Bad Day at the Office

Week 3, Day 11

A typical Monday for me that just got worse as the day wore on. I left my new house to fend for it's self this week. Rhys was sick with some sort of weird rash over the weekend. My work email was still down from last Thursday. I had a wrap up meeting for the Bike to Battle Cancer committee that ran a bit long and I didn't leave the office until after 12:30pm. I rushed to St. Louis from Springfield for a special demo the school was hosting on Fois Gras (more about that in a later post) that started at 4:00 pm. Needless to say I was a little late, by the time I changed and got into class. I hate being late....

I moved straight from the demo to class where we discussed a serve safe chapter, listened to lecture on sauces, and watched Chef Sara demo a bechamel sauce. In classical cooking there are five basic primary or mother sauces; Bechamel, Espagnole, Hollendaise, Tomato, and Veloute. From these sauces other sauces are derived. The Bechamel is a white sauce traditionally made by whisking milk gradually into a white flour-butter roux (equal parts clarified butter and flour by weight). Most primary sauces have very little flavor because they are the base for making other sauces. We will cover a sauce a day this week.

So, following the demo we were asked to take a short break and get our stations set up for practicing knife cuts. Easy enough. During the break I proceeded to pour coffee down the front of me without noticing. Nice, right? Chef Eddie had to point the incident out to me during our in depth discussion of chef footwear. Then to top it off, I finally cut myself. While getting out my knives I was attempting to replace a guard that had fallen off my pairing knife and I sliced right into my index finger. I thought, given the circumstances, it was a good idea not to practice tournes today.

Interesting factoid from an F2 student: Risotto is not a type of grain, but a technique in which a grain is prepared. I had no idea!!

I've had better days....