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Joe has returned to the internets in blog form. Follow his exploits in India.

BELIEVE YOUR EYES! A POST!

Due to the recent public outcry (three people at last count), apparently I'm long overdue for a blog post. The severity of my cyber laziness didn't really sink in for me until I realized I haven't posted since chicken cycle in kitchen. A LOT has happened since, let me tell you.

Oh wait, that's why you're here-- to let me tell you. Fair enough.

Since chicken we have blazed a delicious trail through the edible animal kingdom. First stop was beef, a 72-hour period that easily took about three years off of my life. Dishes included roasted top round, grilled NY strip, Pittsburgh rare filet mignon, hamburgers, fajitas and calves liver. Let me remind you that this is breakfast. I don't know what you're eating at 8:30am but I was garnishing my hamburger with a steak.

I wish I was exaggerating.

Liver was interesting. Our family never did the liver and onions thing because, so says my mom, she didn't like it when her mom made her eat it so she spared us from the experience. My final take is that it pretty much has a beef taste to it and isn't terrible when paired with the onions and bacon, but I could never see myself ordering it out at a restaurant. A lot of people couldn't get past the texture, but honestly I think there are worse textures in the culinary world.

For example...Pittsburgh rare. Take a perfectly good steak, quickly sear/borderline char both sides of it leaving it uncooked rare in the middle. I just didn't care for it. Picture a slightly overcooked steak texture/taste followed by the mush of the raw meat in the middle. I don't get the idea of doing that to a perfectly good steak, but oh well. When in the 'Burgh...

Three bypasses later, we moved onto game-ish proteins. Venison, duck and lamb to be more specific, and to be even *more* specific-- venison stew, lamb chops persillade, sauteed breast of duck, char su roasted duck and medallions of venison.

Duck was never on the menu at the Shugar household so it was another first experience there. And I must say, duck is delicious. It's interesting that it isn't cooked to the specs of chicken, and can be served a bit rare in the middle. Overall I think the flavor is just more exciting. Both preparations we did in kitchen were good. The char su is a tasty, Asian flavor rub (sugar, kosher salt, ginger, coriander, anise seed, ground black pepper) glazed with a honey, red wine vinegar and hoisin mixture. I will get down on in the future, for sure.

Maybe I can convince the mom to do a duck for a holiday this year. Hmmm...

The venison medallions were also very good. I've always liked venison, but until class I've only ever had it in jerky form. I'd take venison over beef any day, for sure. Just better flavor.

Post midterm we moved onto our focus for the remaining time in kitchen-- seafood! I now know how to fillet a flat fish (i.e. grouper) and a round fish (i.e. bass). Also notice the extra 'L' in fillet. Fish is fillets. Beefs is filets. See the difference? You learn something new every day.

Cooking kicked off with sole a'la meuniere (sauted sole with a butter/lemon/parsley sauce), poached sole vin blanc, stuffed sole, and pan fried sole. Pretty much just different, basic preparations of fish. Honestly the star of these two days of fish cookery was a caper anchovy mayonnaise (mayo with cider vinegar, dijon mustard, lemon juice, salt, tobasco, shallots, capers and anchovies). Before you turn your nose up at the sight of anchovy, know that there's only once minced into the preparation, which probably gives it more of a salty taste than fishy taste in the grand scheme of it all.

I also made a fish chowder and grilled marlin in there, and there were crab cakes both days as well. The crab cakes were great the first day and pretty meh the next day (despite the addition of bacon to them). It really comes down to who's cooking sometimes. The fish chowder, I thought, was really good...until chef said we should throw some tobasco in it. I agreed, but when he started adding --one good shake...two...three?-- it just totally overpowered the chowder and became all you could taste. I would have left it out...or used A LOT less.

We then moved on to poached salmon, bronzed sea bass, and pan fried cat fish. I took the cat fish the first day and made some pretty tasty goujons with a cajun remoulade. That's a *really* fancy way of saying fish sticks and spicy tartar sauce, by the way, lol. With the goujons came hushpuppies too, and I've never met a non-delicious hush puppy, that's for sure.

Yesterday was shrimp creole, cioppino (mixture of seafood in a tomato sauce), seared sea scallop stir fry, seafood gumbo and grilled steakfish (tuna this time). I got down on the cioppino with Billy which meant I got to peel and devein a few pounds of shrimp, clean some clams and "debeard" some mussels. Good times.

Honestly, all the food was disappointing, which sucks because this is the kind of stuff I was excited to cook and always excited to eat when I'm out. I don't know if it's just the quality of the seafood the school purchases, the quality of seafood in PIT in general, how people cooked stuff or what. Nothing was really impressive. The gumbo was alright. Our cioppino just tasted like so-so seafood in a really tomato-y tomato sauce. The scallops were rushed at the end and not cooked correctly. The creole, again, suffered due to poor quality of the shrimp. The tuna was good, but pretty similar to the marlin.

Again, this is all just my opinion, but I've had too much good seafood in my lifetime to not notice blah seafood. I saw a sign of this when I was in my second month and some kid presented our chef with a soft shell crab preparation. I'd never had soft shell crab before and heard it was delicious, so I tried some. It tasted terrible. Again, I write it off on bad quality of seafood or poor cooking...but I dunno. Billy and I do alright for ourselves in the kitchen so to not be impressed with even our dish Friday...I'm leaning on the ingredients being meh. Our the recipes being meh. Something here is meh, that's for sure.

Who knows, maybe Monday everything will be delicious...

As for delicious sides we've made to go with the proteins, here's a quick list of my favorites: roasted shallot whipped potatoes, grilled portabella mushrooms, spaghetti squash, grilled asparagus, and parmesan chateau potatoes. Pretty straight forward, really-- the 'chateau' in chateau potatoes is referring to the presentation's shape (five sides). You dip them in oil, roll them in parmesean cheese and bake them. Delicious.

IN OTHER CLASS NEWS...cost control and wines are going fine. Through midterms in kitchen, wines and cost control my grades are 98 percent, 95 percent (guess) and 100 percent, respectively. I just turned in a project in wines that is worth 20 percent of my grade and it should be a solid buffer to my 'A' standing in that class, without a doubt. We've been tasting our way through the last two weeks-- chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, riesling, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir, syrah (or shiraz if you're Australian), champagne. No complaints there.

SIDE NOTES...I'm looking for a job locally. There's a career fair coming to town Tuesday for the students further ahead of us, but we're required to go and scope people out, meet and greet, etc. There are some places that strike up my interest (Colorado Springs, Pinehurst, Disney) and a few practical fallbacks (Columbus, Port Clinton, Cleveland, Pittsburgh). We will see where life takes me in six months, I suppose, or if I can get a foot in the door early. We can't sign up for interviews, but it doesn't mean we can't *get* interviews.

VERY IMPORTANT...I have discovered the Strip District, Pittsburgh's 'farmer's market' so to speak. This means it has always existed, and I've been aware of it, but I finally made a point to go. Pennsylvania Macaroni Company has changed my life. The cheese counter is amazing. The deli is amazing. The pasta and ingredients are amazing. The place is...you guessed it...AMAZING! There's also some good places down there to get fresh produce and even fresh soft tortilla shells (I'm talking still hot in the bag you're buying fresh).

NOT IMPORTANT...the school changed its name to The Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts from the PCI moniker. Sounds fancier I suppose, and we have a new sign on our kitchens building. My tuition dollars at work.

OK-- this post is enormous. My guilt of not posting for almost an entire month has been washed away. I promise my next post will come sooner so...until next time...

I've never been so ready for a new year...

Alright-- the first post of 2010. There may not be any flying cars, hover boards or anything else the Back to the Future movies promised me that the future would be like, but there's still culinary school. And a new month means a new block of classes.

Kitchen is all about proteins this month, from your chickens and beefs to the chickens of the sea (I mean seafood...I think?). Our chef is old school, he graduated in '74, and appears to have lived the *cough* 70's lifestyle. His catch phrase is, "Can you dig it?" and I'd say he's a 75% match of Christopher Walken in both his appearance and mannerisms.

He also talks to meat, sometimes a bit inappropriately. Don't believe me? Watch this. The first ten seconds proves my point. And that's just silly. That's not him calling a piece of pork a "dirty slut" when trying to hack the spine away from a rack of chops with a cleaver. That really happened, on day one of class. It is impossible to make this stuff up.

Anyway, the class is going to be intense. The atmosphere is more kitchen-like for sure, with groups responsible for more dishes on a daily basis. As a group we're probably completing four to five unique dishes a day on top of shared responsibilities of side dishes. The pace continues to amp up, and I've got no complaints there.

My other two classes this month include a class about pairing alcohol with food, and a cost control and purchasing class to further stuff some Math into our heads. The pairing class has the potential to be interesting (it is an interesting subject, no?), but the teacher has been a bit of a let down thus far. Cost Control is just Math with a purpose...if there is such a thing...as opposed to Math for the sake of Math. The class pertains more to using Math like we would in the industry, not just proving we know 2+2=4.

Other than that, I de-boned my first chicken today. That was a trip. It pretty much went down like it does in the YouTube clip above, just not as smoothly as it's no easy task for a first-timer. It's a practical requirement though so 20-odd days from now I will hopefully be able to fabricate the chicken with ease.

How's that for a New Year's resolution?