Cooking school week 6

This picture is the view from th highway between Napa and Sonoma.


Week 6 of Cooking School This week was a short week, only four days, because our blocks are 14 days long. This makes for a nice long Labor Day weekend. Wade and Ali are in town so we have been having fun with them and their friends Jason and Caitlin. So school.

This week was again testing week. Wednesday and Thursday I had tests, Wednesday was a written test, and a knife test, and Thursday was my cooking test. For the knife test I had to produce 2 cups of small dice (1/4” cubed) onion, 2 cup or julienne (2” x 1/8” x 1/8”) onion, ½ cup fine dice shallot, ½ cup minced garlic, and 1 cup tomato concasse (which is tomatoes that are boiled for 45 seconds and shocked in ice water and then peeled, seeded, and cut into little pieces). All of this in 30 minutes. Lets just say that there was onion flying everywhere. The funniest part was my friend from school Victoria who was right next to me for the knife test, kept singing dankeshane everytime anyone said concasse (which is pronounced Con-ca-say). It was too funny and we were all giggles during the test, but we both did well even with the giggling.

Thursday went really well, as well. The test was sautéed chicken breast with sauce of fine herbs, berny potatoes, which are mashed potatoes with black truffle pieces in them, shaped into pear shaped and rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. Another reason to be made at the French, they take forever to make. Lastly green beans were the veg. All of my food came out pretty well, and I again was freakishly clean. If I could only make myself be freakishly clean all the time in the kitchen, not just on test days. Oh well. Chef Tucker Bunch said I looked like a rock star, referring to how nice my food and my station looked, so that made me happy. I am currently 1/5th of the way through my program and I am really starting to like it. I feel less scared and more in control, which is nice.

Everything in sunny CA is going well outside of school. The grape harvest has begun and should last until the end of September. We have been having a major heat wave which has been pretty unpleasant in our not air conditioned apartment. Right now 10:30 AM on Sunday, the shades are all drawn and windows all shut to keep in the nights coolness. How funny. I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday weekend!

Lots of love,
Abby