Wait a minute...

On second thought, I don't think I want this. Let me clarify: it's alright for the powers that be to post this blog on their page and say it was written by a student. I don't want them to attribute it to my name, though. And I must say, I have misgivings. Once they claim this blog, my editorial integrity is going to be questioned because my readers - yes, all three of you - will start suspecting I have become a marketing tool, and that I have to censor certain sentiments instead of remaining my old, candid self.

Hmmm ... Anyway, last time I checked, I wasn't on their page yet. The brand manager probably found Luto-lutuan too roguish and highly unsuitable. LOL.

You want me to whaat?

I just got a message today that my school is interested in picking up my blog, probably for marketing purposes.

Super-LOL while blushing!

I hope that's not the end of my cherished anonymity. Also, I'm a bit embarrassed to have the brand manager - hi, Mr./Ms. Brand Manager! - read about how I went through school with utter gracelessness. I would love for my eulogist, as she/he speaks before my ashes are scattered out into the sea, to say that I went through life with great humor and grace, but so far it's been all humor. I certainly hope they get that, the self-deprecating humor-as-coping-mechanism thing. And I certainly hope it does not affect my chances of being hired by their signature restaurant (hint, hint!).

Anyway, please read away. I and this little writing project of mine would be honored, if we do get picked.

A bad case of performance anxiety

Here it is, my perfectly poached egg (you can also just make out Gisslen, peeking at you from the upper edges of the skimmer). Look at its soft ovoid roundness begging to be cradled in your palm and cooed to. This was at home, in my one-burner kitchen. I was practicing for egg cookery lab in Level 4.

I failed miserably in school the next day. My egg looked like roadkill. In fact, putrifying run-over animals would have looked 50 times more appetizing next to the disaster I ended up with. Poaching eggs demands sureness of hand, even an arrogant, unwavering belief in oneself and one's ability to make a collection of gloopy proteins coalesce by means of vinegar, just the right temp and unerring stirring.

Crème brulée and the threat of permanent eyebrow loss

I'm really proud of my caramel cages. See, I put two, overkill be damned. However, the chef said the top of the brulée was too scorched for his liking.

Chef, crème brulée means "burnt sugar".

Sorry sir, I'll put the torch down now. Didn't mean to glower and wave it inches from your face.

Pretty

Here's something I'm really proud of - the Pavlova I made in baking class for meringues day. It was one of the prettiest things I'd ever made. I gave it to my pal Elka, a ballerina and arts writer, who I'm sure would appreciate the connection between the cake and the famed danseuse.

Giving back

While thousands of my countrymen lost their lives, family and/or property due to Typhoon Ondoy, there I was high and dry in my room. The worst tribulation I suffered that day was not being able to go out at will. There wasn't even a power failure to put a crimp in my plans to collapse in front of the TV.

So, partly to assuage survivor's guilt and mostly because I felt it was my civic duty to help out, I joined my school's relief effort, which consisted of cooking food and giving it to the Red Cross. I got repaid with a small kindness a day later: my employer decided not to deduct the time off from work I took for that activity.

We were able to make enough on that day to feed 1,000 people rendered homeless by Ondoy.

Day 48: In which an extra set of (undamaged) fingers proves most desirable

I want a skin graft for my birthday. I cut myself in class thrice - all due to idiocy - on three different fingers. My injuries included lopping off part of my nailbed, ugh! "Excellent decision to take your hand off the chopping board!" chef Vic said as I was about to hack off the bone and, possibly, my fingers, with a gigantic cleaver.

But there's a happy ending to the story: I scored a personal best in labwork for this level. I'm not sure how that happened. Our dish last night was Pan Seared Frenched Pork Loin with Polenta and Chasseur Sauce. The chef liked everything, amazing!

Frenched, by the way, refers to a cut of meat in which the chine bone is left protruding. It reminds me of English ladies' patrician pinkies sticking out during high tea. Only the French can turn the adjective referring to their peoplehood into another signifier for a professional cooking term - like the tourné, it is more evidence of their deliberate efforts to keep their kitchen hauteur esoteric (rolls eyes. But no, that's not racism, mes amis Français. Please think of it as good-natured ribbing).

My polenta and sauce were well-seasoned and of the correct consistency, and the blanched green beans were fortunately done just right. The last time I had a blanched vegetable - asparagus for grilled tenderloin labwork - for garnish, it got overcooked. It turns out that one is supposed to let it stay in tap water for some time after cooking. I'd just dipped my asparagus in the cold water and took it out immediately (apparently you can only do that if you have ice water). The poor things were as limp as my self-esteem that night!

I didn't think my pork was something to write home about - I found it a little dry inside, in fact. But the chef liked my cooking last night (and that, really, is something to write home about!). He only took off points for the way I arranged the beans on the plate - I should have just arranged them in one row parallel to each other instead of stacking them diagonally like fallen lumber converging on a point atop the pork.

So, it was a lucky night for me in the kitchen, though it left me wondering: are my standards for "good" food really that off? Am I from another planet?

In other news, my favorite "new" food is polenta. I love its mouthfeel - the way the finely-ground grains of corn tease and tickle the tongue before dissolving. It's an elusive-feeling food - before you can put your finger on what exactly that new texture in your mouth is, the polenta has already disappeared and slipped down your gullet. Hey Bill [Buford, the journalist who apprenticed to Mario Batali. He complained in his memoir of the experience that it was such a pain to cook in mass quantities], polenta ain't that bad. You should've just thinned it out with some milk or water.

Class trip: Laya

08.23.2009: I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been to Antipolo. My very first trip to the city involved dining at Vieux Chalet, a Swiss restaurant nestled in its hills, and a dose of art at Pintô Gallery.

I've made another pilgrimage to Antipolo to eat again, this time with my classmates for a five-course dinner at Laya, a "personal dining" restaurant a few meters away from Pintô Gallery in Grand Heights Subdivision. The restaurant offers a Southeast Asian menu that changes weekly, along with a customizable dining experience where guests can specify what and how they want to eat. Diners can make requests such as a string quartet, their favorite wine, special table settings or being able to watch the chefs prepare their meal.

The dining area has an intimate ambience that makes the place perfect for dates, marriage proposals and wedding receptions. The dining area is on a terrace overlooking a pool, a massage hut, and a small bar. There's also a private, glass-walled and curtained nook within the dining area for a more intimate setting. Small Buddha statues and wall hangings dot the landscaped garden and the dining area, adding to the serene atmosphere of the place. The twinkling lights of Manila can be seen from the garden and the dining area. (I'll post the pictures of the place sometime this week since I don't have my memory card with me as of posting time.)

For our dinner, we had the menu called "the best of Laya":

Appetizer: Nori prawn roll with mango papaya aioli (right), shrimp & chicken wanton bag with Thai sweet chili (top), and stir-fried kaffir lime pork in lettuce wrap (left)

Soup: Thai-spiced pumpkin & cashew nut soup. I liked this spicy soup, although the taste of the ginger tended to overpower the other flavors.

Salad: Mango salad with bagoong dressing. I love the dressing! Since I'm a big salad fan, I will attempt to replicate it at home one of these days (when I know more about cooking, most likely).

Entree: A choice of (a) Pan-seared honey ginger Norwegian salmon with toasted cashew nuts and sweet potato mash. The salmon was tender and moist and I liked the innovative use of sweet potato in lieu of the usual potato.

or (b) Herb-marinated US hanging tender steak with honey-roasted garlic mashed potatoes and mixed greens in Asian dressing. The steak lived up to its name - it was very tender and the sweet, red wine sauce complimented the meat nicely. My only quibble about both main courses was that the mash was cold.

Dessert: Cashew mango kesong puti and Chocnut banana spring rolls with creamy Chocnut dip. Very nice use of local ingredients - Antipolo is famous for its cashew nuts. There's also the nearby Rizal Dairy Farms, although I'm not sure if the kesong puti was sourced from the farm (even if it isn't, it's easy to find in the Philippines).

Irene Tan-Gurango, who co-owns Laya with her husband Ricci, used to work for the school as its human resources officer. As our very pleasant hostess, she led the dining room staff in personally attending to us. She made sure that my classmate Adam, who has a seafood allergy, still enjoyed his Laya experience by being served different fare.

What made this dinner resonate with the group was that all the chefs are alumni from our school. "I brought you here to show you that there's life after Global," said chef Vic. The three Laya chefs - Ricci, Ogie and Katrina - talked about what to expect in our industry training, advising us to consult with our chefs about the best venues to train in. Our on-the-job-training would be a very challenging and stressful time, they said, but we should expect to succeed if we take it seriously.

P.S.
I should've been star-struck - Irene fronts the band Chubibo; Ricci used to be with Hungry Young Poets and Mojofly and he even sessioned for The Dawn - but I didn't have my rocker cap on.

Day 33: In which the stars and pilot lights align

08.24.2009: I'm happy to report that I scored a personal best in our practical final exam as I finally broke the 90% threshold.

Our class of 21 was divided into two groups, with one group starting at 5:30pm and the other commencing at 7:30pm. (I was in the first group). Each member of the class had to make white chicken stock, and use that for risotto alla parmigiana. The stock had to be flavorful yet clear and free of impurities, while the risotto needed to be plated correctly (in the middle of a heated plate, in a manner highlighting the texture of the grains) and served piping hot.

After grading us, chef Vic said he was looking for proper stock-making technique, which includes skimming the stock for impurities before adding the mirepoix and aromatics, and reducing cooking to a simmer after bringing the stock to a boil.

The stars and pilot lights must've aligned and I must've done many of those things right (although saying that does not sound good, as if I'm running around like a headless chicken unaware of what I'm doing). My only obvious mistake was being stingy with the salt in my risotto - chef Vic complained it was under-seasoned. It's a tendency dating back to childhood, I guess, when I once put too much patis (fish sauce) in a ginisang monggo (sautéed mung beans) dish and my father said it was easier to adjust too little rather than too much seasoning. The chef also didn't like how I sprinkled some parmesan on the area of the plate surrounding the rice - he said it made the plate look dirty.

Still, it looks like there's hope for me after all.

Days 30-31: In which we learn about the underrated potato

08.18-19.2009: The potato used to be among the most important foods in classical cuisine, says Gisslen. Gratin Dauphinoise, duchesse potatoes - the names attest to the tuber's place in the kitchens of the aristocracy.

While its place in the spotlight has been superceded by flashier, more glamorous starches such as pasta, the potato is still an important part of classical and contemporary cuisine.

For demo day, chef Vic showed us how to make French fries, gratin dauphinoise, duchesse potatoes, croquettes and whipped/mashed potato.

Croquettes:


Whipped/mashed potatoes:


Gratin Dauphinoise (pronounced "dohffanWAH") reminds me of a potato-based lasagna. You cut the potatoes as you would potato chips, then layer the chips alternately with a milk, cream and garlic mixture in a pan or dish. This is baked for up to 20 minutes until a crust forms on top. I didn't find the Dauphinoise very impressive at first because it had only a few basic ingredients - potatoes, milk, cream, garlic and salt - but was pleasantly surprised by its cheese-like umami-ness when I took a bite.

Duchesse potatoes use the same basic recipe as whipped/mashed potatoes, but are piped from a pastry bag. They are mostly used as decorations.


And since we're talking about all things potato, here's "The Potato Eaters" by Vincent van Gogh, one of my favorite artists:

Days 29-30: In which I learn the importance of attention to detail

08.13-14.2009: It's the second day of the starches module. This time, we focused on grains. The chef showed us how to make paella (above), rice pilaf and risotto. I saw some arborio and basmati rice in their raw states - the latter sticking in my mind, or my olfactory glands, rather, for its cockroachy smell.

To make rice pilaf, you saute long-grain rice, such as basmati, in some butter, simmer it in liquid, and finish off the cooking in an oven. The rice should come out fluffy and not too moist, and you fluff it out even some more with a fork before plating:


On practicals day, I forgot to cook off the wine - again! - for the risotto, and garnished my pilaf the wrong way by sticking the bay leaf in it upside down. Chef Vic also pointed out that since he wanted to see the texture, I should not have turned out the rice into a rounded dome. Details, details.

Chef Vic's risotto topped with Parmesan cheese:

Days 27-28: In which we roll out pasta by hand

08.11-12.2009: That's chef Mike Yap's (pitching in for chef Vic) finished fettucini with tomato sauce made from scratch, and spaghetti aglio olio.

We learned how to make not just these sauces, but also how to make fresh pasta. It's quite a laborious process because one has to make a dough, rest it, pass it through a machine several times and hang it up to dry. Before the lesson I thought freshly made pasta was superior to the store-bought one, but it turned out there are benefits and disadvantages to using each kind. The most memorable idea I took away from this lesson was that macaroni in commercial usage refers not just to the bent, elbow-shaped pasta but to all kinds of factory-made dried pasta.

My classmate Marjun hanging up the finished fresh fettuccine:

Practicals day went by smoothly, almost. The class made fresh pasta with tomato sauce. Being the dunce that I am, I managed to make a few slip-ups here and there, such as forgetting to cook off the alcohol in my sauce. Tomato sauce is made with a little white wine, and if one does not let the alcohol evaporate, there is a strong aftertaste. Still, my dish turned out well enough, and the chef was pleased, saying it was "delicious". I could not answer when he asked before tasting it if it was good (I wanted to say, "I don't know what your notion of 'delicious' is, sir," but that sounded a bit too smart-alecky).

Day 26: In which I get all weepy on you

08.10.2009: When the tasks I am required to perform and master in school get a little too complicated, I often ask myself, What the hell have I gotten myself into?

I find that I'm starting to pose the question with growing frequency as our tasks grow more and more complex. I asked myself this during fish day, when we were asked to fillet fish and fabricate squid, oysters and mussels.

I posed the question to myself on sauce day, when our chef demonstrated the making of five mother sauces and I made a sorry curdled mess out of my hollandaise sauce the day after.

I asked it again last night. The order of the day was to make brown chicken stock and slice two jicamas into six tournés - one chateau (2 in. long x 3/4 in. wide) and five cocottes (1.5 in long x 3/4 in. wide).

The key here was to multi-task like crazy. I had to simultaneously slice and brown the bones in a pan on the stove, slice the vegetables for the stock, make a sachet of herbs and spices, brown the vegetables and stir them occasionally so they don't burn, skim the surface of the simmering stock for scum, tidy my station in between and turn the jicamas.

In between there are bursts of frantic running to the sink to rinse my knife and hands or clear out unneeded equipment. My tournés did not turn out the way I wanted them to. Meanwhile, my stock was rated well, though points were probably taken off because of mistakes in my technique.

And then there's always being sleep-deprived on a class night, staggering home drained after a practical exam, losing some of my social life and worrying over how to allot vacation leaves to studying.

I'm not complaining - I love every minute I spend in cooking school. My teacher and the school staff are affable, and I'm fond of my classmates, who show me many small kindnesses and treat me like a sister ("Bro, take care of her," they say to the last person I'm left with when going home).

While the pressures of schoolwork are enough to make me want to wring my hands and tear up my apron, I know all of this pales in comparison to the hubbub of a real kitchen, where you have 50 things going on at once and you can barely hear each other over the racket of service.

So, sometimes I shall ask, What the hell have I gotten myself into, not to rant, bemoan nor complain, but to convey bemusement, astonishment and joy at all the amazing and groovy new things I'm learning about food.

Day 17: In which we start anew

07.29.2009: This is our syllabus for the second level, which focuses on stocks, sauces, soups and starches (click photo to zoom in):

Days 15-16: In which rocking saves the day

These are our final exams. The written one covered everything we'd previously studied, except for food safety, sanitation and nutrition.

The practical one, which I was more worried about, required each student to fillet a tilapia, brunoise an onion, and make the julienne and batonnet cuts on a jicama.

I was doing fine in spite of my onion brunoise being too large. Chef Vic praised my fish - hooray, practicing at home paid off! - and my clean station, but the jicama was the spanner in the works. I remembered the wrong dimensions and used the measurements for batonnet - 1/4in by 1/4in by 2-1/2in - for my julienne. My finished product was too large, of course, and if I'd been the teacher I would have failed myself, but at least, said chef Vic, I had the rocking motion down almost pat, and that saved the day. I think I got 85% for my practical, which is more than great, considering the flubbed julienne cut.

Days 13 -14: In which I run afoul of fowl

Look at me, I'm cheating. I'm well into Level 2 of my Grand Diploma course now, but I haven't finished posting about the first level yet. My schedule is getting more and more hectic, hence the cheating - I now have to combine two classroom dispatches into one post, when previously there would be an individual post for each day. I apologize for any tears, burnt meat pies and any general wringing of hands this may cause (ha ha!).

So, on with the hoodwinking on this blog. Day 13 revolved around poultry - the types of fowl served for food and how to fabricate, or make the different cuts of poultry, before cooking.

First, we learned how to truss, or tie up a chicken with butcher's twine. Trussing a chicken before it is roasted is done so that the chicken does not splay all over the place, ensuring even cooking.

Then, chef Vic showed us how to do the different cuts. This is his finished tray:


The neck and wishbone. The latter needs to be removed before fabrication:


The suprême (pronounced "sooprem") or airline cut (above), and chicken breast for stuffing. The suprême is a chicken breast quarter with the wing bone exposed. I have no idea why it's called the "airline" cut, but it reminds me of an English lady holding her pinkie up as she drinks tea:


Chicken lollipops, which come from the wing part:


He also demonstrated how to cut up poultry into eighths:


This was all too complicated for me, but I managed to earn a decent grade. And sorry, the pictures must be too gory for some.

Day 12: In which the gruesome murder of a fish is committed

Lab day. We were to execute and submit the following items:

Tilapia
* de-scaled
* finned and gutted
* 1 side skinned
* 1 side skin on
* bones and head removed intact, then cut into 4

Shrimp
* tempura
* butterfly
* ball

Oyster
* shucked
* in the half-shell

Mussels
* de-bearded
* cleaned shell
* meat removed cut from shell, then replaced

Squid
* cut into rings
* scored
* head without eyes
* beak only

After doing all the lab work, we were to compute for the weight and price of all the usable parts we could obtain from the tilapia, a process known as butcher's yield. This time, the math was the easy part.

I started with cleaning and shucking the mussels. On lab days, my strategy is to start with the easy tasks to get them out of the way, reserving the better part of my time and energy for the head-down stuff. I had to wash, pare off the barnacles and debeard the four mussels on my tray. The trick with shucking mussels, I discovered, was to insert the shucker near the hinge connecting the shells, slowly twisting the tool until the slit grew wider.

That done, I wrestled with the oyster. Opening an oyster's shell is about as easy as trying to dig your way to China with a penknife. Try as I might, I could not make, pardon the expression, heads or tails of the gnarly shell and where to insert the shucker. My oyster looked like a lump of sand and concrete hastily put together by a starving carpenter as he hears the lunch bell. All I managed to do was break off bits of the shell. I wasn't sure if points were to be deducted for damaging the shell but with each calciferous fleck that came off, I imagined points from my GPA crumbling away.

I decided to put the darn thing down and do the shrimp, a task which passed without incident. The squid also gave me great joy, their skins coming off easily like worn out socks. The beak, tiny and burr-like, was easy to coax out of the head, and the flesh easily yielded to my knife.

Now it was the tilapia's turn. As early as the first step, de-scaling, the blundering clod that I am sprang into action. My classmates expertly scaled their fish, while I sent the scales flying mostly into my face as I artlessly grappled with the scaling tool. This, by the way, was the first time I'd ever used one, thank you.

The fun part was removing the bright red gills and eviscerating the fish, letting the red-yellow viscera drip out. Yum!

I started sweating when it was time to fillet. As I cut away I felt the pressure of trying to make the fillets as whole and perfect as possible. I tried to cut as carefully and as close to the bone as I could, but my cuts were still not close enough. I also failed to take out some bones in my fillet. The chef spotted them instantly (why are you so wise, sir?)

I made other blunders. While making the fillet without skin - this involves peeling off the skin near the tail until you have a flap of flesh big enough to grasp with your hand - I was terrified the meat would break off. Thankfully it didn't, but Chef Vic later told me I needed to cut closer to the skin. How does one do that without tearing it, I wonder? I dread to think of the filleting horrors awaiting me on Finals Day.

Now, back to my briny friend. After futile eternities prodding at the tightly closed shell, I finally managed to weasel the shucker into the sucker (sorry, could not resist. The oyster gave me a hard time; I deserve the relief of a corny one-liner or two!). I had never been so happy to see mollusk meat as I was that night.

I think I did a much better job here than with the vegetables. More importantly, no one in class got cut. It seems we've all grown more comfortable with our knives. I think I flubbed my vegetable cuts because I was sometimes more afraid of getting injured.

We ended the evening with a meal of squid and shrimp. Our victims were simmered in some parsley and spices and spooned over rice, and they were good.

Day 11: In which we learn about flowering squid and well-groomed mussels

Thursday's session was all about fish and seafood. Chef Vic lectured on the various types of fish, mollusks and crustaceans commonly served for food.

He demonstrated how to gut and fillet flatfish and roundfish, shuck oysters and clams and clean shrimp and squid. We also learned how to prepare shrimp in various ways: tempura-style, butterflied, and "balled".

Mussels, I discovered, have a fibrous "beard" which needs to be removed prior to cooking.

Squid, meanwhile, can be sliced into two or four lengthwise halves and scored with small lattice-like cuts. When cooked, the squid swells and turns into what looks like the concave half of an armadillo's armor. My classmate called this a flower, and the class, all manly testosterone exuberance, laughed at him.

Starting with this post, I'll begin doling out the tips I learn in cooking school. Here is the first one, appropriately about a fishy matter:

Chef's Tip:
Lean fish is best used for making broth. Oily fish, such as tuna or salmon, is too strong flavored, and its oil will also make the broth, well, oily.

Day 10: In which we earn our first battle scars

As expected, some of us got cuts while practicing our knife skills last night in class. We earned some sort of dubious school record after eight people, including myself, got injured. I got my cut attempting to tourné a jicama (that's the real English word for singkamas, not turnip). The tourné, where you make a vegetable into something resembling a seven-sided football, is the most challenging cut of all to master. My turned vegetables, especially the one of the eggplant, looked like monstrous alien invaders more apropos for a science fiction B-movie.

My other cuts were also uneven, although Chef Vic, our instructor, praised my batonnets and minced garlic. By God, I'll keep attempting the tourné and the other cuts, even if I manage to fillet all of my fingers. My friend and house neighbor A has even kindly agreed to let me do the cutting and chopping for her Monday dinner.

Tonight, meanwhile, is fish and seafood night. This is one of the things we're going to be doing:

Day 9: In which we get acquainted with our best friend

Last night was knife skills lecture and demo. These are all the cuts we have to master (click the picture to zoom in):


Tonight, we do the cuts ourselves. Since students are not allowed to take videos in class, I turn to the old reliable stand-by, YouTube.