Chef Girl

Juventino Update

2006-04-23T00:54:00.000-04:00

D'oh! I almost forgot. I'm sure my reading populace is just dying to find out the latest in my incredibly fascinating quest to secure the affections of the adorable Chef across the hall. I daren't disappoint, despite one episode left on the Season 2, Disc 4 of Alias, and an entire bottle of lush biodynamic German wine just consumed.

I wrote the email I mentioned (about absolutely needing my spicy power point CD as soon as possible, lest I have a horribly conspicuous omission in my carefully-crafted class notes). In it, I tried to appeal to our dual love of order and organization, without neglecting the necessary cornicopia of blooming prose and hilarious afterthoughts. Truly, it was a masterpiece of cyberfliration.

Juventino never responded.

However, on Tuesday he approached me in the hall with an (I'd like to think) bashful grin and a manila envelope full of burned CDs for our class.

"I got your email," he said, almost hestitating. Then, excited, he whipped out the evidence. "But I've only had a chance to burn CDs for some of the class. Can you hand these out?"

I did hand them out, diligent pupil that I am. And I'd just like to say, even though "Niehaus" is at the end of the alphabet, *my* CD was the first one in the envelope.

I mean, I couldn't Juventino-dice a potato if my life depended on it (even more impossible than an onion...for YOU must impose the geometry--a spatial task which, for the mathematically unblessed, is like trying to tie your shoe without opposible thumbs. If you doubt me, get a potato you don't mind wasting, square it off, obtain the "helpful" knife chart, and just try to make 1/8" by 1/8" by 1 1/2" juliennes. No, seriously, before you judge me--TRY.).

Remember what we were talking about?: My CD was Numero Uno.

I'm just saying.

I Apologize for the Delay

2006-04-23T00:18:00.000-04:00

I've had all sorts of good intentions to write and write and write this week, and have instead been overcome with other things--be it cooking leathery rabbit and discovering that it tastes kind of like meat stuck beneath a hairy hunter's armpit, or trying to process the putting-to-sleep of Tulip, or eating too much Easter candy...or, which is really the kicker, trying to want to do something other than watch endless episodes of Alias. As I don't want this blog to turn into some kind of pathetic diary of my life, I am just going to offer small tidbits (think: appetizers) of last week's culinary endeavors, and then I will try to be better at updation in the coming week, in case anyone out there is tracking (and after all that Alias, I can believe that someone is. George W? Ex-boyfriends? The Alliance??? You never know.)

In another diary-esque aside, I'm required to write an essay about a culinary figure who influenced my life. It's due on May 2nd, and I went from considering James Beard (a dull record of his early Oregonian escapades written by a vanity biographer [husband of his cookbook editor], and the blow jobs Jeremiah Tower reports to have given him while holding up his enormous tummy rolls kind of ended that) to an intense obsession with M.F.K. Fisher. I should have known this was coming, as I can't believe I've been without her in my life for so long. If you don't know anything about M.F.K. Fisher, your life and palate are the duller for it. If it doesn't end up being too ridiculous, I will post my essay here and then you can begin to appreciate my obsession with a woman who wrote about food, passion, hunger, and sex with a kind of voluptuous prose that 1) I've never before encountered and 2) was composed at a time when the words of women were far less prevalent in the public unit of acceptance. I don't know how she did it. I hope to find out before my essay is due.

In the meantime, last week Chef Allen was in Santa Fe, and we butchered bunnies and piggies and Mary's little lamb with a substitute. Our sub-Chef was a small-yet-imposing women with the scarily perfect kind of skin I hope to have at 45 (but given the evidence of maternal predecessors, will not). She had a lot of fascinating things to say, most especially about Pork (God, I love Pork) about which I promise an "Ills of Industrialization" treatise (after I finish with season 2 of Alias, I swear). Just to tide you over, you know lamb? How it can taste like sweaty socks grilled over charcoal made from a vat of post-frat-party vomit? Well, there's good reason.

Lambs have scent glands in their legs (Randy and I shaved one off a leg and sniffed it and waved it around, so I swear it's true) that, as they mature, give off that musty locker room odor you taste in cheap Indian lamb vindaloo. The scent permeates the meat as the lamb grows up, and after about two years of glanduar excretion, no small sheep has even a chance of tasting mildly decent. So get 'em while they're young, folks.

Sub-Chef Erica's best line:
"Mouthfeel is what separates the men from the boys."
(Is it, truly? Anyone willing to conduct a test? I'll supply the pineapples...unless that would invalidate results... ;))

P.S. Dear sweet Tulip is probably undergoing her general cremation this very moment (getting her ashes back, besides being unduly morbid, cost $200 more). If you have a chance, send a few happy thoughts of endless catnip and plenty of IAMS Turkey & Giblets to the litter box in the sky.
P.P.S. Daisy and I could also use donations of Kleenex.

Tribute to The Egg

2006-04-16T23:38:00.000-04:00

Happy Spring, everyone!

On this joyous occasion of resurrection and passing over, there is an abundance of eggs to be enjoyed on either side of the Jesus divide. However, there is really only one ovum worth mentioning:

The Cadbury Cream Egg (Step 6).

Now, I'm not generally an advocate of any kind of mass-produced chocolate, especially when it's affliated with the Hershey Corporation, purveyors of fine brown wax since 1927. But, U.S. distribution deal with the cacao equivalent of McDonalds notwithstanding, the Cadbury Company can be allowed continued fiscal support from People of Taste. This, because their fine milky-chocolately sugary-creamy fakey-yolky Easter masterpiece must be worshipped on every altar of epicurean appreciation--secular, Pagan, or otherwise.

Much as each person has a preferred fashion for Oreo consumption, there are a variety of methods by which to enjoy The Egg. Here I offer you my tried-and-true method:

1) Purchase the blessed four-pack. Only the classic version will do, none of this caramel-variety crap or imposter brand fakery. If you live in my neighborhood, finding the Classics could involve getting down on all fours in the crusty aisle of Key Foods to search the deepest corners of a seemingly empty shelf. You might be reduced to this after a day-before-Easter trek to every drug store in the near vicinity, all of which were cruelly picked over by eight-thousand diligent double-stollerians. Don't worry if the nearby Rastafarian piling Rice-o-Roni in his cart thinks your insane: when you surface from the floor brandishing the Four Pack, he will never again doubt the power of either The Egg or the childless woman's need for her Easter fix.

2) Place the package in the middle of your kitchen table, or on an available and properly centrally-located counter space. Admire the purple cardboard through which shine enticing glints of primarily-colored foil.

3) After a timely worship, carefully open the package and remove The First Egg.

4) Roll it around in your palm for approximately 3.2 seconds. More and you will start to melt the lucious chocolate "shell;" less and you will not sufficiently room-temperaturize the internal sugary essence.

5) Remove enough foil to reveal The Egg's top third.

6) Bite off this portion and suck rapidly. Such a vacuum-action will ensure that your first bite includes not only the thickest bit of chocolate, but also a goodly amount of the white, without which The Egg Experience is but substandard chocolate consumption--otherwise known as Easter blasphemy!

7) Insert your tongue and lick out the rest of the yolk. Be sure to admire the accompanying visual of white white and yellow yolk, made entire of refined white sugar. (The kind of which apparently terrifies some self-admitted "fascist" Brooklyn parents, who insist that their children go an an egg hunt for eggs filled with *stickers*--not an Egg, bit of chocolate, or even disturbingly-bloated Branch's jelly bean in sight. To me this not only shows alarming disregard for festivity, but also the desire to turn their children into joyless and vehement macrobiotics whose mid-life crises are spent hawking homemade candy on the Interstate in a desperate effort to save other children from similar fates as the Tragically Tofu-Boned.

A mere matter of days before the roadside vigil begins.)

8) Place the rest of the chocolate shell (yes, all of it) into your mouth. Allow to melt luxuriously, occasionally swirling as your personal need for lingual aerobics dictates.

9) Repeat x3.

10) This is a nine-step process. Some things in life don't fit into comfortably hectacimal confines.

Of Mango Cubes and Brown Marshmallows

2006-04-11T23:05:00.000-04:00

Well, friends, today was good. How else to describe a day that ends with a deliciously chilly vodka tonic and the equivalent of a week's salary worth of veal in my fridge? New York people be nice: There could be veal scallopine or blanquette de veau in your very near future. I'm not averse to foot massages or gifts of fine dark chocolate, is all I'm saying.

In other news, tonight's veal extravaganza included de-boning an entire baby cow hindquarter--a piece to which two kidneys are still attached. They look a bit like a mango skin pimpled with little brown marshmallows. See below.

Take this, but brown

Blooming on this

And you get this. Tell me it's not an accurate description.

It's just too bad that's not what they *taste* like. Sauce Robert (mustard/shallots/cream) aside, the texture/flavor combo reminded me of stale Charleston Chew melted onto leftover low-grade beef chunks, had I ever been unlucky enough to ingest that combination. Now I don't have to.

It's such a funny thing about taste (for which we all know there's no accounting for, in any part of life), how much it has to do with pre-conceived notions and societal conditioning. It's really no weirder to eat muscle and connective tissue and fat than it is to eat organs, but man, try telling that to my brain as I swished around that piece of kidney and forced myself to swallow. What finally did it was the thought of being the Girl Who Threw Up Kidney for the rest of time.

Already tonight Chef Allen went over sauteeing perfectly (ahem, Juventino) diced potatoes, which involves such vast quantities of butter that he deemed them "Potatoes Alisha." (I love subtly sarcastic people.)

I also inquired of Chef Allen if Chef Juventino had ever delivered on the promise of a CD with his sleek spice Power Point. He hasn't. Which is shocking, really, for a fellow Type-A. Of course I am not at all okay with this (I wasn't going to indulge myself, but now I'm compelled: The smashing 100% I got on last night's quiz reminded me of just how much pleasure such people [ME] get out of demonstrating perfect multiple choice skills. Years after high school, when such things were commonplace, I finally figured out what it is: Grade-gasms. I actually get a nearly sexual thrill from the in-control-of-everything feeling I acheive in momentary and meaningless perfection. Ooooh, I'm shivering). Chef Juventino WILL deliver the disk, and I am going to email him about it. I am sure his response will be every bit as exciting as it is in my fantasies. I'll be sure to report the sordid details.

And that's about it. My vodka tonic (whoever it was who gave me the huge bottle of Grey Goose for my housewarming party, I LOVE YOU) is nicely kicking in, so I'm going to go read about James Beard for my upcoming paper (oooh...I LOVE papers!). Curled up next to me will be my poor, poor kitty, whose left ear is now entirely flat, fused to the top of her skull. It's the saddest thing ever, and has gone leagues towards making me understand how people find the motivation to start foundations to investigate strange diseases that take their loved ones.

If I had a movie star salary, the Cat-Killing Skull-Inflating Cancer of Horrific Proportions Society would be soliciting the knowledge and support of the world's pre-eminent veternarians. As it is, Daisy and I have daily pow-wows about how we'll deal with life on our own. She's not sure she wants a new sister.

For now, both sisters are really enjoying the kidney that Eduardo the Large Cuban did not entirely consume. Sauce Robert aside, of course.

Slaughterhouse 1402

2006-04-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

I realize I am harping on this theme of death, but this evening being faced with parts of a cow the normal person doesn't even realize exist, an awful fact became clear to me.

Chefs are murderers. I mean, all sensible meat-eaters are, in a sense, but there a is very visceral quality to this new profession that involves, well, things that were once quite alive--mooing contentedly, covered in leather--becoming very, very dead. And then lathered in butter sauce. (I'll make Chef Allen proud yet.)

Next time you consume cow consider this: it's not only "aged beef" that must be aged. All beef must be aged at least six weeks, because prior to that its rigor mortis makes the meat too stiff for steak.

Life, and death, in the details.

(Perhaps going to the Bodies exhibit just prior to starting my butchering career was a bad idea. Because, honestly, it's a little eerie just how much WE look like steak.

Delicious. Anyone want a short rib?)

I'm just saying. Think about it.

I Shucked a Bivalve

2006-04-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

And Eric the NY Stock Exchange Floor Trader murdered a lobster. Chef Allen lobotomized the other. And I screamed.

When they first brought out the lobsters they were covered in towels, and when Laura took the towel off, there was one delicious beast squirming around and glancing suspiciously at its mostly-dead friend, who was testing out rigor mortis nearby. I squealed (seriously, involuntarily, as I will kill spiders and remove mouse carcasses from inside my stove), "Oh my god it's moving!"

Chef Allen shook his head. (Is this becoming a theme in my interactions with him?) "From the girl who doesn't like butter. Honestly," he sighed.

I'm quite popular.

Then he grabbed his knife and proceeded to demonstrate how one "piths" a lobster, which is essentially driving a very sharp knife into its brain to cut its entire skull cavity in half. Then you twist off its tail with a sudden cruel crack and dismember its claws, and in less than ten seconds a live large crustacean is reduced to a few pieces destined for butter sauce.

Who remembers this guy? Chef Allen in a past life.

Previous to turning our classroom into a seafood slaughterhouse, we had learned how important it is that chefs be able to determine the sex of a lobster.

"How can we tell the sex of a lobster?" Chef Allen asked the class.

A wave of murmurs faded before ever becoming audible. Finally, Dean eruditely offered, "Females have ovaries."

Chef Allen shook his head (not at me!). And sighed, "Sure thing, Dean." Then he held up one of the lobsters, shook it, demanding, "Hey! Do you have ovaries?" Needless to say, the lobster didn't answer.

So how do you really tell? Females have wider hips and taste sweeter. (Boys, this is wisdom for the ages. I hope you didn't hear it here first.)

Also, it's not good to kill agitated lobsters, because the adrenaline that pumps through their lobster veins when they get excited makes them taste bitter. So Chef Allen demonstrated petting a lobster in calming strokes across its shell. You can also stand it on its head and fold its tail over, which apparently is the Downward-Facing Dog of the yogic lobster universe. The most important thing, I think, is whispering sweet nothings.

"Yes, good little lobster, you will taste delicious smothered in my roux."

Or,

"Don't worry, I've put enough water in this pot that you will be entirely exfoliated by scalding hot liquid."

Apparently Martha Stewart once suggested putting vodka in with the lobster water, which would "relax the lobsters." Horse shit, says Chef Allen. Which makes sense, as his impression of the difficultly inherent in enjoying a bit of Smirnoff while boiling to death was nearly worth the entire price of my tuition.

Relaxed or not, those buggers were incredible in our saute of fruits de mer. Plus, the fruits de mer included several clams that I myself shucked. For after I saw the brutal treatment of lobster, shoving a knife into a living mollusk, slicing its key muscles in two, ripping off half its skin, and then scooping all its intimate parts into a bowl didn't seem so cruel. In fact, it was kind of fun.

I might have a career as a seafood butcher.

Damn Layers of an Onion

2006-04-07T00:31:00.000-04:00

[Thanks, Neil, for giving me the coolest poster ever--now my home bathroom is officially as awesome as the bathroom of a cheap bar, as it contains a real-live framed poster of fascinating inanities! An elephant weighs less than the tongue of a blue whale...]

I'll begin with Tuesday's hilarious moment during which I made a realization. As Dean had taken my normal brown-noser seat at the front of class (also good for people who haven't figured out how to properly clean their glasses), I was relegated to the big table's back edge, which faces the classroom across the hall. Which is...you guessed it...Juventino's classroom.

Not that I wasn't incredibly intrigued by the introduction of all the shiny stainless steel kitchen equipment with which I will become intimately familiar (Steam-jacketed kettle, anyone? 1000 degree broiler? Hobart that cleans and sanitizes dishes in a speedy three minute cycle?), but the discovery was mildly distracting. Funniest, however, was when Chrissy (of the kiwi-skin eating fame

and also, as a fascinating personal aside, who purchased an efficiency apartment in the building next to ICE to eliminate an every day commute from deepest New Jersey. Unable to sleep on her first night, she inquired with management as to the source of the two interminable bright lights from across the way. "Why, they belong to a cooking school," she was told. And thus began the journey of a woman who yesterday admitted,

"I NEVER cook! I'm the microwave queen!"

to the stainless steel jungle of the professional kitchen)

caught my wandering gaze and burst out laughing. So of course I burst out laughing, and luckily Chef Allen had just said something that may have been construed as hilarious and we were saved. Chrissy is apparently convinced that her mission is to make Juventino tell her how old he is, which I don't think I assigned but can't be sure. Oh, how I wish I could sometimes close my big mouth. Alcohol, to some, is simply a social lubricant, while to me it's a vocal diuretic.

Sigh.

Tonight, though we actually picked up our knives for the first time! And we sharpened them (correction: I tried to sharpen them) and then began what will be a long and laborious journey with onions, celery, and carrots.

When we were first presented with the onion and asked to dice it, the tense silence in the room was tangible. Suddenly, a group of people who collectively have diced twenty fields of this pungent root became anxious neophytes, afraid to wield the great power of Wusthof's glowing 9-inch Chef's Knife.

Or maybe it was only me.

Because Neil seemed to be an iron-chef in the making, and my first piece of onion squirted away and underneath a rack of tongs. And Dean's days as a Balducci's peon caught up with him, in a pleasant and efficient way.

But I just eyed that damn onion, and cried a bit (onion's fault, totally), and then Chef Allen had to come over and tell me that it was okay to have your onion fall apart, because that is the nature of onions.

"Alisha," he comforted. "Onions do that. Don't worry! It's not like I'm asking you for a Juventino dice."

Yep. I'm not worried. I'm just thanking the lord that some people are less anal than I am, and that one of those people will guide me through the re-learning to chop process.

And then I will master the slippery, slimy onion, and dice it to my will. Because there appears to be a kind of dice I have to master...

This is my official Classic Knife Cuts Visual Model Set. I urge you to note the teeny-tiny nature of the "fine brunoise," which weighs in at 1/16" cubed. Apparently, I will be engaging in knife drills after which my brunoises and other fancy cuts will be placed on this very plasticoated chart, in the place next to the stylish 3D model, in the hopes that mine are exact replicas. In fact, some teachers require such precision. ;)

I Fixed the Preferences

2006-04-07T00:27:00.000-04:00

...so now you don't have to be a member of this strange blogging world to make comments. Please do! I have no idea if anyone is really reading my heartfelt commentary on...my life...which of course is stunningly interesting to everyone...

... :)

Sanitize Me

2006-04-06T23:43:00.000-04:00

When I walked into class on Monday, ravenously hungry after a bit too much work-provided celebratory birthday champagne, I was greeted by a gorgeous spread of Girl Scout cookies and Whole Foods Brownie Bites. Turns out that Laura (very sweet Wall Street girl) who I'd asked if she wanted to get drinks after class today in honor of my getting older, decided that wasn't enough and got the whole class in on a slew of birthday festivity.

1) Said cookies and brownies
2) A handmade card featuring an apron with shiny whisk in front pocket, complete with real apron strings (provided by talented magazine art director Kathleen and signed by every single person)
3) Two flans from Eduardo, who made them upon getting home from class last night (!), and served them after turning out the classroom lights and lighting a candle and starting a round of song.

Which was hilarious, because it truly sounded like a chorus of dying platypuses with bill disorders. Chef Allen surveyed everyone afterward, shook his head, and could only say, "Jesus, people, this isn't a funeral, she's only 26!"

Our morbid reverence for the night's topic of santitation notwithstanding, we do seem a strangely quiet group for people who, individually, are quite interesting. I'm sure once the knives start flying and I start burning things, our interactions will quite literally heat up. And it was pretty funny to blow out a birthday candle after we'd just discussed improper germ transference. Truly, if you're going to be a germophobe, as I suppose it's good to be when you're providing other people with matter that will infiltrate their small intestine, is there anything more disgusting than birthday cake?

I mean, poor Chef Allen caught Hepatitus A AND B from an improperly washed piece of lettuce in the early 80s. It's no wonder he didn't eat his flan. (I hope Eduardo didn't notice. The rest of us downed the yumminess like starving sailors marooned in a culinary school that, ironically, doesn't provide food for the first ten sessions.)

It is mildly eerie, though, how much confidence we diners give to people we've never even laid eyes on, hiding way back in a kitchen with the power to poison us rather easily in negligence or stupidity. Not that I don't encourage consuming vast quantites of shiny, expensive mesclun greens....

4) (Remember that list of nice birthday things?) We all went out to the divey Irish bar across the street, appropriately called Limerick's

[There once was a girl called Alisha
Whose birthday caused quite the fiesta
Four drinks she did have
With nary a spaz
'Til she kissed the bartender's bald spot-sta.]

and everyone bought me drinks and almost everyone came and I was truly touched. The coolest thing that happened, apart from the discussion of Juventino's class during which I accidently admitted that I found standards of hard-ass discipline strangely attractive

No, this is NOT what I mean. You sick people.

was that I discovered that Neil works for the advertising company that makes those cool posters in bar bathrooms with the random facts like "Did you know that every time you lick a postage stamp you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie?" and "The practice of collecting beer coasters is called testelogy!" He promised to bring me one for my birthday.

Rockin'. Happy Freakin' Birthday to me! I will meet Alec Trebek yet.

A Not-So-Vanilla Discovery

2006-04-05T22:06:00.000-04:00

Sunday, Chef Allen was in Seattle for the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference, which meant he missed our mustard, spice, and condiment session.

But that's okay, because in his place we had Chef Juventino. Now, the very whisper of "Juventino" strikes fear in the hungry hearts of students at the Institute of Culinary Education. He is known far and wide as the one who insists on hair nets, perfect PERFECT dices, and general standards of kitchen hygiene and culinary performance beyond the capabilities of the quotidien individual. Tension was in the air as we entered the classroom and discovered a perfect power point presentation awaiting our note-take-age, and the man himself seated on a stool in a dauntingly composed fashion.

"Dean!" Juventino demanded. "Are you here?"

Dean was.

"Dean!"

"Yes, Chef?"

"Is your last name really 'Casanova'?"

(It is, dear Lord.)

People forgot to mention that Juventino was funny.

And they also forgot to say how cute he is! I mean, Chef Allen's tangential humor and rambling lectures are learning experiences in themselves, but Juventino is a pinnacle of white-jacketed organization and beautifully intimidating demands. And he's funny. Casanova? Ha!

At this point, though, I had not yet been introduced to the glory of the slide per spice, or the fascinating knowledge that Juventino is practically my Park Slope neighbor. I was still sitting, waiting for class to start, listening to people tell the Chef what culinary feats they intended to achieve in their futures.

Intermingled with thoughts like "There's nothing hotter than a man with a cleaver" and "Why do firemen get all the calendar glory--I know who'd make a great March," I managed to ramble something about food education and book editing. But that was not nearly as interesting as what the boy next to me had to say. Not that I really heard any of it, because my brain did a little re-jig when Randy began with "My boyfriend and I want to..."

Eh?

It seems I missed a key point about my colleague in aspiring chefhood, as I am wont to do because I want ALL the adorable boys to be straight. He does work 1) in publishing and 2) for Martha Stewart, so perhaps I should retire my powers of deduction. In my own defense, however, YOU try figuring people out when you never see them in civilian clothes and have only known them for twelve hours. ("I wouldn't judge people so quickly, Alisha," is NOT an acceptable retort. ;))

(NB: Juventino dated a pastry student when he was going to ICE. A FEMALE pastry student.)

Oh, and what was I talking about? Condomints? Spices or something? Right. The perfectly wonderfully methodical spice slide presentation intiated some glorious knowledge, and not just of Juventino's backside. (I'm done, I swear. If I know anything, it's when to stop this kind of thing.) Or the delicate sweep of his hand as he bathed the white formica table in orbs of allspice. (Done.)

Did you know that chili powder is not just dried ground chilies, but also garlic powder and salt and something else I don't recall because of the darling little way Juventino's mouth curled when he spoke of it? (I shock even myself. I am actually not even close to the level of obsession I am expressing, but I do it for your reading pleasure.)

OR that saffron is the world's most expensive spice not just because it's small and golden and stringy but because those small golden strings are the stigmas of a wee purple crocus each of which only provides THREE stigmas? (It takes 14,000 stigmas for one ounce of saffron.)

But that's not even as interesting as what I learned about vanilla. I'll bet you had no idea of:

The Steps to Harvest Delicious Vanilla

1) Be in Tahiti, Madagascar, or Mexico.
2) Be near a very particular orchid (the ONLY orchid that produces anything edible!)
3) Be near this orchid on the ONE day a year when it opens during the mere 2-3 HOUR period during which it's open
4) Pollinate it by hand because there's only one species of bee that can do it and he's not very reliable
5) Harvest the pod WHICH HAS NO SMELL AT ALL six to nine months later
6) Transfer pods to a wooden box lovingly lined with a blanket and sweat them for 24 hours
7) Then sun-dry them
8) Now they're starting to smell like vanilla
9) Dry them a bit longer until they shrivel and smell nice
10) Cut the damn things open and take out the beans and have your way with them.

The things in life we take for granted, right?

Oh, and last, when the lovely Randy got off the F train to head to his Alphabet City abode, he wished me a happy early birthday and a nice getting-older platitude: "26 is a good year!" So, yeah, he's not just out of college, either.

Sorry, Randy! I'll bet your knowledge of olive oil will astound me yet.

God Bless Porky

2006-04-05T21:37:00.000-04:00

Apologies for being truly poor at updation this week--one fabulous roadtrip to Virginia and two birthday drinking sessions later, a girl has a hard time blogging.

I could wax poetic about Richmondian Southern Charm, but honestly every quaint y'all paled in comparison to the HAM. God can take the chickens and the cows, strike the seas so full of mercury that we can never digest tuna again, but if he were ever to forsake the fabulous pig, life would truly become unworth living. In Virginia, the Beast of Perfection came smokily mapily cured in an enormous slab. One bite of this with biscuits and runny eggs, and even the staunchest Yank would reconsider his position on the Union. Thank you, Confederate Capital of America, for my ham-gasm.

Seriously.

I'll Take it Extra-Virgin

2006-03-29T22:57:00.000-05:00

Last night I ate oil.

That's right. Spoonfuls of pure fat. It was deliciosity personified. At least, the ones made from olives were. The others, made from rapeseeds or corn kernels or soybeans, were considerably less so. But still, how many times in life can you ingest spoonfuls of oil just because you have to?

An interesting note for foodie friends who care: You should never fry with olive oil. It can't take the heat of grapeseed oil, or canola oil (peanut oil has the highest smoking point), or classic Wesson vegetableness. And did you know that some disgusting and highly profitable company makes an oil called FryMax, which has the highest smoking point of all and is used by McDonald's throughout the world? Think about that lovely, strainable, re-usable-for-an- entire-night chemical compound the next time you dig into your crispy trans-fatty fries.

But I highly recommend 25-year-old balsamic vinegar. It's like wine candy. I could drink it. I practically did. In fact, I have a really hard time understanding how it is that a classroom full of people who seemingly should love food would leave an almost plateful of this supreme form of vinegar on a plate destined for the landfill. But if, by god, I have to eat an entire classroom's full of oil and vinegar for it not to go to waste, then so be it. I'll take 18,000 calories for the team.

God, I'm in trouble if I ever own a specialty olive oils line. I'll be infusing spices and pieces of bark and leafy herby things all over the place, but if someone gives me a squishy loaf of bread I'll consume my entire stock. I'm practically having an orgasm just thinking about blood orange vinegar with garlic-rosemary infused extra-virgin olive oil.

(And yes, extra-virgin olive oil is made by very, very young Greek boys with soft hands and steamy presses.)

Last thought for the evening: Randy is a lot younger than I was giving him credit for. I mean, it's not as though I don't give plenty of men plenty more credit than they're due, but honestly, this scene by the olive oil and cooking wine rack did me in.

I say, "Wow, this Greek oil is amazing. I wonder what it's called."
And I grab the bottle, and it's from a company called Iliada, their Extra-Virgin Kalamata. Randy says,

"Kalamata! I know that brand! I've totally seen that in the grocery store."

??

It's like the one woman in class who popped an entire half kiwi in her mouth, and then wondered: "Am I not supposed to eat the skin?"

But I digress. Randy's prolific knowledge of olive classification actually has nothing to do with my minor loss of respect for his potential maturity. Really, it had to do with this:

Alisha: "Dude, check out the cooking wine they had us taste! It's FRANZIA! God, that takes me back."
Randy: "Yeah--to, like, yesterday."

Oh, the box wine days. Unless he just has extraordinarily poor taste in cheap wine (please see http://flamingogirl.typepad.com/winofiles), he must be just a barely post-collegiate baby, who might even still cherish his alma mater keychain the same way six-month-olds love their pacifiers.

Oh, the days of boxed-wine extra virginity. How they have passed.

But they are good memories, aren't they?

My Birthday Came a Week Early!

2006-03-27T23:35:00.000-05:00

Today they gave us a big fat bag of cooking toys. Eight knives of varying sizes and degrees of lethality to lemons, pork chops, or whole live monkeys. Citrus reamers. Vegetable peelers. Slotted spoons and pastry tips that squeeze frosting squeeze into three different little patterns. It's even better than Christmas!

Chef Allen won't let up, either. We're all getting to be known for some lame thing we've said. Dean is officially the "Egg White Omelette Guy." Laura (stockbroker) is the one who eats apples, core and all. Luckily, Chef Allen seems to have forgotten the Chalaza Incident, but when I suggested tonight that the best use for watermelon was in a margarita, he introduced the next twenty fruits with the phrase "And we all know what Alisha would do with this!" Which is fine, at least I'm not Jing. Poor girl, she couldn't figure out which neat toy was her chanel knife, and just kept repeating "Which one is the Sha-nell knife?"

Chef Allen wanted to know if she was also looking for her Gucci melon baller. "And what about your Louis Vuitton spatula?"

Yep, I'd rather be the margarita girl. Apparently Randy and Dean thought the whole margarita thing was pretty hilarious, because they just kept laughing and laughing. But this is okay, because I like them, too:

Pre-fruit tasting. Randy sits munching on a bag of nuts.

Chef Allen: Who's ready to eat fruit?
Dean: Me.
Chef Allen: Who said that?
Dean: Randy!
Dean to Randy, as an aside: It'll go well with your nuts.
Randy, quietly: Everything goes well with my nuts.

My kind of boys.

Who Cut the Cheese?

2006-03-26T23:11:00.000-05:00

Now, many of you couldn't wait to hear about the trauma and humiliation a cheese-loather such as myself would endure at the hands of two hours of fermented curd tasting. I'm afraid the whole experience would have been mildly disappointing to observe. One, because I cut off the smallest eentiest bits of nastiness possible, and two, because I felt generally disengaged from the entire process as my sweet, sweet freak face cat today got diagnosed with some wretched form of pituatary or thyroid cancer. Not, actually, diagnosed as of yet, but the secondary problems such as thick calcium deposits on her skull and bulging eyeballs and shifting ear cartilage all point towards something awful that can only be exactly determined after--at the very least--at $1250 MRI.

Which I can't afford.

And even if I scrounged up the money, that would only be the beginning of expensive radiation treatments and/or tumor removal operations or other depressing and dastardly things.

Maybe Tulip can get her own show at Coney Island and raise chemotherapy money herself.

The [still entirely revolting] taste of cheese? It pales in comparision to my suffering kitty. And I realize that I sound very sarcastic about this, but the truth is I can't cry about it any more today. Lest I also be a despondent fruit-taster tomorrow.

I do, however, after digesting 27 (yes, count them, TWENTY-SEVEN) different forms of cheese, have a analogy for those of you who consume my portion of the world's cheese supply. Imagine this:

A relatively garden-variety human being sits in a sunny garden. Were you to take a bite out of her leg, you'd find her a fresh, even slightly grassy-tasting individual. Pleasant, normal, like a fine glass of milk. Suddenly the scene is interupted by a scary "gourmet," who swiftly injects the human full of the stomach acid of a cow. The human is then forced to sit in the ever-strengthing sunlight as the temperature becomes steamier and steamier, getting more and more bloated as the bovine acid attacks her chemical makeup. Soon, a terribly foul scent permeates the air; she is "ripe" and "aged." Shave off another piece of her calf now, and how do you think she tastes?

Right. She's become cheese. Need I say more?

It's Called a Chalaza

2006-03-25T20:09:00.000-05:00

Tonight we finally met Chef Allen. He's a hilarious individual who loves to pick on people (easy, we're all wearing nametags), works as an executive chef in a swanky corporate dining room in midtown ("No!" he tells the silly stockbrokers, "You CANNOT have diet coke with your boeuf bourginon!"), and lived in France during the seventies when "nouvelle cuisine" came about ("It was A-mazing"). He also has a slightly high Texan voice and mild effeminite mannerisms, which add to his overall charm. And, since he's going to be our actual Chef-Instructor, he wonders about all of us.

Except he didn't wonder about Eduardo the large Cuban, because right after the fire drill he asked us to consider the concept of fire in the kitchen: "Now, if Eduardo is flambeeing peaches, is that a fire? No. We know Eduardo is flaming, but that is not why."

To my mind, Eduardo has all the flame of a sopping wet pile of wool, but okay.

In any case, we're a fascinating bunch, full of investment types and advertisers and doctor's office receptionists. We each only say a sentence or two about ourselves, but some stand out more than others.

Take Dean, for instance.

"I went to college," Dean explains. Dean's next proclamation is best appreciated with visual and auditory description: he is a classic strapping Ken-doll, dark hair, dark eyes, perhaps some connection to the New Jersian Mafia. Only mild remnants of some B&T accent. "And then I was supposed to go to culinary school," Dean explains. "But I saw this guy drive by in a Mercedes. And I was like, I'm gonna get me one of those. And so I became a banker."

With one of these under his belt, Dean would put off worrying about the relative size of one banana to another for some ten years.

Then Eduardo offered us all jobs at his soon-to-be opened Cuban diner. And, suddenly, it was time for blond-haired aloof-seeming boy to introduce himself. I've heard some fantastic names in my time, being from hippie Santa Cruz; anything in the botantical or natural world, names of continents, planets, even mythological astrological bodies. But I was not prepared for what came next.

"I'm Randy," said the boy.

It was so hard not to bust a gut. That is an unfortunate name, truly. But, Randy's pretty cute, so I just sputtered something under my breath like "So am I." It must have sounded like a cough, because Cameron said, "Bless you." Indeed.

And our relative state of arousal isn't the only thing Randy and I have in common: Randy works as a publishing assistant at Martha Stewart Living. I work as an editor at DK. Yep.

Chef Allen then went on to explain how we will all be tasting everything we make, no matter how disgusting we think it is. "I just don't care!" He says. "You WILL eat kidney! And you will like it."

Kidney sounds okay to me, as does really any internal organ. Because when I flip to the next page of the syllabus, I discover that my carefully constructed culinary lifestyle will soon be shattered. For next Sunday is TWO HOURS OF CHEESE TASTING. The terrible weight of cheese dread sunk like a swanky oceanliner in my gut.

So I distracted myself by deciding that the commis cap actually makes men look kind of like stewardesses, which is attractive in a bizarre way. Dean looks like he'd be right at home zooming up to a girl in his Mercedes and offering a beverage service. Or maybe Randy's first words to me will be, "Fish or Chicken?"

And the last thing I have to say about tonight is...wait, there's two things. One, I think I may have given my swift intelligence away too early. And two, the French Revolution is why.

Starting with two, check this out: The reason the great diaspora of French cooking and culinary haughtiness spread throughout the developed world is due to their Revolution. Because the French had already elevated cooking to an art form in their aristocratic households by 1789, when the upper class was sent to the guillotine their personal chefs were out of jobs. So these culinarians left France, opened restaurants in other countries, and thus spread their butter, cream, and pretentiousness throughout the world. Seriously! And didn't we Americans inspire their revolution? If only we had known we were gambling away the future status of Jell-O on the world stage.

We also talked about eggs. And identified the parts of an egg. There was the obvious yolk, the white, the shell, and then that weird little white piece of visceral stringiness, which has always served to remind me that an egg might actually have become a real chicken. It's called a chalaza. Chef Allen wrote this mysterious new word on his board, and I called out, in a display of stunning wit:

...Never mind that chickens aren't mammals.

Or that nothing has to be cut before the egg comes out of the chicken.

Or that I graduated from a distinguished university (and still make less than $40K a year, but I digress)...

...because I blurt,

"Isn't that the umbilical cord?"

Ravishing brilliance from a girl who, astonishingly, can changes lightbulbs by herself.

Chef Allen stared a me for a full thirty seconds, shook his head, and continued with his egg lecture. Omlette, anyone?

And God Made Eggplant

2006-03-25T16:31:00.000-05:00

We all arrived early and sat in line, waiting for ID picture-taking and locker assignment distribution, 16 adults each trying to mask excitement and trepidation. Some tried silence, others fiddled with their backpacks long-unused; I turned to the mild-mannered man next to me and squealed, "Hey! It's been a long time since we've had a first day of school, right?"

Cameron, whose name I soon learned, nodded calmy and even managed a kind of smile, while Chris leaned in from the next place in line and added, "Yeah, I couldn't figure out where to buy a combination lock."

As the line plodded along, I nodded eagerly and hauled my bag full of sexy checkered pants to the next seat in line. "I totally know! Two twirls counterclockwise, one twirl clockwise, another one back, it's like high school, crazy, and you have to make sure you're in the popular hallway, you know?" Neither Chris nor Cameron laughed. Then, feeling like trailing off was the right way to go, I shut up for a little while to survey the scene.

But you see what I mean. It is TOTALLY possible to be in the wrong hallway.

We looked to be about equal in terms of men and women, all seemingly over the age of 25 (ha French Culinary Institute! I *did* manage to avoid being in class with eighteen year olds fresh off the SAT boat!). One by one we had our pictures taken, changed into our chef costumes, and piled into classroom 1402, faces barely discernable from one another in our sea of white jackets and dweeby little hats. (Seriously, whose idea were these?)

This is Colin from the American Hospitality Institute. His commis cap is as sexy as they come. If only we could say the same about his nose.

Gathered around the long stainless steel table on little stools, we were greeted by a portly chef with a large, intimidating white binder. He proceeded to give an orientation lecture from said binder, the basic premise of which was, of course, show up and don't swear and don't do drugs. (I understand the first one, but I thought the other two were part and parcel of the restaurant industry? I guess those come during on-the-job training.) Two desperate hours later, when most of my extremities had fallen asleep and full-on REM was threatning, Chef Michael the Phenomenally Boring finally exited.

We then came to understand that our real teacher, Chef Allen, was unavailable that evening because of last month's snowstorm that pushed all classes in that session forward one day. So, while he was busy final-examining a gaggle of new chefs, we would spend the next two hours identifying vegetables with Chef Anna.

Ah, Chef Anna.

She looked mild enough, despite her wild red hair and eyes seemingly capable of shooting sparks. Wheeling in an overhead projector, she set herself up, and surveyed us, slowly and deliberately, as if daring someone to fire up her scary pupils. At last, she spoke. "This is the toughest profession you can imagine," Chef Anna proclaimed. "And if you don't think it is, then you should rethink your choices. Fourteen hours on your feet is an easy day! And people will yell at you. PEOPLE WILL YELL!"

Toes rapidly figdeting in my tight shoes, I thanked the good lord that I don't, ultimately, want to work in a restaurant. Because it's not that hard to imagine me cowering in a corner, clutching a paring knife and bunch of parsley, slipping on tears induced by some loony Frenchman who disagrees with my concept of "minced." Really not very hard at all.

The class, meanwhile, was silent. Except for Eduardo the large Cuban, who ventured, "But, man, restaurants is SO fun!" Then Chef Anna smiled, and an enormous collective sigh was had, and she spoke again. "Yes, Eduardo. But I wasn't going to tell them that yet."

Chef Anna had a lot to say about heirloom produce and the lackluster quality of the broccoli with which she'd been given to lecture but, really, the next two hours can be boiled down into two highlights.

1) Her interpretation of the reason endives and white asparagus are grown without light: "Because they like it in the dark, ya know what I'm tellin' ya?" (Don't we all?)

2) Her reaction to the eggplant.

The bulgy purple fruit sat on its tray, innocently doing its aubergine thing. Suddenly Chef Anna grabbed it, brandished it above her head like a cleaver at the Bates Motel, and screamed, "THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW GOD WAS A MAN!"

Well, it turns out that eggplants of the generic dark purple variety come in two sexes. The female ones have tons of seeds, which make dishes comprised of their eggplantiness overly bitter, whereas the lovely male eggplant has barely any seeds. You can tell the sex of an eggplant by feeling its bulbous end--if there's a deep brownish indentation, it's a bitter woman. If it's nice and smooth as a baby's behind, it's a man and will...taste better. Hmm.

Seriously, though. Just what's female about these???

Ultimately, I'm rather fond of my first take-home lesson from cooking school: Tis not the fault of women that we're bitter. Take it from Chef Anna and blame it on god, girls!

The [Mis]Adventure Begins

2006-03-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

Well, it's March 19th, which means that tomorrow is March 20, which is the day I start culinary school. March 20th has seemed so far away for so long...but lo and behold, like a pan that heats much faster than you think it will, so when you pour in oil it starts smoking and sets off a small fire, the day is speedily ablaze. (As such prose should be, eek.)

I made my last pre-aspiring-chefhood supper tonight, while pondering just how exciting it will be to be taught how to beat a butternut squash into julienne-stripped-submission without two different knives, a potato peeler, a grapefruit spoon, abundant shrieks concerning fecal matter and orange slime all over my cabinets. AND, to be taught to smoothly brown pieces of pork without watery pork juices oozing everywhere and turning my best searing efforts into sad steamage. This will be amazing--aren't you EXCITED??

The setting: New York's Institute of Culinary Education. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday from 6-10PM. Starting tomorrow, in case you somehow missed that.

The cast: An as-of-yet undetermined group of 15 other chefettes. An ICE student's average age is 26, and there is generally a half split between men and women. Who will my people be?

The costumes: 3 double-breasted white jackets, 2 pairs truly hip drawstring checkered pants, 1 pair of the world's ugliest shoes, 9 aprons and 12 little towels [these double as potholders]. H-O-T, hot.

It all makes me wonder who picked WHITE as the color to wear when you're hanging out over hot grease and saffron and sherry vinegar? (It must have been the French.) I fear that this experience will make me learn far more than I've ever wanted to know about bleach, and ironing. Supposedly I will be required to look professional--and that jacket is a wrinkle-inducing, stain-inviting nightmare. Uh-oh.

The plot: Each of us must complete 400 grueling learning hours and 210 "externship" hours in a to-be-determined restaurant kitchen. (Right now I hope mine is wd-50, because darn that Wylie Dufresne, he's adorable. And he makes the most daring food in New York City. C'mon, a wheel of foie gras that spills beet juice when you cut into it, dusted with candied olives and "green pea dust?" Fried cubes of mayonnaise alongside pickled tongue? An "egg" "sunnyside up" made of rubbery coconut milk and a pierce-able mound of runny carrot? I can only imagine what wild idiocy could become of collaboration with a fascinating brain like that. Which I realize, naively and immodestly assumes that a big-shot chef actual has any idea who the peons in his kitchen are. We'll see...because I know nothing about restaurant kitchens at this point, except that I really like to eat what comes out of them. And that I'm naive and immodest.

It should be a journey...given my the [mis]adventures in my past, I can't even fathom what this experience will hold. But I do know that it'll involve really high temperatures, raw meat, large knives, and walk-in freezers, so it should be pretty darn funny.