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