I know that artisans and bread purists will be distressed by the whole bread machine thing. I do make bread by hand fairly often.
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I’ve been busy and lazy. Culinary school is going well. I just finished with midterms and seem to have done pretty well. We’re making veg dishes in class tomorrow. Ones I was supposed to practice this week and didn’t. Mostly because I couldn’t see the boychick eating braised celery or pumpkin. I’ll have to wing it in class tomorrow.
Cooking at home has centered on soups, chili and chicken pot pie. Oh, and lots of baby spinach salad. Admittedly, I have been a bit uninspired cooking wise over the last while. I honestly think it’s the not working at an outside job. Now that I have all the time in the world to cook, I can think of all these other things to do. Funny that.
I was going to post my chicken pot pie recipe but it’s hardly worth posting a full on recipe. All you need is enough pie pastry for a double crust 9″ pie, leftover chicken chopped into medium dice, diced onion, diced carrot and diced celery or a bag of frozen mixed veg. I added leek and yellow pepper last night. Saute the onion, celery and carrot, add the chicken, then any frozen veg. Sprinkle the warmed through mixture with a tablespoon or two of plain flour. Stir until the flour is mixed in and cook about five minutes to cook off any of the raw flour taste and pour over a cup of chicken stock or milk to make a light sauce to hold everything together. Line a pie plate with half the pastry, fill with the mixture and top with the rest of the pastry. Cut a few vents and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes or until the pastry is browned and the sauce is bubbling. As it may run over, it’s not a bad idea to put a baking sheet on the rack below the pie. Make sure to refrigerate any leftovers as soon as they’ve cooled and reheat to bubbling in a hot oven.
Wow. It is still amazing to me that I get to do this thing that I have wanted for so long. I realize how very lucky I am that I have an amazing husband who is supportive and encouraging. He told me in the midst of my doubts last week about the financial wisdom of me being in school that I didn’t realize how much faith he has in me. I guess I didn’t. I want to succeed for both of us.
I am taking two classes, Safety and Sanitation (online) and Culinary I. The S&S class also serves as the certification class for the ServeSafe certificate (after I pass a final in December) which means that I will have a safety and sanitation certificate. It seems a small thing but a least one job that I have applied for has required such a thing.
Culinary I is the intro to cooking course. The Nashville State kitchen is very well appointed (not that I have another school kitchen to compare it with) and the chef instructor is someone I am really looking forward to working with and learning from. He’s a Civil War re-enactor with a period mustache that makes him somehow less intimidating than my mental image of the red-faced, screaming French chef throwing saucepans at apprentices’ heads.
The class starts with knife skills and works through stocks, soups, sauces, vegetables and starches. We finish up with egg cookery. There are written exams as well as production exams, the first mostly being knife skills.
Speaking of knives, I am ordering my knife kit on Friday along with my chef coat, checked pants and floppy hat. I am giddy of course. The knife kit has everything the program requires and a few extra goodies including a insta-read thermometer and measuring spoons and cups. The school has a special deal with a tool company that supplies the German-made (not either of the two big names) knives. Knives, which because of the very strict rules about carrying weapons on campus, we are not allowed to have at hand except in the kitchen and back and forth from our cars. No running off to an afternoon class with your kit in your hand or apparently you will have a nasty run in with security. I’m glad the chef mentioned it or I probably would have been the idiot getting wrestled to the floor, screaming, “You can have my knives when you peel them from my unconscious fingers.” Not an auspicious beginning to be sure.
This past week was, as you can tell, all about introductions. This week should be a little more exciting.
No, not a fallen souffle or having six extra dinner guests when you are serving individual roasted quail carcasses, nightmares in the sleeping soundly and pleasantly dreaming until something takes a very wrong turn in your psyche and you wake up sweating and find yourself clutching the bed post as if it were a weapons grade wooden spoon.
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