The Class with the Substitute

Interesting Fact: If you shake cloves of garlic between two metal bowls, they will peel themselves without smashing the cloves.

Apologies for my unbelievably small post yesterday, but I was fairly miserable after our first class with the new chef as she's not particularly nice, chided me for "gossiping" (which I wasn't even doing), and has absolutely no sense of humor. Very sad.

But last night, we had a substitute chef who I have a slight crush on. He was amazing. We grilled proteins last night and after a brief recap lecture of grilling and some information on the proper temps of the degrees of wellness for meats, we went to work on our marinades and fabricating our meats (we had to cut up our ostrich, trim the fat from our Duck breast. De-bone our chicken breasts and paillard them). Sub-Chef wouldn't let us measure anything for our marinades, we had to do it all on sight and taste. He showed us the neat garlic trick that became today's interesting fact. He actually did our knife skills with us and took time to properly demo them so the class (including myself) would start cutting better and straighter. He showed us the best way to control a flare up on the grill (throw salt on it). He refused to let us pull out our thermometers to test the temperature of the meats, but rather showed us a trick to learn the doneness of a piece of meat based on touch. He was all about the grilling and some great information. Most importantly, meat after cooking, must rest for at least 5-10 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute throughout (this way it doesn't bleed out when you cut into it) and the meat should be turned over once when resting (you know, gravity and all). Also when cooking meat, always slightly undercook it and allow for carryover cooking.
He watched us all like hawks, critiqued our seasoning techniques, our grilling techniques and tasted everything we produced (center-cut pork chops, steak, ostrich, duck breast, chicken paillard, lamb chops). And while he was critical and made sure we understood how important proper technique was, he let us be creative with our marinades, and didn't talk down to us. It was refreshing after one day with our new chef who seems to have forgotten that cooking is fun.

Oh and for those of you who have asked about whether tasting everything is mandatory in culinary school or not - as I mentioned previously our old chef didn't make us, the new one different story. At the end of Monday's class she asked if we were allergic to anything, and then promptly told us after those of us that had allergies divulged them that besides the foods we just said we were allergic to we had to eat everything that we made in class from now on. No excuses.

Tonight, I believe we start roasting.