Culinary School Week #4: Frying and roasting vegetables

Poaching fish; Tian & Gratin

My fourth week in culinary school is done! This week we focused on roasting and frying vegetables, a “taste” workshop and side projects. It’s been a whole month and we’re hitting a good rhythm by focusing on one topic and having lots of side projects.

Tian; Gratin

Tian: we chopped up zucchini, tomatoes and japanese eggplant to 1/4" rounds. Alternated layers diagonally on a bed of sauteed onions, covered in olive oil+S&P and baked in 350°F for 30 minutes.

Gratin: we used a mandoline to slice of potato and garnet yams (sweet potato), alternated layers vertically with cream, covered in breadcrumbs + cheese + S&P and roasted in 350°F for 30 minutes.

Gratin & Tian zen: Gratins are roasted with breadcrumbs & cheese topping; Tians don’t. You can use any chopped vegetable, seasoning and intermediate layers in either.

Deep fried: citrus, kabocha squash, mushrooms, and green beans.

Fritto misto coating: We dredged fruits and vegetables in fritto misto coating. Big surprise: deep fried citrus was amazing. The burst of citrus when you bite into it was delicious.

The sauce on the top is chunky mayo onion dipping sauce. And the sauce on the bottom is garlic-dill mayo dipping sauce.

Fritto misto zen: 1:1:2 ratio of rice flour : semolina : AP flour. Dip in butter milk then coat in fritto misto and finally deep dry in 370°F.

Deep fry zen: dredged vs. breaded vs. battered.
- “Breaded” has breadcrumbs on the outside. e.g. “Breaded” zucchini below.
- “Dredged” means first dipped in liquid (buttermilk) and then coated (e.g. fritto miso coating).
- “Battered” has the coating and liquid combined. e.g. Tempura.

Breaded deep fried zucchini

“Breaded” zucchini: we breaded zucchini sliced on the diagonal and deep fried it.

“Breaded” zen: We want breadcurmbs on the outside. But they won’t stick without a liquid (eggs). And eggs won’t stick without flour. So we first AP flour, then dip in eggs, then finally coat in breadcrumbs.

Poaching fish and covering in classic Beurre Blanc sauce

Poached fish in Beurre Blanc sauce: we made a poaching liquid for the fish and poached for 1–2 minutes each side.

Beurre Blanc zen: reduce wine, vinegar and shallots until 2tbsp are left and slowly incorporate 1:25 ratio of of butter.

Barb Stuckey’s talk about “Taste”

We started off the week by having a mind-blowing workshop about Taste with Barb Stuckey. She’s an amazing speaker and she gave us a super insightful talk. A few highlights:

• Bottom left photo: You can taste umami by tasting MSG+water and NaCl+waster and comparing the difference.
• Bottom right photo: Taste requires contact with the tongue. There are 5 accepted tastes, 3 likely tastes (Fat, Calcium, Carbonation) and a bunch more that may or may not be tastes (e.g. Metallic).
• Top right photo: Different sugars have different temporal effects. Demonstrated by tasting different kinds of coca-cola.

Creme puffs filled with pastry creme and topped with chocolate glaze

Side project: Creme puffs. We’ve been making choux pastry for a while now. It all came together when we used Creme Puff pastry, filled it with vanilla pastry creme and topped it with chocolate glaze. Look at that shine!
Creme puff zen: baked choux dough + filling + glazing.

Chocolate pastry creme: add 4oz chocolate to pastry creme while hot.

Gougeres. Nicole Plue’s recipe.

Gougeres: savoury choux pastry. We used Chef Nicole Plue’s recipe and it was da bomb. Objectively da bomb.

Gougeres zen: make choux dough with spices (nutmug, cayenne, S&P) and add cheese (gruyere) after adding the eggs.

Other stuff that we made this week:

1. Roasting vegetables: we cut up some vegetables, covered in oil, S&P and roasted
2. Creme brulee. Caramelized with a torch.
3. I ground up Rice in a Vitamix and made rice flour. Magic.
4. Eggplant. So much eggplant.

Read more about my culinary school adventures by reading about my third week in culinary school:

Culinary School Week #3: Vegetables