Day ten: Death by mustard

Posted on | May 21, 2009

One of the bonuses of going to a culinary school is, sometimes, you get to eat at the school restaurant (actually, I’ll get to work there in the next term).

The food there is always good. Sometimes amazingly good.

And today was no exception.

I know, because after a long morning cooking, I, along with my classmates, was invited to eat there.

An experience we thoroughly enjoyed.

My boyfriend’s back
Well, it’s not the boyfriend but, rather, the husband.

See, he was away on business for two days which meant I didn’t get any decent sleep last night. But, this evening, he banged into the house with an armload of tulips and these really terrible candies along with smiles and kisses.

I put the tulips in some French juice bottles, sans juice (I seem to have misplaced my vase), ditched the candies (they were this weird technicolor) and enjoyed the pictures.

And I slept a whole lot better last night. Which made today, cold sauce day (well, they called them cold because they are served cold, but two involved cooking), much more pleasurable than yesterday.

Sauces are good. Almost as good as a decent night’s sleep and having the husband home.

Fight fire with … no, that can’t be right
The first sauce I made was a fiery Chinese-style mustard. My sauce turned out so pungent, it would surely kill anyone foolish enough to ingest more than, say, a quarter teaspoon of the stuff.

Now, I didn’t set out to make such a killer mustard (strong, yes, but not lethal), but when the very kind Nepal Chef found out what I was doing he loaded me up with spices from his secret stash, including Szechwan peppers and real cinnamon.

I didn’t take into account that whomever wrote that recipe did not have a direct line to Asia for their spices and, thus, would not have the glorious fresh supply that I had. So I followed the recipe to the letter and made a mustard so powerful the FBI confiscated my recipe as a secret weapon.

Chef Rushmore told me to leave it until tomorrow and it would not be so harsh (you have to give the flavors time to mellow). And if it was still too much, we could tame it with a little (gallons) of honey.

Funny thing is, one person in the class actually raved about it: The only Asian student here.

If there are leftovers (and I have no doubt there will be), I’ll give it to him to take home.

Assuming it hasn’t burned through its container.

Pretty in pink
Next, I made rhubarb and port wine preserve. If there is a polar opposite to the killer mustard sauce, this is it.

The preserve is sweet and warm and almost rich. And, of course, it is a wonderful pink.

And, best of all, this is my first time cooking with rhubarb. Who knew it was so easy and delicious? I’ll have to see what else I can make with it.

You saucy wench
Finally, my third sauce was a chutney. Now, I adore chutney, but I had never made one, so I really wanted to give it a try.

It started badly: The first mango I cut was badly bruised and unusable. But the second was pretty good.

I only got a quick taste of this before I had to pack up the sauces and help clean the kitchen, but it is going to be sweet and rich with a wonderful, fiery heat. Not as strong as the mustard, mind you, but strong enough.

And, although it was a bit involved to make (lots of cutting of produce and blooming of spices), it was a lot of fun.

I want to try making one at home.

Meat me in St. Louis
Now, while I was scrambling to make three sauces in two hours, Stern Girl (Other Guy never showed today) was scrambling to make a terrine of forcemeat.

She did much of the grunt work, but I got to do the pretty part.

Namely, I was responsible for the garnish, for filling the terrine, and for poaching the thing.

For garnish, I placed delicate dill fronds on the bottom of the terrine, then pipped in the forecemeat. The plan is, when the terrine is inverted and flipped out, the dill will be on the top, making a delicate design.

Of course, if the dill moved during the filling or the cooking, the delicate design could be a design disaster. But we won’t know until tomorrow.

I’m dying to see how it turns out.

Lecture and lunch
And into the lecture we went for a quick talk on shellfish and culinary math when, suddenly, we were invited to lunch in the school restaurant.

See, the restaurant did not have enough diners and they wanted to give the student restaurant staff a workout so, lunch for us.

Now, envision, if you will, a very nice dining room with student waiters and student cooks.

Seven of us, in somewhat dirty, but neatly buttoned-to-the-throat chef’s jackets, tromp in and are seated at a round table.

We order, and we receive course after course of amazing food.

The first thing that happened? The Sweet Line Cook plucked a hair out of his appetizer. Four courses later, he plucked another one out of his dessert.

I didn’t find any hairs in my food, but I did find flavor with the best halibut I have ever eaten.

I wasn’t so fond of my soup: Too much spice and not enough flavor. And the salad was a bit too vinegary. But all of this faded once I got my halibut which was tender and flavorful and cooked to fine-dining perfection.

If you had told me that was trucked in from one of the nice restaurants in town, I would totally have believed you.

And then there was that dessert.

Now, I love sweets so you can’t go too wrong with me there. But there are some things I am picky about. Such as cheesecake. But this was the second best cheesecake I have ever had (the first place honors goes to Juniors in New York, meaning this cheesecake is pretty damn good.)

It was less dense than a New York cheesecake, lighter, with an almost fluffy texture. And so creamy and smooth it was wonderfully easy on the palate.

In fact, this was the second time I got this at the restaurant. The first time was so good, that I just had to have it again.

The end of Complaining Girl
And I found out what happened to Complaining Girl: She was transferred to the night class. Much as I didn’t like her, I am glad for her sake that she didn’t get booted out of school. After all, she moved half a country just to be here. But now she is in class with Vegan Gay Guy (remember him from the first term?). She rode him pretty hard when she got booted out of the first term class and placed in ours. So I won’t be surprised if she is making life quite merry for him at night.

Poor Complaining Girl. She, like my mustard, could probably do with a generous helping of honey.

(Oh, and, hey, if you want to win a free cookbook, do enter the Twitter contest I’ve got running this week … details are in the box on your right. Good luck!)

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