arts class must do the 10 cuts in 30 minutes.

The tourné exercise went well, and it is one cut that I feel confident about. It aso happens to be the one that from all appearances is the most complex. Yet it was simpler for me than the julienne (1/8 of an inch square by 2 1/2 inches long), which others in the class appeared to cut with ease.