There are many things about The French Culinary Institute that are very French. The cooking terms and techniques are French, many of the instructors are from France and most dishes contain "a little bit of butter," as one chef liked to say as she added an entire stick to the pan. Yet I didn't realize how American in nature The FCI was until I was interviewed by Veronique Radier of the popular French weekly magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur.

I was interviewed by Ms. Radier when she visited The French Culinary Institute over the summer, and remembered our conversation when someone pointed out that I was quoted in Le Nouvel Observateur ’s article, "A la ‘Chef Academy' de New York." The article features The FCI as a training facility equal in price and prestige to an American business or medical school, and emphasizes much of what has become un-newsworthy in an American publication: the celebrity status of cooks in America, the lofty dreams of culinary students and the financial success of culinary schools. In the article, I was described as a "petite brune petillante," a.k.a "a small, brown-haired, effervescent girl," who is getting a master's degree from Columbia University and has dreams of being a food writer. A student like myself probably wouldn't interest an American magazine. But in France, attending a costly culinary school with two academic degrees is still news.

As Ms. Radier and I talked in FCI's comfortable, brightly lit student lounge, she explained that the attitude towards cooks, and of cooks, is entirely different in French culture. She said that cooking was widely viewed as a secondary profession, a job that someone would do if they didn't have the smarts to be a lawyer or doctor. The current American mentality towards cooks is often one of respect and even reverence. In comparison, it lacks the celebrity appeal in France, a fact that fails to attract young people entering the profession or applying to French culinary academies. Because of this, Ms. Radier worried about the future of French cuisine in France without a new generation of leaders.

I'm grateful for my degree from FCI, and as someone who loves to cook, for the American mentality towards cooks. It's often a profession of social misfits and debaucherous party persons, but among those, there are many hard workers and even artists. We’re lucky to be considered among the ranks of the creative, eccentric work force that gives color (and taste) to our society.

After a nice week break from school, it is time for the next trimester to begin.  For the next three months I will not be in the culinary labs everyday, thankfully!

I will be taking:

Menu Planning and Cost Controls: Although I’m not entirely sure what the class will be like, but basically it is a math class to help you learn to plan a menu, ordering food, and keeping your costs down.

Communication Skills: This is basically a speech class, not much else you need to know about that.

Foundations of Leadership: This is a class required to graduate, you are taught how to be a good leader and different types of leadership for you to implement in the working world.

Baking Science: (or Bake Tech) is a lab that is all about how baking works and the science behind it.  We will learn to make foods with egg, flour, sugar substitutes, also how baked good will turn out when you change the balance of certain ingredients.  Like, how will cookies bake and taste without baking powder etc.

While these classes won’t be a walk in the park with the amount of homework and the number of tests, I will have more free time which will be a godsend.  Taking labs almost 40 hours a week ontop of working another 40 hours a week can really get stressful!  Hopefully now, with every thursday off to myself I can go skiing atleast once a week.

As an extra credit project for my Classical French Pastries Lab, I researched a fruit and nut that is fairly unheard of in the U.S. let a lone the northern hemisphere; the Pili Nut.

While I wont post all eight pages of the paper that I wrote, but I thought you might hearing about some of the interisting things I found out about this strange nut.

“If you were to go to your local grocery store, more than likely you would not see the Pili nut of over 4,000 different varieties of nuts grown and cultivated in the world.  The Pili nut is native to the Philippines, specifically the bicol region, and is very difficult to buy outside of the area.

The tree that the pili nut comes from is called the ovatum, or the Canarium tree.  These trees are an evergreen that is similar to an American Spruce in leaf shape and size.  Ovatum trees are typically gown as an ornamental tree and the pili nuts grown outside of the Philippines are typically used to make jewelry or other arts.  While the ovatum tree will grow pili nuts in any type of hot and humid tropical enviroment, only ovatum trees grown in the Philippines are edible.  Scientists and botanists have not been able to pinpoint one specific reason as to why pili nuts are not poisonous when grown in the Philippines.  But, the suspect that the acidic nature of the volcanic soil in combination with the humid climate is what makes the pili nuts edible.  Pili nuts grown outside of the Philippines are extremely acidic, bitter, and are a very potent laxative.  Eating more than 5 or 6 of the poisonous pili nuts can lead to hospitalization and even death.

The pili fruit itself is a drupe, similar to a date, and the pili nut is in the center, shaped like an almond.  The fruit itself is covered with a thin tough black skin that is shiny and smooth, the fruit inside is bright green and fibrous pulp.  The pulp of the pili fruit can be eaten but is very tough and grassy tasting.  To eath the fruit, first blanch the pili and peel off the thin skin, the Filipino people will than dip the fruit in a fish sauce and scrape the pulp off the the seed with their teeth, than discarding the seed.  While eating just the pulp is an acquired taste, it is the most popular way to eat the pili fruit in the bicol area.”

While you most likely wont even be able to taste a pili nut unless you take a trip to the Philippines, the pili nut has a great almond taste that everyone should try once in their life.

Copious amounts of butter, even more salt, one second-degree burn and zero cuts. My experience at the French Culinary Institute in New York City has been all this and more. I haven’t regretted for a second my decision to drop my newspaper reporting job to learn the basics of classic French cuisine.

While I’ve enjoyed my chef’s tough critiques and learning to make the “mother sauces,” it’s only getting tougher. As a culinary arts students at the FCI, we must pass six levels of the curriculum to graduate. After tomorrow I will hopefully have completed level two since enrolling nearly three months ago.

On tomorrow’s exam: we must quarter a chicken, filet a trout, produce perfect cocottes from two potatoes and whip up some mayonnaise. It’s surely more easily said than done. I should pass the test tomorrow but what really worries me is moving to level three. We’ll be going over a number of recipes over and over, the chef’s critiques will be become tougher and they’ll expect more from us, and we’ll be given time constraints for dishes.

I feel like I’ve been able to treat culinary school with a leisurely attitude at times but it’s now time to get serious. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Now that it has been a few leftover-filled days past Thanksgiving, I'm sure most of you don't want to hear the words "turkey," "gravy" or "cranberry sauce" until November 2009. But in the spirit of excess that the holiday embodies, I had to share an oyster stuffing recipe that was a hit at our Thanksgiving table. Don't stop reading! It doesn't have to eaten along with the traditional turkey day accoutrements (although it was delicious with the brined, smoked turkey that our host prepared on the grill). The great thing about this recipe is that it has simple, delicious flavors that are a winning combination beside any dish — briny oysters, lightly smoked bacon and fresh hints of sage, thyme and parsley. Use it to dress up a roast chicken dinner, or even serve it alongside a grilled pork tenderloin or holiday ham. However you serve it, it's guaranteed to make everyone at the table thankful, no matter the occasion.

Oyster Stuffing (8-10 servings)
This recipe is a New England classic, and with a few minor changes, pretty true to the original "Herbed Oyster Stuffing" recipe published in the November 1992 edition of Gourmet Magazine.

Ingredients:

* 2 fresh French baguettes, cut into 3/4-inch cubes (about 12 cups)
* 1/2 lb sliced hickory smoked bacon
* 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil (if needed)
* 2 medium onions, finely chopped (about 2 cups)
* 1 1/2 cups chopped celery
* 3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
* 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh sage
* 2 cloves of garlic, minced
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
* 2/3 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
* 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted
* 16 oz jar FRESH oysters, drained and juices reserved; oysters cut into halves or thirds
* 2 1/4 cups turkey giblet stock or low-sodium chicken broth

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.
2. Spread bread cubes in 2 shallow baking pans and bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes Cool bread in pans on racks, then transfer to a large bowl.
3. Cook bacon in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp, about 10 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain, reserving fat in skillet. Crumble bacon.
4. If the bacon doesn't render enough fat, add olive oil. Cook onions, celery, garlic, salt, and pepper in fat in skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, 8 to 10 minutes. Add thyme and sage, and stir another minute or two. Transfer to bowl with bread cubes, then stir in bacon, parsley, butter and stock, seasoning well with salt and pepper (don't forget to taste!).

The recipe can be made up to this step 1-2 days in advance. Cover and refrigerate, and then bring to room temp before putting in the oven.

5. Add chopped oysters, and about 1/2 cup of reserved oyster liquer, making sure to decant so that none of the sandy sediment on the bottom gets into the stuffing.

6. Transfer stuffing to a buttered 3- to 3 1/2-quart shallow baking dish. Bake, covered with lid or foil in middle of oven for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake until browned, about 30 minutes more.

When I moved into my dorm three months ago, I was surprised to see what we were equipped with in our kitchen.  Although I knew a kitchen in a dorm would be small, I didn’t know just how small it would be.  While we have a full sized refrigerator, a small sink, and even a garbage disposal, the stove and oven was less than remarkable. Ericka, my roommate, and I nick-named the oven, “our easy-bake oven”.  The oven is at least 20 years old and can only fit a 9 by 13 in pan, and there is not even a inch of wiggle room on the sides!

Cookies or Charcoal?
After about the first week of living on campus, and this is after finally getting everything put away, I wanted to test out my new oven.  I made up some cookie batter and portioned them out on a sheet pan.  The first problem that arose was that there was no temperature markers on the dial.  So, I tried to overcome that hurdle with an oven thermometer.  Although I couldn’t get the oven to stay at one temperature, I figured somewhere between 350 F and 375 F would be alright.  I put the cookies in and waited.

After only five minuets I went to go check to see how the progress was going.  Oddly the outside of the edges were almost black and the center were still completely raw!  Obviously, I took them out and threw them away, but I wasn’t about to give up.

After another 2 hours and about 36 more cookies, I finally found the right combination of oven temperature and oven placement, along with placing 2 sheet pans under the cookies to block the intense heat on the bottom.  In the end I mastered the art of the chocolate chip cookie in my easy bake oven.

Moving On Up
So now after making cookies, and that’s about it in my oven, I am taking a risk and stepping out.  I am making a pot roast.

Ok, so I know making a pot roast is a little less temperamental than cookies or any other baking, but this is a full meal I am making, not just dessert.  After braising a large chuck roast that I obtained from Whole Foods, I put it in the oven at what I thought was 325 F.  After waiting an hour, and of course I couldn’t find my oven thermometer, I realized that was most likely not even 200 F.

Now, three hours later, I have a beatuiful roast beef with potatoes and carrots.  Just the way my mother makes it!

Hopefully in the future, I can continue to wrangle my oven into doing as I wish, but I think in the mean time I will stick to driving to my aunt and uncles house and using theirs!

For about two months now, every person in the culinary building has been astir with talk of “the sanitation lady”.

Once every few years, a safety and sanitation’s expert visits each of the Johnson and Wales campuses and inspects them, letting us know what needs to be changed and improved.  Our Chefs would prep her coming by scaring us into cleaning the most minute of details around the kitchen.  Some examples are, taking the feet off the tables, unscrewing the drain caps, and removing the door to the ovens.

She’s Here!
We were all on edge expecting “The Sanitation Lady” to show up.  From the way our Chef nervously warned us each day, we all feared being expelled if something was found wrong in our kitchen.  I could feel her eyes on our classroom, judging us from outside looking through the glass windows that face the hallway.  Even though her presence was not announced, an odd hushed silence came upon the room.  We all seemed to work a little harder knowing that this woman was watching.

Face-To-Face
When she finally came into the room I was the first to greet her.  Saying hello and how are you, she was very nice.  Even looking a bit like my mom, with a kind face and short dark curly hair.  She gave the normal pleasantries back and smiled before moving about the room for inspection.

About an hour later, she was done looking around and took my chef out to the hallway to discuss what she found.  When my Chef came back into the room, his mood had changed.  His whole demeaner had changed, from the jovial teacher we all loved, to a very strict and rigid man.  Seeing this, I knew it must have been bad!

And The Results Are
When class was finally over, our Chef called the class over to one table to talk.  He didn’t have a smile on his face like he normally does, which scared us even more.  Once we were there he explained what happened.

Apparently we are excellent at cleaning!  Everything was being done properly and that she thought that of all the class rooms she went to, that our class did the best at cleaning!  She did find a few things wrong, like that our butcher block tables were too beat up and were not sanitary in her mind, and that a few plastic bowls were broken and should be thrown away.  But, these are the kind of things that not even a health inspector would correct you on.

I’m happy to know now that this woman, whose reputation for being so frightening and strict, thought that we were doing a great job.  Although, I guess I will never know why our Chef was so upset, its good to know now that we are doing the right thing.

I wrote a piece awhile back about the best culinary remedies for the common cold. Back then, my coughing and sniffling was much helped by tea and chicken soup. The "starve a fever, feed a cold" maxim proved true for the cold, but what about the fever?

Luckily for the sake of culinary research and unluckily for my personal comfort, I was dealt a nasty flu last week that landed me in bed for days with a fever that hovered between 101 and 103 F. All those remedies I tested earlier - garlic, hearty chicken soup, herbal teas - were all too strong and nausea-inducing in a severely sick state. I tried starving out the fever for a day, but without any fuel to fight the infection, the symptoms got worse. I was about to give up and start eating warmed, canned chicken broth when I remembered a recipe my good friend Celia Cohen used to make when she was ill.

Celia is a bit of a genius when it comes to purposeful food, and always knows the best recipes for a high-protein snack or a balanced power breakfast for a busy day. Her soup is possibly the best item yet, as it's everything a fluish person needs: it's easy to make, has a mild, clean flavor and a comforting, throat-soothing heat. The soup lasted me many meals, and before long, I had enough energy to fight off the flu. I certainly hope I won't be getting sick again this season, but if I do, the upside will definitely be enjoying this soup again.

Celia's Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:
2 organic, bone-in chicken breasts with the skin still intact (this is important, because the organic meat with the bone and skin are what's going to give you flavor)
1 large carrot, sliced in rounds
1 leek, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
5 cups low salt chicken broth or water
1 cup egg noodles

Procedure:

1. Pour a little oil in a pot over medium heat and add chicken skin down, letting it cook a bit.
2. Add vegetables and broth or water. Bring the mixture to a low simmer, and let simmer until the chicken and vegetables are cooked through and tender.
3. Strain through a sieve. Transfer the broth back the pot, bring to a boil and add the egg noodles, cooking about 8 minutes.
4. While the noodles are cooking, remove the skin and pull the chicken meat from the bone.
5. When the noodles are done, add all of the ingredients back into the pot, ladle out a bowl and let the healing begin!

In my previous post, I detailed the beginning of my attempt to cook wild Canada Goose, a bird whose meat is tough, livery and difficult to make into a meal. I chose the confit method, marinating the breasts (and some fool-proof, emergency duck legs) in a spice rub overnight, and then cooked the meat in duck fat, garlic and thyme. My butcher didn't have enough duck fat, so I also added olive oil so that the meat was totally submerged in fat. I covered the pan in foil and placed it in a 200 F oven (180 F is ideal for confit, but 200 F was the lowest temperature my oven could be set at). Hopes were high, but expectations were low. My hunter friend who shot the geese warned that few had been able to make the meat tasty, or even edible.

The duck legs were done within 4 hours, and were everything confit duck legs should be — the meat was moist, flavorful and effortless to pull from the bone. Testing the goose breasts with a knife, it was clear they needed more time. Just before the guests arrived for the midday meal, I tested them again. Six hours of cooking had rendered them tender. I pulled some of the meat off and tasted it. There was none of the livery flavor others had warned about. The goose was rich and tasted of wild game, without being gamey. The experiment was, against all odds, a success.

I have written a version of the recipe below. Although I haven't tried a sausage preparation with goose, I recommend this one because the flavor of the goose comes through. It’s softened by the spices and cooking method instead of masked by other ingredients. It's so good, that I may have to take up shooting geese myself…

Canada Goose Confit

Ingredients:
For Goose and Dry Rub
8 goose breasts, about 5 lbs, skinned and cleaned of sinew and silver skin
1/2 cup ground star anise
1/4 cup ground coriander
1 cup ground fennel seed
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups kosher salt

For Confit
Enough duck fat, and if necessary, olive oil to cover breasts in pan
12 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 bunch thyme

Procedure:

1. Mix the spice rub together rub over the goose breasts, coating thoroughly.
2. Store in a bag in the refrigerator 10-12 hours or overnight.
3. When the goose is done marinating, rinse the breasts thoroughly so that no spice rub remains. Pat dry with a paper towel.
4. Preheat over to 180 F, or the lowest setting on your oven
5. If rendering solid duck fat - place duck fat in a pot over low heat and allow to turn into a clear liquid. Low heat is important, otherwise you'll color or burn the fat.
6. Arrange breasts in a hotel pan or baking dish, and scatter crushed garlic and thyme over them.
7. Pour rendered fat over breasts, and if there's not enough to cover, add olive oil to pan just to cover.
8. Cover the pan in tinfoil, and place in oven. Check every couple of hours, but give 6-8 hours for the goose to become tender.

• If serving immediately, goose can be taken out of the pan and served. Strain and store the duck fat/olive oil for later use, as well as the garlic.

• If storing for later use, transfer the goose to a large container. Pour duck fat through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl, leaving meat juices in the bottom of the pan and reserving the delicious garlic. Pour the strained fat over the goose. Let the fat and goose cool at room temperature and then chill in the refrigerator, covered, until serving.
• Suggestions for serving: there are a million ways to serve confit. For my dinner party, I spread the garlic used in the cooking process over baguette slices and topped it with the goose, some cranberry horseradish chutney and a drizzle of the duck fat/olive oil cooking juice. Those who have tried it know it be true: there is little that duck fat can't make delicious.

Pun fully intended, a goose is one tough bird. I'm not talking about the farm raised specimens offered at Whole Foods, perfect for a Christmastime roast. I'm talking about wild Canada Goose, shot instead of bought. A description of a food product that includes the words "fresh," "local" and "wild" usually means that the item will be of the highest quality. Fresh, local wild goose is the exception.
According to longtime hunters, wild goose meat has not always been the tough, livery product that it is today. Back when corn fields were harvested by less meticulous, modern machines, there was a bounty of kernels for the geese to feast on. This was the wild fowl alternative to "grass raised, corn finished." When applied to cows, this term means that they have been raised naturally on grasses, but given corn in the months before slaughter make their meat more tender and less gamey. For geese, this meant a diet that was based primarily on field and aquatic grasses, and corn when it became availably at harvest time.
My friend is an avid and morally inclined hunter who likes to cook what he kills. This is a problem when he shoots wild geese because of the unsavory nature of their meat. Tired of making jerky (the one preparation that seems to make it palatable), he decided to collaborate with me in a culinary experiment. I have 8 goose breasts in my oven as I type.

Originally, we wanted to make sausage with his kill. From online hunter's forums, sausage seemed like an ideal vessel for goose meat because one can mix it with spices and a good amount of pork butt to mask the livery flavor (vegetarians avert your eyes: one recipe on a hunting/cooking blog even elicited the reaction "mmmmmmmmmm, i want to shoot a goose or duck now for sure just to try this.") Unfortunately I own neither a sausage maker nor a meat grinder. When I called my local butcher to beg the use of his, I got a firm "no, we have inspector come."

Without the sausage option I was forced to take another route. After much consideration, I chose the confit method. In confit, typically duck or goose legs are rubbed with salt and aromatics, left to marinate over night (or even longer), and then cooked at a very low temperature in their own rendered fat. Stored in this fat, confit can last for weeks if handled properly. I was hoping that the dry rub I used (a combination of star anise, fennel seeds, brown sugar and salt) would cut the gamey flavor, and the "low and slow" cooking method would turn the tough breast meat into fork tender deliciousness. In case of emergency, I threw in a few Pekin duck legs to feed my dinner guests.

The breasts have a few more hours of cooking, but I'll let you know how it goes…