Back at the cutting board, with terrific sous chef

Don't forget to practice your culinary skills during the holidays.

The admonition from Chef Dan Fluharty came across as a command as much as a reminder. Either way, it was good to have in mind.

Having departed the city immediately after the last day of Culinary Foundations II final exam for a brief trip to Tucson, I hadn't had a chance to put the command/reminder into action. That is until Monday night at the home of my most gracious brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Marco and Thelma Ruiz.

They turned over their kitchen -- and their daughter Luna B. Ruiz -- to me for the evening. Luna as sous chef and yours truly as chef de cuisine cooked up a small storm. We roasted a chicken. We made a sauté of green beans and red bell peppers. We made pommes duchesse, the fancy piped potato that is a beautiful addition to any plate. We concocted a sauce nateur from the chicken pan drippings.

Twelve-year-old Luna was by my side the entire time, taking it all in and pitching in on every task. She absorbed the information like a sponge, even taking written notes on some of the French terminology. It was a joy to work with her, and it was a joy to cook good food in a confident manner for beloved family members.

The Ruiz family clearly enjoyed the evening's repast, dazzled by my still novice but growing-better-by-the-day culinary skills.

Chef Dan, one practice session down, many more to come.

Fulfilling end to a fine term in culinary school

Overcooking was the theme of the final day of culinary competency exams at the California Culinary Academy on Friday. Chef Dan Fluharty called several students on it, both for their pork chops and their veal scaloppini. He subtracted two points for my overcooking a veal scaloppini.

Now, lest one misunderstand: We're not talking about food that's charred beyond recognition. Overcooking is a matter of seconds and a degree or two, especially when dealing with these cuts. One of my two small pieces of veal was cooked right -- very slightly pink in the center -- while the other was cooked a few seconds over. That may have occurred in the keeping-it-warm phase while I plated other items or in the final saucing, that is dipping the veal into the heated sauce marsala just before plating.

Most aspects of the final exam went well. Chef scored my grilled pork chop as perfectly cooked. I lost two points on my sauce chasseur, one for it was a bit thin and one for it being a bit underseasoned. Thirty-eight points on the plate, out of a possible 40.

The veal cooking cost me two points, and undercooked Brussells sprouts cost me two more points. My pommes duchesse -- mashed, then elegantly piped, then browned potatoes -- turned out nearly perfect. For the plate, I earned 36 of a possible 40 points.

From a strategic viewpoint, it was a great success. I followed my plans for all meals in both days, and I plated highly flavorful meals on schedule, in fact ahead of schedule.  I made a tactical mistake here and there, but nothing that made an item inedible or even the least distasteful.

All in all, it was a good conclusion to the six-week term in Culinary Foundations II. The four plates I prepared for the final exam garnered a collective 91.3% of the possible points. I'll take it!

(Photo shows remnants of the grilled pork chop-risotto-broccoli plagte, after Chef sampled and judged.)

The rules of engagement, culinary school style

Monkey wrench, curve ball, change of plans, the old switcheroo.

Or, maybe we should look at it as the surprise introduction of a new menu.

Call it what you will, but we students in Culinary Foundations II heard today what our lives will be like for the next three days, and it's interestingly different than what we expected, not to mention even more challenging.

First, on Wednesday, we will get a 50-question written final exam, rather than the 25-question exam we had been anticipating. Fair enough, I say. The written side of this is something that I for one am comfortable with.

Then comes the more challenging aspects of our final exams: the actual cooking on Thursday and Friday. We were looking forward to cooking two fully plated meals each day and have been working on our mise en place and production plans in anticipation.

Chef Dan Fluharty (above) revealed today, almost as an afterthought, that half of us will do one set of menus on Thursday, and half will do the other. Then on Friday, we will switch. We will not know until Thursday who will be doing what.

We all had expected to do roasted chicken and poached salmon on Thursday, and grilled pork chop and veal scaloppini on Friday. Now we will need to be prepared for all on Thursday.

Additionally, Chef said, we will work four people to a station for the exams, rather than the two to a station we have been enjoying. That means more competition for prep space and stove burners and more crowded conditions overall.

As my wife would say: Breathe.

It will all be fine. Even if it isn't, b y day's end Friday, it will all be over.

Final tasks practiced; more practice in the offing

Two five-course meals -- one led by a grilled pork chop, the other by sauté of veal scaloppini -- will be required of us on the second day of our two-day final exam in Culinary Foundations II next week.

Chef Dan Fluharty demonstrated preparation of the protein for both and vegetable for one in class today. We then we set about to prepare the full plate for practice over two hours.

In that time, I plated both meals with a fair level of success. I do need more work, on the veal dish most especially, but also on plate presentation overall. That work will begin this weekend, not only for these two dishes, but for the two that must be plated on the first day of the final next Thursday -- roasted chicken and poached salmon.

Look for the complete rundown on the menu for the two days' dishes in the blog this weekend.

(Photo shows my pork chop dish and accompaniments waiting to be plated. Top center, the service plate warming; top right, pork chop being kept warm; lower center, braised fennel and apple in final stages of cooking; left, sauce chasseur just before straining.)

Turns out calabacitas con tomates is French!

Chef Dan Fluharty introduced a new vegetable dish in Culinary Foundations II class on Thursday, to accompany our poached salmon and rice pilaf dish.

Squash and tomatoes provençal, Chef called it. As he described the ingredients and the way to make the dish, it seemed very familiar.

It's what I call calabacitas con tomates -- literally little squash with tomatoes. My mom made it often, and I have made it most of my life. Squash is another of those foods of New World origin, cultivated throughout what are now both North and South America by indigenous people long before Europeans came. In fact, the word "squash" comes from a Native American word for it.

Here's how I make this tasty side dish: Heat a half-cup of chicken stock or water in a sauce pot. Add diced half of an onion and 1 clove of minced garlic, followed by 4 peeled, seeded and chopped roma tomatoes (Chef Dan's recipe called for crushed tomatoes). Add herbs -- thyme, tarragon, marjoram. If the herbs are dry, add them in the beginning; if fresh, add toward the end of cooking. The zucchini and/or yellow summer squash are cut in half-inch-thick rounds, and they go in last, because they cook quickly. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook until most liquid is gone. Cover with grated Monterey Jack cheese to serve.

Construct a meal; for fun, deconstruct it

Assemble a list of ingredients and give to each of a half-dozen good cooks, and you will get a half-dozen different results. Each will use a different approach, different cooking techniques and different presentations.

Assemble a list of ingredients for one cook and ask for a specific, traditional preparation. Then, ask for a new preparation using the same fundamental ingredients but prepared, cooked and presented differently.

That's called deconstruction, and it is used as an exercise for cooks and chefs to instill thinking along with the creativity that they ought to bring to the prep table. In Culinary Foundations II, we must do a hypothetical deconstruction -- that is, write a paper on how we would do it -- in a project that Chef Dan Fluharty calls "The Plate." The project deadline is Friday.

I have selected a classic dish from my cultural heritage for presentation and then deconstruction -- red chile tamales. It's a propitious time, because they are traditionally made at the holidays in Mexican and Mexican-American homes. My mom and my tias made them by the tens of dozens for Christmas and New Year's Day, and I plan to do the same this year.

How will I deconstruct them? Doing so requires going back to the basic ingredients that make up a tamal. Starting with the basics, I will build a new menu. The results will be posted here by the end of the week, so please come back to take a look.

(Photo credit: www.finecooking.com)

Culinary competence, confidence trump comfort

Am I getting comfortable with my skill level in culinary school? Hardly. Am I beginning to feel a bit of  competence and confidence? Yes.

That was very much in evidence today. The finished product, which is what matters in the culinary world, was successful in Culinary Foundations II class. It was our first full plated meal -- protein, vegetable, starch, sauce, garnish.

Forget for the moment the feel-good philosophizing about the journey and not the destination being the goal. The destination in culinary arts is most definitely the goal. It feels good and gives one a sense of competence to put a well-cooked, attractively plated and highly flavorful dish in front of someone. And the confidence of having done it right comes at the moment of plating, similar to when -- excuse the sports metaphor -- Barry Bonds swung the bat and knew, he just knew, that it was a home run. I knew when putting my roasted chicken on the plate today that it was a winner.

Roasting a whole chicken, potatoes and other root vegetables and making an accompanying sauce was the order of the day. Chef Dan Fluharty, as is his custom, demonstrated the techniques for the first hour or so, and then sent us to our respective cooking stations to create something similar.

We each trussed a chicken and put it in to roast. Then we prepared potatoes tourné, the fancy French cut to shape them as small and elegant footballs, and other root vegetables -- rutabaga, parsnip, carrot and turnip. Each was cut differently for roasting, for presentation and knife-skills practice.

The outcome for me was chicken done just right, vegetables that were cooked well and a sauce -- oh my, a sauce -- that did just what a sauce should do: elevate every other element of the meal. Importantly, Chef Dan agreed.

It was a living, breathing, highly edible example of both the competence I have built and the confidence I am beginning to feel in my culinary skills.

(Photos: Above right: Whole chicken, foreground, and root vegetables, background, awaiting preparation at my cooking station. Lower left: roasted chicken, just out of the oven.)

Meat and potatoes? No, protein and starches

We all have heard someone referred to as a "meat and potatoes" person, or of "eating our greens." In the culinary world, the talk is different. "Meat and potatoes" is "protein and starch"; "greens" are "vegetables."

Add a sauce and a garnish to make up the five components encompassing a typical service for a restaurant meal.

It is to that end we are headed in Culinary Foundations II. The last two days of class -- Dec. 17 and 18 -- for the final competency exam, we will prepare four plates, each with those five components. Look for the full rundown of the menus in a blog posting in the next few days.

To get us prepared, Chef Dan Fluharty will take us through a week of practice beginning Monday on the seven classic French cooking techniques. They are braising (Monday); roasting (Tuesday); frying (Wednesday); poaching and poëler (Thursday); grilling and sauté (Friday).

My Sunday cooking plans already included making braised short ribs, sauté of green beans, wild rice and a brown sauce from the braising liquid. I will pay especially close attention to proper technique in preparing them.

The shallot: a celestial beauty

Consider the shallot.

This small, unobtrusive, sometimes hard-to-find aromatic may well be the Pluto of the culinary solar system. We know it's there, yet we accord it little respect, often ignoring it completely. We prefer the bigger, stronger Jupiter-like onion. Or, we're drawn to the shrouded mystery of the leek: Like Venus, we surmise, something amazing must lurk beneath all that layering.

Yet it is the shallot that provides a sweet balance to a sauté, a delicate flavor to a sauce, a quiet complement to a simmering soup. Just as Pluto provides a delicate balance to the solar system, complementing rather than competing with the bigger orbs. It is small but significant, celestially speaking.

A shallot brought me to a small but significant moment of awareness Thursday as I completed my culinary school competency exam on vegetables and starches. Behind schedule, I was rushing to get green beans and red peppers into a sauté. The bacon fat was rendered, and next came the shallot. But in my haste, I had neglected to dice a shallot.

When I began culinary school just 10 weeks ago, dicing a shallot would have been a show stopper. I would have wrestled with cutting it open, removing the papery skin and figuring out a way to slice into the small object without slicing into a digit. The entire operation might take five minutes.

But now, in a seemingly magical transformation, I do it with ease. On Thursday, without pausing, I grabbed a shallot, sliced it open, peeled off the skin and fine diced the 2-inch beauty with a 9-inch chef's knife, all in 30 seconds. Into the sauté went the diced shallot, and I completed my dish with minutes to spare.

The episode was an emblem of my culinary progress, a small but significant moment with a small but significant shallot. Kind of like that small rock way out there in the solar system -- Pluto. Small, yes. Yet it has its significance.

Learning (not) to boil water

A final practice session today for the big competency exam in vegetables and starches led me to conclude that, largely, we students in Culinary Foundations II class are being taught not to boil water.

At one point in the two-hour session, I had five sauce pots on the stove, four with water and one with chicken stock, all related to the five dishes I was preparing. As they perked, simmered and bubbled, it occurred to me that my key task at that moment was NOT to let any of them boil.

Slow warming, sure. Simmer, fine. Bubble a bit, OK. But hard, rolling boil -- NO!

As Chef Dan Fluharty and others explain, a hard boil knocks the food around and damages it, cooks it too fast in many instances and unevenly in others.

One can recall foods that were over-cooked because they were plunged into boiling water. They came out mushy, flavorless and even discolored.

The practical exam will show if we can cook veggies -- artichoke, carrots and green beans -- and starches -- potatoes and rice -- so they are solid and intact with good shape and crispness, flavorful and of good color.

In short, we must show that we have learned not to boil water.

(Photo shows my pots NOT boiling.)