The Post with the Return

Not-so-Interesting Fact: It is nearly impossible to maintain a full time job, be in school, and keep current on two blogs all at the same time, but with a little prodding and a sympathetic boss, one can in fact pull it off.

So. When we last left off I was somewhere near the beginning of Module 2: The Cooking Methods, alas now I'm a solid week and change into Module 3: Breakfast Cookery, Line Simulation and Garde Manger. This means that we have some catching up to do. Also, it seems I have to discuss poaching eggs, which by the way Deb, can be done, although, I certainly feel your pain! So lets get it started. The rest of Mod2 broke down all the cooking methods in a method-a-day fashion. We fried, we poached, we boiled, we simmered, we steamed, we stewed, we braised. The chef made me cry, although I did make it home before the tears started streaming. A classmate threatened me, although he's now been expelled. And I still look really stupid in a chef's uniform, although I am aware that most people can't pull it off either.

If anyone has any interest in hearing about a particular cooking method, I'd be happy to break it down.

Then came Mod3. New material, same chef, although she's eased up quite a bit and I can almost see a glimmer of a heart somewhere deep inside. The first two days of the module were spent on breakfast cookery. We spent the entire first day on Eggs. Yep. thats right, 4 hours cooking eggs. We fried them, baked them, hard cooked (i learned that a chef does not "boil" eggs - this way no green yolks), soft cooked, learned how to make fritattas, American style omelets, and French rolled omelets. Then we poached the eggs, made hollandaise, heated up some canadian bacon and toasted some english muffins for eggs benedict. Poaching eggs is sort of a strange phenomenon, and its not that easy to do. There are a couple of tricks that I can pass along. First, the water should be shivering (165 degrees-180 degrees) no bubbles should be breaking the surface at all. Fresh eggs are better because the white is tighter. Now crack the egg into a cup to make sure that you dont break the yolk. Now pour egg into the water, BUT, there are 2 ways to do it that will keep the egg together so you're not making some strange variation of egg drop soup. One can either pour the egg into a poaching ring - this little metal mold that sits in the bottom of the pot that will hold the egg in place (this works fairly well, although be careful when removing the egg as it will stick to the bottom) or take the handle of a wooden spoon and make a little tornado in the water, drop the egg right in the yolk. wait for it, and pull out when the yolk is set but not cooked through. If you take the egg out too early - egg drop soup. [Hope that helps, god speed].

The second day of breakfast cookery was carbs galore - waffles, pancakes, french toast, stuffed french toast, crepes, hash browns. Really complicated stuff.

Then we immersed ourselves in line cooking. Every day through next tuesday, we prep all the recipies for the day and then we individually cook on the line - so far this has been my favorite part of the class as we all just get to cook and work on different plating presentations and we don't cook in teams so I don't have to rely on anyone else for my food to cook well.

Thats it in a nutshell (help, i'm stuck in a nutshell- which is really why I haven't been updating). Some other interesting things of note:

• including crazy guy who got expelled, my class is now down to 11 people from 14. (People are dropping like flies)
• i'm almost halfway done with the program
• my knife skills have improved tremendously
• my knife skills are the only thing to have improved tremendously - while i think its good to learn classic technique and what working in a kitchen is like, culinary school has only furthered my belief that cooking is instinctual, either you have it or you don't