Day 22 - October 22, 2009

Day 22:

When I got to school today I sat in the high school group and watched a demo on Chicken Cordon Bleu. I have only had it once and I really liked. This method was a little strange compared to the way I had had it and looked really good. This way the cheese is formed into a small log, rolled up in the ham slice and then the chicken is wrapped around the log so when you cut into it, there's a big cheese pocket on the inside. After that, I headed into the kitchen to start my own project.

I volunteered to prepare some flank steaks for lunch and a catering event for next Monday. Today I started all the prep work on the steaks. I needed to trim all the fat and silver skin off the meat and then get it in the marinade so they could start soaking up all the goodness.
I pulled out two big packages of the flank (each package has 6 steaks in it). They are starting to get to the point where we need to use them now our they will go bad so we were making a little extra. I got all set up to start trimming. John had come over to show me what to do and I was ready to get started. About 5-6 steaks in and my knife hits my fingertip and I start to bleed. I was thoroughly annoyed and headed to the sink to start cleaning it up and put a bandage, and a glove on. When I got to the sink, I noticed that I had two spots that were bleeding and realized that I must have cut it twice without realizing I had done it one of the times. I washed up, put on a band aid and a glove and headed back to my station. A couple minutes later I cut through my glove and decide that I should probably put a finger cover over my band aid in case this happens again. So I go get a little latex rubber cover for my finger and then put on a glove and go back again. About 5 minutes later, I hit the knuckle on my thumb and it starts to bleed as well! I head back to the sink and wash up again, bandaging two different fingers this time, two finger covers and another glove. When I went back this time, I couldn't even get a grip on the meat or the fat to start cutting it off. With two layers on my fingers I couldn't feel anything. I was going crazy! I couldn't believe I had cut myself 3 different times while trimming up this steak. I told Rex and John that if I cut myself one more time while I was working on this, I was going to trade someone jobs and they could finish my last 4 steaks. Luckily I finished them all without any more cuts and I was able to start on my marinade.

I had picked two different marinades for the steak. The first one was a garlic, shallot, rosemary marinade and the second was a garlic chili marinade. John looked them over and told me to do the garlic chili.

The recipe I have is for 1 flank steak, so I had to times it by 12. I ended up with an entire can of chipotle chili in adobo, 12 jalepenos, and over a pound of minced garlic. Crazy! I thought it was going to burn my face off when I tasted it, but it was really really good. I put them all into the marinade and cleaned up.

I wanted to try it out at home to see how it turned out so I bought one of the steaks from the school (we had plenty to spare) and brought it home and cooked it for dinner. It turned out really good and I was happy with the recipe.