Compound Butter will change your life...

I'm pretty much a fan of all things dairy so when we learned about compound butter in culinary school, i knew I was in for a real treat. This fancy sounding butter is really just unsalted butter with amazing yumminess ("raw ingredients"), frozen and stored to use as a shot of flavor to different dishes. The butter and whatever ingredient is mixed together, then rolled into a log, wrapped in wax or parchment paper and then just throw it into the freezer- presto-change-o. 

Compound better is typically used in restaurants as a finishing method. The compound butter log is cut into coins and used to top a hot piece of fish or meat so that melts on top on it's way to the table for service. Pretty awesome right? 

Here are some popular compound butters to get your mind going: 

- Shallots (used on Grilled Meat or Fish) 

- Tarragon leaves (used on Fish) 

- Lemon Juice, Parsley, Shallots, Red Wine, Meat Glaze (Grilled Meat)

- Strawberry (or other flavored) Jams (used on french toast, pancakes, etc) 

We made a Compound Butter with Truffles (both the oil and actual truffles) and chives - we used this on top of our green beans and gremolta (next blog posting) - pic below. Just imagine her melting on top of a hot steak and you'll start to salivate: 

Hot Chef

Know you have been dying to know what my classes are like (in my head you are) and probably want to know about hot chef Justin who has been teaching my classes. Thought I'd do a quick picture post - more about the giant fish he's holding later...

Culinary Class #2 : Duck Confit and Compound Butters

This is actually a backlogged post from about a week ago - I have obviously been behind but I wanted to make sure to write about the amaaaaazing stuff we learned about in Week 2 at FCI.

Let me start out by saying that I made mayonnaise for the first time - it was actually such an arm workout. You start with Egg Yolks, a little White Wine Vinegar, Lemon Juice, a little water, Mustard, Salt, Cayenne and of course, the vegetable oil. You have to continue to whisk as you slloooowlllly add the oil... if it goes in it could break and you'll have to start over. Even more difficult is making hollandaise sauce - which is pretty much the same concept but you add butter and it has to be whisked over a double boiler and maintained a perfect temperature. Chef Will who demoed this for us had a hard time and his hollandaise broke and he had to start over. Pretty much you need to make sure it's at perfect temperature otherwise you'll end up with scrambled eggs if it's too hot. You also need to maintain it at room temp for serving otherwise it's no good. So think about that when you order this tempermental sauce at Brunch when you're hung over... it's not easy! Pic of my (SUCCESSFUL!) mayo below:




















We also talked about compound butters - they are literally my new favorite thing. It's the EASIEST thing you can make the the possibilities are endless. All you need is unsalted softened butter and... well whatever you want to flavor it with. We made black truffle and chive butter which meant folding in chopped black truffle (you can get at Whole Foods in a can), finely chopped chives, and black truffle oil. You transfer this softened butter mixture onto parchment or wax paper and roll it into a log... take this, freeze, and use on anything! Most restaurants keep compound butters on hand so that waiters can cut a coin of the butter and place it on top of lobsters, steaks, etc. allowing it to melt on the protein on it's way out to the table... what an amazing party trick, yes?

You can also make sweet compounds, mixing butter with fresh strawberry jam and putting this on french toast, brown sugar and maple for pancakes.. whatever! Are you, or are you not amazed?

We also started the preservation process of our duck confit that would we use in our soup next week (coming in a blog this or next week) - you basically buy a duck legs and preserve and freeze it in it's on fat... that's what confit means. It's the french technique of preserving cooked meat without refrigeration by storing it in fat. This gives the duck a total tenderness and slightly gamey taste.. if you've ever had duck confit, you know it's the best thing ever. More on Duck Confit next week.

Our main dish that we created was a sea scallop (TOP SCALLOP)... like most unseasoned cooks, seafood scares me. Especially scallops which are considered a high-end seafood. It was surprisingly easy to sear them - just get the stainless steal pan super hot (to keep it from sticking to the pan) and give each side a few seconds for a beautiful sear. We served this on top of a tomato confit (which was herbs and olive oil pretty much) and a duet of purees: Cauliflower (which tastes like mashed potatoes) and Pea.

A Puree can be made from pretty much everything - just add cream in a blender! You cook all the veggies (or whatever) in cream over the stove and then stick it in a blender to get it smooth. Easy right? You can also toss in flavorful herbs or things like garlic or truffle oil (which is what we did because nothing beats truffle oil)... so simple! With the pea puree we cooked it in chicken stock which gave it a really wonderful flavor... got rid of some of that pea tastes and graduated it above pea baby food.

This was a great class - much more enjoyable than day 1 which was a complete clusterfuck of chopping veggies...

Picture of my beautiful results below!

Recession Special Dining

Having to entertain clients on a weekly basis, and also from being a cheap bastard, I found an amazing article in NY Mag about "Recession Special" Restaurants in the city.

Don't let the title fool you - these are some of the best restaurants in the city, just with slashed prices! What do you know, everyone wins!

Here is a link to the list - I've copied and pasted some of the highlights below:

Artisanal: $24.50 three-course dinner from 5 to 6:30 p.m; grilled-cheese bar at lunch.

Chanterelle: Three-course lunch for $42, which includes tea or coffee and a tray of chocolate truffles.

Craft: "Frugal Fridays" feature a menu of market-driven dishes for $10 or under at the bar. Categories range from meat on a stick to offal.

Del Posto Nine-course "grand tasting menu" reduced to $125 from $175.

L'Ecole at The French Culinary Institute: The nightly $42 five-course dinner features standout dishes like grilled rib steak and fluke carpaccio.

Wafels & Dinges: The price of the WMD (the Waffle of Mass Deliciousness, which includes unlimited toppings) has dropped to $6.

Also, a big WOOT WOOT! for Restaurant Week - I'm doing my 2nd Restaurant Week at Mercer Kitchen. I'm a big fan of Jean-Georges, so I can't help myself. I'll do a review when I get a minute...

First Day at FCI

So as some of you know I started my course at FCI on Saturday, bright and early at 9:30am. Everyone put on their Chefs outfits which include a Chef's jacket, these dorked out drawstring checkered pants, an apron, a neckerchief (yikes), and a skull cap which made all the girls look like 12 year old boys. I looked super dorky... it was amazing.

In any case, our instructor was Chef Justin who was tall and gorg (future husband, thanks?), and coincidentally very talented. We were given an AMAZING kit with great quality knives, tongs, thermometers, whisks.. .pretty much everything we could ever need. The best part is that these are ours to keep so it saves me the trouble from having to go out and be confused in the kitchen section at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

The class was 5 hours long and there was a TON of information to retain. Everyone got their own station and most of the class was taught at the demo station where we were shown basic knife skills on vegetables and proper cooking techniques. All the terminology was in french and since luckily I speak french, it wasn't that hard to keep up.

Our first dish was a medley of garden vegetables - not exactly an exotic recipe but was great practice for how to cook veggies properly. I was most excited about cleaning and prepping artichokes which completely intimidated me prior to the lesson. You basically strip off the leaves, cut off half the stem, use your paring knife to get rid of the dark green around the base, and split the remain choke into quarters, removing the little hairs inside of the veggie. To keep it from discoloring, we rubbed it in lemon... then TADA! It was done!

We also learned about tournage which is a french taillage and basically the bane of culinary students' existences. You basically use your paring knife to get your vegetable into a football like shape - one of my fellow students definitely cut himself while trying to master this technique. Really not easy. In the picture at the bottom of this post, the zucchinis on the side are turned so you can get an idea of what a really shitty job of tournage looks like.

Another cool skill we learned was how to make tomato concasse. Basically what that means is a peeled, seeded, and diced tomato. A trick I learned for peeling tomatoes was to place an criss-cross incision at the bottom of the tomato, toss it in boiling water for a few seconds, and then into ice cold water basically "shocking" the tomato out of it's skin. An awesome trick.

In any case, here is the result of the vegetable medley we created - be very proud of me!

French Culinary Institute.. yikes.

I'm not sure if this is part of a quarter-life crisis tied in with my love to feed my belly and/or the Top Chef NY fanatic coming out in me, but I am officially enrolled in the French Culinary Institute in SoHo NYC. Yup - I'm doing it. I'm going to have get over my fear of knives somehow in the hopes of someday replicating Hung's crazy feverish deboning of like 12 chickens. That was intense.

Since I signed up, I've been hosting dinner parties for up to 7 people - for a total non-cook like myself, I practically worked myself into a tizzy from just making the salad. I'll be posting the results and some recipes and tips in the next few blogs, so look out for those.

In the meanwhile, please note that starting January 10th, this obsession with a) being on reality TV and b) becoming a "hot" chef begins...

Are you ready?