Hunger-Inducing Photos

I'm in a non-kitchen class this rotation—the first part is Restaurant Cost Control (basically a business course for restauranteurs) and the second half is Wine & Beverage. Hopefully I'll have some interesting material to blog about once we start tasting wines next week, but for now, I won't ramble on about food costs, revenues, and profits. Instead, I thought I'd post some pictures of food from Meat Fab that never made it into my previous posts. 

The simple bowl mussels above of is one of my favorite things I've made in culinary school—or anywhere—so far. Mussels are something I would never have considered making for myself before—I guess I was afraid that I wouldn't cook them correctly and end up making myself and others sick. In reality, they're unbelievably easy to cook, and once you get them steaming in a pan or pot, you know they're safely done once the shell has opened. If it doesn't open at all, throw that mussel away. 

I mimicked the mussel demo that Chef K. had done earlier that morning and sauteed mine in a pan with some shallots, garlic, white wine, tomatoes smoked on the stovetop, and a little parsley. I added sliced mushrooms to my version, because in my opinion most things are better with mushrooms. The major difference between my mussels and Chef's was that at the end of cooking the sauce down (after removing the cooked mussels), he added about half a stick of butter. I decided to omit the butter all together and see how it tasted, and I actually enjoyed the lighter version more. It was really fresh-tasting and allowed the flavors of the shellfish and smoked tomato to shine.

On crustacean day, I decided to honor my Maryland roots and tackle the softshell crabs above. They're blue crabs that are eaten shortly after molting their hard shells, so you can eat the entire thing. I grew up finding these on menus all the time, but many in my class had never seen or tasted them before. A few classmates worked with me to make a few different coatings—we did a cornmeal crust (spiked with a little cayenne pepper), panko bread crumbs, and tempura batter. After dipping the crabs in flour, then egg wash, then crumbs, we fried them in hot oil. My favorite was definitely the cornmeal-crusted version—the coating was really flavorful and it provided the thin, crispy exterior that makes a softshell crab so special. 

On shellfish day, we also had a big bushel of Gulf oysters to work with. After my mussel dish was finished, I helped a classmate make these Oysters Rockefeller. It's a classic preparation in which oysters on the half-shell are topped with a spinach cream sauce and bread crumbs. We made a bechamel sauce and added a whole bunch of chopped spinach and some grated parmesan to it, then let it cool and spooned this over freshly-shucked oysters. We used panko bread crumbs for their awesome crunch and put the oysters in the oven just until the crumbs were brown. I've had this dish many times in New Orleans and thought our attempt was pretty decent.

This is actual Japanese Kobe beef, imported from Japan with a certificate bearing the name of the cow it came from (no joke). A classmate who works at one of Atlanta's top steakhouses brought it in to class for us to try—the chef there gave it to him specifically as a gift for our culinary school class. I certainly did not cook any of this meat myself—it needed to be handled by a true steak expert, since the smallish piece that he was given costs close to $100 in the restaurant. My classmate cooked it perfectly and sliced it thinly so everyone could have a little piece. Please forgive the culinary cliche, but it truly melted in the mouth like butter.

I really never expected to eat foie gras in culinary school. But when a few people in my class expressed to Chef K. that they'd never tasted it before, he made sure to bring some in so that they could experience this luxury menu item. Another of my classmates works at Craft and prepared the slab of foie the same way that they do it at the restaurant. Chef Tom Colicchio, Craft's owner and one of my favorite chefs, is known for keeping things simple and letting great ingredients speak for themselves, and this foie gras dish was very indicative of that style.

I watched and asked questions as my friend worked: he cut apples into a perfect brunoise (1/8 x 1/8 x 1/8 inch dice) and cooked them down with some apple cider and vinegar (I think!), then put them into a Cryovac bag and did some sort of sous-vide thing to them so that the apples absorbed most of the juice. He simply seared the foie gras in a hot saute pan and topped it with the apples. I had one tiny bite, and it was still completely decadent. It was interesting to hear what people had to say after tasting this delicacy for the first time. It's hard to compare the richness and silkiness of foie gras to anything else. 

Looking back, now that I'm sitting in a classroom, I realize just how spoiled we were over the last few weeks!