Day two - First blood...

Since lessons are divided into demonstration and practical, with three lessons per day (3 hours each) I end up being at the school from 8am to 7pm every day, with about 1.5 hours of downtown in between, depending on how quickly the kitchen is cleaned up after practical.

Today was the first practical lesson, which was to practice the various cuts julienne, brunoise, paysanne, concasse, hache, ciseler, etc.  This did took a lot longer than was expected, so we did not even get to the Potage Cultivateur.  Oh well, I had my hands full trying to julienne carrots into 1-2mm sticks, 3.5 fingers long.  We also worked with onion, parsley, potatoes.  3 hours goes by remarkably fast, and when it's over it feels like you got beat up by a gang of thugs.  Clarification on Mirepoix (40% onions, 40% celery, 20% carrots) is a Garniture Aromatique, something that is to add flavour.  It's not a cut specifically.  Just an aside, TWO people showed up late for the first lab.  A Russian guy for no apparent reason was 5 minutes late, and a Greek guy who was 10 minutes late who tried to explain in broken english why, and Chef Benoit really didn't care.  He said "First time, I don't care, we get to 3 I don't let you into class and it's an absence."  It was annoying since he had to start over again, over how to light an oven etc.  The gas, etc.  Oh, and I drew blood by stabbing my hand.  I am proud to say I was the second one, not the first, to get cut.  I'm fine, it was more embarrassing than anything.

Some notes on the people in my class.  I think there are 25-30 odd students attending the intensive courses, almost evenly split between Cusine and Pattisserie.  In cuisine, there are only 2 local Ottawa people, the rest come from all over Canada, the US, Russia, Greece, Australia, etc.  After the first practical class, one of the girls  (who is from Mexico) transferred to the Patisserie program which is a lot less intensive (20 lessons vs 30 lessons).   It's funny because of the 12 people in Cuisine, I think only 3 or so are interested in becoming Chefs.  The rest are there purely for the experience.  There's a Doctor named Jennifer from the US, and she told me she's a Psychiatrist, and I asked her to explain what possesses people to pay to go through this pain and she said if she knew she'd try to cure us all.

In between classes, I got my government French results.. C in Oral interaction!  Wooohooooo!  I guess a lot of it has to do with the French training program at work, where for the past 6 months, I've been spending about 8-9 hours per week on average learning french.  So anyway I have a C-B-C profile now and am quite pleased that the hard work paid off.

Demonstration for class #2 was taught again by Chef Benoit.  This guy is really, really funny.  The class was on various cooking methods, and the most hated of portion of French cooking, "Turning of vegetables" and a recipe for Greek Vegetables or Legumes a la Grecque.  Strange thing.  I've been to Greece (and a very pretty friend of mine just got back.. Heeeyyyyy :D ) and to me, Greek veggies are tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, some good olive oil.  Chopped haphazardly.  French-style not so much.

Firstly, we discussed the techniques for cooking vegetables.
Pocher - to poach, cook in a large amount of liquid (from cold or hot)
Cuire A L'Anglaise - use salty water (BORING, that's why we call it English according to Chef Benoit)
Court-Bouillon - liquid + acid + garnitude Aromatique (anything that brings flavour); takes about 20 mins minimum to bring out the flavour when making the court-bouillon
Glacer A Blanc/Brun - White glaze, coloration is through the caramelization of sugars
Oxidation (ugly brown colour) of vegetables is caused by light and air.

Family of vegetables
Root - Carrot, Beet, turnip, radishes, parsnips
Tuber - potato, yams, croene
Flower - artichoke, broccoli, cauliflower, capers
Fruit - tomato, peppers, eggplant, avocado, zucchini, cucumber, squash, pumpkin, olives
Seed - beans (various - wax, red lentils, soy) and peas
Leafy - Spinach, Cabbage, Lettuce
Stem - Green Celery, Asparagus, Leeks
Bulb - Onion, Garlic, Shallots
Fungus - Mushrooms, Oysters, Morels (Black and Blonde) which grow in sandy soil or old garbage dumps

Special notes on Trufles - depending on condition, black french trufles can go for $5000-$7000/kg.  Also Tuscany has nice trufles.  Are also grown in Oregon and Himalayas (which are *only* $500/kg but quality is not so high).. good trufle should be very firm, not spongy at all.  Trufles are hard to find.. Dogs and Pigs can be trained to find them.  They are a cancerous growth on Oak Tree.  Flying patterns of flies might indicate
them.  Whatever, just to go to Wikipedia or google.

Chlorophyll is a protein that is found in green to yellow veggies.
Carotene is protein that colors, blue to black, red orange, pink, etc.

Turning vegetables is for presentation purposes.  It doesn't change the taste, but it's a huge pain in the butt.  All turned veg should be the same size, equal cooking times.  Always make more ie. if you want 100, make 130, so you can taste to make sure it's cooked right.  Chef Benoit showed us how to do zucchini, carrots, mushrooms.  Wait till you see the pictures

To properly prepare a tomato without seeds, you:
-  Monder (remove skin by blanching in hot water after cutting a cross on the bottom and cutting off the stem side, and putting in ice water bath ... I did this in Mexico many times)
- Epepiner (get rid of the seeds by cutting in half and either squeezing them out which is not exact, or cutting it out)
- Concasser - cutting into tiny cubes.
Tomato seeds are bitter and cannot be used for anything and are hard to digest.  Get rid of them whenever possible.

I have a couple of pages on notes for turning veggies, but there's no point.  You just have to practice till you get it.  I'm gonna have to be able to do 70 turnips in a later class... so yeah.  That's greeeeeeaat.

Chef Benoit briefly demonstrated Knife sharpening.  The easiest way is to rest the tip of the sharpening tool against a table and cut away from you towards the table.  It looks simple enough... but it's not.

Paper lids for pots can be made with parchment paper by folding in half, quarters, then over and over in a triangle, then trimming the excess to measure from the middle of the pot.

Cuire a L'Anglaise, put green beans in rapidly boiling salt and water + coarse salt (always use coarse salt for boiling, it's cheaper), and then immerse in cold water when 90% done.  Always finish food by blanching right before serving, and put the green beans in a bowl with some butter and toss.  Add salt to taste.

That's about it for demo #2.

The practical #2 didn't go exactly smoothly.  Chef Jean-Marc was the instructor, and looks-wise, he's classical french looking guy and reminds me a bit of this guy who got punched out in soccer last week.  Except Chef Jean-Marc is really nice. To put it bluntly, I suck at turning vegetables.  I'm gonna have to practice this long weekend, but basically you are supposed to make 7 sided "footballs" which are 3.5-4 fingers long out of carrots (or zucchinis).  Mushrooms are even harder.

I spent so much time on turning that I didn't even get to the mushrooms and barely finished my dish.  My carrots were under cooked, and my sauce was watery.  If Chef Ramsey was there he woulda been yelling at me.  I think Chef Jean-Marc felt sorry for me, because I think I looked pretty sad (or pathetic.. hahaha) and I started off by saying "Sorry Chef, I didn't get around to the mushrooms, I promise I'll practice and do better". I had to remind myself that this is the second day of classes, and the first day in the kitchen.  Also, pretty much everybody struggled like crazy.  Two people didn't even finish on time, and the Chef let them continue cooking while the rest of us cleaned.  Oh and I cut my right thumb.  Just a knick this time but painful.

So day 2 down.. it's gonna be a loooooong month!  My goal for tomorrow is not to cut myself...