n l Melissa's Adventure

No one will ever compare her to Julia Child, but Melissa Clement has now completed culinary arts classes, and she has the vegetable lasagna and rum cake to prove it.

BY MELISSA CLEMENT
PHOTOS BY RACHAEL SANTILLAN

Each of my adventures is supposed to be something I have never done, something I haven’t done in a generation or so, or something I have never done well.

I can’t say I have never cooked. I reared four healthy children on nourishing food, but they have never said, “Mom, will you make some of that (fill in the blank) like you used to?’’

When my relatives get together, I ask, “What should I bring?” I am told in a cheery little fashion, “Just bring yourself, dear,” or “You can bring the wine.’’ I get it. Sometimes I take deviled eggs. I can make each one look interesting by putting a half-olive right in the middle of each deviled egg, so it looks like an eye. People don’t really taste deviled eggs anyway. They just sort of shove them in and swallow.

Chef Richard Kugelmann instructs Melissa Clement on proper knife techniques.

I was discussing this with chef Richard Kugelmann, who teaches culinary arts at Fayetteville Technical Community College. He said I needed to learn to cook a “signature dish.’’ It sounds so classy, I had to do it. And so my first adventure into the culinary arts began.

On a Friday, I went to the FTCC Culinary Arts Department on campus in the Horace Sisk building. I entered through the kitchen and was amazed at just how shiny clean the place is — talk about eating off the floor. I witnessed Kugelmann’s dozen students hard at work, taking orders and filling them, just as if they were in a commercial setting. Half the students practiced waiting tables while the other half did the cooking. It was a busy place.

BREAK OUT THE KNIVES!

On Monday, I joined the students in watching a video on sauce-making. It was complicated. If I had to make those sauces, I would be too exhausted to eat them. I learned that Bechamel sauce is the basis for lots of French sauces. I doubt I will make it, but it sounds good when it rolls off your tongue. When students went to the kitchen to practice, I watched and learned how to crack an egg and pass it from shell to shell until the white drops out. I went home and practiced this neat trick. It’s something I can show off for my family.

One of the important things I learned was knifery. In Chef Richard’s office, he unwrapped and laid out a bevy of knives, all for different uses you wouldn’t believe. One is a curved tourne knife used for cutting vegetables into a football shape. It was almost a reverent occasion, like some man showing you his treasured gun collection. These tools of the trade deserve respect.

Tuesday was a hands-on day for me, the day when the chef gives me private lessons on how to bake a rum cake, something I never would have attempted before.

Chef Richard was trained in classical French cooking. He says that in the mid-1800s, the French were the first to organize and set standards for cooking procedures and they perfected the art of cooking. He can use sexy-sounding terms like “mise en place,” which means “putting everything in place’’ or getting all ingredients and tools you need ready before you start the cooking process.

Fire-grilling the veggies.

It’s important. You don’t want to be running all around when you find you have just used up your last cup of eau de vie and have to borrow some from a neighbor in the middle of the night. The next important thing to do is turn on the oven unless, of course, you are just making a salad.

Next comes the mixing. I’m surprised when we start with cake mix, but do not follow package directions. It’s only used as a base as is the vanilla pudding mix to shorten the time it takes to make his own recipe. We use cottonseed oil because it has less flavor so it doesn’t interfere with the finished taste.

We go to the storage room and Chef Richard unlocks the storage cabinet. What a sight. He takes out a bottle of dark Bacardi rum, carefully measures and records the amount. One-half cup for the batter, another for the glaze.

During the mixing, I get a lesson in the proper use of a whisk, using your wrist rather than your arm.
The Bundt pan is sprayed and floured and the bottom filled with sliced almonds, which will be on the top when it is flipped over after baking.

While the cake is in the oven, we make the glaze using real butter. The chef believes in using the best and freshest ingredients and never mind the fat. “Fat is flavor. If you are worried about fat, take a walk the next day,’’ he says with an under-his-breath apology to his mother, who is extremely health-conscious.

The cake is almost done. To test it, he plunges in a giant toothpick. It comes out clean and after five minutes I am entrusted with turning the cake upside-down on to a plate. He says, “Be gentle.” I tell him I will. It’s my first time.

USING MY (LASAGNA) NOODLE

My next adventure is making his recipe for grilled vegetable lasagna. Here we put a wet cloth under the cutting board to stabilize it. I learn how to chop vegetables with a curved knife using a rocking motion and pushing away from my body. Breathe through you mouth when chopping onions and your eyes won’t water. I rough-cut portabello mushrooms, eggplant and other vegetables and toss them into a bowl, then add olive oil and basil, oregano and thyme. Smells good already.

The cook shows off her rum cake!

The chef demonstrates “painting” oil on the grill and positions thick-cut vegetables on it. In a few minutes, I turn them 45 degrees to create awesome cross-hatched patterns. This is fun. We later cut up the vegetables for the lasagna, but the flavor is still there. He says cooks who can grill properly are some of the glamour chefs of the kitchen.

The next step is to assemble the whole shebang. We layer three cheeses and vegetables on flat strips of lasagna in a steel pan and bake it for 45 minutes. Ahhh, the aroma. Now comes the rewards of all that work — eating the fruits of our labor, the out-of-this-world finished dish.

I learned some great things from Chef Richard, an enthusiastic teacher. Now, if I can just remember all of those things that I wish I would have learned years ago. n

> HELP! I’M MISSING MY CULINARY GENES!

> Learn to cook with Chef Richard, click here