I have two neon band aids on both of my pointer fingers and a few burnt red scars on my arms, proof of a particularly clumsy week at school. Someone told me that there is a bar in the Village that offers a free beer to people with cooking scars as an industry special. I am determined to find this bar on my less coordinated weeks.
Life has been busy and stressful. I have my first final for culinary school on Tuesday which will cover our textbook of well over 300 pages. It will also be our first practical, meaning we will be wielding our knives and cutting our vegetables into uniform shapes in front of our arbitrating chef instructors. Slightly intimidating if you ask me, but some small masochistic side of my personality is a little excited about the idea. In a way it is like a fake quick fire challenge. I half expect Tom Collichio to pop in and ask us how we are doing.
I should have been studying. I should have been home cutting mounds of onions and vegetables like a crazed Meryl Streep playing Julia Child in Julie & Julia, but I let my stress, my worries, and my overall somber mood take over. I let the procrastinator take over and I went to Liberty State Park in Jersey City to take a stroll along the pier with my favorite little man.
We both sat enjoying the view of the southern tip of Manhattan, next to a few guys fishing in the Hudson. Every so often a fish would bite and they would reel them in and toss them back a few minutes later. I wonder if they’ve ever brought the fish home and ate them. Urban legend tells of freaky fish along this stretch of the Hudson, not unlike Blinky the three eyed fish caught by Bart Simpson in Springfield, but I will stand by my precious Hudson and whatever creepy crawlers that may inhabit it.
The lazy day may have setback my study schedule, but it did provide some much needed amount of nothingness. You know the necessity to do absolutely nothing. It’s good for the soul and I plan on fitting it in on a more consistent basis.
Tonight I will be chopping more vegetables and paring Idaho potatoes into eight 7-sided bullets called a cocottes. We have 15 minutes to turn one potato into 8 perfectly uniform French bullets. To give you an idea of the shape that makes most culinary students cringe, check them out below. From what I hear, after using them at school, we will never have to use them again. Nonetheless I will dedicate myself to these French exactitudes while watching old episodes of Top Chef on my DVR.
Here are the cocottes as well as some caramelized pearl onions before we tossed them into our lamb stew.
