It'sFoodTime!

Day 3: CIA Boot Camp
9/26/2007

Woo-hoo! I got coffee today BEFORE class started and actually understood some of the first hour of lecture…

My job today was to make spaetzle (a german ‘pasta’) and a tomato herb sauce, both of which came out pretty darn good. I’ve been afraid to get into spaetzle at home because it seems like such a big project. In fact, it was the easiest item we constructed today and came out great. We worked on sautéing, pan frying and stir frying methods for meats along with a variety of soups. Our team made breaded pork, while the other teams banged out pan fried chicken, deep fried cod, chicken Provencal, and stir fried beef. Amazingly, when the oil is held at the right temperature for pan and deep-frying (about 350 F), very little oil is absorbed by the food. I normally don’t touch fried foods, and while that may not change, my previously closed mind is at least opened up a bit on the topic.

The stoves used in the school kitchens are commercial hulks that put out 80,000+ BTU per burner, and a setting of “low” is strictly relative. Keep in mind that a large burner on a gas home stove is only about 12,000 BTU. Put a cast iron pan on those 80,000 BTUs for a few minutes and the iron thermal mass is brought up to temperature. As our team learned today, if said pan is over 450 F and you pour in some oil, it catches fire and you have a major stir created in the kitchen. Best not to do that!

For soups, we made shrimp bisque, mushroom soup, onion soup, and chicken consommé. The consommé is basically a stock made with vegetables and ground meat. The meat and veggies form a “raft” that binds up the impurities that discolor the stock, and looks like an unappetizing meatloaf forming in the pot. After simmering for several hours, the stock is ladled off and is perfectly clear. Today’s consommé was made with ground chicken and it came out great!

We spent the afternoon discussing methods of presentation and how the standard for “classy” has changed over the last 40 years or so. These days, colors on the plate shouldn’t be too extreme and the elements on a plate should be overlapping and have vertical height. Looking at arrangements from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s showed how dramatically expectations have changed, from gaudy arrangements in the shape of fish or animals on metal or colored platters to today’s clean, served-on-a-white-plate vertical arrangements.

Friday is the big day where we create a two-course meal that we’ve been designing throughout the week. Our plan is an appetizer of smoked quail, stuffed with wild rice, cranberries and apples, served on a bed of arugula and red onion, tossed with balsamic and walnut oil. The entrée is planned to be roasted pork loin, served on a bed of risotto with parmesan and basil served with “crackers” made from melted parmesan. For color, we’re making heirloom cherry tomatoes, sautéed in olive oil, and wilted, glazed baby bok choy. Remember this paragraph and we’ll see how close Friday’s “creation” turns out to the “Wednesday plan”!

Dinner tonight is at Escoffier, the French restaurant on campus. I’m not even a little bit hungry, since in addition to eating the food we prepared ourselves, the baking and dessert classes crank out lots of dishes that we are compelled to try lest they go to waste or we hurt someone’s feelings. I can’t help but think of an interview I read ten or fifteen years ago where Burt Reynolds stated that eventually, you just can’t hold in your gut anymore. Dang.

More tomorrow …

– Chris

The result of our team’s efforts today: breaded, pan fried pork loin on spaetzle with tomato herb sauce!

Day 0: CIA Boot Camp

It’s 10 PM New York time, and I’m watching the clock with increasing agitation since I have to be up at 5 AM tomorrow morning for a 6 AM orientation meeting.  This wouldn’t normally be such a big deal, but after being up at 3:30 AM this morning to catch my flight from San Francisco to JFK airport in New York City, it’s clear that I’m sleep deficient even on Day 0.  Regardless, the day has finally arrived.  Boot Camp is about to begin!

An uneventful flight, some mild panic getting across Manhattan, a pleasant drive through upstate New York to Hyde Park (within spitting distance of Poughkeepsie, if that helps), and I arrive starving at the Inn At The Falls, a nice, but free-of-all-frills-including-room-service hotel located 10 miles southeast of the Culinary Institute.  But, first things first!  A drive to the CIA to get acclimated: the school is calm, with “kids” hanging out on a quiet campus that is bordered by the wide and imposing Hudson River and populated with historic looking brick buildings.

Then, time to stock up on the essentials: a fine bottle of Oban single malt scotch from a liquor store literally within 2 minutes of closing!  That’s Karma, baby.  It’s going to be a good week – stay tuned!

– Chris

Olives in Glass Houses

It happened to me again! I started wondering why it is that black ripe olives are virtually always sold in cans, while green olives are virtually always sold in clear glass jars?! Of course, I had to do some research!

It came as a surprise to me that California is the only state in the US that produces olives, supplying 80% of the olives consumed in the US. However, because the cost structure for producing olive oil in the US is too high to be competitive with imports, 99% of the olive oil consumed in the US is imported from countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece, Morocco and Turkey.

The answer to the question of why black olives are sold in cans and green olives are sold in jars lies in how olives are processed. Black ripe olives, the kind we buy in cans and eat on pizza and salads, are actually not ripe at all! They are picked green, soaked in a lye solution to remove bitter tasting compounds, exposed to oxygen to turn the olives black, and then packed in cans with brine and steam cooked. Green ripe olives (NOT the olives we buy in jars and put in martinis!), are processed in cans like black olives except they are not exposed to oxygen and so retain their green color.  Believe it or not, these green olives taste exactly like black olives.  Do a blind taste test and see for your self!

The olives sold in jars, stuffed with pimentos and used in martinis are typically Spanish green olives. Like black and green ripe olives, these olives are picked green and soaked in lye to remove the bitter flavors. Then, the olives are fermented for months in a strong brine that essentially pickles the olives. The finished olives are packaged in jars, and are pasteurized but NOT cooked before shipping.

Mediterranean olives, such as Kalamata olives from Greece, are cured by soaking the olives in water, followed by salt water brining for many months. The olives are not cooked and are typically sold in jars.

Dry cured ripe olives are shriveled, dark olives that are cured in salt, typically soaked in oil and sold as a specialty item in the deli. They are really good, and are typically found in plastic containers, pouches, or jars.

No type of olive MUST be packaged in either a can or jar. For black (and green) ripened olives, its convenient and economical to package, cook, and ship the olives in a can. The olives are uniformly colored so there is no need to spend money on a jar to provide aesthetic appeal. Spanish green olives, on the other hand, are often stuffed with pimentos, garlic, anchovies, almonds, etc. and need to catch the attention of shoppers. Since Spanish green olives and brined Mediterranean varieties are not cooked, the convenience of a temperature tolerant can is unimportant, and transparent jars have become the norm.

So there you go!

– Chris