Winding Down

The very best aspect of Culinary School is that once Chef starts the lecture, there is nothing else.  In an instant, there goes any thought of work, laundry, to-do lists and have-to's...nothing is important with the exception of what Chef is saying and what must be accomplished during the next 5+ hours.  It's incredibly liberating and terrifying, all at the same time.

Tonight was all about poultry fabrication, which means taking 1 whole chicken and cutting it into 8 beautiful pieces and all of the ways to cook and prepare said chicken.  Well, not all of the ways because believe you me, there are hundreds of ways to cook and prepare chicken.  Just ask my mom.

Tonight we practiced four of them; pan frying, roasting, braising and poaching, which always make me kind of gag because I have yet to eat anything poached that was savory.  It just is not high on my list of ways to prepare ANYTHING.  We also prepared a salad a couple of sauces, rice and Duchess potatoes.

There 's just something about being in the kitchen with all of the madness, the hum of people working, conferring and figuring out what do to that really warms and invigorates me. It's strange how it happens and all of the emotions that go coursing through me as I work with two other students to prepare our meals. We are a team/table and we must work together as a table and all of the tables have to work together as a kitchen. 

I am finding that I want all of the answers and to know how to do everything, now and I get a little frustrated with myself when I don't/can't do/have them.

Example - I am a pretty safe cook, and what I mean by that is that I have a palate of flavors that I have worked with over the years that I'm comfortable with and I've been just fine when having guests to our home.  It's worked for me.  Well...my class mates have their own palates and guess what?  They are different than mine.  It's forcing me to do things outside of my comfort zone and to expand my senses to enjoy flavors that others really enjoy, like curry, for example.  I'm not saying this is bad, it's just an observation.  I'm learning to get comfortable with it, although, not fast enough for my liking but tonight I trusted, embraced my fear of some flavors and went with it. That learning paid off.

We did well...there were a few tense moments, but we pulled it together and presented all of our plates. The entire kitchen was late (collective gasp!), and our table was the last.  It's a balancing act and we are working it out and learning.  Our salad was "very" good; our pan fried chicken over-done (I won't get into why, although it did have to do with stopping to clean our table and being forced to walk away from the chicken frying in the pan...'nuff said and lesson learned), roasted chicken a tad overdone, poached chicken overdone, as was everyone's,  although our tarragon sauce was the best and our braise along with the curry sauce was the best of the night and Chef had every student try it.  Our rice was seasoned perfectly.  So....we did okay.

My personality is coming out more and more and that just can't be helped and maybe I don't want to hide it.  I'm trying so hard to not be "Miss Bossy Boss," and at the same time I'm being true to myself. Why is it that at 49 I still need to know that I'm okay?  Where does that come from and why, I ask myself, does it even matter? 

It hit me that Chef had caught a glimpse of the true me when, during our de-brief after we had cleaned up and met again in the lecture area, he was explaining to us that next week's class would be about beef.  Chef, jokingly said, "we'll turn Marcus (the only guy in our class), loose with a knife to cut up a half of a cow, and then quipped, "no....we'll let Ginger go after it," and then he did the classic stabbing motion that most folks equate with the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho!  WTH...really?  Seriously?  This does not bode well for my grade...

They won't throw me out...I have too many more classes to take, and, just like a bad penny, I'll keep turning up.