Back to being an ink-stained wretch

Monday's lesson in Culinary Foundations III left my fingers temporarily stained with black ink, a reminder of my days in the newspaper business.

Squid ink, to be precise.

It came from cleaning and prepping a half-dozen of the slippery little sea creatures for fried calamari, accompanied by a hand-made aioli dipping sauce. 

The squid came to us whole and fresh, ink included, and it took me awhile to work my way through them (a pair of them is pictured on my cutting board). We kept tentacles and the tubular bodies sliced into small disks.

After breading lightly in flour and deep-frying for a couple of minutes, the calamari were delicious, along with the aioli, which is a mayonnaise infused with roasted garlic.

My previous report that on Monday we also would make lamb stew with puff pastry -- vol au vent -- was incorrect. We made the lamb stew but no pastry. We made polenta to accompany it.

Midterm week looms in culinary school

Chef Dan Fluharty (left in the midst of a cooking demonstration for his Culinary Foundations II class) has one more demo to do early this week before we have two days of tests -- one day written, one day cooking.

Chef will show us pommes duchesse, a mashed-potato concoction that must be piped for plating in a fancy design.

More importantly, it must be piped in a swirly, fancy design for Wednesday's competency exam on vegetables and starches in Chef Dan's class.

Besides the piped potatoes, we must make, plate and present sauté of carrots, an artichoke with either aioli or hollandaise sauce, green beans in a sauté with red bell peppers and a dish of rice pilaf.

In number and variety of of plates, it will be our most extensive competency exam. We began with presentation of three sauces, followed by a competency on three soups. Cooking, plating and presenting five plates moves us closer to the end goal for the class in three weeks -- being able to assemble four plates of five items each for two days of final exams.

Monday will be the pommes duchesse demo, review for the written midterm exam Tuesday and a practice session for Wednesday's comptenency exam.