Weapons of Choice

I posted this today over on Chef Talk but though I would also add it here. I will try to remember to add some pictures.

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My previous career was in metal casting and I have a BS in metallurgical engineering. My perspective on knives may be a little different than everyone else's since I approach it from a metal and engineering view rather than a culinary view. Probably not right but some things I just can't shake.

In my opinion, a forged knife is hands down the best knife, ignoring brands, styles, size, etc. Of the forged knives I am a big fan of pattern welded steel often erroneously referred to as Damascus steel. Forging gives a knife wonderful strength, elasticity and crystal alignment that can't be done by stamping. The advantage of a pattern welded knife is that two or more different metals are forged together. At a microscopic level this gives a serrated edge with wonderful sharpness that in a sense re-sharpens itself as the edge wears since the different metals wear at different rates. My third favorite knife and quickly becoming my number one favorite is the sintered powder metal knife. Like the pattern welded knife it creates a microscopic serrated edge as it wears so it is brilliantly sharp. The fact that it is sintered allows for the use of some higher tech metals that are not available any other way.

I am opposed to buying a knife kit as I believe in buying the best knife for the job that is in my budget. My first knife was a Lamson-Sharp 10" Chef's Knife. GREAT knife. My only regret is that is isn't longer, but I didn't know that at the time. It's forged and made in the US. It didn't really come into its own until I began sharpening it myself with my two sided water stone and put a slightly narrower angle of edge on it. I use this knife every day in school and at home.

My second knife was a Nenohi Nenox G-Type Petty 5.9" (15cm) as I wanted to try one of the Japanese knives. This is a PM made knife and has an edge that boggles my mind. Some days I use this knife more than my chef's knife because it cuts so well and feels so good I don't want to put it down. This Japanese knife is a little harder to sharpen but once you get your technique down, it isn't a problem. One thing I learned from both of these knives is that sharpening them yourself will give you a better, sharper edge that lasts longer than what you got out of the box.

Third knife was a Ittosai Stain-Resistant Layered Steel Santoku 6.4" (16.5cm) as I wanted to try this new to me style and it was a pattern welded knife I could afford. Great knife but not as good as the other two. I really have not bonded well with this style but if I want to cut thin slices of onion, tomato or potatoes, this is a good one to use. But it normally stays at home rather than at school. Sharpness and edge retention is in between the Lamson and the Nenohi.

Next knife was a Glestain salmon slicer. I rarely use or require this knife but when I do, there is nothing better. Very sharp out of the box and I have not sharpened it yet. I am a little nervous about sharpening a 12" blade. Not sure as a culinary student when or if you would need to purchase one of these, definitely not at my school. It was a celebratory reward for myself.

Last knife I bought was a Misono Hankotsu for ripping up chickens. This was my first venture into single sided Japanese knives. This is a very heavy and menacing looking knife. Makes me feel like I should join the French Foreign Legion. While the edge out of the box is sharp, it isn't very good. It is not consistently sharp along the length of the edge. As before I think that sharpening this knife myself will get the maximum performance out of it. I just have not done it yet. I have to watch my DVD on sharpening first since I have never sharpened a single sided knife before.

For honing I use an F.Dick flat multi cut steel and highly recommend it. I don't do the razzle dazzle knife honing routine that every cook does. I think it is BS. I slowly pull the knife, at the proper angle, along the full length of the knife across the steel. After each pass I feel for a burr with my fingernail. If the burr moves to the other side then I hone that side. If I don't feel a burr on either side I don't bother honing the knife. I can usually hone a knife with three or four slow passes, though a knife that was used hard may need a few more. I hone them in the morning and then forget about it.

My recommendation for a first time purchase is to buy a good but not great nor cheap chef's knife, middle of the road. In my opinion, hands down, the Japanese steel is superior. But there is nothing wrong with the other's either. I highly recommend Lamson Sharp. Wustoff and Henckels are good too, but I would be sure they are forged. I have not been impressed with Dexter. Messermeister is better than Dexter. Regardless, this is a learning knife to learn technique, beat on, mess up sharpening, break the tips, etc. You won't be out much. Even an old Chicago knife is a good starter. Stay away from the cheap stamped Chinese crap. I don't like metal handles like Global but I think that is more of an individual preference, they are good knives. Buy a good steel and learn to use it. Buy at least a two sided stone and learn to use it, especially correct edge angle. I don't like oil at all but that is probably a personal preference. Do not ever ever ever rely on or use one of those pull sharpeners like fishermen use or an electric sharpener. Nothing will ruin your knife faster.

I'm going fish fish, fish fish, fish fish fishing again...

After we finished with our tribute to Eire, Chef gathered class around to tell us that the next day we had someone coming in to talk to us about a trip to Italy in September. One of the other schools in the area goes every two years or so and Chef is tired of us being the orphaned step-child and wants to start having us have the same opportunity to go. There would be some sightseeing and and also some cooking school. Sounds awesome even though I don't like Italian food. For the others it would definitely be good resume padding. Mayfield kept interrupting with a bunch of question, how much? When? What is the program? Where? Finally I had to interrupt. "You know, I bet that is what the guy is going to tell you tomorrow." I'm so smart. Bunch of undisciplined, attention challenged, disrespectful people.

Afterward it was time for our Nutrition class. I had set out a piece of salmon last week but then school was cancelled and it had sat for a week in the walk in. I threw it out and started over. I did learn that the vacuum sealed fish is supposed to be thawed out unwrapped, not in the vacuum sealed package. Something about the meat gassing off.

I had not done fish yet for this class, and we all should eat more fish, so I checked with my client and it turns out she LOVES salmon. That settled it, barbecued salmon. I have not had barbecued salmon before but my niece raves about it. It is one of three foods she will eat. She was very disappointed when she came to visit and we took her to Herb's to experience true southe'n BBQ that salmon was not an option. I think it is a Midwest thing.

I received mixed advice on how to grill the salmon. Chef said he sears the outside and finishes it off in the oven. I did indeed use this technique. Another instructor told me to soak the salmon in milk, but of course that was not an option for my client. I didn't bother making a barbecue sauce from scratch. I heard once that 75% of all restaurants use Cattlemen's sauce as their own or as a base to make their own. I used some Bull's Eye that we had but added Worcestershire, honey and apple cider vinegar. I lightly marinated the filet for maybe a half hour before throwing it on the grill. I basted it a few times. I tried very hard not to over cook it but it zoomed past 145°F so fast after I had pulled it, even though I pulled it early. I wasn't too worried because I believe that most people are used to eating overcooked salmon as restaurants play it safe.

I combined a presentation and a vegetable by placing the salmon on a bed of roasted vegetables. I had intended to use yellow squash, egg plant and zucchini but discovered at the last minute that all of the yellow squash had been used up that morning. I subbed red bell pepper instead. Tossed everything in olive oil, grilled them then finished off the vegetables in the pan with the fish in the oven. I cut the veggies into strips after they were cooked. I have a very sharp knife so that was not hard to do. Because my client wanted her plate to go, I was not worried about losing heat or any of the food being cold.

For dessert I went as basic as I could get, an ounce each of fresh blueberries, strawberries and blackberries layered into a parfait with vanilla soy yogurt. I put a pinch of raw sugar on top just for effect. Wendy City loved it so much she wanted the recipe. Take that Sandra Lee!

I named my menu the Superfoods because it was loaded in nutrients.

My compadres were making oatmeal burgers. I have a reputation in my class for being a pure carnivore. It isn't true, I do like vegetables. Even more so fruit. But I have a reputation to maintain no matter how false, and it is a fun reputation to have. Most people thought I wouldn't make the oatmeal burgers because of my anti-veggie reputation. Not so. Chef said the times he has had them they tasted just like a real hamburger. My client does not, will not, eat red meat. There was no way, no how, I was serving her a food that is like red meat. You should never make your client vomit because of your food. I had to argue this point with Mayfield. He said there was no red meat in the burger so what was the problem. Sometimes it just is not worth arguing.

Unfortunately Chef couldn't find a third of the vegan ingredients for the oatmeal burgers so they had to make some substitutions. New Girl almost vomited I think after she tasted one. I had a big piece and the flavor really was not bad. The texture was awful though. Just a nasty mush. Baby food has better body than these burgers. I had planned on making a black bean burger this week, but after tasting these I changed my mind. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Morningstar Farms (formerly Worthington Foods as in Worthington OH, my hometown) spicy black bean burgers, but they are made with textured vegetable protein (TVP). Without TVP I had my doubts of making a successful black bean burger. Today I noticed that in my recipes I have a black bean burger recipe that I have made, I just forgot. Looking at my notes today, I see I commented on the texture and mush mouth feel of the burger.

I watched everybody plate up. I feel good working with Tennessee. He was making an orange sorbet and wanted something green to garnish it with. Naturally we didn't have any mint. My brain went to working and I came up with using some zest from a lime. He liked my idea, made me feel good. Mayfield on the other hand did not like my questioning his plate. Yes, your oatmeal burger is healthy and nutritious, but serving two of them isn't really a healthy concept. Can we say portion control? RK was looking for some A1 sauce for his. Blech! I never use that stuff. He asked if my Bull's Eye barbecue sauce was the same. My eyes glazed over. Then I noticed a half sheet of what looked like under cooked potato wedges. I called out, "what kind of chips are these?" I thought they might be jicama chips or yucca chips which is something I wanted to do. "Thems is just baked taters," RK replies. Yeah? Your pre-diabetic client is going to love those. If only she knew that RK NEVER EVER washes his hands. I don't eat anything he cooks.

Éireann Go Brách

In college I always wanted to have an Erin Go Bra-less party, girls got in free if they weren't wearing a bra, with proof of course. Sadly, never happened.

On Monday we cooked once again for the local travel club. We had no idea what they were meeting about but it was close enough to March we decided to have St. Patrick's Day as our theme. If I had known ahead of time I would have brought my Irish cookbook, if I could find it. I said we should do a beef stew, shepherds pie, fish and chips and shortbread cookies. All of that got nixed except for the shortbread. Thanks TOM. Chef wanted more ideas. I said bangers and mash which isn't really Irish but close enough to count I think, I've had it at several authentic Irish Pubs. TOM pushed for a dish called Toad in the Hole. TOM explained that it is an Australian dish of a bed of mashed potatoes with the sausages sticking up so they look like toad heads poking out of a hole. While I realize that as a penal colony many Irish were shipped off to Australia, that doesn't make it an Irish dish. Turns out it's and English dish though I suppose it is popular in Ireland, made with Yorkshire pudding batter not mashed potatoes and the sausages lay down instead of poke out. I'm not surprised I am learning that TOM is all bluster, though I think the sausages sticking out would have been a clever touch.

So in the end we had corned beef and cabbage. Even though my heritage is Irish and German I do not eat corned beef and cabbage or sauerkraut for that matter. Blech! Chef did override TOM and added back the shepherds pie. Pizza Girl and The Kid made roasted vegetables, turnips, beets, potatoes, rutabagas and carrots. Slo Mo wore himself out making roasted potatoes. Chico and RK made soda bread. Hotties #2 and #3 made the shortbread. Tennessee, who was in our class as a make up day, I think worked on the potatoes, I'm not sure. New Girl and Sushi Boy 1 made apple cake. MILF chose me to be her partner to make bread pudding.

Except she didn't show up so I was on my own. We had a recipe for New Orleans bourbon bread pudding but we wanted to substitute the bourbon with Bailey's. But Chef did not get any Bailey's so I used a coffee extract. We were supposed to cook for 120 people. They had me sharing a chafing dish with the apple cake but that made no sense because the apple cake was going to be plated, so I got to use full pans. That was excellent because we have a shortage of half pans. What I did not know was that we were doing a double buffet line so I needed a full pan on both sides. This is the downside to things that are decided on Thursday when I am not there. Good thing I made three pans.

Pizza Girl had given the recipe to MILF so I asked PG if she could get me a copy. "Sure, after I finish with this butter." Tennessee wa standing next to me watching her pack a round tablespoon with butter and then scoop in out into a tub. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. I just shook my head and gave him a big Cheshire Cat grin. It's one thing if you scale a recipe for something like cookies and it requires 17 tablespoons of butter; baking is pretty exact with little forgiveness and you need to measure it out. It's another thing if the butter is for roasting vegetables, just round to three sticks! And she's done with school this quarter, she should know better!

I checked in on Sushi 2 and the toads. He was working with Igor and they were wrapping kielbasa in bacon and baking them. The sausages came out of the oven black. They so screwed up this recipe because they never thought about how they were going to serve the dish. They had baked the toad in the hole in full pans but were serving in a round chafer. So they spooned it all out into a round dish. Then they decided the sausages were too big so they cut them in half. In my opinion they were still three times too big. The batter/pudding stuff was nasty. The whole dish looked more like a pile of black dildos in vanilla cake than anything else.

Back on my side Chico and RK are arguing about their soda bread. Neither of these cats ever wash their hands so I wasn't eating any of this. Chico used a wooden skewer to test to see if the bread was done and pulled the pans out. RK had a fit because the recipe said it needed to bake for an hour and needed 25 more minutes of cooking. Back and forth. Chico walked off and RK cut a few slices of bread and then put them all back into the oven. They're both idiots. Later when Chico and Tennessee were slicing up the bread for service I told Chico that next time he could use his thermometer to check to see if his bread was done. HUH? He looked at me like I he was stoned and I had just flipped on the lights. When your thermometer reads 200°F, your bread is done. Like I'm the stupid one.

Earlier I had helped The Kid peel carrots for their roast vegetables. I use my petty knife. It is crazy sharp and I can peel a carrot faster than they can with a peeler. I just have to be careful to not go too deep or I'm hacking up the carrot. I can do it with potatoes too but it isn't as easy with the round shape. I was waiting for the HUGE mixing bowl that we usually use for salads. They were using it to toss their vegetables together before roasting and they were taking their sweet old time. I NEEDED that bowl because it is the only one big enough to do three pans of bread pudding. The Kid tells me that as soon as they finish these carrots I can have the bowl. I grab my knife and take over the cutting board. I asked how he wanted the carrots cut. Half rounds. It's funny that even though they seem to have learned that even sized pieces cook evenly they have not learned that as the carrot tapers down the piece has to be cut larger in order to maintain the same mass. I start in on the carrots and I'm cutting three to four carrots for every one that The Kid is cutting. Come on man, I might be twice your age but you only have one quarter of school left. You've got to have better knife skills than that!

After I get my three pans into the oven I see New Girl and Sushi 1 looking worried; their cake is not complete. Apparently after they had it in the oven a few minutes and were cleaning up they found their baking soda and realized they had forgot to put it in. So they pulled out the cake which was flowing over onto the oven deck and dumped it into a bowl to try to start over and salvage it. They weren't using an extender rack which was also a mistake. We don't use cake pans like you would at home, we have a rack that fits in the full sheet to make the cake sides. This is how the pros do it. They got everything mixed together and back in the oven, this time with the extender, but it was too late the cake just never cooked right. There was some discussion that they had also forgotten the milk. I would have scrapped the whole thing but they spooned the cake into a bowl and served it anyway. We had Toad in the Hole and Cake in a Bowl. Actually it tasted a lot like bread pudding and would have been good with ice cream on top.

I saw Mayfield's and TOM's shepherds pie. I am somewhat of a shepherds pie connoisseur. If I go to an Irish restaurant/pub I'm getting either shepherds pie or fish and chips or both. This was not shepherds pie. They made a bed of seasoned ground beef and onions and topped it with mashed potatoes and cheese. No peas. No carrots. And the meat should be in a sauce, almost like a beef stew. This was not right. Since I gave up beef for lent I did not try it but the mashed potatoes were awesome.

I had two pans of bread pudding out and ready to serve at 11:59. I still don't understand why the rest of them can't do that. Because we had two of each I said I needed a partner to help serve since MILF was not there. Hottie #2 asked why. Because I can't serve both sides at the same time by myself. Duh! She was serving the green shortbread cookies next to me. They were nasty. Remember we were supposed to serve for 120? About half way through all the people we ran out of cabbage, then corned beef and then shepherds pie. We did not run out of vegetables, potatoes, the nasty cookies and of course my bread pudding, because I had three pans, not just one. Dumb asses. Part of the reason is portion sizes. We are supposed to serve about a three ounce portion. My classmates have not learned that yet. People were getting half plates of cabbage, three 3 inch pieces of sausage, etc.

I am pleased to say that my bread pudding was a hit. I had many rave reviews and some people broke the rules and came back for seconds. I was even getting positive comments the next day with the left overs.

Sláinte mhaith!

Field Trip!

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Gung Hay Fat Choy!

It's the Year of the Tiger.

Last week we did our banquet a day early and our theme was Chinese New Year. Once again, me picking the theme. "Chinese food" was suggested, which is a cuisine. I suggested "Chinese New Year," which is a theme. Subtle I know.

Immediately I knew what I was going to make, Hot and Sour Soup. I got tired years ago of not being able to find a good soup when we lived in Bainbridge. Not a single good Chinese restaurant there. To be fair, they aren't any better here.

For some reason our class has shifted from making 6-8 items which we can do well to making 16-18 items which we can't even do half assed. Soup is simple, but I took my time so I didn't get roped into helping out someone with poor planning. My only problem was the chicken stock I had expected to be there from the Principals class never got made. So I had to use chicken base, and it was my downfall. I HATE using bases. I make a mean soup, and it hit all the right notes, except chicken base is so high in salt that the soup was too salty to eat. Really pissed me off. In hindsight maybe I should have poured half of it out and replaced with water and hoped the cooking would have been long enough to not taste watery. I left the pork out so that there was a meatless option, though as I type this I wonder where chicken base falls in the view of the meatless world.

Once again the rest of the class wasn't ready until quarter after noon. This time I said screw it and stood at my station waiting for everyone to come out with their dishes instead of helping. At some point you have to stop being a crutch and let people struggle to walk on their own.

RK made egg rolls, how typical, a Chinese burrito. They were lacking on filling but were pretty. Mouth made little egg rolls and called them spring rolls. I pissed her off because she was the sixth person to ask me where food was supposed to be stationed. It's Chinese buffet, it doesn't matter! Hottie #3 made Peking? Duck, well duck at least. It seemed a little burned to me. Bar Code made crab rangoons, They were pretty neat because he baked them rather than deep frying. They were one of the better dishes served. He disappointed me though because he refused to eat anything we made because he doesn't eat Chinese food. That's an issue and an attidude problem if you me.