Everyone, including the dog, ate my homework

Practice, practice, practice makes perfect, and while my culinary skills are far from that, they took a big step forward this weekend.

I practiced braising, making stock and creating sauces. All went reasonably well, making Sunday dinner a decided hit among family members. "Oh my God, it's delicious," was No. 1 fan Hilda's reaction. Zipper the Shih-Tzu rated the espagnole sauce, drizzled lightly onto his kibble, "two slurps."

Here's what transpired as I endeavored to take on techniques learned in the first four weeks of classes at the California Culinary Academy:

* On Saturday, I found veal bones at a local meat market, and that led to my making a brown stock. To my delight, it congealed nicely, just as I have seen in school, where we are under the careful supervision of the master chefs who are our teachers.

* On Sunday, I prepared to braise two meaty beef ribs, for which I had asked the butcher to leave the rib bone long. I dried the meat, tied it to the bone and browned it. Forgetting to season it before it was browned was a mistake, I admit, but the quality of the sauce pretty much made up for that.

* Two and a half hours of cooking time left the meat tender on the bone and the pan drippings rich with the meat flavor and that of the mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery). I strained it, skimmed off the fat and added some of the brown stock. Now came sauce-making time.

* Into the concoction, I added a few ounces of diced fennel and the rubies from one pomegranate. The combination was Chef Tony Marano's suggestion, saying the contrasting flavors would complement one another and add a sweetness to the finished sauce. He was dead-on correct, and the resultant sauce, after two more strainings and a reduction by half and then half again, was the hit of the meal.

* Green beans called for a béchamel sauce, as described by Julia Child in her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." So I used clarified butter and flour to make a roux, stirred in the scalded milk, flavored it with onion, bay leaf and a whole clove. It came out very tasty, but the texture was a tad pasty. More milk might have helped.

The short ribs were falling-off-the-bone delicious, and I must pronounce my first major venture into multi-tasking a French meal a success.

Can coq au vin and sole meunière be far behind?

(In my rush to serve dinner, I neglected to take photos of the finished plates. This photo shows the gelatinized veal stock and the deep brown espagnole sauce.)

Learning 'le cuisine' the hard way is the only way

The adage that we learn more from mistakes than successes has proven true at the midway point of my first term at the California Culinary Academy.

Five stitches and four blisters later, my knife skills are much improved, I can stir up a roux on my way to making sauces, I now know the fundamentals of restaurant and food-service safety and sanitation, and I can name and relate the uses for a wide array of pots, pans and fundamental kitchen equipment and tools.

As a result of the stitches, I learned a better way to core a tomato for concassé (turn the tomato, not the knife, to reduce the danger of knife slippage).

The blisters came when I was stirring my first in-class roux and bits of molten butter and flour splashed onto my hands. But I made a good brown roux, which helped me make a flavorful espagnole sauce.

I've learned these most basic of the basics from two excellent chef instructors and from listening to and observing my fellow students, both in their own successes and mistakes.

Executive Chef Michael Weller, who oversees the culinary arts program, said during orientation on Sept. 19 that the first six weeks, that is the first term, would be the most difficult. So far, it has been difficult and intense, but also energizing and challenging in many positive ways.

Next comes building confidence, manifest in increased assertiveness at the cutting board, mixing bowl and stovetop.

(Photo courtesy of fellow culinary student Keejoo Hon)

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.

What am I cooking this weekend?

Home menu items for this weekend are designed to put into practice the skills I learned this week at the California Culinary Academy.

Dinner
Short ribs, with a madeira sauce, made from a base of espagnole.
Green beans in a béchamel sauce.
Brown rice made in a brown veal stock.

Breakfast
Eggs benedict (old-fashioned, but it's a way to practice making hollandaise)

That's a good start. Check back Sunday to read how they turned out.

(Photo credit: www.ayearfromoakcottage.com)

A 'point' of cayenne and other fineries of sauce sorcery

The saucier is the first among equals in the classic French kitchen.

It is no wonder. The word pronounced in proper French sounds a bit like "sorcerer." And that is what the saucier is, a maker of magic.

Chef Tony Marano, who is teaching sauces to us as part of the Culinary Foundations I curriculum, is a big believer in the magic of the kitchen.

"But don't confuse magic for mojo," Chef Tony says. "Magic is the way we explain science that we don't yet understand."

Aw, man, no! The magic explanation is more than good enough for me. Taste a well-made espagnole or perfectly balanced hollandaise. That's magic.

Sauces come from combinations of butter and flour and water flavored with meat bones and chopped vegetables and butter combined with egg yolks and a dash of vinegar. Oh, and a "point" of cayenne -- the amount that fits on the point of a knife, that is.

What could at first reading seem like composting materials are the ingredients with which the saucier makes magic.

The magician we are learning from -- Chef Tony -- is modest yet factual about his sauce-making abilities. He has whipped up a half-dozen sauces from scratch before our eyes this week and then patiently walked us through the steps it takes to do it the way he does. We are thrilled to need a lot of practice.

Chef Tony was saucier for at least one French restaurant in the Bay Area, where he ran a station that produced all the primary sauces and many, many variations of them every night.

In class on Thursday, his magic -- or was it his mojo? -- was on full display as he demonstrated the makings of mayonnaise and hollandaise, both egg-yolk based sauces. When finished, we all eagerly lined up to taste, and as we passed the bowls for a dip, Chef Tony allowed as to how "this isn't the best hollandaise I've made."

He could have fooled all of us. There were plenty of "yums" and not a single "yuck." It was by far the best hollandaise sauce I had ever tasted.

Or had I tasted magic?

(Photos: Chef Tony Marano upper left; his student sauciers trying their hands lower right. That's me second from right. Lower right photo courtesy of fellow culinary student Keejoo Hong)

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.)