Culinary school quotes of the week, Week 11

A motto to live by
"It makes cheap and cheerful quickly."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty (right), describing the benefits of preparing and serving polenta.

Enough already
"I had more than my share of fried stuff today. I'm through with fried."
-- Culinary student Fontaine McFadden after "Fryday" in the classroom kitchen, where, basically, if it wasn't moving, we battered it and fried it. Oh, and ate a good bit of it. 

Dare you to mess this up
"This is probably one of the most stupid-proof sauces we have."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty describing a soy-ginger sauce used with tempura-battered fish. 

Aromatherapy culinary style
"It makes your house smell good."
-- Culinary student John Briggs, touting one benefit of braising. 

Cooking: glamorous? No, glabrous
"You can always tell a good sauté cook or a good grill cook: no hair on the forearms."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty, moments after pulling his singed arm away from the stove top when cooking veal scaloppini.

Hold your tempura; hold it 'til it's icy cold

Fried foods don't rank very high on my list of ingesta. Nevertheless, the technique of frying is one of the seven in the classical French repertoire and therefore part of the curriculum for Culinary Foundations II.

Thus, as Chef Dan Fluharty likes to call it, today was Fryday. We fried zucchini, we fried potatoes, we fried onion rings, we even fried shrimp and fish and mushrooms. By frying, I mean to say that we used the classic French approach, which is what we Americans would call deep frying. What we call frying, in a pan on the stove top with a little oil, the French call sauté.

Chef Dan demonstrated the technique with two batters, a beer-based and a tempura. The tempura to me was the easier to make, and it was lighter on the fish and shrimp for which I used it.

Tempura is made from corn starch, rice flour, pastry flour, a frothed egg white and cold, icy cold, water. Even once it is made to the right consistency, it must be kept cold. I kept the bowl mine was in sitting in an ice-water bath, even when coating the fish and butterflied shrimp.

The results were tasty, to the limited extent I care to taste fried foods.

Thursday we move on to poaching salmon and fully plating a meal, as we will be expected to do for the final competency practical next week.

(Photo shows my Fryday production. Clockwise from upper left: shrimp tempura, French fries, culinary student Alfie Regadio's siracha-based sauce for the fries, cod tempura with Alfie's tartar sauce, beer-batter zucchini, beer-batter onion rings.)