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.