Culinary School – Day Two

Well, I can honestly say nothing super interesting happened on day two. More knives. More cutting. Ho hum. Batonnets this time.

What’s that you ask?

Ok, so you take a potato. Peel it. Cut off all the sides so that it resembles a rectangular prism (is there a term for that? Geometry class was oh so long ago…) that is about 2-2.5 inches long. Then cut planks for your rectangular prism that are 1/4 inch thick. Then cut those planks into little logs. So you end up with a bunch of little rectangular prisms that are 1/4″ by 1/4″ wide by 2.5″ long.

Cool, so…what can you use them for?

Well, then you take your little logs and cut them into 1/4″ cubes. Voila! Fine dice! If you had made 1/2″ cubes, you’d have medium dice. 1/8″ cubes you’d have brunoise.

What if you didn’t make them into cubes at all?

You’d have French fries!

So the day after class, I tried out my mad knife skills by making French fries. I’d include them here, but I didn’t think they turned out all that well. In the future, I’d just go with Ore Ida (flame away).

My method? I did a triple cook. Parboiled the batonnets. Cooled and dried them. Fried them once at 325 degrees. Cooled them. Fried them a second time at 375 degrees. I did something bad though…when I cooled the parboiled potatoes, I put them in the fridge. AFTER I did that, I read that this often makes your potatoes brown too fast when you fry them. And…this is what happened to me. So I had to take them out of the second fry before they were done. Don’t let this happen to you!!

So if you want to make your own fries…go here.  Or, if you have a fool-proof way to make fries, please do us all a favor and share your method!

What else did I learn?

A little history about restaurants. Fun fact: the word restaurant comes from the French word restaurer, which means to restore. People used to go get “restoratives” which were generally boiled meat broths. Eventually more items were offered and thus, the restaurant as we know it was born.

What else…

A few “people of note” in the history of restaurants. Marie-Antoine Careme. August Escoffier. Alice Waters. And we ended with a little info about Julia Child.

And that discussion let me to finally – FINALLY – make Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon. And I will never make basic pot roast EVER again. You should make it too. I might make it again next weekend – it was THAT good.

Stay tuned…

Ms. Pantry Raid

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