two weeks in...

I'm two weeks into culinary school and this week was my first week in the actual kitchen! Hooray! Last week was an in depth discussion and lecture on food safety and sanitation (ServSafe). On Tuesday, we had our certification exam. If I didn't pass, I would have to retake the test for $40!! Luckily, my rabid 2 hours of studying paid off and I only missed one question on the test. HOORAY, I passed!!

This week in the kitchen, we're officially working on knife skills...julienne, fine julienne, brunoise (cubes of julienne) and fine brunoise (you guessed it, cubes of fine julienne - 1/8 by 1/8) and my "favorite" tourner (making 7 sided, 2 inch football shapes out of potatoes, carrots and other veggies). I'm making soup this weekend so that I can practice my knife skills - FUN! I want to try out for the competition team at the school and knife skills are important. (Especially since there are 4-5 other students from my class alone that are planning on trying out. I think the team is only 4-5 students.)

So - even though we're just doing some boring but necessary fundamentals like knife skills and stocks this week, we did do some cooking. It's nice knowing that we'll get fed at least once each day during class! On Wednesday, our first day with Chef U (who will be our chef instructor for the majority of our 6 month course) we made pesto. It was a little strong for me, personally, but I was HUNGRY!! I think I'll try it with less or even with roasted garlic to see how I like the flavor.

Thursday we had soup made from veggie scraps, roux, water, cream and seasonings. It was surprising tasty given the list of ingredients. Friday's lunch/dinner was by far the tastiest though - we had roasted chicken, mashed potatoes (potato scraps) and stir fried veggies (from practiced carrots and celeriac julienne). I luckily volunteered to cook the chicken and it was surprisingly easy and tasty, even the chicken breast was juicy.

Roasted Chicken Recipe
- rinse the whole chicken (remove the bag of "goodies" if your chicken comes with one)
- generously sprinkle and rub your chicken with salt, pepper and paprika (rub the whole chicken)
- place the chicken, breast down on a roasting pan with an inch layer of mirepoix (rough cubes of about an inch wide of 50% onion, 25% carrots and 25% celery)
- roast at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes
- flip over (breast up) and baste with hot chicken stock (we had some simmering on the stove)
- finish roasting until done (leg joint should be loose and juices run clear)

Enjoy!! If you like, use the fond left in the roasting pan to make a nice pan gravy by adding more stock and either cornstarch or a roux (flour and butter) to thicken it. The oven at school is a convection oven, so timings may be a little off. Use your best judgment - the chicken was mostly cooked before we flipped it.

Lessons learned this week:

• Olive oil can release free radicals (which can contribute to cancer) when heated, so Chef U doesn't use it for cooking
• The top GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) crops in the US are Soy, Wheat, Corn, Canola and Cotton.
  
• Chef only cooks with grapeseed, peanut, sunflower or safflower oil because of free radicals and GMO.
• It's not the GMO that will get you...but the pesticides and insecticides. Most GMO crops are modified to make them more resistant to pests and insecticides. This makes the farmers less careful when spraying...and more gets into your food.