Finally in the Kitchen! - Day 1

Dear Food Diary and fellow Bloggers,


Today was the first day of my Culinary Foundations 2 class! After 6 weeks of learning the ins and outs of food safety and sanitation, julienne-ing potatoes, macadoine-ing carrots, and creating a perfect tournés out of a turnip (those are all fancy knife cuts for those of you who are confused)...I am FINALLY in the kitchen! I am beyond excited to get down and dirty and start some cookin'! 


We started off class meeting our Chefs...Because of the large amount of students, the class is split in half and I am fortunate to get to work with two Chefs. We have Chef Sutton (who is my Chef) and Chef Knight (in culinary school we call our teachers Chefs...so when you hear me refer to my Chef, that would be my teacher!) At first, both Chefs were very intimidating...not on a Gordan Ramsey from Kitchen Nightmares level...but still intimidating. Chef Sutton emphasized the importance of CLEANING, moving quickly and being efficient... She does not like, nor "tolerate Tortugas" in class. In other words, no standing around doing nothing! Chef Knight talked about how everyday the food we make will be plated and presented in the alloted amount of time, and will then be poked, prodded, picked apart and tasted for a grade..and 100% is very hard to come by. YIKES!!  Me, being the perfectionist that I am finds this to be very scary! So, for the first 2 hours we went over the rules and regulations of class, and our course outline. After all that policy talk we got down to the "meat and potatoes." :)    The first thing on our docket was STOCK MAKING!

"Community" Stockpot

In Culinary Foundations 1, we learned the basic principals of stock making, but we never actually got to make the stock. So, needless to say this was exciting! First we watched our Chefs demo a proper chicken stock, then we were on our own! We all rushed to get our mise en place... Mise en place means "everything in its place." For a chef it means... make sure you have all your ingredients and proper equipment before you start cooking! Its a chefs way of life. After getting my mise on (haha) I followed the recipe and put together my stock. Chicken stock for ya'll who want to know, consists of raw chicken bones, cold water, Mirepoix (carrot, celery, and onions), and a bouquet garni (a bundle of spices)...then is simmered for hours. Once I got all of my ingredients mixed together I presented it to Chef and got her stamp of approval. Victory! I had successfully completed my stock. Proud of myself, I dumped my creation into the HUGE "community" stockpot to simmer over night. :)


Let the cleaning begin! Today I feel like we did more cleaning than cooking...but having a clean kitchen is important...so clean on! Wash, rinse, dry, sweep, mop, sanitize.... repeat. For about 30 minutes the entire class ran around repeating this until the kitchen was shining like a brand new stainless steel Chefs knife. Once cleaning was done, we were given our homework and class was dismissed. 


Time to get my homework done! Talk to you tomorrow!


- Chef Kass In Training