Could there BE any more delicious food?!

I'm sure it's not news to most of you that I love the TV show "Friends" so the title of this entry is a little play on Chandler's character. In all seriousness, though, the food just keeps getting better and better.

We had our first day of production in Traditional European Cuisine on Thursday, and my group was assigned basic braised chicken legs along with risotto. Some of you have asked for recipes, and it's difficult to post them because what we work from can hardly be called recipes. For example, the "recipe" we were given for our chicken dish was as follows:

...............

1. MAIN ITEM

• Oil
• Chicken Legs

Sear. Remove.

2. AROMATICS

• Mirepoix
• Garlic
• Herbs
• Salt and Pepper

Sweat.

3. THICKENER

Add fat (if necessary). Singer.

4. MOISTENING

• White Wine
• Appropriate Liquid

Build braising liquid.

5. FINISH

Reduce if necessary. Strain. Adjust Seasoning.

...................

As you can see we are given no quantities, times or temperatures, so the resulting dish is dependent upon the student(s) working on it. The chefs want us to learn culinary techniques so that they become second nature. They say that we shouldn't be referring to recipes every other minute, and we should only measure in specific instances. I must say that I was quite proud of how our first European dish turned out. Our chicken was perfectly seared, and the viscosity and flavors of our sauce paired very nicely with the the chicken. Here's our dish as we were preparing it for the oven to finish it off.

My class has been spoiled the last several weeks by wonderful dining room service and 3-course French dinners. Now, only half of the class is invited to dinner each night, and the other half must stay behind in the kitchen to plate our dishes for the dining room (since we now provide food for the dining rooms) and begin the clean-up process. I can't really complain though because we are still fed a delicious dinner. It's just that we have to eat it while standing or sitting around our production tables in between cleaning tasks. And I don't know why it is, but serving dinner from these metal warming trays just makes the food seem a lot less appetizing. Point and case - the dish that you see above was eventually converted into the dish with the orange-ish sauce third from the end of the table. It still tasted great though.

Over the weekend, I chose to attend yet another class outside of the school's curriculum. My advisor and chef from Introduction to Baking and Pastry taught a 6-hour class on Artisan Bread Baking at Home. The class was in a beautful home in Smithfield, RI, and the owners had a wood fire brick oven which we used to make some wonderful wood-fired pizzas and 7-grain breads.

We started off with the pizzas. After making the dough, we each assembled and fired some pizzas. I didn't make the one pictured below but it was by far my favorite. The crust was fired with a layer of fig preserves topped with crumbled gorgonzola. As soon as it was pulled from the oven, the woman topped it with some lightly dressed arugula, prosciutto and parmesan. It was scrumptious!

I had never baked in a brick oven before so it was interesting to learn the techniques behind it. Since the heat comes from the fire and embers, we carefully monitored the temperature until it dropped low enough for us to bake our bread loaves. Just as we did in my baking class, we loaded our shaped dough onto a couche for the final proof and then onto a loader. The resulting bread was delicious! I will certainly be practicing this one in a home oven.

Some of our loaves before the oven:

All of our loaves after the oven:

And lastly, here's a picture of me with my academic advisor and instructor for this class, Richard Miscovich. As many of the other students in this class commented, "He really knows his bread," and that is an understatement. I'm just about ready to switch to Baking and Pastry after taking this class.