Taking stock ... no, that's making stock

Wednesday's session in Culinary Foundations II was about as real as it gets when it comes to simulating restaurant kitchen work.

Besides the final practice run for today's five-dish vegetable and sauce competency exam, two of us had to start and mind a big pot of chicken stock. We did so under the watchful eyes of Chefs Dan Fluharty and David Isenberg.

Into the huge pot we dumped 75 pounds of chicken bones (photo at left) for a pre-heat and rinse to get impurities out. Then we emptied and discarded the water, refilled and added 15 pounds of mirepoix -- coarsely chopped onions, carrots and celery. Fellow culinary student Alfie Regadio prepped the herbs for inclusion once the temperature came up to simmer. He also did one pass of dégraisser and ecumer -- degrease and skim -- to remove excess fat and foam from the simmering stock. The night class would finish the stock, we were told.

Amid it all -- mostly getting the stock started and occasionally eying its progress -- we did our prep and cooking work on vegetables and starches.

If my artichokes (photo at right, with hollandaise sauce), rice pilaf and pommes duchesse turn out today as they did in Wednesday's practice, I will be happy.

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.)

Cooking veggies harder than it looks

Ofelia Islas Chihak -- my mom -- liked her vegetables a little crunchy, and that's how she taught me to cook them. Chef Dan Fluharty, my current cooking teacher, said he likes them crunchy, too.

Good enough, I said to myself. I learned from one master cook, and now another will be easy to please.

Not so fast, culinary boy!

Veggies are more difficult than appearances would have them. One doesn't simply toss them into boiling water or into a sauté and forget about it. The delicate flavors of vegetables must be handled with care, then cajoled and coaxed from within and from outside to keep them delicious.

We in Culinary Foundations II had our first practice session this week on prepping vegetables for restaurant production. The competency exam will be in one week (Dec. 2), so I have improvement to make. Here's the list:

Green beans (upper right) : check. Blanch briefly, then into the sauté with rendered bacon fat, fine-diced shallot, julienned red bell pepper, and finish with a pat of whole butter, salt and white pepper to taste. Chef liked the flavor and the texture, saying mine had the right crunch to them.

Artichoke: needs work. I boiled them too hard, leaving parts overcooked, parts undercooked. In photo at left, notice the white spots where the stem comes into the main body of the artichoke. Those are signs of undercooking. The way the "choke" or inedible center, came out mushy was a sign of overcooking. How could something be both undercooked and overcooked? I need to figure it out in a week.

Brussels sprouts: speaking of under- and overcooking, these came out pretty tasty, but some were more dense than others, and thus there was an unevenness in the cooking. Will have to work on it.

Carrots (right): check, with an asterisk. They were highly flavorful, sweet from caramelized sugar and orange juice. But my oblique cuts were too big and thus the veggie was a bit too crunchy. A relatively easy fix to work on.

Eggplant: needs work, mostly because I haven't tried it yet. This beautiful veggie has always been a mystery to me. Time to unravel the mystery to try replicating the delicious eggplant parmesan that Chef made in class this week.

Adventures with vegetables, to be continued ...