Week 8: Pasta! Pasta! Read all about it!
If you thought it couldn’t get any better…
Week 8 of culinary school ushered in the return of normalcy after our pastry extravaganza of weeks 6 and 7. And by normalcy, I just mean cooking savory food, because nothing is normal about culinary school. I wasn’t sure how the last week of level 2 would measure up to the constant, sweet delight of the prior couple weeks, but it definitely exceeded my expectations. I mean, it’s hard to go wrong when you’re making things like pasta and cheese — two of my favorite food groups. In short, it was wonderful.
Speaking of non-normalcy, an interesting development occurred during this week: I started dreaming about cooking almost every night: what I had made that day, what I would do in different scenarios if something went wrong the next day, ideas for new flavor combinations…it reminds me of my days consulting at BCG when I was deep in building an Excel model during the day and would find myself reviewing spreadsheets in my dreams. You can imagine which dreams I prefer. The much awaited sequel to Jiro: Chloe Dreams of Cooking. Any movie agents out there who can hook a girl up?
I digress. Week 8 was a little all over the place, covering the following diverse topics:
Nutrition
Local/sustainable cuisine
Cheese
Pasta
Wine
“Chicken your way” (I will explain)
We also took our final exam so that we could move on to the next level. I passed!
Healthy-ish
As above, we resumed culinary with lessons on nutrition and local/sustainable cooking. I suppose the focus on health made sense sense given the borderline offensive amount of sugar we had gone through in the previous two weeks. Interestingly, the healthy food was less exciting to me, which is ironic considering my interest in wellness, being a registered yoga teacher / fitness junkie and all. But there were a few standout dishes, which I have laid out in a mini photo essay below:
A warm potato and olive salad called “Petatou” with goat cheese, broiled béchamel, and tomato fondue
I wasn’t expecting to love this dish, but it worked really well. The creaminess of the cheese and béchamel plus the sweetness and slight acidity of the tomato fondue were a perfect balance for the starchy, briny potato olive mixture. I will say that I was a little confused as to why this was part of our sustainable cooking lesson, as tomatoes are definitely not in season right now. But it was delicious, so I would definitely make it again!
Deep fried falafel and griddled lavash with hummus, tzatziki, and spicy paprika oil
Check out my plating! I was proud of this one. I liked making this dish because these are items that are simple enough to eat, but the falafel and lavash are intimidating (for me) to make at home because of the deep frying and homemade bread components, respectively. Both ended up being easier than I expected and are foods that are especially excellent when freshly cooked, so I see the value in making them again myself.
Farro risotto or “farroto" with butternut squash, mushrooms, parmesan and sage
Farro is a whole grain that has a nutty flavor and a satisfyingly chewy texture. It works nicely in place of the arborio or carnaroli rice typically used for risotto and is bit healthier, with more nutrients and less processing. Barley and spelt work well in this context too. It’s best with hearty fall and winter vegetables like the ones in this recipe, though my friend Lidey Heuck, a New York Times Cooking contributor, created a really special corn and tomato farroto recipe that is ideal at the height of summer. Ultimately, our version was not super healthy because we finished it with butter and cheese, but hey, whole grains and vegetables, right?
Seared ocean trout with a sunchoke and coconut purée, with sautéed butternut squash and pan-braised kale, sprinkled with toasted coconut
For this dish, we simmered peeled and chopped sunchokes — a lovely root vegetable that tastes like a creamy, sweet version of an artichoke — with coconut milk until they were tender (about 20 mins), then used a food processor to purée the mixture together. They key here was to just cover the sunchokes with the coconut milk so that they would fully cook through, but still have a velvety and not too watery texture when puréed. You can always thin out a purée, but it’s hard to thicken it up once it’s been blended. Coconut milk is a nice option to add creamy richness when you want to keep it plant-based, if you like that flavor.
Say cheese!
Of course, we couldn’t stay healthy for too long. After nutrition came a delightful lesson: CHEESE! Some of you may know that I did a college summer internship at Murray’s Cheese in New York, where I learned a ton about cheese in just two short months by working the cheese counter, assisting in the classroom, and tending to the cheese that was aging in the caves downstairs. When I got back to campus that fall, I started a cheese club, conducting monthly cheese tastings out of my off-campus apartment, and I made sure that I had a sick cheese spread at every party I hosted. It got to the point where people around school would stop me on campus and say, “Hey Chloe! I had cheese yesterday and thought of you!” Basically, I became “the cheese girl” and I was very down with that.
Fast forward to the present, it was nice to be back in my wheelhouse, and our instructor encouraged me to share my knowledge with my classmates throughout the tasting. We tried 5 cheeses from each animal milk family: cow, goat and sheep. There was one cool twist: we kicked off the tasting with the animal’s fresh milk. We’ve all tried cow's milk, but how many of you have tried goat's or sheep's milk? This was a fascinating way to start the tasting because we could track the flavors from the fresh milk as they intensified through the cheese making and aging process. It turns out that fresh sheep’s milk is shockingly delicious! It’s much sweeter than I expected, even sweeter than cow’s milk, which was surprising because sheep’s milk cheeses can become really funky as they age.
The spread: 3 types of milk, 5 cheeses per type. And guess where the cheese came from? Murray’s!
Here are the names of the cheeses we tasted. My favorites were the Brillat-Savarin (cow), Tomme du Berger (goat), and Ossau Iraty (sheep).
We also made homemade mozzarella, which was surprisingly easy! We started by submerging cheese curds in hot water and then stretched them out into long ribbons as they melted, using the back of a wooden spatula. Once we had created a bunch of these ribbons, we smushed them into a little ball and turned it inside out to create a perfect, shiny sphere. That’s it! Easy as…cheese.
I typically eat mozzarella on the colder side of room temperature, but it’s much more delightful when formed and then eaten right out of the warm water. The texture is supple and delicate rather than rubbery, and it falls apart in your mouth. I would definitely do this at home — I just need to find some curds! Here are some videos of the mozzarella making process to bring it to life. I find it easier to understand a technique when seeing it versus reading about it.
Here, the first stages of turning curds into balls of mozzarella
This is how you turn your melty curd ribbons into perfect little mozzarella spheres.
My balls. Aren’t they cute?
Pasta party
Next up was pasta - my favorite part of the week. The highlights for me were mushroom risotto, gnocchi with brown butter, toasted hazelnuts, and crispy sage, and lasagna bolognese — all classic dishes that are perfect for this cold weather. For some reason I’ve been on a pasta kick since I started school, ordering it whenever possible at restaurants, so I relished the opportunity to make some myself.
For the mushroom risotto, we used five different types of fresh mushrooms: cremini, shiitake, white button, oyster, and maitake, a.k.a. hen of the woods. The first three we sliced thinly, and the second two we ripped into bite sized pieces - they are kind of stringy, porous and oddly shaped, so it doesn’t make sense to slice them like the round and flat ones. We also used dried porcini mushrooms, which we reconstituted in the wine we were using to cook the risotto to add even more mushroomy flavor.
Our five types of mushrooms. Gorgeous.
No skimping on the shrooms
Our instructor taught us a foolproof method for cooking the risotto that I have since replicated at home and am grateful to have under my belt! The keys to success occur at the end (steps 7 and 9 below):
Bring a medium pot of water or stock to a simmer on the stove.
In a wide-bottomed, high-walled pan on medium heat, sweat onions in olive oil with a little bit of salt until translucent. Don’t let them brown! In the case of the mushroom risotto, we cooked the mushrooms before adding in the onions.
Once the onions are translucent, add your rice and coat it with the onions and oil.
Note: We used carnaroli rice because its extra-starchy center makes it harder to overcook than its cousin arborio, which can go from hard to mushy in a split second.
Cook the rice for a few minutes until it has been coated well with the oil and is beginning to soften up a bit.
Add your wine to the rice / onion mixture; simmer and stir until it has almost completely been absorbed by the rice.
Now you can start adding your water or stock a ladle at a time. The liquid in the rice should always be at a simmer. You should definitely stir it, but you don’t need to stir vigorously or constantly. It’s also perfectly fine to give the stirring a rest for a minute to let the liquid absorb. Continue adding and stirring until the rice is almost cooked. When cooked, it should be soft on the outside but still have a chew or bite at the center of the grain. You can add a little salt while you’re doing this, but not a ton, because presumably you will be adding cheese at the end which will make the whole thing saltier
When your rice is almost cooked, add another ladle of stock and bring it all to a boil. This step activates the starch in the rice to create a really nice, creamy sauce.
Mix in your butter and cheese and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Right before serving, add a little bit more liquid to loosen up the risotto so that it will spread out on your plate. You don’t want a big sticky pile of rice — it should lie mostly flat and have a little bit of sauce oozing out around it.
Garnish your plate with more cheese grated on top.
My station was right next to our instructor's on risotto day, so I overheard Chef’s feedback to my classmates as they brought up their plates. Without fail, he told every single student that they should have added more liquid right before serving (per step 9 above). My risotto was already on the plate, ready to be tasted, so I quickly spooned some stock in it directly, mixed it all together, and garnished with a touch more cheese. When I got to the front, Chef told me it was perfect, and then whispered to me that the best in the class. I was so happy…and now I will never forget this last step when making risotto!
Mushroom risotto, a classic that never gets old
The gnocchi with brown butter, toasted hazelnuts and crispy sage dish was equally satisfying; I loved the rich, nutty, caramelized flavor and the crispy texture we achieved from sautéing the soft little pillows in the luxurious brown butter. To make them, we first baked Idaho potatoes in the oven to allow them to dry out, since potatoes have a lot of water inside them. With potato gnocchi, you don’t want the dough to be too wet and soupy, which would make it hard to roll out and shape. Boiling the potatoes (which many recipes instruct) adds even more water to them, leading to overly wet dough. So we went with baking, and chose starchy potatoes, which naturally have less water than waxy potatoes (remember my starchy vs. waxy potato rant from week 3?).
While the potatoes were still hot, we pulled off and set aside the skins, milled the flesh, and then mixed it with eggs, flour and salt. Chef encouraged us to move quickly so that the dough didn’t become too soft as the flour continued to absorb the water from the potatoes. We rolled the dough out into logs and then cut it up into our cute little dumplings. Finally, we nudged each of these down a grooved wooden board to add ridges to ensure that sauce would cling to them.
We started by mixing riced potatoes with eggs, flour and salt.
Then rolled this dough out into a log, from which we cut the pillows.
Then added ridges for optimal sauce absorption and distribution.
My rustic result.
We finished the dish with some multitasking, boiling our little gnocchi until they floated to the surface of the water at the same time as we started the brown butter sauce, which we made by heating butter in a pan on a medium flame until the milk solids turned a golden brown. We then sautéed the cooked gnocchi in the butter until the edges were crispy and the butter was a darker brown, and finally showered it all with thinly sliced sage, which fried up quickly, as well as a handful of crunchy toasted hazelnuts. A sprinkling of salt, pepper and cheese, and we were set.
The verdict? It was HEAVENLY. I ate two and a half plates and had no regrets whatsoever. As an added bonus, our instructors had, unbeknownst to us, collected all our potato skins and crisped them up in the oven with a hefty sprinkling of parmesan cheese on top. I said it earlier: we couldn’t stay healthy for too long.
Gnocchi with brown butter. toasted hazelnuts and crispy sage. Probably my favorite dish to date.
Not in the curriculum: perfect potato skins. Thanks Chefs!
For the lasagna bolognese, we first made our sauce a day in advance. To me, a good bolognese sauce is like a tight hug: it’s warm, comforting, a bit mushy, and you can feel the love. For ours, we started with a ubiquitous Italian vegetable base called soffrito, comprising finely chopped carrots, onions, and celery — similar to French mirepoix. We enriched the soffrito with minced pancetta and prosciutto and let that all soften as we stirred it in a large pan. Next went in hefty hunks of raw ground pork and veal, and we let the mixture cook together, constantly mashing and stirring it until it was soft and cooked through, but not brown. You don’t want crispy brown bits in your bolognese — it should all kind of melt together to achieve that velvety texture. Afterwards we added wine and milk — yes, milk! — and let that reduce before adding puréed Italian tomatoes. This simmered gently for hours on the stove before we cooled it and stored it overnight to let the flavors meld. It was definitely a process. A proper bolognese does not happen in the blink of an eye.
The never-ending lasagna continued into the next day, when we made and rolled out pasta dough, cut it into thin rectangles for the lasagna, and parcooked these sheets in boiling salty water. Then, we sloshed the layers of noodles with the bolognese and creamy béchamel sauce in a loaf pan, alternating the sauces as we papered on each fragile sheet of dough. We ended up taking the unbaked lasagnas home, since it would be a lot of food to eat in class, My husband was VERY happy when I popped that baby in the oven on Sunday night.
Ecco la lasagna! (That means “voila” in Italian)
Layers on layers on layers
Getting creative: "Chicken Your Way"
We switched gears from carbs back to protein for “Chicken Your Way”, a legendary day cherished by instructors and students alike. First, we reviewed how to quarter a chicken, which we would need to do on our final exam in a few days. Then, we were given the freedom to cook it however we pleased. This was really the first time we were told to bring our own flair and approach to class, and everyone was excited and a bit nervous to show off their skills beyond the curriculum.
Our instructors advised us in advance to cook a chicken dish that we knew versus trying something brand new, a philosophy I agree with any time I am cooking a meal for anyone other than my husband (poor guy, he’s definitely tasted a lot of “rough drafts”). I think it’s important to practice a recipe to get out the kinks and determine how you’re going to put your own spin on it when it comes time to serve others. So, I chose a classic French preparation called poulet au vinaigre, which translates to “chicken in vinegar”. It’s of my favorite recipes from one of my favorite cookbooks, Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat. I know it sounds a little weird, maybe even gross, but bear with me. I had made chicken in vinegar once before at home, and it convinced me of the importance of acid in balancing and intensifying flavors in foods. I had kind of avoided acid in food up to that point — I was never someone who put lemon on my fried calamari — but this dish showed me how important and delicious acid is, as it makes flavors pop and keeps you coming back for more.
Chicken in vinegar starts with searing the chicken parts to get a nice crispy skin, then caramelizing onions in the same pan (scraping up all those umami bits of chicken skin). Once they are sweet and deep brown, you deglaze them with a hefty dose of white wine and white wine vinegar. Then the chicken takes center stage: you braise it in this magically mushy medium until it’s nice and tender. Finally, you top it all off with a healthy serving of cream and butter to make an epic sauce for service. It’s an unctuous and tangy umami bomb that far outperforms your expectations from its simple name. I decided to serve it with crunchy pommes darphin, the fancy potato latke that I famously burned in level 1, as well as with tender roasted winter veggies from the Union Square Greenmarket.
I practiced my approach on my husband the day before "Chicken Your Way" to make sure I had the techniques under my belt, had enough time to make all the components, and to determine how I would plate the fully composed dish. Everything needed some tweaking, but that’s why we practice! The next day in school, after we quartered our chickens, there was a mad dash for all the tools and pots and pans we needed, followed by a frenzied two hours of cooking. Right before serving, I found the sauce to be a little too acidic and had a mini freak out, but then it occurred to me to monter au beurre — a classic French technique we learned of finishing a sauce with a generous hunk of butter — and that extra fat tempered the acid perfectly. It was a hit! I loved seeing what all of my classmates came up with as well. People took all sorts of interesting approaches, from tamales to curries to making fresh pasta. The whole day was exhilarating, exhausting, and so much fun.
Poulet au vinaigre, my take on “Chicken Your Way”
The aftermath of a crazy two hours of cooking
Wine o’clock
The last topic we covered before taking our final exam was wine. And this wasn’t just a perfunctory wine tasting - we spent an entire day on wine. I think we tried about 12 wines in total. And by tried, I mean we swirled them around in our mouths and spat them out into spit cups, because we signed an agreement saying we would not drink at all. I definitely didn’t sneak any sips. Absolutely not.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to explore some of the world’s most beautiful and prolific wine regions across North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and have done many a tasting on the vineyards themselves. While you can’t beat tasting a wine while you’re looking at the vines that birthed it into the world, this tasting was one of my absolute favorites I’ve done. I thought it was going to be redundant with my previous experiences, but we went into so much more depth than I expected, especially around pairing wines with food. To illustrate these points, we were given bites of different snacks to represent flavor profiles, like smoked almonds for smoke, grape jelly for sweetness, sriracha for spice, and salami for umami. We then tasted combinations of these to imitate the flavors of different dishes and cuisines which we then paired with wines as we tasted them. You’d be surprised at how much a smoked almond with sriracha and grape jelly tastes like pad thai.
The goods
Our snacks, which we combined to approximate different dishes. For example, we paired lemon and butter together to represent beurre blanc, which is a sauce often served with fish.
Grape jelly, almonds and sriracha taste a lot like pad thai! Sounds gross, but it works. Perfect with a glass of Riesling.
My favorite takeaway was the idea that when it comes pairing flavors of wine with flavors of food, 1+1 does not equal 2: if you have an acidic dish like a ceviche and you pair it with an acidic wine, it won’t lead to an acid overdose — in fact, the opposite. The acidic wine will actually minimize your perception of acidity of the food, allowing you to taste the other underlying flavor notes in the food. All of a sudden that ceviche goes from primarily mouth puckering to sweet and spicy.
The same principle of pairing goes for sweetness. If you eat something sweet and drink something sweet together, they will both taste less sweet. Think about brushing your teeth in the morning and then drinking orange juice. Normally, the juice would taste really sweet on its own, but as soon as you have something sweeter in your mouth like toothpaste, you can’t taste the sweetness of the juice! All you taste is the acid. In this case, the outcome is nasty, but think about what would happen if you paired a sweet dessert wine with a beautiful wild strawberry tart. All of a sudden, rather than the strawberries just tasting sweet, they taste even more strawberry-ish, and you can notice all of the nuance in their flavor. To sum it up, dessert wine cancels out some of the sweetness of dessert and ends up elevating the other flavors.
We also learned some good rules of thumb like “oak goes with smoke” — oaked wines go with (and are mellowed by) smoky foods — as well as some suggested pairings of specific grapes and dishes, such as:
Riesling with Asian food
Sauvignon Blanc with a bright salad
Chardonnay and salmon
Merlot and game meats (like duck)
Red Zinfandel and lamb
Of course, rules are meant to be broken, but you can’t go wrong if you follow these rules. One last highlight of wine day was a hilarious moment when one of my classmates accidentally drank from his spit cup, which he had been using to dispose of each wine after swirling it in his mouth. I think it will take him a while to live that one down 😂
PSA: Drink from your wine glass, not your spit cup. A classmate of mine learned the hard way - poor guy!
The final straw
Last but not least, we capped off the week with our final practical and written exams covering the diverse topics of level 2. Our tasks were to:
Make the stirred custard creme anglaise without curdling it i.e. scrambling the eggs - a key learning from our pastry module
Fillet a fish (sea bass)
Quarter a chicken
I was quite nervous about the fish and chicken as butchery is hit or miss for me. The night before the exam I bought two sea bass and three chickens and practiced my technique. The chickens were okay, but the fish went HORRIBLY. But somehow the next day I got in the zone and pulled it off perfectly — a true miracle. I got 98% on my overall practical exam and graduated to level 3!
My fillets from the night before my final — a total disaster. I really thought I was doomed.
My fillets during my final the next day - success! My practicing the prior night definitely paid off.
Creeping on my instructors from the hallway as they inspected my work.
And now for the fun part…
Tips and tricks!
Use the right tools, the right way
To get the best out of your olive oil: When you’re making a salad dressing or pesto, don’t agitate the olive oil too much — it will become bitter. In the case of salad dressing, this means that you should mix it gently with a spoon right before dressing — don’t whisk it vigorously with a whisk or a fork. With pesto, this means that it’s advisable to wait until all your other ingredients are thoroughly mixed together before stirring in the olive oil. If you need to create a paste or emulsion with some sort of oil while blending, use just enough of a neutral oil that won’t get bitter, like canola, grapeseed or safflower, to achieve the effect. Then, add the remaining olive oil at the end for its beautiful flavor.
To prevent your onions or shallots from ruining your food: When you’re dicing an onion or a shallot, use this method, where you basically cut a 3D grid by making slices into the onion horizontally and then vertically, keeping the root intact. The smaller dice you want, the more cuts you should make at the get go. If you try to finely dice your onion by further chopping it after you’ve already cut it up, you’ll end up releasing sulfur compounds which will give it an unpleasant taste.
To get every last drop out of that lemon: When squeezing half a lemon to get its juice, stick a fork in the middle and then squeeze around the fork — you’ll get more juice that way
To protect your expensive herbs: Don’t vigorously chop delicate leafy herbs like mint or basil - they will oxidize and turn black. It’s better to slice them thinly into ribbons (“chiffonade”) and then slice through the ribbons in the opposite direction once or twice more if you need smaller pieces. Here’s a helpful step by step guide.
To mash potatoes perfectly: be sure to rice or mill your potatoes when they are still hot — this will keep them from getting gluey, and it will also be easier to achieve than if you waited until they were cool.
Perfect your pasta
Always use a LOT of water when you’re making pasta so that the water will continue to boil once you’ve put the pasta in the pot. If you use a small amount of boiling water and then you completely displace its volume with room temperature dry pasta, it will bring the temperature down. And when dry pasta sits in water that isn’t boiling, it becomes sticky from the starch it’s releasing, risking it all sticking together. Another reason it’s important to use a lot of water is to dilute the starch that oozes out of pasta when it’s cooking; if you don’t do this, the pasta will again stick to itself, leaving you with a clumpy mess. And lastly, you want to make sure you have pasta water left over to finish off your sauce at the end!
Pasta water should be generously seasoned with salt, like a bowl of soup, so that the noodles themselves have some flavor on their own. A good handful of salt should do the trick.
The key steps to nailing a risotto occur at the end: when it’s almost done, bring the risotto to a hard boil with a generous shot of your cooking liquid, which will fully activate the starch in the rice and give the dish a gooier texture in a process called gelatinization. Then, add your fat (butter and/or cheese) to emulsify that liquid into a sauce. Finally, right before serving, be sure to add a little more cooking liquid to loosen up the rice so that your sauce is the perfect consistency. It should be slightly leaking out from the edges of your rice, which should be able to spread out on the plate rather than sticking to itself in a large pile.
When making potato gnocchi, make sure to move quickly and not leave your dough sitting around, otherwise it will get soupy and hard to handle, and it could even fall apart in the water while you’re boiling it. If you want to make gnocchi in advance, you can boil it and then store it in the fridge/freezer until you’re ready to finish it in sauce.
Honor your ingredients
If you want to cook dry beans but forgot to soak them overnight first, you can quick soak them by covering them in water that is 4x their volume (i.e. 4 cups of water per 1 cup of beans), bring it all to a boil, then turn it off and let them sit for an hour before cooking them.
Sometimes you want to cook butternut squash quickly. Rather than roasting, try sautéing the butternut squash in small cubes which will make it sweet and tender very fast. But keep one thing in mind: butternut squash has a lot of fibrous material right under the top layer of the skin that will stay tough if you try to sauté it, so the best bet here is to remove the outer layer of the squash with a knife (rather than a peeler) when you’re preparing it. The peeler removes the finest outer layer, whereas the knife gets deeper down. If you’re roasting the squash, though, a peeler works just fine, since the roasting takes long enough that the fibrous layer will have time to break down.
Optimize your grocery shopping
If you’re planning to buy canned tomatoes for pasta sauce at the grocery store, our instructor recommends the brands Pomi and Muir Glen for the best taste and quality that is widely available.
Obviously it’s preferable to have homemade stock to cook with, but that’s not always (or often) realistic. If you need to buy boxed stock, go with whichever brand has the fewest additives. The ingredients should say something like “onions, carrots, celery, chicken bones” and that’s about it!