advanced food prep, part 1 [and a parable about sticktoitiveness]

that’s a word, you know.  sticktoitiveness.  betcha learned something new today.

anywho, onto the topic of culinary school… i took advanced food prep this past fall and haven’t had a chance to put the pictures up on the blog, so today i’m posting the first half of the semester.  but this post also gets the added bonus of a parable [a personal one, at that] told by yours truly in the first person.  and so that you’re warned, the beginning of the parable is going to be me on a lengthy rant about my difficulties in this certain culinary school class, because it was a very………educational semester, but i assure you that i will come full circle and there will be a moral at the end of this story.  please bear with me.

so, as promised, my tirade:

i knew from the beginning that it would be a challenging semester because a large portion of the class was focused on preparing meats.  and meat and i have an interesting relationship.  i’m not a vegetarian, but i often eat like one at home, mostly because a.) i’m usually too lazy to cook something elaborate and b.) i only moderately like meat.  i like it in stuff – tacos, pasta, dishes, etc. but there aren’t very many center-of-the-plate protein dishes that really excite me.  [seafood is the exception though – if it comes from the water, i’m all in.]  anyway, because i don’t cook a lot of meat for myself, i knew that i would be learning a lot in the class and that it wasn’t going to come super easy for me.  and then the “advanced” part kind of scared me a little.  in addition, as i’m gaining more responsibilities at work, i’m traveling more [in general, about once a month], having to spend a lot more time working when i’m not at work, etc.  which can interfere with culinary school and how much time i spend working on schoolwork.

but. little did i know that the biggest challenge would not be any of these things, but instead, a little 90-pound fierce asian tiger of a chef, who happened to be the instructor of the advanced food prep class on wednesdays and thursdays from 7 to 10 pm.  yep, for a good portion of the semester, this woman who barely reached my shoulder was pretty much a villain [and a very intimidating one] in my life.  like a lady voldemort or something.

what was so bad about her?  you ask.  what could this tiny little lady possibly do that would make her so unnerving?  well, let me explain.  She Who Must Not Be Named can be meaner than a snake, and she relishes in yelling and yelling and yelling at everything and everyone and you can barely understand her and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done, but she wants the whole class to know that she’s yelling at you.  all day, all the time, she’s yelling at someone.  it’s, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING??  do you not know how to do that?  how could you possibly have passed basic?  you’re doing it wrong!  why are you doing it this way?  what did you do?  this is awful!  WHO DID THIS?  which one of you did this?  this looks terrible!  worst i’ve ever seen!  was this your group?  what were you thinking?  did you do this?  i don’t know which of these is worse!  they’re all bad!  didn’t you read the book?  didn’t you do your research?  you didn’t listen to me!  that’s not what i said!  that’s not the way you do it!” on and on and on the entire class.  it’s the type of thing where you try not to make eye contact and do your best to blend in with the wall and hurry to get the furthest stovetop from her at the beginning of class in hopes that she won’t come over and rip your head off.  i swear that this tiny little lady can make the biggest of guys quiver in their aprons.  and she will never, ever EVER tell you that you did well at anything.

the dumb part is, i had been warned by several people not to take her class, because everyone had had issues with her in previous semesters.  apparently the whole class from the last semester’s advanced food prep class had gone to the dean about her.  but you didn’t hear it from me…

and yet i didn’t heed the warnings.  after all, i hadn’t had issues with a single professor in my whole college experience at a&m, and how bad could she be?

HA!  by week 3, i was ready to quit.  [okay, let’s be honest.  by day 2 i was ready to quit, but by week 3, i was at my wit’s end.]  she may or may not have made me cry a couple times [after class…but barely after class] and i don’t consider myself a sensitive person.  i like criticism – it makes me want to do better.  my mom always says that i’m one of those few people who takes it well.  but apparently not in this case.  i couldn’t deal with her.  i dreaded the class terribly, i was nervous and on edge and miserable during the class, and afterward i was either sullen for 24 hours or irritable.  she really got under my skin.  anyway, i told my parents that i was going to drop the class and take it next semester.  it just wasn’t worth it.  although my parents understood my pain, because i called them every evening after class and they had to listen to my venting about her for the next thirty minutes, they tried to convince me to stick with it.  “it’ll probably get better,” they’d say.  or, upon hearing about all the people in my class that were dropping, “just think about how great you’ll feel when you’re one of the ones who stuck it out.”  yeah, mom and dad, i would think.  it feels great.

the problem was, she had taught the night class for the past two semesters, and i had no idea whether she would be teaching it the next semester.  this class was a pre-req for many others, so i couldn’t put it off forever.  and after missing out on thursday night events with my friends for a class that made me miserable, and then spending many hours outside of school reading, doing homework and quizzes and researching frantically before class in a fruitless effort to satisfy her and keep my grade, i finally decided to take my parents’ advice and force myself to get through it.

and i never thought i’d say this, BUT.  i’m so glad that i did.  no, i wouldn’t really say that i won her favor [for some reason, i was always the one she was looking around for – “where’s jessica??”  which was kind of unfortunate.  i swear she didn’t even know half of the other students’ names by the end of the semester, but i was the lucky one that she was always checking on].  but i wasn’t on her bad side either, which is really good.  a miracle, really.  and no, she didn’t magically transform into a sweet little lady halfway through the year, although i do think she calmed down slightly once our class dropped from 20 to 10 people.

but i think i kind of figured her out.  a little bit.  for one, i learned to understand her accent, most of the time.  if you repeat things back to her, you can confirm that she said what you thought she said.  and i learned to expect to be yelled at.  she’s gruff and in-your-face and totally wants you to make you look stupid when you ask questions, but she does like it when you ask them.  i think it pays off later.  if she tells you you’re doing something wrong, the best thing to do is to briefly explain to her why you were doing it that way, but then tell her that her way is better.

she cares less about taste and more about presentation when it comes to grading – it’s all about how it looks.  “you eat with your eyes, guys!”  she’d say repeatedly, which i have to agree with.  when plating your food, she wants height, color, and texture.  especially texture.  [i still giggle to myself when i think of her saying, “weh is da CWUNCH, guys?” – translation, “where is the CRUNCH, guys?” which she said to us at least every class period.]  but no matter how much time and effort you spend making that plate look perfect, when you present it to her, she will scowl at it, say something that falls in the range of, “this looks like s***!” to, “not great, but i can fix it,” and will immediately start rearranging things on the plate.  and i have to say that 99% of the time, when she rearranged it, it did look better.

she’s very practical-minded, and reminds me of my great-aunt gerry, a brilliant lunch lady and leader of the school cafeteria in her day, in that she really does have more cost-efficient, more time-efficient, or more effective way of doing just about everything.  some stuff that would make you think, “wow, why didn’t i think of that?” and other things that would make you think, “wow, who actually thought of this?” but they were all methods that really worked.  and like aunt gerry, she never wastes food.

and another thing: this woman, who probably weighs less than i did on my 12th birthday, LOVES. TO. EAT.  and i always like this in a person, being the foodie that i am.  there were a few days during the semester that we weren’t cooking and she was lecturing, but she came in saying, “we have nothing to eat!  so i told them to pull stuff for sandwiches,” and then she gave us a short lesson on how to arrange and serve sandwich fixin’s.  she looks out for us in that way.  and one of her favorite lines was – no matter what we were making that day – “someone fry up some potato chips!”  she definitely has some mad cravings, that’s for sure.  and she eats and eats, and then tells us that she goes home and has a snack or a light dinner before bed.  i wish i had her metabolism, is all i can say.

somehow, all these qualities made her slightly more endearing as the semester went on, and i think my group partner and i even went so far as to call her “cute,” to each other one day when she was in a really good mood, only to promptly eat my words when she verbally pounded us into the ground five minutes later.  but i guess i learned to appreciate some of her good qualities, because what else are you going to do?

most notably, the whole experience taught me more about dealing with people, specifically those who are more difficult to work with, and about perseverance.  because i was completely convinced that i wasn’t going to make it.  and you know what?  my parents were right.  i was proud that i had stuck it out.  i thought about making a shirt that said, “i survived ****’s advanced food prep class.” [don’t want to totally call her out on this blog…]  i would probably be highly respected by all food & hospitality students at el centro who would see me wearing it because THEY KNOW.  i decided against it though.  anyway, it was absolutely a major accomplishment in my book.

so there were a lot of morals to this story – the last one being that food is always fun.  pretty much no matter what.  and here’s the proof of that:

{french omelet – chef critiqued it with, “you’re selling the omelet, not the avocado!”  but for me, you’d be selling the avocado! ;)  and eggs benedict – a buttered and toasted english muffin topped with canadian bacon, sautéed shimeji mushrooms, a poached egg, béarnaise sauce, and parsley}

{i tried century eggs, a chinese delicacy, for the first time!  they are eggs preserved for 100 days in a mixture of clay, ash, lime, salt, and rice.  they are blackish in color, smell not so bueno, and have a gelatin-like texture with a creamy grayish yolk.  they’re served with pickled ginger and eaten raw, and believe it or not, they were pretty good!  but i want you to google “century eggs,” look up some photos of them, and then try them.  I DARE YOU.}

{pancakes – we chose to make blueberry, strawberry, and bacon ones!  and check out this one group’s elaborate display.  i was pretty impressed. #pancakeplating}

{mushroom souffles and a bunch of different kinds of quiches}

{spinach & sausage quiche}

every class period became an experiment to see how the groups could plate the same food in different ways.  for example, here are five different ways to plate and serve huevos rancheros:

{huevos rancheros version 1}

{huevos rancheros version 2}

{huevos rancheros version 3}

{huevos rancheros version 4}

{huevos rancheros version 5}

{my first time to fabricate a chicken!}

{vietnamese stir-fried chicken with chile and nuic cham [vietnamese dipping sauce] on the side}

{treats from the bake shop.  the pastry had a whole peach inside!}

{chicken piccata and chicken fricassee}

{creme puffs from the bake shop with caramelized sugar on the bottom – probably came from a croquembouche}

{fillet of salmon meuniere and fillet of halibut meuniere}

{halibut en papillote}

{YUM}

we had four sit-down dinners throughout the course of the semester in which each group was in charge of making a course [or two] of the meal – enough for our entire class – and then we would sit down and eat together and talk about what was good, what could be better, etc.  although it was nerve-racking and a bit stressful at times, i really enjoyed these sit-down dinners.

{sit-down dinner #1}

{appetizer – i think they were some kind of mexican potato balls}

{salad – don’t remember what it was but it was tasty!}

{chicken entree – once again, failed to capture what exactly it was but it was really good.  i especially like the mushrooms, green beans, pearl onions, and those beautiful potatoes!}

{dessert – lemon tarts with raspberry sauce}

{sole that is about to be filleted.  i shouldn’t have looked at his little face!}

{i’m not sure what these sacs are called that hold the eggs in bodies of female fish, but we all gave chef the ones we found in our sole and she fried them up in a pan and we all tasted them.  i love masago and caviar, but i thought these tasted kind of weird to be honest.}

{poached sole dueler with steamed potatoes and sautéed spinach.  and then fried potatoes.  because chef said, “someone fry up some potatoes!  we need some cwunch!”}

 {sour cherry tart from the baking class.  and we always make a plate of leftovers for the police officers… someone hit the jackpot this time!}

{sit-down dinner #2}

{appetizer – soft-shelled crab on crostini with mango cabbage slaw.  SO good!}

{soup – corn, crab, & potato chowder}

{fish entree – pan-smoked salmon fillet with pepper salad, butternut squash, and sautéed kale}

{dessert – some sort of awesome apple cobbler with homemade ice cream}

{goodies from the baking class – yummy lemony something and a raspberry tart}

{that day i was talking about when chef taught us how to serve sandwich fixin’s}

{my sandwich is there on the right – my style is open-faced, easy on the meat, heavy on the cheese and veggies!  and then the sandwich on the left is one of my classmate’s sandwich.  he is ironically the tiniest person in our class, but the bread on his sandwich is literally a whole loaf of pan bread from the baking class.  you can’t tell how huge it is in this picture, but imagine a sandwich on a whole loaf of bread.  that was his.}

{potato chips.  to satisfy chef’s cravings of course.}

{for our midterm practical, we had to make chicken fricassee along with two sides of our choice.  after a lot of nerves, a lot of preparation, and a lot of running around the kitchen like a crazy person, i presented two hot plates to chef, on time and ready to be tasted.  which i had thought impossible.  i may not have fabricated the chicken exactly the right way, the beans may have been too abundant and the potatoes too sparse, but i was damn proud of that plate of chicken fricassee.  also, i got a good grade, so i’d say the midterm was a success.}

stay tuned for part 2 of advanced food prep [sans THE LONGEST ESSAY IN THE WORLD!  sorry about that].  coming soon!

xo