Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Personal Chef 101

Time is moving so fast I'm losing track of where I am and what I need to post.

My Nutrition class is basically Personal Chef 101.

Here is my first class effort:

Roasted Pepper and Olive Salad

Pan Seared Chicken Breast on Couscous with Green Beans and Cinnamon Gelato


I was pleased with the dish and I received a rave review from my client. It has somewhat of a Greek theme with the the olives, couscous and chicken. I'm not so sure that the couscous is actually couscous. Chef said it was but then Chef ordered a new case it it doesn't look like this stuff, but again, my client liked it, whatever it was. The chicken was seasoned with cracked pepper, cumin and turmeric. The "couscous" was tossed with onion, peppers and tomato. The green beans were seasoned with nutmeg. The gelato is not a true gelato since no custard is used. Cornstarch is used as a thickener instead. I also had to use soy milk because my client has a milk allergy. The taste was good but the texture was off. I would say it was closer to pudding than ice cream. It reminded me a lot of tapioca pudding. All in all I was pleased with my first effort. In looking at the picture, I could have done a little better on my plating.

We did this meal after cooking in the morning for our banquet class. That meant I was cooking or washing dishes from 8:30 to 4:30 with a break from 12:00 to 1:00 to serve food and eat. My ass was dragging. My feet and legs hurt so bad. I could feel myself move slower and s-l-o-w-e-r and slooooooowwwwweeeeerrrrr. I once saw a Red Wings hockey game that went to six overtimes. By the sixth period it looked like they were skating on slush instead of ice they were moving so slow due to fatigue. That is exactly how I felt.

Looking around the class, my buddy Tennessee was attempting to wing it with no prior plan. Fried prosciutto in a pesto cream sauce on homemade pasta. Kudos for home made pasta rather than processed and refined stuff, but not really a healthy meal overall. And damn that prosciutto was salty! Took me hours to get the taste out of my mouth.

Good ol' RK took three hours to make empanadas. They were the size of of a Hostess cherry pie, if not bigger. Granted they had a savory filling with rice and olives and raisins, but they were deep fried and HUGE! That was his entire plate too. He made eight, we're serving one. Some people just don't get it.

3 comments:

Brook said...

yep-looks good. and that doesn't look like couscous to me either.

Spellbound said...

Damn, I am slow as molasses not to notice you had a blog. Self obsessed I think it's called. My niece, age 18, just started into culinary school in Charleston. I get to listen to her tales of classes in cream puffs, knives and algebra. I'm going to direct her over here so she can benefit from your wisdom. I mean, I cook but I'm not dead serious about it like she is.

Huff Daddy said...

Hi Spellbound, thanks for stopping by!