Okay, so in a previous entry, I was SO wrong. Lemon zest is not bitter when sauteed.What makes it bitter is the pith, aka the white stuff in between the rind and the actual lemon. Solution, don't remove the pith, just the rind. The rind is full of the citrus oils. It's amazing! I can eat it by itself, screw sauteeing it! I've learned many things by merely listening up in culinary school.

Snail

No this isn't a post about making snail, although, escargot is a delicacy in many places in europe. I'm still in level one, and right now the main thing that we should be worried about is learning the foundations of all the technique. So, accuracy in our taillage (uniform types of cuts), so that cooking time can be even, and preparing our mise en place (having all ingredients in the recipe measured out and ready to go.....both things that I need in improvement in. I'm so excited about learning everything we're learning. Yesterday, we made salads, which are one of the most delicate preparations we must master in school. Mishandling the leaves, or not drying them property, or over vinegar-ing a vinaigrette, not washing things properly, all can result in a HORRIBLE salad. We made a macedoine de legumes w/ tomato fondue and basil mayonnaise (favorite), Salade Nicoise (pretty classic french salad), and sweet and bitter leaves with tomatoes and herbs topped w/ duck confit (cured duck legs cooked in its own fat). My partner and I were the last ones out of the kitchen last night, because we were a bit behind cleaning our stations after each preparation. Although I am learning how to be a better communicator in a kitchen. Not just things like yelling out "HOT!" when you have a hot pot of something around others, or "SHARP!" when your going to wash your knives: but having a plan of action w/ your partner about who's getting what in the recipe, and who's preparing what for the recipe. For example, I didn't tell my partner that I was getting the herbs for the last salad, and he came back with all the leaves, and the herb. Kind of annoying (of me not to have told him what I was getting). So I'm learning so far what NOT to do.
But on the bright side, I'm getting much more confident. I don't get nervous when bringing things to the chef to taste. I know it'll taste good, or near perfect. I have a pretty good palate. I'm also pretty confident that I can break down tasks quite sufficiently and delegate them to others. Since I'm working w/ a new partner this week, I don't want to be completely demanding just yet (Part of me still wants people to like me), but if I were comfy enough w/ my partner to be able to tell him what to do, we'd probably go faster.
Today's Melina's birthday, and we're going to Jean-georges (4 star nyt, 5 star michelin, kind of a big deal). Woo hoo!

Ok, so I'll be reworking this site. Not so much how it looks, but what I use it for (there I go ending a sentence with a preposition).

Last nights meal was a tri tip beef cut (a cut from the bottom sirloin on a cow...yum), hijacked from Trader Joes dumpsters last month before I stopped working there (more on that later). No fancy marinades. No fancy vegetables. Just plain old roast beef, slathered in a smoky bbq sauce. I started by salting and browning the cut of beef for about 4 minutes on each side. I threw in some sliced spanish onions I got from the farmers market last tuesday (oh and, you should cut the green stems off if not storing them in a refrigerator. I mistakenly put them in a brown paper bag in the kitchen, and when I went to open them.......gooey stems). I also threw a few sliced garlic cloves. Before browning the meat, I sauteed the crap out of one onion (I really had to use as many onions as I could. Can't risk saving them for much longer), and once brown, added a touch of red wine vinegar. Added that mix into the browned tri tip pot. I also added about 1 tbsp of lemon zest, and a halved head of garlic (nothing's better than roasted garlic). I punctured the cut with an instant read thermometer so I can know when the internal temp of the thickest part of the cut was 145 deg (medium rare), and finally put the pot into my 300 degree preheated oven.
The thermometer beeped just about 30 min later....i was a little, not so much that it hadn't cooked through, but that the flavors hadn't married for long enough, so I took out the therm, sealed the dutch oven, and turned the oven off, not wanting it browner than medium. By this time, I was halfway through the squash after that.
Some purple sqaush, on that looked like a mini-football shaped yellow pumpkin (sweet and tangy uncooked...weird), yellow and summer squash. All done the same way to see which cooks the best in a pan. Sauteed in Olive oil, garlic, and (yikes) leftover lemon zest. a spash of lemon juice at the end. My lesson: lemon zest is gross and bitter when sauteed (duh).
The beef had to be refired, so I cranked up the oven to 350 for another 15 minutes. The onions really flavored the juices from the meat, but the meat wasn't super flavorful. Now if I can just figure out how to keep as much juice in the cut so the aromatics can flavor the meat and not the juices. Perhaps not covering the pot next time to reduce the humidity? The end of the story is that my wife loved the meal, a lot. I ended up cutting the roast in slices on my plate and slathering a good bbq sauce over them. Not so bad.