How does he keep his slender figure?

   Chef Dan Fluharty scores final platings from five students in Culinary Foundations III. This plating was worth 50 points. Chef tasted each component to score doneness, seasoning, temperature, appearance and portion size. He also scored each plate overall on food color -- minimum of three colors required for full credit -- cleanliness, design and height. The rectangular plate in the center and the round plate on the far right are grilled pork chops; the plate nearest Chef's left hand is sauté of duck breast; the plate near his right hand is fillet of sole and salmon mousseline; the plate in the lower left is mine, grilled New York steak.

The most important ingredient in cooking

Fail to salt a vegetable or a piece of meat, and its flavor will be lessened.

Don't put sugar in lemonade, and it will be too sour to drink.

Remove all fat -- butter, oil, other rendering -- from cooking, and it becomes much more difficult, in fact nigh impossible.

So which of those is the most important ingredient in the kitchen?


None of the above.

"We only have so much time," Chef Dan Fluharty told us in a recent lecture in Culinary Foundations III class. "You must make it your friend."

And your most important ingredient. More than anything else, time can make or break a meal. Day after day in the last 18 weeks of classes, we have faced one time crunch heaped upon another. In some cases, we spent too much time on something, in others not enough, and in still others time simply ran out.

Take Wednesday's time crunch in the competency final exam. We had 15 minutes to fabricate -- cut into specified pieces -- a whole chicken. We had 45 minutes to cook a five-part meal with one piece of that chicken. We had one hour to cook another five-part meal right after that.

Time-line organization and planning were keys to success, along with execution of the time line. In each instance, time was tight, and there was some, but not much, margin for error.

Most of us completed the chicken fabrication with plenty of time to spare. Mine was done in 9 minutes.

My chicken dish, too, came together according to my timeline and plan. I was the first in class to present the dish to Chef, with about five minutes to spare.

The grilled New York steak went to the last tick of the clock. The steak itself was the final ingredient to go on the plate, and I placed it there literally as Chef walked by to declare time was up. I could have used another 3 or 4 minutes, time I had lost on two do-overs -- my potato mixture for which I had forgotten the egg yolks and my spinach, which I had over-blanched, leaving it as a small glob of green.

We've seen it on "Iron Chef", "Top Chef" and "Chopped". The tming matters, more than just about anything else.

On the last lap of 'cooking marathon'

Early on in Culinary Foundations III class, Chef Instructor Dan Fluharty (right) promised students a "cooking marathon that gives you a real world feel."

He has fulfilled that promise.

Today, we finish the marathon with two meals of five parts each. The first, with a chicken breast at its center, must be completed and presented in 45 minutes. The second, for which I drew New York steak, must be completed and presented in one hour.

All 10 of us should be ready. The chefs have been working us out for 18 weeks. In the last six weeks, we have had intensive, timed cooking exercises almost daily. In that six weeks, we have prepped, cooked and plated two dozen full meals, including three-course offerings and all rooted in the classic French techniques and flavors we have been learning.

We can see the finish line ahead, and we must run hard through it.

The real world lies just beyond.

The problem with garnish, or, relevance in dining

You know the scene: Order dinner at a restaurant and on the plate is a sprig of parsley or a slice of citrus or some other nondescript piece of something presumably edible.

That's garnish, meant to enhance the meal and serve as something attractive. Often, though, the diner shoves it aside. That's after the thought behind it got shoved aside by the chef or whoever plated the meal.

Garnish in French means "to adorn" or "to furnish." As the French have done with most other aspects of cuisine and eating -- e.g., 100 or more ways to cook an egg -- they have attempted to standardize garnish preparation and presentation. A 1914 handbook to assist chefs and cooks lists 209 items in the garnish section, according to Wayne Gisslen in "Professional Cooking," the key textbook we use in culinary school.

In our current class, Culinary Foundations III, we get a point on a plated meal for a thought-out and appropriate garnish, and we lose a point if the garnish is inappropriate or nonexistent. Chef has taught us that the garnish can be an offshoot of some aspect of the dish and overall should complement the dish, including adding color where needed.

For Wednesday's all-important final competency exam, garnish will be a factor.

For my chicken dish, I will use a couple of small mushroom caps as garnish, and if I have time, I will carve a small design into them. If not, I likely will go with a sliced and fanned mushroom cap on the plate. The mushroom will be appropriate because it will be part of the sauce I plan to make.

For the grilled New York steak, I plan to thick slice a roma tomato and grill it for a few moments to provide some texture and color on what otherwise will be a pretty neutrally colored plate.

Seems like lots of attention, but every point counts. More important, the plate must look good and be appetizing. My garnishes are intended to achieve those ends.

It's like CSI: Spinach gets creamed, steak gets grilled

Grill a steak? Should be no problem. Cream some spinach? That's a bit more complex. Compounding the matter is butter -- compound butter, that is, with roasted garlic. Then there are the potatoes duchesse.

That's menu No. 2 in the mystery basket for Wednesday's final competency exam. It is what I will plan, prep, cook and plate for Chef, all in one hour.

Grilled New York steak sounds simple, but it must be done to Chef's exacting specifications -- medium rare with good grill marks.

But first things first: The potatoes must be boiled and the garlic roasted as starting steps. Compound butter takes a while to set, so my plan will be to handle it and get it in the reach-in refrigerator as quickly as possible.

Spinach needs thorough washing, at least three complete dunkings and rinsings in cold water. And the cream for it must be light. As Chef said the previous time we cooked it, this is creamed spinach, not spinached cream.

Piped potatoes into the oven, spinach on the stovetop with light cream, the steak cooks and then rests. Plating starts now.

It will be an intense hour.

(Photo shows what the steak ought to look like, with compound butter, when presented. Photo credit: www.occidentaldc.com.)

Mystery basket menus for final exam

What one knows about cooking is only as good as how well one can apply the knowledge when those 60,000-BTU burners are fired up. That's the left brain-right brain dance that occurs in the kitchen.

Then there's what I call the "third brain," a mystical element that catalyzes the cognitive and the creative in the culinary arts, bringing about magical results that a scientist could explain but whose properties are better left to the imagination.

All the knowledge we have acquired in the last 18 weeks, and all the skill we have built in applying it must come together for magical results on Wednesday in final competency cooking exams in Culinary Foundations III.

First test will be that after fabricating a whole chicken, we will take one breast and make a meal of it, in 45 minutes. More about my plan for that in a blog posting later today.

Second test will be prepping, cooking and plating another meal from a specified menu in one hour, what Chef Dan Fluharty has called "the mystery basket." He revealed mystery basket contents on Friday:

1. Seared and oven-finished breast of duck with sauce bigarade, herbed couscous, seasonal vegetable, garnish.
2. Grilled New York steak with roasted garlic compound butter, pommes duchesse, creamed spinach and garnish.
3. Poached snapper with salmon mousseline, caper beurre blanc, rice pilaf, seasonal vegetable and garnish.
4. Seared and oven-finished rack of lamb with hazelnut crust, mint demi-glace sauce, potatoes croquettes, Brussels sprouts and garnish.
5. Grilled pork chop with sauce chasseur, potatoes anna, sauté of green beans and red bell peppers and garnish.

Before we drew numbers on Friday from Chef's toque blanche to determine who makes which plate, the buzz among the 10 of us was that the highest degree of difficulty is with the poached snapper because of the mousseline. That's a stuffing that must be prepped and piped into the rolled fish fillet.

Perhaps. But every one of the five has its challenges, not only in getting the protein cooked properly, but in the balance between crispness and overdoneness in vegetables, the delicacies of the sauces and the seasoning needed to bring the starches to full flavor.

On Tuesday, I will reveal which of the five I drew and my game plan for it.