Tuesday, February 17, 2009

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
Contre filet roti pommes chateau

Poulet cocotte Grand-mere
Poulet cocotte Grand-mere

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