T
he following Monday, Chef Felder was back. I didn't know who I liked better. Ainsworth was like a cool older brother in town for the weekend hanging out. “Duck fat is one of the best kinds of fat to use because it's so tasty,” I heard him say as he strolled through the long narrow kitchen. “The only better kind of fat is fat that comes off foie gras.” When someone asked how much mirepoix to use for stock that would be used for aspic, he said, “If you go to measure for your stock on extern, they may laugh at you. You should know by now how much mirepoix to use.”
Felder, on the other hand, had arrived from another realm to bewitch us. “Cooking is
magic
, cooking is
alchemy
,” she said, eyes asparkle. She could even make aspic, a flavored liquid made solid with gelatin, exciting.
“Lobster consommé with quenelles of wild mushrooms was served last night,” she announced to the class during lecture, snatching an example out of the air the way a magician produces a flapping, fluttering dove. “We have left over a quart of consommé, and we have one lobster. Our choices with that are to give it to the staff or throw it out or come up with something to do with it. A quick method is to change that consommé into an aspic.
“We have one lobster and we have now made lobster aspic. What we do is we cook off that lobster, large-dice it, take a little bit of scallion, a little bit of watercress, small-dice some chervil, blanch it, small-dice some chives, and blanch it. We combine the lobster aspicâwe have probably seasoned it up high because it's going to be served coldâtogether with our
lobster meat and our chervil, chives, put that into a terrine mold, triangular shape. And what was going to be thrown out has now turned into a lobster terrine that we can slice and make sixteen to twenty orders out of. Two small slices, serve it with a little bit of baby greens, a little bit of lobster-stock-reduction mayonnaise, and make back our money. A quick method if you already have a consommé. Total utilization.”
I felt like clapping.
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O
ur plated appetizers were due on Day Eight, and our table, Bianca and two others from a different Skills class, had been assigned the following menu:
Chicken galantine with cranberry-orange coulis, wild rice and wild pecan rice salad with toasted-pecan vinaigrette, and pears poached in a port wine syrup.
Lobster salad with mache, haricot verts, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and truffles with truffle-oil vinaigrette.
Shaved vegetable salad with olive oil, lemon juice, Parmesan, and black pepper.
These would be beautiful plates, the kinds you see in the pages of
Gourmet
magazine. Each of the six groups had its own menu. One, if not several, of these plates would float into a Day Eight Skills-kitchen gale of pots scorched with béchamel, bowls of chicken velouté, and clam chowder the consistency of oatmeal, as if out of a mirage.
The galantine was intriguing and worth mentioning, if only as an example of a forcemeat other than the de riguer pâté en croûte (Chef Ainsworth had defended this dowager of the buffet table by saying that if you could make this classical forcemeat preparation, you knew how to work with dough, forcemeat, and aspic, and you could put this basic knowledge to use in many ways). A galantine is typically a poultry forcemeat poached in gelatinous stock.
“Y'all?” We had gathered round for a demo. “Write this down: preparing a skin for a galantine.” Chef Felder, who had spread before her on a cutting board the entire skin of a chicken in one continuous sheet, bumpy side down, with two little pant legs where the drumsticks had been, explained
the preparation technique. She scraped the fat off the skin and squared it off, noting how very, very delicious chicken skin could be if you cooked it in a moderate oven until it became crispy enough to sprinkle over salad greens and sautéed chicken livers. She trimmed the pant legs, laid the skin on a sheet of plastic wrap to help with the rolling, and continued through the entire preparation of the galantine.
Our forcemeat, made from the marinated dark meat of the chicken, pork butt, and fatback, was spread in a long strip down the skin; we would lay two chicken breasts on top, then cover the breasts with the remaining forcemeat, into which we had mixed dried cherries and pistachios. We would wrap it all tightly in the chicken skin so that it formed a cylinder about nine inches long and about three inches in diameter. We would then secure the cylinder with cheesecloth and butcher's string. Chef Felder tied the string at both ends, then supported the cylinder in three places with more string, saying, “Little cummerbunds. Gentleman, you know what a cummerbund isâholds the tummy in.”
“Not necessary, Chef,” said Ben, serious as a marine.
We would poach our galantine in 170-degree chicken stock to an internal temperature of 160 degrees. We would cool it in the stock overnight, then remove it from the cheesecloth, paint it with glace, roll it in finely chopped pistachios, and then it was ready to slice. Each piece, rimmed in green, would contain a chunk of moist white chicken breast surrounded by forcemeat that was brightly dotted with red and green of cherry and pistachio, the secondary internal garnish. We would serve the slices with a bright cranberry-orange coulis, rice, and poached pears.
Not a recipe for the working, single parent of three, perhaps, but an intriguing classical preparation. “This is a basic galantine,” Chef Felder said. “I want you to learn the technique first. Once you've got the technique, you've got the world by the toes.”
After the chicken galantineâa two-day preparationâthe lobster salad would be a no-brainer, or so I thought until the mache didn't show up in the order. Mache, a small light-green leaf at the end of a pale twisting stem, had a fresh delicate flavor perfectly paired with lobster, both in looks and taste. Without mache, we had no lobster salad.
I found Adam, food steward for this block. He said he'd ordered mache but hadn't seen it come in; we checked the order sheet, which showed the storeroom had filled this order. I went to the storeroom. They didn't know
anything but promised to send the mache as soon as it came in. I explained the problem to Chef Felder upon my return and she went to the storeroom. She tangled with these folks all the timeâthis was how she got heirloom tomatoes, how she got both fresh sardines and very expensive anchovies packed in salt and imported from Italy.
She returned, subduing indignation, and said to me, “Mr. Metz has taken our box of mache.”
The mache the Culinary bought was hydroponically grown by a nearby farmer and shipped in plastic bags inside sturdy brown boxes; it grows in dense bunches and these are intact when shipped. It's a beautiful product that's usually plentiful here, but with the summer break approaching, the storeroom had cut back on ordering perishables. Felder made another call, then gave me instructions. “I want you to go up to the functions office, across from Fish kitchen,” she said quietly. I want you to pick out eight perfect,
beautiful
bunches of mache without disturbing it. Talk to Dora.” Chef Felder told me to bring a half hotel pan with damp paper towels and reiterated that I was to gather the mache bunches as delicately as possible, so that one would scarcely notice their absence.
I assumed she'd worked all this out with Dora, who was in charge of filling Mr. Metz's order, but I'd failed to notice the subversive hush in her voice. When I arrived at the functions office I was met by a woman with dark hair wearing business attire. I had often seen this woman in the halls; I didn't know where she actually hailed from, perhaps Latin America, but she always reminded me of the spooky Malaysian matron who blackmails Betty Davis in
The Letter
. In real life she was probably as generous and kind as Mother Teresaâshe always seemed friendly when she appeared in Pantry for Mr. Metz's utabaga, or popped into Coppedge's bakeshop to pick up Mr. Metz's sourdough. I told her I was looking for Dora.
“You're looking for Dora?” she said. “Well, that's me.”
I said my name, explained I was from Chef Felder's kitchen, and that Chef Felder had told me she, Dora, would be able to help me out. I fully thought she would say, “Yes, I was expecting you,” but instead she shook her head. “This is all we have.” She pointed to a box on a rolling cart loaded with food. “We ordered from the storeroom two pounds and they sent us this.” The box read two pounds. Dora removed its contents, two plastic bags filled with mache, and put them on the scale, which acted as a
paperweight for Mr. Metz's order. Each bag weighed ten ounces, twelve ounces short of two pounds. She shook her head saying, “Mr. Metz doesn't mess around with boxes.”
I asked if I might be able to removeâvery delicately, one would scarcely noticeâeight perfect, very very beautiful bunches.
She said no. But she told me to wait while she made a phone call.
An assistant appeared and began to go over the order being placed on the cart.
“Wouldn't it be possible for me to take just a little?” I asked the assistant. “Do you really need
all
this?”
The assistant said yes.
“Could we call Mr. Metz and find out if he needs all of this?”
The assistant smiled and said, “Sure, go ahead. Call him.” This was clearly a dare.
“Would he be at home?” I said.
“He's probably still in his office.”
Something told me then that it would not be cute if I called Mr. Metz's office asking how much mache he planned to use. But I kept trying anyway, for the heck of it, the paper toweling in my hotel pan growing dry.
“Is he using it now, tonight?” I asked.
“He's taking it with him.”
“Where is he going?”
“I believe he's going to his home in Pennsylvania.” This would make sense. We were one day away from a four-day Fourth of July weekend. I remained focused on the task at hand.
“It's summer,” I said. “Mache is in season. Surely there's a farmer's market near his home in Pennsylvania where he can pick up some freshpicked mache.”
The assistant shook her head.
“Surely he can buy it somewhere.”
She smiled at me, still shaking her head, and said, “I don't think he's been to a grocery store in his life!” Then she turned her head completely away from me, chuckling in disbelief at what she had just said. (Heaven forbid she would slander President Metz!) This was undoubtedly one great perquisite of being president of the Culinary Institute of Americaâhaving the Culinary storeroom at your disposal. I wouldn't spend much time in the Shoprite either.
“I only need eight tiny bunches. I'll settle for less.”
More grave shaking of the head. I sensed she was growing weary of me, but I pressed on blindly. “Perhaps we could FedEx Mr. Metz some mache tomorrow.”
This suggestion was not taken seriously. Dora returned, saying the storeroom was completely out of mache.
“I need just a little bit, and I need it by six o'clock.”
“We need this by four o'clock, which is right now,” and onto the cart went the box of mache, and off I was sent with my little empty hotel pan.
I began to beg at other kitchens. Chef Kief, in Pantry, had a box of mache, winced at its contents, and said, “I need all of this. This has to garnish fifty plates tomorrow.” Then he sighed, pulled one bunch, pulled a second and a third, put his fingers on a fourth, then thought better of it and said, “That's really all I can spare.” I wanted to say “Bless you,” but I only thanked him.
When I returned and explained to Chef Felder what had happened, she rolled her eyes thinking, “If Mr. Metz knew that we needed it, he'd surely give up the few sprigs we needed,” but she only sighed. She decided that we would do four lobster salads instead of eight.
I saw why she liked to use mache for this dish: she directed us to plate the appetizer with the lobster tail, in thick slices but apparently intact, as if the lobster were alive in a tangle of seaweedlike mache. The presentation was a good one, especially with the black truffle slices sprinkled on top in vivid contrast to the orange lobster. I had never peeled a truffle and asked Chef Felder how I should do it; as I watched her peel oneâshe had wrinkled her nose that we had to use cannedâshe said, “When you get fresh truffles, which are about eight hundred dollars a pound, store the truffles in rice. The rice pulls flavor out of the truffles. Then put two eggs into the rice and store it in a cooler. The eggs will absorb the flavor of the truffles. They breathe. And then here's what you do. You gently scramble those eggs. Gently, gently scramble those eggs and put them in the middle of the plate and serve them with pain de mie toast and champagne. It is a very romantic New Year's Eve supper for two.” Having finished her story and her truffle, she departed.
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G
arde Manger students, outgoing students, ate on stage, as did incoming A Blockers, and students in the wines and menus block of the curriculum. Stageâthe raised platform of the former chapel's alterâwas
served by the Classical Banquet Cuisine class, which prepared classical European cuisine; student waiters, in their first table-service class, used silverware to nestle fresh rolls onto your bread plate as you sat down, and they refilled your coffee after dinner. In our whites, we could at six-thirty have dinner on stage and be served, for instance, a mikado salad (rice with oysters), followed by game consommé, followed by osso buco with freshly made noodles.