The Meat Packer

So I work on a poultry farm but until today I hadn't really had to deal with the poultry side of things. The farm sells its poultry in various forms. We sell boned out chicken, marinated duck and poussin, chicken and turkey pot pies, chicken sausages, turkey burgers, quail, and more.

I'm a vegetarian but I really support the way the farm raises their birds and I really don't mind handling meat. Its a good thing too because for 4 hours this morning I packaged up somewhere around 200 of the "boned out" chicken. Mike and Irma cut the young chickens into eight pieces: 2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 breasts, and 2 wings. All the pieces were placed in a large plastic bucket (as you can see in the picture.) My job was to take two of each piece (not necessarily from the same bird) and put them into a cryovac bag. There is a special way the pieces get placed in the bag so that it will look neat and uniform. It is kind of mindless work and after four hours of repeating the same thing over and over I felt a bit like a worker on an assembly line. I would like to learn how to cut the chickens just right so maybe one day I'll ask to be taught. The carcasses are saved to make chicken stock. So much chicken stock gets made every week and yesterday I asked Mike how many gallons of stock he thinks he's made in the 3 years he's been working. A low-ball estimate he gave was 5,000 gallons!

Apparently more chickens are killed each week during the summer and so more stock is made. The stock isn't used very much in the summer so much of it gets frozen to be used in the colder months when more pot pies and soups are sold. Stock also gets sold as it is.

It always seems to be something new for me to do and I really enjoy how it gets switched up from day to day. One day I'll be putting crusts on hundreds of pies and the next I'll be putting hundreds of chickens in bags! Wonder what next week will bring...!

Live & Learn

Today I gained a healthy respect for the Hungarian Wax Pepper. Last week I had sliced them up for a sandwich with no problem and they didn't seem very hot when I ate them but this week was a different story. I was seeding the peppers without wearing any gloves and all of a sudden I noticed my eyes were starting to sting. I stopped handling the peppers and gave my eyes a little rub. Needless to say they got worse, soon I couldn't even keep my eyes open and my face and hands were on fire. Luckily one of the other cooks had a contact case and solution in her car and got it for me. When I took my contacts out my eyes started to burn even more, it was one of the most painful things. I kept flushing my eyes and washing my face and hands for about 5 minutes before I could start to see again. My contacts were out of service so I resumed working with very limited vision. Eventually my brother came and dropped off my glasses and I was able to see what I was doing.

When it was time to slice up the jalapeno peppers I was much more cautious wearing gloves and keeping my hands away from my face. I learned my lesson in dealing with peppers and will never make that mistake again! Hot peppers are really great to eat & not so great to have in your eye.

Making the Dough

There is a really good cookie we sell in the store. Its a chocolate cookie made with sea salt in the dough and sea salt sprinkled on the top of each cookie before its baked. Its the salty/sweet combination that everyone loves (or should love.) Today I made 56 lbs of the dough in three batches. The mixer did most of the work so I can't complain but after all the dough was mixed I had to roll it into four pound logs and freeze them. I thought that making cookie dough would be a fun job but it really wasn't that much fun. It certainly isn't the worst job but making 27 x a recipe of cookies is a lot different than making one batch.

I have the large large quantity recipe memorized now and will have to break it down if I want to make it at home from memory. I realize now how helpful a "bakers percentage" would be in this situation. Also if the recipe had been in pounds instead of cups it would have been easier to figure out exactly how to divide the dough evenly into logs.

Health Inspectors

I feel like when it comes to food some of the laws in this state are somewhat silly. We've been selling homemade iced cream out of a little shed on the farm. It has a sink and air conditioning, freezer, and refrigerator. It's really quite nice in there. The ice cream selling was going great and people were loving it. Then all of a sudden last Thursday the local health inspector lady came by to inspect the ice cream shack. She didn't look very pleased and said we really shouldn't be operating. The floor in the shed isn't "finished" and apparently that needed to be done. Because we were serving the iced cream and lunches through the window of the shed there are more rules and regulations than if we were to just scoop ice cream outside under a tent. That seems a little silly to me but for now we've moved the ice cream freezer inside the main building and sell it from there.

Bush Basil

One of my favorite things so far at work has been the opportunity to learn about new kinds of herbs and how to use them. The picture above is bush basil. The leaves are very small compared to traditional basil and much closer together making it look more "bush-like." It is also a bit more pungent and spicy than regular basil. Last week I used the bush basil on a margarita pizza. Instead of taking basil and chiffonading it, I used the leaves of the bush basil and left them whole.

I've learned about two other types of basil, lemon and Thai. Thai basil has purple stems and has a bit stronger flavor. Someday I'd like to make a pesto out of the lemon basil.

It seems that an herb garden can be one of the most useful and indispensable things for a kitchen. Being able to go out and pick what you need when you need it and how much you need is not only convenient but also less wasteful than buying herbs by the bunch.

Knife Skills

It was early Wednesday morning when I got a lesson in knife skills. It was a combination of talking with a co-worker, using a knife that I wasn't familiar with, and not practicing good cutting technique that resulted in me slicing of the tip of my left thumb. It wasn't painful and I wasn't scared; I just felt silly. I had been cutting zucchini with a 12" chefs knife that was much longer, taller, and sharper than I am used to using, not to mention I was cutting somewhat carelessly. After about 10 minutes the cut stopped gushing blood and I was able to bandage it up and wear a glove. I returned to slicing and Mike showed me again the proper way to tuck in fingers and thumbs while cutting to prevent such mishaps. Of course it wasn't as though I had never been taught that, it was just that I was being careless. So I didn't learn anything new that day, instead I realized the importance of why we learn and practice correct knife techniques on Day one in the culinary program!

The Start of Something New

Today is Saturday July 10th and the first 24 hours of my internship is complete! To my own surprise, I am feeling fairly confident and productive. Even more surprisingly I find myself looking forward to working next week! At the end of last semester I was dreading this whole internship course; I thought for sure I would hate it and be a failure. Perhaps I would hate it if I were working in a restaurant kitchen but as it is, the farm has been a fun place so far.

The kitchen at the Griggstown farm makes me feel comfortable, almost like my own kitchen. My job this summer will be to come up with a simple and seasonal menu for lunch that will be served Thursday - Saturday from 12-2 pm and to prepare those items. I will also be helping in the kitchen making salads, cookies, and other baked things and working in the new ice cream shack making homemade ice cream sandwiches and cones! While the kitchen is hot hot hot and working on the outside grill is roasty-toasty, working in the shack is pretty cool (literally!) since it stays air-conditioned at a pleasant 70 degrees.

On Wednesday I came in at 8 am and before I knew it, it was 4 pm and time to go home. I already am comfortable and get along with the people I will be working with. That's definitely a plus! It seems I will have a lot of freedom to do my own thing as far as the lunch menu goes. Mike, the sous-chef, told me he would get any ingredients that I might need and that I am free to experiment and do what I think would be fun.

The first thing I made on Wednesday was some tabbouleh salad, followed be a cucumber salad. I didn't have a recipe for the cucumber salad so instead of being nervous I just imagined that I was at home making it. How would I make this if I were winging it at home? That's what's fun about working here! After that, Mike was talking to me about being a vegetarian and asked what some of my favorite things to make are. When I told him that I really enjoy grilled pizza he suggested I put that on the menu for lunch. I suggested a sundried tomato and mozzarella pizza with pesto and he said to go for it. Again there was no recipe for the pesto. Of course it's a simple thing to make but I wanted my pesto to be fantastic. I pretended that I was at home making it, and it came out fantastic. On Thursday I brought in a pizza dough recipe and made up 1/2 lb. rounds of dough. They were a little to big and we had some problem with it sticking to the parchment paper so on Friday I made them 6 oz. and separated them with tin foil. Always learning!

Probably my favorite part about cooking here so far is that a worker on the farm will come into the kitchen with a bucket of eggplant he just picked and that we need for sandwiches. Or that when I need some herbs for a marinade I can walk outside and pick it.

P.S. The photo is obviously of one of my grilled pizzas. It is delicious in both my opinion and the customers! :)