Culinary Agoge

Southern Biscuit Batch #1: Pre-Baked

If you listen to the news, talk to anyone on the street or walk the lonely halls of America’s shopping centers you’ll see and learn that times are tough. Everyone is looking to save money in these uncertain times and I am no different. The “timing” could not have been better as I make an effort to go out less, save money and focus my time and energy on my culinary learning.

One of the great things about food is its capacity to tell a story and transmit history. I’m not talking about fancy cuisine invented by chefs at exclusive restaurants, but the simple wonders that are passed down by generations of family whose sight and smells evoke memories of childhood and glimpses into another person’s life.

While trying to save money I’ve resolved to ditch the $1.50+ Starbucks muffin or scone or the $1.00 bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts. I have replaced them already with the muffins I have been diligently creating and have decided to add to my breakfast lineup with something simple and equally fulfilling. My southern muse Cassie suggested a recipe for southern-style biscuits that was reminiscent of the ones that her mother used to make her while growing up in rural West Virginia. I couldn’t think of a better way to connect with her past while also providing a tasty treat in the morning as I start my day at work.

I combined my dry ingredients in the food processor and then moved them to a large bowl. I worked in my shortening and frozen butter quickly, being careful not to melt the butter with my body heat. I added the buttermilk, gently working it into the doughy mixture and found myself the unfortunate

Southern Biscuit Batch #1: Baked

possessor of what Alton Brown calls “club hand”, a hand covered in sticky almost glue-like batter. Luckily I had a free hand and was able to wash my hands in the sink with a flick of the faucet handle. A spoon might be a better instrument for mixing, but this gave me valuable insight into what the dough should “feel” like. I moved it onto a floured surface and folded it over several times before flattening. Since I did not have 2″ cutters, I used a glass as my muse advised and cut out the biscuits. The left-over dough was re-combined and used to create the remaining biscuits. They were baked for 15 minutes and then cooled on racks for 5 minutes before eating.  One word: perfect.

Southern Biscuit Batch #1: Cooling

With one bite I could imagine the subtle saltiness which would combine with cured breakfast meats and eggs in the morning. Eating these along with waffles and pancakes and sweet syrup also came to mind as a delicious combination. I wondered what other Southern treats Cassie could share with me and how I would have to bribe her for her knowledge. So far so good with my learning. I can’t wait to find my next challenge.

Pre-Baked Batch from March 7, 2009

My sister Ashley is over so I have a victim for my cooking attempts.  I’ve had some practice with making muffins which I think are pretty good so I decided to try something that I felt comfortable with while making minor changes to gain more understanding. I created chocolate chip and walnut muffins using Alton Brown’s Old School Muffins recipe (I’m Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking). I started by setting up my work area, pre-heating the oven, and getting out my ingredients when I realized I was almost out of yogurt. I contemplated going to the local store to get more, but decided that if I did not have enough I would substitute milk for the missing amount to see what happened. Luckily I had just enough for the recipe (after scraping the sides of the container for every last drop), so the substitution lesson will have to wait for another day.

I combined my wet ingredients first with my whisk and then immediately combined my dry ingredients in my food processor which is efficient and dramatically adds to the fluffiness of the batter and ultimately that of the end product. I then put the dry ingredients in a bowl and worked the wet ones in with a silicone spatula. This was much easier to do being more comfortable with the process and what the batter should look like. Before filling the muffin tin, I worked in mini-chocolate chips and whole walnuts into the batter. They were easier to work in than the blueberries and it was much easier to get an even mix. Uniformity was something I had a problem with with my previous batches. Once the extra bits were mixed into the batter I filled my tins and placed them into the oven as usual.

The cooking time was about the same for this batch but I noticed a distinct change in the end result. While on the surface all appeared to be the same as my previous batches the, they were not as fluffy and moist. This batch differed in two ways from previous batches. I used vegetable oil instead of corn oil. This is really what the recipe called for, so I wanted to see what effect that would have on taste and texture. Secondly, instead of blueberries

Baked Batch from March 7, 2009

I used mini-chocolate chips as mentioned. Substituting the chocolate for blueberries undoubtedly had an effect on the water content. I can’t say how the difference in oil had an effect. I do feel that the chocolate is a nice compliment to the dough taste and mixed with walnuts is a good combination. I thought using the mini-chocolate chips would create a more uniform batter, and I was right on that, but I think using larger chips would allow more chocolate to come through. This was verified by Ashley and is a change that can be made based on taste.

Baked Batch from March 7, 2009

For my next batch I will try the corn oil again to see if I can detect any difference in taste and texture. This will help me finalize my recipe preference for future batches for myself and others.

Cambridge School of Culinary Arts

This evening was the start of my in-class learning as outlined in my self-created course of study. I arrived early, eager to discover what exactly was on the agenda for my first lesson. I walked into what was a small classroom that flowed directly into a kitchen. Can it really be true that it has been 7 years since I sat in a classroom as a student? I signed in and found a seat as the class shuffled in.

The smell was unexpected, not pleasant, but not unpleasant either. It was the smell of “sterile”. This was not my mother’s kitchen, but an unemotional and unbiased place of learning that begins each day with a blank slate allowing its occupants to transform it as they see fit with their creations.

We began with the basic knives as the Chef instructor, a recent graduate, explained their names and use. She started with the Chef’s Knife, followed by the Bread Knife, the Boning Knife, the Filleting Knife and finally the Paring Knife. Before moving on to our stations we were shown a Japanese and regular mandolin and discussed the basics of sharpening and honing our knifes on a honing steel. The Chef’s Knife and the Paring Knife would be our instruments for this evening’s lessons.

We washed our hands and walked over to a station where we would find a plastic cutting board, knife, apron and towel. I peered around the room looking at my classmates, wondering what their backgrounds and reasons for joining this class were. The lesson began.

We started off with zucchini and a julianne cut, moving on to carrots and cube cuts, parsley, chives and mincing, onions, garlic and dicing and red peppers, mushrooms and slicing. We used the paring knife to slice wedges out of oranges and lemons. With each item we cut, our confidence grew and things became clearer. Each slice, dice and cut produced some of the building blocks for future meals as well as our knowledge.  Steadfast repetition surely will transform this conscious task into an unconscious relex.

The class was a great beginning and I look forward to next week where we explore the preparation and use of eggs, a key ingredient in cooking and a much enjoyed staple of my diet.

As a follow-up to part one of my post, I also made a French-style omelette following the instruction of  the late and great master chef, Julia Child. While I was researching material to study at the beginning of my culinary odyssey, I came across a clip of Julia preparing a basic omelette on her classic show The French Chef.

Watching Julia Child cook brings back wonderful childhood memories stored in the deep recesses of my memory banks. Memories of baking cookies and cakes with my mother and maternal grandmother are the first to arrive, but quiet evenings parked in front of the tv watching in awe as she transformed simple ingredients into culinary masterpieces don’t take much longer to follow. That is the essence of French cooking as I have come to learn and is what she excelled and bringing to and teaching the American public about. I decide to use this clip as my inspiration for my breakfast.

I have what I would call an egg addiction. I love eating eggs, and if I had the time to cook them, read if only I got up early enough, I would eat them every morning.

Attempting to emulate Julia Child

I heated up my pan on high heat, tossed in some butter and as it began to bubble dropped in my whisked eggs. The eggs had been whisked in a bowl with a bit of salt and pepper. As the eggs began to cook and coagulate I shook the pan as depicted and within twenty seconds had my meal ready to serve and neatly folded onto a plate. I had never made an egg this way and it tasted great. I wish I had folded it a bit more and seasoned with some salt to bring out the flavor, but I guess this means I’ve left more room for improvement for next time.

Pre-baked Batch from March 1, 2009

Well rested and hungry I awoke with a desire to experiment in the kitchen. I had previously created blueberry muffins using Alton Brown’s Old School Muffins recipe (I’m Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking) and decided to test my creative abilities. This time I resolved to make blueberry walnut muffins figuring that adding that extra crunch from the walnuts would enhance the overall texture while also allowing them to contribute to the subtle bun enjoyable flavor.

Having previous practice with this recipe I felt a lot more composed especially after learning from my experience with mise en place. I set out my bowls, utensils, ingredients and recipe for reference after preheating my oven and greasing the muffin tin.

This time I also added a bit of vanilla extract and used a spatula to mix the batter instead of my hands. I wanted to get a fluffier batter that would hopefully result ina fluffier texture after baking.

Baked Batch from March 1, 2009

Baked Batch from March 1, 2009

The muffins were placed into the oven for exactly 20 minutes. One thing I did notice was that the batter was not mixed as evenly as before but the result was a wonderful muffin equal to if not better than the previous batch with the walnuts as an added bonus.

I had a minor issue getting the muffins out of the tins and onto the cooling racks, when I bumped the racks an caused them to split apart, with one of the muffins falling through and cracking as can be seen in the picture. This was a minor disappointment in an otherwise perfect baking experience.

Superior skills are acquired through tried and true methods and adherence to learning as a process, not as an arbitrary conglomeration of tasks and experiences. The ultimate expression of this was the Spartan Agoge, the iconic process for which I base my transformation.

It is possible to become a great cook and perhaps attain the level of experience and knowledge of a chef through trial and error, but that’s not efficient; I work a full-time job in Advertising and can’t afford to be anything but efficient in my learning process given my limited time outside of work. Learning from others’ experiences as well as building on a solid foundation are the key to success in any field. For this reason I have set out to develop a core curriculum for myself to build a solid base of knowledge from which I can grow. This may seem like I am contradicting myself in that I am not launching head first into a career shift or institution of learning where a plan has been set for me, refined year after year and implemented based on experience and results, but my reasoning is that I would like to do some independent research and studying to survey the land to understand what direction I would like to take and also to understand where my journey may lead me. I need to know where I want to start and more importantly when I will consider myself to have reached my goals. To me this is like going to elementary and high school. You learn a little bit about a lot of things on a very superficial level. Once you graduate you are hopefully equipped with the basic knowledge needed to make an informed decision about your future and take direction with your life  that will set you out on a path that is more defined.

All this amounts to the fact that I must structure my learning to have any hope of adding more to my life than a nice book collection. I must also include milestones to measure my progress while varying my experiences and adhere to a timeline. After much thought and consideration I have settled on the following curriculum for myself understanding that it can change as I move and gain more experience.

Required Reading:

I will start with the basics again. I will re-read Alton Browns two books I’m Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 and I’m Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking to gain a deeper understanding of its contents. After completing those books, I’ll move on to Shirley O. Corriher’s Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed. After fully understanding those texts I will complete my studies with Harold McGee’s treatise on cooking and the Culinary Institute of America’s curriculum “bible” On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. I don’t own McGee’s book and will have to acquire it. I plan to read a book a month with the hope that there will be many topics and concepts that will overlap with each book. The more in depth books hopefully will be easier to read as I build up my knowledge base.

Supplemental Reading:

I will read the books I purchased on the experiences of being a chef, completing one every month. I’ll start with Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford to gain an understanding of what it’s like to become a chef from an outsider and amateur’s perspective. I’ll move on to Michael Ruhlman’s The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute to understanding the process of formal education in the culinary world as he outlines the training process at the Culinary Institue of America. Finally I’ll read Ruhlman’s The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection to understand the arduous process of obtaining the rank of Master Chef as judged by the CIA. I have heard great things about two books that I am going to consider as optional reading for my foundation. One, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin and the other, White Heat by Marco Pierre White sound interesting and I hope to get them and read them time permitting.

Experience:

Theoretical knowledge is great, but true knowledge comes from doing. I can read all I want about slicing and dicing, sauteing and braising, whipping and baking, but until I get some real experience it’s all just theory. To get hands on experience I plan to take two approaches. First, I’ll attempt to cook a new recipe a week from one of the cookbooks I have purchased. Secondly I plan to enroll in a basic cooking class. I considered many options ranging from private tutor to adult education classes in Boston and Cambridge. I settled on a six week course  entitled “Back to Basics I-VI” at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts which is set to begin on Friday March 6th, 2009. I’ve only been in and worked in a commercial kitchen once when I was in my teens as a dishwasher for a month. Actually working with food in an environment other than my apartment will be an eye opening experience that I look forward to with great anticipation. The schedule looks like this:

Interviews:

During my four and a half month learning process I have set a goal of interviewing two chefs about their lives and experiences. In order to get a broad exposure in person I will interview a chef new to the life and one with many years of experience.

Timeline:

I plan to complete my self-induction into the world of Culinary Arts by June 30th of this year at which point I will consider moving on to more advanced classes and reading. I have a feeling I will need to read McGees book several times to truly absorb even some of its concepts so this is a bit up in the air. I would also like to acquire hands on experiece in the real world in some aspect related to food. The position and experience I will seek are unknown for now although but is likely to change as I learn more.

Having already read Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential a while ago, I decided to get some new reads. I finished the other books save for Cookwise as  Amazon was actually sold out of it with no date in the foreseeable future for shipping. I want to read some accounts on being a chef to understand what that really means. I want to get under the skin of it and see what’s in the blood so I’ve chose the following books:

Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford. This is an autobiographical account of working with renowned chef Mario Batali at his New York City restaurant Babbo.

I also chose two books by Michael Ruhlman, The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute and its sequel, The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection which chronicle Ruhlman’s experience at the Culinary Institute of America as well the preparation for the Certified Master Chef exam at the CIA of chefs Michael Symon of Lola and Thomas Keller of French Laundry.

Hopefully these three books will provide a progressive knowledge base about what it means to be a chef and will add to my steadily growing foundation.

Any new skill requires learning and there’s just no way around that. While attaining instant mastery of a skill a la The Matrix might seem ideal at first glance, I realize that it’s the injuries, the surprises, the mistakes and the successes that make knowing anything in life so worth it.

While I’m not prepared to quit my day job and plunge head first into culinary school, I do appreciate that I must study the basics and build a foundation if I am to go anywhere. Reading has always been a great way for me to learn, second to in-class instruction. After much research I selected the following books to begin building my culinary foundation.

In order to gain a broad overview on the culinary world I decided to get Running a Restaurant for Dummies with the hope that I can gain some insight into the business. I hope to learn how you choose a concept, plan a menu and the steps from idea to opening day and beyond. I’ve always been a macro type of guy who liked to see the big picture before getting into the details.

I enjoy watching Good Eats, a show hosted by Alton Brown. His zany approach to food as a science is appealing and informative.  I appreciate how he is able to break down complex subjects into easy to understand concepts and therefore I chose to buy not one but both of his books on cooking, I’m Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 and I’m Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking. The culinary arts diverge into two distinct but complementary paths of cooking and baking, both of which his books cover. I also chose to purchase his book on equipment Alton Brown’s Gear For Your Kitchen. On his show he does a great job of explaining the appropriate use of cooking equipment and also how to come up with substitutions if you don’t have a particular item at home.

Lastly, I am excited to buy Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed by: Shirley O. Corriher. It’s another well reviewed book on the science of cooking which I hope will help me understand not only the what and how’s of cooking but the why’s that one needs to know to be truly great.

I hope these books will start me off on the right path on my journey and look forward to more suggestions from readers and friends.