Hello anyone reading

Its been a while since I have actually updated my blog, I kinda went from blogging almost everyday to blogging once a week to I got so busy that I forgot. Things have calmed down some and when April comes I'll be blogging about my Superior Cuisine Session, till then I'll try to blog about what culinary stuff I'm up to.

At long last!

Gratin de fraises au sabayon 2, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

ALRIGHT! I think its time to be not lazy and finally sit down and actually update my blog; it’s been about a whole week since it saw an update. For one I am sorry for not updating as much as I usually do, been quite tired after school or busy with other things. Tonight however I am free and am dedicated to updating my blog up to par. Alright since the last actual time I updated my blog, a few lessons have gone by, I last stopped off at lesson 22 and now we’re on lesson 26 with one extra lesson about offals!

First up lesson 23, in the demonstration we learned Blanquette de cuisses de grenouilles, Coquilles saint-jacques provencales, Feuilletes d’escargots aux champignons des bois, praires farcies and moules marinieres. In the order that I listed them, this is what type of meat was used for each dish, frog legs, scallops, snail, clams and mussles. When I first heard that we were making frog legs and snails (escargots) I was shocked, since it would be my first time trying both. Sadly though I wasn’t brave enough to try both, I did however cook the frog legs! For the practical class it was pretty interesting, we had to cook two dishes which was a first for us. Not only did we have to cook two dishes but we also had to do it service style. The chef would make groups and then he would go to each group and call orders to us. The first round of orders were pretty straight forward and we only had about 15 minutes to cook both dishes. Of course we were given about an hour to prepare all of the ingredients; we just weren’t allowed to cook any of it. The first round of orders were easy, it was the second round that got a bit complicated. The chef wanted us to feel like what it would feel like in a real restaurant environment, so he would call out the dishes but with no gluten or no tomato. My group was a bit lucky and we didn’t get an order too crazily complicated. The frog legs and scallops I made were pretty good, the first two plates I presented the chef said the frog legs were a bit over salted and the scallops weren’t. Then when round two came by, I had both seasoned perfectly and cooked to the right perfection. I felt that because I had a chance to correct myself right away I was able to produce a better dish. That’s pretty much the same way I generally feel about the previous classes we had, after each and every practical I learn the dish better and feel that I could do a lot better if I got a second chance.

Next lesson 23 and a half, this lesson was just a demonstration class with no practical afterwards. The special thing about this lesson was that it was entirely on offals, yes you read right OFFALS. In case you don’t know what offals are, they are organs and extremities. There are many offals that are edible some are liver, heart, lungs, brains, sweetbread, tripes and prarie oysters. The ones that the chef cook that night were veal brain (I think I forget it if it was veal or lamb), veal kidney, veal liver and veal sweet bread. The smells that were coming up while the chef was cooking were quite interesting, especially when he was cooking the kidneys. In the end I only had enough courage to try the veal brains and sweetbread, which tasted like a really mushy fat. I can’t quite pinpoint the full taste or texture of it, but if anything the texture was like a really rough puree. While I ate both of them I had to force my brain to think about other things other than what I was about to eat.

Lesson 24, we only learned three recipes this time and they were aubergines imam bayildi (eggplant), osso-bucco piemontaise (braised veal knuckle) and gratin de fraises au sabayon (a sweet dessert made with strawberries). Out of the three recipes that we learned that day I had to make the osso-bucco piemontaise. The eggplant though I would really like to try sometime because it tasted quite good. During practical the osso-bucco wasn’t that hard to make, there was just a lot of things to do and we had to race against time since the chef gave us about an hour and half to finish it. For this practical I didn’t really panic much or forget many small details, when I plated to the chef it turned out pretty good. The veal knuckle was cooked well and the sauce tasted alright, except that there was a bit too much fat in the sauce. Other than that one error the chef didn’t have anything out much to complain about, he even said that my seasoning was good.

Onwards to lesson 25, this lesson was quite interesting because in this lesson the chef had to drag a few things on just so that he could do something other than standing there waiting for something to finish cooking. In this lesson we learned to make salade tiede de foies de volaille (this was a warm chicken liver salad), cotes de porc charcutiere (pork chops) and savarin aux fruits (drunken cake). Alright so today we had to make one of my favorite things to eat, pork chops. The catch here is that the pork chops come still attached as a rib and we have to debone and clean them before sautéing. Like the chef had told us before, once you debone and clean one rib all other ribs are pretty much the same. Well he was right, once we did that big beef rib all the other ribs that we had to do were pretty easy and very similar. We also had to make a mashed potato side dish, which wasn’t too crazily hard minus the fact that mine almost died. While I was keeping it was on the bain marie (hot water bath) the plastic wrap broke and some water somehow got in. I thought that the potatoes were ruined, panicked, borrowed my friend’s potato just so I could plate. When I went up to the chef I told him what had happened and showed him mine, but also told him the one on the plate wasn’t mine. He looked at it and tried it, and told me that there wasn’t anything wrong with it. I gave him a blank stare and he said that since only water had fallen into the potatoes, nothing was ruined. I couldn’t figure out why till he explained to me, he said that with water I could just strain the potatoes and then on low heat steam out the water. He also told me that it was a good thing it was only water, because if it was anything else my potatoes would have been ruined. Other than the potato scare, my sauce and my pork chop was cooked properly. I was quite surprised that I managed to cook the pork chop with some pink still in the middle when I was quite sure it was fully cooked (mind that these were LARGE pork chops).

Ah Lessons 26, finally I have caught up in blogging about school, in this lesson we learned how to make civet de lapin a la francaise (rabbit stew), soufflé au fromage (cheese soufflé) and bavarois rubane (a mousse with 3 different layers). The crazy part of today’s class was that we had to debone and cook a rabbit at the same time make our own pasta. First of all I was a bit freaked out that we had to cook rabbit, I thought that out of all the things in life rabbit would be the only thing I would never cook. Turns out I was wrong, although I did try some of the rabbit meat and it didn’t really have any crazy taste to it. It was like I was eating any other meat, maybe like if I were eating chicken. Today though was insane, some of the intermediate and superior students were telling us that a lot of people during their session didn’t finish on time. With that being said we were all panicking a bit, but at the end of the day we all pretty much finished by 2 and a half hours, except for me and two other people (we finished 2 minutes late). Deboning the rabbit wasn’t too hard after I did it once and got a feel of where I should cut and what not. The annoying part was to clean off the rib tips, your suppose to somehow rip the skin right off the ribs and then cut off the excess meat. The chef was being nice and told us that we only had to present one of the rib pieces cleaned. Making the pasta dough wasn’t too bad; it was rolling it out to be super thin that was a pain. In the end when I presented my dish to the chef, he told me over all everything was good minus the fact I was a bit late and that my pasta was a bit thick. Today was a pretty good day for me in practical, since today’s dish is supposed to be one of the hardest to complete on time.

With the days going by, I come to realize that time just keeps on flying by, when school first started it felt like 3 months was a long time away. Now that I took in a deep breath and slowed down the world a bit, I figured that 3 months is like a blink of an eye. With that in mind, my final exam is coming up soon! Hopefully I have learned well enough and am going to furiously study and prepare for it. With all my experiences and with my constant improving of my techniques, I feel that by the time exams are here I will be able to ace it. I also feel that as the days go on I feel more and more confident about my cooking skills as well as my task management skills.

Because of the over due update to my blog, there are too many pictures so it would be a lot faster if you just visited my flickr account and look at all the mouth watering pictures there
Dave's Flickr Page

NAC Black and White Gala Weekend!

Appetizer Dish, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Alright the past few days I’ve been quite busy as well as lazy, Wednesday and Thursday I was just lazy. Friday and Saturday though were different; I was the complete opposite from being lazy. But before I get into what happened on Friday and Saturday lets start off with Wednesday. For me Wednesday was a bit of a wind down from the Monday class, because we were doing a dish that I felt was simpler. The dishes we learned in demonstration class were Filet de rouget a l’ains (red snapper), Lotte au poivre vert (mon fish), Filet de feltan a la duglere (halibut) and Escalope de saumon en papillotte (salmon). The way that the salmon was cooked was actually pretty neat; it was also pretty different compared to the other recipes we’ve learned in the past. The previous recipes we’ve learned were all generally cooked in oil or butter, but this was just seasoned and cooked. Making the vessel that contained the salmon was also quite neat; you don’t even need tape or glue to hold the edges together. In the next demonstration class we learned how to make sautee chicken with a mushroom and tomato sauce which tasted so very good. The other thing was we had to debone the chicken whole. We also did a few other recipes that day which were Pintate au chou, perdix pochee a l’estragon and Margret de conard aux champignons sauvages.

The practical for Wednesday which was the Filet de rouget a l’ains (red snapper), went pretty well for me. Preparing the fish was a tiny bit hard but after filleting it, it wasn’t so bad. The rest of the recipe went by pretty smoothly, the fish stock was good, the vegetable was okay and the extra dish we had to make (rice pilaf) was okay too. When I presented I was quite happy with my dish, but the chef told me that my vegetables were a bit over cooked and that I should be a little gentler when stirring the rice with my fork. The practical on Friday night was a bit tougher than the previous fish recipe. First off we had to debone a whole chicken; the deboning process was a bit tough for me at first. Now that I think about it though it actually isn’t too bad, at first I wasn’t sure which bones stayed and which were to be removed. I also wasn’t too sure on which parts of the chicken bone that were left I was supposed to cut the tips off of. After deboning the chicken the rest of the dish actually went by pretty smoothly with a few exceptions of course. Those few exceptions were that I burned my sauce a bit and by making the sauce more of a darker brown color it gives it more of a bitter taste. The end product was decent, it could have been a lot more runny, needed a bit more salt and of course the bitterness. The vegetables that went into the dish weren’t hard to do at all; I cut my tomatoes a bit larger than what I should have though. At the end everything came together, I seared my chicken perfectly and plated all correct. We also had to do an extra dish on the side since we have so much left over time, the chef made us do which ever cut we wanted to do of a potato. I decided to make them into little balls and cook them anglais style and then sautee them in butter (which I forgot to do, due to the time factor).

Now with the school part out of the picture, we move onto the other exciting part of Friday and Saturday! Friday before any of my classes started, I went to the NAC (National Arts Centre) to volunteer in the kitchen. I got there at 8am with Dat; we got settled and went straight to work. The task they had us to was make salmon roses, one of the chefs at NAC would slice the salmon for us and we’d roll it into a rose (I later learned his name was Trevor). When we thought we had finished all that was needed, it turned out that we were short a few salmon roses. So Chef Bento came by and inspected each and every one of them. He saw some were a bit larger than what was needed, and asked us to redo some of them. After readjusting some of the larger salmon roses, we were able to squeeze out another 32 pieces. Once the salmon was complete, we were sent off to another section of the kitchen and were told to wrap lettuce and daikon into bundles. These bundles were for the appetizer, they were to stand in the middle of the plate on top of some hummus to hold it up. So we did 50 of the lettuce/daikon wraps and had to get ready to go back to school for class. So we went back to class, did the class thing, went home, slept and were suppose to wake up bright and early but ended up sleeping in till about 8. I was suppose to meet Dat and Lisanne for breakfast, but I was so tired from the night before I kept sleeping till the time I had to leave for the NAC. Got to the NAC at about 10am and started work right away. The first thing they had me do was use a machine to roughly peel potatoes and then finish off the job with my paring knife. At first I wasn’t sure how to use the machine that well, so I was a bit slow to start off. Then the chef working beside me showed me a few small tricks and after that I was zooming through the potatoes. Once the potatoes were finished off, we headed over to the other side of the kitchen and started plating the part of the appetizer that could go on before service. Which were the salmon, coleslaw, beats, blue cheese and the hummus in the middle to hold up the salad. We all worked quite quickly, each with a task to do and complete. We had to do a total of about 600-700 plates and we zoomed through it like it was nothing. After the plating of the appetizers we went for a short break, because of the adrenaline I wasn’t too fond of the break (it made me a bit tired from lack of adrenaline). After the break though we got to do the fun stuff, we got to plate the main course blanks. A blank is a plate with only the vegetables or side garnish and the protein (which would have been the lamb, beef steak and salmon) would be put on seconds before service. So we were like a well oiled machine and zoomed through all of that pretty quickly as well. With the blanks done we started getting ready to bring up all the food to our stations and prep for service. I was paired with Stephen and we went with Chef Madan to his station and help him setup for service. About 20-30 minutes after we moved all the plates and food up, we started stacking the appetizer plates to be ready for service. Then once the gala was getting a move on, and we finished the appetizer plates, everything else pretty much came like wildfire. Stephen and I were busy restacking clean new plates for the desserts, when done we went out and saw that the whole kitchen crew was plating all of the main course meals. Pretty much right after the main course was done we went off and began plating the dessert, which was a frozen parfait (the parfait was quite heavenly with a nice rum taste to it). BOOM BOOM BOOM as quickly as we came in, the dishes went out even quicker. The whole service was probably about 45 minutes to an hour (or more long), but it felt like only 15-25 minutes had only passed by. Once the last dessert went out, I felt a sense of accomplishment; I was there to help plate over 150+ dishes.

Once everything was completed, all the dishes and carts were brought back down; we all had a toast with Chef Bento. The team that I was able to work with Saturday night was an amazing group. They all knew exactly what they were doing, when and where they were doing that task. They were so cool that I went out for some drinks with them afterwards. I had a lot of fun volunteering at the NAC Black and White Gala, and had hoped to go there again (which I will be in the future). Saturday left me extremely tired with about 11 hours of work and then having some drinks after.

This here was the awesome team I worked with (stephen left before we could get the picture taken)


Le Cordon Bleu students with Chef Jose Bento


Just some of the plates we had to plate that night



Demonstration 21 which includes the red snapper


Demonstration 22 which includes the sautee chicken with tomato and mushroom sauce

Turnips AHOY!

Caneton aux navets, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Woo what a long day yesterday was; I never did enjoy having 3 classes in a row. First up was a demonstration class, then the practical class and then I had a demo assist for basic pastry. Today was a day that most of the class has been dreading, it was the day that we had to turn 70 turnips! Man all weekend ever chance I had I was practicing turing, I even had a study session with some classmates to practice turning. During the weekend things went well, I was turning pretty well minus the fact that I was taking my sweet time. The demonstration was pretty short compared to most of our other demos; we only did 3 dishes again. The 3 dishes that we learned were canetor aux navets (a duck dish), poulet cocotte grand-mere (similar to a roast chicken) and contre filet roti pommes chateau (something like a roast beef). The chicken and beef dish were pretty simple to make, there wasn’t anything too insanely hard about it. The duck dish however was a bit harder to do, we had to truss the duck, then cook it and then turn 70 turnips and after that glaze the duck with a sauce.

During practical class I started off pretty well, I went right on with the duck, trussing it was a big different from the chicken but none the less still the same. After I went on with searing my duck and got a start on the turnips. My duck seared pretty well, so I put it into the oven to let it begin cooking and went back to my turnips. For some reason I was turing a lot slower than I normally was and was struggling quite a bit with it. There was a shortage of turnips and the chef lowered the number of turned turnips down to about 50, but even then I was only able to finish about 30 turnips within the time I had. After that everything went pretty smoothly, I had a nice glaze on my duck and the sauce was seasoned correctly. My day was pretty good, other than the fact that I wasn’t able to complete the turned turnips.

As the lessons go by I learn how to control my time better, I’ve learned that I can’t be spending a long time focusing only on one topic. Now I give myself a time and if I can’t reach the goal I had I move onto the next task so I can complete the overall goal. I also figured I still need to practice a lot more, which I do everyday .

Contre filet roti, pommes chateau


Poulet cocotte Grand-mere

Super Friday!

Petite marmite henry IV soup bowl, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

WOOO! What a great day I had on Friday, the day started off with me recovering from the lack of sleep on Wednesday night. In the demonstration we did three dishes that were taught by a retired chef who had been teaching for over 35 years named Chef Claude. The three dishes we learned all had a very rustic feel to them, they were Petite marmite henry IV, Blanquette de veau a l’ancienne and Truite pochee au court bouillon. I was a bit surprised that it only took about 10 minutes to poach the trout; I thought it would at least take 15 to 20 minutes (truite pochee au court bouillon). The dish we had to do for practical class was the petite marmite henry IV, which I’m not sure what the English would be but it had chicken, veal and beef knuckle. They were all cooked together in a cocotte, simmering on medium heat for about an hour to an hour and half. The recipe itself isn’t insanely hard to produce, except making sure it’s seasoned properly and that the meat has all fully cooked through and is not still tough.

During the practical class I started off doing pretty good, got my knuckles in the cocotte cooking and started right away on the vegetables we had to turn. At this point in time my turn skills have been improving, I just hope they will improve enough to impress the chefs before exams. After that everything was quite straight forward, remember to skim the cocotte for impurities that the meat would produce and season. We also had to make a veloute sauce, which in the end my turned out to be not thick enough but the chef let it go this one time.

I presented the dish to the chef, got some pretty good feedback but was told that the dish is more of a country dish. A dish that didn’t need to be presented in a very exquisite manner and that plating it roughly was good enough. My seasoning was also pretty good and my turning got better, which I’m very happy about. So over all I did pretty well in class today and am wishing for more of these days in the future.

Truite pochee au court bouillon


Blanquette de veau a l'ancienne


Cool Candy sculpture

GRILLIN TIME!

Cote de boeuf grille, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Ah from deep frying and braising we come to grilling! Today was especially fun since the chef began talking about grilling and showed us how to debone and grill a nice rib eye steak. The lesson started out with the chef talking about different terms and he also mentioned about different ways of cooking eggs. Three main types of egg cooking are in the shell, out of shell unmixed and out of shell mixed. The dishes that the chef went through with us were gratin dauphinois, oeufs mollets florntine, rouget grille beurre d’anchois and cote de boeuf grille beurre marchand de vin. The first one was a potato and cheese dish, then an egg with cheese + cream, then red snapper with anchovy butter and last but not least the grilled rib eye with red wine butter.

During the practical class things went pretty smooth for me, I was getting my reduction done and my vegetables cut right away. I worked furiously to get all my vegetables cut and ready to go, but with all my concentration I completely forgot about my red wine reduction. So it burned and I had to restart, that didn’t faze me too much, so I finished up my vegetables and continued onto my meat. I got really into cleaning the rib and making sure that the rib tips were very clean and guess what, my reduction burns yet again. Now at this point I’m getting a bit frustrated, I normally don’t burn my reductions and today it happened to me twice! We had run out of shallots and panicked, but used my friend’s shallots to make more reduction in the end. Since I rushed the reduction the end product of the butter wasn’t as flavorful as it could have been. Other than that screw up, my rib eye wasn’t fully cooked, since someone turned the right side of the grill to low and only kept the left side running at max. I didn’t’ realize this till the end when I was about to remove the steak. The cool thing about that was half the rib eye was rare while the other half was medium rare. I had a lot of fun deboning the rib and then cooking it after wards, even with those slight mistakes I still kept going till the end. Oh we also had to make fries and this baked tomato stuffed with parsley, garlic and bread crumbs. The fries I made were fine, but the tomato decided to look like the leaning tower of pizza.

Over all I had a pretty good day at school, a few stressful moments but in the end I managed to pull through.

Rouget grille


Oeufs mollets florentine


Gratin dauphinois

Braising and Deep frying!

AH I seem to be falling behind on blogging these past few days, again I’m going to do a multi blog in one go. Today’s blog isn’t as bad since I’ll only covering two days worth of material. The first lesson we did was on braising, there are three types of braising. They are a brun, a blanc and en ragout. A brun is used for whole pieces of meat and the meat is seared before it begins to braise. A blanc is the same as a brun except that you use clear liquids and you try to add as little color as possible. En ragout is more like a stew, the meat pieces are 1-2 bite size and the water level if filled up to height. In the demo the chef showed us how to make Boeuf a la monde, Navarin d’agneau printanier and Carre de proc braise nivernaise (which are in order, braised beef, lamb and pork.). The chef also showed us how to prepare and clean ribs; the whole process of cleaning every rib tip is tedious but seems like fun to do. The next demonstration we did some deep frying techniques, frying fish and vegetables. In the demonstration the chef showed us how to prepare, beignets de gambas, sole meuniere, merlan frit colbert and a steak dish that I forget what its called in French (in order from first to last, shrimp, dover sole, whiting and steak).

During practical for the first lesson we had to make the Navarin d’agneau printainer, which is braised lamb stew. Doing this dish was pretty fun, since we got to debone a whole lamb shoulder. At first I was a bit worried that deboning the lamb would be hard, but once I got the lamb shoulder it was quite simple to do. The chef said that hoped we would take about 30-40 minutes to finish that, most of us in the class did it in about 10-15 minutes. After deboning, we had to sear it, add the vegetables, water and pop it in the over for about 45 minutes. While that was cooking we had to do the hardest part of the dish, turing vegetables. I’m still practicing everyday on turing my vegetables, but it’s a bit hard and I do it quite slowly. Spending the rest of my time on the vegetables, I almost didn’t finish on time, in the end I did not turn my potatoes and only turned a few carrots. At that point I thought about the past and how I didn’t finish some things either, but I refocused and said to myself I’m going to serve with or without what I didn’t complete. So I took my dish with the rest of the vegetables I finish, plated it all and served. I explained to the chef what happened and he somewhat understood, but he said I had to work on my turning. The rest of my dish turned out pretty good, the lamb was cooked perfectly, the sauce I reduced a bit too much and the vegetables could have used a bit more salt.

The next practical that we had, we had to make merlan frit colbert, which is fried whiting with colbert butter. The chef had told us that this fish is quite delicate to work with and we had to be careful not to be too rough. So I started off filleting the fish, at first I didn’t press down too hard, but realized that I had to put more force into it else I’ll never cut anything. After about 20-30 minutes of slowly cutting out the spine and gutting it, I was finally done preparing the fish. So I put that away and started to work on the colbert butter, which is not very hard at all. You have to reduce some veal stock, room temperature butter, tarragon, parsley, lemon juice and mix them all together. When I first started to whisk the butter, it was a bit tough since we’re not supposed to melt it completely, but at the same time it has to melt. Then after whisking for a few minutes, I added in the reduced veal stock and continued to whist, while whisking it splashed and some of the veal stock got onto my uniform. After getting a bit frustrated in why it still wasn’t incorporating, Allison suggested I place it on some heat and whisk. Following her advice, I continued to whisk and add veal stock and after a few minutes it work perfectly. Once I was done I had to place the newly formed butter into a piping bag and pipe out pieces of butter. After the butter was complete, we had to bread the fish and deep fry it, which wasn’t hard at all, after it was all done I plated and bon appetite.

The past two lessons weren’t too bad for me; I got maybe a tiny bit discouraged but soon after brought myself back up. There wasn’t anything extraordinarily wrong nor did I manage to do everything perfectly. I am quite proud of myself for being able to debone the lamb and fillet the whiting. After this many lessons in school, I feel that at the end of the day I just need to practice more and more. I noticed that I have been getting a lot better every day and with that I’ve been getting discouraged less and less. My confidence level in cooking has been going up day by day, I just hope it will continue this way all the way till the end of my course.


Navarin d'agneau printainer the one I did in practical


Beignets de gambas


Sole Meuniere


Merlan frit colbert


Steak and Fries which I forget what the french name is

Three days in one go!

Salade de poissons marines plated, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Hey everyone so I forgot to do a blog post for the last few lessons I had, just been really tired and didn’t have the energy to really blog till now. Things are still great here minus the hours of practice and schooling. The last three lessons that I forgot to blog about were pretty interesting, we’re focusing more on cooking techniques instead of the basic slicing and dicing techniques. On lesson 13 we started learning about potages and the difference between it and soupe. Lesson 14 we continued on that and did lobster bisque and a bortsch. Then on lesson we learned how to make many different kinds of butter! It was pretty crazy we did cold butter and hot butter sauces. Lesson 13 was a bit weird, it threw off the meaning of soup for me, and I always thought any type of hot liquid was soup. Apparently it is not, according to French cuisine soupe is a liquid served with bread in the soup, and a liquid served alone without bread is called a potage. The first few minutes I saw there staring and scratching my head going WHAT! After about 10-15 minutes I went ok, I guess this makes sense (which it does). The one we had to make was called Potage Juilenne d’arblay, it kind of reminds me of a mashed potato looking soup with julienned vegetables. Lesson 14 was a continuation of potages, the dish we had to do for practical was called a consommé. This potage is quite plain; most of the other dishes we’ve made were more appealing than this. This potage was pretty much a very clear liquid with some brunoised vegetables as the garnish. Then on lesson 15 we got down to business and sautéed up a nice piece of salmon with white butter sauce. The sauce tasted quite fattening since it was pretty much all butter, but mixed with the salmon it tasted great!

In the practical of lesson 13, it was somewhat intense but at the same time somewhat easy. We had to cook some potatoes till they were soft enough to make a puree type liquid out of them. After that we had to julienne vegetables, which is always a bit hard for me since everything had to be perfectly shaped. (I’m getting better though) I managed to keep within the time limit and not go over, the only thing was I needed more work on my vegetable cuts and the potage was a bit thicker than it should be. On lesson 14 for the practical it went pretty smoothly, I started out with a visual image of what I was going to be doing. The second I walked into that kitchen I already knew what I had to do, where I had to go and the things I needed to complete my tasks. It was a pretty good day for me, I completed everything well in advance and was able to serve 10-15 minutes before the given service time. Again I needed more practice on my different vegetable cuts and to work on my seasoning of the consommé. Lesson 15 which just happened today went by not bad I had the same mindset as I did on lesson 15. The only thing was that I sort of lost my groove when I went to filet a 15 pound salmon. It was a great experience and I somewhat understand how to filet one perfectly (but it was still quite hard). After filleting it and going back to my station to work, it kind of threw off my rhythm and I forgot a few things. I didn’t salt my butter sauce enough, my potato was a bit over cooked and my fish was over cooked as well. Overall the chef said I did a pretty good job, I just need to really focus and not lose concentration.

The past 3 demonstrations and practical’s have been great, I’m really trying to step up my game and put forth my best efforts. Even though I still have lots to learn and lots to really improve on, I feel as the days go on I get better and better. The best news of all was that the buses are back up and running again, which means I can bus to school and practice!! This excites me greatly. I’ve wanted to go to school early or even on days off to get in some much needed extra practice. Hopefully once I start going to the production kitchen more I’ll be able to improve a lot more.

Creme de moules au sofran

Bisque de homard

Saumon a beurre blanc

Potage Bortsch Polonais

Consomme

This is some crazy chocolate art sculptures that I think superior students did

Grilled salmon!

Salmon grille, sauce bearnaise, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Ok I was too tired to actually sit in front of my computer and type up the blog. Didn’t do it the night before either because was preparing food for the UFC fight party, which GSP DOMINATED! So yea on with what new recipe I had learned on Friday, we learned more sauces and this nice grilled salmon recipe. The sauces we learned were all emulsion type sauces; the two types of emulsion sauces are stable and unstable. The main recipe that we learned and had to reproduce in class was the Salmon grille, sauce béarnaise. Which is made up of grilled salmon, a béarnaise sauce and some turned potatoes. The dish itself isn’t too hard to make, the salmon was a bit weird for me to prepare because of the silver skin. I wasn’t sure where I should be cutting and how, every time I did make a cut it somehow cut some of the skin off too, which I though was weird. I also had some problems with turning potatoes; it wasn’t going as perfectly as I wanted. Those two tasks took me the longest time out of everything I had to do in class. The rest of the recipe was quite straight forward, making a white wine vinegar reduction, clarifying some butter and then combining it all to create the sauce béarnaise. I also learned that for every egg yolk, you should always add a certain amount of liquid, which is 1 yolk to half an egg shell full of liquid. We also learned how to filet salmon, I didn’t get to tackle it but from the looks of my classmates, it looked a bit hard. For grilling the salmon, I’m not sure if I didn’t oil the fish enough, or the grill top wasn’t oiled down enough, but even after letting it sear it stuck to the grill top and flaked a bit. I also seemed to have overcooked the salmon which made it begin to flake and break apart which isn’t a good thing. Other than that everything was alright, nothing too horribly bad.

After getting home from school on Friday night, I was so very tired and pretty much didn’t do much and slept from 12 or 1am all the way till 11am the next day. (It was a great sleep) Saturday was a good day though, got up at 11am, had breakfast and went out with Andrew to do some last minute shopping for the UFC fight night. I learned that non open fire grills are bad for cooking irregular shaped meat, since all the sides don’t cook at the same time. Dat, Natalia, John and John’s friend Valerie, came over as well to enjoy the fight and food. John came over and made some brownies he learned in class. Dat helped me out with making a pork shoulder roast (which turned out looking really nice) and help me out with the chicken kabobs which in the end we took all the wooden skewers out. I also made some baked sausage with carrots and red onions, along side of pork chops and chicken drumsticks. Andrew made bacon wrapped water chest nuts which are really good, a bit salty with a nice crunch. The rest of the night was just fun, we watched the fight, played some rock bank, played random board games and drank lots of alcohol. (mmmmm at jagerbombs) The main fight GSP Vs BJP was AWESOME! GSP dominated the entire fight, after the first round it was over for BJP. But before I get off topic more, today Sunday (which is super bowl Sunday) I am making some dry rubbed ribs and hamburgers.

From top to bottom
Mayonnaise, Remoulade, chantilly, Gribiche

From left to right
Bearaise, Toyrolienne, Hollandaise

First burn!

poulet poche sauce supreme 4, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

It’s kind of weird and annoying, I keep having decent days, great days and sometimes bad days. Today however I had a great day in practical class, yesterday’s demo is just demo there isn’t much to say about it. In the demo class yesterday the chef touched up on the different mother sauces which are veloute, espagnole, béchamel, tomato and hollandaise. We also learned to make riz pilaff, which has to be done at the exact temptature, water ratio and procedure else it will be made wrong. The riz pilaf is later on used in the new recipe we learned, poulet poche sauce supreme. At first the poulet poche sauce supreme seemed really hard, because we had to truss the chicken. This is something I’ve never ever done in my life, I might have seen trussed chickens, but never have I done it myself. I think I went over my notes about 30-40 times before class to make sure I got the trussing down. During the practical class I start trussing the chicken, at first I wasn’t sure where I was suppose to truss, but after reading my notes again (and after the chef showed us again) I finally understood. Once I got the hang of it, I finished it up in about 15 minutes or so and went on to the next preparation. Next we had to take the chicken and boil in water to make stock, so diced up the vegetables, did a bouquet garni and tossed it all in. While cooking the chicken we had to make sure that any impurities were taken out. While that keeps boiling, I made the roux and prepared the rest of the ingredients I needed for when the stock was ready. Finally the stock boiled for long enough to use, added the stock to the roux and made veloute (which is made up of white stock and a roux), after the veloute is made sauce supreme can be made. Sauce supreme is the veloute mixed in with some cream, chicken skin, reduced a tiny bit and strained out to make the sauce. Before or after the sauce is done I had to make the riz pilaf, which you have to suer (sweat) some onions with butter first, then add the rice and mix together. Once the mixing is done the rice can not be moved around anymore, add in the chicken stock, bouquet garni, a paper lid with a hole in the middle, a lid to cover the whole pot and off to the oven at 400°F for 17-19 minutes. Once all that is done, I had to form an island on the serving tray with the rice, then place the chicken on the rice, pour sauce to cover the whole chicken and finally circle around the rice island to finish it off.

I feel today was pretty productive, I worked well, got pretty good results but the only thing was I need to work on timing and speed. When I brought my dish up to the chef, he told me that everything was good but I was about 10 minutes slower than everyone else. The good thing is that I’m getting better and better, now I just have to work hard and work faster as well as time things better.

Oh today I also got my first burn on my finger, I was handling a hot pan straight from the oven. I forgot that it was really hot and grabbed it to move it aside. After that split second I felt a sharp pain and knew I had gotten burned by the handle. After wards I showed the chef my burn, now usually most people tell you to run the burn under water or to put the cooling gel to sooth the pain right? Well guess again the chef asked me if I trusted him, I was a bit scared in saying yes but in the end said yes. He took my hand rubbed butter on my burned finger and turned on a gas stove and put my finger close to the flame. At first it wasn’t so bad because it felt like my finger was warming up, but then he put more butter on my finger and this time put my finger closer to the fire. Then he did it one more time this last time hurt a hell of a lot more than the first two, since my finger was pretty much touching the tip of the fire. Even though I was pretty scared and a bit freaked out that my finger was dangling over an open flame. The chef was a genius about doing the butter and the fire thing; I still had a bit of pain but after about 2-3 hours the pain pretty much disappeared. When the burn first happened I had this big blister on my finger, then after the chef did his butter trick the blister swelled down and is now almost gone. The pain also disappeared, well physical pain at least, when I touch it I still have a psychological pain.

Great Souffle! mediocre salad

Salade Nicoise, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Let’s start off by saying today in class I had THE hardest time trying to stay away for some reason. It wasn’t that the class was boring or that I only had 4-5 hours of sleep, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. Even though I was struggling to stay awake, I still managed to pay attention and learn a few things. Today in class we learned about different kinds of salads, the main one we had to do for practical was salade nicoise, we also learned frisee aux lardon, salade des nonnes and salade francillon. Salade des nonnes is a rice and chicken salad, salade francillon is a potato salad with mussels and frisee aux lardon is a hot salad which contains frisee and prok belly. Salade nicoise is a vegetable salad made with tuna and garlic vinaigrette. The dish over all isn’t too bad to make, the hard part is chopping everything to be the same size and making sure that everything is seasoned properly. I managed to finish everything in time but was still one of the last ones to present to the chef. When I present my dish to the chef, I told him a few mistakes I made, I over cooked a few of my vegetables and because of that some of them broke apart easily. Other than that he said that I didn’t dress the salad with enough of the vinaigrette and pointed out that many spots were dry.

This was kind of a downer, there I was thinking oh man I could have so done better, and I wish I had done better and so on. So lost in thought, I just kept myself busy with cleaning my station. Then the chef announces that we have to get out our frozen soufflés from last week, garnish it and then present it as a class. He gave us about 20-30minutes to complete the task; we had to bake these almond cookies, assemble the soufflés with the candied oranges and place our soufflés in the order of the class list. This all seemed quite easy to complete, but the trick to this was to get everyone to finish at the same time. This meant everyone had to be baking all together so no one is dragging behind. We managed to completely present the soufflés all together except for the fact that we were 5 minutes late. After we were all settled down, the chef walked around looking at the soufflés and gave us an opinion on it. The first few were pretty good, then he got to mine, I started to feel a bit nervous. The almond cookie we had to make wasn’t made very well, mine didn’t roll into a cigarette properly and the other style I did kind of shatter into pieces. After going through different scenario in my head about how bad it might be, the chef complimented me about the soufflé. I was shocked that the chef said that about my soufflé, after getting a mediocre review on my salad this compliment on my soufflé made my day.

As the days go by, all I can ever think about is how much I’m learning everyday even with my bad days and my good days. Good or bad they all add up and equal into the amount of information I’m learning. We’re on lesson 10, the lessons are getting harder and hard but I’m still loving every minute of it.

Salade des nonnes

Frisee aux lardons

Salade Francillon

Frozen Souffle

Filets de sole dieppoise

Filets de sole dieppoise, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Oh man oh man oh man! Today was such a crazy day, we’re finally starting to work with actual meat well fish but still! Today in class we learned what the 5 mothers sauces are, and learned how to make 2 or 3 I forget. We also learned how to make a chicken and veal stock and the differences between different stocks. In French stocks are called Fonds, the 3 that we learned so far were fonds blancs, fonds bruns, fumet de poisson. Fonds blanc is white stock generally kept clair (clear somewhat see through liquid and non thicken), fonds bruns can be made clair or lies (thickened) and fumet de poisson is fish stock. I was quite excited when the chef said today you will learn how to make meat stocks. So class rolled on we learned this and we learned that and soon after we had practical class

Today’s practical class was one of those days that I kind of was struggling in. We had to filet a fish, which I’ve never done in my life and after watching the chef I thought to myself OH NO! Class starts up with everyone scrambling to grab a piece of the dover sole and begin skinning and then deboning the fish. Skinning the fish was not as bad as I thought it would be, you have to cut a bit of the skin where the body ends and the tail starts, and then scrape towards the body a bit. Then after that you have to use your fingers and pull on the fish skin and rip the skin off, we had to do this to both sides of the fish. Now this fish, the dover sole is kind of weird its eyes are on one side and apparently it swims in an awkward way. The skin ripping was somewhat easy; the hard part comes next, where you have to debone the fish. I hated it every time I stuck my knife in the fish to cut off the meat from the bone, I would always hit into another bone. Every time I would hit into another bone I’d get scared since they chef said how easy it was to cut right through any of the bones with our knives. I managed to do one piece pretty good without cutting out any of the meat and had to get help on the rest from the chef. Afterwards everything went by pretty smoothly, except for the fact that I burnt my mushrooms and had to restart it. The mushrooms kind of made me lose some time and I was one of the last ones to plate my food, which made me panic. In the end I managed to finish it up, I also got a bit of help from another chef that was in the kitchen walking by. He helped me thicken and season up my sauce; he also taught me a few things about the dish I was making. In the end I panicked a bit, was quite frustrated but managed to finish off the dish, plate it and present to the chef. In the end the chef reviewed the dish I presented to him, he told me that over all it was pretty good but the sauce was a bit salty and the mussels were a bit over cooked.

Other than my mushroom mishap, I had a great day knowing that we’re moving on from vegetables and starting to do meat!

*note* The picture above is what the chef made in demostration to show us, that is not what I made. Mine looks similar to that but not as sexy looking

Sweet Treats!

Sweet Treats! , originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Okay so today was another one of my killer days, 3 classes in a row starting at noon going all the way till about 10pm. The day started out as usual, waking up, getting dressed, etc and off to school I went. Today was a pretty cool day in demo; we were doing ice cream like dishes and a soufflé glace. What was even cooler was the fact that the chef was using one of those ice cream machines, man he said that a good house hold one can cost up to 1000 dollars WOW! The dishes that the chef showed us were glace café, crème glace vanilla, sorbet, granite, soufflé glace and cigarettes aux amandes. The glace café and crème glace vanilla were quite similar, since you start both off with a crème anglais. Sorbet was pretty easy to make too, you need to first make simple syrup (water and sugar bring to a boil), add lime, add to a tourbine (ice cream machine name in French), add egg whites when almost done, freeze again and then serve. Granite was a lot simpler than the three above, all you really have to do is make simple syrup, put it into a large pan, freeze and then serve when ready. Making the dough for the cigarettes aux amandes is really easy too, but actually baking it and giving it some shape looked a bit hard. The hardest out of all of the recipes is the soufflé glace, the process is quite easy, but the actual work involved is really tiring. To make the soufflé you need to make 3 different types of crème, first a whipped crème, then a meringue, then a sabayon and mix the three of them. You also need to make some candied oranges to go along as decorating; the cigarettes aux amandes is also part of the decoration. So the ingredients in making the different crèmes are really simple, the method needed to make them is pretty simple too, the extremely hard part is constantly whisking the crèmes. Yes I know it doesn’t seem so hard right? But it strains your arm a heck of a lot, I thought ok I’m a strong guy maybe I can last quite a while before tiring. Turns out I lasted maybe 2 minutes of constant whipping with each hand before they became too tired. After finishing the 3 crème I thought my arms were going to fall off. So I mixed the 3 together and it made this nice, smooth, velvety texture. When I was done placing my soufflé into the ramekin, I tried a bit of it WOW it was sooo good!!!! After an enjoyable demonstration and practical class, we had a seminar on hygiene, some of the things they mentioned was I’m guessing common sense to some, but not to all. I did however learn a few things about what temperature cooked meat should be kept at and about dealing with leftovers.

After a long day I’m pretty spent, but I still love every minute I’m at school. These past few days of class have been great and I’m looking forward to even more great days.

Cigarettes aux Amandes

Candied Oranges

charlotte aux pommes 5

charlotte aux pommes 5, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Hello everyone, I had class today at 7pm the latest class possible in any given school day. At first I thought it was going to suck, since most of my classes generally end at 6pm or 3:30pm. Other than having such a late class, my day went by pretty good, watched some TV and played some games. At 6pm Josh comes to pick me up and off we head to school, today we did the practical lesson. As I mentioned from my last blog post, I learned to make Charlotte aux pommes, crème anglais au calvados. This recipe seemed quite simple, since the only things you needed were, bread, apples, eggs, calvados, butter, milk, sugar and vanilla extract. I walked into the practical room quite confident and ready to rock and roll. The class quickly got settled down and off we went to gather materials and begin the recipe. First thing I did was cut out the bread pieces I needed, then melted some butter and cored/peeled some apples. After that I took the bread pieces and dipped in the melted butter and placed them into a shallot pan. Then I sliced up the apples into square and cooked them in butter till they were somewhat mushy on the outside but still solid in the inside. I however made one small mistake which lead to my crust fall apart afterwards, the mistake was that I prebaked the bread a tiny bit before I added in the apples. Since I did the prebaking thing, my crust got a bit over cooked and didn’t stick together like it should have. After that I took out the shallot pan out, filled it with apples and back into the oven it went! This was the easier part of the recipe, the next part is a tiny bit trickier, but I managed to do it alright. We had to make a crème anglais, to make this I took two egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract, milk and calvados. So first you have to bring the milk to a boil, beat the two egg yolks quickly with sugar and vanilla extract. Then combine the egg mix with the hot milk, add the milk slowly so the heat doesn’t cook the egg mix and mix the two together with a wooden spoon (not a whisk, I made the mistake of doing that, but fixed it in the end). Afterwards pour back into the russe and let it slowly cook, while stirring with the same spoon till it reaches the right thickness. When that is done pour out the crème anglais, pour into a bowl in an ice bath and then add in some calvados to give it an extra kick (trust me adding in the calvados add so much flavour!). By this time the charlotte aux pommes should be pretty much done now, so take out let chill, chill the crème anglais. Then when chilled enough flip over the charlotte aux pommes onto plate and serve with the crème anglais on the side. This dish is supposed to be served in between the courses of the meal, it’s not really meant to be a dessert dish. I was able to finish the recipe before the allotted time and was allowed to bake the puff pastry I made the other day. I forgot to add egg wash on the dough before sprinkling it with cheese, but it didn’t make a huge difference.

I had a really great day today in practical class, as I think about it now it feels like as the days go by and classes completed, I feel more and more confident. The first week I was insanely excited about going to school, then the second week I lost a bit of that excitement and some of my self confidence. Now with the third week coming along, I’m feeling great, getting my confidence back up and loving school way more than before. I just hope that the rest of the session goes on like this, I have a feeling it will and every day I will love school more and more and more.

Charlotte aux pommes with no sauce

Charlotte aux pommes, creme anglais au calvados being poured over

Charlotte aux pommes with the creme anglais au calvados on it (sauce should be served on side not on top)

Day of Confidence

Pruneaux au vin blanc, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Hey look! It’s already Monday; wow the weekend went by really really fast. On that note it’s already the start of my third week at Le Cordon Bleu! WOOOOOOOOOO!!!! For some odd reason, last night I only slept for 4-5 hours, either way I was able to survive through the day. Today was a normal day with 2 classes, since I had a triple threat on Friday and ended off with a demonstration class. We started the day out with a practical class, I worked on the dreaded puff pastry, and in the end it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Although a few of the layers of the puff pastry ripped and some butter leaked out, the chef helped me out a bit and in the end it turned out alright. Other than the rips in my puff pastry the practical class went by pretty good and smooth, not major problems.

With my lack of sleep, I continued onto demonstration class, feeling sleepy but I endured on. The class started off a bit slow and I really wanted to sleep, once the chef started to cook a few dishes and explain how to make this and that I woke up a bit. Today we learned how to make about 5 different dishes they were; charlotte aux pommes, crème renversee au caramel, poires au vin rouge, pruneaux au vin blanc and sobayon aux fruits. Charlotte aux pommes is kind of like an upside apple tart served with a crème anglaise (English sauce). Crème renversee au caramel is a dish that is made up with caramel on the bottom and an egg custard as the top filling and its baked. Poires au vin rouge is pear poached in red wine and pruneaux au vin blanc is prunes poaches in white wine. Sobayon aux fruits is a kind of desert that sort of looks like yogurt (look at the pictures below), we took strawberries and put some egg foam on top (it tastes better than it sounds haha). The recipes today weren’t so shocking as the other recipes we’ve learned so far, the recipe for tomorrow I actually have some confidence in reproducing it. For the first time during school, I’m actually somewhat confident in myself in reproducing what the chef has shown us. It feels great to have some confidence, I hope this feeling and this confidence stays with me through out the rest of the course.

Poires au vin rouge

Sobayon aux fruits

Creme renversee au caramel

Charlotte aux pommes