Trials and Tribulations of a 4th Quarter....

If I've been remiss in posting lately, it's because 4th Quarter is no joke. Apparently the first week of class was the honeymoon. Now the marriage is on full-tilt. Couples therapy ahoy. My class has been getting the short end of the stick a lot lately, it seems; the 6-month closure of the Academy back in the spring and summer gave the instructors time to rework the way the whole program is structured and for some reason, my class has ended up being the guinea pig for their new way of doing things. This mainly effects us in workload; as I mentioned in a previous post, our COD notebook (all of the menu work, recipes, costing, inventory, plate design, etc) is now due at the end of 4th quarter and the execution of the project itself is in 5th quarter. Prior to now, it has been entirely encapsulated in 5th quarter. So not only do we have all of the regular 4th quarter tests, assignments and studying to handle, we've got these notebooks to deal with. I feel like if I'm not busting my ass on the line putting out food these days, I'm staring at a computer screen trying to write recipes to the exacting standards of the chefs.

It's stressful, is all I'm saying.

On the brighter side, practicum class is still a learning experience every minute of every day. I'm being introduced to interesting new produce, techniques and foods I've never even heard of before. I'm making fresh pasta. I'm happily grilling, sauteing and pan-frying fish, searing scallops -that was a first for me yesterday and I managed to not screw it up- and steaming clams. I don't know why, but I've always been intimidated by cooking fish. It seems like such a precarious process that could turn disastrous at the drop of a hat, but it's really not. Let's just say the thought of being handed a large fillet of sturgeon and told to cook it and come up with an appropriate sauce to accompany it in half an hour kind of filled me with dread, but there I was grilling that chunk of prehistoric fish flesh to perfection and draping it a few minutes later with a luxurious Sabayon sauce.

Since I last updated, I've worked the entree station (steamed ouzo clams with pancetta and corona beans), the larder (my clotted cream project), sous-vide rotation (apple cider cornish hen with buttered cinnamon apples - oh my God, so good sous-vide), entree 1 (leek and cherry dumplings with baby fennel and 5-spice seared salmon and consumme) and garde manger (blood orange, arugula and mint salad with a warm duck egg and orange vinaigrette). I've also handed in my menu and two of the recipes on it which have all come back with very positive feedback from the chefs. If there's one thing I feel really positive about, it's that despite how much greif putting together this notebook is giving me, I know I have a strong menu that already has a lot going for it by virtue of a clear direction and interesting theme.

We had our first pop quiz on Friday, which I'm totally zen about despite it's unexpected timing. It made me feel good to be able to answer all of the questions confidently, drawing on what I'd learned by doing and putting into practice instead of from studying obsessively to memorize information that may have been abstract and theoretical up til that point. This is our first opportunity to see what kind of grader Chef Karen is, as well, so my class waits with baited breath.

As for the Sunday Market cooking, that took a hiatus last week because I came down with a doozy of a cold, which I'm still sniffling from and which has made it's way to Kris, who is right now feeling how I felt last weekend. Drowning in Vicks-scented tissues and liquid Tylenol Cold to get some semblance of sleep at night.

The weekend previous was a great success, though! We went to the market with the intention of finding rabbit so I could recipe test my tartlets at home, but the butcher we use only had a whole frozen rabbit and at a market cost of $7.99/lb, that would've been impractical. So we changed tack and decided to make chorizo and cherry stuffed chicken. Picked up some absolutely gorgeous organic rainbow carrots, cherries -I know, I know, not in season, but I wanted to try cooking with them ahead of COD testing- some fresh snow peas and and pomegranate.

Once we got home, we discovered the chicken thighs still had ribcage attached, so I got a chance to show Kris how to take out the thigh bone. Instructing someone is a great way to reaffirm to yourself that you actually know how to do something. We chopped up the cherries, mixed them in with the chorizo and stuffed it in the thighs. While that cooked in a little bit of olive oil, we cut up our spectacular rainbow carrots into rondelles and warmed them up with the snow peas and pomgranate seeds in some butter over low heat. Lastly, we make a pan sauce by deglazing the chicken pan, adding some diced tomato and a bit of heavy cream, then straining.

Kris and I were both very satisfied with how this dish turned out. My only complaint was that the flavor, if not the texture, of the cherries got lost in the cooking process. I asked Chef Karen about it the following days and she suggested using sour cherries next time, which hold their flavor much better and would be a nice contrast to the sweetness of the chicken and the mild heat of the chorizo.

But enough of that... here are the pretty pictures!

Our lovely organic rainbow carrots and fresh snow peas.

Mmmm, chorizo.

Kris bones out a chicken thigh!

Stuffed and ready to go!

Getting happy in some olive oil.

I strongly believe in letting food taste like itself without heavy flavoring, so here's our fresh veggies just warming up in some butter, salt and pepper.

The final product - Cherry-Chorizo Stuffed Chicken with Rainbow Carrots, Snow Peas and Pomegranate!

As of Thursday night, we picked up some simple white plates from Pier One because we want to get some nice presentation photos and food inherently looks fantastic on white plates. Coming up this weekend: salmon! Stay tuned!