The Class Where the Virgins Were Separated from the Extra Virgins

Interesting Fact - The Chef's hat (otherwise known as the Toque Blanche), has one hundred pleats in it. Legend has it that they represent the 100 different ways a chef can prepare eggs

I skipped a class and for that I apologize, but I was swamped at work yesterday and barely had time to eat lunch. So here's a quick recap before I get into last night's class. First things first we received are super awesome knife kits. Complete with Wusthof Knives. It was like Channukah come early. After a whole lot of oohing and aahing we moved on to learning about the Brigade System - a.k.a the Kitchen version of Ford's Assembly line. Which then brought us to fruit ID, nothing to surprising and shocking here except that I did try my first baby coconut and they were quite good. We got out of class a half an hour early.

Last night we spent the first hour doing recipe conversions. I now can tell you That 4 quarts = 128 oz = 8 pints = 1 gallon. Also that a pint of liquid (such as H20 or milk) that has no density weighs exactly a pound. Pretty neat, right?

Then we moved on to our oils and vinegars. Our chef-instructor, who happens to kick some major ass and owns this restaurant upstate (so if you're ever in the 'hood go!), also threw in with the vinegars and oils, three bottles of a fairly decent merlot for us to drink. We went through the nutty oils (hazelnut, walnut, peanut, sesame), the infused oils (tarragon, basil, red pepper), the canolas and the corns, and then we hit up the olive oils. Some interesting facts about olive oil for ya: first of all - the grades of olive oil (ie. pure, virgin, extra virgin) refers to the acidity level in the oil) - The first pressed cold oils are going to be cloudy and the best of the batch.

After the olive oils we moved to the vinegars: red wine, white wine, rice wine, champagne, sherry, regular balsamic, and a balsamic that had been aged for over 12 years. The aged balsamic was so viscous it was like cough syrup. I thought it was pretty decent although Chef Anna told us that it wasn't a good balsamic. In other words if it starts out as crappy balsamic, it doesn't age into anything but a crappy aged balsamic. Also, its interesting to note, that while wine goes into cellars for proper storage and aging, vinegars go into attics for the same reason. Someday I would like to have both a wine cellar and a vinegar attic. It doesn't even have to be in a gingerbread house.

From the vinegars we moved into the cooking wines - Madeira, port, red, white, marsala, but all of the examples we had for tasting were crappy, so I just stuck with the drinking wine I had in front of me.

Tonight - Nutrition and Condiments and Spices. You'll all be happy to know that next week we begin our knife skills, and not too far behind that is butchering! Until tomorrow...