This was a very interesting week at school. It was a good week, because it was our fifth week, which means that we are a third done our program! It’s amazing that we are already a third done; the time has absolutely flown by. This week was also charcuterie week. Now I’m sure many of you are thinking, “Charcuterie? What is charcuterie?!” You’re not alone. That is exactly what I thought at the beginning of this week.
Charcuterie literally means “cooked meat”. It’s the practice of making sausages, pates, terrines, bacon, confit, etc…generally from pork. Charcuterie also involves using all parts of a carcass, and ways of curing and preserving meats. It is a bit of a lost art, having first been regulated by the Romans, but it is coming back.
So our week started off with pork butchery. A couple of us were at Starbucks before school talking about the day to come. We knew we were butchering pork, but we figured that they would be bringing in large slabs of pork for us. “They’re not going to bring in whole pigs” were our exact words. Well, we were partly right. They didn’t bring in whole pigs, just halves. As we came into our classroom we noticed that everything that is normally set up at our stations (oils, salt, pepper, utensils, etc…) was all set underneath. We were told not to put anything on the cutting boards, and a couple of the guys were sent out back to help bring in our meat. And bring in our meat they did! Halves of pigs! Gutted and with no head, but everything else was there; hair, hooves, one even still had it’s curly little tail!
We knew from then that it would be an interesting day. So first off we got a demonstration on how to butcher the pig. Where to cut, what bones to remove, how to cut off the skin, etc…
After this we were sent back to our stations, and with about 6 people per pig we were put to it. I was given a piece of the pig and I set out to cut the skin off. Well, at this point one of the visiting chefs who were there to help us let me know that my knife was too dull to do anything well (I stoned it the night before!!). I proceeded to try, and he came back and let me know again that it was too dull and “don’t ever show up to work with a knife like that”. Great, I’m off to a good start! He then lent me his boning knife, which was very nice of him.
So I set off again, and it was easier with the chef’s knife. Easier until I set his knife down after washing it, went to wash mine, came back and his had disappeared. As I was having a minor freak-out and came close to my first break down in class, my stove mate found that another student couldn’t find his knife and had wandered off with the chefs. We returned the knife to the very angry chef and started off again.
Again, I was off to a great start. We got through pig butchering day without any other problems, and then moved on to the rest of charcuterie week!
We made sausages, terrines, cassoulet, ballotines, galantines, salmon roulade, pickled vegetables and more. The whole week was a build up to Friday where we put together charcuterie platters, showcasing all of our work from the week. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures to put up, but my classmate Kari does on her blog http://iheartbigflavour.wordpress.com.
The only disappointment (other than the knife fiasco) I had this week was that we used truffles for the first time…but it was in something I couldn’t eat! The only item from our charcuterie platters that wasn’t gluten free was the terrine we made. The base of the terrine was a mixture of ground pork, pork fat and duck leg meat. But all of this is held together with a “panada”; a mixture of breadcrumbs moistened with stock, milk or cream. With this mixture we layered truffles, duck tenders (breast meat) and trotter meat (meat from the feet of the pigs we butchered…hey, I said we used everything from the pig!). So I was a little annoyed that my allergy prevented me from trying truffles (which I’ve never eaten before), but I guess that just goes with the joys of being Celiac!
Charcuterie week was very interesting. Our chefs started talking about it the week before, telling us how great it was and how interesting and fun it would be. So from this I was very intrigued. It was interesting to learn everything we did all week, but I didn’t get as excited as the chefs made me think I would be. I did enjoy learning about butchering the pig, how to make sausages, and basically how to do everything we did this week, but I didn’t feel the passion that they did. I think I mainly just enjoyed learning what we did. I did feel a sense of pride looking at our beautiful charcuterie platters, because they were quite incredible. And as one of my chefs pointed out, if they had shown us pictures of these platters on the first day, I would not have believed that we could have made them. After writing this, I think that I am undecided on charcuterie week. Maybe with more practice I might enjoy it more, but for now, I’m looking forward to this week; it’s seafood week! Bring on the crab and lobster!
Charcuterie! And yes, it can be gluten free!
Culinary School Photos
I have finally figured out how to post photos to my blog, so here are a few from the first few weeks of school. These photos are all courtesy of my classmate Amy. I am going to try and remember to bring my camera from now on, so I will hopefully post photos more regularly.
Creme Brulee
This is the only thing I could eat during our pastry days.
Pear Tart
The poached pear tart.
Pear Tart (Side View)
Profiteroles
Profiteroles made from choux pastry dipped in chocolate, with creme patissierre in the middle and resting in creme anglaise.
I will post more photos as the weeks go on.
Week 4-Otherwise known as pastry week
This week at school we did three full days of pastry. We made bread, tarts, profiteroles, puff pastry, cinnamon buns, creme brulee, muffins, cookies, scones and more. It was sugar overload!
One of the things I enjoyed making the most was a pear tart. But not just any pear tart! This tart had about five different components to it.
First off we made a blitz puff pastry. It is essentially puff pastry but a little bit quicker and easier to make. We mixed the pastry dough and formed it into about the size of a piece of paper. Then it is folded like a letter, and left to rest in the fridge. Every so often we roll it out, fold it and let it rest again, until we have done this four times. This lets the dough and butter form layers. When this pastry is baked it puffs up to about seven times its original size.
This pastry was the base of our tarts. Next we poached pears (or rather, our chefs did, in a communal pot for the class). The pears were poached in a mixture of red wine, cloves, star anise, cinnamon sticks, sugar, bay leaf and water. They were poached until they were relatively soft, but still had structure. We had pitted the pear halves, and we filled the hole where the core would be with chocolate. Then we put some pastry cream; a mildly sweet thickened milk mixture (which can be made with cornstarch instead of flour!) in the tart shell, and rested the pear on top of the pastry cream.
While doing all of this we made tuille pastry. This is pastry that we baked in very thin pear shapes and dusted them with crushed nuts. When these came out we rested them against the pears in the tart. The whole thing sat on top of creme anglaise (pastry sauce), which is a vanilla sweetened milk and cream mixture.
These tarts looked amazing. I have a picture of them that a classmate sent me, and I will try to post it later today.
Of course I couldn’t eat these tarts! Or any of the other pastry we made this week, until we ate our creme brulee’s. We ate them on Wednesday, after everyone else was totally burned out on sugar. Most people had only a bite or two because they were really sweet and everyone had filled their sugar quota for about the next year…except me! I was so excited to eat the creme brulee! As this was the only sugary item I had eaten all week I had no guilt about eating all of mine!
And my week also ended on a sweet note when one of the pastry students informed me that they had made a poppy seed cake that was gluten free! I ate one piece, and passed the other along to my dad. He was thrilled, especially after seeing all of the other items I had brought home all week that neither him or I could eat.
This coming week we’re learning all about pork, and I believe we’re even making our own bacon! Stay tuned…
-To view some pictures of all of the pastries from this week, check out http://iheartbigflavour.wordpress.com
Oysters!
Today at school we learned how to shuck oysters. I have never done this before, and I actually haven’t eaten many oysters in my time. However, I have eaten enough to know that I don’t like them raw, but I do enjoy them cooked. Luckily for me, we were cooking the oysters today.
The first thing we did was watch a video (yes, I said video, my school busted out the VCR!) on oyster production. We learned how they are grown, produced, packaged, shipped and shucked. The process is actually pretty interesting, but long to get into. If you’re interested, Google “oyster farming” and you can find a lot of information.
After the video we watched one of our chefs give us a demonstration on shucking oysters. We all gathered around the demo station, trying to get a glimpse of some secret that might make it easier!
To shuck an oyster, you first have to figure out which is the top and which is the bottom of the shell. You may laugh and say, “isn’t that obvious?” but it’s not! Even our chef wasn’t sure with his first one. The cup side (curved side) is the bottom, and the flatter side is the top. Then you need to take a shucking knife and wedge the tip in the “hinge” of the oyster. It’s like a little lip between the two shells. You wedge the knife in there and then turn it slightly to open the hinge. Before you yank open the shells, you need to slide the knife in and detach the abductor muscle from the top shell. This muscle keeps the oyster in place.
Once the top shell is off, run the shucking knife along the bottom of the oyster, again detaching the abductor muscle. While doing this whole process you need to make sure you don’t lose any of the oyster liquor from inside the shell, as people like to slurp it along with their raw oysters!
It’s quite a process to get these little things out of their shells! I had always heard that shucking oysters wasn’t the easiest thing, and it’s true! At first. As I was holding my first oyster in my left hand and the shucking knife in my right my chef came over and told me that I was scaring him and looked like I was going to hurt myself! So he showed me a different way to hold the oyster and got that one started for me. I did my next three myself, with a bit of trouble, and immediately decided I needed more practice. I decided I would borrow a shucking knife from school and buy some oysters on my way home to practice. More on that later.
The oysters we made at school were cooked. We breaded them with a mixture of flour, egg, crushed toasted quinoa, parsley and spices. I of course used potato flour. Once they were breaded we briefly shallow fried them until the breading was slightly crispy. We served them with brunoise carrots (tiny tiny cuts of carrots), julienned radish and cucumber and a beet juice emulsion.
They were really good! I really liked the smaller ones that I could just pop in my mouth. The crispyness of the breading mixed with the saltiness of the oyster and freshness of the radish, cucumber and carrot was fabulous! What I didn’t like was my one large oyster, because I had to eat it in two bites, and then the slimy texture of the oyster in the middle was more noticeable.
Our finished product:
Oysters breaded and shallow fried, served on the half shell with brunoise carrots, beet juice emulsion, cucumber, radish and herb salad.
Everyone had different reactions to the oysters. Some people loved them and were trying to steal some from other people, while some people didn’t like them at all, and were giving their oysters away.
I bought the oysters from Inlet Seafoods in Newport Village, Port Moody, and the gentleman who helped me was very helpful. He showed me two different kinds, and I picked the ones that looked the most like the oysters we had done at school. Although of course I can’t remember what they are called! When I got home with my dozen oysters I was determined to shuck them all. I grabbed a cloth and my shucking knife and went to it!
The first couple were very easy. The knife went in quickly, slid around and I got the shells open with minimal damage! Then I came to one that was crusted with barnacles. Hmmm, my chefs didn’t mention barnacles at school. I tried with this one, couldn’t get the knife to budge in, so I set it aside for later. I went though the rest and got them all done quickly. I shucked much better than I did at school, as well as quicker. Then I came back to the barnacle oyster. I tried again, broke the shell a little bit, but made no advancements in opening the shell. So I gave up. Although, in my defence, I think the reason I couldn’t open the shell was because the barnacles were encrusted along the two shells, keeping them closed. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself!
So, on my second try shucking oysters I got 11 out of 12 of them done. Not bad! All in all, it was a successful oyster day!
Fellow Culinary Student’s Blog
For another look at the life of a culinary school student, check out my classmates blog. She blogs about food in general as well as our adventures at culinary school.
Check her out at http://iheartbigflavour.wordpress.com
