All U Can Eat

The final Wednesday of the American Regional rotation is always buffet day. The class picks out a theme, selects more than a dozen recipes to go along with it, and decorates the room accordingly. The buffet's "guests" are always the students from Food Science, one of the first classes of the program. Food Science is not a kitchen class, so the newbies get a little preview of what goes on in production classes in addition to an opportunity to eat until they're Thanksgiving-style full.

It honestly seems like forever ago when Mr. W., the Food Science teacher, walked my class down to American Regional for the buffet. At the time, American Regional seemed so far down the road for me, and I was impressed that the students pulled off such an elaborate feast—their theme was New Orleans Thanksgiving, appropriate given that it was November. Culinary school is flying by, and sure enough this Wednesday was my own buffet day. I'd like to think that our feast was just as impressive to the clean-jacketed Food Science students we served.

We decided against a seasonal theme, since the April holidays have already passed, and went with "A Tribute to Hollywood." We picked five movies that are tied to regions in the U.S., and each table prepared a few dishes that represented those regional cuisines. We decorated our tables with movie posters and random props that we all dug out of our closets and basements, and each wrote our name on a construction-paper star to make a "Walk of Fame" on the floor.

My group's movie was Scarface, thus our cuisine was "Floribbean"—the Florida cuisine that encompasses Latin and Caribbean influences. We made Cuban-style yellow rice, a spicy gazpacho (a bit different from the recipe we made last week on Tex-Mex day), and a refreshing shrimp salad. The top photo is a closer shot of these three dish presentations. Funny that this movie was assigned to a group of four girls, none of whom had ever actually seen Scarface all the way through!

Another table took inspiration from a movie that I had suggested when we were throwing out regionally-appropriate titles: Fried Green Tomatoes. It's one of my all-time favorite tear-jerking chick flicks, and couldn't have been a better theme for Southern food. This group, obviously, served a riff on fried green tomatoes stuffed with cheddar cheese; candied sweet potatoes; and a peach and blueberry shortcake.

The Tex-Mex table was represented by Hang 'Em High, a Clint Eastwood movie that I've also never seen. The guys in my class seemed to be collectively obsessed with it, though. This all-guy group made a Mexican chocolate and pecan torte and an enchilada casserole.

The Fargo table showcased Midwestern food, including a beef-and-bacon meatloaf and braised cabbage (also with bacon, naturally!)

The final movie was another that I suggested—this time not a chick flick! There is no better movie for Italian-American cuisine than The Godfather. They made some stuffed shell pasta with meat and ricotta and actually found a recipe for a "Corleone Salad". I couldn't come up with any specific ties to the movie in the recipe, but was a tasty, simple salad with greens, mozzarella, and olives—something you'd be served with your meal at any red-sauce Italian-American restaurant.

The buffet was a hit—our student and chef guests came back through for seconds and thirds. Word gets around the school when it's buffet day in American regional, so people from every class usually mosey in to try the food during their breaks. We still had tons of food left over—the plates you see above were just the presentation plates; we served from huge dishes and platters behind the displays.

Though the kitchen was chaotic at times with so many dishes in the works, it was a really fun day. I loved getting to present and serve our food to people other than just Chef P., and decorating the room with construction paper etc. brought me back to the thrill of class parties in elementary school. And it may not be the most refined dining experience, but who doesn't love a good all-you-can-eat buffet every once in a while?

Louisiana, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains...all in one week!

It's been a delicious week in American Regional. Monday kicked off with the Cajun and Creole cuisines of Louisiana. Before Zack and I met in college, I'd never even been to Louisiana, but after more than five years of food-filled visits, I consider myself pretty well-educated in its cuisine. However, prior to Monday I'd never actually cooked any of it myself before.

The Louisiana menu was full of classic dishes: gumbo, stuffed mirlitons (called chayote squash outside of the bayou area), red beans and rice, maque choux (a creamy, rich stewed corn dish), crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, trout with pecan butter, pecan pralines, beignets. My group was on entree duty, and I volunteered to make the jambalaya. It's one of those dishes that seems straightforward enough to make at home—I love one-pot meals!—and I wanted to learn the tricks that make the rice so delicious and flavorful. We used a classic combination of chicken and spicy andouille sausage—I like seafood jambalaya the best, but this is what we had to work with since shrimp were needed to stuff the mirlitons.

Jambalaya turned out to be very simple, provided you have some pre-cooked andouille, which we did. We made sausage from scratch back in Garde Manger class and I'm fine with never doing that again, thanks. I broke down a chicken and cut the meat into bite-size pieces, then browned it in a pot with a little oil. Then, I took out the chicken pieces and browned the vegetables: the "holy trinity" of onions, peppers, and celery replaces traditional mirepoix in Cajun and Creole cooking. Some diced lean pork went into the pot with the vegetables as well. Once all of that had browned, I threw in the spicy sausage and all of the spices—our recipe called for equal amounts of black pepper, cayenne, chili powder, dried thyme, ground cloves, dried basil, and mace. New Orleans food certainly is not bland!

At this point, the rice goes into the pot and is browned for a few minutes before the chicken stock is added. The chicken pieces go back in too, and I brought the pot to a boil, then cut the heat to a simmer and covered it to let the rice cook. That took about 35 minutes with occasional stirring. Then it needs just a few minutes uncovered to let the rice dry out a little, and you're done! It was spicy and rich and flavorful, just how I remembered it from Mother's in the French Quarter. We molded it and scattered the plate with fresh herbs for presentation—Chef P. requests that we plate everything in fine-dining style, but for this one I'm all for serving it in a big messy heap.

Jambalaya goes refined

Other highlights from Louisiana day included the shrimp-stuffed mirlitons, which were almost as good as the ones I was first introduced to at Zack's parents house. They went really well over a delicious corn-and-boiled-peanut salad that another group made. People seem to either love or hate boiled peanuts—I love them! They're just regular peanuts boiled in the shell in salted water, sometimes with spicy Cajun seasonings, and they take on a totally different flavor and texture. In Louisiana, you can get them at roadside produce stands and even gas stations. Zack remembers a "peanut man" who came around selling them when he was little. Whenever we visit, he's always on the lookout for this "peanut man"...no success yet, unfortunately.

Beauty plate of shrimp-stuffed mirlitons over corn-and-boiled-peanut salad

The etouffee was extremely rich, as it should be, and the crawfish were tasty even though we got them frozen. There's nothing better than fresh crawfish straight from the shell.

Crawfish etouffee—not the most attractive dish, but very delicious

On Tuesday, we moved into the Midwest. The cuisine of the "Central Plains" isn't very easily defined with specific dishes—but they use a lot of beer, bacon, sausages, and beef. It's not the lightest fare, to say the least. We were at the sides table and I made some braised cabbage that I actually liked a lot. Naturally, it was made with bacon and braised in Guinness (and some apple cider).

Beer-braised cabbage

Here we plated some of the cabbage and our other side of corn-and-wild rice cakes with another group's pork medallions, which were served with a blueberry sauce.

Pork with blueberry sauce, braised cabbage, and wild rice cakes

Moving along, we headed into the Rocky Mountain region. Chef P. talked about the abundance of wild game and berries out there, but admitted that there wasn't much to talk about in this cuisine: "You know what their main crop is out there? Rocks." It was probably a good day to be stuck at the dessert table. We made an amazingly moist blueberry cake that was served topped with cream that we'd warmed in a pot with a vanilla bean. The class devoured two large cake pans of it. Our group also made some skillet cornbread and lemon chess pie, which I always thought was Southern, but apparently not.

Melt-in-the-mouth blueberry cake with cream

Just for the record: it was Passover this week and I was avoiding anything leavened, so I allowed myself only a tiny taste of cake—to make sure it came out okay, obviously! And as for all the rice on Louisiana day, I have adopted Sephardic culture and they're cool with rice during Passover. Yeah...we all do religion differently, people!

Next, we tackled Tex-Mex cuisine and the soup table. Chef P. explained that the day's menu was actually more authentically Mexican than Tex-Mex, which in this country has come to mean fake-Mexican food like nachos and jalapeno poppers. Our class made chicken with mole, the intense sauce made with chocolate and chiles; chile rellenos; matambre, a roulade of flank steak filled with greens and hard-boiled eggs; tres leches cake, etc. In my opinion, this was the best day ever to find ourselves at the soup table. We made two of my all-time favorites: tortilla soup (which is one of my staple dishes at home) and gazpacho (which I'd never actually made myself before, but I ordered it at pretty much every meal on my trip to Spain!) Speaking of, Chef P. clarified that gazpacho is not indigenous to Mexico, but to Spain. She didn't write these menus and admits that sometimes they are a bit misguided! We also made empanadas, which are not really Tex-Mex but South American.

Back to the soups. The grilled vegetable gazpacho is definitely a recipe that I will make again on my own. Grilling the zucchini and onion and roasting the peppers before pureeing them gives the soup a wonderful, slightly charred flavor. We gave it an extra kick with some siracha and rice wine vinegar and garnished with perfectly diced cucumbers (knife skills!) and tortilla strips that we fried ourselves. I brought some of this home and Zack loved it—I guess he's like a little kid who will only eat vegetables when they're hidden, because the pureed soup includes several that he normally doesn't touch!

Grilled vegetable gazpacho

The tortilla soup was very different from the one I make at home. Mine is a tomatoey base thickened with corn tortillas that are pureed with the broth. It may have originally been a recipe that I found somewhere, but I usually just tweak it a little each time I make it. In class, we made a brothy soup that was more like chicken soup gone Mexican. This is probably the more authentic version. Both have corn kernels and are flavored with cilantro and lime. I like tortilla soup both ways—my version is more of a hearty meal-in-a-bowl, while the brothy one, like chicken soup, would be perfect medicine for a cold.

Tortilla soup, brothy-style

Finally, we hit California cuisine. I don't have much to elaborate on—my group made salads and it was a fun, laid-back Friday if not all that interesting. Plus, I forgot my camera. The spinach salad I made was pretty tasty though. How could it not be—it was tossed with warm bacon dressing, goat cheese, toasted walnuts, crispy chopped bacon, and some dates. It's a salad that's really about as healthy as a steak dinner. Other chefs from throughout the school always come by our class after production time for some lunch, and I've never seen them hit the salad table so hard!

Fifty-Nifty-United-States

Did everyone have to sing that song at some point in elementary school? It's how I remember the 50 states to this day—all I have to do is start singing "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas..." and soon enough I'll hit the elusive state that's momentarily slipping my mind. In my current class, American Regional Cuisine, we're cooking our way through every state (I sang the song in my head while reading over the syllabus to make sure we weren't missing any).

Obviously, some states are far more exciting than others, and the curriculum is laid out appropriately—for example, Louisiana gets its own day, while the "Central Plains" day represents a whole bunch of culinarily-challenged states. On Mid-Atlantic day last week, my home state of Maryland (and its Chesapeake neighbors) probably got most attention because we bring crab cakes and softshells to the table.

Each day over the next three weeks, we'll talk about a different region and make several recipes from that part of the country. Chef P. has a great system going—our groups rotate tables every day, and table 1 always makes soup and appetizers, table 2 salads, table 3 entrees, table 4 starch and veg, and table 5 bread and dessert.

We were at the sides table for New England day and made this delicious "New England stuffed eggplant"—still not exactly sure how this recipe is indigenous to New England, though. We also roasted some expertly-cut root vegetables (below) and baked a green-bean casserole with fried onions (made from scratch, NOT from a can!) which we plated beautifully with the entree group's broiled bluefish (top photo). Next week I'll take more pictures—I wish I had one of their other entree, lobster-and-cod cakes.


I was disappointed that we ended up at the dessert table for Mid-Atlantic day—I'm already way out of baking mode. We were stuck with applesauce cake (a super-moist and delicious Pennsylvania Dutch recipe) and shoofly pie (kind of like pecan pie minus the pecans, made with molasses—not a huge fan). The tables around us got to tackle softshell crabs, Maryland crab cakes, crab puffs, potato latkes (representing New York's kosher delis), and chicken-and-dumplings (we learned that this dish is actually not indigenous to the South, but to those Pennsylvania Dutch again).

We only have an hour and a half for production in this class, and the time constraint is most difficult for the dessert table. Making a cake and baking it in this amount of time is tough (in fact, for the applesauce cake, almost impossible—it needs an hour and 15 minutes in the oven). That's why there are no pictures of our desserts...in our rush to get them out of the oven and plated for presentation time, I completely forgot to take some. Oh well—at least Chef P. had good things to say in her critique. Looking forward to hitting the entree table tomorrow!

Great Fried Chicken (though not made by me!)

Since I'm off from school this week, I thought I'd still provide you with some food-related reading. I initially planned to post about this on Atlanta Magazine's blog, Covered Dish, to which I contribute weekly. However, after talking it over with my editor there, I realized that people here in Atlanta (especially the foodie community) are already intimately familiar with the Watershed's excellent fried chicken. Plus, a close-up of it appeared on the magazine's cover just a few months ago. So I figured I'd share my first Tuesday fried chicken experience with you instead.

The other day, one of my favorite food blogs, the Amateur Gourmet (a.k.a. former Atlantan Adam Roberts) alerted me to a wonderful 20-minute documentary on Southern cuisine maven Edna Lewis. You can watch “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie” here on Gourmet’s website and I don’t know how I missed it until now—the posting date is January ’08. It’s narrated in the soothing voice of the “Grande Dame of Southern Cooking” herself, collected from past interviews (Lewis passed away in 2006). Watershed chef Scott Peacock also provides commentary and insight into the remarkable life of his close friend and culinary inspiration.

Every Tuesday night at Watershed, Peacock is still cooking the fried chicken recipe that he and “Miss Lewis” perfected together. I’ve been dying to try it ever since I moved here, but Zack and I are generally late-dinner people and always seem to make it over to Decatur just in time to learn that the kitchen is out of chicken. We reluctantly order something else from the (still very good) menu, drooling as heaping plates of fried chicken and biscuits arrive at the tables of those who arrived earlier.

After discovering “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie”, I was determined to get to the Watershed early this Tuesday. We didn’t have a reservation but showed up before seven and scored a table for two in the packed restaurant without too long a wait. “Two chickens?” asked our server before even handing us the menus. “Yep!” we replied gleefully.

It did not disappoint. True, I’m from up North, but I’ve never had fried chicken like this before: the flavorful crust is dark-brown, not golden, and the meat beneath tender and juicy, even the breast. It came on a homey plate piled with mashed potatoes, green beans, and two of Peacock’s justifiably famous biscuits ($19). There was no sweet potato pie on the dessert menu last night (we were way too stuffed to have dessert anyway), but still, Miss Lewis would surely be proud of her protégé.
Watershed, 406 West Ponce De Leon Ave., Decatur; 404-378-4900; watershedrestaurant.com