Rounding Third for Home, the end inning of Term 2 had me hauling my ass through the bakeshop.
I launched into the air and belly-slid into home plate just under the glove. It was a pretty cloudy landing and I think a few eyes got blackened in the process, but I tagged the bag and scored my point. With a plate of Earl Gray and peach scones balanced in one hand and a Manila clam pizza in the other, I lay in the dirt, panting, spitting out dust, happy to have survived.
If you want a great psychology experiment, take a bunch of cooks and make them bake. Seriously. It was almost as if the class was told they were going to be air traffic controllers for the week. Meltdowns occurred. Swearing levels doubled. The one seasoned line cook declared, in very flowery language, that they’d “rather (insert flowery language here…) be a (…and here…) dishwasher than a (…aaaaand here…) baker, (Expletive of emphasis involving blasphemy of a popular deity)!” You get the idea. I even had one little moment of mental irritation as I fouled up some caramel sauce. Picture a stainless steel bowl with a whisk firmly socked in by the tines, leaning a little, closely resembling the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Five hours of boiling later, I rescued the whisk and surrendered to my stand-in chef, begging for swift execution.
Not dissuaded in the least (hell, I still can’t flip an egg without breaking yolks, so I look at it as having a handicap in each area, not unlike a bad golf swing), I somehow got totally charged up about blending some of the bakeshop principles and applying them to the culinary side. I took to infusions like a duck to water. I went nutso doing things to cream that would make people blush. Running rampant through New Seasons, I grabbed tea leaves, spices, whatever smelled good and I went to school knocking out Creme Anglais and custards (dessert sauce/ ice cream/flan/ creme caramel bases) in flavors such as Cardamom Orange, Jasmine , Earl Grey and Almond Flower teas. After tasting the party in my mouth with such easy tricks as that, I went full-on assault for my final day of baking- Pizza.
Drawing the short straw, or so we thought, my group and I were assigned pizza with white sauce, as pesto and red sauce were snatched up by two faster moving groups. Agreeing that Bechamel sauce is wickedly heinous stuff, I got the gears started and belted out an alternate sauce base with an infusion of such clammy goodness that anyone who got a lick of the spoon kinda fell to pieces. I posted the results of the pizza exercise here. It was easy- moving from baking ratios to cooking improvisation, at least in my mind. Not so in other people, I found…
Working in the bakeshop kitchen on O/T one afternoon, the pastry instructor and I were chatting about cooks and bakers. He insisted that bakers are essentially lemmings who cannot do anything but follow a recipe, a tradition, a formula. I was astounded at the flat-out accusation he implied at the lack of creativity in a baker as compared to a cook. Surely there was a degree of recklessness ingrained in a person who, if given a clean canvas such as flour or chocolate, could create a totally whack product that defied the Old Establishment, wasn’t there? Portland is full of artisan bakers and killer cooks. The lines blur all the time with things such as foie gras ice cream, maple bacon donuts and duck confit biscuits. Sweet and savory collide all the time around here and nobody seems staid, uptight, ridid or unimaginitive. I wondered, aloud, if one had to choose between the two and “be” only that one kind of identity- cook or baker.
Not afraid in the least, I gladly pound out a mediocre loaf of bread, I adore biscuits and now crave fresh ice cream of my own crafting from time to time. Willing to put fruit with protein, I am all over a dinner plate mash-up closely resembling a dance party in a warehouse. Savory and sweet are virtually inseparable sometimes (you should try my dark soy chocolate sauce on fruit sushi sometime), and to choose between them would be like removing one of my arms.
On my interview at the Inn, I chatted with the chef, who said she is a little of both. I explained that I have a love of both, but need more practice at baking. She strongly nudged me back toward school when I told her I was planning to take Pastry & Baking classes after externship. Said it was too valuable an opportunity to miss. I got confusing signals from the pastry chef at school, as he was convinced that a person has to be a devotee of one or the other discipline, not both. I have this gaping hole in my head where my understanding of all that is Food used to be. I now have to find an answer to the age-old question: Which comes first, the Chicken or the Egg Merengue?
I have a little extracurricular schooling coming up with a chef who is on staff at the C.I.A. Greystone. I will spend a week with him and my externship chef, and I hope to bring up this little topic and ascertain an answer, not unlike Michael Ruhlman’s quest for answers on veal stock… Stay tuned.
School Update:
Well, I ended my second of three terms last week. Written and practical test scores were acceptable in my book, even if they were not as high as I would have fantasized over. I had one little choke episode on the Black Box cooking day- the protein/ sauce portion was particularly uninspiring and done poorly in my opinion. Never before have I stared at a chicken breast and said, “What the FUCK do I do with this???” It was pretty lame, in all seriousness. I chose to finish all my tasks, a whole slew of them, and in that decision, I left the protein for last and it showed. Shame on me, but I know I am truly better than what I presented, so I can accept my mediocre mark on it and move on. I still can NOT flip eggs. After a little pseudo harrasment from my brother today about the exercise, I asked him if HE could do it with no utensils. He said no. I soothed us both by saying, “Guess what? 90% of the world can’t, so screw the eggs!” and I rested my case. I explained that in a testing situation such as that, one has to triage the more manageable issues and leave the ones needing more care for later. Knowing I was weak in egg cookery, and that only repetition and time were going to be my friends in that skill, I focused on the things I knew I would be awesome at, and accomplished them well. Brian even snarfed down a biscuit, which he absolutely hates, and declared it the best one he had ever eaten- that beat my GPA by a mile any day. (My next post will explain a little more about the OTHER distraction I was under, and even though its no excuse, I am okay with the marks I received.)
It was a hard term, period. If the first term was like kindergarten, this one was like AP Calculus while running a full track season in college. Losing our instructor right before some big moments in the term was disruptive, nerve-wracking and spirit-killing, but we mostly pulled it out of our asses to perform for those that stood in to replace him. Group projects that I was a part of came out smashingly well, I feel, as we all pulled together as a team and made it matter, made it happen and made it good. Some of the group members I was with are going to the restaurant kitchen with me in Term 3, and for that I am grateful.
Next post is all about where my head was at during finals instead of on the grill with my poor chicken breasts. My bad.
Hold your head high, you are a winner in my book. Love ya!!!!!!!