About that Turkey breast...

...I'm stealing an idea from Alex Guarnaschelli & covering it with cheesecloth dipped in melted butter. OK, I'm set then!

"'Cause it's all about control..."

Should I really be feeling as triumphant as I am for scoring what I did on the MarthaStewart.com "Which Thanksgiving Side Dish Are You?" quizzle. A score only 5.99% of those who took it received, beeteedubs:

You are undoubtedly
Savory Sweet-Potato Souffles.

You aim to impress with everything you do. You appreciate elegance and showmanship. You've been planning your Thanksgiving feast for weeks now. This holiday season, there'll be no canned soup in your kitchen.

Oh, I've been planning. This Thxgv'g is a special one because Paul & I will soon be in a new place that will accommodate the fucking amazing dining table & chairs making their way to us now. I ordered my organic Diestel turkey a week ago not even knowing where we'd end up because I knew this year was going to be the year. What year?

THE YEAR I'M THE BOSS OF EVERY THXGV'G COMESTIBLE. In my home, anyway.

First things first: do I brine the bird or not? Well, I was going to, until Harold McGee disabused me of this plan. Like I'm going to let watery gravy happen in my kitchen! I'm not bummed about the breast getting dry because I eat that 1 part meat to one part canberry sauce. Oh, that's no typo. I only like Ocean Spray cranberry sauce WITHOUT chunks. It's so delicious, I can eat it with a spoon. I also love the "fffwop!" sound that happens when it comes out of the can in one semi-solid, indented mass. LOVE.

Next is gravy. I'm making stock for it as soon as I can unpack my big pot. & just like my Grandma Nadine, I'm augmenting this viscous delight with the neck meat & giblets. Meat with a side of meat, y'all.

Dressing. Yes, 'dressing', not 'stuffing', which is what I would call it if I was to shove it up my bird's cunt. But I'm not. Ciabatta, mirepoix, some of that affore-mentioned stock & pancetta. OK, I ganked this from Giada de Laurentiis. So what? I would add the chestnuts, but Paul does not like them (weirdo! I think the soft texture & nutty flavor is perfect). Just because I'm the boss of this endeavor doesn't mean I can't be benevolent.

The green beans I'll cook with combination steam/sauté. Sautéing 100% makes the beans wrinkly, & 100% steaming is just...so sad. I plan to dress them with minced shallots, mustard, & butter they will cook with. I cannot abide by the horrific gut-bomb that is green bean casserole with the canned onion thingies. Unless if maybe we're talking bechamel instead of cream of mushroom soup. That I can't accommodate on my stove top room-wise.

This next component is an homage of sorts to a good friend of mine who I've spent Thxgv'g with the last four times. Waldorf Salad, with spicy roasted walnuts. What's not to like? Thin slices of tart Granny Smith apples, sweet & earthy carrot, spicy walnuts, creamy dressing. If I was one of those people who spent more time & energy on salads, I would make this at least once a week.

Lastly, in a nod to Paul's birth place, he will be making Yorkshire puddings. I would say we're having these in lieu of dinner rolls, but dinner rolls are the dog's breakfast compared to Yorkshire puddings. A little turkey drippings in the muffin tin, batter, in the oven, & out comes the most poofy, soft & satisfying starch I've ever stuck in me gob.

Whoa! I said 'lastly', but I forgot about the cheesecake. No pumpkin pie because apparently I'm married to a total hater. W'evs! I like cheesecake more anyway.

I have a mental list of everything I can prepare in advance to avoid collapsing under the weight of my own expectations on the kitchen floor. Wine should help, though.

Stained & drained.

Staying up to do laundry, yeah yeah! (I was singing that more than saying that.) What an ass-pain white is. They (as in the faculty) have really put the screws to us about our uniforms being spotless & pressed. Sometimes, I iron in the morning before class because the night before I was too lazy to bother. As I'm pressing half-awake, occasionally still drunky, I think I'm seeing stains, or that my coat isn't really white & I won't notice until I get to school. Ugh! Besides inducing paranoia, the uniforms are messing with some of us.

I'm not afraid to admit I'm still not used to mine. The pants are of this heinous-anus small b&w check fabric that hasn't softened despite repeated washings. The cut is ridic; exaggerated hips, & the legs are far too short. If only I could transfer the superfluous hip fabric to my ankles. The coat is OK, though for a small, the trunk is very baggy on me. The hat...oh, the hat. It's a white skull cap that threatens to pop off my head from my hair being shoved up in it. The thing leaves a mark on my forehead when I'm finally able to take it off. Makes my small head look even tinier, which contrasts the hip-y pants & apron on top of them. Top everything off with a pair of skid-resistant clogs, & my friends, you've got yourselves the most sexless outfit you've ever done seen.

I get that "it's not supposed to matter," & ultimately, it doesn't matter that we look silly. It's fairly clear that the men-folk couldn't care less... Of course, the uniform was made for men, so why should they? Some of them look handsome in it, but most just look well-suited.

I, on the other hand, feel like it enhances everything I try to play down. I have my own system of doing this in my "street wear": Got a small head? Have lots of big hair. Hips kinda wider than your bust? Wear tight pants. Even though I'm not even thinking about what I look like when I have to meet deadlines prepping & cooking food, when I catch a glimpse of myself in uniform, I recoil internally. I know some of the other women feel the same. It's nothing worth dwelling on, but it's a reminder that stings & serves a purpose. It's not about sexy (or more to the point, if anyone can tell if we're hot underneath the layers of fug), but that we have an opportunity to be obscured enough physically for everything else to matter so much more.

God help ya if you're a butterface.

Now I promise never to use "butterface" ever, ever again.

You better WORK.

So my day as group leader was the most fun I've had at school yet. We finished our prep early, & we did well. (So where were our props, Chef Instructor G? I mean, let a person know sometimes.) I actually wish we spent more time doing prep because I'd actually like to get to the point that I'm not questioning my technique. I mean, that's primarily why I chose to go to school instead of working from the bottom up in some grimy kitchen. The lectures are just so completely dull & ramble-y I wish I could peace-out of them without failing. I mean, tell us something we can't learn on Wikipedia!

I also find myself biting my tongue a lot during lectures so that I don't sound like some shit-heel know-it-all. Por ejemplo, he spoke about white pepper & wine, but didn't even mention rotundone, a chemical responsible for the fact that I think white pepper smells of cat feces. I learned that by subscribing to the Dining & Wine section of the NYT on my Google Reader, homies.

No matter. The humbling thing about devoting yourself to learning about food is that if you lived in every moment of humanity's doomed existence, you still wouldn't have learned a tenth of it. As many times as I hear, "It's all been done before," I can't help but think, "Good thing most of us don't know about it."

Aside à propos of nothing: Everytime he demonstrates with his hands the difference between the sides of a sauteuse & sautoir, he reminds me of RuPaul. "Sauteuse, sautoir," might as well be "Sashay, sauté!"

Picture yourself as a weed whacker...

You guys ever hear the phrase "in the weeds"? It's an oft-used phrase in kitchens to describe the lonely, anxious state one finds his/herself in as they struggle to complete tasks they are not doing fast &/or good enough.

It was also how Chef Instructor G described my group today.

I will preface this with an admission of guilt: I did not have my mise en place list prepared for tomorrow, when I'm group leader. Pulling the products from the walk-in was easy, but quickly & accurately forecasting every piece of equipment nearly was ridiculous. I had to make an extra trip to the stockroom (not very economical with the movements, are we?). When I went to the second quarter chef instructor for my protein, I was thrown a curve ball. The menu's protein was changed, so I had to exchange equipment & products, not to mention dig like mole to find enough pork tenderloin. THIS IS EXACTLY WHY PREPARATION IS KEY. Had I come prepared, the protein switcharoo wouldn't have been as much of a set back.

This evening, as I prepared my plan of action for the group tomorrow, I realized I hadn't forgotten to pull anything. That means I won't start my day with what Kathy Griffin refers to as "pre-diarrhea", which for someone like me, could turn to actual diarrhea that I won't have time to deal with!

Tomorrow will be an easier going day, or so I hope.

Things get interesting.

Blogger's block! I need to be more diligent about this.

So the first quarter of the program works out thusly: when you aren't in classes, you're spending time in the kitchen prepping, assisting second quarter students, bussing, stocking, doing dishes, filling in where you're needed most in any of those groups (tournant), or acting as the sous chef. Yes, 95% of it is bitch work, & that's a point. I get nervous knowing I won't be spending a lot of time with my knives. I have a knife competency looming above me at the end of the quarter scares me when I take two minutes on one onion. However! I rock at suprêmes, so there's that.

I spent most of last week in the second quarter kitchen. I decided not ask for things to do, but find things to do. If you have to ask, I think it's more of a statement that you don't know what you're doing. I may grab the wrong utensil or take too long to sautée carrots, but I'm inspiring more confidence that if I was standing around looking flummoxed, ya know?

So I wasn't sure if the second quarter students I wound up under were entirely disinterested in my extra pair of hands, or if they just weren't organized. I found myself gravitating to other students to answer questions, or demonstrate something for me. That is, when they weren't stepping in to do so without solicitation. It's kind of nice knowing who's going to be your rock when shit hits the fan. I also appreciate that never at any time has someone mocked my unhoned skills.

At least not to my face, which is also awesome!

The more rocky experiences were valuable exercises illustrating the importance of preparation (mise en place really is everything) & learning economy of movement. There's a reason why the good ones make it look easy— because they spend a good deal of time planning every aspect of every dish down to the peppercorn. I wouldn't even be surprise to know if they learn to time their bowel functions to avoid interruption.

Tomorrow, I'm back to prep in the first quarter kitchen, which I admit to being relieved by.

Coffee, forced socialization, orientation, quails' eggs.

Without any reasonable excuse, I've already fallen behind on my project of documenting my culinary school experience. Yeah! that's what I'm doing here.

Last Tuesday (the first day of school) started in a very diarrhea-inducing way. Everyone was e-mailed about a mandatory orientation that started at 8.00am. There was a meet'n'greet sort of deal with coffee & pastries, during which I spoke to no one. I'm not my most effervescent with strangers if alcohol isn't available. I largely spent the first half hour glancing around, sipping coffee (which I didn't have much of because more than six ounces will give me the shits) & getting out of the way of people who were clumping together near me. I unsuccessfully avoided one chick who kept swishing her hair around, telling everyone about her ten days in France. People who act braggart-y about travel sicken me because they like to make their audience think they're more well-rounded then them, ignoring the fact that most people can't afford to travel.

An assembly followed, & all of the instructors said a little something along the lines of being passionate culinarians, sustainability, yeah yeah. One woman in particular stood out. I'm not sure of her association with the school, being that she is a restaurant critic. I'm sure it was mentioned, but I didn't start paying attention until she had the mike. (I'd prefer not to say who she is as she struck me as they type who gets Google alerts on themselves, & for the obvious reason that I'd rather not burn bridges before my career begins.) She started out by telling us what she had made her child for breakfast, which she called "Mommy's Muffin" (sounded pornographic to me, but to a woman wearing a banana clip in her hair...obviously not). "What I do," she said, "is take a cwah-sont [note: I don't mind that she pronounced this correctly, but her emphasis was absolutely ridiculous, like she was trying to remind us 'this is how it's said'], slice it in half, fry quails' eggs, QUAILS' EGGS. Yes, my child eats QUAILS' EGGS." She went on about how well her child eats, & how she hopes he/she becomes a chef.

I'm not sure if this struck anyone else in the theater the way it did me, but it seems awfully assinine for her to want her child to do anything in particular, & more so that she thinks cooking her offspring specialty items will encourage it. (For the record, as a child, I was lucky if my mom could afford Kraft Cheese & Macaroni, which was infinitely superior to the Western Family three-boxes-for-a-dollar kind. Of course, WF was better than having to rely on whatever ancient Hamburger Helper some suburban fam donated half-heartedly to the food bank we sometimes relied on. If anything, this make me appreciate that I am now lucky enough to eat as well if not better than mommy's muffin muncher.)

She then went on to give us her life story (which illustrated how well some Americans luck into shit, yet act as though they worked their way there, ha. I'll be nothing if not candid, my friends. I wouldn't even be in culinary school if my husband didn't do so well, though the rest is up to my ass). At one point, she discussed her writer's block on a Valentine's Day article, which then led to her singing lyrics she made up about wanting nothing but a good meal, sung to the tune of "My Romance". You know when you get the feeling someone's going to sing, & do so in a sincere manner? & it makes you feel extremely tense & uncomfortable? That was how that was for me.

After the show, we shuffled off to our classes, where we read many syllabuses.

(Week one, to be continued...)