Day 6: Chiffonade

Normally Monday mornings aren't my finest part of the week. However, knowing that I was off to school where I would inevitably be cooking...delicious food...I somehow made it out of bed sans snooze button. I arrived to learn that we were working on culinary math. At first I thought I was going to fall right back to sleep, but it ended up being really interesting. We learned that the chef is in charge of ordering the food for the kitchen. In doing so he needs to take into account pricing, portioning, and waste. Although it seemed like basic math could figure out how to plan menu pricing, there are many hidden steps involved. Ever read a recipe that calls for 1 pound of bananas? Is that 1 pound with the peal or without the peal? Exactly-therefore the chef needs to take into account weight and size of all of the ingredients and how much of those ingredients can actually be used. The chef also can plan a menu to take advantage of the waste. For example, if a recipe calls for small diced potatoes there will be left over potatoes that could not be cut into a uniform small dice. Most likely one of your fellow diners is currently eating steak accompanied by mashed potatoes. These skills are important to learn for students who want to one day run a kitchen, and also for everyone to understand how to make best use of every ingredient.

Following math we worked with lettuce greens, cooked greens and cabbage. We chopped up numerous types of lettuce: Boston, romaine, arugula. To accompany the lettuce chef taught us about the variety in oils and vinegars. Although oil and vinegar is the most basic salad dressing option, there are so many different oil and vinegar combinations you can use. We stuck with the basics and lightly dressed the greens with 1 part balsamic vinegar, 3 parts extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. I want to try champagne vinegar next time I make a dressing. Something about the word champagne makes it sound like it will taste special.

Next up we learned how to chiffonade cabbage. To start we had to chop into a huge red cabbage. This cabbage was a beast and was not willing to budge. I kindly offered the duty to my partner Juan who most likely had a better shot at cracking it. After a quick game of tug of war he finally cut the head open. We split it up and began to chiffonade the leaves. This is done by rolling cabbage into a round tube and slicing it into thin ribbons. Chef taught us how to wilt the sliced cabbage in salt, a very cool way to soften up tough cabbage.


Final duty of the day was to prepare cooked greens. I was in charge of collard greens and escarole. I washed, ripped, blanched and shocked these greens to help prepare them for sauteing. The escarole and collard greens were on the bitter side. At first taste I was not interested in eating them. However, after the blanch and shock preparation we sauteed them in oil, salt, and shallots. With a little bit of added flavor these cooked greens were delicious. Each group was responsible for providing two types of mixed greens. We went around the table and tried all of them. My favorite were mustard greens which were less bitter than the rest. Overall we learned a lot about the variety of greens that are available for chefs to use, now I just need to study which is which.