Welcome to Cooking with Chef Tom Beyond the Bird.

I'm KC Counts and I am joined by Chef Tom, who has become a little bit of a regular with KRWG public media.

What an honor it is.

It's done for us.

Well, thank you.

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We as we approach the biggest food holiday of the year, are going to do something a little bit different.

I know that over the years, just talking with family and friends, it comes up from time to time.

Let's do something a little different this year for Thanksgiving.

And so that' where Beyond the Bird came from.

And you are going to show us how to have a turkey-less Thanksgiving That is correct.

it's working out well, because we're actually in my class today.

Tell us about this room and what happens here.

This room is our demonstration lab.

We come in here as chefs.

We have a culinary team that this is where we do our demonstrations.

We can use our cameras and record demonstrations.

We had the New Mexico Beef Council come in, and we broke down a side of beef.

One afternoon the master butcher took it all, all the way down to the steaks from the whole side.

And then we cataloged those onto the computer so the students have a resource to actually do some research before they head into class.

Some of the other things we've done is we've actually done a KRWG show during COVID from these labs here where we broadcast from here via Facebook to KRWGs audience.

That was torture because obviously I was in a studio isolated Che Tom was here with all the food.

Yeah so.

and you hear some people here, we've invited some friends to come up and join us today, which is great because it's now a live studio audience.

They are going to participate not only with questions, but we're going to feed them today.

How does everyone feel about that?

[Clapping] Thank you for being with us.

Yes.

We appreciate everybody getting up early, being here right on Friday.

So we're going to have some fun today.

My students will actually be the ones coming up here and preparing the food.

And today's menu features six different dishes.

We're going to start with soup and salad.

It's a Granny Smith apple salad and a Christmas tortellini soup that we will present to you.

And then we're going to follow that with some roasted Brussels sprout with canndied Walnuts and Brie.

The entree will be a red chile-crusted lamb chop with Duchess Sweet potatoes and tri color carrots.

And then we're going to finish with chocolate mousse.

Yes.

And we're going to do it all within an hour.

Yes.

Yeah.

So tell us a little bit, Chef Tom, about what's happening back in the kitche and what the students are doing as we're here talking to the audience.

That's a good question.

What are the students supposed to be doing while we are... They're suppose to be showing up any second now with our first course.

They've been here for a couple of hours, planning ahead.

They've been working on this for a week, getting the knowledge of their recipes, researching the ingredients.

They came in early this morning, started preparing all the food, and then as they finish their dishes, they'll come in here, present the food, and will serve our guests.

All right.

Now, tell us a little bit about the program and what students experience as they make their way through the program.

The program is a two year associate's degree.

You can also get a certificate.

We have a real intense curriculum.

We bring them in in August.

The cohort studies together, there's one that starts on August one because we work an eight week mini semesters.

So the students are together for eight weeks and then they go to the next level when the new group of students come in in October.

So we're getting ready to start another cohort.

They come through and they work on a building block pattern where what they learn in the previous class translates to the next class, and we just keep building on that till the final semester.

They're here as when they actually serve the public a three course meal here in our dining room.

I want to remind everyone that the recipes that we're going to be enjoying today can be found on our Web site KRWG dot org.

And you can also find this program if you have to miss any part.

You want to go bac and make sure you get it right.

You can find the program on our website as well.

So let's start with the recipe for the very first dish.

The first dish is a tortellini soup.

We're trying to be a little bit different with what we're doing.

This class has been studying different cuisines, different ways to celebrate from not just our culture here in the United States, but from around the world.

We served a British cider soup, cider and onion soup in a previous class, but today we're we're doing the tortellini.

We'll talk a little bit about how you paired everything today and kind of what went into the decisions of what you were going to serve.

Well we want to make sure that we're using ingredient that are relative to the season.

We have a lot of cranberries in here in our area.

We have nuts.

We're doing a pistachio butter on our carrots today because, you know, we're known for our pistachios here and we're using a lot of the flavors.

Our lamb, which is typically a dis that comes out of New Zealand.

We're going to take it in New Mexicofy it with some green chile powder or red chile powder.

I'm sorry.

And then we've enhanced that with some of the flavors from around the country we brought in cumin into this rub.

And it's just a phenomenal just the way it all works with the sweetnes of the carrots and the potatoes.

The potatoes are going to be beautiful.

They're going to be nic and fluffy in a big cone shape.

And so they're going to be real nice.

And so it's going to be it's funny.

One of my students once called the Duchess Potato a gourmet tater tot because it's crispy on the outside and and fluffy on the inside.

But yeah, so we said it's traditionally made with a russet potato, but we're swapped out for sweet potato because that's typically done around this time of year.

Now you'll notic that nothing is pumpkin spice.

There's some things that are way overdone.

So we're not doing anything pumpkin spiced.

So tell us a little bit about your own background and how long have you been teaching now?

I've been teaching just over 11 years.

And so before that.

I've been in the industry for about 35, 38 years.

I know I don't look it, but I started as a baby.

As a baby.

A baby chef?

Yeah.

So what what made you transition into teaching?

I think my passion for sharing the knowledge with others, there' a lot of educators in my family, and then I look back at my career and I go, okay, well, as a corporate trainer, going into a restaurant or a facility and you're trying to fix what' going on and you're discovering things are operating properly and then you're retraining people.

It's the same as teaching where you go in and yeah, our first dishes have arrived.

It is just phenomenal to sit down with the new chefs that are becoming culinaries, and have some really aha moments where they actually get what's your, you know, wha you're trying to relate to them.

Hello, Samuel.

Hello, chef.

How are you?

Good hows everything going?

Doing well.

What did you bring us today?

We brought you um... Apple Crisp I'm going to have to get my notes out.

We did today.

A tortellini Christmas soup and also a holiday Honeycrisp salad.

And we will show you how the salad was prepared and prepped and then the Dzeck Jared is here and is gonna help serve as well.

Okay, beautiful.

Have the soup on board.

You want it on the stovetop.

Yes.

Okay.

Why don't we we're going to start with the soup because that wa we can get these to the table.

You going to take it from here on out to the tables?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

We're going to go down this side for those that are here in the studio audience, we want to thank you for your patience while we are workin through this for the first time.

What goes on in our head planning this is now being translated to live.

So we're going to make sure that you guys get some soup here pretty quick and then you're going to do this salad here.

Okay, You'll be underneath this, but your head on the beam.

So you're going to hear some little instructions that we're doing just becaus we want to keep everybody safe.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So the soup, let's take the lid off.

Ohhhhhh.

Ahhhhhh.

But wait.

Ohhhhhh.

Oh, so and they call it a tortellini soup because there's tortellini in it What else do you have in here, Sam?

We have crushed tomatoes, chicken broth.

There's diced spinach with baked bacon and Italian seasoning and garlic and onions.

So this sounds like a pretty easy recipe, right?

So this sounds like a pretty easy recipe, right?

It is.

Top with Paremsan Okay, I'll let you do that.

Tell us a little bit about the starting point for this soup.

The starting part was I just got a soup can was bigger than that.

And we put a little bit of oil, diced up the bacon and let that bacon simmer unti it was crisp and then afterwards we added the onions that cooked for about up, cooked down for about 3 to 4 minutes.

And then with that we added the garlic, fresh garlic that was minced and that was cooked down for another one minute.

And then after tha we added three gallons of stock.

We let that cook u to heat and boil and after which we added the crushed tomatoes and then let that simmer.

Oh, and tortellini which was the best part I think other than the bacon.

and then other than that and the spinach was last, you don't want that to work so much so that spinach cooked downward the soup as well.

And thats how we got our tortellini soup.

All right.

Thank you.

Your welcome.

[Clapping] You know, one of the things that' so it's a beautiful soup, right?

It's colorful.

And and it really has a really rich look to it.

And then you're adding just that parmesan cheese there at the end.

And the unique thing about most of the recipes that we do here is we eliminate a lot of the salt because we're able to get the salt from things like parmesan cheese.

It's a little bit different than just having a salt shaker on the table.

In fact, most of the restaurants I worked at, the first thing I've done as a chef has come in and removed the salt pepper shakers from the table because I want them to try it.

You know, as an artist, we put a lot of effort and time into these dishes and we want the people to under... to truly understand our art form at its purest.

And this is a simple recipe.

The beauty of this is also having salt from the bacon that's in the soup as well.

It always pains me, and I don't know if you know anyone who does this, but it always pains me when I see someone salt their dish before they've even tried it.

It's like, I know I' going to want this extra salt.

So no, not having the shaker there in the first place.

You must have seen some people get a little nervous about that or.

Yes.

Or like quite think too much salt in there.

I went to culinary school in the late eighties, earl nineties, and one of my chefs, and I'll never forget his name was Corky.

He was our fish chef.

And he told us that as a culinary student we were selfish and we didn't understand it at the time.

And he says, you all are here because you want tha instant feedback you thrive on.

Did I do well with that dish?

Does my customer like it or my guest?

You know, it could be a family member.

And he said you want that instant feedback?

If I was an architect, which is another fantastic honorable art form, they wait years to get the feedback because it takes forever to build a building.

But here we create a dish and I can look out in the audience and tell you if we're getting good feedback or not.

So and it keeps us going.

One of the other questions I get as a chef is what's your best meal you ever cooked?

I haven't done it yet, But that that keeps me going.

I always want to do better than the last dish because that's what we're known for.

You're only as good as your last meal that you've prepared.

So do you have a go to tester for maybe new recipes that that you're creating someone that you trust to be absolutely honest with you.

Yes.

And they're right here beside me.

All my students, if they don't like it I know it's not going to sell.

But I also have to make it easy enough that a student or a novice can prepare it as well, because I want everybody to be able to enjoy it.

The first day that they're with me in Chef one-oh-one, I ask them 15 questions and one of them is always, What's your favorite restaurant?

And some of the questions or some of the answers I get are just phenomenal.

I had three students in on class tell me that there was a a fast food restaurant that was their favorite, and I was like, okay, well, let's define restaurant.

I said, some of these fast food restaurants are more like a ga station in more ways than one.

So, but as they grow and learn, we take their awareness of what quality food is as well as culture in our labs.

If you were to wander down right now, you'd hear classical music.

I think I have a Vivaldi playing in the in the labs right now because I want them to be awar that there's more to life than pop music and fast food.

So we want them to sit down and enjoy the meals.

Does everybody have a bow of soup in front of them?

Yes.

Okay.

And delicious.

[Clapping] So the way my class operates now on these Fridays, are we take somebody like Sam and you'll meet two other team leaders today that they've been in the program long enough to know where all the ingredients are and what the techniques are.

So we make them team leaders.

We have some of what we call lower classmen.

They've just started.

We also have some dual-credit high school students with us today.

And so they're learning how t work in a professional kitchen.

The and Sam is their group leader.

These classes can range from I think we have 23 or 24 students on this roster.

I've had up to 36 students in a class.

And if I have to answer the same question 36 times, it gets kind of frustrating.

So I assign group leaders and they'll take the lead.

And I the first question I ask a student, they come with a question, Did you talk to your leader?

Because I should answer.

If we have five teams, I should have the answer the same questio five times instead of 36 times.

But Sam has stepped up and been a phenomenal leader for this group.

So well done there.

I'm going to move the camera over so you can see how the salad is prepared.

Please enjoy your soup while he does his salad.

Well as you can see we do have a bit of mixed greens here that was already prepared and I had my tea set up a mise en place for me, which is get your ingredients in order.

So this is just help us speed along the display right now.

So at this point it's going to be a honey crisp apple salad.

So so it's a great holiday one, right?

Everybody likes apples.

The dressing wa actually made with apple cider vinegar, honey, lemon and vinaigrette.

So that was a vinaigrette honey dressing.

I'm going to wait to last so lets add dried cranberries.

We're going to be generous to sprinkle those around.

And what are the things here?

They'll go ahead.

Go ahead.

Who likes blue cheese?

Because a lot of the students, I realize, do not like blue cheese.

And I'm a fan of cheese.

Cheese day here is always a fun day, because I always have students that say, oh, I'm lactose intolerant.

And I was like, okay, I'm going to ask you a question.

You don't have to answer it, but I want you to think about this.

Are you lactose intolerant, crampy or explosively?

Because if your explosive?

Don't taste these cheeses, but we do put about six goat cheeses in there, and that goat cheese has no lactose in it.

So those that are lactose intolerant, that are missing cheese, try goat cheese.

Manchego is a great cheese.

It comes out of Spain.

It's got a brown rind and it's got it's made with goat milk.

So what I'm doing is jus not adding everything at once.

While I like to mix, adjustin to toss the saldad, so that way we can see maybe we don't need everything.

And while you're doing that, all float a question to you, okay, What is the filling for the tortellini and how do you go about getting the torta tortellini recipes?

Well, in Chef Castro, she's somewhere in the studio audience today.

She actually teaches how to make tortellini and traditional.

She does hers with ricotta cheese and garlic and herbs, teaches the fold.

It's a very technical fold to keep it together because sometimes you drop it in the water and it falls apart and how you filling comes out in the essence of time.

We actually bought frozen tortellini today because Sam's already learned how to make the tortellini, so I wanted to teach them how to apply it to the soup.

So these are cheese filled tortellini, parmesan and ricotta cheese in this.

So tell us about the choic of Apple Chef Tom for this salad Well, we wanted to do Honeycrisp unfortunately, our vendor didn't have those in stock and sent Granny Smith in place.

Granny Smith's a little bit tarter.

The Honey Smith or a Honeycrisp Apple is a much more delicate apple which holds up really well with this this dish.

But we like to have that crunch in there.

When we design a plate, we lik to have what we call the wheel.

So you're going to have something soft and something crunchy and you're going to have something savory and something a little bit more sweet.

So some of the dishes, you'll see we're going to have like something that counterbalances the boldness of of of a dish with maybe a sweet glaze, which is going to go the carrots are going to complement the red chili on the lamb today quite well.

But we want to have those contrasting flavors and textures.

So it's not just about the the one dish, it's about putting the whole composition together.

And so one of the things I was going to mention about the Cranberries is we can infuse a little bit of a different flavor in the cranberrie by steeping them in in a liquid.

So if we wanted to ad maybe a cinnamon flavor to it, we can do warm cinnamon water soaking in there and then they'll plump up a little bit.

It won't be as chill.

So even if you have cranberries from last Thanksgiving on your shelf.

Oh, I do.

Yeah.

You can.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

We can actually reconstitute them because they're dried.

And so all we're doing is replacing the water that's been taken out of them.

Right.

That's one of those things.

You buy the cranberries in the ba and you only need a quarter cup for whatever your recipe is, and then the bag stays in ther and then you forgot you had it.

So you went out and got another one the next year.

I think I have about a decad of cranberry pantry somewhere.

So they're vintage.

That's right.

okay Im gonna give this soup a try here.

And I am a notoriously messy eater, so we'll see how we can do you know today But I'm sure that by the.

Oh, that's why I have the apron on.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm only a messy eater when I'm wearing white.

Mm mm.

Mm hmm.

There's something about tomatoes.

I think I put them in just about every soup.

Yeah, well, they do at a level of sweetness as well as like Sam was saying, the acid.

So the acid will help cut down on some of th the pleasure factor of the fats.

So did you use fresh tomatoes in the soup?

We did not.

We use canned.

Okay, so just a crushed or?

Crushed can thats in a tomato puree.

In puree.

Yeah.

yeah.

One of the things that the students discover her is how to use a fresh product.

Also how to use a quality source product.

And so we spent a lot of time on product identification and product knowledge.

Our local vendor here does great work.

They support our efforts quite well and they love supporting education.

So when we look at a what they call the book, it' basically everything they sell.

We go through and we teach the student how to look at identifiers that, you know, okay, this may be the cheapest, this one's the more expensive.

But also let's look a how many portions we get out of.

So there's a lot of math that goes in.

Yes, math.

I would have been s disappointed to find that out.

But it was it was funny today.

We had our briefing this morning and I said, okay, here are the recipes we're going to be preparing.

I print out copies for every team.

And I was like, By the way, we're cooking for 60 people today.

You need to scale these up.

So they have to learn, Am I going to make it till I have 60 portions and then stop or am I goin to make it once for 60 people?

So they have to do the math in order to do that.

So how often is there a pivot when you're creating dishe and you are really putting a lot of thought into the sourcing?

And how often do you have to change your plan?

More often than people to know.

So that's one of our secrets we keep in the back.

Now we pivot a lot.

We are probably one of the most flexible industries because things always happen.

Trends are happening.

Unfortunately, there's recalls, so there's times where we can't look.

He was saying that he used spinach, so this time where you can't ge fresh spinach, so what do we do?

So we'r always looking for alternatives and some substitutes are work better than others.

There's times where we go in there and I'm like, I know we it was on the shelf, but now we can't find it.

Or you open the box and the quality is not there.

So you have to do something because you can't deny your customer.

You can't say, okay, well it came in bad, so sorry you don't get lunch today.

One of the things that comes to mind as we're having this conversation and since November, livestock imports have been halted at the southern borde due to the New World Screw worm.

And there have been other pressures on beef producers in the United States related to ongoing drought.

So how does something like that impact your choices here in terms o the price of beef skyrocketing?

And.

Well, one of the things we teach our students is keeping up with current events.

You know, pay attention to the news, pay attention to the things that are happening.

The price of gas actually influences the price of beef two years from now.

And when you explain why and how they start to understand we just read an article in class the other day about the lamb industry, which is why we're featuring lamb toda instead of beef is because lamb is going to be more prevalent in the near future because of of the rising cost of beef.

So chefs are going to star looking at these alternatives.

And so I'm hoping that everyone enjoys their lamb today.

Some people go, oh, they're so cute, but they're delicious.

So cute.

Um.

So how is everyone enjoying the salad?

Yeah, very nice.

Yeah.

Thank you.

When you when you try the lamb, don't feel badddddd.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Toms gots jokes.

And if you can have some people, we have another question.

Oh, Chef Tom.

Yes, And it's ca the salad be done with different cheese or apples or are these the best to use?

Why would you change my recipe?

Why do we do the soup last now?

No soup for you!

Yes.

These are guidelines.

These are not.

I even tell when I was in the restaurant side of our industry that the menu.

I was one of those chefs.

You see some sort of say absolutely no substitutions because they don't want to flex.

This is the way I put it together.

And you will have it my way or not at all.

I'm the type of chef that this is my list of ingredients, and this is how I plan on putting it together for you.

And if you like that, I'll do the work for you.

But if you see something on one dish that you want to apply to another dish, great because that allows me the opportunity to look at it and go, I like this.

Let's make this into another dish.

Chefs are always learning.

We get up every day and we come to school learning from our students.

We learn that our instruction may not be the most effective in educating our students.

And so we have to change.

We have to be abl to pivot our teaching process.

And it may be the same class at the same time every fall, but it' a different set of individuals.

And so we have to learn that we may end up having to change not just products but methods and instruction.

So we come in going, we are learning every day.

So we have a mantra here in our labs that we want our students to take this to heart, that instead of, Oh, I have to go to school today.

No, you get to go to school today.

So when culinary arts, they ge to dot dot dot, whatever it is.

And so we're changin their mindset to come in craving on what they're going to do today.

I said, D they say I get to wash dishes?

Yes, actually, my turn, my turn.

Try that at home.

Yeah, because the other students get to mop the floor.

So.

Yeah.

So for an experience like this what, what what does this mean, an experience like this to the students?

Having guests here?

When I announced this early on in the class, they were excited and then they started thinking about the reality of it.

And then they thought last Friday I had some that were like, I think I'm going to call in sick.

And because it's kind of overwhelming when you are so used to cooking one plate to be evaluated by your chef, We take a bit of every component on the plate.

That's how we have to grade.

This isn't this is a grade book.

It's not a beer belly.

And so we have to we have to evaluate the technique.

Do they cook it properly and then they take that home.

So that's one way.

And then we start expanding it.

So it's the ones that are further along in the process that are enjoying it and then leading the way.

Like Sam, he brought his team in there.

They were nervous.

I could see it in their eyes, but Sam pulled them along and now they're going to go back and go, okay, it's great.

I can hear them talking in the kitchen right now.

You dont want to know what the are saying, but I can hear them.

But it's a growing experience every every step of the way.

And they're going to learn this.

Now, we have som that come in from the industry.

They just want to hone their skills or learn more than what they're learning at the facility that they're working at.

And then we have people that are just like, Yeah, I'll give it a shot.

Yeah.

And it's actually kind of interesting to see how they interact with each other and then grow as a unit.

I wanted to ask a little to You could talk about the salad dressing, right?

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is so delicious and so light.

So tell me again how that was put together.

It.

The base is olive oil and cider vinegar.

And then I asked them to sweeten it up with a little bit of honey to kind of take that acidity and kind of neutralize it a little bit with something sweet.

And the the best flavors come from the more simple dishes.

So I think there's only like six ingredients in the whole thing.

You have to check ou the website to get the recipe.

That's right.

Okay.

KRWG dot org you can find all of the recipes there and and also the program, right?

That's correct.

So for folk who are listening on the radio especially valuable to go and so that you can get the visuals and get those recipe and thank you for sharing those.

I know that sometime chefs are a little bit reluctant to share recipes, and so do you have some that you keep that are your secret recipes?

Most of the chefs will always keep one ingredient back.

Oh, so the recipe for the lamb I didn't put lamb on there.

Yeah.

No.

If I'm running a steakhouse in the steak house down the street wants to run a topping that I'm doing, we always say, Oh, yeah, we put this and this, and.

And we never share the ratios, so they have to figure that part out.

Unfortunately, you get to see a lot of these through social media now.

So they're like, Oh, I can yo know, you I can replicate that.

But there's always something that a chef does, and it could be just a technique.

Like when I use cayenne pepper, I always dry toasted in my saute pan so it doesn't have that metallic flavor when I add it to whatever.

So I get my brand new jar of cayenne pepper and I toast the whole thing because I know I'm going to toast it eventually.

So you use it that way all the time?

Yes.

And then I put it back in the container.

It's already ready to go.

So but that's one of the tricks that I learned along the way.

So is it just a couple of minutes?

Yeah, it's a low, low heat.

No oil, because you just want to keep it dry and just stir it around.

You don't want to toast it, but you just kind of want to bring out the the flavors.

Now, that's one of those that you don't want to flip because you're going to end up sneezing it all over the counter right.

And so does it change the look of it at all we're looking for to know that it's done.

You you it will change the hue of the redness, but once it starts to turn brown, you're going to start to pick u a little bit of a burnt flavor.

So you want to avoid that.

So you want to pay attention.

It's not one of those things we we also teach that there are certain things you can put on the stovetop, like I'm going to put pasta water on, come back and salt it right before I put the noodles in.

But while the water is there, I could walk away from it.

Go do something else.

I don't have to sit there and watch it.

This is one of those things you have to watch.

Okay.

Great question.

How do you approach altering recipes for dietary restrictions?

We've got dairy free gluten intolerance mentioned earlier, etc.?

Well, that's one of the things that was really fascinating.

I got to be the fly on the wall in watching Chef Castro teach a class on vegan food, and it started weeks before having to source the products vegan cheddar cheese.

I believe she brought in, you know, in some of these things, you're like, huh.

One of the best dishes that came out of that week was a vegan chorizo, and it was really cool.

The class rolled it into taquitos, but you, if you didn't kno the difference that it was tofu based, you wouldn't know tha it wasn't, you know, fo-chorizo So it's one of those thing because it can be hard to find those vegan products that are I'm sorry, that are good.

I've had so many bad, you know, fake meats and fake cheeses.

Right.

Right.

And so it's but I know ther there's they've come a long way.

That they have.

And watching her teach this class kind of opened my eyes and it's seeing the world from a different perspective, you know and there are some that are dietary an then there's some that are fads.

And I'm talking abou the individuals that are like, Oh, yeah I want to try this latest thing.

So I'm my sister was guilty o that when she went to college.

She's like, I'm going to be a vegetarian.

Well, out of convenience, all of her friends are vegetarian.

They grew up that way where she grew up.

You know, in a military family, we go to steak night at the mess hall every Wednesday.

And but it was out of convenience for her.

So there are some people that, you know, are experimenting, which is great.

But again, that's why we get up every morning and learn something new.

It's not like, okay, no, you're going to eat ground beef burgers all the time.

Black bean burgers are were one of the earlier crazes and the evolution of some of these.

Now, there's some synthetic things that we kind of have to go what' the long term effect of these?

Because our art form and this is something really heavy for the students to to comprehend is our art form becomes part of the consumer.

So the soup that you've made your body is now.

I am one with the soup.

Yes.

Yes.

But your body's absorbing the nutrients out of it and getting what it needs.

So that's a huge responsibility as an artist to put that in front of somebody and say Please enjoy, that's one thing.

But now please, this is going to be part of who you are.

And so that way is real heavy with them.

Sometimes.

I am never going to forget that.

All right.

Okay.

Ileana please come say hello to them.

Say hello to our friends.

Hi.

Have you considered calling in sick today?

Now I do.

Thank you so much for doing this for us.

This is beautiful.

Okay.

Would you like to tell everybody what you made?

So what my group did today was the lamb chop with the red chile rub and then the trifle carrots with pistachio orange butter and our super sweet Dutch potato and Danny's group actually did the brussel sprouts.

Come on in, Danny.

Hello.

So for us, it's oven roasted Brussels sprouts, and we added a little honey slash spicy glaze and a candied walnut and topped with a brie cheese.

So.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Well, instead of just showing them, why don't we give them a plate?

You know, I mean, when you look at this plate, you really do think Thanksgiving, don't you?

And there's no turkey an there are some sweet potatoes.

So that's.

Yes, So.

So one thing that would that might come with from your traditional plate.

Correct.

What made you keep the sweet potatoes?

Well, a lot of the ingredients, because of their seasonality and the abundance that we have, cranberries is always available.

So the prices become less expensive and everybody's price conscious now because of everything that's going on in in the the entire country.

And so we want to make sure that we are buying stuff that's economical and sweet.

potatoes this time of year are quite affordable.

So we put them to use and in several.

things.

We talked a little bit about some of the things impacting beef, but you know, our tariffs impacting food?

If they haven't, they will.

And some we are seeing some prices, especially our proximity to the border, like you're saying, the beef coming across the in the border, it's it's going to impact pricing.

The avocados that we get, they're going to skyrocket.

And I know the growers, we try to get as much source locally as we can because A here at the community college, we want to be part of the community and helping the local farmers and people that are here.

If we go down to the farmer's market and get it.

But the volume that we have to get right also dictate how much, you know, we can buy.

What's one of your favorite who sent this?

One of your favorite stories from your students graduating from this program?

What a great question.

Thank you.

There's so many stories.

And I have to say one of my favorite stories, because she's here today.

Did you plan that?

She wrote it.

I recognize the handwriting.

Is seeing their success and she owns a local bakery here in town and is we're quite proud of of what she's done and whether they go on to b an entrepreneur or go to work.

We've got two or thre that have gone to Disney World.

I've got two down there currently, one that's a full time and one doing her internship.

And we're proud of them learning what they've done here and go on.

One of my funny stories about I have a sous chef that's working at a high end country club in Austin, Texas right now, and she went on an internship up in Santa F and went to a restaurant there, and she was always questioning, why are you teaching?

Is this why are you teaching us that?

And one of the things that we were teaching her was how to change the paper towel and the paper towel dispenser.

And so I. Would ask, Why are you doing?

So?

Here we are in culinary school, and I'm teach them whenever the paper towe dispenser at the hand sink would becom empty, I'd be like, All right, we're going to do a demo.

And I show the whole clas how to change the paper towels, and she thought that was a lamest thing and even put it in her weekly reflection.

I can't believe I learned how to change paper towels.

That should be the janitors.

So she went to this five star restaurant in Santa Fe.

Her first day there as an intern.

She goes to dry her hands and the paper towel dispensers empty.

It clicked.

She, instead of turning around and going, Chef, we're out of paper towels.

She said, Chef, where are the paper towels?

And he goes, You don't how to change them.

She goes, Of course I do.

Because now she remembered the reason I taught her how to change paper towels.

Right.

Yup.

Yeah.

So and it's those little things that you like, and that's pretty cool.

Okay, I'm going to try this.

So why don't you talk a little bit about how you put this lamb together?

Okay.

The lamb is we bought it frenched again we like to teach how the French and they learn that in class.

But in this Friday fun class.

Thank you, Eliana.

Of course, chef.

So it comes in in the rack form and they broke it into what we call lollipops.

So you can see that with the French bone, there's no sinew or meat on it.

And then we season it with our red chile rub New Mexico, red chile powder, cumin, granulated garlic, granulated onion, a little bit of white pepper, just a little bit of salt.

That is so good, isn't it?

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, that's delicious.

Yeah.

And brussel sprouts are one of my favorites.

And I've got to be honest, I just can't get it right.

I mean, I try roasting, I try steaming, I try.

You know, all these different ways.

And I love to get like a brussel sprout with just this little, you know, roasted bit to it.

But I end up burning the leaves.

So can you help me?

Help us with the brussel sprouts?

Well, to be honest with you, this is the second batch of brussels sprouts today.

Oh, I'm not alone.

No, they didn't get it right either.

The instructions are to tak these and what we call blanch.

So you can do this at home a couple of days in advance.

Where we take salted water, they cut the stem off and then split in half.

And then they put it in boiling water to soften it up a bit.

So you're pre-cooking it now.

We do what's called shock.

We take it and put it in ice water to stop the cooking process.

So then it's part cooked.

Then it doesn't have to roast as long in the oven.

So they put it in the oven.

It went right before service and you get that nice caramelization.

So sometimes they burn because you put them in raw and it takes two too long in the oven to cook.

That's the problem.

Thank you.

All right I'm going to try that so soon.

Hopefully I'll remember.

I'll remember.

Check the website.

I want to.

So as I was tasting that brussel sprouts with the honey, right?

Mm hmm.

I started to feel that red chile in my mouth.

Is that a reaction that's going on?

Yes.

How interesting.

There is a lot of chemistry that goes on in cooking and some of it's hidde and some of it is discoverable.

Yeah.

And that's what you just.

You've found.

Anybody else have that experience?

Yes.

And it's so there's ways that we design plates to be eaten.

So you eat it in that fashion.

So we always call what we call 6 oclock.

That's the part of the plate that we want the customer to dine first.

So the lamb chops should have been placed in front of each one of you today, right in front.

So you taste the lamb chop first, and then you work your wa through the rest of the plate.

Now, I went counterclockwise.

Well, youre a lefty.

I'm a lefty.

Okay so let's talk about the carrots.

Yes, they're heirloom carrots.

They're tricolor.

They split these in quarters because we wanted to show you that carrots just aren't always orange.

So I said, let's make sure that we have enough carrots that we can give one color, one of each color to every guest.

And so they in order to do that, they typically we would just split these lengthwise, but they split up lengthwise and then again in quarters that saves on cooking time as well as you get that nice color on your plate.

There's a little bit of a different flavor.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's got the pistachio butter on it.

Oh.

Okay.

Let's talk about the pistachio butter.

Okay.

How how did you create that?

It's they grind the pistachios in the food processor.

Just a little bit to get whenever we take anything and we make it smaller it creates more surface areas.

We can extract more flavor.

So say you ate a marshmallow this big, You taste the the one marshmallow, but if we cut it into smaller pieces and spread it out, that's more marshmallow surface area for you to taste.

So if you take a little bite of each one, that marshmallow will last hours instead of just one big marshmallow.

I'm convinced that everything is activating the chile.

Re-activating the chile.

Okay, let's get to those sweet potatoes.

So this is the dish that one of my students said.

This is the gourmet tater tot.

Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside.

So they.

They took the sweet potatoes and they boiled them until they were nice and tender.

And then they process it through what's known as a food mill.

Now, most of the food mills that we are familiar wit is usually an abuela taking her red chile pods and grinding them out.

There's multi uses for them, and this is one where we take and take all the lumps out so it's nice and smooth.

They mix it with some seasonings and some egg.

The egg is a binder.

It helps hold it in place and.

Then they're able to pipe it into this, this form.

And so that's a traditional duchess.

Duchess formed a potato.

And so does it go back in the oven?

It does, yeah.

So it's we too the original recipe called for.

It was twice baked potatoes.

So they wanted us to take the potato, bake it whole.

The super data split in half, scoop it out like a traditional sweet potato, put the filling back in.

But what we did is we elevated it.

Yes, yes, yes, indeed.

All right.

How's everyone enjoying that dish?

It looks like it looks like you did.

Yes.

So good.

All right.

Danny is going to do a really quick chocolate mousse.

It is so simple.

It's 12 ounces of chocolate chips.

Go in the blender.

And then what else you got to put in there.

Three, Four eggs.

Four eggs.

Where are we going in there?

Oh, just in case I get any shells.

Okay, so she just mentioned that she's cracking them not right into the blender, but into a separate dish because of a shell fell in and then you're trying to fish it out around or you get really crunchy mousse.

Okay, So it's four eggs to 12 ounces of chocolate chips and then it's eight ounces of hot coffee.

No, the hot coffee will actually cook the eggs.

And then she's going to puree this.

Go ahead and start distributing those for her.

When it comes to coffee, I buy cheap coffee, but I think it's it went from about 12 to $18.

Mm hmm.

So.

So what are you.

We don't buy cheap coffee.

Okay, So went from 18 to about 30.

Yeah, it was funny I'd never had a cup of coffee.

Go ahead.

I never.

I think this one, you've got to throttle up.

So she's going to process this unti the chocolate chips are smooth and she gets the color that she wants.

So she's looking for right now.

I didn't like coffee.

I didn't drink coffee until I had breakfast cookery at culinary school.

And there was a coffee expert that came through and he did the tasting and he had a Colombian.

He had a different darkness.

And then he showed us Jamaican Blue Mountain.

Oh.

Which is only available on this planet on half a mountain in Jamaica.

And I have been to that coffe shop at the top of blue Mountain sipping.

Yes, I. It gave me chill to think about that experience.

I have a cousin that lives in Jamaica, so very nice.

Very nice.

So I went from not having a coffee to buying little tiny four ounce packs for like $15 a pack and drinking it straight black.

Okay, so then what we do, I don't think our coffee was hard enough.

No.

Okay, so don't worry.

You're going to eat the one in front of you.

That's how simple this is.

If the coffee was hot enough to melt the chocolate chips, unfortunately, the students found out that I had coffee back here, and they've been drinking it all morning and took our prop.

So it would melt the chocolate chips and then give you the consistency on set.

We poured into the wine glas and then let it set for 4 hours.

But that's how simple this chocolate mousse is.

It's not standing over the stovetop, having to stir things and whisk it.

It's really, really simple.

Would you typically blend it for longer or.

At this point, no, because we're still not goin to melt those chocolate chips.

Yeah.

And it's just because of the coffee.

They're just.

Not hot.

Yeah it's just not hot enough.

Okay.

So we'll thank you for coming up today.

This has been really fun.

This has been so much fun.

I it's kind of a dream of mine to, you know, get my Julia on just a little bit, you know, or at least be the guest.

Right.

Right.

And have the opportunity to to learn from you and also to taste these delicious dishes.

And so let's go back to kind of the beginning.

When we talked about the season and the biggest food holiday of the year and what you might do differently in your own home and with your friends and family, what do you think are those inspirations that people are finding.

Always trying to find something new and something unique, learning whether it's technique, the first Thanksgiving that I cooked for my in-laws was the biggest argument I think I've ever ha because I changed the method of getting up every hour to base it overnight to cooking it the whole bird within like 3 hours.

So it's a 24 pund bird and I put in the oven at 550 degrees.

Cook it till it's golden brown, reduce the temperature and then let it go until it's done and learning those techniques.

So we're always doing something different, but at my house we have probably about 40 people that come through on Thanksgiving Day, starts at 4:30 in the morning and goes till way too late at night.

And so we're just trying to entertain throughout the whole day.

So I always do 3 different 3 turkeys.

I do a traditional turkey, I do some sort of southwest and this year is going to be a red chile last year.

We did green chile where I actually took fresh roasted green chiles and slid them under the ski and let them cook with the bird.

And then we did.

I peeled one or debone the whole thin and then stuffed it with sausage so that we could slice it like a roast.

This year I still haven't developed it yet, but we go out and look it and it made sure you don't just Google turkey recipes.

You look at something that you can use the turkey with.

So it may be a chicken or a duck and then go, okay, well, let's see how we can put these together.

One of the things that we teach in the last semester they're with us is deconstruction.

So I said, We're going to do five star plating in this class and everything has to be elegant.

And so they said, Well, I want to do pie area.

Okay, well, that's more of a casserole than anything else.

So they had to deconstruct pay to take all the ingredients and then learn to put it bac together where they could charge a five star price for it.

I have a cousin Eddie, wh told me when he was a teenager that he was allergic to Turkey and I did not believe him and he proved it.

And so it was the first time that I had, you know, as a young person myself, you know, encountered someone with a food allergy like that that I just didn't even know existed.

We had somebody that couldn't be in the roo if we were peeling a cucumber, come through the program.

So just the mist of the cucumber could set off a reaction.

Isn't that so interesting?

Yeah.

And you want to be concerned about those.

So when it comes to dietary restrictions, we take it into consideration.

But, you know, if we're sitting now, like today, if they were going around right now putting a mousse in front of you that we know has sugar in it, and you say, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm diabetic.

Okay, with that, we'll take it away from you.

But we don't have a subsitute available because we didn't know.

Right?

So it's a relationship between the individual with a concern or a conditio that we just need to be aware of so we can accommodate.

But so if you can, we do this in a sugar free version?

Yes.

And how do you make it good?

Actually, there's some really great sugar free chocolate chips out there, and that's the only part of the sugar.

And that would be the only difference.

Yes, there's no sugar in the coffee and of course, the eggs.

Listen, it was a sweet chicken.

One last question.

It goes lost on me.

I was moving on How do those interested get involved in the culinary program?

And can people who are not planning a career in the industry community members take part or is there only room for majors?

No.

The class that actually prepared the meal today is open for anyone in the community.

We've had several community members come through these classes and they range their one credit classes.

You still need to register with the DACC and become a student, but yo can sign up and take this class.

In my sausage class, I had two people that were retirees that just want to learn how to make sausage.

So we've taught a five day sausage class.

This is, I think in the spring I'm teaching a pizza class and we do five traditional pizzas down found in our country as well as bring in some international pizzas.

And I imagine I can find some information by going to your website.

Thats correct.

DACC dot Edu slash chef to get to our program.

But DACC has so many wonderful programs out there and just hearing the stories about how our communities interact, I know that we look at other programs for guidance and help.

You know when I was building the syllabus for my food styling and video production class, I was leaning on the instructors over in digital media because they they had the technology.

They told me, what's the best way to teach the students as well as some of the platforms that they use.

So there's a lot of collaboration going on here and a lot of it's behind the scenes.

Some of it's a little bit more pronounced than others.

But yeah, well, I definitely want to thank all the folks behind the scenes here today, all of the students and our own production team, our TV production manager, Christian Valle our director of Engineering, Tony Porras, our engineer, Mark Johnson, our development Director.

Edmundo Resendez our general Manager Adrian Velarde.

And thank you to Oregon Mountain Solar and Electric and Evolve Federal Credit Unio for making cooking with Chef Tom Beyond the Bird possible.

Cheers and happy Thanksgiving.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yes.

Now I'm going to dig into this That is delicious.