Making my own hollandaise sauce

I got up early on a recent Saturday, determined to make a good hollandaise sauce after failing in class. But before I could whisk it up, I had to make my own clarified butter. At school, assistants had the ingredient all ready to go in huge vats on the stove.

The hollandaise recipe requires 200 milliliters, or 14 tablespoons, of warm clarified butter. (One large egg yolk can generally take in up to 200 milliliters of oil or fat.) You need to melt 300 grams, or 2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons, of whole butter to get 200 milliliters.

I doubled the guideline just in case I screwed up. I dumped a little more than 5 sticks of butter in a saucepan. I melted the butter on low heat until foam formed at the top and water and milk solids settled on the bottom.

I skimmed off the foam. Then I carefully poured the clarified butter, the clearest portion of the liquid, into a container, leaving behind the solids. That is not easy to do. I poured the clarified butter through cheesecloth, hoping it would catch any foam I missed, but there were still some floaties in my butter.


Clarified butter
 
Over a hot water bath on the stove, I vigorously whisked the egg yolks, remembering what Chef X had shown me. He was tough on us, but we all loved him. Even though he yelled a lot, it was his way of motivating us to be better.

I slowly mixed in the clarified butter and the sauce grew. To me, eggs are fascinating. Eggs are emulsifiers and are able to bind with fat and water molecules. That's why sauces like hollandaise and mayonnaise can be made---ingredients that don't normally mix together are now married by an egg.

I warmed the sauce over the hot water bath just like we did at school. The sauce was a little thick, so I took a teaspoon of water from the hot water bath and whisked the bit of water into the sauce. I seasoned the sauce with lemon juice, salt and cayenne pepper. I poured the sauce over a poached egg, garnishing it with chopped chives. My husband finished off his plate.

Hollandaise sauce
Adapted from The French Culinary Institute Classic Culinary Arts program

200 milliliters (14 tablespoons) clarified butter (see recipe)
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons of water (Rule of thumb is 1 teaspoon per egg yolk)
lemon juice to taste
salt to taste
cayenne pepper to taste
more water if necessary to thin out the sauce

Cover the bottom of a saucepan with water and bring the water to a boil. The saucepan should be big enough for you to be able to fit a stainless steel bowl on top. When the water begins to boil, reduce the heat.

Put egg yolks and 2 teaspoons of water in a stainless steel bowl. Using a balloon whisk, mix the yolks and the water just to combine. (Do not use an aluminum bowl because the sauce will have a tinny taste.) Place the bowl over the water you've just heated and whisk the yolks vigorously. Make sure the bottom of your bowl does not touch the water. You want to incorporate air in the yolks so the volume will double in size. Beat the eggs for four minutes.

If the bottom of your bowl is too hot to touch, take the bowl off the heat and keep on whisking. If the eggs become scrambled, you'll need to start over.

The mixture should have a creamy consistency. You'll see streaks on the bottom of your bowl as you whisk.

Remove the bowl from the heat. Slowly add the clarified butter in a steady stream and whisk vigorously. Add lemon juice to taste. Season with salt. Season with cayenne pepper, but make sure the sauce doesn't turn red. If the sauce is too thick, whisk in teaspoons of water from your water bath on the stove. Whisk the mixture over the hot water bath to warm the sauce before you serve it.

How to make clarified butter
300 g (2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons) whole butter

Melt the butter on low heat in a small saucepan until foam forms at the top and solids form on the bottom of the pan. Let stand for five minutes. Skim off the foam. Pour the clear portion of the liquid through cheesecloth into a container. Use right away. Or, keep the clarified butter in the refrigerator and melt it when you need it.

Print recipe

Hollandaise sauce success

I have to go study for a test. But I thought I'd post this photo of the Hollandaise sauce I made the day after my really bad class.

The sauce had the consistency I wanted, and my husband ate all of his poached egg.

I'll post the recipe later.

- Jenny

Culinary school: Emulsified

Day 7 Friday, June 18, 2010

I kept adding a slow stream of clarified butter to my hollandaise sauce, not knowing when to stop.

I looked down. The sauce seemed all right. It hadn’t separated. I brought the sauce up to Chef X.

He looked at it with disdain.

“I don’t even know what that is,” Chef X said.

“How much butter did you add to the sauce?” he asked harshly.

I opened my mouth.

“I already know how much butter you added just by looking at it!” he snapped. “When you do your béarnaise sauce, I’m gon’ be standing right there.”

Speechless, I froze and then scurried away.

The mayonnaise I previously made had garnered a nod, but he only wrote down a grade for my hollandaise.

We were making emulsified sauces, trying to coax egg yolks to combine with clarified butter or oil.

I prepared the ingredients for the béarnaise sauce in a daze.

“Are you OK?” my partner Gillian asked.

“Yeah,” I said, my face stricken.

We put diced shallots, red wine vinegar, water and dried tarragon in a shallow saucepan to reduce. After all but a couple tablespoons of liquid were left, we strained the ingredients and saved the shallots.

I put two egg yolks in my stainless steel bowl. The bain marie, or hot water bath, was bubbling away on the stove.

Chef X appeared at my left elbow.

I tensed.

“You’re freaking out,” Chef X said. “Don’t freak out just because I’m standing here.”

I cracked up. My body instantly crumbled and relaxed.

“Now add your ingredients,” he said.

I added a little bit of the reduced liquid. Then I reached for a small plastic cup of water and dumped it in.

Chef X gasped, his eyes full of horror.

He snatched the bowl from my hands and poured most of the water out in the sink.

“When I told you to put the water in, I thought you knew how much water to add!” he said. “One teaspoon per egg yolk!”

The sauce was still salvageable. I began whisking the yolks over the hot water on the stove. The balloon whisk I used was as long as my forearm.

Chef X pointed out I needed to put more air in the sauce. He took my whisk. As he bent over the bowl, his right arm worked like a manual eggbeater, whirring over the sauce. When he was done, the sauce had exploded in size.

“A minute more,” he said and walked to another workstation.

I whisked the sauce as hard as I could. Making emulsified sauces seemed easy enough, but how did you know when the egg yolks were cooked? How did you know how much clarified butter to add before the sauce broke?

I showed the sauce to Chef X who said it was ready.

He turned to another classmate. “See? Look how much air is in there,” he said, praising his own work.

I went back to my station and began adding clarified butter to the sauce. My partner threw in the cooked shallots. She minced tarragon, while I added more butter.

Chef D, Chef X’s number two, had said the sauce’s consistency needed to be like Helmann’s mayonnaise. I lifted up my whisk, trying to discern if the globs that fell looked like ribbons that sprung back a little. The sauce seemed thick. I added a teaspoon of water to thin out the sauce.

The sauce was getting cold, so I put it back over the hot water bath. If we didn’t serve a warm sauce, Chef X would yell at us.

I added a pinch of salt and more of the reduced liquid to make it have more bite to it.

My partner and I showed the sauce to Chef X. He tasted it.

“Good,” he said.

But I was still shaken over the last sauce. I could not get hollandaise out of my mind.

“Are you OK?” Gillian asked again.

“Yeah,” I replied.

I knew Chef X didn't yell at people to be mean. He did it because he believed we could do better. I had failed at other tasks like cutting enough turnip batonnets to cook in salted boiling water. But I could not get over Chef’s criticism. Maybe because it fed into my fear that I wasn’t cut out for culinary school, that I was continually going to be slow at cutting vegetables.

I left hard news journalism to cook. I quit what I knew, and now I just felt lost.

_____________________________________
Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes
Day 3: Culinary class leftovers
Day 4: The dreaded Tournage
Day 5: Making Stocks
Day 6: The Salt Experiment

Culinary school: The salt experiment

Day 6 Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I sprinkled a pinch of salt into the chicken veloute sauce, whisked and tasted the sauce. It was still bland. I added another pinch of salt, tasted and added more.

It was as if I were back in my high school chemistry class doing a titration experiment and trying to figure out the pH of a solution by painstakingly adding drops from a different solution.

The previous sauce my partner and I did — a bechamel— lacked salt, Chef X said. This time, we wanted to make sure we got it right.

Chicken veloute is a sauce made of chicken stock that is thickened by a roux of flour and melted butter.

I took another taste of the sauce and moved the tip of my tongue back and forth over the veloute, judging its salt level. The sauce wasn't ready yet. When I felt the full flavor of the sauce, when I could actually taste salt in the sauce, I would stop.

After many pinches of salt, my partner and I took it up to Chef X for inspection.

He swiped the sauce with his spoon and tasted it, tapping the top of his mouth a couple times with the tip of his tongue and moving his lips simultaneously.

He looked at Gillian and then at me.

"Dat is excellent," he said in his French accent.

We beamed.

Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes
Day 3: Culinary class leftovers
Day 4: The dreaded Tournage
Day 5: Making Stocks

Inwood Greenmarket

I love living a few blocks away from a farmers' market. Every Saturday, I go to the Inwood Greenmarket on Isham St. between Seaman Avenue and Cooper Street in New York City. The market has a little bit of everything: fruit, vegetables, cheese, ducks!, fish, seafood, grass-fed beef and turkeys. I bought all my potted herbs (thyme, basil, chives and parsley) from the greenmarket. 

I can even donate clothes, shoes, bags and other cloth to Wearable Collections. They take your textiles and recycle them.

Wearable Collections

Culinary school: Making stocks

Day 5 Monday, June 14, 2010

All around the room you could hear Whack!

My classmate Gillian* and I were cutting chicken carcasses into smaller pieces to make stock. We took the skin and fat off the bones.

Whack! I hit a chicken bone with the base end of my knife, but the bone didn’t break all the way through. I hacked some more.

We covered the chicken bones with water in a stockpot and brought them to a boil. Then we discarded the water and filled the pot again. We dropped in a bouquet garni of thyme, parsley stems, peppercorns and a bay leaf, letting the herbs and spices fall loosely in the water. We would be straining the stock later, so putting the bouquet garni in a sachet was an extra step we didn’t have time for.

We brought the stock to a simmer and let it sit on the stove for about two hours, skimming off oil as we started other stocks.

“It’s not very complicated,” Chef X had said.

But he said sternly, “Never add salt to your stock.”

The flavor would come from the bones and the mirepoix of cut vegetables. Mirepoix means “put in place.” The size of vegetables and what type vary in a recipe depending on how long you cook them.

Our fish stock was simmering away on the other burner. I had sweated leeks, onions, celery and mushroom trimmings in the pot before adding the halibut bones. When the flesh had turned white, I deglazed with white wine. I let some of the alcohol bubble off. I covered the bones with water, added the herbs, spices and garlic and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

When Gillian and I brought our fish stock for Chef X’s inspection, he said, “Very Good!” and wrote “Perfect” next our names.

My whole body smiled.

About two hours later, he wrote, “Very good,” after he saw our chicken stock.

But he looked at our vegetable stock and said, “It’s OK. It look gray.”

The stock was supposed to look more yellow than it did.

He explained that maybe when we sweated the vegetables, we had too many chopped green leeks in our stock, or maybe we cooked the butter too long before we sweated the vegetables.

I came home, wired. The more we cooked in class, the more I felt I could handle culinary school.

_____________________

*Name has been changed.

Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes
Day 3: Culinary class leftovers
Day 4: The dreaded tournage

Culinary school: The Dreaded Tournage

Day 4 Friday, June 11, 2010


A carrot shaped using the tournage technique

My classmates and I lined up in front of Chef X, waiting for him to judge our shaped potatoes. The potatoes were supposed to look like bullets. But some of us had carved potato wedges into stumpy fingers or whittled them down to fat toothpicks.

In French classical cooking, tournage is the practice of shaping and carving a vegetable. You “turn” your vegetable in one hand, so you can create a shape out of it with your other hand. The purpose of the technique is to make the vegetable look good and make sure it cooks evenly.

“This will become your worst nightmare,” Chef X had said, holding up the perfect torpedo he made for his first tournage demo.

He was right.

We had cleaned up after cooking shaped vegetables when Chef directed us to make four shaped potatoes in four minutes.

I struggled to even hold my paring knife and anchor the potato wedge with my small hands. When I pierced the flesh with my knife, I made jagged edges until I managed to smooth them out.

Chef did tournage so effortlessly. During his demo, he deftly cut curves in a potato wedge with his right hand as he turned the wedge in his left hand. All that was left was a shaped vegetable that was 5 centimeters long—a cocotte.

My joints began to swell from holding my knife, letting pain creep in. Even if I put down my knife, it took a second or two longer for my fingers to straighten.

I tried not to agonize too much over my potatoes or I would miss the four-minute deadline. We kept our scraps and our shaped potatoes in a bowl of water to prevent them from turning brown.

I waited in line and presented Chef with my stumpy nubs.

“They have no shape,” he said. He took one, made quick curved motions and my nub turned into a bullet.

I knew the potatoes looked bad. I just didn’t know when they would ever look better.

Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes
Day 3: Culinary class leftovers

Culinary class leftovers

Day 3 Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I could taste the sweetness of the roasted beets and the richness of the goat cheese in my mouth as I walked home. We had made a beet and goat cheese salad, along with ratatouille in class, and I couldn’t wait to devour the leftovers.

It was midnight when I unlocked the door to the apartment. But I opened the plastic container and ate all of the mashed up salad. I dug in, trying to get roasted beets and goat cheese in one spoonful. I loved the tartness of the vinaigrette. We had used champagne vinegar.

In class, Henry and I had made a beautiful salad plate. We filled a metal, round mold called a timbale with diced roasted beets. Then we spread goat cheese on top to fill up the mold. We drizzled vinaigrette around the beets and cheese and placed tiny apple cubes around the star of the plate. To add color, we mixed the vinaigrette with the deep fuchsia beet juice and drizzled that around, too.

Henry carefully lifted the mold, and the beet and goat cheese cylinder stayed intact. He gently pushed the seasoned frisee into the goat cheese, so it stuck up in the air.

“Nice structure,” Chef L said as we presented our plate.

Chef X and Chef L broke the perfect cylinder of beets and cheese with their spoons.

They tasted the ratatouille Henry and I had made.

“It needs more salt,” Chef X said. “Remember you give a pinch for yourself and a pinch for the chef.”

Later, I tasted the ratatouille--- a mélange of eggplant, zucchini, red and green peppers, onions and garlic. It had a lot of flavor, but salt would have made the dish pop.

I took a bite of the salad.

“Wow,” I said, surprised at how well it turned out.

I enjoyed the product of our stress.

We had let the ratatouille simmer as we worked on each component of the salad. Pressure weighted us down, but I welcomed the feeling of adrenaline. Class felt exhilarating, reminding me why culinary school was worth it.

Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes

Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes

Day 2, Monday, June 7, 2010

I pared off sides of my carrot as fast as I could.

We had 35 minutes to cut carrots, turnips and onions. Then we had to cook julienned carrots in a sauté pan and boil turnip batonnets, or sticks, in salted water.

My work area, or poste de travail, was the same as every other student: Bowl of unpeeled vegetables on the left, bowl on the right for peeled vegetables ready to cut and another bowl on my cutting board to collect peelings. The setup makes it easier for you to prepare and assemble your ingredients, or mise en place.

I had cut my carrot right away, instead of peeling all my vegetables. After I took off the sides of the carrot, I looked down at my bowl full of carrot peels and knew I’d get in trouble if I mixed my carrot trimmings with them. Trimmings were given to other classes to make stock. I got another bowl for the trimmings even though the fourth bowl wasn’t supposed to be there.

My classmate Henry* had peeled his carrot, turnip and onion in one bowl. He dropped his peels in the compost bin in one swift move.

I frantically peeled my onion and my turnip. At the far side of the room, Chef X yelled at a classmate for having a messy workstation.

“What is this?!” Chef said. “Clean your station!”

A moment later, Chef X stood next to me.

“What is that?!” he said, pointing at my extra bowl of carrot trimmings.

“What is that?!” he said, pointing to the empty square boy container I had taken from a shelf even though I didn’t need it.

“Clean your station!” he yelled and walked away.

Somehow I got rid of the extra bowl, composted peels and managed to make my station less cluttered.

Henry was already ahead of me, cooking his julienned carrots in a little bit of water, butter and a pinch of salt in a sauté pan and covering them with parchment paper. The method is called à l’étuvée and it’s used to cook vegetables à la minute, or to order.

Chef X appeared at my side again. “Isn’t that better?” he said, passing an eye over my clean station.

“Yes, Chef,” I said.

I dumped my wispy carrots into a pan, stuck it under the faucet to add a bit of water and dropped a pat of butter in there. I looked around for the salt. It was gone from the chef’s table.

“Who has the salt?” I asked.

The chef’s assistant pointed out the box of kosher salt next to the sink.

I darted over there and picked up the box. Another classmate was at my elbow.

“Come on. Come on,”  Phil* said.

I shook grains of salt into my palm. “Here,” I said, tipping my palm and letting salt cascade into my classmate’s hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

I gave a generous pinch of salt to my carrots. I covered them with parchment paper that I had folded into a triangle and cut, so it would fit the surface of the pan.

I blindly cut turnips into sticks, half a centimeter thick. At home, I had carefully cut off the sides of the turnip, sliced it into squares and then cut those squares into sticks. I didn’t have time to be exact.

“Don’t forget to watch your carrots,” Henry warned.

The pan was boiling. I bounded to the other side of the table to lower the heat.

“Now, taste it,” Henry said.

I tasted a carrot sliver. It was still a little crunchy.

I cut more turnips. Then I tasted my carrots again. The julienned carrot gave way under my teeth. The carrots glistened like they were supposed to.

I added more salt to boiling water in a saucepan and dropped in my turnips. Compared to Henry, I only had several turnip batonnets, while he had plenty. I willed those turnip sticks to cook faster.

Other classmates were lining up at the front of the room to let the chef taste their carrots and turnips to grade them.

I fished out one turnip batonnet. I was just about to put it in my mouth when Henry said, “Don’t forget to shock it in cold water.”

“Oh,” I said and dumped the batonnet into the cold water bath.

“Thanks,” I told Henry.

I bit into the turnip. It was al dente, not ready at all.

I sliced and diced my onions, forming two piles on a sheet pan. Chef X would judge them later.

I bit into another turnip, lowering the number of my batonnets to four or five. It still wasn’t cooked enough, but I was past the deadline. I got in line and put my plate in front of Chef X.

He picked up a carrot wisp and ate it.

“These are good,” he said.

He looked down at my turnip batonnets in a pool of water.

He said something I couldn’t hear. Then Chef said, “Zero.”

I don’t fully know why I got the grade, but I could think of a number of reasons; they were too short, there wasn’t enough, they were uneven.

Dazed, I walked back to my station and waited for Chef X to evaluate our cut vegetables.

We had to cut julienned carrots into a brunois — a small form of dice that looks like cubed confetti. We had to turn turnip batonnets, known as a jardinière cut, into a macedoine, or cubes the width of half a centimeter. One half of an onion had to be sliced—the emincer cut. The other half of the onion had to be diced to show the ciseler technique.

Henry had generous piles of carrots, turnips and onions on his side of the sheet pan, while my side had a drought.

Chef X came around to us. He looked with approval at Henry’s vegetables. Then he waved his finger over my vegetables.

“This is no good. This is no good,” Chef said.

My sliced onions were too chunky. My diced onions had different lengths.

I wasn’t surprised at his verdict. But my fear grew. What if I couldn’t do this?

Chef X showed a female classmate how to properly cut an onion. I didn’t feel alone. Someone else struggled just as much as I did.

He cut an onion in half, lengthways.

“Follow the line. Follow the line. Follow the line,” Chef said as he sliced the onion into perfect wisps.

He positioned the root of the other onion half to his left and sliced along the lines of the onion. He cut across those lines. He fluffed the diced onions with his fingers.

I would practice tomorrow.

___________________________
*Not my classmate's real name.

Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
First class: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?

FAQ about Culinary School posts

 I thought I'd answer some questions readers may have about my culinary school posts.

When did you start culinary school and why are you going?
I started classes at The French Culinary Institute in early June. I'm a part-time student, going to class Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. My expected graduation date is at the end of March. I decided to go to culinary school because cooking is relaxing.

Were you asked by the school to blog about your culinary school experiences?
 No. The opinions expressed on all posts about culinary school are my own.  


Do you use real names?
All student names have been changed. But Chef X is the actual nickname of our Level 1 and 2 instructor. All instructor names only show an initial. 

Will this blog dish the dirt on culinary school?
 I write about culinary school because I want to remember. If a classmate got wasted one night, I'm not going to write about it. I'm mindful that my classmates want to get good internships. I'm also not going to rant about other classmates on my blog.

You write a lot about one chef yelling at you.
Chef X yells at students because it's his way of motivating you, but he has the best intentions and he has a good heart. I wrote about his harsh criticism during Levels 1 and 2 because that is what happened---nothing more, nothing less. Everyone in our class has the greatest respect for Chef X.

Will you post recipes from your school curriculum?
 I will not be posting every recipe we did in class. I think it would be unfair for me to post the entire curriculum online when part-time students pay $36,300 to attend school and full-time students pay several thousand dollars more. I've posted a recipe for hollandaise sauce because it's considered a "mother sauce" in French cuisine. Early versions of hollandaise turned up in the mid-1600s and I don't think anyone has ownership over the recipe.

If you have more questions, feel free to e-mail me at hummingbirdappetite@gmail.com.

Who said cutting vegetables is easy?

First class Friday, June 4, 2010

I cut the side of a turnip as if tires screeched on a car with worn brakes. Across the counter, my classmate, who interned for well-known Chef Thomas Keller, had whizzed through most of the vegetables we had to cut for our first class at The French Culinary Institute. The majority of the sliced, diced, and julienned onions, leeks and carrots on the sheet pan were his. We were presenting them to Chef X as a team.

I cut all but one of the sides of the turnip, turning the root vegetable into a cube with a rounded edge on the left side. My knife squeaked through the block to make slices, or tranches, that were half a centimeter thick. The final rounded edge was discarded. I cut each tranche into sticks that were again half a centimeter thick--- a type of cut called jardinière. (We had to learn French words for all cutting techniques.) Lining up the tips of the sticks against my knife, I cut again, making small cubes, or macedoine.

I was painfully aware how slow I was. I felt so green. Earlier in class, I was about to slice an onion in half when Chef D stopped me, looked at my left hand holding the onion and said, “Like a claw.”

To grip the onion, I bent my forefinger, middle finger and ring finger slightly, hiding the tips, and tucked my thumb behind the others. That way, I’d have less of a chance of cutting myself.

As I sliced my carrots and cabbage, I tried to make sure my movements were like a “choo-choo train” as Chef X described. “Try to do the motion of the steam train,” he said in his French accent.

All vegetables were separated. Peels were thrown into the compost bin. Trimmings of carrots and leeks were dropped into bins at the back of the room so other classes could make stock.

Once, I dropped bits of Savoy cabbage in a bowl of carrot trimmings, forgetting that I wasn’t at home in my own kitchen. Chef X caught me.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing to the bowl. “I made a mistake, Chef,” I said.

“What is that?” he said, pointing to the cabbage vein I had cut out of the leaf before I did a chiffonade.

“Compost,” I replied.

He gave a slight smile and walked away.

Chef X was stern, yet made us laugh. He constantly tested us.

“Where does this go?” he asked, holding up an onion skin he had peeled.

A student took it and dropped it in the compost bin.

“Are you sure that’s compost?” Chef X asked, looking quizzically at the student.

The student hesitated, his face showing doubt even though he could see rotting carrot peels, turnip slices and other vegetables in the bin.

“Oh, it’s compost,” Chef X said, breaking into a sly grin.

At the beginning of class, Chef X told us what he did not tolerate.

“If you have an attitude, I will break you,” he said.

His French accent only put more emphasis on each word.

He was adamant that items were either put in recycle bins, trash or compost.

If Chef X saw any one of us pass by a sink and not pick up food collecting in the drain to be used as compost, he said, “I’m gon’ to mek you clean for the whole class for 19 days.”

“I like the team people,” he said. “I don’ like the individual.”

So as partners, my classmate and I presented our cuttings to Chef X.

“This is good. This is good. This is good,” he said, waving a finger over the cabbage chiffonade, the sliced and diced onions and sliced leeks. Both of us had cut the cabbage. My classmate had cut most of the onions and all the leeks.

“These are too big,” Chef X said, zoning in on the carrots, which my classmate had julienned and cut into even smaller cubed confetti.

When Chef X looked at my turnip cubes, he said, “These are good, but they could be better.”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t fail.

I sat on the subway train headed home, feeling a bud of hope that maybe I could eventually cook like a professional chef.


Other posts:
Panic before my first class at culinary school

Panic before my first class at culinary school

My eyes sprung open at 2 a.m. My right arm still felt weak at my side like a limp celery stalk, and my first class at The French Culinary Institute was that day. I lay in bed, worried about cutting vegetables with a grimace on my face and horribly screwing up.

I thought I had left my newspaper, but it was entrenched in the muscles and tendons of my arm. For almost two months, I’ve had pain in my right elbow from typing and straining it with repetitive movements. I had tennis elbow and I hadn’t played the sport in years.

I got up, turned on my laptop and searched for acupuncturists on Yelp.com. A friend told me she was surprised how her tennis elbow arm felt better after her chiropractor did acupuncture. I found ecstatic reviews of some practitioners in New York City’s Chinatown, which was within walking distance of the culinary school in Soho.

It hurt to type and move the mouse. It hurt to write down addresses.

I lay down in bed on my back, feeling how useless my right arm was. It took a long time for me to go to sleep.

Later in the morning, I called the first business on my list, asking if I needed to make an appointment. No, the person said. I asked if there was a wait, and he answered no again.

I took the subway to Chinatown. My heavy bag with my chef’s uniform and shoes bumped against me as I walked several blocks to Lin Sister Herb Shop.

When I poked my head through the double doors to the second floor office of the acupuncturist, no one was waiting. After hearing my problem, the acupuncturist directed me to lie down and put my arms on my chest.

I had never undergone acupuncture before. My father, a physician, hated the practice and scoffed at it. I knew he might call me and yell over the phone for going.

I remembered my father wailing about the health risks of infections from reused needles. But the acupuncturist pulled out packaged sterile needles out of his breast pocket. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what he did.

I heard a soft ting and the first needle was in.

“You’re good,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. He was soft-spoken and very polite.

The acupuncturist inserted needles in both arms. My left elbow had pain, too. He pushed a heat lamp over my right arm and told me to stay still for 30 minutes. He gently closed the door.

Alone in the room, I looked down at the needles sticking out of my arms. Panic flooded my body. I fought it off, saying to myself silently, “One” as I breathed in and “Two” as I breathed out. I tried to make my mind open. I wished hard that whatever the acupuncture was doing that it was smoothing out the pain in my arms.

When time was up, the acupuncturist swiftly took out the needles.

Back outside on the sidewalk, I wasn’t sure if I felt any different. Sitting in a restaurant with two hours left before class, I wrote notes on index cards and noticed I didn’t feel as much pain. My right arm still felt a little weak.

Later, I stood in class, arms at my sides---the one position that didn’t hurt. In the second half of the five-hour class, Chef X explained the different ways to slice and dice vegetables. It was then that I noticed I didn’t detect  limpness or pain in my arm. I had stopped being so overly aware.

By the time I peeled a turnip, my right arm felt strong enough to dice it.

Next up: Chef X.

My mom's egg rolls

The house smelled like the fryer, but I had egg rolls to eat.

In May, I drove all the way to Wisconsin from New York to visit my parents. I needed to drop off my car because I wouldn't need it in New York City.

Every time I come home, my mom makes egg rolls because they're my favorite. But this time, with her guidance, my brother and I made them ourselves.

We cooked vegetable egg rolls because we didn't have ground pork, but they were still crispy and wonderful and fried.

Mom told me to shred each vegetable for the filling.


The filling is made of Korean sweet potato, cucumber, zucchini, Napa cabbage and bean thread noodles.

Bean thread noodles looks like this:




My brother and I wrapped the egg rolls and he cooked them in the deep fryer.



Mom’s vegetable egg rolls
Ingredients:
1/3 to 1/2 of a Korean sweet potato or regular sweet potato
1 zucchini
1 cucumber
1 Napa cabbage
1 bundle of bean thread noodles
1 package egg roll/spring roll wrappers. (They must be thin wrappers, not thick.)
salt
vegetable oil

For sealing the egg rolls:
1 egg
1 tablespoon of water

Soy sauce

Shred the Korean potato. Microwave the shredded potato in the microwave for one minute to soften it. Set aside.

Wash the zucchini and shred it in another bowl. Season with salt. Then microwave the zucchini for a minute. Repeat with the cucumber.

Soak bean thread noodles in warm water. Set aside.

Pour vegetable or peanut oil in a Dutch oven or cast-iron pot until it is about 2 inches high or the depth you desire. Heat oil until it reaches 375 degrees F. If you don't have a thermometer, drop a tiny piece of an egg roll wrapper in the oil and see if it sizzles.

Meanwhile, rinse cabbage in a large bowl of water. Strip away some of the large outer leaves and use them for soup. Julienne all other leaves. Season with salt. Microwave cabbage for a minute or two.

Cut bean thread into lengths as long as your forefinger. Mix potato, zucchini, cucumber, cabbage and bean threads in a large bowl.

Beat an egg and add 1 tablespoon of water in a small bowl and set aside.

Take an egg roll wrapper and place it in front of you on a plate, so it looks like a diamond. Spoon two tablespoons of the mixture in the bottom corner. Fold over the corner. Take your hand and pull the filling towards you to tighten the bundle.

Turn the bundle over again. Then fold the flaps of the wrapper inward. Fold the egg roll one more time. Brush egg wash over the last corner. Then roll the egg roll over to seal it.

Repeat until you have as many egg rolls as you want. Save any leftover filling in the refrigerator. Dip egg rolls in soy sauce.

Note: You can cook ground pork and add it to the filling. You can add other vegetables like carrots if you want as long as you soften them in the microwave before you add it to the filling.

Print recipe

How to wrap an egg roll:

Place an egg roll wrapper on a plate. Turn the plate so it looks like a diamond. Put two tablespoons in the bottom corner.



Fold over the corner. Take your hand and pull the filling towards you to tighten the bundle.


Fold over again.


Fold the sides in.


Fold over again.


Beat an egg and add 1 tablespoon of water in a small bowl. Brush egg wash over the last corner.


Fold over again to seal the egg roll.

Bad timing

Hi all,

As much as I wish I could post more, I can't at the moment. I have pain in my right arm from tennis elbow. It's probably a result of constantly working at a computer from my previous job and constantly being in front of a computer at home.

So, I need to rest. I'll post when I can. I'm starting classes at The French Culinary Institute this week and having pain in my arm is definitely bad timing.

I'm more nervous than excited about going to culinary school. I will keep you posted.

Jenny