Who's that chick? Who's that chick?

Feel the adrenaline moving under my skin...
(David Guetta feat Rihanna - Who's That Chick?)

Lesson 3- Poached Chicken with Supreme Sauce / Common Thickeners

The dish, as cooked by the demo chef

Continuation of our stocks lessons, today we learned about chicken stocks. For practical we focused on poaching a chicken and learning how to make Béchamel sauce, which is one of French cuisine's mother sauces. We used it as a base to make the Sauce Suprême for our chicken.

First we learned about thickening agents. Thickening agents refers to ingredients that we use to thicken a liquid. Common thickening agents include starches (flour, potatos, rice), others include milk, eggs, ete. The instructor was quick to point out that gelatin from bones is NOT a thickening agent, as it alters the property of the liquid by too much. In our class, we focused on roux. White roux refers to mixing flour into melted butter, while brown roux is the same thing but you allow the melted butter to brown first, which would give the roux a deep brown color and a stronger flavor.

Two ways to make Béchamel:

1. Mix cold white roux with hot milk, equal parts
2. Mix hot white roux with cold milk, equal parts

Pour the milk into the roux all at once and whisk vigorously or you will get lumps. Allow the liquid to boil to activate the thickening agent. To make Sauce Suprême, mix in a ton of chicken stock and reduce until it becomes a beautiful creamy texture. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Boom.

For practical, we got a chef who fancies himself as a Darth Napoleon Gordon Ramsey Vader. The guy was 5 feet tall and enjoys walks around humming the Darth Vader Imperial March song while criticizing everyone's cooking methods. He always managed positioned himself next to me every time I screwed up, and mocked how I handled my whisk/chicken/pan/whatever. It was very stressful as I had to manage the poaching chicken, boiling sauce and cleaning my station, all while enduring the Imperial March in the background. I ended up burning my rice in the saute pan, which gave it an unappealing brown color and prevented it from absorbing liquid afterwards. When tasting, the chef spat my rice into the trash and said "This is the shittiest rice I have ever had. You are lucky that this is the last ungraded class!" Thanks chef. I was so demoralized that I just shoved my food into the Tupperware to bring home. I ended up trashing everything.

Reality vs the Dream: 

I realized today that I still have a long way to go

In business school parlance, this would be called a good "failure case." I ended up writing a post-mortem analysis about why I screwed up (better station management, mis-en-place earlier, ete), so this wouldn't happen again. Why did I care so much about what a short chef says about my food anyways?

Quote from this class:
"If you do cut off your finger, you are not allowed to scream, because you will scare everyone. Also do not bleed all over the station or you will have to clean your own blood. Do not ask for help because your finger is gone already. Come on, I am just kidding!" - Demo chef Vaca, while cutting a chicken. No one laughed.