Day 1 of Week 4! Time is flying by at record speeds! Today we prepared a vegetable stock using mirepoix, a vegetable mix generally including onions, celery and carrots. Our team did a pretty good job I feel. The stock was très doux, very sweet. I definitely feel that I would enjoy chicken stock a lot more, but I still appreciate the flavor and effort put into making a vegetable stock.

The most interesting and educational segment of the class was, as always, Chef Mark’s demonstration on how to efficiently cut mirepoix in a uniform manner. I never knew how to cut carrots before now. Now I do. Here’s “How to Dice Carrots for Dummies”:

1. Block the carrot. Do this by cutting four sides of the carrot, making it rectangular.
2. Plank the block. Cut thinner slices off of the block.
3. Turn those planks into sticks. Slice the planks into long, thin strips.
4. Dice the sticks.

My group mates and I met up and practiced making our assigned soup, Cream of Broccoli, and we had yet to see this demonstration. We didn’t peel the carrots, we didn’t have any onions and we cut the carrots and celery all wrong. I am so grateful for this cooking class and for Chef. I am learning new things every class that I feel are applicable to my daily life.

Day 2 of Week 4 was fantastic. Jasmine, Steve and I were responsible for making a hollandaise sauce to go with poached eggs and Chef’s mac ‘n cheese. After following Chef’s instructions to a “T”, we asked Chef to come over and test our sauce. He picked up a soup spoon, came over and said, “If the sauce is made correctly, when I blow on the sauce on the back of this spoon it will create rose petal ripples”. Sure enough, there were rose petals. Then he actually tasted it. “I don’t remember ever having to never tell anyone something to fix on this before” said Chef, seemingly surprised that we got it on the first try. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of myself in a class. Ever.

AHA Moment

My AHA moment came with the hollandaise sauce that our team successfully made. There is one thing in particular that I gleaned from this experience: Listen to instructions and follow them. You can learn a lot from people if you are actually wanting to hear what they have to say. It’s crazy the things that people are willing to tell you if you demonstrate that you are listening and putting in the effort to understand them. Chef’s passion is clearly cooking, but teaching is also high on his list. I come to class two days a week for two hours a day and see a bunch of people who don’t want to be there, but feel that they have to be. That just isn’t true. If you don’t want to be there, then just leave. Either that, or decide to have a mentality that allows you to listen to what Chef has to say because he appears to be a well of information as far as I can tell.

Here’s the skinny on what you’ve been doing wrong at the grill: Never season the steaks before putting them on the grill (it’s useless), always rub oil on to the steak to evenly cook the meat, and NEVER flip the steak before rotating it 90° and placing it in a new spot on the grill. These rules will change your life. I promise.

Chef demonstrated on Day 1 this week how to break down the side of a cow, and it was awesome. From this section of cow came the intercostal muscles (rib meat), bones for stock, fat for lard and rib-eye steak which is made up of the side muscle, the center muscle and, what Chef called the “Maserati of meat”, the rib-eye cap . C’était super génial! And it was delicious. The class fees were definitely worth while, just for that char-grilled steak.

Close to the beginning of Chef’s demonstration, he mentioned how each rib-eye steak would have to be sold at around $90 a piece in order to make a profit. But, I’ve never paid for a $90 steak in my life! This is where a chef’s knowledge of versatility comes in handy. In order to decrease the price of that individual steak, you have to know how to get the most out of that section of cow. 1 petit filet could be charged at a rate that would lower the cost of that rib-eye. I found this to be truly intriguing, but perhaps my readers have fallen asleep.

Anyways, Day 2 of Week 3 was all about fish. The same principles that applied to beef applies to fish. The salmon we got to eat was fantastic. Chef went off on a passionate tangent on sustainability about how fish hatcheries had been feeding their salmon chicken bones, making the meat white. Then they added red food coloring to compensate for the color problem. Gross. I already stated that the salmon was good; I’d just like to add that that beef was WAY better. Just personal preference I suppose.

AHA Moment

My AHA moment this week occurred when we finished grilling the beef and I got a taste of it. Mom always said to slow down and enjoy my food, but something about this particular day made that point stick. As Chef Mark said, “Tasting food is the gateway to understanding how to cook”. There is so much joy to be found in this rough world, and we must cherish those moments. Cooking and eating can be one of those moments, we just need to slow down and appreciate it. Don’t eat. Taste.

Today I’m starting with Day 2 of Week 2 since the transitions work better that way. As usual, everyone showed up 15 minutes before the start of class for attendance taking, phone sanitizing and hand washing. Then began the demonstration on how to properly use a chef’s knife! After about fifteen minutes of demonstrating, Chef had all of the tables grab cutting boards, knives and a knife honer so that we could practice the technique that he had taught us. I’ll quickly summarize the lesson.

The proper way to hold a knife is to pinch both sides of the blade just above the handle using your thumb and index finger of the dominant hand. The three fingers remaining should gently wrap around the handle. Focusing on the cutting hand first when chopping, the motion is to bring the knife down and forward, up and back, and repeat until done. Your non-dominant hand should have your knuckles facing out, protecting your finger tips, with your thumb being the finger located the farthest away from the blade itself. When using the honer, the blade should be angled at 20 degrees from the honer, and should be run along the honer for the whole length of the blade. Any other angle will dull the blade. Below is a video to demonstrate.

Day 1 of Week 2, Chef asked us if we wanted to do something other than standing around the kitchen listening to him talk. The class seemed to think “do we really have a choice”, to which Chef would probably have responded, “not really, no”. While I don’t mind listening to Chef speak, as he has important and useful things to say, I love a change of pace. So we went to the cemetery closest to the HRM building. Once inside, Chef asked us to find a shady spot and reflect on what we wanted people to think of us at our funerals some day when we were dead and gone. And I did reflect. Here’s what I wrote.

AHA Moment

I realized in that cemetery that the journey matters more than the prizes you earn along the way. It’s a very good thing to set short-term goals for yourself. But, when you attain that short-term goal, you’ll find yourself lonely or purposeless unless you have set a long-term goal as well. As human beings, we must be striving for something greater than ourselves at all times, and hopefully that something improves us as individuals as well as the world around us.

As for me, the meta-narrative I am choosing to live by is the truth. Life is hell; coming to terms with that fundamental truth is the only way you can choose to live that hell the best way that you know how. The best way to survive in a world full of blood thirsty competition, pain and suffering is to tell the truth. That’s what I want people to say about me at my funeral: that I was honest to a fault.