Pasta alla Carbonara

This might just be the best thing I learned to make in culinary school. We learned it in our "dairy and eggs" class and since it has both, it's perfect. The recipe our instructor made was not gluten free so I didn't get to try any of it but it smelled so insanely good that I made it myself at home with gluten free pasta a few days later. It's. So. Good.
There are no tricks to this, it's one of the easiest recipes out there. Because it has so few ingredients, make sure to use the good stuff, namely parmigiano reggiano. You want the onions and garlic to get velvety soft and translucent, don't rush it. Once you mix this up, you need to eat it fast. It doesn't keep and it's not good cold so be ready to scarf. For everyone here in LA, you can get all these ingredients at Trader Joe's and this recipe is the perfect antidote to the grey, drizzly weather we're having today. Please to enjoy:

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Ingredients:
- 1 lb gluten free spaghetti
- 4-6 oz pancetta, diced (or guanciale -I wish!)
- 1 small yellow or brown onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic sliced lengthwise, paper thin
- 3 egg yolks
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup grated parmesan cheese (more if you want extra for sprinkling)
- salt and black pepper to taste

Cook pancetta for about two minutes, until fat begins to render then add diced onions.

Cook over medium heat until pancetta is crisp and onions are slightly caramelized and buttery soft (this took me about 40 minutes. no joke.)

Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more, until the garlic is softened and aromatic.

Cook the (gluten-free) spaghetti using directions on package.
Before draining the pasta, reserve a cup of the cooking liquid to add later if you need it.

Mix the egg yolks, cream and cheese together in small bowl.

Drain the pasta and quickly add it to the pancetta/onion/garlic mixture.

Add the egg/cream/cheese mixture. Toss/stir vigorously and quickly to make the sauce and coat the pasta. Add as much cooking liquid as you need to make the sauce a thick, even consistency. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Serve immediately with grated parmesan cheese.

This is heaven.

Like Buttah

I have seen lots of chefs use clarified butter but I never knew what it was or why one would use it until I learned about it in cooking school. Clarified butter has had the milk solids removed so that just the butterfat remains. The milk solids burn much faster than than the fat so you can use clarified butter at much higher temperatures without ending up with a smoky kitchen and brown (or black) butter. Clarified butter acts a lot like oil. It isn't necessary to refrigerate it and if you do refrigerate it, it becomes hard and needs to be brought back to room temperature or heated to become liquid again. I thought it would be difficult to separate the milk solids from the butterfat but it was actually very easy!
Now you can do it too!

Step 1: Toss your butter into a sauce pan. You want it to be small enough that you can easily skim your ladle in it once the butter melts. If it's too shallow, this will be tricky.

Step 2: With the pan over medium heat, let the butter melt gently. If you need to turn they heat down, that's ok. You want the butter melted but not boiling or burning.

Step 3: Using a ladle, skim off the frothy top layer, leaving behind as much of the golden liquid underneath as you can.

Step 4: Continue skimming until all of the froth is removed an you are left with just the butterfat.

Step 5: Keep the milk solid froth in a separate container,you can serve it over popcorn later!

 That's it! You did it! Easy Peasy! Look at that beautiful clarified butter. Ready for omelet makin'!

Veal Stock and Demi Glace

If you've ever had a steak in nice restaurant and it was served with a delicious, dark, rich sauce and you've thought to yourself, "Dang! That is one delicious sauce; wonder what they put in there!" chances are, you have enjoyed demi glace.
Demi glace is like a secret weapon that hides in your sauces and takes them to a whole other level.
Demi glace is made from reduced brown veal stock. The stock can be used to make veloutes or gravies. Since I can't eat flour, an essential ingredient in veloute and gravy, I don't have much use for veal stock but demi glace is used to make reduction sauces and I have LOTS of uses for those. 
Demi glace is a lot of work.
Demi glace made me cry. Mostly from frustration but finally from pleasure.

Once again, as with chicken broth or stock, the most frustrating part is having no way of knowing if/how your final product will turn out. I spent days slaving over this stuff and at the end, it tasted like nada. Well, not nada; it tasted like mildly beefy water. Not exactly what I was expecting. However, when I finally reduced what I thought was a demi glace (but was really still veal stock) down to a true demi glace and used it in a sauce, I was rewarded with a flavorful substance that defies description.

The trick to making demi glace is...there is no trick. And there is no recipe. Making veal stock and turning that into demi glace is just one of the important steps a chef takes in learning to trust her instincts. I did everything I was supposed to do but I didn't follow the directions to a T. This is SO important in cooking and I think it's why my instructor doesn't put a lot of stock (punny, I know) into recipes. YOU are going to eat this. Do YOU think it looks/smells/tastes right? When my bones didn't brown as quickly as the instructions said they would, I didn't take them out anyway and go to the step, I kept cooking them as long as it took to get them looking like I felt they should look. I can't stress enough how important it is to learn to trust yourself. In the end I did this and STILL thought I had a disaster on my hands but as you will see, my initial faith in my self paid off.

Ingredients:
- 6-7 lbs veal knuckle and marrow bones (It took me ages to find these. I went to many stores including butcher shops but I finally got them from Gelson's. You can probably find them cheaper from Harvey's Guss)
- 2 lbs mirepoix, roughly chopped into large, comparably sized pieces (onion, leek greens, celery, carrots)
- 1 cup red wine

- bouquet garni (garlic clove, thyme, chives, parsley, peppercorns, white leek leaf, bay leaf)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place veal bones in roasting pan, do not stack them but they can be touching.

Roast 30 minutes then turn the bones. Continue to roast until bones are brown, 1 to 3 hours. (took me 2 plus.)

Add mirepoix to the pan, leaving out the leeks (if they roast too long, they will burn) and roast another 30-60 minutes.

When the veggies are just starting to caramelize, add the leeks and continue to roast until the mirepoix vegetables are nicely caramelized (took me almost 2 hours, total.)

Place the bones and mirepoix in a LARGE stock pot then deglaze the roasting pan with a cup of decent red wine and a wooden spoon.

Pour the resulting liquid into the stock pot. Fill the stock pot with cool water until the level is a few inches above the bones. (Mine was about 2-3 inches, I ended up with A LOT of stock, too much water, I think. Next time I would just cover the bones.)

Throw in the Bouquet Garni.

Simmer at a "tremble" (French = "fremir") for 6-8 hours. Periodically skim off any scum that floats to the top.

Bring down to room temperature then refrigerate overnight. (If you need to bring down the temp fast, divide the stock into smaller containers)

Skim off the fat that collects on top.

Now you have veal stock!
Let's make demi glace:

Reheat. Bring to a slow simmer and continue simmering slowly to reduce stock by AT LEAST 50% (up to 90%.)

The consistency should noticeably thicken and the demi glace should have a nice aroma and mild but meaty taste*. Freeze for up to 3 months.

*My stock was oily, tasted (as I said) like beef water and was not thick but was slightly gelatinous. I declared it a failure and cried and cursed the heavens for allowing me to abuse that poor cow-baby's bones in such a fruitless manner. I froze it anyway and pulled some out of the fridge a few weeks later. To my shock, with a bit more reducing, I was able to make an OUT OF THIS WORLD red wine reduction sauce. The moral is, don't give up on your demi glace. When in doubt, reduce, reduce, reduce. You might be surprised at how it turns out!

Chicken Broth

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (tee hee.)

In class we spent our first day learning the basics of the kitchen: safe chicken = 160 degrees, when walking with a knife, hold it against your leg with the tip pointing down and the blade pointing behind you, don't use metal utensils in reactive pots and pans, etc, etc, etc. Very valuable and useful information that we blasted through in four short hours.

Our second day in class we talked about stocks, broths and roux based sauces.
Stock is a liquid made from bones, veggies and seasonings where all the solids and fats are removed.
Broth is a liquid made from meat and bones, veggies and seasonings where the solids are removed but some of the fat is left in.
A roux is a thick sludgy looking goo made from mixing flour with clarified butter and stock. This is the base for bechemel sauce, gravy, veloute, gumbo and other preparations. Since flour has declared war on my intestines, I will not be giving it the satisfaction of being prominently featured in my blog. So there, flour!

I decided to jump right in and make myself some chicken broth. I chose a broth because chicken bones/parts are not all that easy to come by unless you've been planning ahead and saving bits and bobs from your chicken carcasses. Since I didn't even have the know-how to cut up a chicken or which bits went into the stock and which were used in the original preparation, I found it a lot easier to just dump in a whole roasting chicken. The ingredients for a broth are simple.

There is no real recipe, it's more like a formula and there is also no way to KNOW for sure that you're doing it right. The most frustrating and difficult thing I've had to understand in school so far is that when it comes to stock/broth/demi-glace, you won't really know if your batch is good until you use it in a recipe. Until you are experienced and familiar with the delicate nuances of these things, you won't be able to smell, taste or see the quality of your finished product. This KILLS me. It's a scary feeling freezing your broth and not knowing if it is going to taste like anything or not when you put it in that risotto you'll make down the line. As much as I hate this, it's part of being a chef and I am learning (slowly) to trust myself and be patient. I can't tell you the satisfaction I got from tasting that first risotto made with my own, from scratch, chicken broth. It was perfection.

I say all this mostly to caution you. When you make your own broth and you go in for that taste before you take it off the stove, it ain't gonna taste like much of anything. My first thought when I tasted mine was "chicken water." You don't add salt and pepper to broth; you add them when you are seasoning the dish you make WITH the broth or stock. Since there is no salt or pepper, the flavors in the liquid are delicate. You should taste the essence of the type of meat or bones you used and a mere hint of the vegetables and herbs.

So now, without further ado: How to make Chicken Broth
Makes 2 Quarts

- 4 lb chicken (I used a roaster)
- 1/2 - 1 lb medium chopped mirepoix (40% Onion, 40% Celery, 20% Carrot) I used: 3/4 of a large onion, 2 small/medium carrots (peeled) and 1 large celery stalk
- 1 boquet garni (thyme, chives, parsley, peppercorns, white leek leaf, bay leaf) -you just eyeball the ammounts here, check my picture

In a large stock pot place chicken, breast facing up

Cover with cool water so that the chicken in submerged and there are at least 2 inches of water above the top of the chicken

Add the mirepoix

Simmer slowly over medium heat. If bubbles form, reduce the heat slightly. You want the broth to "tremble" but never boil. Do not put a lid on the pot.

Continue simmering for about 2 1/2 hours, skimming and discarding fat occasionally. Add the bouquet garni and simmer an additional 30-40 minutes. Since we are straining out everything, we can add the bouquet garni loose. If we were making  soup, we might tie it together with kitchen twine so it could be easily removed.

Let cool. Remove chicken*.

Strain the liquid through moistened cheese cloth over a colander.

Pour resulting liquid broth into smaller containers to allow it to cool enough to be placed in the refrigerator.

Cool in the fridge overnight.

The next day, skim the fat off the broth with a spoon or strainer and place the broth in freezer bags in 2-4 cup increments. Freeze flat on a cookie sheet for easy storage.

Thaw and use as needed.

*I used the chicken for chicken salad and made the BEST most MOIST and TASTY chicken salad I have ever made!

WELCOME!

To those of you who trotted over to this little site from other blog, The Picky Gourmet: thanks for stopping by! To those of you who just happened upon this site: HI!

I'm going to cooking school so you don't have to!!!!

This is my place to talk about what I am learning/ have learned in culinary school. I attend a part-time professional course that meets once a week and I am in total nerd-love with this class. I get there early every week, wearing my school-supplied chef's jacket, black pants and black shoes with my hair pulled back in a bun (like a real live chef!) I sit in the front row, teetering on the metal stools designed to separate butt muscle (and let's be honest, fat) from bone. I ask lots of annoying questions, I take copious notes and I generally bug everyone with my over-eager, wanna-be teacher's pet demeanor. Sorry guys, it's just the way I am! I LOVE food! I love learning about it and touching it and cutting it and cooking it! I LOVE IT!

I cook out of a teeeeeensy kitchen

 See? And in addition to that minor restriction, I also cook TOTALLY GLUTEN FREE. Yep. I take what I learn in class and make it work for those of us who have gastro-intestinal systems that don't play by the rules. I promise, you can feed these G-free recipes to anyone and they will not complain, generally they won't even be able to tell and you don't have to mention it, if you don't want to. I won't tell.

The 20 weeks break down like so: 1. Intro/Knife Skills 2. Stocks and Roux Based Sauces 3. Sauces, Reductions, Emulsifications, Purees, Infusions 4. Dairy and Eggs 5. Soups 6. Fruits and Vegetables I, Salads and Cold Preparations 7. Fruits and Vegetables II, Cooking Techniques 8. Vegetables III, Starches, Potatoes, Dried Legumes, Grains 9. Fin Fish 10. Shellfish, Crustaceans, Mollusks, Cephalopods 11. Poultry I, Young Birds, Dry Heat Cooking 12. Poultry II, Moist Heat Cooking, Braising, Stewing 13. Meat I, Beef, Lamb, Pork, Veal 14. Meat II, Braising, Stewing 15. Yeast Breads 16. Quick Breads and Pastry Dough 17. Plated Desserts 18 - 20 TESTING (: > /)

Please keep the questions flowing, part of my goal here is to impart the lessons I learned in class and make them available to all you fellow wanna-be chefs out there. Help me, help you!

-The Picky G