Meat Fab, Week 2 Day 5. Last night Jen organized a little get together at a Japanese restaurant. Fun was had by all which resulted in a little tiredness in the kitchen. I couldn't get to sleep until 6am this morning. Today was my second day of butchery. Yesterday the chef demoed salmon, chicken, beef sirloin, and lamb racks. The practical for this portion of the class is to french a rack of lamb in under ten minutes. I finally hit that mark today after my seventh or eighth rack. I have the time down I just need to clean more meat off the bones.

Casey and Manny made stew for family meal. They elevated this humble dish to an artform. In lecture, we over the answers to the quiz we took yesterday. During the review session on Wednesday, Chef Pearson gave us a lot hints and outright answers to the quiz. But something led me to miss a few questions.

Meat Fab, Week 2 Day 2. Jim and I were the kitchen managers today. Our main responsibility is to make the family meal at 630pm. Jim was pretty open to any ideas, so I suggested fried rice. Our protein was pork loin. We roasted three of those off. One was marinated with a Chinese BBQ sauce I found in a cookbook. The recipe called for red food coloring which led many to wonder where the pink color came from. Another we stuffed with some sausage meat, roasted, covered it with mustard, rolled it in bacon, and finished in the oven. I like to call it pork three ways. The last one was an apple cinnimon recipe that Jim found on the web. We also made a fruit salad. Those four hours went by really fast. We wasted some time by peeling grapes for the fruit salad. I think we could have spent the time cutting up other fruit we had. I ended up taking more food home than I brought.

It felt good to cook for my fellow classmates. People liked the fried rice but I thought something was missing. I think it might have been the white pepper. We usually use that in class, but on this day we ran out. I used black pepper instead. It just wasn't the same.

Lecture was review for the quiz about poultry, fish, and shellfish. Last day of charcuterie tomorrow.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 4. More charcuterie fun. Chef Defleze is from Wisconsin so he has decided to teach us cheese-making. A little milk, a little cream, bring it up to 100 degrees add lemon juice to curdle and let it sit for a couple of hours. Then we poured it into grease trap bags which are roughly equivalent to twenty layers of cheesecloth. Tied it up and hung it in the refrigerator. More tomorrow.

Rodney made some Hot links. I brought it home and cooked one up. My parents thought it was extremely spicy, but it almost tasted sweet to me. I wonder what is happening to my palate. I got to make a torchon which means "dishtowel" in France. The method of making this comes from Thomas Keller's insane masterpiece The French Laundry Cookbook. Chef Defleze had all the fun of deveining the foie gras. I soaked it in milk for an hour to remove excess blood. Then I marinated it for an hour in brandy, white wine, and shallots. Then it is wrapped in a cheesecloth, poached for three minutes, shocked in an ice bath for ten minutes, wrapped in plastic film, and hung in the refrigerator. Tomorrow is the tasting. Can't hardly wait.

Rodney and I also made a pork mousseline terrine. Mousselines are protein, eggs and cream processed into a mixture which is then used in some way: mostly quenelles and stuffings. Another method is to shape it into a terrine which is what we did. I think I lucked out with the fun stuff first because the other half in butchery break down meat all day for the rest of the school. We get to make and take home as many charcuterie products as we can do.

Another video in the lecture session. I almost feel asleep. It was a continuation of the Pork salughter video. They described where each of the parts of the pig went.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 3. I got to class early and asked Chef Pearson to share his technique for knife sharpening. His technique is different from Chef Deflieze's in that there is no wasted motion; he sharpens on the forward motion and the backward motion.

We learned how to do galantines which is a whole chicken deboned, garnished, rolled, and cooked. The classical preparation is to tie the roll in a cheesecloth, poach in chicken stock, cool, and serve cold. Chef Deflieze likes to wrap it in bacon and roast it. I opted for the classical method because I was curious and because everybody else did it the Chef's way. Rodney and I also made Fennel Salami. Two more items on the list.

We also stopped to watch Chef Pearson demo breaking down a whole pork loin. In lecture, we watched a collection of four videos on the slaughter of cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep. I was more fascinated than disgusted. I don't know how some of those workers do their tasks day in and day out.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 2. I get to school ten minutes before class starts and manage to get in a little fingernail maintenance. Chef Deflieze checks it everyday for the charcuterie students. I panicked because I forgot my small recipe notebook at home. I wound up using my Palm Pilot. It was extremely useful, but I think it doesn't stand up well to possible stains and cuts. We learned how to make sausages today. It's pretty simple for fresh sausages anyway. Grind the meat, fat, and seasonings. Cook a test piece for seasoning. Reseason, and run it through the sausage press. Remove air pockets in the sausage and roll into links. Rodney and I made New York Spicy Italian sausage and Chicken and herb sausage. We smoked the NY Spicy Italian in the smoker, but Chef Deflieze left in too long. I didn't know you can actually overcook a sausage. The texture gets mealy because the fat separates from the sausage. The Chicken and Herb sausage came out okay. I feel that I'm going to have a pretty large collection of sausages in the freezer come winter break. Rodney has appropriately chosen this time to start on the Atkins Diet.

Over the Thanksgiving break, I suffered from withdrawl of the daily family meals. I had definitely taken that part of school for granted. We had a short lecture after class. We did a sample yield test where we figure out the actual cost per pound of a cut of meat, fish, or poultry after waste is considered.

Meat Fab, Week 1 Day 1. Another first day of a new block. We have two chefs: Chef Pearson, the Butchery instructor and Chef Defelzye, the Charcuterie instructor. Chef Pearson has made the rounds in hotels and resorts. He graduated from California Culinary Institute in 1995. Chef Defelyze is a young 27, graduated from the CIA and has had his share of restaurant experience. These guys have only been a duo for four months. Who knows how much longer they will stay on. I wonder where Chef Instructor lies in the path of my career. Since we didn't have the usual let's-go-around-the-room-and-share-our-culinary-dreams, I'll do a little musing here. I want to work a year or two in top restaurants around the nation for a decade and then take an executive chef position in my late thirties. Not sure what happens from there: a TV show, a chain of places, or possibly back to culinary school to teach. The future is just a chalkboard.

Chef Pearson went through all the details of the class with goals, grading procedures, homeworks, and other stuff. Then Chef Defelyze demoed filleting a salmon and cutting tranches of salmon (45 degree cuts). He demoed on a piece of salmon that was infected with kadoa, a bacterical diseases in which the bacteria eats away at dead fish flesh. It is commonly found in farm-raised salmon. The chef wasn't sure what health impacts there are for eating it but it degrades the quality of the fish. Chef never uses infected salmon and marked it down to notify the Purchasing. Then Chef Pearson demoed the various chicken cuts we are doing. 8 way chicken, airline breast, chicken supreme, drummettes, and boneless leg and thighs. It sounds like we're going to be butchering a lot of chicken.

An interesting aspect of this class is that the kitchen manager is in charge of the family meal. The Chefs tell us what protein is available and the rest is up to us. I'm thinking about fried rice maybe some chow mein. Maybe a small side of pork belly...