Sticky Rice

Many of my students do great things (contrary to my previous post on classic whoppers). My current class is fabulous...they are engaged, interested and enthusiastic. Here's an example: perfectly grilled Teriyaki Salmon with Steamed Spinach and Coconut Sticky Rice. It is a pleasure to be there: teaching guiding and encouraging them to realize all their culinary dreams.

Stock Pots and Olive Pits

This post is about some of the unbelievable things students have done in the kitchen, all those “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING???” moments that you can laugh at afterwards but during the event you just wanna tear your chef’s hat off, yank out whatever hair you have left and run screaming out of the kitchen. Were they listening to a thing you said? Were they actually awake through all their previous lessons?

One of my favorite stories was from Chef S, who instructed one of his students to strain the stockpot that had been simmering for hours and hours. The stock was nicely reduced and flavorful. The student strained the stock into the sink, steaming and swirling down the drain, and brought over the bones and asked, “Chef! What do you want me to do with these?” WHAAAT???? A similar story involved simmering a bag of shitake mushroom stems into an infused broth, which the student strained (yep, down the drain) and then added the tough inedible stems to the Shitake & Fresh Thyme Velouté. Once I asked a student to chop several bunches of parsley and throw the stems into another stock pot. At service time I’m looking…where’s the chopped parsley? There it was, floating in the stock and there were the stems neatly set aside for god-only-knows-what. Just the other day I instructed, "drain that can of clams, use the juice as some of the broth for the chowder and we'll add the clams at the end". (yeah, I know "canned" clams for the chowder...horrors!) Where are the clams right before service? Nowhere to be found! (No one fessed up to tossing 'em)

Chef B has a great story about an worker that trailed in a restaurant where he was the executive chef. He asked him to pit a vat of olives. He brought Chef B the pits. Where were the olives? IN THE GARBAGE! Because he was a real life worker B was able to scream "what the f**k is wrong with you?" and throw his sorry ass outta the kitchen. (We don't do that with our students as much as we might be tempted.)