Week One - Stocks and Knife Cuts

Week One was mainly us just getting into the swing of things. Us being the students and our skills instructor. He's retired Navy, has been a West Wing chef for years and years, and is a really easy-going, vibrant, happy man. And he knows his stuff. Thursday night class is our "lecture" period. We went over our syllabus, expectations, dress code, professionalism, etc. Friday and Saturday night classes are our "labs" when we actually cook what we discuss in the lecture. So every week is roughly 4 hours lecture, 9 - 10 hours lab. Thursday, we split up into three groups, which will be our groups for labs. I must say, my group is shaping up to be the best...but more on that later.

Friday and Saturday we prepared our white and brown stocks and worked on our knife cuts, of which there are seven: julienne (1/8" x 1/8" x 2"), brunoise (1/8" x 1/8" x 1/8"), paysanne (1/2" x 1/2" x 1/8"), batonnet (1/4" x 1/4" x 2"), and small (1/4" x 1/4" x 1/4"), medium (1/2" x 1/2" x 1/2"), and large dice (3/4" x 3/4"x 3/4"). We're tested periodically on the spellings, measurements, and actual cutting of these so you'll most likely be seeing me list them out in an effort to help me study. Same with the mother sauces, but that's Week Two.

Brown and white stocks are fairly basic and easy, which equals tedious. But man do they smell good. Next up: Week Two where we create the five mother sauces out of the two stocks.