Thanksgiving!

Here we are on Thanksgiving break and I am deciding to take some time out and update on the past couple of weeks at the CIA. We have a whole week off which is great, so I am well rested and ready to start my next class on Monday.

Skills Development 1 just concluded on Friday and it was awesome, to say the least. We learned precision knife cuts and the general guidelines and recipes for soups, stocks and broths. Lets just say that I am a soup base making machine! It was great to learn about quality stocks and the use of bones in the kitchen. Let me briefly recap what we learned...

We learned about Chicken stock and broth. The main difference between stocks and broths is that broths can be served as is whereas stocks are used as a base for other dishes, mainly soups and sauces. Also broths use meat and bones in the recipe rather than just bones that stocks call for. We also learned how to make a white and brown veal stock which is used a lot within the kitchen for sauces. We made French Onion Soup, Fish Chowder, Cream of Broccoli Soup, and potato dishes. We also learned about the basics of blanching vegetables for garnish and for other production components. We made Espagnole sauce, one of the mother sauces, and Jus de veau Lie, which is a reduced brown veal stock and super delicious.

We now move on to Skills II which continues to explore knife cuts including the dreaded tourne potato and fluting of mushrooms. It is also and introduction to basic cooking techniques such as sauteing and braising and the specific culinary applications of each. We will have the same chef-instructor that we had for Product Knowledge which should be awesome. It will be good to work with my fellow students better as we continue to learn more.

This school continues to demand professionalism in every aspect of our education and I couldn't love it more. I never realized how seriously I took this leg of my journey, but I find myself holding other students to the high standards that the school does. Let me tell you though, I sure get the comments! ;) I get disgusted at myself when my chef pants aren't ironed and it's the only thing I can think about all day. I realize that I am a dweeb and probably should focus more on cooking and not on ironing my clothes.

Well, now I am off to enjoy the family and rest some more, but I will update at the end of the week to showcase Skills II in the best light I can. Until then, happy cooking and enjoy the rest of the holiday!

Daily Bite:
As I mentioned earlier, Espagnole sauce is a mother sauce. The mother sauces, also known as grand sauces, are considered the basic sauces in traditional French cuisine. Antonin Careme, one of the most influential French chefs, found a way to classify the immense amount of sauces used within French cuisine. There are mother sauces and secondary (or derivative) sauces that are based off of these mother sauces. There are traditionally four sauces that make up the Mother sauces: Espagnole, Bechamel, Veloute, and tomato. There is some disagreement about the mother sauces, Careme actually does not include tomato sauce and uses Allemande as the fourth sauce. A lot of people will also argue that Hollandaise is considered the fifth sauce, it just depends on what you agree with. Check it out online and if you want some recipes, let me know and I will hook you up.