Chicken and Salmon and Garlic, Oh My!

Now you know what we did in cooking school this week.

We roasted chicken, dismembered it and froze it. Then we dismembered more chicken, deboned it and froze it. We also learned to fillet salmon, debone it, and you guessed it, freeze it. Then we learned to correct way to prep carrots and onions, and my team peeled 5 million cloves of garlic (I can still smell it on my fingers). The last day of class we learned to slice carrots and onions (and not our fingers) and we got to cook them.

I mastered the "flipping in the pan" technique without getting food everywhere, made some yummy carmelized onions and worked on my carrot slicing. We also got to blanch the carrots, cool them, then reheat them with the onions. And finally, we got to eat them! Mine had too much pepper . . .

I also spent almost 500 bucks on books and knives. Actually by the time I add the gadgets I bought in Victoria and binders, etc, it's well over 700. \\sigh\\

I did get a nice pair of Docs (since we need black shoes for the kitchen, might as well get the best), a sharpening stone, a meat thermometer, and a tiny Micro Plane grater (don't really need it, but it's really cool!). I found a fun silver Sharpie that I'm going to use to personalize my knife bag (everyone has the same one). I want to get a pair of pliers for fish deboning, and some fabric paint for the knife bag.

We also got our uniforms. I still need to get a pack of white T's to go underneath, hopefully that will mean I won't have to wash the top every day if I can keep food off it (that should be interesting). The really fun part is that we have to be there 30 minutes earlier next week. \\Argghh\\