Clams, Mussels and White Wine/Butter Sauce

I got to do my first experimenting in cooking AT SCHOOL. To feed to my classmates. So awesome.

Everyone's group but ours had to follow a recipe, then chef stopped by our table and said "do whatever you want. make it have pasta, clams and mussels." I believe our collective jaws dropped. After hemming and hawing over the recipe we were going to make, (should it be white wine? should it be cream?) we decided to rest on it. In the morning I showed up early and wandered into the library on a whim. Why it would take me 3 months to figure out that the best foodie library in town was in the damn culinary school, I have no idea. It was way better than walking into the Powell's food section.

I ended up finding a recipe to cook mussels in white wine. I wrote it shorthand (completely avoiding telling everyone that you were supposed to just use the wine for cooking the mussels instead of as a base for a sauce because I really didn't want a reduction of heavy cream as a sauce) and took it back to my group. They approved, but now I was stuck with the daunting task of figuring just how to make this into a sauce. When I disappeared into the adjoined kitchen with little more than a sauce pan, crawfish stock and some booze, I got a little bit of that high I used to get when you'd lie to your parents about something stupid. No, dad, I didn't borrow your power saw to cut the head off my brother's army men. Why would you think that? But it was more yeah, I know what I am doing with this half gallon of sauvignon blanc and a whisk.

Long story short. It worked out fantastic. I think I really have a knack for sauces. I'll give you the full breakdown below for what I did and write down notes for myself for ways to make it simpler in case I want to make it again. It was good enough I probably will some day.

First thing I did was set 1.5 cups seafood (mostly crawfish and shrimp) stock and 2 cups white wine to reduce in a sauce pan on the stove.

Next we sauteed up about three cups each mussels and clams (no shells) in a few ounces of butter, with minced shallots and garlic (feel free to be extravagant with the butter, it all gets added into the sauce anyways and the sauce is very buttery). As they are cook, clams and mussels release lots of moisture. When done, strain the juices from the pans through paper towels and into the sauce pan. (Put the clams and mussels in a bowl on ice to stop cooking) Continue reducing. The liquid from the pans is a nice milky color and gives lots of body to the sauce.

After about 20 minutes, add an ounce of minced shallots, a teaspoon of lemon zest, and let cook for another few minutes. When the sauce is done reducing, add enough minced parsley to make it definitely a factor in the sauce, I think I used maybe a half a cup (really don't remember). Then start swirling in chunks of raw butter (monter au beurre). Balance the sauce with about a lemon and a half squeezed into the sauce. Salt to taste. (Don't use salt until the very end because I lot of these ingredients are naturally very salty).

To finish, saute the clams and mussels (just to heat) in a small amount of butter. Toss the sauce with angel hair or small linguine, add the mollusks and salt to taste. Remember, the sauce will end up much thinner than thickened, roux-based, or cream sauces. That was a concern for members of our group (until the dish was assembled). This is a very flavorful sauce, and being a butter sauce, it only needs to coat the pasta, not have a pool of it sitting in the bottom. That is very unappetizing with thin sauces.

If I wanted to try this again and make it healthier, I would substitute the seafood stock for vegetable stock, only use butter to saute the mollusks and thicken with a cornstarch slurry. It would turn out much fishier and I would use less lemon and probably a few extra herbs to make it more "green" tasting, maybe saute up some mushrooms with it as well. I think it would require a lot of balancing to get it right.

Two Steps Forward...crap.

One thing about culinary school. You are constantly fooled into thinking you know everything. For a few days, you'll be in the groove, perfecting the same types of dishes. Then, all of a sudden you make the most appalling string of crap ever to grace your kitchen. Enter the shame...

Of course, it's probably just the fact that I now have the wherewithal to identify my mistakes that is making me insecure about the rubbery shrimp I produced yesterday. And the incident with the fennel. That wasn't so good.

Call to Arms

I receive a tersely written letter demanding the entire class’ presence at a meeting four days before the start of Skills II. After years of reading emails in the corporate world, I can sense the subtext in this letter. The subtext is: YOUR ASS IS MINE FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS.

I instantly feel sorry for those who can’t smell it coming. Newbies are blood in the water for our shark of a chef.

At my last job I worked for a demanding, slightly (verging on full blown) neurotic beast of a woman who was far more demanding than any other boss I’d had in the nitpicky world of technical editing. She was (ironically or not, I haven’t a clue) a chef in her former life. We’d butted heads more than once in the six months I’d worked for her and still goes down in history as the only person I’ve actually yelled at in my career. It’s pretty damn easy to say I am anxious about this new chef I have to slave under.

I show up, and true to history repeating itself and all that, she looks exactly like my previous boss. A short, stout, silver-haired, steely-eyed dragon readied with her alpha female superpowers to tell exactly what she demands from us. She’s the type of person who tells you exactly what she expects of you. I respect her. Straight talk gets the point around. It’s much better than the touchy feely crap I endured in Art School

I’m a little wary of all the rules she has set up for us. I’ll be the first person to admit that I am stubborn as hell and have just the teensiest problem with authority. I’ll just have to see if I can stick it out without throwing a tantrum or one of those 20 gallon stock pots across the room.

Mise en Place

Cooking School: Day 1 (The hazing bit)

Well, the first day is over. It’s been a long time since I was a “new student”. All the old feelings are there combined with one new one. Annoyance. I thought I had gotten over feeling like a complete dumbass when plopped into a new terrain, but apparently that new feeling never goes away. I did the whole wandering with my mouth open, not asking directions and getting lost down the one stairwell that does not give access back into the floors, but rather makes you walk all the way down to street level, back around the building and up the elevator again to get back to the exact place I got lost in the first time. Fantastic. I still have no idea what purpose these fire doors could have. What if you go into the stairwell only to realize the first floor is on fire?

First impressions: My new Chef looks as though he were a cartoon of a french chef come to life as (that dude from that movie). He is round shouldered, lamented his forgetfulness regarding suspenders (and consequently spent the day hiking up his pants, though not in a lewd way) and is self effacing for the effect on the crowd. All in all, a very gentle seeming, relaxed persona. The perfect introductory chef. Almost like comedy traffic school for foodies.

As for learning, there wasn’t a ton that was explicitly pounded out, although, the extensive talking about how kitchens work and the rules of the classroom give a sense of how kitchens are conducted without standing at the chalkboard with little half cursive 1, 2, 3, etc. drawn down the board with inane rules insulting people’s intelligence.

The people are more varied than I’d expected. I thought I’d bee hip deep in fresh graduates with their shiny faces and annoying tendency to act just like what they are: high schoolers with a few weeks tacked on. Although I saw evidence of many of these man-boys in the halls (the girls are harder to spot) with their silly mugging and clowning in front of entire classes. They also displayed the annoying habit of talking loudly to the chef in front of dozens of strangers. Damn them and their self confidence. But most of my classmates are also in the diploma program which is usually a choice you make if you’ve already had the luxury of paying off a few credits cards and slipping a fifty to the student loan Nazis every five seconds.

There’s an eclcectic mix. Everyone seems pretty nice even though I believe there is a mullet among us and perhaps a thick set of dreds. Not everyone has all their teeth, one person admitted to an extra rib and webbed feet and the professor forced us to tell our last meal should we get to choose when we die. A wee morbid methinks, but a deliciously fascinating thought to ponder instead of trying to rhyme your name with something. Mine rhymes with Contrary.
My last meal would be barbecue ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad, and about 5 pounds of the ripest watermelon around. Sunshine mandatory.

Notes on what I learned: The Escoffier System of Kitchen Labor Divisions:
Executive Chef
Sous Chef
Rotisseur
Entremetier
Garde Manger
Saucier
Etc.

Too tired to think. This has been the first day I tried going to school and working. We’ll see how that pans out. Haha. Get it: PANS. I am so tired.