Our First Lesson
My sous chefs are deadweight. I asked them to chop a few carrots and they completely ignored me, choosing instead to toddle around the kitchen saying things like "maaaabaabaabaa" while they pushed a wooden toy bus. Is that professionalism? We are in cooking school, people, and you will never get a job in a fine restaurant if you do not master basic sauces.
I jumped past the first few chapters in On Cooking to get to the meat-and-potatoes-hands-on work: knife skills. NFPD (for those who don't know my husband's blog, check out Not-For-Profit Dad at www.not-for-profit-dad.blogspot.com) snickered as he walked by me last night, commenting on the fact that I have skipped over the first few chapters on professionalism and kitchen safety. Food-borne pathogens. Stuff like that. You know, the "filler" they throw into text books on cooking.
Side story: In one of my college medical anthropology courses, we had a week-long unit on food-borne pathogens and illnesses we may encounter when working overseas (or in America since bacteria isn't generally familiar with country borders). My professor delivered all of her lectures in this matter-of-fact, deadpan tone. One day she started the lecture on e.Coli by saying: "Mommy, mommy, can we get a hamburger? And what did Mommy get as she drove through Jack-in-the-Box? A car full of bloody diarrhea." I always think about that lecture when I read (or choose to skip) over chapters on food safety.
But back to cooking...
Rather than work on basics such as chopping and slicing, I jumped right to mincing an onion--a vegetable that has a very specific method for cutting. I studied the diagrams for a bit and then started to prepare the onion. Of course the book doesn't mention the fact that YOUR EYES ARE GOING TO BE TEARING AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DISCERN THE LOCATION OF THE CUTTING BOARD AFTER 15 SECONDS OF CUTTING. But that doesn't matter because two paper towels of tears and 8 minutes later, I have a gorgeous chopped onion. I may not be ready for the big time, but I'm certainly having a good start to cooking school.
I jumped past the first few chapters in On Cooking to get to the meat-and-potatoes-hands-on work: knife skills. NFPD (for those who don't know my husband's blog, check out Not-For-Profit Dad at www.not-for-profit-dad.blogspot.com) snickered as he walked by me last night, commenting on the fact that I have skipped over the first few chapters on professionalism and kitchen safety. Food-borne pathogens. Stuff like that. You know, the "filler" they throw into text books on cooking.
Side story: In one of my college medical anthropology courses, we had a week-long unit on food-borne pathogens and illnesses we may encounter when working overseas (or in America since bacteria isn't generally familiar with country borders). My professor delivered all of her lectures in this matter-of-fact, deadpan tone. One day she started the lecture on e.Coli by saying: "Mommy, mommy, can we get a hamburger? And what did Mommy get as she drove through Jack-in-the-Box? A car full of bloody diarrhea." I always think about that lecture when I read (or choose to skip) over chapters on food safety.
But back to cooking...
Rather than work on basics such as chopping and slicing, I jumped right to mincing an onion--a vegetable that has a very specific method for cutting. I studied the diagrams for a bit and then started to prepare the onion. Of course the book doesn't mention the fact that YOUR EYES ARE GOING TO BE TEARING AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DISCERN THE LOCATION OF THE CUTTING BOARD AFTER 15 SECONDS OF CUTTING. But that doesn't matter because two paper towels of tears and 8 minutes later, I have a gorgeous chopped onion. I may not be ready for the big time, but I'm certainly having a good start to cooking school.
posted by Mum at 10:31 AM
5 Comments:
Deadweight yes. But extremely adorable dead weight. Keep chopping those onions...daddy wants flavorfull stuffing for Thanksgiving.
I just couldn't get past the "car full of bloody diarrhea" part. The rest was all a blur.
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If you refrigerate an onion for a few hours before you cut it, it won't make you tear up so much.
I just tagged you. (but I put this in an old post in case you aren't interested).
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