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.

OMG! Not Vegetarian!

Yesterday morning I went out to start the cars, I don't scrape windows, haven't in 15 years. Cars these days come with a built in function called "heat" and have "defroster" settings. Some even have front and rear defrosters. Amazing technology. I could be lazy and buy a remote starter, but it isn't that difficult for me, as long as I don't fall down the steps. Anyway, I went out yesterday morning to start the cars and it was snowing hard. So I went inside to check to see if there was any notice regarding school and there was an email saying school was not closed. Fine. I would appreciate some consistency though. Last time it snowed on a Thursday and on Monday we didn't have school. This time we got about two inches on Friday and had small snow squalls on Saturday and Sunday and it was snowing now. Not a problem for me, I've driven through far worse on a routine basis in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. But just be consistent.

I got to school a little early. Blue skies. Unbelievable. I think there were 8 of us out of 18. Hottie # 2 called in saying she couldn't get out of her driveway. BS. But what really pissed me off was the school president announced that anyone who missed yesterday was not to be counted absent. So what's the point of being open? It seems the school is in a quandary with snow days, make up days, and staff suffering through furloughs but being asked to work for the make days. And somehow the attendance is tied to state funding and they don't want to risk losing any. It was 45 degrees when I left school yesterday afternoon. And even then people were saying they couldn't get out of their driveways. B-S.

Last night we had a dusting of snow, blue skies at 9:00AM and right now and school was cancelled for "inclement weather." WTF!

At least I will be home for the start of curling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week's nutrition class was a little more difficult because we were not allowed a grocery list. We had to work with what was already in the kitchen. That meant that just because something was in stock when I left on Tuesday, didn't mean that it would be there when I got back to class on the following Monday.

I always try to have three parts to my meals, soup and salad and dessert, salad and entree and dessert, salad and entree and side, etc. I figured I could do a veggie wrap. I would take one of my extreme high fiber tortilla shells from home. I would make hummus and use it instead of mayo and hope for the best on a variety of vegetables.

Trying to figure out a dessert was a little more difficult. I finally decided to go with oatmeal raisin cookies since I knew there would be oatmeal at school. But I was going to have to do some modifications. The classic Quaker Oats recipe called for butter and I couldn't risk using butter for someone with a milk allergy. I searched some vegan recipes for ideas but many of them called for items I knew I wouldn't have access to like apple sauce.

The other obstacle to overcome was the recipe yield was 48 cookies. I need one cookie. I needed to try to reduce the batch size down. My goal was to make a 50g cookie and a four cookie batch. The scientist in me kicked into over drive. The Friday before my class I settled into experiment mode.

Batch Number One was the classic recipe scaled to a yield of four. It worked! Batch Number Two was my attempt at replacing the butter with canola oil. It worked! But then I did my nutrition calculations and decided I needed to get some calories out. With batch Number Three I attempted that by replacing the white sugar with Splenda. The cookies worked again! But I still needed to get rid of more calories. For the last batch I pulled out all stops. In addition to using oil and Splenda, I replaced part of the brown sugar with honey. I also replaced the egg content with egg white. And I upped the oats and reduced the flour to try to pick up a tad more fiber. They took a little bit longer to cook and the cookies had to be flattened with a spatula because they did not spread out. But they did bake.

All of the cookies were made with dried cherries because I couldn't find my raisins. From now on, I'm using cherries. I thought they were SOOOOO much better. For my class I was planning on using dried cranberries because I knew for sure they were in stock. Of course the unadulterated cookie was the best. My wife preferred the cookie with oil substituted for butter though. It had a softer texture. The cookie with Splenda and oil was almost indistinguishable from the one with oil and sugar. The final cookie with all of my changes was not bad. No, it wasn't as good as the previous three but it was still a good tasting cookie. If you had nothing to compare it to and had one fresh, you would come away thinking it was a good but not memorable cookie. Better than many of the nutriloaf cookies available.

I was excited because I achieved my two goals, make a small batch of cookies and a healthier version that still tasted good. In the end I was able to reduce the calories from 211 to 156 and the fat grams from 9g to 6g per cookie. Unfortunately I was only able to increase the fiber content from 1.5g to 1.7g per cookie. Still, it was a noble effort.

I had no idea what to do for the third component for my meal but I kind of had this idea of soup and sandwich that kept popping into my head. I wanted to make a Russian fresh mushroom soup because I was sure that I had fresh mushrooms to work with. But the recipe calls for milk. Ugh. This will only work if I have soy milk and even if I have that, can you make a good tasting soup with soy milk? I decided that I would wing the third part and wait until I got to school and see what I had.

There was soy milk!

For the soup, I halved the batch. It's a stone simple soup made with milk, fresh mushrooms, potatoes and a little barley. Instead of sauteing the mushrooms in butter, I tried with a tiny bit of olive oil. It did not work as well and I ended up overcooking the soup trying to get the mushrooms and potatoes soft. By overcooking I mean that the soup was much thicker than I have made in the past, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I like thick soups. Of course the thickness could be related to using soy milk instead of real milk. Dunno. It tasted fine though.

I LOVE hummus. Just plain ordinary hummus. I don't need any of those fancy flavors like roasted pepper hummus. I can OD on hummus, and have. If you buy your hummus, stop. It is so damned simple to make and probably better for you than buying pre-made. I made a small batch and spread it on my wrap instead of mayo because if you are like me, you need something moist in your sandwich. I didn't know until later how many calories are in hummus. My nice thick layer of hummus skyrocketed my nutritious wrap to over 600 calories! A little less than if I had given her a Whopper from Burger King!!! If I had known that at the time I would have given her soup and HALF a sandwich, which probably would have been smart regardless. At least the fats from my hummus are far healthier than those in a Whopper. I did send the fiber content into the stratosphere with this meal.

For the veggies, I used a peeler to make thin strips of cucumber, carrot and bell pepper. I added a large leaf of romaine and for whatever reason decided to throw on some bits of broccoli florets. I kind of regret that last one. To take it over the edge, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes and sprinkled them over the middle. The whole thing rolled well, looked good and had the color that Chef wanted.

Except Chef wasn't there. New Chef liked what I was doing though. I hope I impressed him. He really liked my cookie and was very impressed with the thought process and effort I put into making them. Wendy City wanted her meal to go. I didn't think it was as good as the week before. The broccoli was really bothering me.

Speaking of effort. Mouth came in, pulled three items out of the walk-in that we had left over from lunch, put it on the plate, declared she was done and went home. Is that cooking? I didn't know we were doing Semi-homemade with Sara Lee.

In the end, my client didn't really care for the cookie, but hey, I tried. She did however love the soup and sandwich and appreciated all of my efforts.

Moroccan Medley

After our Afternoon in Paris, I have my nutrition class. Days have blended together now but I believe that we had a planning session for our nutrition class. Or maybe we cooked, I don't remember. I do know that I had asked Chef what our focus for our meal should be and Chef said Mediterranean Diet. Personally I am undecided if the Mediterranean Diet is all that yet. Is it for real or is it a fad? Probably somewhere in between but for sure it is the latest diet craze and frenzy.

Rather than just make something up like the others in my class do, I decided to do Moroccan. I try to make all of my Nutrition meals as three courses. For this one I wanted to do a soup and salad and a dessert. Most of my class is just serving a single salad, or in the case of RK a single empanada/burrito.

In addition to the nutrition summary that I have been providing my client, I started giving her copies of the recipes in case she likes what she eats. I scaled them for two. This puts me exponentially above and beyond my classmates.

The salad was a savory sweet potato salad served at room temperature. The soup was a chickpea and lentil soup with just a little bit of chicken. And for dessert I made a light fruit salad tossed in orange juice and honey. Of all of the food I have cooked in all of my classes, I am most proud of this one.


I was disappointed that afterward Chef said we need to work on our plating, he wants to see more color. He also said we need to focus on portion sizes. Surely he wasn't talking to me?

PS. I got a rave review from my client!

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.

And It's Magically Nutritious

As I said, I'm taking two classes this quarter. In the afternoon I have my Nutritional Food and Menu Development class. Basically this is Personal Chef 101. As usual, the class started off slowly and spiraled down from there.

While our chili was cooking, I purchased my book for class in the school bookstore. Chef told me to buy the In Good Taste book. I cocked my head and said OK. I had noticed that everyone else had a book titled Nutrition for Foodservice and Culinary Professionals. In the book store the In Good Taste book was labeled as "required" and the Nutrition book was labeled as "recommended." Very good. Halfway through class Chef asks who has their book and a few start whining about how they don't. At that point I hold up my copy and ask, "I thought we were using this one?" Yes. Then the fireworks started. Whine, whine, whine. You told us to get the other book. Whine, whine, whine. WTF, you people can't read? (more on that later).

The issue apparently is the cost of the books. They are almost $100 in the book store. You can go online and buy a new one for half that and a used one for a tenth. For me, the class was that day and I needed the book so I bought it. I don't mean to sound like a snob, but I don't care how much the books cost. When I was in college and books were listed and ASSIGNED it was your responsibility to read the assignements BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. That meant, buy, borrow, photocopy, rent, whatever (we didn't have online sources back then, heck, we only had one bookstore, you bent over and took it). These guys are holding up the whole class because they don't want to shell out more than $5 for a used book plus $4.95 in shipping. Grow up dammit. That's like me not showing up to work because I don't have the money to buy steel toe boots. Find a way!

So any way, our modus operandi for this class is to pick someone in the school and cook a meal for them every Tuesday (or Monday if conflicts arise). We are to interview our client about their dietary needs. Cool. I can do that.

Holy shit! First we had to have a ten minute debate, explanation and just mental tripping over what a "meal" is. If you ever criticized Bill Clinton for asking the definition of the word "is" then you can shut up now since I just witnessed ten people, culinary art students, future chefs, asking for the definition of a "meal" and a "plate". Thank God my knives were locked up in a locker.

We also have to keep a notebook with our meal planning and nutritional data. It will be graded and I quote "I want you guys to put some effort into this quarter." You want me to keep a notebook? A lab notebook? Thank you Lord! This plays to my metallurgical engineering strengths.

Small scale cooking with a scientific approach? Now we are in my realm. New Girl is a former med-student so I think she and I will be the ones that shine in this class.

Not knowing a single person in the school I asked Chef for help. He recommended the receptionist, Wendy City. She's pissed me off in the past, but maybe some good food is the key to getting on her good side. She was agreeable to me cooking for her. I learned she's Type II, has a milk allergy, a shellfish allergy, does not eat red meat or catfish. Good, a challenge. I'm Type II also, so I won't need any research there, that part will be easy. Seven years of diabetic nutrition classes and I think I have that aspect down cold.

I came back told Chef and he was pleased. Now for the meal plan. I was thinking a salad, chicken and vegetable and a small dessert to cleanse the palate. I understand why Chef wanted us to use the In Good Taste book, it's a cookbook, the other is a text book, no recipes. First thing I find is a Roasted Pepper and Olive Salad. It uses kalamata olives so I immediately think Greek. I find a recipe for Pan Seared Chicken Served on Couscous and Green Beans. Perfect. To finish, a pseuso-ice cream made with skim milk, yogurt and ricotta. Yogurt just screams Greek.

I'm all set, I figure up my calorie count, proteins, and carbs based on the nutrition info given for each recipe. Looking good, about 700 calories. I start making my grocery list. Dammit, she's got a milk allergy. A ha! Cinnamon Gelato! Maybe I can substitute soy milk for the milk and get it to freeze? Chef says it's worth a try. Sweet! I'm ready to go and work out my details at home.

At that point Mayfield asks Chef about serving some of last quarter's Stollen as a dessert. What? For those that don't know, Stollen is the better tasting rich uncle of fruit cake. Chef frowns, "what are you talking about?" "The stollen bread we made. That stuff is so gooood. It'd be a great dessert Chef," says Mayfield. Yeah, like a piece half inch by half inch! Chef told him, "you have to remember what class you're in. This is NUTRITION."