Class 10 - Don't Truss Me

When I roast a chicken, I look at it when I pull it out of the oven and think to myself okay now what? Well, after this class, I won't hesitate any more. I'll just grab my boning knife and get to work. I can proudly say that I can now quarter a chicken both before and after its cooked.

A class like this is when having a vegetarian partner is a huge plus. She took one look at the chicken and said to me "Jen this is all you". I grabbed my knife and went to work. Each team started with two whole birds: one to cook whole then break down, and the other to break down and cook in parts. We began with the bird cooked whole.

First step on this bird was to pull out the wish bone, and then cut off some other unwanted pieces that I'm sure you all don't want to hear more about. We then trussed the chicken, which is just tying it together with twine so that the chicken cooks evenly and maintains its shape while cooking. At this point, it became apparent that my partner and I were a little too aggressive at removing aforementioned undesirable parts. Our poor little chicken didn't want to be trussed...we cut off too much so the string kept slipping off...Oops! Luckily, the chef took pity on us and tied up our bird with some fancy looking boy scout knots. Then we seasoned the bird inside and out with salt & pepper.

We heated some butter until smoking in a skillet and then browned the chicken on all sides. The pan has to be very hot when the chicken is added otherwise the skin sticks to the pan and you lose arguably the best part of roasted chicken. After it browned, we rested the chicken on top of the wings we had removed and put it in the oven to finish cooking.

We took the undesirable parts and cooked them in a saucepan with chicken and veal stock, wine, and a bouqet garni. Essentially, making a stock based sauce to later plate our chicken with. For sides to the chicken dish, we crisped up some bacon then fried some mushrooms in the bacon grease and cooked some pearl onions. This chicken took about 40 minutes in the oven. When it came out we let it rest for about 15 minutes to keep the juices in. The chef demonstrated the proper way to break it down and serve it. In French cooking the proper serving is white meat bone in and dark meat bone out, or the reverse with the white meat bone out and dark meat bone in. Essentially, you cut the chicken so that you have 4 plates, 2 of each style. We started by removing the legs then we sliced the breast off the neck. Mine came out okay. I think its one of those things that need to be practiced a few times before one can make any sort of outrageous claims of perfection, or at least thats what I'm telling myself. The important part is that the chicken and the sauce were delicious. We took the stock sauce that we had strained and reduced and served it over the chicken for our dinner. It was the best meal we have had yet at the school, if only because it was the fruits of our own labors rather than those of other students. I also really liked the sauce...it seems that everything we make with veal stock I love. The flavor is just so much richer than other sauces.

We made another chicken after break that we ended up taking home. This was the chicken that we had previously quartered. When breaking down this chicken we started with the wishbone as well. Then we removed the wings and cut off the thighs, removed the backbone, then split the breasts. Sounds easy but its one of those things that I think I'll need pictures of the steps the first few times. Again, we browned the chicken in heated butter in a skillet and finished it in the oven. In the pan that we browned the chicken we cooked some sliced mushrooms and then shallots. And this time I got my chance to flambe! I gently put the brandy in the pan off the heat and then with my best go-go gadget arm tilted the pan until the brandy flames shot up and died down. We then added some wine, some of the sauce from the earlier chicken, and diced tomato. I loved this sauce even more than the first one...it had such a wild mushroomy, tomato, and rich beef flavor to it. I kept taking spoonfuls of it, leaving very little for my partner to take home for her boyfriend. My partner hadn't seen this and I had the assistant chef vouch for me that I just over-reduced the sauce...he he! Oops, but then again she did give away my potato chips on Monday!

Next up is beef and veal!

Class 9 - Whose your fry daddy?

Who doesn't love potatoes? If your answer to this is you don't, stop reading now...you won't enjoy this post at all.

Our most recent cooking class, was all potatoes. We started with your standard potato chip and french fries. There are 3 types of fried potatoes: single fry, double fry, and triple fry. We did single and double fry. The single fry is for small cuts like the shoestring fries or potato chip. The single fry potatoes are cooked in 350 degree oil until they're brown (literally only takes a minute or so). I opted to do potato chips as my single fry (a no brainer I think), and marinated the potatoes in vinegar, dried them, and fried them. Of course, as soon as these were done I drained them on paper towels, salted them, and dove in! These were hot, crispy salt and vinegar potato chips like none I've ever had from a bag. I was flabbergasted when my partner offered the last few to the group next to us who burnt their single fry potatoes. Lucky for me (and her), there were some more potatoes destined for our fryer...

For the two fry method, we cut regular size french fries and first poached them in oil that was 250-275 for about 5-7 minutes. Then, we fried these in 350 oil until brown and salted them when done. At that point, I decided it's time I buy a fry daddy for my apartment.

Okay, so now heres where things started getting dicey. Out came the mandolines (no the ones we used did not come with the safety grips). Now, I have always wanted one, but at the same time, I have always been afraid of them. Growing up a klutz made me fear pretty much anything that involves using sharp blades near my fingers...call me crazy. We used the mandolines to julienne 2 potatoes for Pomme Darphin. This is a gigantic pancake of potato. Once the potatoes, and luckily not my fingers, were julienned, we heavily seasoned them with salt & pepper. These went into a nonstick pan that we had heated up with clarified butter. As these cooked, we pushed the potato together with a spatula so that it formed a cake. Once the first side was cooked, I used my expert skills and with a simple flick of the wrist flipped the pancake over...on the second try (the first try was more of a fold then a flip). Once the second side browned slighlty, it went in the oven to finish cooking. The outside gets this buttery crunchy crust with a thin inside layer of smooth potato. I was such a huge fan that I have actually already made it at home twice since class (I blame my farm share for including 4 lbs of potatoes this week). One of the ones I made at home I stuffed with some roasted garlic and smoked gouda...this could get dangerous.

Our next potato dish was far less exciting...Potato Dauphinois, which is really just a fancy name for potato au gratin. This was okay, but I've made better potato au gratin with other recipes with half the cream and butter that we used.

They really front-loaded the class with the good stuff. Our next preparation was mashed potatoes using a food mill. I was actually a little shocked that they wasted our time with mashed potatoes...I'd equate it to teaching us to make mac and cheese from a box. With some of this mash we added egg yolks and piped it with a star tip and baked these. Basically, this assured that all of us were capable of working weddings (if you've been to enough, you've seen these piped potatoes on your plate and wondered why they taste sort of like mashed potatoes but not quite right).

At this point, it was virtually impossible to concentrate. The school was having a party in the room that looks into our kitchen. In that room were some of NYC's top chefs - Chef Jaques Pepin, Chef Pollinger (of Oceana), Chef Craig Koketsu (Quality Meats), Chef Anne Burrell (from Food Network's Secrets of a Restaurant Chef), etc, etc. In fear that one of us might cut our fingers off with a mandoline as we stared at our heroes, they let us out early!

Next up is cooking chicken, including breaking down a whole chicken.

Ad Hoc at Home Book Signing

My sister and I went to the cookbook signing held at Williams Sonoma in Columbus Circle for Thomas Keller's new book, Ad Hoc at Home. We were amazed with how the Williams Sonoma staff have these events down to such a fine science. The whole experience was absolutely wonderful. We arrived about 15 minutes before the scheduled start and there was already a pretty long line almost running outside the store. While we waited in line, my sister and I started flipping through the book. Its a beautiful cookbook...okay, its really more of a tome weighing in at a hefty 5lbs. The pictures are beautiful and the recipes are primarily for straight-forward american comfort classics, with a few modern twists here and there. On the traditional front there are things like fried chicken, roasted chicken, chicken pot pie, creamed corn, and meatball recipes. And on the fancier, more challenging/gourmet front there are recipes for blowtorch prime rib roast, confit of pork belly, and homemade mozzarella. There are a ton of recipes for vegetables and a whole chapter on how to perserve vegetables and fruits. After flipping through it while in line, my sister and I were certain it was going to become one of our go-to cookbooks. In fact, we decided that our christmas cooking would come largely from Ad Hoc at Home recipes. Our wait in line was probably around 30 minutes, but it didn't feel long at all. The unbelievably cheery and friendly staff at Williams Sonoma came around with a sample of cauliflower soup with homemade croutons and chocolate chip cookies (both of course made from recipes from the book). These samples were delicious and confirmed our sentiment that this cookbook is going to be something special. My sister was so pleased with the experience she decided she might just quit work and begin a career at Williams Sonoma! They even had someone at the ready to snap a photo with the chef! Chef Keller signed the book "It's all about Family". Lets hope all the family loves the recipes! I'll be sure to keep you posted on what I try out from the book.

Until next time,

Class 7: French Pastry is not for Me

Class #7 was part 1 of our 2 part pastry series. The first session was all about pastry and pastry creams/custards (pates and cremes to the french). Personally, I am not a big fan of french pastries...alot of them tend to be a little too eggy for me (and after last week's egg overload, eggs are pretty much the last thing I want to eat). Call me a boring American, but I prefer cookies, cakes, and more carbohydrate heavy desserts.

We started with custards. There are three types of custards: baked (like flan), stirred (cooked fully on the stovetop like creme anglaise), and starch-based (like pastry cream - these are more similar to pudding than the other custards because of the starch). We prepared one of each type. The basic custard technique is a three part approach that starts with infusing a dairy product (milk, half & half, or cream) with a flavor agent (vanilla bean, lemon zest, lavender, etc) and bringing this to a boil. The next step is to whisk air into eggs and sugar until the mixture turns a whiter color. The eggs are then tempered with the heated milk. Our baked custard was a creme caramel. We started by making a caramel and pouring a few tablespoons of this into little ramekins. Then we made a vanilla custard and poured it on top. These were baked in a bain marie. Once these come out of the oven, they go directly into the fridge b/c apparently they do not taste good right away (although I don't think they taste awesome anyway). After they have sat in the fridge for while, they are turned out onto a plate and look like this. So, the creme caramels look very pretty, but they're not my type of dessert and texture. They taste like a flan with a caramel sauce on top.

Next up, we made pate a choux, which is cream puff dough that is used to make eclairs and profiteroles. Pate a choux is unique in that its cooked twice - once on the stove top and then once in the oven. You cook butter, sugar, water and salt over a low heat and once it boils you add flour. After that's dried out, eggs are added. I found out the hard way that you have to be careful about doing this in the same pan...I put my eggs in the pot immediately after I removed it from the heat and ended up with some fried eggs and a pasty mess! Well, I learned from my mistake and the second batch came out perfect (perhaps mostly thanks to the chef hoovering over inserting pointers as I made it). We took the pastry and piped it into eclairs, brushed them with an egg wash, and baked them. We filled these with the next custard we made, which was a starch-based pastry cream. The pastry cream was essentially the same preparation as the first custard with the addition of flour and cornstarch as thickeners. I dipped mine in a chocolate glaze. I tried one, but once again found that this style of dessert isn't really for me. The dough tastes eggy and the pastry cream is sort of a glorified pudding (ha I know not a bad thing at all...in fact I thought the filling was the best part).

Our final custard was a creme anglaise, which is used as a sauce for desserts or a base for ice cream. This is the most difficult of the custards we made or I should say the easiest to "f" up. Mine would have been lost, but luckily the chef came by our station and had me pull it off the heat in the knick of time. I flavored mine with a coffee syrup and took it home. I poured a little in my coffee each day for the rest of the week...yum!

So if my summary didn't make it clear, I didn't love the stuff we made in this class. I can imagine needing to make a creme anglaise, but the rest of the desserts don't have me running to my kitchen to recreate them.

Next up - Pastry part 2 - pie crusts.

I'm a Swooner for this Schooner

I've called NYC home for a while now. But, as a born and raised New Englander, theres still some part of "home" missing. And when I look out onto the East River, I realize what that void is. Okay, so I've never seen a lobster trap out on the river, but you know what I mean...Living so close to the ocean, I should be able to get a good lobster roll. I've tried a lot of places and some of them come close (Thank you Five Napkin Burger for your Lobster Roll Sliders). But I've never found a delicious authentic New England lobster roll. That is of course until you arrived Luke. I don't know you Luke, but I love you. I love your story of growing up on the coast of Maine. But most of all, I love that you felt the need to bring the people of Manhattan a GREAT lobster roll.

Luke's Lobster is a little storefront sandwiched between the ever bustling Caracas restaurants. Theres room enough for maybe 8 people to sit/stand and eat the rolls there. We were lucky to get ourselves a prime window seat. The menu is nice and basic - Lobster, shrimp, and crab rolls and then some combo plates. We opted for the Schooner, which includes a lobster roll, chips, pickle, and a Maine soda. Chowders are promised in the future, and I can only hope that they arrive in time to be enjoyed on a cold winters night.

The orders come up pretty quickly...I suppose thats the beauty of having one specialty. My first look at the roll brought a sense of awe...this lobster meat looked too perfect and such a beautiful color to be real. It honestly looked like it was straight from the claw and fresh from the ocean - no strange minced "lobster meat" this meat was chunks of actual lobster claw. The first bite was heaven. I find that typically restaurants forget that this is a LOBSTER roll and tend to make it more ROLL or mayo and butter then lobster. But not my Luke. There had to be at least 3-4 claws worth of lobster meat on this unassuming roll. Thats not to say that the roll itself wasn't delicious, just that it didn't take any of the glory away from the lobster. Furthermore, it was not doused in mayo or butter. There was a subtle smear of mayo over the bottom of the soft roll that was ever so slightly toasted and buttered. The lobster meat was largely left to speak for itself and sprinkled with a magic seasoning blend that if I had to guess included celery salt, pepper, and garlic powder. It was just phenomenal. The lobster was tender and perfectly cooked, not chewy like you often find in amateur lobster rolls. A place that has you plotting your next visit before you even finish your meal is a definite winner...at Luke's I was planning my next visit after my first bite.

Class 8: The Apple of My Pie

Our second session on pastry was pie doughs. Each team made two doughs, one pate brisee and one pate sucree. Sweet little me made the sucree...the two doughs are virtually the same. The pate brisee has flour, butter, water and a pinch of salt, and the pate sucree is the same with the addition of a little sugar and some egg. My dough came together nicely. The chef had us mix the dough together more versus previous classes I've taken in pastry. I have to say that this did help the dough stay together more. The class made 4 different recipes - 2 different ones on the pate brisee and 2 different sweet pies on the pate sucree. Our team made an onion and bacon tart and an almond pear tart. The other teams made a quiche lorraine and an apple pie. The class had a lot of down time. I didn't love either the onion tart and the pear tart was pretty looking but not too delicious.

Since we had so much down time, the chef taught us how to make pasta dough. I always forget how easy it is to make a homemade pasta dough. Its basically just flour, olive oil, eggs, and a pinch of salt. Unlike the pie dough that you want to only knead until it comes together, you knead the pasta dough for about 10 minutes. I took mine home and made some fettucini that was delicious.

Next week we're back to regular cooking...I think its all about potatoes next class.

I'd bet the farm - Review of La Masseria

I don't get that excited to go out for Italian food. Don't get me wrong...I love good Italian food, but I feel like there are just too many places in Manhattan (especially midtown west)that serve Italian food that is mediocre at best. So when some friends and I planned an outing for a birthday dinner for a more plain palated bunch, it was with much trepidation that I recommended La Masseria. I had heard some wonderful things about this place, so I felt cautiously hopeful that this restaurant might fill the void of great italian restaurants in midtown. And, after eating there, I am very happy to report that I have found my go-to Italian restaurant in not just midtown, but the city.

Walking into La Masseria, you instantly feel the vibe the owners were going for...a vacation from the hustle and bustle of midtown to a peaceful farmhouse. The decor is so quaint you barely realize the busy dining room. (Nota Bene - La Masseria means farmhouse in Italian so it didn't exactly take a genius to figure out what they were going for).

Our waiter was a friendly Italian guy, who as soon as we asked his feelings on dishes, rhapsodically chimed in with his opinions (which by the way all turned out to be very justified opinions!). We selected a Ravenswood Cabernet for our wine of the evening and started with the Burrata special as our appetizer. While we awaited our appetizer, they brought over a beautiful bread basket with three choices - foccacia, italian bread, and a cheesy breadstick that didn't taste unlike a delicious cheezit. The burrata arrived and with great fanfare the waiter cut open this beautiful homemade cheese that was surrounded by melt in your mouth tomatoes. It oozed onto the plate slowly and he poured some olive oil on this wonderfully creamy mozzarella. This was gone in no time and whetted my appetite for the pastas that were to arrive.

I'm a huge food sharer, so I love going out to eat with a group because it means you get to try more dishes! The only downside with this is that it often leads to the highly disappointing "order envy". I loved my dish, but I certainly had order envy...for pretty much half of my friend's orders. Going around the table clockwise, there was a tagliatelle bolognese, a gnocchi with taleggio cheese and radicchio, linguine with white clam sauce, orchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage, and my dish of thick fettucine with eggplant and smoked mozzarella. I know you're thinking "Jen didn't order a meat sauce" but the truth is I'm a sucker for smoked cheese.

Okay, so the best place to start is with the pastas themselves. I love homemade pasta and was happy to find that all were homemade. I would have to say my favorite dish was the gnocchi, which just melted in your mouth and were covered in a slightly sweet cheese sauce. Honestly, these were addictive, so for my friend's sake it was good that I was separated by a seat from these little bites of heaven. My fettuccine was wonderful. The texture of the fettuccine was perfectly al dente but still managed to have this silky soft texture. The eggplant was cut into the ideal size pieces and cooked until tender, the tomato sauce on the pasta was a bright fresh-tasting sauce, and the mozzarella was sprinkled throughout giving a nice smokey hint to the dish. The linguine with clam sauce and the bolognese were both dishes I would contemplate ordering WHEN I return to La Masseria. They were seasoned and cooked to perfection. The only dish that I was not overwhelmed with was the Orchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage. My sample bite was very strong on the broccoli and just a little too bitter tasting because of that. But the pasta and sauce still had a very nice flavor.

Well, since we were celebrating birthdays, we had to order dessert! We went with the special chocolate lava cake, although the hostess was trying to sway us towards the her favorite cheesecake from the sidelines.

Our dessert arrived and came with on the house shots of limoncello (yum!) and a slice of cheesecake and a wink from the hostess. The chocolate lava cake was pretty good, but I have to say, I am beyond glad that they sent over the cheesecake. I am personally not a huge cheesecake fan, but this wasn't your typical cheesecake. If you've ever wondered what would happen if you crossed vanilla jello pudding with a NY cheesecake, look no further just go to La Masseria and order this. I could not get enough of this airy, pudding-like version of cheesecake.

Overall, the food was fantastic. Whats more, you can't ignore the fantastic service at La Masseria. For my friends and I, they made us feel like cherished regulars and provided that perfect balance between too much and not enough presence. And come on people, how can you not love a place that brings you free drinks and dessert!

What a wonderful restaurant! I will no longer worry about where to eat before a show...I'll instantly make a reservation at La Masseria.