day 44: fabricating duck; chicken marsala 2.0

I was hoping we could make the sauteed duck breast again since we were fabricating duck today...but I'd never say no to chicken marsala. It was also nice to see Chef Pastore demo it, not only to get a refresher but to see a slightly different technique as well. Before that though, we get a refresher on tourne cuts.

Chef Pastore starts by squaring off his potato.

He then carves each of the corners into a "C" shape, like a football.

Now with four rounded sides and four flat sides, he starts carving the flat sides into a "C" shape at a slight angle so that the tourne will have seven sides (about two sides per one whole flat side).

When he gets his basic tourne shape down, he can...

go back for a second or third pass to refine the sides.

Take a bow, Chef. Good job.

Next up, Chef Shalchian preps our duck by removing the neck, liver, kidneys and other goodies from the cavity. A bird without this bag of treats would be called a W.O.G. (without giblets).

She gives it a good wash...

and a good pat dry, inside and out.

Like our chicken yesterday, she starts by making an incision where the leg and breast meet...

until she can snap the thigh bone from its joint just like this. She was extra careful to make sure the breast skin stayed intact.

Also, like our chicken yesterday, she separates the breast by sliding her boning knife as close as she can to the keel bone on either side.

The rib cage was lot more fragile on the duck than on the chicken.

After removing both breasts, she flips the bird and slides her finger under the oysters to separate them from the bone.

Carefully cutting around the oyster...

and following straight down to keep as much yield as possible...

Chef Shalchian removes the leg entirely from the carcass.

She cleans and trims the fat around the leg...

and carefully trims the fat around the breast, making sure to preserve about 1/4in beyond the meat to allow for seizing upon cooking.

Here is my fabricated duck...

and for fun, another chicken.

The highlight of the day was seeing Chef Pastore do what Chef Pastore does best: cook. Cook chicken marsala. Here, he heats up some oil until it starts to smoke.

After pounding out his chicken breast, seasoning it, and lightly dredginging it through flour, it goes for a saute in the hot pan, presentation side first (the shiny side that has/had the skin).

You can tell he's getting a nice brownness once the edges crisp up...

and we flip. Why did we do the presentation side first?

Because the second side never browns as well.

Setting our chicken aside, we carmelize some onions in the same pan, adding more oil if needed.

Next we add the mushrooms, and we definitely want carmelization on these. Today, we had oyster, cremini and shiitake to choose from...delicious!

Like potatoes, mushrooms love a good hit of salt.

Chef Pastore adds some shallots, and we saute.

And for the marsala in chicken marsala, we deglaze with marsala wine, scraping up the fond from the pan.

We let that reduce, about demi-sec.

Then we add just a bit of veal stock, for body.

We mount the sauce with cold butter...

and we swirl, swirl, swirl.

We check our seasonings to make sure the sweetness from the marsala wine is balanced with some salt. We also add our concaseed tomatoes and some parsley. Then, we add our chicken back to the sauce to coat.

Finally, we plate.

Hell, why not all of it.

Here is my chicken marsala with pommes vapeur. After over-herbing yesterday, I made sure today to season with a gentle hand, especially the black pepper. Chef Shalchian said my chicken was cooked nicely, although there was a small spot that may have overcarmelized from too much heat in the pan. My tournees were cut beautifully, although I might have overcooked my potatoes just a bit. Best of all though, she said my marsala sauce tasted great as I really found the balance between sweet and salty. Fantastic! I also made sure to serve on a nice hot plate. After burning Chef Brown's fingers once, I may have gotten a little bit shy about heating my plate too much. But Chef Pastore and Shalchian always give the plates a quick test pat to check the temperature, so I don't think I'll be having that problem in this class.

day 43: fabricating chicken and whole red snapper; herb roasted chicken 2.0

Being in the baking lab for the past three weeks feels like a fantastical dream that never even really happened. I mean, really...cookies and pies and cakes? I could have used a big ass cake today, we were all so on edge at the start of class. "What is this big pointy thing? A knife, you say? Is this some new invention?" But being with these two chefs again knocked the sense into us fast. Overall, it was a pretty good day, and now that we get to re-make a bunch of the dishes we made in 110 and 130, I feel I'm going to cook more with my instincts than with my recipes. I did today by adding a ton of garlic to herb roasted chicken and pan gravy, and it came out great.

First up, Chef Pastore wants us to play with our chicken. Get to know our chicken. Give our chicken a full body massage. Just don't choke it. Here, he demonstrates how a nice, relaxed chicken should look drunk.

Chef Pastore demonstrates his trussing technique by tying up the legs, as usual...

but then going around the side instead of between the thigh and around the breast. This will prevent the ugly lines the twine may leave.

Before we do the classic cuts, we separate the breast/wing and leg/thigh first. Chef Pastore starts by cutting that stretched skin between the leg and the thigh. This will aid in removing the breast.

Next, he goes in through the neck and snaps the wishbone to remove it. Hope he gets is wish! This will also aid in removing the breast. I did this on my other whole chicken I roasted to help remove the breast after cooking too, and it really did make it easier.

Finally, to remove the breast, Chef Pastore places his boning knife right against the side of the keel bone and puts pressure against the bone to keep his yield as much as possible.

Cutting the breast to where the leg and thigh met was easy because he'd already separated the skin there. On the neck end, Chef Pastore separated the meat until a single, thin film of skin was left, and then removed it. I was never able to get to that point on my own bird.

It is important when removing the leg and thigh that the oyster remain intact as it is the juiciest, most succulent bite on the entire chicken. Here, Chef Pastore shows us where to find them by pushing the back into buttcheeks. He's also sliding his fingers under the oyster to separate it from the bone.

Here, he's sliced around the oyster  and will continue down the thigh until...

he separates the thigh completely from the carcass, perfectly preserving the oyster. Now that we have all of our meat separated, we can do our classic cuts.

For the airline cut, Chef Pastore starts by splitting the wing from the drumette. All the cuts that we have made so far have gone through the joint, not through any actual bone itself.

Next, he frenches the drumette by scoring around the end of the bone and scraping off all the meat to the tip of the bone.

For the supreme, he just separates the joint between the drumette and the breast.

He did trim off some of the excess fat for our skin-on today, and the fat should be trimmed meticulously if we did skinless.

Here, Chef Pastore demonstrates feeling for the joint between the leg and thigh...

and then he goes for it.

Perfectly clean separation of the leg and thigh.

The thigh also gets both ends of its bone hacked off, leaving a narrow strip of bone in the center. Why? I don't know.

Here is the half bone-in thigh, or simply, thigh.

Chef Pastore frenches the leg...

because leaving it alone is never enough.

For our other leg/thigh, we do something called a tunnel bone.

Chef Pastore cuts the meat along the thigh bone...

to expose it.

Then he cuts the bone off cleanly, right between the joint.

He repeats the cut along the leg bone to expose it.

But insead of removing the entire bone, he chops through the bone leaving the tip.

Voila! Boneless leg quarter.

Here is my attempt to fabricate a chicken. That Pastore...one day, the student will become the teacher! Disclaimer: not anyday soon.

Next up, Chef Shalchian cleans and guts a fish. I wonder if they did a coin toss this morning. If so, she lost. She starts by removing all the fins, save the tail.

Over a scaling station, she uses the fish scaler, or horse comb, to scale the fish. The scales go a flying anyway.

She rinses the fish under cold water, feeling for any remaining scales. Common problem areas she mentioned are the belly, and the collar.

She exposes the gills, and then pulls them out. Nasty! Those thing look/feel like alien teeth.

She gently makes an incision between the anal fin and what she calls "the poopy trap" and reaches in...

to pull out all this deliciousness.

After rinsing the cavity until the water runs clear, we store the snappers on ice in this swimming position, as they are a round fish. Flat fish lay on their side. Chef Shalchian says this is to preserve the filet.

Here is my beautifully cleaned fish.

And for ha-has, we roasted a chicken and made a pan gravy. For the first time since I started school, I feel I really cooked without thinking. Like I said earlier, instincts over recipes. Everything came out great. Chef Shalchian appreciated the height I put on my dish.  She should...she's the one that taught me that. I served her with the bones facing away like Chef Brown taught us. And knowing she was a big fan of garlic, as am I, I loaded it up under the skin of that chicken so it wouldn't burn. I also used a good amount when making my pan sauce. She said the chicken was delicious, but that I may have gone a little bit heavy on the herbs, and I agree. There was no subtlety in my cooking at all today, not that that's completely bad. Also, she said my sauce tasted great!...but that it was cold. I should have warmed my plate a bit more to hold the temperature. Overall, I think it was a pretty good day, considering we were getting back into the swing of things after our baking bonanza.

day 42: fruit tart 2.0

Today was our final, so no new food...just a couple of old favorites revisited. I got an A- for the class, and I call shenanigans.

day 41: meringues with coffee swiss buttercream, cheesecake and berry pie

Pie comes from Mrs. Smith. Cheesecake comes from Sara Lee. Not today. We got to make a bunch of stuff that I've never made before from scratch, which was a lot of fun. I would say most people "have to" cook savory food, unless you can afford to eat out all the time. But baking is something you usually only do on special occasions, sort of a treat, and I think that's why I like it. The meringue drop cookies put me up against that damned pastry bag again...but today was different. After working with that thing for three straight days now, it's getting a lot easier. I also drew these for my final tomorrow, which is okay because we had a bunch of the buttercream leftover today for me to use tomorrow. Chef A said the meringues could be a bit drier, so I'll just increase my oven time from 45 minutes to an hour. We used trablit for the buttercream, which is a coffee extract that made it taste wonderful. Weird fact: I like coffee-flavored things like this, and like ice cream...but I don't really care for drinking coffee at all.

So today we had the big reveal of the cheesecake that we baked yesterday. I guess it did need a full day to set in the cooler, as it shrunk away from the pan a bit, and was a lot more firm than the wobbly jello consistency it had yesterday. I feel really lucky to even have cheesecake. Some exploded due to being in the oven too long...some turned gray, maybe from some exposed aluminum in the mixing bowl. I got a good texture, no cracks and a nice yellow color, but Chef A said the crust could have been a bit more even.  It's not too easy to crust the bottom of an opaque pan evenly, but I'm a fan of crusting all the way up the sides. The most crust, the better, I say.

I am most proud of the pie because I even came in early today to work on it. We were supposed to make pie dough yesterday, but it was so hectic with the eclairs, cream puffs and cheesecake, I never got around to it. Luckily, I did get around to mising out all my ingredients, so I just left them in the cooler to be nice and cold to work with today. Like the biscuit dough, we cut in the fat to create nice, flaky layers. And like the biscuit dough, I wasn't going to have nasty biscuit crap all over my bare hands, which also warm up the dough and makes it harder to work with. So I got gloves, and that worked great. Like my chocolate chip cookies, I also found that it just baked better if you bake them from frozen or as cold as you can possibly get it right before they go in the oven. I think I did a great lattice job, although I wasn't about to attempt Chef True's crimping of the edges. It looked so easy as he was doing it, but I've been duped by that before during demo. Chef's all, oh, look at me, look how easy...then you go to try it, and everything falls apart. I'm just kidding...our chefs aren't conceited about their abilities. But I have gotten pretty good at smelling something rotten when they make something look too easy and you just know it isn't.

day 40: cream puffs and eclairs

Today, we filled our eclairs and cream puffs that we baked off yesterday. The cream puffs got a little chocolate, diced strawberries and freshly whipped chantilly cream, while the eclairs got stuffed with pastry cream and were dipped in chocolate. Who knew squeezing something out of a plastic bag could be so difficult? We had to shape all of our eclairs and cream puffs freehand, and if you've never used a big ass pastry bag before, you wouldn't understand. Chef A said my pate a choux baked off nice and crisp. The pastry cream inside the eclairs were a little dull, due to overcooking, but it was nice and smooth. The cream puffs could have used a bit more cream around the edges (think of a burger too big for its bun) as the strawberries and chocolate should not be visible at all. I'm pretty happy with both overall.  I got a few not so pretty ones, but more than enough nice ones to present. Tomorrow: cheesecake!

day 39: lemon meringue tart

Today, we made our last tart with the pate sucre dough, and it was a good one. Unlike everything else we've made that I've tried to unload on random people, this one stays with me. The lemon custard was so delicious, I wouldn't mind eating a bowl of it, straight. I didn't realize there was a big jug of lemon juice being passed around, so I squeezed fresh lemon juice, which I think will make it all the more better. Kinda like the chocolate chip cookies we made from scratch...they probably don't actually taste much better than cookie dough you buy at the supermarket, but the knowledge that the ingredients are fresh just makes it taste better in your brain. We also got to use the blowtorch, which of course was a lot of fun. Chef A said my custard looked nice and shiny, my meringue was smooth and I colored it nicely, but I did have a few tips that burned.  I'll have to make sure to pat those down next time. I really hope I get this or the fruit tart Friday for my final. I'd just be plain embarrassed to have to give away another stinky frangipane tart. Tomorrow: eclairs and cream puffs. Side note: I totally stayed after school today and baked off my cream puffs, alone with Chef True. That's a detention fantasy waiting to happen.

day 38: pear frangipane tart, palmiers, linzer jewels and chocolate chip cookies

1978 called and it wants its desserts back. Today, we made this frangipane pear tart, which no one in my class had ever had...nor did anyone proclaim its greatness when Chef True asked how it tasted at the end of class. When I tasted the pears today, they reminded me of a fruitcake...in the way that you may be able to stomach half a slice of that once every December. This thing definitely has that exact same flavor profile. We had Guest Chef Martinez today in place of Chef A, which a lot of the guys went apeshit over. The straight guys. Anyhow, she said I baked the tart off nicely and that I did a good job presenting the pears. She did notice a spot on my tart shell that was uneven, which she recommended that I just make sure to cut even across next time. She did not, however, notice where I majorly patched some dough that I broke, which I stupidly pointed out. I think there was also a spot where I might have spilled some of the frangipane onto the shell, which should have been wiped. I'm pretty happy with it overall, but I hope I don't have to make another one of these for my final. Boring.

Next up, we baked off three different cookies that we'd prepared last week. The linzer jewels were fun to make, but all that almond reminded me of the frangipane, which just the thought/smell of was enough for me. The chocolate chips were pretty standard fare, but the palmiers were my favorite because I have a total food memory with these cookies. When I was a kid and I'd go shopping with my parents, my mom would do the actual shopping while my dad would take me to the bakery at the front of the store and buy me one of these...I loved them so much. I used way too much sugar on these today because Chef True kept stressing how much you couldn't over-sugar and to be generous with it. Well, I sure showed him. Chef Martinez said my palmiers and linzers came out good, but that I'd creamed the butter and sugar for the chocolate chip dough too long, which produces a flat cookie. I never knew that...that's good to know. She also liked my platter presentation, which I'll agree looks great. Tomorrow: lemon meringue tartlets.