French Cuisine Boot Camp at the Culinary Institute of America--Day 1

Note: I have had the good fortune to have taken several classes at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY as part of their 'Enthusiasts' offering of non-degree classes. This is the first installment describing my experience in my most recent 5-day Boot Camp. My views do not necessarily reflect those of my classmates, but I do hope they--and you--enjoy reading my perspective on the course. 

Day 1: Orientation and Mother Sauces

6am. Orientation begins in the dining room of the Continuing Education Center at the CIA. I'm just pulling into the parking structure. Frick.

Fortunately I know where I'm going, as I've been lucky enough to have attended CIA Boot Camps before.  I head straight into the room and quietly apologize for my tardiness.  I sign in & grab my new duffel bag--my fourth official 'Boot Camp' bag. I scan the room and choose a table near the windows where an older gentleman is seated. The crowd looks pretty much like every other at the first-day orientation: a mix of people in casual attire (first-timers) and chef uniforms (repeat boot campers).  Sometimes there are professional chefs in their own chef's whites, but mostly these classes tend to be made up of foodies.

After our run-through of rules and expectations, we grab breakfast in the student cafeteria. It hardly seems appropriate to call it a cafeteria when all of the food is made to order and the specials include things like egg white omelets with ham, goat cheese and pesto.  They also offer an almost overwhelming selection of daily options such as eggs any way with bacon, sausage, potatoes, etc., two choices of smoothies, baskets full of pastries, and so on.  Everything is made by a class of culinary students who started their efforts at 2am.

This is our first opportunity to get to know our classmates, and it's the typical opening round of questions: what's your name, where are you from, occupation, is this your first time here, etc.  The camps tend to draw a lot of people from the New England states, plus a smattering of others from the rest of the U.S.  I'm amazed to meet a fellow Wisconsinite who lives just about 40 miles from me. I've never run into another Cheesehead in class except for the time I came with one.

We return to the classroom, and there is little time to chat as Chef dives quickly into the lecture on sauces. He will demonstrate the "mother sauces" in the kitchen, after which we will make derivative sauces in our teams. Since we're only making sauces and not actual dishes, one of the full-time student classes will prepare our lunch for day one. For the rest of the week, whatever we make we will eat for lunch.

After talking through the recipes we move into the kitchen to declare our spots for the week.  The kitchen we'll occupy over the next five mornings consists of four team stations built around back-to-back stoves and ovens. Each station has its own mini fridges under the counter, plus two cutting board stations and a table behind it with a third cutting board station. Each cutting board station has an apron and two side towels folded neatly, plus a chef's knife and paring knife.

My new Wisconsin friend invites me to join her team, but the linens are already taken from that spot. I wander until I find an open spot and find myself joining Team 2 with J and T. I take a quick peek at my binder to see what sauces our team will make: chasseur, fresh tomato sauce, soubise, and choron. We also need to marinate some pork for one of tomorrow's dishes, salade tourangelle.

Chef calls us all over to the stove on the other side to begin his demonstration of mother sauces. There are five basic sauces that feed all others in French cooking: velouté, béchamel, espagnole, tomato and hollandaise. He starts by making a roux, a roughly 50/50 combination of flour and butter that is cooked in a sauté pan until it reaches the appropriate color for the sauce you're making. The longer you cook the roux, the more it browns and takes on a stronger, nuttier flavor. For white sauces, the roux is left "pale" to "blonde," whereas a brown sauce will be cooked to the color of peanut butter. All of this has to be done while watching carefully and stirring, because a burned roux needs to be tossed.

After our demonstration we disperse to our stations to figure out who would prepare what sauce.  I take chasseur, a derivative of espagnole sauce with mushrooms and wine.  I keep thinking it's 'chausseur' which I think has something to do with shoes if I remember my college French correctly.  T takes soubise sauce, a bechamel derivative.  J accepts the challenge to make choron sauce, an egg-based variation on Hollandaise. I do not envy his task--working with egg yolk over simmering water scared the bejeebers out of me, and since I have no plans to recreate such a sauce after returning home, I'm not sorry to let someone else take it. 

We all dive into preparing our sauces, starting to figure out how we'll work together. There's a lot of bumping into each other initially, borrowing ingredients from each other, asking one another's opinions on what we're doing, and calling Chef over as needed.

My chasseur sauce turns out to be fairly straightforward. That's a very good thing, as we'll have to stop midway through preparing our recipes to have lunch. Plus, there's a photographer coming in the afternoon to take pictures of each of us with Chef Remolina, for which we'll need to step away from our sauces briefly if we're still cooking at that point.

After lunch the sauces are really rolling there's a crowd around the stove. The burners seem to be completely ablaze or shut off entirely, so we're all a bit on edge trying not to burn our first projects in the CIA kitchen.

J's tenacity impresses me.  After fighting with scrambled eggs on the first two tries, he presses on for a third attempt with his sauce with the help of one of our student assistants.  He continues whisking diligently, and reluctantly hands the whisk to the student and T in order to get his  photo taken with Chef. He returns afterward and produces a perfect sauce.

Everyone pours their sauces into tall metal pots--bain maries--and places them on a large table in the kitchen. Chef has us gather around the table and passes a plastic dishwashing basket full of spoons so we can try each sauce.  We follow each other in a circle around the table, ooh-ing and aah-ing over the delicious and, in many cases, decadent sauces we all created on our first day.  This is clearly the start of a delicious friendship.

Espagnole sauce

Brown roux: 3/4 cup butter + 2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Mirepoix: 2 cups onions, medium dice + 1 cup carrots, medium dice + 1 cup celery, medium dice

2/3 cup tomato paste

5 qt brown veal stock

Sachet d'epices: 4 parsley stems, 4 bay leaves, 4 garlic cloves, 1 tsp dried or fresh thyme, and 1 tsp cracked black peppercorns, all tied into a cheesecloth sachet Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter in a sauté pan over medium heat until it stops bubbling. Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, until it becomes a deep, rich, brown color (darker than peanut butter). Reserve.

Heat the oil in a saucepot over low to medium heat and sauté the onions until translucent. Add the carrots and celery and continue to brown. You are looking for a golden brown color from the onions.

Add the tomato paste and cook for several minutes until it turns a rusty brown and has a sweet aroma.  (This evaporates the acid and leaves the tomato flavor.)

Add the stock and bring it to a simmer.

Whisk the roux into the stock. Return to a simmer and add the sachet. Simmer for about 1 hour, skimming the surface as necessary.

Strain the sauce. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. The sauce is ready to be served now, or can be rapidly cooled and refrigerated for later use.