Healthier eating for kids in school, and it's about time

Unhealthy eating and overeating are such ubiquitous problems in American society that it's difficult to decide where to begin solving the problem.

How about schools, where meals are served to millions of our children every day? And, where the food service isn't what any reasonable person would call healthy.

In fact, our federal government contributes in a big way to the unhealthy nature of school meals by requiring that a significant portion of the federal money spent on school meal service be spent to buy surplus agriculural commodities, according to a story in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

The Chronicle story (read it here) spells out the issue and what some are doing about it.

(Photo credit: www.whitehouse.gov)

Cooking school has me in stitches -- 5 to be exact

Halfway through the final practice for Friday's practical exam on the 10 basic knife cuts in culinary school, I put a good little gash into my left thumb with my paring knife.

Five stitches and a bit of embarrassment later, I'm wondering if I'll be able to handle the exam on Friday.

The cut is at the first knuckle, and while it isn't deep, it is at a critical spot, because that's where my thumb bends, thus cracking it open. So it is stitched, splinted to prevent bending and wrapped in some pretty cool looking tape.

For the record, I was coring a roma tomato when it happened.

Also for the record, I had completed six of the 10 cuts and still had plenty of time. And, I had the presence of mind to ask Chef Tony, our cool-headed teacher who immediately took me out of the game, how I had done on what I did manage to complete.

He took a serious look at my tray and declared, with a nod and a smile, "You're on the right track."

I'm convinced it wasn't a sympathy assessment.

Sure-fire diet? Study restaurant safety and sanitation

It was Day 2 or Day 3 of culinary school when I paused in my reading for Safety and Sanitation class to wonder if I would ever eat in a restaurant again.

It seemed that between chemical cleaners and clostridium, botulism and bacillus cereus, E.coli and employee carelessness, one's chances of getting sick from what I have learned to refer to as food-borne pathogens are pretty high.

In actuality, they aren't very high. And that's the point -- and result -- of the California Culinary Academy, other culinary schools, the food-service industry and governmental agencies emphasizing safety and sanitation.

It is the first class that culinary students take. It includes not only all the lessons but the requirement for passage of the ServSafe examination to be certified as a food industry worker.

Safety and Sanitation instructor Chef John Meidinger is straightforward about the need for what I call strategic cleanliness in the workplace: "You kill bacteria two ways: heat and chemicals. I don't want to put my meat in a chlorine marinade, so I will use heat to kill bacteria; that's called cooking."

Everyone has a story to tell about some restaurant mishap or carelessness -- mine is finding a hunk of wire embedded in ahi tuna at a high-end Tucson restaurant. But considering that we Americans spend more eating out these days than we do on groceries to eat at home, and only a miniscule number become ill, the industry does a darn good job of keeping it clean.

This class is an eye opener, yet at the same time provides positive motivation to me to contribute to the culture of cleanliness.

Putting the French into French cooking

The complexities of French cooking, via all seven classical French cuisine techniques, were explained in an intense, fast-moving demonstration today at the California Culinary Academy.

Chef Gilles Penot (left) of Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts School in Ottawa, Canada, was on the San Francisco campus , which is a Cordon Bleu affiliate school, for the demonstration.

In one hour and 45 minutes, Chef Gilles trussed a chicken for roasting, tournéed carrots and potatoes and cooked a meal as more than 30 novice students, including yours truly, sat in rapt attention.

Chef Gilles' heavy French accent made following his lesson more challenging, but it added a genuineness to the afternoon's activities. There was both a seriousness and a light-hearted happiness to him as he worked, an obvious manifestation of his love for le cuisine Francais.

His teaching involved a facile recitation of the proper French terminology interspersed with rapid-fire questions to students about why he was doing what he did or what he should do next.

In the allotted time, he showed the trussing, browning and roasting of the bird, glazing of the carrots and sauté of the potatoes, plus creation of a brown sauce from the chicken fat's flavors and a hearty-looking stock.

Bonus: In the class that followed, as we practiced our knife work, Chef Gilles showed me an efficient and effective way to hold the potato for tourné.

Next best thing to cooking and eating good food is ...

... reading about cooking and eating good food.

My reading for pleasure includes a good portion of food and cooking writing. Not cookbooks, although I peruse those, too, and have a collection of nearly 100 cookbooks. We're talking books about food and cooking as culture. Here are a few examples, including my most recent and current readings:

* "My Life in France", Julia Child's story told with her great-nephew Alex Prud'homme. I just finished this warm and enlightening book in which the mother of good American cooking tells how she immersed herself in French culture, including its cuisine, and came up with her permanently relevant "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and masterful PBS television series, "The French Chef". (Special thanks to friend and colleague Diane Luber for lending me her copy of "My Life in France".)

* "Heat", by Bill Buford. This is my current reading, a revealing tale of Buford's year or more around super chef Mario Batali and his Babbo restaurant, including Buford on the trail of the Mario mystique in Italy and elsewhere. The book title's subtext tells it all: "An amateur's adventure as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany." (A second nod of thanks to Diane Luber.)

* "Down and Out in Paris and London", by George Orwell. I haven't read this, but it was recommended by Chef Tony Marano, one of my professors at the California Culinary Academy. Especially compelling, it seems, are the tales from Paris breadlines and the lives of workers in restaurant kitchens.

* "Beef: And Other Bovine Matters", by John Torode. This offering showed up attached to a recipe for seared beef tenderloin with thyme in my daily Epicurious.com New Recipes feed. The book description shows it leans heavily on recipes but also appears to contain a good deal of the history of beef, breeds, butchering and other background. Torode was born in Australia and now runs restaurants in London.

* Just about anything by M.F.K. Fisher. Here's a list of her works. Most compelling titles: "How to Cook a Wolf", her only novel "Not Now but Now" and "The Story of Wine in California".

* Anthony Bourdain is overexposed, methinks, but he is a talented writer. Try "A Cook's Tour", in which Bourdain sets out to find the perfect meal and travels the world.

This list is sadly incomplete, like a tomato sauce with only tomatoes. There are many more, and I will add to the list in this blog as time allows.

(Photo credits: George Orwell -- top right -- from levity.com. M.F.K. Fisher -- lower left -- from her official Website)

T.G.I.F.? Not this week

"So, are you feeling good about Friday?"

Chef Tony Marano of the California Culinary Academy asked me that as he watched me parboil a tomato for concasse as part of my preparation for his upcoming knife-skills practical exam.

Minutes earlier the man critiqued my tray -- skin in the onion ciseler, unevenly cut potatoes battonet, carrots julienne still cut larger than the specifications (1/8 of an inch gets smaller and smaller as we get older, no?).

After that, how could he ask the question? Here's how: It was meant purely as encouragement from an educator who loves his profession and wants to see his students come to that affection, too. And I do, Chef, I do. I just wish there were one, maybe two extra days in the week for practice before Friday.

(Photo: the soon-to-be victims and the weapons of my kitchen mayhem.)

Cooking like Julia, in under one hour!

The first recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is Potage Parmentier, Leek and Potato Soup. It's simple, takes little time to make and, most of all, it is delicious!

Practicing my knife work for culinary school led me to make a good pot of Potato and Leek Soup last evening. I small diced 1 pound of potatoes and thinly sliced 1 pound of leeks, put them in 2 quarts of water, tossed in 2 tablespoons of salt and simmered for 45 minutes. Then I mashed the softened veggies with a fork. Just before serving, off the heat, I stirred in 2 1/2 tablespoons of softened, unsalted butter. To add color, mince some chives or a little parsley to garnish and serve.

Start to finish -- 1 hour. The working part of the recipe took 15 minutes.

A couple of important steps for the novice cooks: Peel the potatoes before dicing; wash the leeks thoroughly to remove dirt that is embedded in the tight folds of the leaves.

It's a great place to start making Julia's recipes. The result is a soup that she is seen making in the photo and that she describes: "Leek and potato soup smells good, tastes good, and is simplicity itself to make."

(Photo credit: media.onsugar.com)

10 knife cuts, 30 minutes; that's 3 minutes each! Yikes!

Chef Tony gave his students a full hour today to practice the 10 knife cuts he taught us last week, in preparation for a practical exam on Friday. For the practical, we will have to make the 10 cuts in half the time.

That could be an issue for me. Today, in the one-hour practice, I finished nine of the cuts, and my own critique is that five of them were pretty fair, while the other four need work. Not to mention the 10th, which I didn't even get to before Chef called for cleanup.

Tuesday is another day. We will not have an hour. Each day, Chef Tony said, he will shorten the time to move us closer to the reality of 10 cuts in 30 minutes, the expectation for Friday.

A couple of pieces of good news in all of this:

* In the fury of practice for the practical, I have not drawn blood.

* In that same fury, two classmate have, but only small cuts on fingers.

Fun food job of the week: Stanley's Steamers

It's not haute cuisine, but it could be big-time fun. This advertisement is on the California Culinary Academy Website and on Craigslist. This would be a fun job for meeting people and being in the middle of the action in San Francisco.

HOW ABOUT A FUN, OUTDOOR JOB THAT PAYS WELL?

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, we have several openings 32-40 hours a week for individuals who can sell hot dogs, pretzels, and drinks from our "Stanley's Steamers" hot dog carts located in San Francisco's Union Square, PLUS be able to drive our company van making deliveries and working in our commissary several days a week.
Please note this is a combination vending/driving job, not vending only.
Applicants need open availability (mornings and evenings, 7 days a week) and a driving record with not more than 1 moving violation in the past 3 years.
Driving shifts pay $13.50/hr; Vending shifts pay $9.79/hr, plus $25-$40 in cash tips daily. We offer a Blue Cross Health Plan to full-time staff after 90 days.
To apply, please send us your resume with job history and job references. It always helps to include a personal note telling us something about you.
To apply: job-82jmb-1407437055@craigslist.org

SALSA SUNDAY starts with fresh, ripe tomatoes

Nothing is better for making good salsa than ripe tomatoes. Even better, home-grown ripe tomatoes. The bowl of deliious little romas at right came from the small back-yard garden tended by my daughter Ann Chihak Poff and son-in-law Curt Poff in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood. They are sweet and juicy, perfect for salsa.

My plan is to use them in a basic recipe, much like the very first Salsa Sunday entry here on Aug. 30, but with one key modification: I will roast the tomatoes and the jalapeños to give them a bit of a smoky flavor before dicing for the salsa. I call it salsa chipotle, although this recipe doesn't use genuine chipotles, which are smoked jalapeños.

Use your outdoor grill or broiler pan in the oven to roast a half-dozen ripe roma tomates and 2-3 jalapeños. Turn them every few minutes to get the skin blackened all around on both the tomatoes and the jalapeños. After they are blackened, put them in a plastic or paper bag and set in the sink so they create their own steam, for about 20 minutes.

Meantime, chop 1 white onion, 2 cloves garlic and grill them until they are tender. Fine dice them.

When the tomatoes and jalapeños can be handled, remove their skins, clean out seeds and fine dice them. Stir in a glass bowl with the onions and garlic, add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

For my taste, salsa that uses chipotles -- real ones or done the way I suggest doing them -- is best eaten at room temperature. It goes well with steak, fish and on tacos.

Peruvian "super chef's" eatery not SF's first cevicheria

Gastón Acurio has arrived. His La Mar Cebicheria is open on the Embarc-
adero in San Francisco, serving authentic Peruvian ceviche and other seafood delights.

Time magazine this week refers to Acurio as the next super chef, saying that while he doesn't yet have the name recognition of Italian-American Mario Batali or Spaniard José Andrés, his coming to the United States is the first step toward it.

Thanks to my friend and soon-to-be fellow culinary student Susan Bullen for sending me the link to the story.

Oh, and if the publicity leads to a jam at the door of La Mar, try the excellent Peruvian ceviche at Fresca on Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights or three other San Francisco locations.

(Photo credit: Ines Menacho, Time magazine)

Culinary school quotes of the week, Week 1

The truth about the truth

"It's a tradition. Well, it's more of a nuisance than anything else. But you gotta wear it."
-- Chef John Meidinger (right) telling students on Day 1 that wearing a complete uniform as school rules require for all classes includes the neckerchief.

Don Juan and Casanova were chefs

"Cuisine is not about power; it's about finesse. As chefs, we're poets and lovers, not fighters."
-- Chef Tony Marano describing the military-like organizational "brigade" of the kitchen staff as established by the great Frenchman Georges-Auguste Escoffier.

Bad career move

"You don't want to take a chance on making someone sick or killing someone, because that will ruin your career. Or it should."
-- Chef John Meidinger explaining that food spending a cumulative four hours in the "danger zone", 41-135 degrees Fahrenheit, should be thrown away.


Addicted to science

"Food scientists can be our best friends, or they can be evil. ... Worldwide (restaurant) chains use food scientists to layer fat, oil and sugar to levels in foods to make them addictive."
-- Chef Tony Marano (above left) discussing how tastes and flavors can be manipulated.


Rocco my world
"We have books about cute chefs like Rocco (DiSpirito, a New York City chef/restaurateur, photo at right), but also not so cute chefs."
-- Diana Vasquez, Librarian at the California Culinary Academy, telling students what's among the 4,000 volumes she oversees. She didn't identify any "not so cute" chefs.

(Rocco DiSpirito photo credit: delish.com)

Tourné or not tourné; that is the seven-sided question

Our "Bible", Gisslen's "Professional Cooking", ends its step-by-step instruction for the tourné by showing a photo of the finished product with this caption: "If perfectly done, the potato has seven sides." Then it adds in parentheses and somewhat wryly: "(but customers rarely count them)."

You can bet that the next time I am in a good restaurant and find tournéed potatoes on my plate, I will count the sides.

Tourné -- past participle of "to turn" in French -- is the knife cut that produces a little football-shaped potato, and it is the last of the 10 basic cuts learned in this, my first week of culinary school. In one week, we students in Chef Tony's Foundations of Culinary Arts class must do the 10 cuts in 30 minutes.

The tourné exercise went well, and it is one cut that I feel confident about. It aso happens to be the one that from all appearances is the most complex. Yet it was simpler for me than the julienne (1/8 of an inch square by 2 1/2 inches long), which others in the class appeared to cut with ease.

Good food, good wine, good fashion, good time, Saturday afternoon in the Fillmore District

Looking for Saturday activities in San Francisco? Try this:

In the Fillmore district -- specifically on Fillmore Street between California and Pine streets -- it's the first Taste of Fillmore.

Here's all you need to know: http://www.tasteoffillmore.com/

What comes after good? Great, of course

We boiled water today in culinary class, our first use of fire on just the fourth day into our studies.

Actually, Chef Tony boiled the water; we students used it to blanch tomatoes so we could practice tomato concassé. That's one of 10 basic cuts and shapes we are learning in Culinary Arts Foundations I. Each has a name, is precise in method and outcome and helps form the foundation of all the cooking and food preparation we will undertake going forward.

After a rough start Tuesday on the battonet, my cutting work is improving. Chef Tony said so himself, when he saw the results of my ciseler -- that's the dicing of an onion, something I already knew how to do, sort of. I asked Chef when he came 'round for an inspection if my ciseler looked good. "Yes, good," he responded. "Not great."

He wants great, and so do I. A few onions will meet their ciseler this weekend in my kitchen.

(Photo credit: mon-chef-a-moi.com)

Pumpkins and apples and squash, oh my!

Autumn is bringing welcome additions to the Fillmore Farmers' Market in San Francisco.

Pumpkins and other winter squash should begin appearing in abundance. Pumpkins, by the way, are for much more than Halloween and jack 'o lanterns. As the season gets going, I plan to use them for soups, side dishes and roasted pepitas. Stay tuned for some recipes.

Several vendors had apples last week, and more are expected as the harvest gets going.

And the squash -- acorn, butternut and other varieties -- ought to start piling up. Squash are great to have around, because they can keep for weeks, if the skin isn't pierced, and they supply delicious and sweet tastes for soups, garnishes and in combination with other ingredients. My acorn squash and quinoa recipe will appear here in the near future.

Meantime, though, at Saturday's market, I will be on the lookout for big white potatoes and carrots. Why? Because my culinary school practical exam on 10 cuts and shapes -- including julienne, tourné, battonet and paysanne -- will be in a week. Practicing -- and the yummy results including cream of carrot soup and, perhaps, potato leek soup -- will be a top priority for the next week.

(Photo credit: ehow.com)

Appreciating the artistry that is classical cooking

A painter takes care of his brushes, a soprano her voice, a photographer his camera.

And, a chef his knife.

Chef Tony Marano revealed, perhaps unwittingly, the artistry in his chosen profession and in himself today in class at the California Culinary Academy. Chef Tony lectured on knife quality, and as he did, he showed that a knife is more than a kitchen tool. He showed it to be an extension of the chef.

Much of his lecture was about what makes a good knife -- type of steel and its hardness, quality of the tang, the balance between blade and handle.

Yet, he returned near lecture's end to the principle use for a good knife: to help in the preparation of good food.

Those who appreciate good paintings don't think much about the brushes, and those listening to a soprano don't much consider what she has done to protect her voice.

Just as we who eat good food well prepared in restaurants don't wonder at the brand of knife the chef used or what the knife's steel hardness was. Yet without the knife, the meal could not have been created as it came to us for our appreciation and nourishment, if it could have been created at all.

The recognition of the knife as an extension of the artistic chef was implicit in Chef Tony's lecture today. And it made the practical lesson that followed -- to julienne and brunoise carrots -- all the more meaningful and important.

OTD Bush open for business

The long-awaited OTD Bush Street -- aka Out the Door -- opened today in San Francisco's Fillmore District. A steady breakfast clientele populated the sophisticated-looking space, both at the marble table tops and spacious counter seating.

Owner Charles Phan occupied a prominent seat at the counter, keeping an eye on the kitchen and greeting customers.

The breakfast menu features several Vietnamese selections, including lotus wrapped sticky rice with Chinese sausage and "pork shrimp", chicken phô and beef phô and chicken porridge.

Phan and Chef de Cuisine Grace Nguyen offer several egg dishes with interesting twists to them. Included are baked eggs on a tomato coulis and French ham (photo), soft scrambled eggs with chives and soy, poached eggs with a braised Niman Ranch beef brisket and potatoes.

Try the Vietnamese coffee, thickened and sweetened with condensed milk.

The egg dishes seemed a bit pricey, ranging from $8 for the soft scramled eggs to $13 for the poached eggs. A steamed bun was $3, beignets and Vietnamese coffee $8 and sesame granola $9.

Spud trouble ... or ... how I became a bad example

The humble potato humbled me in culinary school.

In the last 30 minutes of today's last class, we got to touch real food. It was sooner than I thought we would, and that excited me. Alas, the assignment to first battonet then small dice a potato proved more difficult than I imagined.

I have lots of cutting, chopping, dicing and knife experience. The trouble: It's all self-taught and without any logic other than getting the items into small pieces for cooking and edibility.

Now Chef Tony is doing the teaching, using "the Bible": Wayne Gisslen's "Professional Cooking". Gisslen points out that cutting food products into uniform shapes and sizes is important because: "1. It ensures even cooking. 2. It enhances the appearance of the product."

Practice, practice, practice will make perfect. For today, I was the class "before" example. Chef Tony used my sad pile of unevenly cut batonnets to show other students, preceded by an apologetic shrug to me, how not to do it.

For the record, the batonnet must be 1/4 inch on each of four sides and 2 1/2 to 3 inches long. In other words, a perfect French fry. From there, the small dice should leave 1/4-inch cubes.

Wednesday will be another day. Carrots will be on the cutting board, for a lesson in julienne, brunoise and fine brunoise.

(Photo credit: www.jsonline.com)

Fillmore update: Dinos' birthday; OTD early open

Dino's, at the corner of California and Fillmore streets in the heart of San Francisco's Fillmore District, threw itself a birthday party this evening, and it looked like the whole neighborhood showed up.

And why not? Free pizza pie!

Nice to see this neighborhood business and its hard-working crew getting some attention on the street. It serves a mean slice of pizza, and its pastas and minestrone soup are pretty darn good, too.

By the way, Dino's is 21, and appropriately billed its celebration as "Dino's becomes legal."

* * *

Several days of tryouts, with free eats for neighbors and friends and a successful introduction this morning to the media, have led owner Charles Phan and Chef de Cuisine Grace Nguyen to open OTD Bush Street for business on Wednesday -- breakfast, lunch and dinner.

That's one day earlier than what everyone involved had been saying for the last few weeks.

Obviously, the kitchen is running smoothly, and the staff is up to speed. The facility is a beauty.