Day twenty one

Do you keep tomato in a fridge? Do not do it.

Another day of liberal arts studying. Math in the morning, followed by product knowledge, food safety and first year experience.

This week is a bit better. Somehow I managed to go to bed before 11 p.m. so I have almost 7 hours of sleep. As a result no attempts to fall asleep during lectures. So slowly but surely getting into new schedule. This Sunday February 03 will be exactly one month since I came here to study.

Back to the day at school. Math was allright, we moved to the point where we have to standardize  recipes. This is a bit tricky, this is not as easy as to convert pounds to litres. Many different ingredients, some of them

Day twenty

Have you seen how Belgian endive grows?

The second day in the kitchen this week. Unfortunately the last one for the week. I would be happy to have four of them in the kitchen. Today we cooked chowder, English style fish chowder. I have to admit that I love it. I like a combination of cream with some veggies and fish. Yummy...

After our kitchen class we had a lecture from a guy who has endive farm here in California. Do you know that Belgian endive is grown in a complete darkness? I thought

Day nineteen

Why do we use lemon juice as part of seasoning?

Another day in the kitchen. Today we made Puree of Lentil Soup (individually) and Beans in a pot (as a team). I would probably say that this is not my favorite so far. It seems I am not a big fun of lentils and other beans. I can eat then if they cooked properly, but do I enjoy it? Not exactly.

Puree soups are a separate category of soups. We use beans as a thickening agent or starchy vegetables. Beans have better thickening quality, therefore we use less beans (2 pounds for 1 gallon as to compare with 3-4 pounds of vegetables). Since beans, as well as starchy vegetables, have not enough flavor, usually we use pork product to add flavor (salted pork, bacon, smoked pork, etc).

With the Lentil Soup we cooked today we have started to use additional seasoning - lemon juice. Why we do this today? The main reason is

Day eighteen

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Why do we have so many ingredients in this recipe? Is author nuts?

Today is Monday, the beginning of a new week. This week we have a lecture on Culinary Fundamentals. The lecture was about ingredients, their functionality and also about the main nutrients, such as water, carbohydrates, lipids and proteins.

Water is main composition of all food (70% and up). Green lettuce has about 95% water content. But milk probably has 80% of water. How that could be? Milk is more watery than lettuce. Milk also contains a lot of different elements, such as fat, protein (in form of lactose), micronutrients (calcium and so on).

Water is also quite amazing liquid. It has

Day seventeen

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How many types of potato do you know?

Today's class for product knowledge was about potato and onion. A lot of useful information regarding these simple vegetables. The variety available is huge. This is really important to know your product. Such a simple veg as potato can be great if right type chosen or awful if wrong one.

For example, you want to make a German potato salad (really great dish), you come to shop or even worst to farmers market and  you see 10 or 15 different potato. What to chose? Such a difficult task, but not if you generally know different types of potato. You definitely do not want to use potato with low moisture and high starch content, because this potato will not hold a shape after cooking and your salad will not be appealing.

In case you want your cooked potato to hold a shape of the pieces you cut tem, go for potate with moderate moisture and moderate starch, sometimes called

Day sixteen

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What is the biggest plant on the Earth? 

Another day of the liberal arts study. Math in the morning, following by product knowledge, food safety and yes, my 'favorite' - first year experience.

We started recipes conversion at the math class. That's really useful. Let's say you have a recipe for a wonderful goat cheese tart and it calls for 10 oz of goat cheese and the yield is two tarts 12 oz each. Now you decided that you do not want two tarts, but you want one and you don't want a huge tart 24 oz, you want normal size 15 oz. So, the question is how much goat cheese do you need? This is really useful to be able to calculate recipe conversion factor and apply it.

Back to the question of the day. Do you know what is the biggest plant on te Earth? I did not know myself this morning. There were many guesses - eucalyptus, baobab (African tree), sequoia and so on. But the answer is -

Day fifteen

a courtesy of

What is the most popular vegetable? That's right - potato.

Today is the second day in the kitchen this week. We have started a new topic - cooking potato. This is really amazing - such a simple vegetable, but so many wonderful dishes you can make. Today is the first day when we cooked not one dish, but two! This is just beginning, I know we will be doing three and four dishes at the same short period of time.

So, the dishes we made today are Vichyssoise (potato and leek soup) and Pomme Puree (mashed or whipped potato). On a side note, I would tell that French names are

Day fourteen

Dude, are you magician? Can you clear this? Or how to make you stock perfectly clear...

It's may favorite day - Culinary Fundamentals. I love to be in the kitchen, to cook something new and exciting. This is the main reason I am here. Today was consomme day, we prepared chicken consomme using broth. It was really amazing to see how the cloudy broth full of other ingredients became absolutely clear.

So, if you want to prepare consomme (another French fancy word) first thing you need is a quality stock. You won't be able to make consomme using store bought stock in cartoon package from the shelf. We probably all should remember about the first rule of organic chemistry, which said

Day thirteen

Oats, are they gluten free?

It's Friday again. This is really good. Doen't mean that I am bored of school and want to escape by any means waiting for Friday.. School is really great, I am enjoying it so much, but a bit tired by the end of the week. Having homework for every day and for every subject is a bit too much. May be I just forget what does it mean to study.

I have received a letter from school today to get my SSN. Came to the Social Administration Office to get my SSN. Unfortunately my data does not match all systems. It seems that school did something wrong (as I was told in this office). So I have to go and check what could be wrong. This will be next week.

At school all is good. Math in the morning, following by product knowledge and food safety. Good news is

Day twelve

Is it cool to have practical for food safety?

Day of classes. In the morning math, then product knowledge, then food and safety and the first year experience is the last one.

Math was quite easy, at this level. We started conversions between volume and weight. Sometimes I think that when Babylon happened and people started to speak different languages, the same happened with measurements. Pounds, ounces (there are two of them - fluid and weight, actually more since for precision stones and metalls used third one - Troy ounce) and so on... We are happy that

Day eleven

Can you stop crying when you cut onion? Do you need a 'magic trick'?

Fourth day in the kitchen. Finally we have got close to the timeline and we did everything we suppose to do. Class task was to strain and cool veal stock left overnight to cook. Group task was to prepare chicken broth. Individual tasks were to clarify butter using simmering method (surprise! you can use different method to clarify butter) and prepare French onion soup.

In the morning our group was assigned to cut 20 pounds of onion, due to miscommunication. Later on we were told that since soup is an individual project everybody suppose to cut it individually. That was discovered by the time we cut half of the onion. I was crying, I don't like cutting onion and one of my fears was

Day ten

Correct seasoning - should you taste salt?

I have received my chef jackets today with my name on it. So now this is serious. No kidding!

Today was Culinary Fundamentals, which means we were in the kitchen. On our third day in the kitchen it was much better, but we were still behind schedule and finished almost 1 hour late.

All our tasks are divided between class, group and individual assignments. For the class assignment we have to make chicken stock and veal stock. For the group we were doing Glace de viande. As foundation for the contemporary cooking came from France we (our chefs) love to use these fancy words. Glace means

Day nine

Courtesy of

Truth about bananas - are  they ripe?

Today is a strange day. It's Monday, but we have no classes. So not sure if I should could this day or not. Probably it doesn't matter, taking into consideration it's still the first month and there are twenty more to go:-)

So, this is day for homework and special projects (we are going to have them in future). In the morning drove from San Francisco to St Helena. In the city traffic was a bit heavy, outside SF it was fine, I made my trip in 1h 35 m, which is quite good.

So here is truth about bananas

Day eight - TGIF

Courtesy of

Can you use bridge in class? Yes you can

Today is Friday and our first full week of studying come to the end.

In terms of classes today is very similar what we had yesterday, except for this fancy class 'First Year Experience'. This one we have only once a week. All others we have had today again - Math, Product knowledge and Food and Safety.

What I learned today?

Day seven - liberal arts

Cucumber - is it vegetable or fruit?

Last week on Thursday, I came here to start learning at the Culinary Institute of America. Last week everything was new and amount of information we received seemed overwhelming.

After one week at school, everything does not look like new. Many things are quite familiar now. Yes, we are not as familiar with kitchen as we should be. But this is simply a matter of time.

Today is the day for

Day Six - Making Broth from Stock

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Shocking truth: Stock and broth are not the same!

Second day in the kitchen. Today is better then yesterday, we have less lecture and spend more time in the kitchen. For now the main problem we (as a group) have is that everyone wants to do everything. Taking into consideration that the resources do not allow everyone to make stock and also because we have to know how to work in team this is the biggest challenge for now - learn how to work together. Our group is not unique in this, I believe this is common at the beginning for everyone. So this is not a surprise for our chef and he knows how to handle this.

From now on our days in the kitchen will be divided between group tasks and individual tasks.

Our group task for today was to prepare broth. I thought between stock and broth are the same. It appears they are not. Broth has higher content of main ingredient, quite often started with pre-cooked main ingredient (sear meat at the beginning) and many times served as is. You do not serve stock.

So, to make a good broth you will need:

Day five - kitchen!

First day in the kitchen: Learn secrets of making a real stock

Finally we made our way to the kitchen. It was our first day there and as every first day it was a bit chaotic. There are a lot of different things going on at the same time. Our huge kitchen on the third floor divided by sections.

We have section for beginners, who just started to learn, we have section for more experiences people who actually serve their food to other students and staff. There is also section for special events (these guys have some privileges).

During our day, we were introduced to the kitchen, where we can find different equipment and utensils.  We were taught how to organise your station. It should be like this:

Day four - payoff

Courtesy of

Science in the kitchen - sounds intriguing

In the morning I drove from San Francisco to St Helena. It took me 1 hour 40 minutes to get there, the good thing was that class started at 9 a.m. today and not at 7.

Today is the first day of our learning. We have only one lecture for today regarding science in the kitchen. The lecture was quite interesting and many points were new for me. For example

Day Three

The last day of the orientation: Secrets of taste revealed

Yes, it was Saturday and once in a blue moon we have Saturday as study day.

That was a last day of orientation. Next week we are going to start our learning. Hope that will place all small things in place. For now some pieces are confusing - how to read class schedule, what to do and don't do in the kitchen.

This post I am writing with a delay. Yesterday classes finished by 3 p.m. and I jumped in the car and drove to San Francisco. Te road wasn't good, there were a couple of traffic jams and it was raining so people were driving slowly. Anyway I made it.
OK, back to school. I believe it is more interesting than hear about traffic issues:-)

One of the lecture we hade was about fundamentals of cooking flavor dynamics. I learned quite a lot. First thing is that the flavor and taste is quite different. Our ability to smell influenced

Day two

January 04, 2013 - Second day

Today is the second day at school. It's still orientation and tomorrow will be the last day of orientation. It seems a lot, but indeed, we have to absorb huge amount of information, regarding what to do in case of....
Probably we won't be able to remember everything, but after this orientation we will know where to look for the information required. So, we were told what to do in case  of shooting (unlikely event in this school, as every student has a bunch of knives), about information technology on Campus, about expectation in the first year (what is expected from us and what we can expect from the school), etc.
And yes, it seems like a Christmas again! We have got tool set. A wonderful back pack full of knives (seven!) and other stuff. All the tool are high quality, indeed I was so impressed with a quality. It's great, can't wait to start our practical classes.
Almost forget - we were told about alcohol abuse prevention and we suppose to take an on-line course. Indeed, it was boring. May be a young people would learn something new, but for people 30+ there was almost nothing new.
Also it was another day of excellent food. For lunch I've got a wonderful beef stew, it was strange feeling that it was from some old day of my childhood. The beef was SO tender and juicy, with great sauce and pomme puree (mash potato - but I prefer French name). In the evening, dessert was remarkable - raspberry mouse with layers of sponge. It was so light and a taste of raspberry with in every piece.
Ah, so excited about food, hope this feeling is not going to disappear.

Day One!

The beginning: The books that make a chef the Chef (see photo).

Finally, day one is here.

In the morning I was shocked to find my car covered with a good layer of ice. Unfortunately I don't have any scraper inside, so I have to wait while it is warm enough to melt this ice.

Tomorrow there will be no such problem, because we suppose to take shuttle to school (there is limited parking available at school).

It was orientation day today. We were told

Before day one

Tomorrow is the day ONE at school.
Today is a move day. We were allowed (suppose) to move to the campus room. After our move, we had a meeting for a new residents where we got all the rules and regulations regarding our lives on campus.
Not much excitement. Looking forward to seeing people from school tomorrow.