Boots in the Oven

Curry and BRAIIINSSS!

So Apicius is chugging along at a fast clip. We now officially have less than two weeks until the final restaurant simulation. Wow.

However, in the meantime, we have been doing some pretty rockin’ stuff and I thought I’d share a particularly interesting day with you. My favorite class this semester is World Cuisine. It is taught by the one, the only, the giant among men, Il Barba. This man loves food (like really, really, really loves it). So he can’t help but say yes if we want to stray from the curriculum and make a few dishes that have piqued our fancy.

This was the case a couple of weeks ago during our Indian Foods class. We were slated to make a slew of curries and tandoori and whatnot, but I’ve been having a real hankering to work more with the NastyBits. You know, the parts that normally get thrown away or makes people go all wrinkly nosed with, “That? Eww. Are you kidding? I would never eat that.”

To these folks I would advise a quick retreat back to their boneless, skinless, chicken breast world and let the rest of us get on with some real eating. These low men on the meat totem pole can be seriously delicious if handled properly. More people are catching on as recently the NastyBits have experienced a little status boost thanks to the concept of Nose to Tail eating. It’s kind of that old Indian philosophy that says if you’re going to hunt it done and kill it you’d better use every part of it.

But enough of that. Back to food. Il Barba appeared on our appointed day carrying a large dripping plastic bag. He proceeded to pull out pig intestines, liver, veal brains, chicken hearts and cockscomb (the flappy thing on top of the rooster). We gathered around.

Il Barba was raised on this stuff and he wanted to start with his grandmother’s intestine recipe, a very Tuscan preparation where the long tube is cleaned, cut into tiny snippets and then braised for a long time with garlic, rosemary, white wine and tomato. Why not?

Next we started on the cibrèo. Cibrèo is a very old chicken stew based basically on various chicken organs and scraps. You start by cooking down the livers and hearts (adding some herbs and other aromatics if you want) then you throw in anything you can get your hands on: the cockscomb, the testes, nervetti, embryonic eggs, anything really. Add some water or broth and cook until everything is done.

The last step is to thicken the mess with a mixture of eggs and lemon juice. This is the defining step that makes cibrèo, cibrèo. Spoon it out over some toasted bread and you’re in for a seriously old school gastronomic treat. The cockscomb has a particularly nice texture. It’s a little chewy but soft- kind of like the rind of parmesan that you find floating in pots of soup around here.

Il Barba pulled out the brain. “I cooked this last week for my young son. When my wife came home from work his whole face was covered with it. She barely had time to make it to the bathroom.” I guess this proves that not even all Italians are big organ fans.

John, one of the guys in my class started blanching the brain in acidulated water. In an unfortunate turn of phrase he announced, “If any one here ever needs brains, I’m your man!” He cringed and stammered a quick retraction as the alternate slang of his pronouncement set in.

Once the brains were blanched we took off the membrane, sliced them and dipped them in a simple batter. After deep frying them to a golden brown you just serve them with some sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. The flavor isn’t much, but the texture is amazing. It’s super soft and pillowy like a whipped oyster mousse.

The cooking done, we laid out our huge spread. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend serving traditional style Indian food with Italian style organ meats. However, in this particular case I can’t complain. Everything was delicious and now I have a great idea for some curried testes and palak intestines.

A dopo. -L. Pants

I'll Show You My Simulation If You Show Me Yours

That's it. It's over. It is now the official end of the semester. Holy crap. Three and half months of braising, baking, boiling, putting gelatin in things that should never know what gelatin is and getting yelled at in Italian. Not exactly a thorough summation, but you get the gist.

As you may have guessed, the final exam at a culinary school is not 50 true/false questions and an essay on the merits of stainless steel (quite a metal it is though). No, the last big bang at Apicius is the Restaurant Simulation.

We spend most of the semester building up to it: choosing the dishes, designing the menus, pairing wines, rethinking plating, etc. We pretty much have free reign, but there are some ground rules. Briefly, here's how it works.

• Everything has to be Italian food (no bangers and mash, no sashimi).
• Everything has to fit within a food budget (we scrapped the lobster stuffed with foie gras and truffles, served on a bed of caviar at the last minute).
• We have to have five courses:
  • Aperitivi: Basically little finger foods to munch on with pre-dinner cocktails.
  • Antipasti: You know, stuff before the pasta.
  • Primi: The first course composed of pasta, risottos, or soups.
  • Secondi: Main course with little side dish dishes.
  • Dessert: You know what the hell dessert is.
• In all of the courses (except aperitivi) we had to provide a fish option, a meaty option, and a vegetarian option (not vegan, though, because we are still in Italy).
• And finally, everything has to be served a la carte, no tasting menu shortcuts like they let the intermediate classes do.
• Oh right, I forgot. Everything has to be made in ONE day. Prep starts at 8:30am with service starting at 8pm, everything from scratch, nothing prepared in advance. Wee!

The guest list is composed of about 50 Italian folk: investors in the school, local chefs, peeps from important wine families, and others of similar ilk. The school would really rather we not suck, not just for our sake but also because this is supposed to be impressive and titillating, not awkward and kind of gross.

So what did we make for this entourage of finicky gastronomes (gastro-gnomes)? Lots and lots of delicious things that you’ll probably never get to have, and the knowledge of this gaping void in your culinary ensemble will keep you up nights sweating and perpetually unsatisfied. Well possibly not, but it was pretty delicious.

We started with four different aperitivi. First, there were crostini with veal liver mousse and a spicy cauliflower coulis. Next was smoked salmon and capered robiola cheese served on Belgian endive- crispy, salty, creamy, a touch of bitter. The most unusual offering was a crostini of preserved quail yolks, white bean puree and fried red cabbage. The yolks are cured using a bit of molecular gastronomy that we jacked from some Italian guy. Basically, you marinate them in salt, sugar and bean paste. They firm up on the outside, but the very center remains deliciously yolky. Strange but yummy.

Finally, we stuffed dates with almonds and wrapped them in pancetta. They got baked and came out all sweet, salty and gooey, but for some reason never got served. Maybe we pissed off one of the waiters because the trays ended up just sitting in the baking room all night. Oh well.

Enter the antipasti. Lightest was a shrimp tartar with pink peppercorns and tarragon. It had a nice little chicory salad on top and a side of citrus foam. The turf to that surf was a warm salad of rabbit confit with peperonata and black olive tapenade. The rabbit turned out perfectly, highlighting its tender juiciness.

The most popular starter was our Cheese Three Ways. It consisted of a parmesan creme brulee with balsamic sauce, grilled pecorino with pepper jelly, and gorgonzola mousse with caramelized pears and walnuts. All in all, not a bad little trio. Not the best dish but certainly the most cheese packed.

The primi were two pastas and a soup. The first was pici (kind of like thick spaghetti) with pistachio sauce and confit tomatoes infused with thyme and garlic. Somehow in all the sauce tossing I missed getting a picture of this one :(

Next we served venison and baked apple ravioli with chestnut sauce. We added a little acid with a red wine reduction. The whole mess was rich, nutty, and a little gamey- mmmwah!

The non-pasta, otherwise known as soup, was cacciuco, a variation on a costal Tuscan dish with sea bass, red mullet and clams. Definitely fisholicious.

The most successful dishes of the evening were probably the secondi. We had been struggling to iron out all of their details for the last few weeks. We ended up changing at least one thing on all of the dishes the day of the simulation. But if it works it works.

Meat-wise, we served pork fillet grilled in lardo with a side of chickpea puree and braised artichokes with mint sauce. Yum. Props to Fiona (one of my 4 compatriots) for making some of the best artichokes I’ve had.

On the seafood front, we served monkfish with saffron sauce, sunchoke gratin and brussels sprouts. The flavors all worked great together and the color of the saffron sauce really gave everything a nice pop.

The veggie dish was cabbage involtini stuffed with roasted root vegetables- beets, pumpkin, and celery root to be exact- and served with fried polenta. For some reason this dish was crazy popular. I mean, it was awesomely tasty, but we almost sold out of them before we even plated any of the other dishes. Odd but true because Tuscans certainly aren’t renowned for their dearth of meat loving.

Everything went smoothly up to this point. Dishes looked nice, things went out on time, everyone knew his or her job and then, then we got to dessert. It wasn’t exactly a catastrophe and truth be told the food that went out to the diners all scored well on the delectability scale. It’s just that we had a few problems.

First, we had an order for the apple tart tatin with five-spice gelato. No trouble with the tart, but when someone returned with the bowl of gelato holding it upside down, I figured we may have a small issue. I tapped the ice cream and found it to be a similar texture to the steel bowl that it was in.

Turns out that somebody left it in the flash freezer for most of the day. Whoops. A small chisel and some cunning work with a hand mixer later, we had what passed for gelato-ish texture. At least it tasted good.

As I was finishing up with the frozen dairy debacle, I rounded the corner to find two of the guys helping us, plating what appeared to be a large amount of chocolate sauce. Unfortunately, we weren't serving any chocolate sauce.

"I don't care how much of a hurry you're in you have to cook the f@#%ing cakes!" Yes, in their exuberance to be timely they had decided to serve the rosemary chocolate cake with orange caramel sauce in an avant garde batter style. After five minutes in the oven in addition to a bit of explanatory strangulation, these too turned out quite nice.

The last desert, a panna cotta with vin santo sauce and cantucci crumbles, didn't really give us any trouble. Once we coaxed them out of their molds they were quite pretty and even more popular. Florentines love their solidified cream.

And basically that was it. We finished service, cleaned up and went out drinking until about four in the morning. We all felt very chefy. When we come back next semester hopefully we'll find out that all of the diners liked eating it as much as we liked making it. For now though, I'm off to eat southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno.

Ooh, ooh! Time for a bit of bragging post script. In addition to all of the cooking and whatnot, I have a fun little food photography class. One of the shots I took (just goofing around really) made its way into the hands of the folks over at Florence University of the Arts and they used it on their catalog cover, promotional posters, and invitations for their big end of the year art show. Go Pants go.

-L.Pants

Apicius Update

Well, if all went according to plan, we are currently in Egypt!  Here's a post about Husbear's progress at Apicius, now that the midpoint of the semester has passed.

Hey it's me!  Thanks for the intro Girlie, now mind your own business. 

It's been a busy couple of months here at culinary school.  Lots of cooking (duh.) and lots of using strange Italian ingredients.

Ooh.  What's this I see?  My teacher told us that we were going to prepare "breast of cow" so I figured, you know, like the chest?  No, no, of course not.  We're talking full on udder here people.  Udder that I personally stuffed with cured pig fat rolled in cinnamon, cloves, and fennel.  And it's served on a orange sauce.

It was pretty good it you could get past all of the glandy, bumpy things.

This is Sole Poached in Pear Sauce.  It comes from a five hundred year old recipe that was originally prepared by, I believe, Maestro Martino.  I could be wrong, but it was pretty damn good.

Crepes with Wine Poached Fruit and Creme Anglais.  Need I say more?

These are fun little Parisian Gnocchi.  Basically just  a dense choux paste piped out onto a baking sheet. 

Here they are filled with a seriously delicious Pistachio Cream and topped with Bechamel.  I have feeling that they should have plumped more, but the woman who wrote the recipe was there and she seemed pretty happy.

These are Chocolate Coffee Cantuccini.  Basically what they call biscotti in the States.  They were good, but I'm not sure why we had to make so many of them - I think the school is involved in some sort of black market pastry trade.

Hey a pigeon!  This one wasn't fast enough though and ended up as a cute little feathered teaching tool.

We boned him (her?) out whole and stuffed sage and rosemary inside, then wrapped it all up in pancetta.  Quite yummy. It tasted a little like liver.

Boiled Veal Tongue.

Veal Tongue Bella Vista.  Sandwiched with ham and truffle butter and then coated in a veal stock gelatin.  Not very tasty.

And finally, Duck with Apples and Cabbage Puree in a Chocolate Sauce.  What's not to like?  This was some seriously good eating, and surprisingly easy to make.

Well, that about wraps up the retrospective for the first quarter at Apicius.  Check back soon and find out about all of the yummy stuff we found in Egypt (what the hell? Egypt?!)  It should be fun. 

I'm probably on a camel right now.

L. Pants

The Times They Are a Changin'

Wow.  So things are not what we were expecting.  They are totally much more kick ass.  Firstly, I showed up to class on Monday morning and I wasn't on the roster.  Whoops.  I chalked it up to Italian efficiency.  However, when I got out of my first class I saw a crowd of people buzzing around our newly posted test results.  I went over and discovered that not only had I made it into the intermediate level, I had in fact been promoted into the advance professional level.  What?!

Cecilia, the head of the school office, saw me furrowing my brow in consternation, attempting to decipher what this meant.  She took pity on me and came over to explain that I had a whole new schedule.  This is a very good thing.  My new classes only have six people (as opposed to 15 or so) and are all taught by amazingly talented chefs.  We're going to be studying a lot of haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy and whatnot, so I'd better put on my big boy pants.

(My cool learnin' stuff kitchen.)

In more confusing and distressing news, I also placed into intermediate Italian language classes.  I can't stress this enough people, I DON'T speak Italian. Whatthehell?

So in my first awesome cooking class, Creative Italian Cuisine, we made some pretty cool stuff. First we made a frozen scampi mousse in the shape of strawberries.  The adorable little things are served with poppy seeds for verisimilitude and chopped  peanuts for garnish.

We also made an amazing garlic bread foam with anchovies and red pepper coulis. (Insert giddy laughter and slapping me here.)  All in all things look extremely promising. 

As expected, in her two days of language class Mme. Pants now speaks amazing Italian.  She's naming everything in our house and flirting with old men in cafes.  I think she may be some kind of linguistics robot.  I'll let you know if my theory pans out.

-L. Pants

Orientating the Italian Way

Thursday kicked off the start of the year long culinary arts program here in Florence, Italy. The day began in the administrative branch of the two buildings that comprise Apicius. The orientation started promptly at 10am- Italian time. Tenish. Tenishish.

The group of about sixty of us was greeted by Barbara, an eager brunette who sports that deep Italian tan and a big smile. She welcomed us all and went over some of the rules and regulations. Various packets and pamphlets were distributed by name. We discussed the different programs- baking, wine, cooking and whatnot- and what was involved with each.

During this time a sheet was passed around so that everyone could write down their addresses, emails and countries of origin. Since I was one of the last folks to get this fun little paper, I was able to peruse everyone’s nationalities: Turkish, Mexican, Venezuelan, Thai, Israeli, Japanese, Croatian, Hungarian, Canadian, Taiwanese, even a few Italians; all in all a pretty impressive mix.

At this point, somewhat inexplicably, Barbara launched into a lecture about ATMs. “Here there are no ATM’s,” she explained. “We are calling them bancomats and not the ATMs. You will wonder all day looking for ATMs and asking all you want. ATM, ATM, you will say, but no. It will not be. In front of you though will be the bancomat, many bancomats, but you will not know if you are not knowing what to call them.”

While this may be true, it did seem a little odd. I mean they’re everywhere and they look like ATM’s. Also, most of the people are in their mid twenties. How big of a problem could this be? I pictured some horrible past episode: A student destitutely roaming the twisting streets of Florence, clutching fistfuls of hair. “Why God does this cursed city have no ATMs! Why have you plagued me with such close approximations that look like ATMs and dispense money to other people, but are not labeled with the acronym that I am used to!” It must have been a sad sight.

When I finally refocused on the events at hand, I was treated to a prime example of Italian efficiency. “We are running ahead of schedule,” Barbara proclaimed, apparently referencing some sort of internal personal timetable. “We shall take a ten minute break.”

About fifteen minutes later, when everyone had reassembled, we each signed a sheet listing the rules of conduct. These included, but are certainly not limited to:

1. You must wear a clean chef’s jacket.       
2. You must wear black pants.      
3. If you miss 21% (?!) of your class, you will not pass the class.      
4. You cannot photocopy your books.                                                                   And finally my personal favorite-                                     
5. You may not eat the food you prepare in class. Food may only be tasted to evaluate its quality under supervision of the chef/instructor.

Of course. You may not eat it, you may only taste it. Perfectly reasonable. Then the signed lists were whisked away from all of us, leaving no one with a copy. These are the important rules. You had your chance to see them, now follow them to the letter or be punished. Perfectly reasonable.

So after the break it took about ten minutes to sign the forms, and then…time for lunch. That, my friends, is some excellent time management.

After an hour or so we coalesced for a “Walking Tour of the City.” First we meandered the few blocks over the other section of the school, the actual kitchen branch. We descended en masse upon three elderly couples eating some sort of fruit crostada that they had no doubt paid a hefty sum to learn to make. They stared up at us with wide eyes, pastry crumbs and sweetened cheese clinging to the corners of their mouths. We stared back confused and shifty. After a few moments the old people went back to their wine and tart and we were hustled back out onto the street.

On the move again, we made our way to the train station. Yes, finally, the train station. How would I ever have known what this was or how to find it without our trusty guide? After sampling its glory, Barbara announced our next stop – on to the Post Office. I tingled with anticipation.

Trundling forward, we passed an interregional bus line office – something that was of interest to me as we are trying to find a cheap way to Naples for Pizzafest ’06. I ducked in for a second to see if I could glean any helpful information and in a deft maneuver, managed to lose a crowd of sixty slowly shuffling people all carrying bright red notebooks. Masterful I know.

Since I remembered that the next highlight attraction was a post office, I got a helpful lady cop to point me toward the nearest one. As it was on the other side of the train station, I took off through the building to see if I could make up some time. Now the train station is about a 100 yards across. In the three minutes or so that it took me to traverse the distance, I was told “You are for the drugs,” “You are against the drugs,” “You look like this particular Italian futbol player,” “Well, no you don’t really, but you do have a mustache.” These were all good to know.

Emerging on the other side I saw nothing. I was about to return to the school when around the corner came my ambling pack of cohorts. I rejoined the pod and we concluded the walking tour by going back through the train station and onto our place of origin. I was enlightened.

Back at the school, it was time to get everyone’s coat measurements and collect the last of the student fees. It was two o’ clock. Displaying more Italian efficiency, they announced that this was not scheduled until three- so we could either wait or leave and come back.

By about four thirty, I was finally able to say "extra-large" and hand them 350 euros. As a final added touch they told us all that they could not possibly give us receipts today as we would all be there until after nine if this were the case. Joyfully, we can pick up our receipts tomorrow when we return for Day Two of orientation.

Day Two Update:

Today we heard more about the ATM vs. Bancomat controversy. Finally, it seems to be becoming clear.

We briefly met all of the head teachers. They seem nice enough and very earnest. Andrea, the head of the culinary arts program, is super intense and seems to want to get down to business. It will be interesting to see if he loosens up as the semester goes on.

Following the introductions, we were treated to not one but two extensive lectures on drinking and how to do it properly. The second was even accompanied by a power point presentation that included slides of fluid and such. (I’ll spare you the pictures).

Barbara gave us the first one:

“Above all Do- Not- Get- Drunk! It is not a useful thing and nobody wants to see it. There is nothing more to say about we don’t like the drunkenness. Do not drink things that are awful. Appreciate good wine. Do not show up to class with a face showing that you had a very, very bad and awful night. If you are drunk do not think to call me. I will come but when I come I will beat you!”

Well said.

After our Don’t Be A Jackass lectures, it was on to placement testing. Since I’m enrolled in the intermediate program I had to prove I wasn’t a ham-fisted hack. The first trial was an insanely hard Italian language deal that I’m pretty sure I mangled. The next were written and practical culinary tests. The written one was fairly easy with questions like How do you make a risotto? and List as many Italian cheeses as you can and describe their culinary applications.

The practical part consisted of making a basic tomato sauce using ingredients from a preselected set. Andrea told us that some of them were included to throw us off – or maybe not. He seemed to really like mine. He said it was tasty and he liked my selection of ingredients, but I should have added the basil later. C'est la vie.

We won’t find out the results until Monday, so here’s to a slightly apprehensive weekend. Wish me luck peoples.

-L. Pants