More Chef Dan quotes from culinary school's 2nd term

(Note: All cited quotations are from Chef Dan Fluharty, instructor for Culinary Foundations II afternoon session, for the term that ran Nov. 9, 2009 to Dec. 18, 2009.)

To err is human; to opine is divine
"Making mistakes on your part is important. You'll need a second opinion on what you cook. That will be me."
-- In his introduction on the first day of class, Nov. 9, 2009 

Worth the sacrifice
"I would go there and eat the nasty food just to watch the show. They served the eggs over-greazy. That is, over easy."
-- Relating why a certain San Francisco greasy spoon restaurant was his favorite; it was the performance the cooks put on preparing breakfast 

In other words: 'No'
"Flaming alcohols are for show."
-- Response to a student asking if he wanted us to flame the brandy when putting it into a sauté. 

Don't green for sake of green
"Don't put a garnish on the plate just to have one. The garnish should tell a story. That means it should be a component of what's in the dish."
-- Response to a student asking if a plated soup could have color added to it with a sprig of parsely 

In emergency, break out couscous
"Couscous is your emergency, go-to starch. If you don't have any idea what starch you're going to serve, couscous is the answer."
-- Explaining that couscous, when mixed with hot chicken stock, can be ready to serve in 10 minutes

Prepping for a culinary holiday: Organization is a must

Among the many skills that the chefs at the California Culinary Academy teach their students is a key and primary one: organization. "Plan your work, and wrk your plan," Chef Dan Fluharty says repeatedly when we have a deadline cooking assignment.

Making and carrying out a plan, in writing, is a must. And I find myself doing the same at home now, not just leaving to chance that the beans will be done on time or the meat will thaw. There's a regimen, and if that sounds too anal for you, you may just have to go hungry!

Seriously, culinary school has not only given me the beginning-level tools to work in a restaurant kitchen, it has taught me good meal combinations, what can be cooked or partly cooked in advance and how to store it appropriately. Getting organized, starting with the mise en place, is the key to success in the home kitchen and on the hot line in any restaurant.

Tonight's dinner will be a simple potato and leek soup, and Friday's holiday meal will be the aforementioned traditional Mexican fare -- highlighted by home-made tamales. For all of it, I have a plan and the ingredients all laid out. Tha's the mise en place.

Tune in later this week to read how it all has gone.

Fancy eats for the holiday? No, tradition rules the day

My vastly improved culinary skills notwithstanding, we will stick to tradition for our main Christmas meal. That means home-made tamales (no mean culinary feat in and of themselves); hours-long, pot-simmered beans; spiced-up rice; two kinds of enchiladas, gorditas dipped in red chile sauce and rolled with cheese.

With two terms of culinary school behind me, I have the ability to put together at least the basics of a classic French-inspired meal. But I'm not even tempted. When it comes to the holidays, we want the food we grew up with, the food that nourished not only our bodies but our spirits, food made with loving hands in the traditional way.

Don't ask for recipes. As in many culinary traditions, these are hand-me-down methods, developed over generations of a handful of this, a dash of that, enough kneading of the masa until it feels right, somehow just knowing that it is cooked enough or that the chile has the right consistency.

Cooking this food transports me mentally and emotionally back in time, to the kitchens of my mom and tias, where no pair of hands was idle and no one -- even the most distant of drop-in cousins -- went hungry.

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo.

Back at the cutting board, with terrific sous chef

Don't forget to practice your culinary skills during the holidays.

The admonition from Chef Dan Fluharty came across as a command as much as a reminder. Either way, it was good to have in mind.

Having departed the city immediately after the last day of Culinary Foundations II final exam for a brief trip to Tucson, I hadn't had a chance to put the command/reminder into action. That is until Monday night at the home of my most gracious brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Marco and Thelma Ruiz.

They turned over their kitchen -- and their daughter Luna B. Ruiz -- to me for the evening. Luna as sous chef and yours truly as chef de cuisine cooked up a small storm. We roasted a chicken. We made a sauté of green beans and red bell peppers. We made pommes duchesse, the fancy piped potato that is a beautiful addition to any plate. We concocted a sauce nateur from the chicken pan drippings.

Twelve-year-old Luna was by my side the entire time, taking it all in and pitching in on every task. She absorbed the information like a sponge, even taking written notes on some of the French terminology. It was a joy to work with her, and it was a joy to cook good food in a confident manner for beloved family members.

The Ruiz family clearly enjoyed the evening's repast, dazzled by my still novice but growing-better-by-the-day culinary skills.

Chef Dan, one practice session down, many more to come.

De los manos de mi suegra: tamales and other goodies

Don't spread the masa too thin; don 't spread the masa too thick. Put two olives in each, not one. Squeeze the meat to get out the caldo -- broth or liquid -- before putting it into the tamal.

Expertise, advice, instruction, guidance all flowed freely at Sunday's tamalada in the kitchen of my suegra, Ramona Martinez. A small but focused and ambitious group of us turned out 14 dozen plus of the delicious beauties in a little more than two hours.

That is, after Ramona stoked us with a home-made breakfast of huevos rancheros, followed by a dose of sobrina Luna B. Ruiz's made-from-scratch banana and walnut pancakes.

The making of tamales for the holidays is a tradition of long standing in families of Mejicano descent. The tamale-making is the focal point, but the reconnection and renewal of family ties become the important byproducts of the day.

We mixed not only the masa with the manteca (corn meal with fat) to make the foundation for the tamales. We mixed the catch-up conversations of recently missed meals together with the richness of the busy lives we all live, sometimes farther away from one another than we like to be. And that becomes a renewed foundation upon which the structure and ever-changing dynamic of the family rests.

We walked away feeling rejuvenated in many ways: with family, with culture and with panzas full of good food and anticipating more.

(Photos, from the top: bagged dozens of tamales awaiting the freezer or cooking; my suegra's hands expertly spreading masa on an hoja (corn husk); beauteous masa blenders Hilda Oropeza (my wife) and Luna B. Ruiz nearly up to their elbows in the basic tamale ingredient; the all-important masa floating in a glass of water. When a small ball of masa floats, it has been mixed and kneaded properly and the masa is ready; when the ball sinks, more mixing is necessary.)

12 weeks of discovery, and it's still a mystery

"We're having Brussels sprouts," doesn't exactly whet the appetite or pique the interest of many people. Yet the idea that Brussels sprouts can -- and more important should -- be part of a culinary repertoire is now in my reality. That includes that they can be cooked in a prescribed manner to achieve flavor and contribute to a well-rounded plate.

Getting to know the Brussels sprout serves as an apt embodiment of my culinary school experience. The strong smelling member of the cabbage family was to me as unapproachable as the complexities of classic French cooking were just three months ago.

In three months -- 12 weeks, to be exact -- my mind, my hands, my palate and most of all my spirit have entered a transformation in which they are moving toward an inexact and still mystical end. Chef Tony Marano of the California Culinary Academy makes the case for pursuit of the mystery being a lifelong joy.

Before, I was a fair cook, with good knowledge of the kitchen and more than basic ingredients. I could braise a short rib and capture the pan juices for a delicious sauce, create a baanced tomato sauce and pasta, even turn out a molé with complex layering of flavors.

Now, I can do those and so much more, with a peak at the mystery behind each. It's what some call chemistry. It seems more sorcery to me. As Chef Tony says: "We use the word magic to explain what we don't yet understand."

For example, I don't understand the magic of how something as minimally attractive and, frankly, odoriferous as the Brussels sprout can be transformed into a tasty, flavorful morsel. Yet, I know how to transform it.

Twelve weeks of culinary school -- and now a reflective break before plunging in again -- have helped me to get a small glimpse at the magic. Understanding? Maybe never. But the pursuit of it has my full attention.

Christmas season also means 'tamalada' season

The tamalada is a tradition as old as -- well, as old as corn. And that's pretty old, considering the experts believe that corn was domesticated at least 5,600 years ago in what are now southern Mexico and Central America.

The tamalada, or tamale-making party, most likely originated out of necessity to secure a food supply during the times when corn and other products weren't available. Corn kernels were dried and treated, then ground to a flour. Mixed with water and other liquids, the corn flour became a dough from which many things were and are made. Tortillas, tamales and enchiladas are but the most obvious and recognizable.

Now, the tamalada is both tradition and celebration, in that it brings families and groups of like-minded people together to prepare food, refresh and rejuvenate relationships and celebrate the season.

Thus it is so that the long-standing -- yet recently dormant -- Oropeza-Martinez family tamalada will be on Sunday at the house of my suegra, Ramona Martinez. Three daughters, three sons-in-law and at least a couple of grandchildren are expected to take part.

A full report on the tamalada will be posted soon.

Fulfilling end to a fine term in culinary school

Overcooking was the theme of the final day of culinary competency exams at the California Culinary Academy on Friday. Chef Dan Fluharty called several students on it, both for their pork chops and their veal scaloppini. He subtracted two points for my overcooking a veal scaloppini.

Now, lest one misunderstand: We're not talking about food that's charred beyond recognition. Overcooking is a matter of seconds and a degree or two, especially when dealing with these cuts. One of my two small pieces of veal was cooked right -- very slightly pink in the center -- while the other was cooked a few seconds over. That may have occurred in the keeping-it-warm phase while I plated other items or in the final saucing, that is dipping the veal into the heated sauce marsala just before plating.

Most aspects of the final exam went well. Chef scored my grilled pork chop as perfectly cooked. I lost two points on my sauce chasseur, one for it was a bit thin and one for it being a bit underseasoned. Thirty-eight points on the plate, out of a possible 40.

The veal cooking cost me two points, and undercooked Brussells sprouts cost me two more points. My pommes duchesse -- mashed, then elegantly piped, then browned potatoes -- turned out nearly perfect. For the plate, I earned 36 of a possible 40 points.

From a strategic viewpoint, it was a great success. I followed my plans for all meals in both days, and I plated highly flavorful meals on schedule, in fact ahead of schedule.  I made a tactical mistake here and there, but nothing that made an item inedible or even the least distasteful.

All in all, it was a good conclusion to the six-week term in Culinary Foundations II. The four plates I prepared for the final exam garnered a collective 91.3% of the possible points. I'll take it!

(Photo shows remnants of the grilled pork chop-risotto-broccoli plagte, after Chef sampled and judged.)

Culinary school quotes of the week, Week 12

Global warming comes to one oven
"He had a very large carbon footprint today with that plate."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty on a student in another class whose roasted chicken cooked until it was charred carbony black.

Caught a fish this big
"I ended up with anchovy fillets."
-- Culinary student Rob Park (right) on his first experience filleting a fish, a nine-inch flounder from which we were supposed to get four 4-inch fillets. 

Revenge of the blob
"Was it napér (pronounced nap-ay)? No, it was glopér (pronounced glop-ay)."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty describing the sauce supréme made by most students. Napér is the French term for desired sauce consistency, to coat the back of a spoon. 

A short love affair
"Remember I told you I liked this stove yesterday? I don't like it today."
-- Culinary student John Briggs, using a new stove top for Part One of the cooking competency final exam 

Flourescent food
"You don't want it to glow in the dark."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty, warning against using more than a pinch of saffron in the liquid going into risotto Milanese.

Chicken slightly overdone? I beg to differ

Chicken roasted just so, accompanied by roasted root vegetables, a flavorful pan sauce, browned small potatoes and roasted mushrooms for garnish. Ah, culinary perfection.

Hold on there, rotisserie boy!

Chef Dan Fluharty didn't think so, calling my roasted chicken "just slightly overcooked." But Chef, I protested, it's moist, it's succulent, it's ... It's 2 points off, Chef concluded.

And another 2 points off for the thin sauce. All right, that's true; my sauce nateur just didn't have it today. Too thin, too buttery. I could blame it on the frozen demi-glace we had to use. But I won't.

Chef did very much like my vegetables and potatoes (yes, potato is a veggie, but in Culinary World, we count it as a starch). They were roasted just right.

Thirty-six points out of 40 for the roasted chicken plating.

Another 36 for my poached salmon, which he also called overcooked, deducting 2 points. It had a touch of pink inside, but ah, well. He very much liked the rice pilaf and was as happy with my beurre blanc as I was. The turned zucchini pieces ("turned" refers to the knife cut on them) were tender but a couple of pieces got just a little too brown; 2 points off.

All in all, a good first day of the cooking competency final exam. We complete the six-week term on Friday, when I will prep, cook and plate a grilled pork chop with risotto and broccoli and a veal scaloppini with pommes duchesse and a marsala wine sauce.

I made a duxelle -- minced, dried sauté of fresh mushrooms in butter, onion and a splash of red wine -- to prepare a compound butter. If it tastes good upon unwrapping Friday, I will use a piece for garnish atop my pork chop.

Menu No. 4: veal scaloppini

The fourth and last plate for the Culinary Foundations II competency final exam, to be prepped, cooked and plated on Friday, will be veal scaloppini, with a marsala wine sauce, sauté of greens beans or brussels sprouts, pommes duchesse and a garnish.

The veal presents a dichotomy in handling and preparation. It's a small cut of meat that must be treated carefully. That is, seemingly, except at the beginning, when it must be pounded with the spike side of a meat hammer (left) to tenderize it, then with the blunt side to tenderize further and flatten uniformly for cooking. But even those actions must be done so as not to break the fiber of the meat entirely.

Even before that, one must prep the ingredients for the marsala wine sauce -- diced shallot, sliced mushrooms and fresh thyme -- and have on hand butter, the marsala wine and demi-glace (highly concentrated veal stock).

When those are ready, the sauté is heated, the butter melted in the hot pan and the veal lightly floured before going into the sauté for a couple of minutes on each side. The desired effect is a little browning before removing the veal from the heat to make the sauce. When the sauce is nearly finished, the veal goes back in for a few seconds before it and the sauce are plated.

Whether it's green beans or brussels sprouts, they are cooked similarly: blanched in salt water, shocked in ice water, followed by sauté in rendered bacon fat with julienne of red bell pepper and diced onion.

Pommes duchesse take the most prep, starting with making what in essence are mashed potatoes, adding cream, butter and seasonings, then putting the concoction in a pastry bag for piping into elegant little "cakes" that then are baked until golden brown (right). The keys are no lumps and the right color and crust on the finished potato.

Chef relents, but we still gotta cook

We were taken by surprise Tuesday in Culinary Foundations II to find out that we wouldn't know which of four dishes we would be required to cook on the first day of our competency final exam Thursday.

Chef Dan Fluharty relented today, telling us our assignments. For me and four classmates, Thursday means prepping, cooking and plating roasted chicken and poached salmon. The other five in class will make grilled pork chops and veal scaloppini. On Friday, we will switch around.

Going into the all-important exam, it's good to know what we will have to do. It allows last-minute adjustments and tweaking of prep and cooking plans and a final revew of the steps needed to get Thursday's two entrees, complete with side dishes, to Chef within the allotted two hours.

Let the cooking begin.

Menu No. 3: grilled pork chop

Continuing the rundown of menus for the Culinary Foundations II competency final exam, which will be Thursday and Friday. Grilled pork chop is the third main dish, to be accompanied by a choice of vegetable ("whatever is in the box," Chef said), risotto Milanese, sauce chasseur and a garnish.

The pork chop must be seasoned and grilled with appropriate grill marks (as in photo at left), and cooked to moist, with a minimal amount of pink inside. The quality of the chop's cooking will count for 10 points out of 40 total for the dish. "You only get one chop; you can't do it over," Chef Dan Fluharty warned us. "It will be five points off if it's overdone; zero if it's raw."

My vegetable will be broccoli florets, assuming they are available. I will trim to small florets, blanch in salt water, shock in ice water, finish in a butter sauté. If broccoli isn't available, I will do orange- and sugar-glazed carrots.

Risotto is cooked with chicken stock and must be brought to creaminess, including a small dollop of cream and grated Parmesan cheese to finish.

Sauce chasseur is made with butter, shallots, mushrooms, a sherry or white wine reduction, demi-glace, tomato concasséand seasonings.

My garnish likely will be a thick slice of compound butter, made with herbs and mushrooms.

Coming Thursday wll be a rundown of the final menu item: veal scaloppini.

Cramming for exams? No, for everything else

Learning the culinary arts will last a lifetime, say the chefs who are our teachers at the California Culinary Academy. If so, why does it seem that they are trying to cram it in all into this one week?

Culinary Foundations II class is in its waning days; the written final exam will be today; cooking competency exams will be Thursday and Friday.

Yet on Monday and Tuesday, Chef Dan Fluharty was still pushing new dishes and techniques. On Monday he demonstrated, and put us to work practicing, two stuffed poultry dishes. On Tuesday, he demonstrated and again put us to work making a braised duck leg and fillet of sole. Both were appropriately challenging, the fillet especially so, because each of us started with a whole fish from which to exract the fillets.

Neither duck leg nor fillet of sole will be on the competency final exams. But several of the side dishes that we made will be, so we got to practice making rich, creamy risotto, rice pilaf, sauté of broccoli, turned zucchini, beurre blanc for the fish and a rich pan sauce for the duck.

Any and all cooking practice serves to improve our knife skills, our attenton to the details of the stove top and the oven -- temperature control, that is. It also improves our organizational skills and efficiencies, all headed toward the plating and service.

The rules of engagement, culinary school style

Monkey wrench, curve ball, change of plans, the old switcheroo.

Or, maybe we should look at it as the surprise introduction of a new menu.

Call it what you will, but we students in Culinary Foundations II heard today what our lives will be like for the next three days, and it's interestingly different than what we expected, not to mention even more challenging.

First, on Wednesday, we will get a 50-question written final exam, rather than the 25-question exam we had been anticipating. Fair enough, I say. The written side of this is something that I for one am comfortable with.

Then comes the more challenging aspects of our final exams: the actual cooking on Thursday and Friday. We were looking forward to cooking two fully plated meals each day and have been working on our mise en place and production plans in anticipation.

Chef Dan Fluharty (above) revealed today, almost as an afterthought, that half of us will do one set of menus on Thursday, and half will do the other. Then on Friday, we will switch. We will not know until Thursday who will be doing what.

We all had expected to do roasted chicken and poached salmon on Thursday, and grilled pork chop and veal scaloppini on Friday. Now we will need to be prepared for all on Thursday.

Additionally, Chef said, we will work four people to a station for the exams, rather than the two to a station we have been enjoying. That means more competition for prep space and stove burners and more crowded conditions overall.

As my wife would say: Breathe.

It will all be fine. Even if it isn't, b y day's end Friday, it will all be over.

Menu No. 2: poached salmon

Part 1 of the Culinary Foundations II competency final exam on Thursday will conclude with preparation of poached salmon. The complete dish will include a 4-ounce piece of salmon fillet, rice pilaf, sautéed zucchini, beurre blanc (butter sauce) and garnish.

Preparation of the poaching liquid, called a court bouillon, is the first step in getting the salmon just right. The liquid is one-half gallon of water, 1 cup dry white wine, 2 ounces of white wine vinegar, 1 cup mirepoix (diced onion, carrot, celery), herbs and spices and a bit of fresh lemon juice. These ingredients enhance flavor and cooking, including coagulation of proteins in the fish.

The salmon goes into the simmering liquid for no more than 6-8 minutes. The key is to cook it to moistness, leaving it slightly pink in the center.

Rice pilaf is cooked using a long-grain rice that has been coated in hot oil to opaqueness before chicken stock is added for a 15-20-minute simmer. It should be flaky and a bit moist, but not wet, and flavored with herbs added at the beginning of cooking.

The zucchini should be cooked to tenderness but not mushy, accompanied by crushed tomatoes, herbs and seasoning. Chef Dan Fluharty showed us a method using canned crushed tomatoes. I hope to use fresh roma tomatoes that I will blanch, concassé and dice before putting them in the pot.

Beurre blanc is a rich butter sauce made with shallots sweated in a reduction of white wine and white wine vinegar, thickened with introduction of cold butter bits at a time until an emulsion forms. Vigorous and simultaneous shaking of the sauté and stirring of the ingredients is required to create the emulsion.

(Photo: my practice poached salmon dish from last week.)

Yummy! Can't wait to eat some 'debris'-filled chicken

Chef Dan Fluharty introduced us to Ballotine de Poulet Grandmère in class today. That's chicken subjected to, as Chef so succinctly put it, being "stuffed, rolled, tied, seared, braised, cut and served."

Let's go back to Step 1. "What do we make it from?" Chef asked, and then answered his own question: "Debris -- things that are left over."

Not really. We made stuffing of small diced carrots, shallot and celery, 1 beaten egg, bread crumbs, a little oil, salt and pepper. That went into a boned chicken leg and thigh, which was rolled, skin side up, tied and put in a sauté for browning. A sauce is built around the browning chicken before it goes into the oven for 35-40 minutes of braising. You can see the finished product -- rolled and stuffed chicken sliced down the middle, sauce and aromatics -- above right.

We also made Stuffed Chicken Breast Doria, using "forcemeat," a ground combination of chicken, spinach, cream, shallot, egg white, herbs and bread crumbs.  the stuffing was piped into a pocket cut into the chicken breast. The concoction was rolled, wrapped in cooking-grade plastic wrap and aluminum foil and poached in a 180-degree simmer. We also made a white sauce, sauce supreme, to accompany it. Result, including a "crowned" tomato garnish, is at left.

Menu No. 1: roasted chicken

The final exam in Culinary Foundations II will begin with roasted chicken. Here's the menu and some of the details for how this plate should come together on Thursday:

* Roasted whole chicken, with root vegetables, turned potatoes, sauce nateur and garnish.

For roasted chicken: Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Season chicken inside and out and truss with butcher's twine Lightly butter the exterior, place on an aluminum foil collar to elevate in roasting pan. Roast 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 F., and roast for up to one hour, to an internal temperature of 160-165 F.

For potatoes, other vegetables: Tourné 3-5 red potatoes to prep for roasting. Prep root vegetables for roasting: rutabaga, carrot, parsnip, turnip.

When chicken is done, remove and rest it for 15 minutes while roasting potato and vegetables. Degrease roasting pan and make sauce nateur: put mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) into chicken drippings to brown, deglaze with white wine, add chicken stock and demi-glace, finish with butter.

Carve chicken and pair one leg-thigh with half breast, set atop roasted vegetables. Pour sauce over chicken, add garnish. Serve.

(Photo shows a practice roasted chicken before carving and plating.)

Heat is on: culinary school final exams

Time to pull on the big boy pants -- checkered chef's style.

Hone knives on the steel.

Check stove burners and fire up the oven.

Se habla culinario. Solamente culinario por este semana.

We students in Culinary Foundations II have our menus for the final exam, cooking four fully plated meals over two days. Here's the rundown:

Thursday's first plate: Roasted chicken, braised root vegetables, turned potatoes, sauce nateur from the roast pan drippings and garnish.
Thursday's second plate (photo at left): Poached salmon, rice pilaf, squash and tomatoes, beurre blanc (butter sauce) and garnish.

Friday's first plate: Brined and grilled pork chop, polenta, braised fennel and apples, sauce chasseur made from scratch and garnish.

Friday's second plate: Veal scaloppini, risotto with saffron, sauté of turned zucchini and broccoli florets, marsala wine sauce from veal pan drippings and garnish.

Practice sessions begin tonight with poached salmon.

Culinary school quotes of the week, Week 11

A motto to live by
"It makes cheap and cheerful quickly."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty (right), describing the benefits of preparing and serving polenta.

Enough already
"I had more than my share of fried stuff today. I'm through with fried."
-- Culinary student Fontaine McFadden after "Fryday" in the classroom kitchen, where, basically, if it wasn't moving, we battered it and fried it. Oh, and ate a good bit of it. 

Dare you to mess this up
"This is probably one of the most stupid-proof sauces we have."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty describing a soy-ginger sauce used with tempura-battered fish. 

Aromatherapy culinary style
"It makes your house smell good."
-- Culinary student John Briggs, touting one benefit of braising. 

Cooking: glamorous? No, glabrous
"You can always tell a good sauté cook or a good grill cook: no hair on the forearms."
-- Chef Dan Fluharty, moments after pulling his singed arm away from the stove top when cooking veal scaloppini.