Chickens hacked, with a bonus

The chicken hacking went well. Although I did learn that chicken hacking is bad - it's where you make a series of short cuts instead of long, smooth cuts, especially when you're boning out the breasts and tenders. Short cuts make for "fuzzy" chicken, something that doesn't feel as good in the mouth as smooth, silky breasts...

So, the chicken became Frenched mini-drumsticks from the first joint on the wings, made into teriyaki hot wings along with the second wing joint. I made teriyaki tenders, too because we were both hungry. The rest is brining - the breasts (supremes for Julia Child fans), thighs and drumsticks.

I somehow became the carcass collector, and took home more carcasses than would fit in my ice chest. They're in the oven roasting for stock. Looks like I'll have a nice, strong batch of nice chicken stock for French onion soup, pilaf, sauces...

Chicken hacking

Tomorrow, we go hands on and dirty with poultry. Chicken is the biggest selling protein, across the board, all types of restaurants. Apparently this means burger joints, too. Why? It's cheap, easy to prepare and tastes good.

No serious chef could ever show his or her face in public without knowing how to completely prepare a chicken. In about five to seven minutes, the bird will go from a plucked, cleaned carcass to perfectly sliced breasts, tenders, thighs, drumsticks wings and oysters.

Yes, chickens not only have tenders (they're attached to the breast meat) but they have oysters, too. Not that you'd want to eat these particular oysters raw, unless you have a fondness for suffering from salmonella. They're the two little round things on the chicken's back, the best-tasting part of the entire bird. If I were Emperor, this is what I'd eat, and give the rest to the starving masses (of course, if I were Emperor, I wouldn't need to learn to cook, but that's another story).

There is very little waste at the end of the process. Some fatty bits, the tail and the tips of the wings. That's it. The carcass is used for stock, the breasts for fancy stuff, the tenders for child food along with the drumsticks, the thighs for all kinds of Asian food, kebabs, the wings for bar food. The most in demand part is the breasts; the most versatile the thigh meat.

By the way, chickens only officially have one breast. So, when you think you're chewing on a chicken breast, you're only half right.

Where is this all going?

Sometimes I think only someone foolish, deluded or just plain March hare crazy would want to own, manage and chef their own kitchen. For someone who never actually worked in a production oriented, professional restaurant kitchen to attempt such a feat could only be described as lunacy. Or perhaps rushing in where any angel would have done prior research into the true nature of the beast and decided that sitting on a cloud playing the harp is preferable to suffering long hours of kitchen hellfire.

Then there's the part about having to pay back loans (or risk a small fortune). The restaurant actually has to remain profitable over a period long enough to reimburse its debt, turn a profit, become enough of an asset that it could be used to earn enough money to one day retire. Burning out before break-even is therefore not an option for the debt-averse.

Yet, here I am in a program whose end result would be my transformation into someone very much resembling a chef. Since I'm not exactly the typical nineteen year old ready to be molded into whatever someone desires, I wonder if a working, non-ownership position is even a possibility.

Seems like going through all of this just to make better turkey at Thanksgiving, grill tastier steaks for the Fourth of July or just save money by not dining in fancy restaurants is really a waste of resources.  At least a semester's tuition at the community college is about the price of four nice steaks in an upscale restaurant.

Today we cook!

this looks much easier on TV...

Equipped with my gleaming white chef's coat, pants, cap, apron, and the proper closed-toe, non-skid shoes (a.k.a. sneakers - trainers in the U.K.), we put heat to food and step up to a well-used Wolf gas cook top whose burners look like inverted Space Shuttle engines.

Our task is to prepare an herb rub, insert it under the skin of some boneless chicken breasts, sauté the breasts until they're browned, and chuck them into the oven to finish cooking. While the breasts are underway, we prepare a sauce from the fond left in the pan. We also make mashed potatoes as our starch. The garnish will be a leafy stalk of basil.

The chicken breasts are huge, like they came from some avian porn star. Thick. Not something that would be thoroughly cooked through to a safe internal temperature of 160° F in the allotted time. Day one, and we're already behind.

The sauce, sitting in a pan over a burner whose lowest setting seems to be "char", goes quickly. Too quickly. Even setting the pan on the warming shelf doesn't stop the slow loss of liquid - it evaporates out of the pan, leaving the shallots and garlic behind like salt crystals at Badwater.

The mashed potatoes worked fine. We even added a bit of garlic to make them more interesting. They await the chicken.

We take the chicken out of the oven, slice it. Pink in the center. Back in it goes. Again. Pink. Back in.

Finally, the chicken is ready. Each breast has to be sliced diagonally into five pieces. Four pieces are not as aesthetic, sort of like rocks in a Zen garden. Except that this is burning hot chicken, we're behind and the plates and oval mounds of mashed potatoes are waiting to receive the slices that will be fanned beautifully over them. Then the sauce will coat the chicken in a shimmery, luscious nape for the piece de resistance.

The sauce, bane of my existence. I add the butter, for the "monter au beurre" step, whisking frantically to try emulsifying the little liquid that remains into the butter. Too much butter, too little liquid. I cannot change the laws of physics, I shout. Nonetheless, I manage to achieve something that resembles a sauce, although it's really more bits of soggy shallots drowned in a massive amount of butter.

On goes the sauce, decorative sprigs of basil crown the oeuvre, and we're ready for evaluation. Late. Bad sauce. Chicken cooked. Basil should grow "naturally" from the dish. I withhold comments about this novel type of horticulture. Epiphytic basil that grows on chicken... that would reduce the chicken farm's carbon footprint, but GMO basil would never pass as organic.

Day one over, and much pondering to do over how to manage the thermonuclear heat of the burners and become their master, find where everything is located for next time, delve into the chemistry of sauces, and wonder if all this is going to work out in the end.

Culinary arts, day two

People crowd into the room, many of them hoping to secure a place by adding. There are about forty people in the room. The room only has work space for a little over twenty people.

Thank the Powers, I'm in!

Now it's time to buy a knife set - an 8" chef's knife, boning knife, paring knife, potato peeler, instant read thermometer, and the coup de grace: a bird's beak knife. This last instrument is like a paring knife, except that it's curved like a bird's beak, with the sharp edge on the inside of the curve. It's for doing the tourné cut, something apparently used to torture students in cooking schools the world over, yet not typically done in restaurants in this country. It generates a lot of waste and is labor intensive, so it's easier (if you're a restaurant) to buy machine cut "casino potatoes" and use your kitchen crew for more essential duties.