Culinary school flashback: Handling my first bad day

Since I’m often asked about what culinary school was like, I’m periodically re-posting “flashbacks” from the blog I kept during my certificate program at Le Cordon Bleu (2009–10).

First, a couple classmate shout-outs: Will, who took the photo above, went on to open an awesome barbecue joint in Roselle called Smokin’ Will’s, if you find yourself in the northwest suburbs.

And Stu, who helps save the day in this particular story, has since started his own business, specializing in artisanal pickles and bloody mary mix, so go check out the gorgeous website and buy some!

Now, the story…

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later: a night in the kitchen when it seemed like everything that could go wrong did indeed go wrong (all my fingers are still intact, however, so at least I did that much right). It started out fine — we were making our last two sauces, chicken velouté and sauce tomate…So we prepped everything for the sauce tomate just fine, adding carrots, onions, and salt pork to cook down before putting in garlic and deglazing the pan with red wine. Then we were supposed to put in diced tomatoes and tomato purée, but there wasn’t enough purée to go around, so everyone improvised a little with the tomatoes. Tie the string of the sachet of herbs around the handle, and the tomato sauce is good to go for at least a half-hour of simmering.

Or so I thought. I started the roux for the velouté — it was supposed to be a blond roux — and somehow the heat got really high and the roux got really brown, really fast. It started to char and smell terrible. The new Chef came over and said flatly, “That’s ruined. Start over.” I got flustered at this point, just because I didn’t expect to screw it up that badly, so I rushed into the dishroom and tried to clean the pan off before the roux adheres to it any further. But of course, it was way too hot to put water on and started sizzling like crazy. I dumped the roux in the trash, which also started smoking, and set the pan down, hoping it would magically cool itself. I eventually got most of the roux off, and went back to the burners.

Then it got worse. While I was gone, Stu and Tony informed me, my tomato sauce got scorched. Big time. Again, not sure how the heat turned itself up, but I looked into the pot and saw a black mess of vegetables, the bottom layer completely glued to the bottom of the pan, with the sachet melted in the middle. And did I mention that the string to the sachet kept unwrapping a bit and dipping down into the burner, causing it to catch on fire? This probably happened at least three times — I kept putting it out with my towel. So new Chef sees this little sauce disaster and just goes, “Just scrap tonight. It’s not going well for you.” Then, thankfully, she showed a kinder side: “But if you’re really careful, you can scrape the top part (the part that wasn’t burned) off, add water to it and save it.” I attempted this, transferring the salvageable part into another pot, and it worked out alright, though I had way less yield that I did before. I took the ruined pot into the dish room and started scrubbing — it was my fault, so I should be the one to scrub the pan. Then, just for good measure, I splattered a black, greasy mix of pork fat and burnt tomato all over my apron. Doubt that’s coming out in the wash.

Struggling to pull it together, and keeping my tomato sauce on VERY low heat, I set to starting my velouté over. Stu gave me his extra roux, which was very helpful, so all I had to do was whisk in chicken broth. New Chef (who had grown accustomed to checking on me by this point) told me when my sauce was the right consistency and had me show it to Chef in the other kitchen. “Just a hair thick” was all I got, so that worked for me. Then my small amount of tomato sauce went through the food mill to show Chef, who evidently was only checking for consistency and thankfully would NOT be tasting what I’m sure still had a generous helping of burnt flavor. He was in a rush, so I got a “very good” before he sent me on my way. After all that!! So I guess of all the nights to go horribly wrong, this one was a decent choice.