The Good Rabbi's Blog

Well, I've successfully completed my first week of culinary school. While it's a LOT of work, I am having a great time. We've started actually getting into the cooking now, and it's starting to get pretty exciting! In other news, I managed to do well on my knife skills practice test (the real one is this coming Monday). We're getting into sauces and soups now, so stay tuned for for more details!

I apologise for the delay in getting some updates on. This past week was very heavy. I had my knife skills final on Monday (where I sacrificed a portion of my thumb due to a dumbass that couldn't say "excuse me"), and my written skills mid-term and practical exams on Thursday. My practical exam consisted of two soups (Potato Leek, and consommé) as well as three sauces (Mornay, which is a modified béchamel, Bordelaise, and Hollandaise). I scored pretty well on all fronts. Next week I move into egg cookery, where we do everything from omelets, to pasta, to flans and custards. Stay tuned... :-)

This week is protein week in skills. We're doing a series of "Iron Chef" competitions. The competitions are not quite the same as what the show has, as we know what the ingredients will be (although we're not quite sure of the cuts), and we theoretically have more time to plan.

Well, I've made it through the first block of courses in culinary school. Thus far, I've completed Skills, Safety & Sanitation, Food Science, and Nutrition. I've managed to do quite well. I'm ranked number 2 in the class (behind my study partner), and I've managed to maintain at least an A- in all my classes.

Well, it's that time again. That time when Jewish people all over the world will ponder the essential question of our faith: Why are we alone faced with the burden of eating gefilte fish? Thus far, I've had the occasion to ponder some of the musings that come every year at this time.

Well, I finished my first course after the skills block - butchery. In this class, I learned how to break down various animals into the cuts that we see in the grocery store, and in restaurants.

I know it's been a while since I last posted an update here, but I haven't forgotten. These past couple weeks, I've been working in a segment of my culinary education called Garde Manger, which is French for "Saving to eat." This is the portion of my education where I learn how to make cold food (cheese platters, fruit mirrors, and various hors d'oeuvres). Generally, during the day, my class is broken down into three groups, and each group is broken down into several two-person teams.

Well, after a lot of trepidation, my stint with Introductory Garde Manger has come to a close. I aced the final exam (the written one - you'd be surprised how many people don't know that there are four quarts to a gallon), and then it came to the more challenging part: the final production, where I'm graded on a canapé that I have to design and make 50 identical "copies" of. These are small hors d'oeuvres, that can be quite tricky for me to handle with my big hands.

Well, as promised, I'm putting some updates to this weblog. First off, I apologise for the delay, I've been swamped with work these past few classes. I just finished my major project for my current class, but I'll get to that in a post that will be up soon. This post refers to my last class - baking and pastry.

Well, now it's Independence Day weekend, and I've finished the next course in my curriculum: Contemporary Cuisine. This is the class where we learn how to cook in manners that reflect modern consumer food tastes. This ranges from more health-conscious (heart-healthy, diabetic cooking, etc.) to vegetarian/vegan cooking, to the various fad diets out there.

Hi there, I know it's been a long while since I last updated this site, and surprisingly I have some time today, so I thought I'd put an update in. Right now I'm in the real "meat" of the culinary programme (pun intended). Throughout the whole year, there are three major courses that comprise the most important parts of the degree requirements: European Cuisine (which encompasses Scandinavia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and a few rogue states in the Balkans), Foods of the Americas (which encompasses South America, Central America, the Caribbean, the USA, Canada & Hawaii), and Asian Cuisine (which encompasses pretty much everything else).

Well, I've finished the academic portion of my Asian cuisine class. This week is all testing. We started off this week with a field trip down to Chinatown. There we marveled at the architecture, the strange aromas wafting through the air, the even stranger foods and ingredients for sale, and the crazy old ladies that kept trying to elbow their way through everyone.

Well, as I mentioned in one of my last postings, this week has been all examinations and competitions for Asian cuisine. All the fun began on Tuesday, after our Monday trip to San Francisco's Chinatown. Tuesday was our team Iron Chef competition.

After the team Iron Chef competition had been completed, we had two days of individual Iron Chef competitions (due to space limitations in the kitchen). I competed the first day. We all had to make one main course plate that consisted of the protein we drew, as well as a starch, and a vegetable.

Well, your Rabbi has entered the first of two major projects associated with his culinary education. The first project is to come up with a restaurant concept in San Francisco. The school has worked with various other groups and companies in the Bay area in order to help us simulate how our restaurant will operate, target customers, etc.

Last Friday, I completed my advanced baking & pastry unit. After spending a good three weeks baking cakes, cookies, and making various pastries and petit-fours, I'm now moving on to advanced Garde Manger. At this point, I thought I'd stop and reflect on my final plated dessert competency.

Well, it's been a hell of a year, and there has been a whole lot of work going on. In my last project of my culinary school career, I have been chosen by my team to be, what else, the computer guy. The main assignment right now is to create a catering company, and cater an event that has been prechosen by that crazy Frenchman that calls himself my instructor.

Well, this is it. The project has been handed in, the presentation has been made, and the chef's jacket is currently being signed. The coursework is done, and now it's on to the externship, but first, a little merriment and rejoicing. Let the drinking begin!

Well, it's been a while since I last posted on this site, and I thought I'd share with you what's been going on in the past few weeks. I've started working for a local catering company in the Washington, DC area, and I've been dying a slow death. Well, no, not really, but it has been wearing away at me to the point that I'm questioning whether or not this was a good idea to begin with. My day starts at 4:30 AM, when my alarm clock goes off, and I just try to ignore it in the vain hope that it will go away. I have to be at work at 6:00 AM, and I work an indetermininate number of hours (I work until the whole kitchen's work is done, whenever that may be) doing stupid mundane shit in large quantities.

Well, eventually it had to happen - I got rotated out of the salad station and into the bakery. So now I have a new uniform, and some new tasks (see below). Updates will be coming soon. Time to make the doughnuts...

Well, I paid my money, and got my blue ribbon and paper hat. Now I'm ready to like, do something.

Pictures (as well as other culinary pictures) are up in my photo gallery.

After another Thanksgiving, I thought I’d ease everyone back into the daily grind with something unusual for this web site: a culinary op-ed of sorts. Recently, the people in charge of New York City have begun a debate on whether or not to ban trans-fatty acids in restaurants. In order to understand the implications of this, it is necessary to know a little bit about what trans-fatty acids are, and why officials would want to ban them.

Normally, fat comes in four types: saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, and trans fatty acids. Saturated fat (such as butter, coconut oil, and palm kernel oil) is solid at room temperature, and is generally quite bad for you, in that it has been shown to be correlated with heart disease. Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature (olive, canola, soybean, corn, and vegetable oils), and while still bad for you, are less bad than saturated fats (although the fat content in your diet should come from unsaturated fats as much as possible).

The trouble is that all the flavour and goodness in various recipes comes from saturated fat. Some enterprising companies have discovered that if they add Hydrogen to an unsaturated fat like vegetable oil, it takes on properties that make it behave like a saturated fat (in terms of taste, texture, and body). These hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils (which are sold as margarine, vegetable “spreads,” oleos, and shortening) are also called trans-fatty acids (or TFA for short).

Recently, authorities have become concerned because of a link between TFA’s and a number of health problems. TFA's have been shown to raise the level of LDL ("bad") cholesterol, while lowering the level of HDL ("good") cholesterol, which leads to an increased risk for heart attack and stroke. Also, there seems to be a correlation between TFA consumption and obesity levels. The federal government, which is in an excellent position to enforce such a ban nationwide, has been silent on this matter, so some municipalities have started to take matters into their own hands. New York City, as the first major city to consider this, is being watched very carefully. Fast-food restaurant chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's, worried about potential drops in profit margins, have already (supposedly) started investigating alternatives for their fried foods.The proposed ban would only encompass restaurants. People would still be able to purchase margarine, shortening, etc. for home use.

As a professional chef, I am opposed to this sort of regulation for two reasons. First is because it’s badly written legislation that unfairly targets restaurants. Only restaurants would be subject to a ban on ingredients that are otherwise perfectly legal to use. Restaurants generally use a shortening in their deep fryers because it’s cheaper to use, and it doesn’t have to be changed as often as oil (and believe me, changing the oil in a commercial deep-fryer is not trivial). As such, the practical implication of this ban would be to quadruple the cost of anything fried.

The second reason I am opposed to this ban is because I really believe that it is not for a government to regulate what I eat. I am an adult, and I should decide what level of risk I’m comfortable with. I understand that there is a large amount of obesity in our society, but at the end of the day, people are responsible for their own diets, and for their level of activity (or lack thereof). What will happen if this ban comes to pass is that restaurants will most likely revert to using saturated fats such as butter, which is why the American Heart Association does not support the ban as it is currently written.

This sort of regulation first started in the late 1970’s when officials were concerned about Peking duck (which requires that the duck is hung to dry for half a day). It then moved to artisanal sausages and salumerias, and now to TFA’s. As a result, a lot of old-style artisan work is being lost. I admire the New York City government’s intentions, however the practical implications would be to shield people from one danger, while exposing people to another. Where does this end? If they come after Five Guys next, then my friends, the terrorists have truly won.

A lot of people have written in and asked me to write a review of sorts regarding the contestants and outcome of the TV show Top Chef. I had been putting together some notes since the end of January (right before the finale), and then I discovered that another chef that's slightly more well known than me had basically written the same thing that I had. So this blog post is being guest authored by Anthony Bourdain.

As a professional chef, I'm affiliated with a number of organizations that send me all sorts of offers. Today I got one that I could not resist posting here. In the past, I've posted articles about how to shop for, use, and get the most out of various kitchen appliances. Today, I found out that there's a growing industry dedicated to making appliances more visually interesting. I thought it might be a good idea to highlight some of these as I find some examples.

I always recommend that people who do a lot of cooking or baking seriously consider buying a KitchenAid Stand Mixer. They're more expensive than other stand mixers, but they weather all sorts of abuse, and will most likely outlive your kitchen. Originally, they were only produced in white and black, but now, they come in all sorts of colours, and sizes. What's the one thing that's missing? Flames. Hey, some people trick out their cars, and flame them out, why not their kitchen appliances? These decals are custom made, and are sold over the Internet. They have a web site, and stores on Amazon and eBay. You know you want it. All the cool kids have one...