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