Day 69

My instructor, Chef Frerichs, pulled me aside today and provided me with some feedback. Not only is he my instructor but he is also a follower of my blog.  He feels that while my blog is "informative" it lacks "emotion". Me?  Lacking emotion?  .....for all of you who know me personally, the last thing I lack is emotion but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I do tend to restrain myself when it comes to my writing because I fear that if I let myself go, the floodgates will open and there is no going back after that. Or maybe it's not that at all....maybe it's that I have spent the last 6 years in management positions where I was coached over and over on how to control my emotions and "leave them at the door" while in a professional work environment. Or better yet,  maybe it's because I fear being stereotyped as an "emotional female" ....and who would want someone like that running their kitchen? Regardless of the reason (or reasons), I vow to work towards releasing more emotion into my posts because the last thing I would want is to not express my passion and feelings when it comes to food and everything food-related.  

In actuality, culinary school is as emotional as it gets for me. It is everything that I care about and ever wanted. It makes me genuinely happy on a daily basis. Cooking is the perfect balance of artistry and science and the final result nourishes not only people's stomachs but potentially, their souls. 

Today we produced sausage in teams of three and practiced making omelets. We made a cajun flavored sausage and a french roasted garlic sausage from ground pork butt and fat back that we seasoned and stuffed into hog casings. I brought some fennel seed from home to use as my secret ingredient which ended up being a wonderful addition to the flavor profile of our french sausage that we stuffed with roasted garlic cloves, parmesan cheese, fresh thyme, paprika, black pepper, salt, cumin, sage, white wine, and roasted shallots.  The cajun sausage was packing some serious heat with the addition of cayenne pepper, red chili flakes, and black pepper.  

Oh and those rolled french omelets.... sure, they're delicious, but perfecting the technique is exasperating.  You need just the right amount of fat in the pan with just the right amount of heat in order to create a perfectly rolled omelet without any color at all. I made close to a dozen omelets. I will say that the last one I made was vastly better looking than the first one of the day.

We were also given two quizzes - one on knife cuts and another on measurement conversions.