A taste of Meat Fab

I had the opportunity of getting a sneak peak at what meat fab class will be like with Chef Bill during Inventory Management. Here is a small video of what’s in store!

IT Video Project: Beer & Food Pairing

Some friends and I had to do a video project for IT. We ended up doing it on beer and food pairing. Below is the video we made:

Culinary Basics and the Production Kitchen

This class is held in the cafeteria at NECI. It’s just like working there on the weekends for work study. The chef cycles each person through different stations. I started out with sous chef, which entailed checking with everyone to make sure they are on track for dinner service, getting sanitation buckets turning equipment on, and helping anyone is needs an extra hand. The other positions include main entree, vegetarian entree, vegetables, starches, bakery, soups, and garde manger (salad bar). We have an hour lecture before we hop into the kitchen and prepare dinner for students, faculty and paying customers.

Cooking Theory: 12 Shades of Roux

Here is a picture I took on a little experiment we did in Cooking Theory. We cooked a roux (taking samples out during the cooking process) and cooked it until it burnt. Then we examined the different shades of roux that we extracted.

If you notice in the picture to the left, there are some abreviations on tape. W stands for white roux. It is the least cooked roux, and therefore has the most thickening power. It doesn’t add much taste to a dish, except for the richness. BL stands for blonde roux. This roux doesn’t have as much thickening power, but does provide a nutty flavor. It sometimes looks like thin peanut butter. Brown roux is very dark, has more flavor, but is also burnt, so it doesn’t provide much thickening power. Brown roux looks much more runny.

End of Mod 1: Assessments Week

So Mod 1 came to an end, and to bring all of our education together, we had assessments week. It really only lasted two days. Each Block, composed of 10 people divided into pairs of two. Each set of pairs went to a different category, such as Cooking Theory, Table Service, Baking, IT/Math/Inventory, and finally judges. I volunteered to go fo

Chef Mark Makes Risotto

r the IT/Math/Inventory. There, I had to do a blind tasting product ID, where I was blindfolded, and tasted 5 different items. I got 4/5, missing Chervil, an herb that is seldom used by chefs here. For the IT portion, my partner and I had to make a few brochures, menus, and fliers using MS Publisher. And finally for Math, we had to do some recipe costin

g, finding out each ingredient’s cost to figure out how much the recipe is actually costing to make.

After we competed, NECI gave us the rest of the day to finish up on any work for classes we were missing. The next day we had a knowledge bowl, which was a trivia contest between Blocks. After that, we had awards handed out. Our block came in 2nd place, missing first by a few points according to one of the staff. We got some pretty sweet water bottles as a prize.

Later on, we had a tasting demo with Chef Mark making a delicious mushroom risotto using portabella mushrooms. After that, NECI provided tasting of various local products from Vermont, such as cheese, dairy, maple syrup, and much more.

After that, we were released for Thanksgiving Break!

Tokyo Beats Paris for 3 star restaurants

I thought this was interesting. It looks like Tokyo has beat all major cities, including Paris, with the most 3 star restaurants at 11 with Paris at 10.

With 11 three-star, 42 two-star and 144 one-star restaurants, Tokyo now holds triple the number of awards that Paris has. Paris has 10 3-star restaurants.

I wish I spoke Japanese, I might see about doing an internship there. I’ll probably stick to the states though.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/tokyo-crowned-worlds-top_n_361254.html

Picnic

We had some nice weather this week, so Robin (my girlfriend) came up and we had a picnic on the capital buildings front lawn. It was pretty relaxing. Montpelier is a small town, but there is stuff to do if you know how to enjoy the little things.

Picnic on the Capital Lawn

5 Tastes Demo

On Monday, I was able to attend a 5 taste demo run by some NECI students and Chef Mark. The students laid out little dixie cups (as pictured on the left) filled with a colorless, odorless liquid. Each up had a distinct taste that the tongue can pick up. Those tastes are Sweet, Bitter, Sour, Salty and Umami.

The 5 tastes demo

The sweet cup had sugar water in it, the Salty cup had salt water in it. The sour cup had citric acid in it, the bitter had quinine and the Umami had MSG, which has a rich meaty kind of flavor. Each one corresponds to a taste on everyone’s pallet.

One of the things we will have to do as chefs is discern what our food is missing, or if it has too much of one taste. It was a great demo because not everyone knows what Umami should taste like. It was good to isolate the different tastes like that.

As a final demo, the students had us mix the sugar water and the citric acid together. We held a piece of lemon zest up to our nose and tasted the concoction. It tasted like I was drinking lemonade! The point of this exercise was to show that even though our tongue can taste 5 different tastes, our nose can smell thousands of different aromas, and aromas make up a big part of how a dish tastes. Even though the liquid didn’t have lemon in it, it tasted like lemonade because we could smell it as we tasted.

Work Study

Well, since I still haven’t seen a post 9/11 GI bill, I decided (or rather, the bill collectors decided) I need a reliable source of income. I decided to work at the NECI cafeteria, also known as Dewey Cafe. I just finished a double shift today, working from 6:00AM to 6:00PM. The day went by pretty fast, and I got to work on my knife skills (they are still a little rusty).

It actually turned out pretty good because some NECI chefs taught me a few things that you might not pick up on in a lecture. It was cool to see and participate in practical cooking in a production environment.

I also bumped into Chef Emma, who chatted with me and my friend about how we could possibly stick together in our 2nd mod. We’d heard that they would be splitting Mods up and mixing the people around. Two good friends in my block and I have been working great together in classes, and we work together studying and volunteering at the Humane Society. I sent an email hopefully convincing one of the faculty to keep us together during the split up. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Professional Development

In Professional Development, we work on setting up internship sites to further our education. This includes vesting potential sites, creating and updating a resume, the interview process, and more.

I have a recent resume I used to get hired at Butlers and the Tavern over the summer. I just have to add that job and clean it up. It seems Word 2007 doesn’t like the tables I used when I created the resume (with Word 2003). So I think I’m just going to copy the text out and put it in a template that agrees with the newer version of Word.

After that, we will be doing practice interviews with NECI staff. I’ve never had a problem with the resume/interview process, but I’m sure this will be new ground for some of our 18 year old students.