Culinary School Diary: Week Seven

By OWEN MORRIS

We finally put our learning to the test when we had to prepare a full meal by ourselves — a classic French/American meal consisting of a airline chicken breast covered in pan au jus, mashed potatoes and blanched vegetables. Within those boundaries we were free to do whatever we wanted, such as plating, extra seasonings, portion size, etc. All the instructor said was he wanted a presentable plate at the end of class.

Before we could get that far, though, we had to cut our chicken breast off of the whole chicken. I am used to whole chickens. Roasted ones at the grocery store make a great meal and then a week’s worth of of healthy late-night snacks. But this was my first time dealing with a whole chicken that wasn’t hickory marinated and smoked. The first trick the instructor showed us was how to cut the chicken without letting chicken juice run all over the counter: He put the cutting board inside a bread pan (any shallow pan will work). It’s a simple trick that really works. Ten students were hacking away at ten chickens on the same table, and there wasn’t any chicken juice left on the table.

There’s more than one way to cut a full chicken, but in all cases you need to get rid of the wishbone lest your guests stab themselves in the mouth. The wishbone is located underneath a couple of layers of meat in the neck cavity. The teacher tried to show the class how to prod with a knife and find it, but the way to find it fast is to get your hands in the neck cavity and feel for it. Mine broke as I tried to remove it, leaving shards of wishbone in the meat, so I had to dig into the meat to try and find it, destroying the look of my chicken before I had made even one cut.