Culinary School Diary: Week 11

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By OWEN MORRIS

Last night’s lecture was initially focused on braising but like most of the lectures, the instructor quickly got on a tangent.

Braising is a method of cooking that uses a little bit of liquid and a lot of time to cook a tough piece of meat. It’s usually done in two parts: First you brown the meat on the stove-top and then you add some liquid and let it cook in an oven (pot roast is probably the most familiar braised dish here in the states). The idea of braising is a little counter-intuitive, in that you are purposely trying to overcook meat to get it to start to break down, which makes otherwise tough pieces of beef very tender.

In learning about braising, though, we also got a lesson in carrots. Or, as our instructor put it: “Please peel them before you tourne them.” (Tourne is a method of cutting vegetables in which you peel them into seven-sided cigar-looking shapes. Very hard to do, very impressive to do — but it creates a ton of left-over product.) “I had a student make these perfect tourne carrots but then he had to throw away the leftovers because the skin had the dirt and the grime on them. If he had peeled them beforehand, he could have added those into a vegetable stock.”

We also got an opinion on sachet bags: “It’s an old-fashioned practice not done out in the industry … bags are messy, they absorb that wonderful sauce you’ve worked so hard to create and take too much time to make. I say don’t use them.”

OK! Back to braising: The two main lessons were to use the appropriate size of braising pan, since the depth and the width of the pan can really change the way the meal will cook. You need a braising pan in which the meat and liquid but snugly — not too snugly. The other lesson concerned browning the meat. The textbook we use instructs you to make sure the pan is really hot before putting in the meat. But our teacher explained that had caused students in his other class to sear the meat and once a piece of meat is seared, the flavors change as it braises.

Finally we got to try cooking a couple of actual dishes.