Kathryn in the kitchen – my food adventures

….well so said the English author Shirley Conran in her book, ‘Superwomen’, aimed at busy women in 1975…. but is it?

Lesson 3 included some of the techniques we’d learned in weeks 1 and 2, plus a few more. As has been the case in the past few weeks, Chef added a few more things to impress upon us to be creative when we cook and cut down on waste. Today the lesson covered; Milk batter for Apple Fritters with Chantilly Cream, Crumbed, or breaded, Sole fillets, involving taking four fillets off a whole fish, and Stuffed Mushrooms, which involved first making a Duxelle ( a delicious mushroom mixture) and clarifying butter (known also as ghee). In addition to what was on the syllabus, chef added Caramel Sauce for the Apple Fritters, Tartare Sauce for the fish as well as fish stock from the fish bones (war on waste!) and a heavenly balsamic reduction for the Stuffed Mushroom. The new ‘cooking’ technique we covered, apart from filleting the fish, was deep frying.

Lesson 3

The highlight of the lesson for me was filleting the Sole (also known as Flounder)…. I love the technical stuff (dweeby mature age student that I am).  Chef explained that from a flat fish you get four fillets and as it was for the boning of the chicken thigh in lesson 2, once you know the technique, it is not too hard to fillet a fish 😏. First remove the skin; this is done by cutting across the tail, salting your fingers to ensure good grip is achieved, and deftly with some strength, pulling the skin away from the tail toward the head. Next cut along the backbone, and at an angle starting from the thickest section (the head), ensure your knife carefully follows the lines of the bones so as not to leave any fish behind. Viola a fillet emerges! Trim the fillet to make it neat. Repeat to remove the second fillet and turn the fish over & do the exact same on the other side to produce four fillets. Don’t forget to reserve the bones for stock (did I say ‘war on waste.’?). Now that you have the fillets, prepare the bread crumbs, flour & egg wash with which to crumb your fillets. We made fresh soft bread crumbs and I was wondering if they would stack up against my ‘go to’ Panko crumbs… the answer was a resounding ‘hell yes’. The deep-fried Sole was delicious and very attractive on the plate with the ‘additional’ tartare sauce, a wedge of lemon and a sprig of dill.

Whole Sole

We then moved to the making the Mushroom Duxelle. Using the brunoise precision cut,  we cut the onion, button mushrooms and garlic and mixed these together. In a hot pan add the clarified butter and the duxelle mixture … cook it out. If wet, the addition of some fine bread crumbs was recommended. Chef gave us free rein to season the duxelle mixture as we chose and apart from salt and white pepper I added a good pinch of cayenne pepper 🌶. The mixture was left to cool whilst we chopped our parsley (lesson one). Taking our peeled field mushroom, we generously ‘stuffed’ away, placed the stuffed mushroom on tray and baked it to perfection.

We then started the Apple Fritter. Now, I am not a desert person, preferring cheese at the end of a meal over a sweet, but this little gem was lovely, both on the plate and on the tooth!

Chef first showed us how to make the milk batter we would use, but for a contrast he also made a yeast batter which he used on his fritters. We peeled, cut & battered 5 thick slices of apple. Tips were given re how to place the apples in the hot oil to avoid them sticking to the basket (don’t you just love tips!).  Once they were golden brown & puffed they were removed from the hot oil and rolled in cinnamon sugar (by now the whole class was excited). At this point I’m thinking, “oh man, they look just like a doughnut ” , which just happens to be one of my husband’s favourites. The fritters were  plated on a bed of caramel sauce, a spoon of Chantilly cream & adorned with sliced strawberry …. very pretty!

Not only was every dish today lovely in it’s own way, achievable in a home kitchen, looked great on the plate and made for good eating, it was also a lesson which highlighted to me that class P1182 was now operating as a team.

My personal favourite dish today was the stuffed mushroom with balsamic glaze, so in answer to my question, is “life too short to stuff a mushroom” my answer is when it tastes this good…absolutely not. If you come to my home for dinner, you just might find this on your plate, either as a first course as a side …..and where as I am a busy women I am certainly no Superwomen 😊.

Bon Appetit & happy cooking!

Kathryn 💙

There is always comfort in knowing what to expect …week 2 has an ease about it as a result of knowing;  how long it takes to get to college and what the traffic is like at that time of the morning, how long it takes me to get dressed in my uniform and get to the kitchen with enough time to wash my hands, put on my apron and set up my bench for the specific lesson/recipes we will be covering during the lesson. Most of us are ready by 8am, with only a few stragglers. The lesson today covers, cutting garlic and ginger, making tomato concasse, preparing & cooking Chicken Yakatori, which involves skinning & boning chicken thighs, 3 more precision cuts (no fingers this time); Julienne, Chiffonade & Brunoise, and the very challenging ‘turning’ technique.

Week 2 Lesson Plan

Bench Prep

We all assist each other in setting up trays of the produce we’ll use in class…. everybody pitches in. I love this part of working in a kitchen, the camaraderie and working together to jointly produce something good to share with others is one of the attractions of kitchen life. If someone needs something, there is someone ready and willing to help/ share etc, even the cleaning is something everyone just gets on with together.

Ginger & Garlic

I faced the brunoise with a degree of trepidation due to the need for the finished product to be such a small and uniform dice. When it came down to it, the only concern was slicing the celery horizontally, where the knife momentarily moves towards ones fingers. I am pleased to say this was approached with due care & there were no injuries 🙂 and the final product was suitably small and uniform. The Julienne & the Chiffonade are very straight forward and very helpful cuts as is the tomato concasse, which I have had experience doing previously. 

Next came the boning of the chicken thigh. I am particularly keen to learn this and all other filleting skills & was pleasantly surprised at how straight forward & easy it was in class. I thought maybe beginners luck so on the way home I swung by the butchers and picked up 6 chicken thighs, all of which I filleted without a problem (and without cutting myself…yay!) and cooked in a similar way for dinner. Unhealthy as it may be, the roasted chicken skin was ‘finger licking delicious’, again there was no waste, with the chicken flesh, skin and bones all used to make something wonderful. Threading the marinated chicken onto the sticks, cooking and plating with the pickled julienned vegetables saw our first plated dish of the course 👌 

Not so white Whites!

Bon Appietit & happy cooking

Kathryn 💙

The day has come and class P1182 is standing in uniform at our benches in Kitchen 9, which is where we will assemble for our practical lesson each Tuesday. I am excited, a little nervous and very happy to be exactly where I am standing.

Newby…Day 1

We number 16 and I am not surprised to note that I am the lone (dreaded) ‘mature age’ student of the group…..with most of them around the age of my children, somewhere between 21 – 27. Quite a few are already working in the industry, some of them embarking on an apprenticeship within good restaurants and pub kitchens. I am the only student who has a (long) career in a totally different field, and who at the age of 57 dares to set out on a new path. We are told we will become a family over the next 2 years, supporting each other through our studies and work within the kitchen …..as this was shared with the class I think quietly to myself, “I guess that’ll make me the mum then” … a thought which rings true when later in the morning I assist several with the tying of their neck cravats.  😄

Kitchen 9

Day 1 is mostly about the rules of the kitchen, what is expected and why things are done they way they are. Chef moves with ease through the lesson outline, covering all the elements and bringing everyone together. The highlight of the class was starting on our knife skills to practice precision cuts. This allows us to learn which knife we use for what, i.e., ‘the right tool or the right job’ and the importance of mis en place. We cover how to finely chop parsley, make a bouquet garni, cut mirepoix and the first few precision cuts; Jardiniere, Macedoine & Paysanne.

Mirepoix

Jardiniere

Macedoine

Paysanne

Finally, another take home lesson for me…. buy some band aids, ensure the small knives are stored handle out in my tool kit, keep my chefs knife tip under control and practice, practice, practice.

Not so precision!

Bon Appetit & happy cooking!

Kathryn 💙

As long as I can remember I have loved food and all aspects of preparing it.  I gained an appreciation of cooking seasonally from my Nanna, a country cook replanted in the city who grew most of what we ate in her ‘pocket handkerchief’ size suburban garden. I later became engrossed with the young talented Australian chefs, brought to me on beautiful glossy pages of  Vogue Entertaining and Australian Gourmet Traveller. I unleashed my passion for what looked so delicious on the pages of those most awaited magazines on boyfriends, friends and family, too often over-feeding them I’m afraid. So – how was it possible I didn’t end up cooking, or at least in the food industry?

IT Corporate life not cooking became my career, and apart from a few joyful (interim) years of working in a high-end cookware shop and attached cooking school, as well as a short sojourn into catering, I have followed that path for over 30 years. In the words of James Barrie in Peter Pan….”Nothing is really work unless you’d rather be doing something else”…. and during these years I never gave up the desire to do that ‘something else’ and become a real cook. At every opportunity I cooked for family, friends and colleagues and my dreams of one day studying to become a chef remained very much alive.

Now at the ripe old age of ‘fifty-something’ I am finally following my dream and in February this year I will commence a four day working week, providing me an opportunity to study Commercial Cookery (part time)! I am extremely lucky that my company has allowed this flexibility and that all the stars have aligned. I look forward to sharing my adventure of becoming a trained cook (still can’t use the word chef)… I hope you enjoy my journey – I know I will 🙂

Bon Appetit & happy cooking,

Kathryn