HawkenProjects_2019_Shum

Concluding my experience working with Chef Lyons, Tim, and Jacoby, I really appreciate many new aspects of cooking. Before I watched Gordon Ramsay and met Chef Lyons, I really just thought food was just something you had to eat to survive. After projects, I think it is something more akin to art and more of a transporter to making people's lives feel better meal by meal. Certainly, through my project, I have learned to make simple, but delicious foods. Although I have answered my project's essential question, I have also learned how to present dishes, adjust the recipe on the fly, and cut produce like a pro. For example, when we were making a hummus dip for Monday's Rise and Dine event, we mixed the standard hummus recipe, then adjusted the product multiple times whether it be the level of paprika was too low or if it needed more tahini. Things like this a cookbook could never teach you - only a mentor can. Furthermore, Jacoby's project aim was to learn more about worki...

When I got to Chef's house this morning, we were already starting off the day in focus mode. Instead of having casual conversation while working, Chef was pretty direct and he wanted to get things done. First, we prepared the chicken with some of the ingredients that we cut up on Sunday night. We used chicken thighs since it would be the moistest part of the chicken, mixed it with potatoes and onions, and seasoned it with paprika, salt, pepper, parsley, and garlic. We made multiple batches which we put in the oven at 400 F for around 40 minutes. We worked pretty orderly, with one person on the seasoning, one person on the mixing, and another on cutting potatoes. This allowed us to finish the chicken early. By the time it was 10:30 am, we were just waiting on the last batch of chicken. Meanwhile, we went over to the catering refrigerator and loaded up all the other ingredients in Chef's car. We put them in special containers that would maintain the temperature of the ingredients...

Last week when Chef Lyons gave us a bag of all the produce we had to cut for Monday, he showed us examples of what they should look like. To ensure the cut vegetables would be the best quality for tomorrow, I waited until Sunday at 10 pm to prepare them. The first vegetable I cut were cucumbers. Chef gave us a total of two cucumbers, one diced and one sliced into sticks. The diced one would be for the couscous, and the sliced one would be for the hummus dip. For both of them, I cut them into segments and quartered them (cutting them vertically 2 times), used the knife to get rid of the seeds, then julienned them. For the dice, I just lined up the julienne and diced them up. The next vegetable was the potato. For the potato, I didn't have to skin it because it would be roasted with the Spanish chicken so there was no need for it. I literally just cut them in half and went through a whole bag of them. The most time-consuming vegetable to work with was parsley. I had to manually go th...

Today, Chef Lyons wasn't feeling too well, so we had an off day. Although I wasn't cooking at Chef's house, I was at mine! In the morning, my friend Eli came over to help me build a new computer for college. I had all my parts ready, but I didn't know how to assemble it... that's where he comes in! As the day progressed, we were starting to get hungry building the computer, so I thought it would be a great idea to make a stirfry for lunch. I made stirfry on the 3rd or 4th day at Chef's house, but it was fairly easy to make. I had bought the beef, produce, sauces, and spices from the local Asian market and Giant Eagles yesterday night, so I was set on the prep. First, I cut onions and bell peppers. I did the bell pepper first because I knew the onions would make me cry, thus effectively blinding me.To cut the bell pepper, I cut off both ends and made an incision in the flesh to make it rolled flat on the cutting board. To get rid of the seeds and the bitter pith,...

Today, we began our morning at Chef Lyons's house as always, but we prepared a dessert for another catering event: s'mores for 100 people for David's mom's event at University Hospitals! To recreate s'mores in an elegant and sophisticated style, we used Chef Lyons's recipe, which involved creating chocolate ganache (melted chocolate basically) and using that to cover marshmallows on sticks, coated with graham cracker crumbs. We started off by sticking marshmallows with sticks, which took a couple minutes. Afterwards, we went over to the stove and melted Hershey bars through the double boiler method which involves placing a bowl over a boiling pot of water to melt the chocolate. If we just had a pan on the flame, it would scorch the chocolate. The double boiler method reduces the risk of the chocolate turning into inedible black carbon. After we melted the chocolate, we dipped our marshmallow sticks into the melted chocolate then rolled it in graham cracker crumb...

Today was all about testing the menu for next Monday. First, as a warm-up we started off making chicken thighs and potatoes for the speech and debate team. We first marinated the chicken thighs with teriyaki sauce and a bunch of other Asian sauces and spices. Next, we cut herbs and potatoes and put everything in the oven. To begin testing our menu for our catering event, we tried making Spanish chicken. If it didn't taste as good as Chef Lyons's teriyaki chicken we would just choose the teriyaki over the Spanish. For the Spanish chicken, we roasted potatoes and red onions with paprika, herbs, and salt and pepper. We also added a hint of lemon zest and juice to elevate the flavor even more. It actually tasted amazing and fit perfectly with the required Mediterranean theme for the event. For lunch, we roasted our own Korean barbeque short ribs, which were amazing. After lunch, we made the perfect hummus after trial and error. Each time we made a batch, Chef Lyons made sure we all...

In preparation for our final project where we will prep and cook for 100 people at the Rise and Dine event at the Ronald McDonald House, Chef Lyons drove us early from Hawken to his house to come up with a final menu, with the theme being Mediterranean food. We all shared our ideas which we brainstormed over the weekend, and the list became: hummus/veggies for our appetizers, salad with oregano Greek dressing, Gazpacho soup, Israeli couscous, and a roasted Spanish chicken. Chef Lyons wrote down everything, and the ingredients we had to purchase. Also, our timeframe gave us a little under a week to test everything on the menu. At around 9:30 am, we headed to Dean's Supply, which is basically a department store for chefs. Although it is an exclusive shopping place for chefs, Chef Lyons told us we could use his business name in the future if we need to buy anything for college there, which is a huge bonus since everything there is extremely discounted and top-notch quality. For lunch,...

Like yesterday, we dealt with meat again... this time being chicken! First thing first, we practiced our knifework at the start of the day. We cut medium-large diced potatoes, celery, carrots, onions, and herbs and laid them to the side for now. Chef was planning on teaching us how to make oven-roasted chicken, so our knife work had to be on point or we could really hurt ourselves. Now the fun part: breaking down an entire chicken. While some parts seemed scary because of how slippery the chicken was, it was a great experience because it was something I would have to learn eventually, and I am honored to have learned it from a professional chef (also, Hawken should totally reimburse Chef Lyons for buying us each so many ingredients to work with)! After learning the different methods to break down a chicken, we seasoned the cuts with salt, pepper, and herbs and put the chicken on top of a bed of cut vegetables. We let the chicken roast in the oven for 3 and a half hours. For lunch, we d...

Today was quite eventful as well as we were introduced to many of the ways to cook. There are two categories: dry and moist. Dry consists of roasting, baking, sauteing, frying while Moist consists of steaming, poaching, and simmering. Chef Lyons's favorite method of cooking is braising, which is a combination method of sorts, where you first sear the meat to give it a good crust then let it simmer with some liquid in the oven. When we first arrived, we immediately started off with knife work. We prepped medium-large diced potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, and herbs to go along with the short ribs that we would eventually braise. After, we rolled our short ribs in herb infused flour and seared it in the frying pan for 10-20 secs on each side. Then, we added red wine and beef broth to elevate the flavor. We cooked the vegetables before adding the liquids, and eventually, everything went in the oven for around 3 hours. For lunch, we made beef stirfry. We each had a packet of skirt st...

Day one of my projects was an action-packed day! While most mentors may only take Hawken students as unpaid interns to do their office work and give them zero attention, David's dad, Chef Lyons, was something else. Rather than teaching us the basics and leaving us to cut away at vegetables for the entire day, he taught us the basics and definitely put in his heart and soul into teaching us how to properly cook and use knives! Before we even touched the cooking board, he told us wildly funny stories about how he left his corporate job for culinary school and old memories. Then, he taught us the fundamentals. Perfecting slicing techniques such as batonnete, julienne, and dicing is essential to our success as chefs. Tim and I first struggled a bit while Jacoby already seemed like a master at the craft, although we did get better as we practiced at home on the weekends. We used these slicing techniques on multiple vegetables such as bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and herbs. We also le...

After listening to presentations about carving wood, building automobiles, and hosting birthday parties for little kids the last month of my junior year, I had no idea what my project was going to be about. Would it be something I am already used to such as piano or would it be something completely different? Well, it turned out to be the latter. Fast forward to the halfway mark of senior year when we had pick a mentor and what our project would be. Thankfully, during the bleak months of the previous winter, I had watched multiple seasons of Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef / Masterchef Jr . Perhaps it was the cooking drama or Chef Ramsay's fiery ambition that impressed me, but nonetheless, I was hooked. That spring, I wanted to be a chef too so I too could cook, but I didn't know a single thing about proper knife skills, recipes, or even kitchen equipment. Also, my parents didn't help as they wouldn't let me purchase Chef Ramsay's $80 cooking m...