French Wine!

Today we worked on more French Wines... we left Bordeaux for Burgundy and the wine labeling laws got even more chaotic. Thanks to the WSET classes I had an inkling of what was coming, but having to learn it in a room with 20 people who don't particularly care about it and just want to get done with lecture is very different from learning about it in a room of 20 people who are truly interested in wine.

Burgundy is crazy with how they label wine, but sometimes you just have to let go and realize that the French do things in their own way. And they make some of the best damn wine out there, so sometimes you just have to learn the rules and go with it. You can't argue with people about it, it just is what it is!

Playing with Fire!

Today I was the Chef for my brigade. This meant I really did very little other than whip up a table side Caesar Salad for one table and make dessert for another.

Okay... so there might have been a little more to it since dessert was "Bananas Flambe" Flambe... as in on fire!

Since the school is still standing and there are no scorch marks anywhere in the advanced dining room classroom it is safe to say that all went well. I was pretty comfortable making the dessert, and the biggest hiccup I had was peeling the banana with a knife and fork!

Full Service!

Today was our first day of full service in the kitchen. All things considered the day went really well. We didn't have a lot of food to produce and everything was from one country so the food made sense!

It was fun to "work the line" today and create food to order. It is the closest to a real restaurant situation that I have been in today. The class really came together and while some of us were producing the food the rest of the class was cleaning up so that we would all have less to do after service.

Tomorrow we head to Africa...

How Many Countries?

Today we picked up some of the "slack" from not really cooking for the past few days. Instead of regular service we threw a buffet hitting food from... Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and India! Yep... all 8 of those countries were represented on a "wild international buffet."

It was a ton of cooking and a variety of different styles for everyone to be working on, but we managed to get it all out for people to eat and eat they did! I was bummed that we didn't have a full day for India as it is one of my very favorite countries to eat from, but I did see how I can make naan bread at without a tandori oven!!

Yan Can Cook...

As a general rule, the International Cuisine class doesn't go to see the Distinguished Visiting Chef lectures. This is because we are responsible for creating the food for the dining room class to serve at lunch.

Today we broke the "general rule."

Since the class has been involved with preparing a variety of things that have gone along with Chef Yan and his visit to JWU Chef Pearson took us to see the presentation. What was scheduled to run 60- 75 minutes went for nearly 2.5 HOURS! Chef Yan has such an amazing way of presenting his talent that you don't even realize that you have been sitting on the edge of your seat for hours. He can do things with a knife that I only dream of...
*carrot slices so think that you can place on a piece of paper and read through
*yellow pepper that is slivered to about the thickness of dental floss
*garlic turned to paste in the blink of an eye
*one tomato sliced so thin that you could cover an entire dinner plate with the slices
and the most amazing part...
*breaking down a chicken in 15 seconds.

The last one is amazing to me, when I had my meatcutting practical it took me 30 minutes to break one chicken down. Here is a video, not from today, but this is pretty close to what he did today!

The People That You Meet...

Today I was reminded of the Mr. Rodgers song about "the people that you meet when you're walking down the street in your neighborhood." At the end of a long day of work I stepped on to the elevator with fellow students and a small cluster of people from one of the upstairs offices. In looking at one of the gentlemen in the group he seems familiar, but I can't quite place him. Upon reaching the ground floor the cluster of people step off and Chef Calenda, who had been on the elevator with us, asks if anyone knows who was riding with us. It turns out that the familiar looking gentleman was Chef Martin Yan! Martin Yan... as in the tv show Yan Can Cook, tons of cookbooks and a slew of California restaurants.

What was he doing at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte, North Carolina of all places... Well, he is a visiting chef as well as being the guest of honor at a dinner event that our International Cuisine class has spent the past two days doing major prep work for! Tomorrow he will be giving a lecture and demonstration for the students and I am really looking forward to seeing it.

Magic Tricks

According to Chef Pearson cooking is just a bunch of magic tricks. In thinking this over I realize that he might just be right. If you think about it, taking a variety of different raw products and mixing them up and creating something totally different is magic! The more you practice your craft the better you get at it, when you start magic you start with the card tricks and at some point you will be able to make a building vanish. With cooking you start with the basics and work to the big showy things.

Today was the start of my 3rd and final trimester of classes at Johnson & Wales. I have a full slate of interesting labs that I'm really looking forward to. The new trimester brings together yet another different group of people, so once again there will be adjustment time as we learn to work as a group and support each other to get the work done.

International cuisine should be a really interesting class, we will be touching on quite a few countries in Asia as well as a quick stop in Italy.