Dropping the ball.

My 2nd week of culinary school was a far less pleasurable experience.

Why?

Let's see. We jumped(or more like leaped) from eggs to NY Strip Steaks cooked medium rare, pan-seared and grilled, creamed spinach, twice baked potatoes, pommes anna, and pommes duchesse. Let's just say, I attempted to leap, but instead stumbled and collapsed into a metaphoric crumpled disaster.
Everything in that one 8 hour class day that could've gone wrong indeed DID go wrong. (I probably shouldn't say such a thing, because things can always get WORSE). Even my knife cuts were less than satisfactory. I don't know if I was thinking about it too much or what. It certainly couldn't be that I wasn't focusing enough, because I'm pretty sure my brain was on the verge of explosion just from all the focusing I was doing. On cutting up a carrot.
Chef mentioned something about muscle memory and it took me back to a conversation I had in high school with my band director, Mr. Gotcher. It gave me an inkling of hope. I remember Mr. Gotcher saying to me, "It's not a natural human thing to stick a flute up to your face and stretch your fingers in all kinds of strange ways to reach certain keys and to make your lips make the perfect embouchure for getting the perfect tone. Which is why you must practice the correct way every day, and eventually, those muscles will just naturally do it for you." Well, I sure as hell hope things start to fall into place for me just like they did as a musician. Because those carrots were not sexy. And I'm going to have to be able to do much more difficult cuts in the future, so I better step it up.
Besides carrots, I was responsible for making the creamed spinach for our group. I honestly find it hard to mess up creamed spinach terribly, but I did. How? The recipe is quite simple. De-stem, wash and roughly chop a pound of spinach, simmer for 10 minutes, sautee' half an onion, strain spinach, add to onion along with cream cheese, sour cream, and parmeasean cheese. Season mixture with kosher salt and white pepper. Put into remekins, top with sauteed bread crumbs, bake for about 20 minutes.
It sounds like a pretty disaster-free recipe, right?

Well, not necessarily when you're a nervous wreck and when salting the mixture, and mistake the sugar for salt. Actually, everyone at my station "salted" their dishes with sugar(which resulted in a nicely caremlized steak at least). After running through the events in my head, I felt like a complete incompetant idiot because we should've used kosher salt anyway which is like 6 times the size of a grain of table salt. I suppose when you're just scurrying around trying to get everything done, the thought process of such simple things doesn't quite compute as efficiently.Dealing with pressure. This is a skill I must master if I want to continue to work in this field(which I whole-heartedly DO). And I've never been one to deal well under pressure. Under intense inspection or judgement. Being in this kitchen with Chef O'Donnell takes me back to All-state orcehstra auditions in high school. I practice at home, I do beautifully, I stand in front of a judge to play my piece, I fail epically. But, there is hope, because I know for a fact that the more I practice on controlling my nerves by throwing myself into such situations, I will eventually be able to deliver competantly.

My steak turned out mediocre I thought. I had no idea what oven to put it in after pan-searing it, and by mistake stuck it in one that was at 325 degrees. I must learn to not rely on what everyone else is doing just because there were 2 other steaks besides mine in that specific oven. After about 5 minutes of having an "Aha! moment" and realizing it was in the wrong oven, I quickly moved it to a hotter one. It turned out slightly more rare than I usually like, but it was still...edible. I say edible because everything, by the time our class had finished cleaning and plating our dishes, was stone cold. I am not a fan of a cold steak. Is there anyone out there who is?? If so, maybe you'd like my restaurant.

Anyway, I felt like I was in a state of confusion the entire class. And that is not a comfortable feeling. Especially coming from me, a person who feels extrememly insecure anyway, but outrageously insecure when not prepared.

I'm going to cook all of these dishes this week hopefully. It doesn't matter that I work 4 twelve hour shifts at that wretched hospital, I will get them done. And I will post pictures for all of you to see. Wish me luck!

EDIT** Here are a few pictures...unfortunately I fell short on my promise and didn't get the potatoes done but accomplished the steak and spinach. Been a hell of a week. But a good one! Stay tuned for another update from our rice cookery class(which went much smoother that my steak and potatoes).

And for those of you with a sweet tooth, I made these cupcakes last week at 2am when I couldn't sleep and took them to work. Dark chocolate cupcakes with coffee cream cheese frosting. They turned out quite yummy.