REMINDER: Daily culinary blog has moved

If you aren't looking at SFGate.com's City Bright's blog, then you are missing the continuation of my culinary blog. Go there to read:

* 'Nothing happens unless first a dream' -- Carl Sandburg

* Dieting? You might want to skip this (including this photo!)

* The croissant: decadent, delicate, delicious, 'defiled'

* It's magic: from dough to done in 20 minutes

Am I cheating on my first love?

My new relationship, with Baking and Pastry class, is not leading to early relationship euphoria. Quite the opposite. Read why, at my blog's new location: www.sfgate.com.

Specifically: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mchihak/index?

15 days, 27 breads and pastries; can we do it?

Ambitious to say the least is Chef Richard's production plan for us in the first three weeks of Baking and Pastry class.

Read about it at the new location of my blog, at the San Francisco Chronicle's Website, www.sfgate.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mchihak/index

Specter of weight gain rears its head again

Now that we're into Baking and Pastry at culinary school, the issue of weight gain is again before us.

Read about it in my blog's new locale, SFGate.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mchihak/index

Blog on the move

   My daily blog entries are moving. Effective today, Feb. 15, read them at SFGate's City Brights.

   Today's blog post -- LEADING WITH MY THUMB -- introduces me and my blog to what I hope will be a wider audience.

   There's room for you there, too. If you have been following me here, please link to SFGate.

Cook goes into hibernation; flour child emerges

Eighteen weeks of cooking classes ended on Thursday, giving us a pretty complete going-over of the basics of classic French cuisine.

Now comes the hard part for me, starting on Monday.

"How long do you cook a cake?" Chef Instructor Richard Sanchez asks rhetorically. "You don't 'cook' a cake, of course. You 'bake' a cake."

That's new territory for me, and I enter with trepidation. I am not a baker. The good news is that Chef Richard seems more than willing to start with the basics.

For example: "The first thing you will learn is to say 'baking,' not 'cooking'."

Starting with that change in terminology, it means a whole new mentality about the kitchen and a new set of mechanics. It means exact measurements, by weight. It likely means less knife work, more whipping and rolling. It means working more with eggs and flour and sugar and ...

Chocolate!

Say, maybe this won't be so bad after all!

We will learn to make a chocolate butter cake, Chef Richard promises.

We also will learn to bake bread and make croissants and a host of other delectables.

Frankly, baking and pastry making have never been part of my attraction to the kitchen; my preference has always been for the savory side. But the territory we covered in cooking classes was far beyond anything I expected, opening my mind to all possibilities.

The newest frontier beckons. I stand ready, whisk in hand.

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.

Last supper: Culinary school final exam platings

My final competency exam platings in Culinary Foundations III class:

Sauté of boneless chicken breast over a mushroom sauce suprême, broccoli florets in a butter sauté with julienne of tomato, potatoes tourné.




Grilled New York steak with roasted garlic compound butter, creamed spinach, pommes duchesse, grilled tomato slices.

Culinary school quotes of the week, Week 18

Nothing dull about it
"Those were some scary sharp knives."
-- Culinary student John Briggs after the class viewed a video in which an experienced butcher broke down a side of beef in quick time.

You've been warned
"He always has such off-the-wall questions."
"And, I've got lots more."
-- Exchange between Chef Dan Fluharty and culinary student Alfie Regadio (left) during a review session for final exams.

Quiz on synonyms
"It's shred vs. grate. With hash browns, you want to grate. Grate, like grate on my nerves. You know:
g-r-r-r-r-a-a-a-a-a-a-t-e."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty critiquing our less-than-stellar performance in making breakfast potatoes. 

Just so it's edible
"Parsley and lemon sauce; it's from a cook book." 
-- Culinary student Jorge Olmos to Chef Dan Fluharty when Chef asked him about the sauce he was planning for his final exam chicken dish.

Thanks for the memories
"Remember the day we made chicken ballotine?"
"That was a bad day."
"That was my worst day yet."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty reviewing our cooking, with culinary students Molly Lester and John Briggs reacting.

Class picture: Culinary Arts, 2010

   Our class; in front: Chef Instructor Dan Fluharty. Left to right: Barry Gose, Aline Brown, Molly Lester, Fontaine McFadden, Jorge Olmos, yours truly, John Briggs, Alfie Regadio, Rob Park, Richard Johnson.

NEWS FLASH: ¡Que Aprovecho! goes downtown!

The gracious folks at SFGate, the Website of the San Francisco Chronicle, have agreed to include ¡Que Aprovecho! as part of the City Brights community blog feature.

Look for it there starting Monday morning, Feb. 15.

It won't be called ¡Que Aprovecho! on SFGate. To begin with, there is a dispute among bilingual family members and friends over the grammatical accuracy of that phrase.

¡Que Aprovecho! will remain accessible as a blog site, serving mostly as an archive for my last six months of postings, to preview my posts at SFGate's City Brights and to link you to it.

The wit and wisdom of Chef Dan

A good teacher does more than impart knowledge; a good teacher imparts inspiration.

Chef Dan Fluharty inspired us from the first day of class in early November, and he did so every day for 12 weeks after, in Culinary Foundations II right through today's final class in Culinary Foundations III.

Chef told us as we prepared to depart his classroom kitchen at day's end today: "In a few years, I'll come into a restaurant and see one of your names on the menu as chef. ... "

That's an inspirational thought in and of itself.

In his honor, here are select inspirational, motivational and just plain funny moments from Chef Dan Fluharty in the last 12 weeks.

"The fish always stinks from the head down."
-- Explaining that if there's a problem with food in a restaurant, it starts at the top.
 
"It's about learning the basics. Today: more basics."
-- Responding to students asking if they could alter, add to or otherwise make more complex the techniques and recipes he was teaching to us.

"Your daily challenge will be: timing, correct mise en place, plate presentation."
-- Spelling out the keys to success in class.

"Chuck got shanked in the ribs over a plate of loins. But he was flanked by his friends, sirloin and round."
-- Chef's way of helping us remember the subprimal cuts on a half of beef.

"For the fryer, where's the magic spot? There's a magic place on the flame. Find it."
-- Admonishing us to pay attention to the deep fryer's oil temperature. We often had it too high or too low, resulting in inadequate cooking.

"Remember, eight weeks ago, you couldn't rub two sticks together."
-- After seeing our collective reaction to his spelling out the elements of a rather daunting final competency exam.

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.

Today, all 10 of us were 'Top Chefs'

Ten of us plated 20 flavorful, attractive and culinarily correct meals today to complete our competency final exam in Culinary Foundations III.

We had an under-seasoned vegetable here and a sauce that was too thick there, but we did ourselves proud. We also did Chef Dan Fluharty proud. He prodded, poked, pushed and most of all taught us for the last 12 weeks.

Chef Dan honored us with a standing ovation as class ended.

Everyone turned in good meals well made. All waited patiently for Chef to individually critique and grade every plate, giving each recipient his or her due upon completion of the scoring.

For the record, I scored 18 of 20 on the chicken dish, which included fabrication of a whole chicken, followed by cooking of one breast with accompanying starch, vegetable, sauce and garnish. I missed one "oyster" in a thigh, and Chef judged my sauce suprême slightly thick.

My grilled New York steak scored 44 of 50. It was a smidgen on the rare side, and I had not thoroughly cooked the roux (butter and flour combination) on the creamed spinach.

High marks and high praise came for my flavors and seasoning on almost every component of both plates, and Chef singled out my vegetables as having been cooked just right.

One day remains in the six-week term, and it will include a written final exam. Afterward, we will cook -- for fun!

It's a shellfish party: lobster, shrimp, oysters, clams, mussels. We will apply our best creative techniques to them, plus make side dishes to complement.

We will celebrate the completion of our 18 weeks of immersion in classical French cuisine.

Technical difficulties mean I can't post photos from today at this time, but I will post them soon.

Meantime, a toast to my classmates:

¡Saludos, Amor y Dinero!

Top to bottom on the left: Aline Brown, Barry Gose, Richard Johnson, Molly Lester, Alfie Regadio.

Top to bottom on the right: John Briggs, Fontaine McFadden, Jorge Olmos, Rob Park

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.)

Final exam plating: Can I make it 'suprême'?

The first of two platings for our final competency exam on Wednesday will be chicken. For the first time in the 18 weeks we have been cooking in school, we must plan, prep, cook and plate the dish without specific direction from the chef.

What he said is that it must be chicken -- use the breast from your chicken fabrication competency test was his pointed suggestion -- and the plate must include a sauce, a vegetable, a starch and a garnish.

My plan is to sauté a skinless, boneless chicken breast, slice it and make it the centerpiece of a plate that includes broccoli blanched and finished in a sauté of butter, potatoes turned in small ovals and browned, sauce suprême and a garnish of mushrooms.

If all goes well, it should look something like the photo above, taken from our textbook, Wayne Gisslen's "Professional Cooking."

BULLETIN: Egg demand falls as market bottoms out

Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day, but I wasn't necessarily looking at it as a good way to start final exam week in culinary school today.

Cooking eggs -- omelets, over easy, scrambled and elsewise -- by classic French standards hasn't been my forte. Suffice it to say that in learning to make a proper omelet, I've had to break many an egg, several dozen in my first practice round a few weeks back.

Today, however, the demand for eggs declined significantly as I rolled out three egg dishes in decent fashion.

Key was the omelet, which like the other egg dishes in classic French cookery, must be done without browning, cooked through and not runny. On my first try, for a grade, I left it a bit runny, but scored well because all other components on my plate, roasted red potatoes with a paprika dusting and country gravy, were done well.

Chef suggested I make a second try on the omelet, albeit not for a grade. I completed it without runniness and little browning. The mechanics are key: moving, moving, shaking, shaking, rimming the egg in the pan, flipping, folding once in the pan, a second time onto the plate. Done. Order up!

The egg market had a crack in it today.

Jazz bassist Charles Mingus and the culinary arts

Making food and making music have much in common. Both coalesce the cognitive and the creative. Both require focus and discipline while finding a way to keep innovation unfettered. Both require mastery of the basics and attention to simplicity, rather than a striving for complexity.

What? you say. What is classical music if not complex? What about the complex counter beats of jazz, the riffs of some popular music, the harmonies of gospel? All have their complexities, as do many of the world's cuisines. Agreed. But bear with me on this thought for a few minutes.

Culinary-musical commonalities bring to my mind the late, great bass player and composer Charles Mingus (left), who is among my favorites in jazz.

His innovation, his discipline in getting the music just the way he wanted it and his musical attention to the region of his roots -- the U.S.-Mexican border -- all capture my attention. Mingus was born in the border town of Nogales, Ariz., the same town in which my mom was born.

My favorite Mingus music is his Tijuana Moods set, in which he played a few essential pieces of music several times over, adjusting in each to gain a slightly different outcome. Each is distinct, yet familiar and connected.

About music, Mingus said: "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

The thought clearly applies to cooking, and it is especially in my mind this week as we approach the stress of final cooking competency exams in Culinary Foundations III.

In short, keeping it simple will serve us well.

Chef Instructor Dan Fluharty reminds us to keep it simple. He does so every time one of us asks about making a twist or turn in the proposed menu, every time one asks about adding an ingredient or using a cooking method other than what is prescribed, every time one says what if ...

Chef's response: Keep it simple.

He knows and is teaching us that the only way to get to complex is to start at simple. That's the key to success in our class.

Just as Charles Mingus found it to be in music.