This past weekend, I was given the pleasure of cooking with a family friend, Nathan Simons, who is professional chef, and attended the Culinary Institute in New York. He and his wife, Audrey Simons, prepared a series of dishes for us to cook together, that would allow me to learn different styles of food, and different techniques. I was able to learn about different foods I had never heard of, new techniques, their life as chefs, and great recipes that I am going to share. Overall, it was my ideal day.

The first thing that he did was write down everything we needed to do on a white board. Lesson 1: Write out your game plan. It was a pretty long list; one in which I was surprised we would be able to finish in 5 hours or so. This list consisted of: chicken, fines herbs, pat â choux, pasta, butter sauce, corn bread, peas, and dark chocolate mousse.

We started with breaking down the chicken. I had watched someone break down a chicken before at my job, but never attempted it on my own. Luckily, we needed to break down two, so I got to do my own. Honestly, I was weirdly excited to cut into a chicken caucus. No matter what it is, I get excited about learning new skills and techniques; especially when I am being taught one on one. We worked out way through the legs, then the breasts, and the wings. Lesson 2: When breaking down a chicken, follow the bone. Nathan was sweet in pointing out that he could have done 5 chickens in the time it took me to do one. But, I am giving myself some credit because even though it took me some time, I did it right, and all it means is a need some practice, which is fun anyways. So, I call that a win. Lesson 3: Do this 30 more times.

Next, we made pat â choux. I had absolutely no idea what pat â choux meant, and I probably did not pronounce it correctly. Lesson 4: Pat â choux is a dough that when baked, forms a hollow ball that you can fill with just about anything, savory or sweet. In our case, we were going to make cream puffs, filled with a dark chocolate mousse. This dough does not contain many ingredients, it is focused on proportions and how you make it. As we began to measure out the ingredients, I noticed that he weighed all of his ingredients, instead of using measuring cups. Lesson 5: Using a scale to measure out ingredients is much more accurate, and is very useful when baking. The ratio when making pat â choux is 2:1:1:2. This is 2 parts liquid, one part butter (always unsalted!), 1 part flour, and 2 parts egg. For the liquid you use half milk and half water. Lesson 6: If you were to use all milk this would cause it to brown much faster.

We made the dough, and then moved on the make the mousse. First, I whipped the heavy cream into soft peaks. Lesson 7: Stiff peaks are when the peak stay standing when formed, and soft peaks are when the peak begins to fall, after being formed. You do not want to over whip your ingredients. After a little while, my arm started to hurt, but I didn't want to seem weak so a trucked on. Which let to Lesson 8: When you are whipping ingredients by hand, the key is to whip in as much air as possible, so you want to tilt the bowl the the side and whip in a more vertical manner, to let in more air. This will speed up the process, and not kill your arm. We put the cream in the fridge and started to heat the milk and corn syrup. After the syrup was melted completely, we added the 60g of egg yolks. But, how you weigh out eggs? Lesson 9: 1 egg is approximately 60g, 1/3 being egg yolk and 2/3 being egg whites. So, each yolk is about 20g. When adding the eggs, into the hot mixture it is vital that we add them in such a way that they are fully incorporates, so that egg bits are not floating around. Lesson 10: When adding eggs, it is important to temper them in one by one, and to whisk until completely incorporated, and not a second more. Next we melted the chocolate in a double boiler. Lesson 11: A double boiler is when you layer a bowl and a sauce pan with water in it. It allows the chocolate to be gradually heated by the steam of the boiling water. We then added the chocolate to the milk and corn syrup mixture. Lesson 12: When chocolate is added other liquids, it can cause it to seize. So, when adding the chocolate pour it in while mixing very vigourously and continue to mix until completely incorporated. Then we took the chilled whipped cream and started to mix it in. Lesson 13: When making mousse you first "sacrifice" 1/3 of the cream into the chocolate mixture. This allows the mixture to loosen and then you fold in the remaining cream gently, and let set in the fridge. Fun fact: You can also put the moose into ice cube holders and freeze it, and then dip them in anything!

Meanwhile, Audrey made craquelin. I also had no idea what this meant. Lesson 14: Craquelin is a frozen sweet dough that allows for a crust-like element. This dough was placed in small circles on top of our pat â choux. Craquelin only consists of three ingredients: butter, brown sugar, and flour. You then roll it out thin, and place in the freezer. Lesson 15: When you take the craquelin out of the freezer, you need to punch out the circles fast because it will begin to soften, which will make it very hard to get the cut outs. This was a perfect addition to our cream puffs, and added a delicious sweet crunch. Since they were all concentric circles, it also forced the puffs to follow that perfect shape, making them even better.

Next, we made our second dough: pasta dough. I had been wanting to make pasta for so long, but I don't have $70 to spend on a pasta roller, so this was very exciting for me. He showed me a basic pasta recipe that is very easy to remember. Lesson 16: Pasta dough can be made with 1lb of flour and 4 eggs. We weighed out our ingredients, and then formed a well in the flour to put the eggs in. He whisked the eggs a bit, while in the well, then slowly whisked in the flour until it formed one solid dough. However it was a little bit dry, which made it hard for the pasta to all stay together. Lesson 17: If the dough is dry add water in small amounts. We let the dough sit for about half an hour and came back to roll it. We cut the dough into four different sections to roll out. After rolling through the first couple of gears we folded the dough into a small rectangle and started back at the first gear. Lesson 18: Folding the dough while in the rolling process gives the pasta a nice chew when cooked. Then we cut the dough into desired length (about 6 inches), and ran it through the cutting attachment. While I continued to roll and cut the rest of the pasta, Nathan made the corn bread dough, which is pretty straight forward (I will explain in the recipe). This corn bread recipe is RIDICULOUS. It is by far the best corn bread I have ever had so you do not want to miss it.

Once the corn bread was in the oven, we started the make the butter sauces for the peas and the pasta. This butter sauce is less of a recipe and more of a technique. Lesson 19: Butter sauce is 2 parts liquid and one part butter or oil. In our case we made one roasted garlic and lemon sauce and one brown butter and anchovy sauce. And yes, I was skeptical about the anchovy, but it added a delicious salty flavor to the sauce. The key part to this recipe is the xanthan gum. This causes the liquid to thicken and adopt a creamier texture. Lesson 20: A little xanthan gum goes a long way. You only need 1/4 teaspoon per cup of liquid.

The last thing to do was cook the chicken and pasta. We started with the chicken because it takes much longer. Lesson 21: Fresh pasta cooks very fast: only about 4-5 minutes. We cooked the chicken in canola oil, not olive oil. Lesson 22: Do not cook things in olive oil at high temperatures. Studies have shown that is releases carcinogens and olive oil has a much lower smoke temp. We placed the chicken in the pan, skin side down and they cooked there for a long time. Lesson 23: The majority of cooking a chicken should be done on one side-skin side if it has skin. You want to flip the chicken only once. When the chicken was getting close to being done we started to baste the chicken. Lesson 24&25: You can tell the chicken is getting close to being done by feeling it: it should start to feel firm. Also, basting it what allows the chicken to stay moist and flavorful. The thighs take longer than the breasts, but have a very rich flavor. Once the chicken was cooked we set it on a rack to let it cool. Once cooled we cut the chicken skin side down and on an angle. Then, we prepared a pan sauce for the chicken. We used the same pan that we cooked the chicken in and added some heavy cream and fines herbs. Lesson 26: Fines herbs is a French combination of herbs that contains parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil. We didn't use chervil but we did use the others. We had at least half a cup of herbs and 1 1/2 cups of cream. We let the cream reduce and then poured it over the cut chicken. Now the chicken was done. We cooked the pasta and tossed it with the anchovy sauce. Then, we blanches the snap peas, cooking them, but allowing them to stay crunchy. We tossed the peas in the brown butter sauce, and we were ready to eat. There is nothing better than sitting down with friends and family over a delicious, fresh meal.

this really was my ideal day.

Now, so that you can recreate all the wonders of this day, I have linked everything you need to know above and here are all the recipes:

Pâte â choux

Ingredients:

170g liquid (85g water 85g milk)

4g salt

8g sugar

85g unsalted butter

95g bread flour

170g eggs (see Lesson 9)

Directions:

Bring liquid, salt, sugar, and butter to a boil. Add flour and mix with a wooden spoon on low heat until it pulls away from the sides and looks shiny. Take off heat, and beat in eggs one at a time--by hand or with a paddle attachment. Let coo, for about 20 mins and then pipe in the 1" circles. Pat down the points of each circles with you finger with a little water. Bake at 350 for 7 mins then rotate and bake for another 7 mins, then bake until they are dry and hollow.

Dark chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

330g heavy cream

60g whole milk

30g corn syrup

60g egg yolks (about 3 egg yolks)

150g dark chocolate

Directions:

Whip cream into soft peaks (see Lesson 7&8) and store in the fridge. Heat milks and corn syrup, until the syrup is melted and temper the egg yolks in one at a time (See Lesson 10, for a video on how to temper in your eggs). Place the heated milk mixture in a large bowl. Melt the dark chocolate in a double boiler and mix into the milk mixture. Whisk in the chocolate vigorously to avoid the chocolate seizing (see Lesson 12). Then, "sacrifice" 1/3 of the cream into the mixture and mix until fully incorporated (see lesson 13). Then gently fold in the rest of the cream, until it is all one color. Put in the fridge until set: at least 30 mins.

-Pipe the cream into the pat a choux, or cut the pat a choux in half and pipe the mousse into the bottom half and place other half on top.

Craquelin

Ingredients:

65g butter

80g brown sugar

80g AP flour

Directions:

Cream the butter and sugar, add flour in all at once, paddle until it forms a dough. Roll the dough our thin and put in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. Then cut into circles (fast) and place on top of pate a choux dough (see Lesson 15).

Butter sauce

Ingredients:

Hot liquid: chicken stock, whey, buttermilk...etc.

Butter or oil

Xanthan Gum

Directions:

Heat the liquid, season it (salt, roasted garlic, anchovies, lemon, brown butter, roasted pork fat, whey...etc. The possibilities are endless). Add 1/4 tsp of xanthan gum per cup of liquid. Blend it all together.

Pasta

Ingredients:

1lb of AP flour

4 large eggs

Directions:

Form a well with the flour and place the eggs in it. Whisk eggs a bit, then slowly mix in the flour until fully combined (add a bit of water if it is too dry). Knead the dough until it is all one consistency and then wrap up and let sit for 30 mins. Roll out, cut, and cook in boiling water for about 4 mins.

CORn bread

Ingredients:

120g corn meal (white or yellow)

120g AP flour

40g sugar

4g salt

20g baking powder

1/4 tsp xanthan gum

280g butter milk

100g whole milk

2 eggs

50g melted butter

Honey

Finishing salt

Directions:

Yields 12 muffin sized corn breads

Preheat oven to 350. Whisk all dry ingredients, then mix in wet ingredients until fully combined. Then add in the melted butter last. Spray muffin tin with non-stick spray (I use coconut oil spray). Pour all the batter into 12 slots. Bake for 7 mins, rotate and bake for about 10 mins, until golden. Rub about half a stick of butter onto all the muffins right when they come out of the oven. Yes, this is a lot of butter; just rub it on all of the muffins so it melts into it. Brush each muffin with at least a table spoon of honey. Sprinkle finishing salt on to eat muffin, and eat one right away while they are hot!!