Culinary school best advice so far: 'Taste, don't eat'

One can see wisdom in Executive Chef Tim Grable's warning -- "Taste, don't eat" -- about weight gain when studying at the California Culinary Academy.

Chef Grable (left) offered the advice in an orientation session the week before classes started. He said watching your weight can be a problem when you find yourself eating your homework and your in-class assignments, literally.

In school's first three weeks, we culinary students have made: butter-heavy béchamel sauce; a butter-laden brown roux for espagnole sauce; pasta and tomato sauce topped with Parmesan cheese; hollandaise sauce, full of butter; mayonnaise, with a cup of oil.

Granted, we had only small tastings of those delicious items, but it's easy to see how when we get to the preparation of foods that those creations become accompaniments of, the potential problem will be at the fore.

For the record: I have lost two pounds since school started.

Further for the record: We did start off with low-cal healthy stuff: learning to cut vegetables including spinach, tomato, carrot, onion and garlic.

But next comes some tempting carnivorous offerings as we learn the basic techniques of braising, sauteing, poaching, grilling and roasting. All accompanied, of course, by those sauces.

Wonder what the pastry and baking students are making?

Culinary school quotes of the week, Week 3

Creationism argument
"It's magic; that's the only explanation."
-- Chef Tony Marano (at left in photo) on how sauces are made.

Stirring the pot
"After reading in the book, it was nice to be hands on and put our skills to the test. ... It was so fun."
Culinary student Rob Park (second from left in photo) who stepped to the stove and stirred up a mean espagnole sauce.

The romance of high cuisine
"Let's say I'm going to make fig and duck prosciutto as an amuse bouche. Oh, it's going to be beautiful! Oh, ho, ho! And all that crap."
-- Chef John Meidinger, with a flourish of hands, head thrown back, inflection of mock excitement in his voice.

Salt: a 4-letter word
"I need salt. Whoa! Not that much! S---! Maybe I can salvage it."
-- Culinary student Candide, accidentally dumping several tablespoons of salt into his hand-whipped mayonnaise, which needed no more than 1 teaspoon. He salvaged it.

What would Shakespeare say?
"Oh, God. Don't get a lawyer involved. (Pause.) Unless you have to."
-- Chef John Meidinger, responding to a student who asked if that was the best way for a restaurateur to get a "variance" from the health department for special food treatments.

Hitting the sauce; espagnole to be exact

We got in the game today, feeling the heat in Culinary Foundations class, literally. It was my turn at the stove, assigned to make a brown roux for an espagnole sauce, one of the five primary sauces used to create literally hundreds of secondary and what are called small sauces.

Under the watchful eye and coaching of Chef Tony Marano, three of us worked on separate sauces -- the espagnole (below) made from my brown roux, another espagnole made in a different way and a tomato sauce. I've made roux before, and I've made sauce before (akin to what we Americans would call a gravy), but not under professional instruction and in front of a group -- my classmates.

The heat, the three or four seemingly disparate operations going on in a convivial jostle for stove space and my control of the outcome -- Chef Tony allowed me to season the espagnole sauce to my taste -- affirmed again for me why I'm doing this.

My roux browned up slower than it should have but eventually came to a nice color, aroma and texture under 20 minutes of constant stirring. I combined it with a brown veal stock that had already begun seasoning with a mirepoix (2 parts chopped onions, 1 part chopped carrots, 1 part chopped celery). Twenty to 30 minutes of whisking, a tablespoon of tomato paste, salt and white pepper and it was espagnole sauce. My classmates generously pronounced it very flavorful.

New universes are being discovered with every turn of the whisk; viscerally familiar worlds are being uncovered with every sampling from the sauce pan.

(Thanks to fellow culinary student Keejoo Hong for the photo of me at work.)

Making sauces: The heat is on

Culinary school is getting down to the pure culinarity of it. Today, three classmates partook in the making of a white roux, a pale roux and, from them, a bechamél sauce and a velouté sauce.

Chef Tony Marano walked us through the process, which included tasting before, during and after seasonings were applied so we could catch the subtle differences. Salt, white pepper and, in the bechamél a little nutmeg, made subtle, delightful differences.

The "magic" that Chef Tony says occurs in sauce-making was very much present. There was indeed a magic in the way the roux came to color, texture and flavor and then how it combined with the liquids -- milk for the bechamél, chicken stock for the velouté -- to get to the end products (in photo, velouté is in foreground, bechamél behind it).

On Wednesday, yours truly steps to the stove with the assignment of making a brown roux as the key step toward an as-yet undisclosed brown sauce.

Whisk, small ladle, spoon are all at the ready. As am I.

Cracking open the door to classic French cooking

The aroma of raw flour gave way to that of biscuits evolving eventually to rich butter and movie popcorn in the demonstration kitchen/classroom at the California Culinary Academy today.

Chef and instructor Tony Marano continued teaching us the foundation of classic French cuisine -- the five "mother" sauces.

Slowly but steadily the aroma filled the room as Chef Tony made a roux, first combining equal amounts in weight of flour and clarified butter. Then he slowly cooked it, creating a white roux for use with a bechamél sauce, then a pale roux to make a velouté. The cooking continued on low heat, making the roux richer and darker, ending after several stages in a brown roux, suitable for an espagnole sauce.

Chef Tony showed how to make "magic", moving the roux from one color and aroma to the next. Clearly, there is something magical about how the simple combination of flour, butter and heat can create the thickener for sauces that underpin classical French cooking.

We'll be plunging deliciously and eagerly the rest of this week into the magic of French sauces. Something tells me that the "magic" Chef Tony described will mean a lot of hard work.

(Photo of white, blonde, brown roux on a plate; credit: chefdepot.net)