What are you, chicken?

The past two days have been poultry days and Poultry Day 1 was Identification and Fabrication, i.e., butchery and whatnot. I have to say, I'm not completely disappointed that I missed Friday's butchery class. I know this class is designed for chefs who are probably buying their chickens whole, but I plan to continue to buy my chickens already butchered. Amen.

Poultry Day 2 was a little more my speed: cooking the bird. I'm down with that.

Chef has been telling us that there are two ways to cook. The wet and the dry. Wet cooking would include boiling, simmering, blanching, or poaching. Basically, any cooking with liquid, except oil. For some reason, frying in oil, even deep frying, fall into the dry cooking category. Dry cooks include baking, broiling, grilling, and frying. Then we get into the fun stuff: Combination cooking, otherwise known as..... anyone? Anyone? Braising.

Braising includes a dry and a wet cook. Today we made Chicken Cacciatore, which falls into the category of braising, apparently.

We dredged the chicken (on the bone) in seasoned flour, shook off the excess, and added it to a saute pan with hot oil. Starting with the skin side down (even if there's no skin on the chicken), we pan seared the chicken (dry cooking) just to get a nice golden brown color on the bird. Once the color came out nice, we removed the chicken from the pan, but kept all the goodness, or fond, or leftover drippings in the saute pan and added onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, chicken stock, demi glace, and seasonings. You guessed it, this is the liquid that will finish off the chicken. We brought the sauce to a boil, reduced it a bit, and added the chicken back to the pan.

Oh, what fun it is to flambe! That's right, it's amazing and terrifying and awesome and terrifying. But, I must give the class credit: the building still stands.

The brandy is what makes it flam and the white wine is what makes it bay. (I don't think that's actually a thing).

The thing that's great about the kitchen at school is that all of the saute pans are oven safe, too. I don't have that at home and I'd love to be able to put my pans in the oven (hint, hint). Anyway, we covered the pan tightly with a lid and put it in the oven for 25-30 minutes,turning the chicken over after 15 minutes [insert arm burn here].

My Chicken Cacciatore looks a little something like this:

De. Lish.

Then, Chicken Milanese! Named for the city of Milan, this chicken bares a striking resemblance to The Schnitzel. But, I assume we can't call it a schnitzel in this context.

We took a chicken cutlet and butterflied it so it opened up and was very thin. Not thin enough, I guess, since we beat the heck out of it to get it even thinner. Paper thin. Used an English breading station (flour, egg, breadcrumbs), and then pan seared it to get a golden brown color, and finished it off in the oven for 5 minutes. We had each individually prepared a tomato salad and an arugula salad which is frequently paired with schnitz.. I mean, with Chicken Milanese. When the chicken was ready, I sliced it into thick pieces, and plated it like this with my salads:

Tomorrow we start lamb! Yum! Butchery? Not so yum. But I hope we'll get to the good stuff soon enough. 

Tip of the day: When adding something to a pan of popping oil, always place the food in the pan in a motion that moves away from your body. This way, any pops or splatters will be aimed at the wall behind your stove and not at your eyes. Unless you want fancy eyes.