Step Into Our Office, part 2

Ok, loyal blog readers, this is an official "my bad" from the Brainfood blogging department. The following post about Chef Teddy and Chef Matt's classroom visits is actually from last year. Yes-- last year. It was initially part of a collection of posts about guest chefs at Brainfood. Rather than let it moulder away in the drafts file, however, I thought I'd take a cue from class and serve it up anyways. Better late than...you know. Just do me a favor and mentally substitute the past tense when applicable.

*New posts on THIS year's class coming soon.

 Delicious Foods that Are Difficult to Spell with Matt
Who: Matt Demery, chef at the Park Hyatt, Columbia Heights Brainfood Volunteer 2006-2007
Why he deserves kudos: For being a weekly volunteer at Brainfood for a whole year, and then STILL coming back to guest chef classes. He’s equally willing to do a class on crème brulees and help us break down tables after Open Kitchen—awesome.
What’s cooking this time: Butternut squash spatzle, seared rockfish, pork belly, braised salsify, and pork jus. It was a tongue-twister of a class to say, but then again, with all the French vocab our students have waded through this year, they’ve learned to look past the pronunciation and focus on the taste. Under Matt’s instruction, students extruded the spatzle dough through a kitchen colander into a pot of boiling water. The dough bits quickly disappeared under the water, and resurfaced in a few minutes as bobbing little pasta buttons. Done. While the spatzle was getting processed, the salsify got a quick peel, and then a stovetop braise in a velvety mix of chicken stock and butter. Done. Having seared fish earlier in the year, students were quick to volunteer to monitor the rockfish, and were turning out meaty fillets with crispy skin in minutes. Done. Despite the great attention given to their dishes, the true star of the day was the one food that students did not cook—the pork belly. Matt had very considerately put an 8 hour braise on the pork belly in advance, and brought in the finished product for us to try. Needless to say, the magic of pork is still a real, tangible force in the kitchen as measured by how quickly it disappeared and how often students continue to clamor for a “class on how to cook that pork belly stuff”.


 Risotto 3 Ways—Teddy’s Encore Class
Who: Teddy, again
Last Time at Brainfood: February
What’s cooking this time: Italian Arborio rice, outfitted three different ways: one with mixture of lobster stock and crabmeat, one dotted with cremini and shitake mushrooms, and one traditionally cooked with herbs and roasted garlic. In his second visit to Brainfood this program year, Teddy followed up his mussel class with another homerun: creamy Italian risotto.
This time, however, Teddy came into the Columbia Heights kitchen, a smaller kitchen which made for a more personal class. Teddy’s mussels class, while exciting, involved a lot of directing traffic (kitchen traffic that is). His second class allowed students to concentrate on channeling their inner Italian nonna, as they stirred away at bubbling pots of rice and peppered Teddy with questions about all things food related. Other highlights of the day included the use of canned crab as a tasty and economical addition to the risotto and Teddy divulging his laissez faire approach to organic mushrooms: don’t wipe the dirt off, it will give your mushroom stock more flavor. You heard it here first.
There was one last surprise in store, however. As students sampled the trio of risottos, Teddy whipped out a jar of truffle pieces in olive oil and launched into the mysterious tale of How Truffles Are Gathered. With every detail, (Only in France?!?! By pigs and dogs?!?! Sold for thousands?!?!) students eyes bulged slightly father out of their heads. Lucky for them, Teddy proffered the jar around, encouraging students to try a small dollop on top of the already luxurious risotto. It was surprising and charmingly over-the-top, much like the chef himself.
-Carina