For our school specifically, we are also recommended to read books regarding sustainaility or food system issues.

The point of both recommendations is to understand the history of how trends develop, and makes you a more well-rounded culinarian. Here is just a snippet of the books that have been recommended or required, along with a general wishlist. The first two are books I am currently reading:

• Northwest Essentials Cookbook – Greg Atkinson (former instructor)
• The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry – Kathleen Flinn
• Letters to a Young Chef – Daniel Boulud
• Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors – E.M. Collingham
• Fat of the Land: Langdon Cook
• Ma Gastronomie – Ferdinand Point

I’m sure there are many others I’ve managed to scribble on a piece of paper during lecture and quickly forget about. As I organie my notes in preparation for next quarter, I’m sure more will turn up and the list will grow.

Two days later, I was standing in their kitchen in a black shirt, cutting 10 lbs of peppers during my “stage” (the A in there makes an “ah” sound). In the restaurant field, a working interview is considered a “stage”, but may also refer to a training position. Many people work a paid position at one restaurant, and then stage at another place. The idea behind it is that it’s worth busting your butt for free in order to have that place to list on your resume.

But I digress. The point was that I ran around that kitchen doing anything I was told for about 7 hours. I walked out with a job, and a big ball of stressed anticipation about starting my first job in a new field in 4 years.

Since then, the work has been nothing short of fascinating. Sure, sometimes it’s repetitive. I may make over 100 pizzas during the time I’m on that part of the line. Or it may  be a musical position day where I end up at any number of different locations doing something different every few hours.

I have a host of hilarious and diverse coworkers. From my super chill sous chef, to my sort of hard ass chef, and all my fellow cooks. Cody leads morning weekend prep, so we always work together on Sundays. He graduated from Seattle Culinary Academy a few years ago, but feels like his best education has been on the job. Because I seem so slow and trying to be a perfectionist, Cody has taken to affectionately referring to me as “culinary school”. As in, I’m taking forever to slice 80 perfect slices of pancetta, and hear “Come on, Culinary School! What are you doing! Slice it and move on!”. I expected this when I looked into this line of work, so I actually find it pretty amusing.

Two very distinct things about Serious Pie are that: 1.) It is an “open” kitchen, and 2.) There is no brigade system in use.

To clarify, an open kitchen is one where the area where food is prepared and cooked (also known as the “line”) is visible to most or all of the customers while they’re eating. This means any mistake we make could potentially be visible everyone. This sucked during training. And if you get behind during a rush, it sucks because people occasionally walk up to the end of the line (our finishing counter where the cooked pizzas get cut and garnished with fresh herbs and start shooting you dirty looks. On the other hand, it’s sometimes fun to have the tourists come through and photograph you or at least stop on their way out and thank you personally.

As for #2: in the 1800′s Auguste Escoffier, one of the first real “chefs”, developed a system of positions in professional kitchens known as the brigade system. Many restaurants these days use some or all of the postions to separate responsibilities and make sure each component of a dish is finished and well done at the same time. My point in referencing this with regards to Serious Pie is that there isn’t any need for that. The most difficult thing assigned to one of the cooks is the wood fired oven. Yes, I’ve cooked a pizza in it once, and no I don’t want to jump at the chance to keep doing it yet.

The upside to not having specific titles and roles is that you may be asked to do all sorts of varying tasks in a single shift. Last week, I had about 45 minutes where I washed herbs off some pancetta that is being made in house. Another day, I’ll be taking 60 pounds of seasoned pork roasts downstairs to grind into sausage. Sometimes it’s things I hate, like washing and drying not bunches, but CASES of spinach. Or having to put on two pair of rubber gloves to safely prep 10 lbs of stinging nettle.

I should probably mention that part of the reason the pizzas people get there are $17 a pop is that all the ingredients are top notch (imported Italian truffle cheese, in house made charcuterie, italian tomatoes, and dough made by our dough master in house etc.).

The best parts of having this job are exposure to new ingredients and understanding the connection between things learned in school and on the job application. I’ve eaten blood sausage, mortadella, foraged mushrooms, and all sorts of other unusual things. I also have a better sense of ways to save time, or at least can do a tiny bit better at having that “one step ahead” plan going in my head while I’m working on a task.

Other unrelated but fun things are the random things that I’ve witnessed during work. I saw a guy propose to his girlfriend through the window when they were eating at Serious. I was working a different day and heard everyone in the lobby gasp and then start “Ooh”-ing. I look up to see the head and neck of the largest police horse Seattle must have sticking in through our front door. He’s a regular, and we save some of our stock carrots for him a few times a week. And of course, the Savor Seattle tours that come through once or twice a day 7 days a week. My favorite tour guide is Eric, who portrays the classic Seattlite with his goatee and utilikilt. He’s so upbeat, and thanks the kitchen for making the sample pizzas with cute little quips like “Thank you so much! You guys even more awesome than…a big bucket full of awesome!”. Dorky, but sweet.

For the record: no, I haven’t personally met Tom Douglas. Though I’m pretty sure he came in to eat one day. But I do get half off all his restaurants now, so I need to be doing some foodie sampling soon.

And then there is the experience today’s title refers to. My most time consuming task to date, was making that damned fonduta. Dev (a coworker who grew up in northern India and happens to make some amazing Indian food for lunch sometimes) loves to walk around being pissed off about something. Or at least stressing about something that he may not have control over. When he gave me this project, I thought he was kidding about me needing to “be ready to stand around for over an hour”. No lies, it took FOREVER.

Everyone has some concept of what fondue is. Melted cheese, usually with some white wine and maybe some dairy to thin it out. Fonduta is similar, but typically made with a soft cheese like Fontina and truffles. In our case, we make fonduta in an effort not to waste any expensive product. The truffle cheese we put on our mushroom pizza is imported, and using the electric slicer inevitably means having some scraps left over. Once we collect about 15 pounds of scrap, we make a ridiculously huge bowl of fonduta and put a special on the menu with that as the main flavoring ingredient.

The concern with the truffle cheese is that it’s very oily, so you have to balance the low melting/smoke point of the truffle oil with the much higher melting point of the water in the dairy. I had to use a giant makeshift double boiler and keep my little butane burner on medium low. The fear is that if you melt it too fast, the emulsion of fats and truffle oil will try to separate from the water inthe dairy and your melt cheese mixture will “break”. If I broke this mixture, I’d be wasting 15 pounds of imported cheese scraps. So Dev gave me my instructions, and left me there with his last words being “Dammit, Ashley…don’t fuck up the fonduta. Oh, and have a good night..”

After an hour and 40 minutes of babysitting the mixture, that stupid fonduta ended up being too thin, and I was told to just put in in the walk in to cool and that someone would figure out what it’s problem was the next morning. I’m sure our paths will cross again sooner than I’d like, but at least I have that experience under my belt.

I feel like this quarter in particular flew by. Part of me is very sad to see it come to a close so soon, but much of me is excited to have hit the official halfway mark in my program. Let’s do a brief overview of the last three quarters so I can offer better perspective on my experiences:

 1st quarter: Mostly academic work. LOTS of intense lectures about the basics of cooking and understanding different types of foods you use to cook. There was a fairly long test every few weeks, and praticum (i.e. practice) ran from 10am-1:30ish. We had our own kitchen in a different part of the building from the “main” kitchen. Chef Gregg was on our asses about how to cut vegetables properly, what type of earrings were appropriate, and threatening to kick us out of the kitchen if our chef whites were anything but clean and pressed every day.

2nd quarter: Chef K.G. introduces us to the main kitchen and it’s multitude of cooking impliments. Things I had never seen before (at least not in real life) included:

*  a tilting skillet (literally a GIANT flat metal surface with perpendicular sides that allows you to cook 10+ lbs of meat at the same time. Fie on cooking in batches, as home recipes suggest.

* A commercial steamer. As the name suggests, it’s big, it’s metal, and that steam is hot as hell! You can put a 2 ft long tray full of carrots in there and it will steam in about 4 minutes. Just step back for about 5 seconds after opening the door or you’ll risk burning the skin off your face

Anyway, the more I look back at second quarter, the more I understand the reasoning behind Chef K.G’s behavior. He treated our class in what felt like a very detached and flippant manner, busying himself at his desk in the kitchen until 10 minutes to student lunch service many days. Giving us confusing or complicated directions on how to rectify whatever mess we had gotten outselves into. In reality, he was quietly guiding us through all the lessons we as culinarians MUST learn the hard way. We were literally paying to have a quarter where we learned how much harder it is to put out 25 of the same food item, what saves time, what wastes time, etc. I spent that quarter running through the two walk-in’s and freezer a ton, staring blankly at the walls of different pots and pans in the 14′x12′ dish room, walking through our One World fine dining room terrified to be playing the part of a waitress. And yet, I understand now that making those mistakes helped me enter third quarter with the knowledge of what and where I so desperately needed. I discovered my own ways to speed up a process, I know what area of what shelf in the spice rack corner to point a current 2nd quarter to  for a spice without even looking.

And so, third quarter came and the excitement of preparing meals peopel paid money to eat ensued. I spent my first week rotating through salad and soup. Salads (or “pantry”, or “garde manger” depending on the type of kitchen you work in and how their brigade system is labelled) was pretty easy. I had a harder time preparing soups, but mostly due to my lack of critical thinking about time. Our bistro serves standard french fare (ceasar salad, trout meniuere, steak frites, ete), but then rotates through a country-specific menu every few weeks. I made red lentil dal (simple a lentil soup with some toasted indian spices). My soup ended up tasting burnt because I didn’t continue to add water as it was cooking. This fact strikes me as hilarious looking back, and I’ve cooked lentil soup at home several dozen times. At that moment, reason eluded me and I took to blaming my close friend, carpool buddy, and station partner at the time, Alexir. Poor guy got quite an earful that day and the whole ride home in the car. It was good we established some things though, as we have since worked together in the kitchen with much less issue.

I also started being educated on the standard lingo used for line cooks, here are the most common thrown around:

On the Fly/On the rail: I NEED THIS NOW! As in, this order was likely fucked up somewhere along the way and now the customer has already been waiting longer than expected for their food. This dish becomes your priority, and any way to finish it faster should be used. Hearing this phrase can be exciting, but usually stresses you out

All day: Used by line cooks and expediter. The expediter takes tickets that print off the machine and read off what has been ordered. Cooks at the different stations are required to “echo” or “callback” what has been ordered from their station to show that they heard and are starting to cook that food. After an order has been called, the expeditor usually rattles off the totals or “all day” orders for the different stations:

“Saute, you have two trout all day. Grill, you have two steak frites, one medium and one well all day…”

The cooks are required to ask their expeditor how many orders “all day” they have if they are concerned that they’re “working” (in the process of preparing) too many or too few

To Sell: I did not understand this phrase until I entered 4th quarter kitchen. I heard it all the time at work, and never took the time to ask. The long and the short of it is that the phrase follows whatever is needed left to complete all requested items on a ticket. If an expediter sees a salmon finished and set on the line, but still needs a salad, they’ll say:

“I need a salad to sell!”

And yes, I did feel very special the few occasions I had this quarter to expedite and practice these and other terms.

Promises for future posts (so I don’t forget):

~ Oyster Bill

~ Pastry program/bake shop rotation

~ Mystery plate

~ Saute

~ Working and school, part deaux

One snowy, frigid Saturday, we made our way up to Bow and met up with Chef Sarah, Chef Vicky, and a handful of our other classmates at the Island Grown Farmers Co-op (IGFC) mobile slaughter unit. As I’ve previously mentioned, my interest in butchery it three-fold. Firstly, my history in the veterinary field makes me want to understand and identify animals on a scientific level. Don’t think that your neighborhood veterinarian made it through school without having at least 1 dissection lab. Two, if I learn which cuts of meat come from where, I can apply my knowledge of the fat content and tenderness of the meat to determine the best cooking technique. Finally, I am NOT willing to be a consumer who fools themself into thinking meat magically appears on grocery store shelves in little styrofoam packages and wasn’t initially a living animal. We owe it to ourselves as omnivores to understand where our animal products come from and how they aer processed. Our ancestors did it, and they ate healthier than we did.

Needless to say, there were moments that were a bit intense even for me. We went into the mobile slaughter unit itself and the owner described the process that would occur at a farm. The interior of the truck was immaculate stainless steel with a couple different tools hanging along the sides.

Inside the facility were several halves of cattle (as in, a 1,600 lb cow, cut in half down the middle). I won’t go into a lot of additional detail, because my facebook photos provide enough of that. We were instructed on how to process which cuts fo meat from where, and then proceeded to do so. It didn’t matter if we made mistakes, since the cow had been over 30 months (which is the cut-off as “too old to be used for anything by ground beef).

During this trip, I had the opportunity to talk on a more casual level with Chef Vicky (the third quarter chef instructor) and Chef Sarah. After my only college experience being 4 years at a university, where I rarely spoke to ANY professor face to face, I never expected to be in a situation where I was talking with my educators about their lives and other interests.

I felt like I really connected with Chef Vicky that day. It wasn’t anything in particular, I just like her style. She’s very approachable and a woman who built herself from the ground up. With no formal training, she has grown to work at more than a half dozen different restaurants and is still part owner of a place downtown. I think it reminded me of how much work I put in to learning about veterinary medicine from just on the job training. This set an awesome foundation for starting third quarter with her in the spring.

Not to mention I got to look all kinds of sexy in my cap, jacket, and “don’t slice your hand open” gloves..

Lola – Downtown (4th & Virginia)

Le Gourmand – Ballard

Tilth – Wallingford

Crush – Downtown

Tat’s Deli – Pioneer Square

Rover’s – Downtown somewhere (?)

Many more to come soon…

Second quarter is referred to by most students as “The short sprint AND the marathon”, meaning each day brought an exhausting amount of adrenaline and continued daily for the full 12 weeks. Chef K.G. is the chef instructor for theory and practicum. Trained originally in his native Japan, and recieving a formal education in the U.S. at C.I.A., K.G. is a talented and disciplined chef. He was distinctly different in the kitchen versus the classroom though, and this made for some disconnects. While teaching theory, he was lighthearted and jovial. In the kitchen, he was there at just the right moment to critique everything you did. Also, since second quarter was/is in charge of cooking lunch for all th SCA students, you are on a serious time crunch and often end up cutting corners. This makes for many a sad food product and many a time you wish you weren’t standing on the line when the later quarter students scoffed at your pathetic plates.

Some memorable moments:

~ Making dauphinnoise potatoes (like scallopped potatoes, but with some of the dairy replaced with chicken stock). My potatoes had been sliced by first quarter the previous day and were held in water overnight to prevent browning. Chef K.G. looked at me as I drained the potatoes through a strainer and then started to layer them in my pan, appeared like he wanted to say something, and then stopped. Thinking nothing of it, I continued my work and put the pan in the oven to bake. About 40 minutes later, I pulled it out and, to my dismay, discovered a layer of potatoes over a lake of water with chunks of milky egg mixture in it. Gha! Chef K.G. appeared (as always) at that moment to tell me what I had done wrnog. Apparently, the potatoes retained WAY more water than I had accounted fod (duh) and released it when baking. His recommendation for future was to put my potatoes in a perforated hotel pan (one of those silver metal pans they use at buffets with holes in the bottom) and put it in the steamer for a few minutes before assembling and baking it. The heat from the steamer starting cooking the potatoes, and at the same time makes them release some of that water. It would also shorten my cooking time. Epic potato fail.

~ Chef K.G still has a bit of difficulty with english. He has lived here for decades, but I’m sure still spends a lot of time around native Japanese friends and family so retains that as his native language. In any case, this made for some real gems of quotes. At first, I found them comforting reminders that even my chefs are human. By the end of the quarter, I was actively seeking out “K.G-isms” and writing them in my notes. The best two were “Why you do that?!” which was heard regularly as students were busted for making stupid mistakes. The second was in references to taking out a sachet (mixture of herbs and spices in cheesecloth, used for flavoring soups and stocks) at the right time. His words were “Fish it right it out” (i.e. “Fish it right out”). To this day, I still use that phrase for everything.

The hardest part of the quarter was understanding that not everyone is well suited to create 24 portions of a food in 2 hours. It was also knowing I had to push through all the mistakes, the horrible time I had rotating through breakfast station, and taking comfort in a few of the good rotations where I excelled (like Sushi, I make a mean California roll). This was also the first time I ever had a moment where I thought, “Maybe I’m not good enough to do this”. I got over it, and feel much stronger having perservered through that moment of doubt, but it was a humbling experience to say the least.

More memories of 2nd quarter later, and a thorough update of 3rd quarter thus far coming soon!

I elected to make a brown stock, whose color is derived from roasting bones prior to simmering them. I took my first quarter chef’s advice and coated them with some tomato paste to encourage caramelization and give a more balanced flavor to the stock as a whole.

Here’s the bones a few minutes into the roasting process:

After about 45  minutes, I removed the bones and put them in my stock pot. I deglazed my pan with some cold water and added the fond from that to my bones. Using about 1.5 gal of water, I covered the bone and started the simmering process:

On hindsight, this was actually too little water. However, I was taking thoughts from several different recipes and didn’t do quite the exact ratio that was recommended.

This lovely mixture simmered for about 7 hours, during which time I was lucky enough to be its babysitter. Nothing like straining stock every 30 minutes to keep you close to home. In the last hour, I added a mirepoix mixture and sachet d’epices to the stock. Ah, the lovely french terms school plants in your vocabulary. Mirepoix is a flavorful mixture of onion, celery, and carrots. These are the trinity of aromatic veggies used in stocks and soups. A sachet d’epices is a bundle of herbs and spices tied inside a piece of cheesecloth. Mine contained some garlic, crushed peppercorns, parsley stems, dried thyme, and a bay leaf.

Let us move on to my new tool from the Seattle Restaurant Store: the ice wand. The one pictured below is about 1/3 the size of those used in school.

After my stock had simmered for the appropriate period of time and tasted right, I strained the mixture through a conical strainer into a chilling set-up. The straining was a rather complicated process that even Matt had to get involved with, so no photos during that. My chilling set-up consisted of a master container with a layer of ice, then a holding container. The bottom and outer edges of the stock would cool via cool air from the ice. However, an ice wand helps chill the center of the liquid while doubling as a stirring implement:

Stir, stir, stir to chill out!

The ice wand was removed and the stock was left uncovered in the fridge overnight to chill. The next morning, I was able to scoop off the layer of fat which had risen to the surface. Solidified fat covering meat jell-o. You know you want some!

To my surprise, the stock had been reduced so well and contained so much connective tissue, that it was a solid gelatinous blob. This could technically referred to as a glacé or an aspic. I just called it a learning experience and thinned it out by heating with some water before storing it.

All in all, I was proud to utilize some of the skills learned at school in my home kitchen. Today or tomorrow: french onion soup with REAL homemade beef stock as the base!

“Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time”

Once that was established, we moved on to discussing how all-encompassing sustainability can be. This is not as simple as planting a tree, or buying a tomato plant from the store. We’re talking about understanding how broken America’s food system as a whole has become. Consider this: in the movie “Food Inc”, a low income family explains that for the cost of a pound of organic broccoli, they can buy several burger from McDonalds. What is going to provide more food for their family?

Upon further investigation, one establishes the “hidden cost of food”. Eating fast food may be cheap at the moment, but consider that long term. People who exist primarily on fast food often have more health issues. Diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc. So the medical costs associated with a poor diet are technically part of the cost of that food. Add to that the cost to the environment to establish a feedlot where cows are packed almost on top of one another to meet the need for meat. Add more cost for the land to grow corn (an unnatural diet that big name meat packers feed cows since it’s cheap) and process it into feed. Completely NOT sustainable. The next thing you know, you are killing yourself and your planet for a burger.

I apologize for that outburst, but it had to happen. I am an unapologetic meat snob, which was discussed in my last post. I am not here to argue with anyone about their views on the matter, so please keep any negativity to yourself. I shall follow suit and resume my discussion about why local foods are worth their weight in gold.

Local foods are an ideal choice for several reasons:

1.) They taste better. Foods grown within a few hundred miles of you are cultivated as their season comes around (strawberries in summer, apples in fall, winter squashes and beets in winter) and are grown as they were meant to be.

2.) They are healthier. Less travel time (either through a processing warehouse, on a truck, or onto the shelf in the store) means a lot. Fewer dirty hands pawing at something you’re putting in your mouth. Less opportunity for nutrients to degrade or for the product to spoil.

3.) They help create a more sustainable local economy. Keeping money local by keeping food local. The food producers then spend their money at local garden or feed supply stores and perpetuate the same idea.

4.) They allow you to know the face of your food. When I went to the Ballard Farmer’s market a week ago, I decided to finally be participatory. I eyed the little glass bottles of cream from Golden Glen Creamery and asked the vendor where Bow, WA was. There was something so empowering to be able to even speak to a single employee of the dairy. I’m not talking about a cutesy hired representative who has good teeth and a catch tagline. I mean a good, honest-faced man whom could milk a cow one day and talk to me about it while selling his milk the next. I though I was a bit shy about asking any additional questions, I’m sure I could find out what breeds of cows they use, how far north or south they sell, what their favorite product is, and so on.

5.) Being able to share a local food experience feels good. When you serve dinner and can say “This fish was swimming out in Puget Sound yesterday!” or “These beans were picked two days ago in Skagit Valley!”, it’s a beautiful thing.

Here’s a photo of my latest goodies I picked up from the Ballard Farmer’s Market last week:

Local delights from the farmers' market

The jelly on the left is made from locally grown apples that were cold pressed at the Four Seasons Kitchen. That was then reduced (cooked over low heat for several hours to encourage pectin production) to a jelly. The savoy cabbage is from Tiny’s Organic. I was drawn to the table because that little bugger of a cabbage head is just so damn adorable! And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. During the remainder of my stay at the market, and my brief trip to a local tea shop, at least 10 people mentioned how cute it was. I found it wonderful to have people excited by a piece of produce. This is what makes people eat more healthy food and try new things!

Investigate your farmers markets, ask the vendors questions, and get the answers you will NEVER receive from big name companies.

Here are a few good places to start:

http://www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org/

http://ballardfarmersmarket.wordpress.com/

To wrap up the end of first quarter, it was wonderful. And I mean all of it. Sure, we were the grunts for all advanced quarters. My “cooking” was making salad, boiling and peeling potatoes, and doing fancy cuts on every vegetable known to man. I had to take hundreds of pounds of compost down to the main compost bin. I was assigned every task in advanced kitchens that no one else wanted to do. But dammit, I loved every minute of it and I wouldn’t change it for the world. The things you learn through those experiences form a foundation for you to become a better, more well rounded culinarian.

On that note, let me resolve a little something that took me a while to get over. The word “chef” is thrown around pretty liberally, and the culinary society takes some offense to it. It’s a title, like other professions, and has to be earned. For example, when I graduate, I won’t be deemed “Chef Marshall” or anything silly like that. Not to say I didn’t daydream about that prior to school starting, but I have since moved on. Most “chefs” have assumed supervisory positions in kitchens, whether they are in charge of a certain station or the whole kitchen. As the traditional kitchen brigade system goes, the order of rank typically goes: Executive chef, sous chef, then “lead chef” for different stations. To put simply in my first quarter chef instructor (Chef Gregg)’s words: “You know you’re a chef when you no longer have a knife in your hand”. Station leads and sous chefs will jump in as necessary, but are often too busy monitoring the flow of the kitchen and directing everyone else. There are a handful of people from our school who graduate and immediately seek out a position somewhere that is willing to give them the “chef” title, but it’s really not that important. Most of us are happy to refer to ourselves as “culinarians”. The term refers to someone “skilled in the preparation of food”. To me, using that term for myself acknowledges that I’m a lifelong student of culinary arts. Today, two months from now, twenty years from now, I’ll still have only brushed the surface of all there is to know about cooking.

Right, now that that has been resolved, back to the matter at hand. In the final weeks of first quarter, we were given the opportunity to fabricate a chicken. I found this term hilarious, as traditionally it is used to indicate building something, and in butchery it means the exact opposite. Given a whole fryer, each student sliced off the breasts, took off the legs and thighs, broke the wings, etc. By the end, I decided I was in LOVE with butchery. The irony of this was how I had looked at Chef Sarah, our 5th quarter instructor, and found it odd that a woman would be so into butchery. After the chicken, I reflected on why this would appeal to me. I realized the fabrication of meats bridged the gap between my previous career in animal medicine and my future in culinary arts.

Rachael (one of my close friends from class) spoke with Chef Gregg about seeking a stage (pronounced “st-ahj”, it’s an unpaid internship at a local business) or paid position at a reputable butcher. He recommend Rain Shadow Meats, which Rachael and I applied at last week. I understand if the owner, Russ, is hesitant to take on students, there’s a lot I have to learn. If that’s the case, I’ll probably apply at Double D Meats in Mountlake Terrace. Alexir wisely reminded me that I had nothing but good things to say about them after we visited the place. Not to mention they also offer to fabricate game meats (Elk, deer, etc) which I would love to learn more about.

Let me take a moment to try and further explain my interest in butchery. Besides the animal medicine part, I also have a very strong interest in animal welfare. This includes wild, domesticated, and farmed animals. Those animals raised on a farm and slaughtered for consumption are giving their life and life energy to further mine. Because of this, it is extremely important to me that these animals live generally happy lives. I don’t want to perpetuate animal abuse, nor do I wish to consume animals whose life energy was primarily fear and suffering. I’ll post in the future about large scale meat producers and why I have little to no interest in purchasing meat from anywhere except within Western Washington. My point is that the butchers I want to work for deal in local meats, who come from small farms where each cow or pig is considered a living thing and not a disposable commodity.

The other noteworthy update is how close I’ve grown to my Seattle Culinary Academy (SCA) classmates. Chef Gregg said by the end of time, we’d be “best friends” and I thought he was just being facetious. Turns out you DO end up appreciating everyone for who and what they are. We all have diverse backgrounds, but that makes up a more well rounded group as a whole. I’m sad we’re losing a big handful of classmates (due to varying circumstances, grades, schedule, life in general), but am hopeful it will make us a tighter and more productive crew.

Here’s to the last few days of 2010, and to moving into 2010 as a second quarter culinary student with an intense desire to learn.

The standard rotation for school has been about the same. Dish pit for two days, spilling giant metal pans in the hallway as getting disapproving looks from senior students. Cooking in 1st quarter kitchen and feeling a bit off…so I started boiling potatoes that my prep list requested be cut raw (frick!).

Overall though, I’ve finally reached that point where things are less intimidating. I can walk through any kitchen (including all quarters of the Main Kitchen) without feeling nervous. After a few shifts in the dish pit, I understand where most tools are kept, so I’m a bigger asset when assisting senior students in the kitchen.

Our study in culinary theory has progresses through eggs (FINALLY into proteins!), and dairy. We had an afternoon last week where we took several “cheese flights”. This meant that each “flight” was a plate that contained 2-4 samples of cheeses from different types of groups. We sampled these a class and discussed what their smell, appearance, taste, and texture were like. It was AMAZING! Roquefort from France, Chevré from Califonia, Cheddar/Jack made AT the school.

Our big midterm for theory went much better than I had expected. We had our standard fill-in-the-blanks and multiple choice. But the main difference was grain and pasta identification. Nothing like sitting down in front of 20 little plastic cups and being told “write down what these are”. The various possibilities included heritage grains like farro and amaranth, corn products like polenta or corn starch, and different types of rice. I found it empowering to sit down and know that I could tell the difference between 3 different types of white rice. The pastas were much easier, as we just had to identify the names of their shapes. And no, their names are not “squiggle”, “curly Q”, and “football”. They are things like fusilli bucati, pene rigate, acini di pepe. I was stoked to get my test back and see 1 mistake on the whole grain ID page. Woot!

And then there are my classmates. With relatively few exceptions, I love these guys! My carpool buddy, Alexir, is great. He and I get off on tangents about culinary topics all the time. We went to Whole Foods a few days after our cheese lecture and poked about to see what was available locally. Everyone comes from diverse backgrounds and has tons of new ideas to bring to the table. Rachael recently hosted a study party at her house in West Seattle. We ate a bunch of cheese and talked quantity of fats in dairy products and the finer points of egg cookery for several hours.

Yesterday, I had my first experience helping a 4th quarter student with their “Chef of the Day” project. Your project is to think up a 4-5 course menu and produce it for the 4 main chef instructors and up to 12 guests of your choice (usually friends and family members). It was so exciting to be in a production kitchen with a bunch of student who were producing food of their own creation! Donning my bright green apron (so I could blend in to the 4th quarter kitchen), I did some simple prep cutting. I got to help with plating, so I had my first experience using a ring mold. I was also able to try one of the proscuitto wrapped grilled scallops, and later a polenta cake with some rainbow chard and braised pork shoulder. AMAZING!

More to come once I finish these last few projects. We’re getting into stocks and meats starting next week.