Three dishes from culinary school and what they taught me

I’m almost finished with my first year of culinary school, and it has been such a rewarding time. I walked into this almost lost in what I wanted to do, but now, I can confidently say I want to work with food. Before this, I already had some experience with cooking, especially at home, so the jump into culinary techniques wasn’t too much, but I still learned a lot. Here are 5 dishes I’ve made this year, and what each of them taught me.

Chicken Chasseur

Chicken Chasseur is a French dish, consisting of seared chicken, usually a whole leg, that is then cooked in a tomato, mushroom and wine sauce. It’s tangy from the tomato and umami from the mushrooms, and it has definitely become one of my favourite dishes, especially when served with creamy mashed potatoes. It was one of the first dishes we made for our meat unit, and it was the meat dish for our exam, so I’ve become quite familiar with the recipe. Obviously, there are a variety of different recipes that you could follow, but the one we did had us sear the chicken leg, skin-side down, in a hot pan with oil until golden brown, removing the chicken and using that same pan to make the sauce.  The sauce, which starts with lightly sauteing shallots and mushrooms until fragrant and the mushrooms have browned, before deglazing the pan with white wine and adding canned tomatoes, and then letting it reduce until creamy. I personally thought the sauce a bit too acidic, so I added just a touch of cream to balance it out. Finally, we served it over creamy mashed potatoes. This dish is quite technique-heavy, with the use of wine and searing the chicken, which can be hard to do, especially as I used a stainless steel pan. During my mocks, I didn’t let the pan heat up for long enough, so the chicken stuck and didn’t get that nice golden colour. Mistake that I didn’t repeat in my exam. But this dish, alongside the Beef Bourguignon we had made previously, is the reason I learned to really enjoy mushrooms. Growing up in Brazil, the only mushroom I came to know was canned champignon, which is the main ingredient for Stroganoff. It is a Russian dish, but also very common in Brazil and usually served with white rice and shoestring potatoes. So mushrooms were not something I enjoyed, but after learning how to use them, they have become a massive part of my cooking. I’ve just finished my first bag of dried shitake mushrooms, and I used them for everything: mushroom risotto, noodles, bibimbap, and a lot more.

Risotto

Risotto is a classic Italian dish, and it is known to be quite hard. But after a few tries and with the right ingredients, it is not so difficult to get the sauce to a creamy consistency, while also leaving the rice grains with an al dente bite. The dish is rice-based, with shallots or onions, wine, a lot of Parmesan and butter, which gives it a creamy, velvety texture. The rice has to be a short grain variety, like Arborio, Carnaroli, Maratelli and many others. Of course, each rice will have a different cooking time and will give different results, but at home, I usually use Arborio. I’ll eventually try to make it with Sushi rice, which I heard might work. The dish also requires a soffrito, which in this case is thinly chopped yellow onions or shallots (we used shallots for a softer flavour), cooked until fragrant in butter or olive oil, then the rice is lightly fried and then cooked with broth, in this case, chicken broth we made in class. I’ve had bad experiences with risotto prior to the risotto class, so I was quite sceptical about it. It became very obvious that I had just eaten badly made risotto. And of course, my first try was very bad. Dry, mushy and overcooked. It turned out more like a porridge than a risotto. But there was one chef who made me truly understand the art of making risotto. In Season 1, Episode 7 of Netflix’s Culinary Class Wars, the chef Kwon Sung-jun, nicknamed Napoli Matfia in the show, made risotto on the group challenge, and it was such an eye-opening watch. And afterwards, I found a video of him also teaching how to make risotto (link), and that made it all make much more sense, especially in the emulsification of the sauce. Now it has become a stable at my home.

Chocolate mousse

Chocolate mousse is also French, but has become a very popular dessert worldwide. It was also a pain to make in class, because my teacher decided to make us whip egg whites by hand. We made the simplest recipe possible, using only dark chocolate, butter, eggs and sugar. The experience of whipping stiff peaks by hand is one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and I’ve already had to do it far too many times for my liking, but I do understand the necessity of this exercise. Just like when you are in secondary school, maths and some exercises you can’t use a calculator, even though in the real world you will probably always have a calculator with you, it’s important to know the basics, without shortcuts, before adding an extra tool. The same goes for the egg whites in the mousse. Whipping them by hand gives you a true understanding of what is actually happening. The addition of air to the egg whites, with the help of the sugar, creates a structured, smooth and fluffy meringue that is folded into the melted chocolate, butter and egg yolks. And after chilling, it becomes rich, creamy and velvety thanks to the Belgian chocolate we used, but I’m sure the same results can be achieved with a high cocoa chocolate.