Day 9: How to Cook Meat While Not Actually Cooking Meat.

All ready for the kitchen, we received our uniforms last week. From now to the end of the course we are to wear our uniforms with hair tied back for school in class and in the kitchen. We've been outfitted with checkered pants, white jackets, white apron, white hat and scarf. We don't have to wear the apron or hat until we are in the kitchen. It feels pretty official now that I'm wearing a uniform.

We are still in theory understanding how to cook meats, chicken and fish. Today it was pretty much about how to cook meats and chicken. Roasting and baking, broiling, grilling, and pan-broiling, sauteing, pan-frying and griddling, simmering and braising. Learning which cooking methods and temperatures are best for which cuts of meat and chicken. We finished today's theory with how to cut up a chicken, cook a chicken and even dress and stuff a chicken.

During theory, Chef noted that the food plating pictures in our course book were awful. I must say they really are. The pictures look very dated. One of the pictures showed a plate of jerk chicken and grilled pineapple in a Styrofoam takeout container. There was enough jerk chicken to feed a family of four. But there was no starch or no vegetable on the plate Styrofoam. I guess the key here is to aspire to make our dishes look way better than those shown in the book. This is something that I look forward to doing ~ plating all my dishes to look great so that you will want to eat the food on the plate with your eyes first.

A number of recipes were selected that we need to copy into our cooking "bible" for when we are in the kitchen. I'm looking forward to making Osso Buco, Roast Duckling a l'Orange and Pho.

Pho is a favorite of Chef's. Class ended with a food competition video. Tonight's homework ~ Read chapters discussed in class today and create a menu using the ingredients that Chef Lindsay has provided us with.