Tuesdays with Dorie

I've just started participating in a fun adventure.  It's called Tuesdays with Dorie and a group of people are going to be cooking their way through Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.  The first week (which I didn't participate in) was making the White Bread Loaves.  I got the recipe from Jules' blog and got to baking, since I needed some bread anyway.  One of the rules of participating is you have to own the book, which I just ordered using a gift certificate that I got for my birthday.  It's a book that's been on my wish list anyway, so I'm glad I will now be able to use it.

This bread is so easy to make and is so good - tastes just like a good white bread should.  The one thing I didn't like is it kneads for 10 minutes in your mixer and I think it was taking a toll on my mixer by going that long.  But, all came out well and they were pretty AND tasty!

You can see step by step on Jules' blog.  I just have the finished results.

The horse in the truck

This site is in Old Town Alexandria, about a block from where I work.  It makes me laugh and do a double take every time I go past it, especially if I'm driving by.  I'm not sure what it's used for, but that horse gets decorated seasonally.  It's usually parked in the same spot, but I have seen it in different places along King Street, so I don't know if it's used as a promotion for something.  When I decided on the picture thing, I knew that I would have to include this.

Brabo

Brabo is the restaurant that I'm working at for my internship.  Right now I'm doing prep cook work.  I do a lot of chopping, peeling and the like.  I also do make some of the sauces, stocks and soups, although usually the two other prep cooks do most of the cooking.  I am learning, and it is very hard work.  Most days I enjoy it, but there are days when I ask myself why I spent all that money in culinary school just to clean mushrooms and peel tomatoes.  It does build speed, though, and even though I'm still pretty slow, I'm catching on and speeding up.  Some tasks are just tedious and take awhile.

I'm hoping to move from prep cook into the butcher shop.  I've done a little bit of butchering, but would like to learn more - it's a good skill to have.

If you want to take a closer look at the restaurant, you can check them out at www.braborestaurant.com.  Be sure to check out all three restaurants - Brabo, Brabo Tasting Room and The Butcher Shop.  It's an interesting place.

Happy New Year 2012!

I thought a good way to chronicle 2012 was in pictures.  Since this will be a huge transition year, I thought I would take a picture a day to document the day to day, or maybe the new in this year.  Also, I want to improve my photography skills using my DSLR, so I thought this would be a good goal and a picture a day should help me to improve.

I thought of the idea on my walk yesterday, so I thought it was fitting to take a picture of my running shoes.  The shoes haven't seen much running lately, but I do get out to exercise a few times a week - hopefully more now that my schedule is a little more settled.

Anyway, here's the picture for January 1, 2012.  I'm a day late in posting.

As an aside, I made Buffalo Chicken Rice last night for dinner.  I was watching Sara Moulton on PBS yesterday and she made it - it's one of her 5 ingredient weeknight meals and I had all five ingredients!  I didn't take a picture (because it's pretty boring looking), but it was sure tasty.  Here's the recipe:

Buffalo Chicken Rice

8 ounces chicken breast, cubed

1 cup long-grain rice, uncooked

2 Tablespoons butter

4 ounces blue cheese

2 Tablespoons hot sauce (I added two, but wish I would have added more)

Cook rice according the directions on package.  Remember to add salt to your boiling water before adding the rice - trust me on this.

Season chicken with salt and pepper.  Melt butter in large skillet and add chicken and cook until brown and cooked through - this should only take a few minutes.  Add hot sauce to chicken and stir to coat.  Add hot rice to chicken and top with blue cheese.  Stir to combine and continue to stir until blue cheese is melted.

I'm back!

For those few of you who actually read this,  school is done, except for a few classes in the next few months.  I've started my externship, finally, after having two places fall through.  I'm about a month behind my classmates, but since I'm working full time, it shouldn't be hard for me to catch up and I will definitely be done before graduation in June.  There's a reason that people start out in restaurants when they're 20 - it's grueling work!

I'm working as a prep cook in the restaurant.  It's just like it sounds - prepping for that evening's service or a banquet.  I chop potatoes and celery, peel onions (150 pounds of them in 2 days!), carrots and tomatoes and clean and debeard mussels.  There's more to it than that, but I'm the low man on the totem pole, so I get to do a lot of the most grunt work.  As I start to learn the ropes, I will be making stock, soups, roast beef and the like, in addition to the chopping tasks.

I still have all fingers attached, although all of the onion and tomato peeling have left the tips of my fingers very sore.  I also have the customary blister on my right index finger from chopping so much.  Eventually it will callous over.

Today is Sunday, so it's pretty slow for the prep cooks.  There were two of us on, so we got things done pretty quickly and then we were sent home.  Nice to have the time back, but, unlike my salary-paying job, if I don't work, I don't get paid.  My biggest job of the day was to pass about 30 pounds of cooked potatoes through the tami (it's like a huge fine-mesh strainer) and make mashed potatoes.  In addition to the callouses, I'm going to have huge forearms if I do that a lot.

The people who I work with are nice, for the most part.  Many don't speak much English, which makes it difficult at times to communicate, especially when I have a "why" question, but it'll work out.  As I didn't have a day off between leaving my old job and starting this one, I've now worked 7 days in a row and have 3 more to go before having 2 days off.

Do I like it?  Well, it's ok.  I knew that restaurant work wouldn't be my dream job, but I think I'll learn a lot that will take me in other fields.

Stay tuned - I'll try to keep you up to date on my adventures.

A more normal week

I think this week should be more normal than last week - it was hard going to school Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  I like having that Friday break, it's needed.

Last night was a cold dish appetizer night.  We started out with a carrot and fennel salad with a champagne vinaigrette.  My chef is starting to really talk to us about different textures in dishes - smooth, crunchy, etc.  So, what I thought would be an easy salad of julienned carrots and fennel was not so easy.  We started out cooking some carrots in butter and then pureeing them with some champagne to make a smooth puree.  This was laid on the bottom of the dish and topped with julienned fennel that had been mixed with the champagne vinaigrette.  On top of the fennel was fried carrot strips - just plain julienned carrots that were deep fried.  Scattered around the dish was some fennel brittle - just hard caramel with fennel seeds added.  It was good.

We also made steak tartare - raw ground beef served with an egg on top.  It's supposed to be a raw egg yolk, but we poached ours.  We also had a parmesan tuile on the side and a little arugula salad to go with it.  When I went for my interview with the school, this was what I had for lunch.  It's not bad - not as bad as you think.  I wouldn't eat it all the time, but it was tasty.  We started with a top butt of meat and chopped our own finely.

An odd week

It's been an odd week at school.  We had off on Saturday and Monday for the 4th of July holiday, so we came back to school on Wednesday and then Thursday we had the second session of our wine-tasting class.  Tonight (Friday) we have a make up class for missing Monday but we are doing a taste sensation class with the head chef from school, no producing anything.  I have no idea what taste sensation entails, but I'll let you know - I guess it has to do with the sweet, salty, bitter, sour, etc. sensations.  Tomorrow is a big cook day (7 items!).  I'll be ready for some sleep when it's all said and done.

On Wednesday, our cook night this week, we made a cold cucumber and mint soup.  It was refreshing, but a little too "cucumber-y" for me.  I like cucumbers, but it was a bit much.  It had cucumber, mint, garlic, anise seeds and some sherry vinegar and yogurt all blended in the blender until smooth.  We had seeded the cucumber and mixed the seeds with some chives for the topping - interesting.

We also did paella.  Yum!  How can you go wrong with chicken, onions, chorizo, peppers, tomatoes, shrimp, mussels and peas?  Add the rice and some saffron in and it's a little bit of heaven on a plate.  Best part?  Lots of ingredients, but only one pot!  Sorry I didn't get a picture, because it was pretty all there in the paella pan with some fancy lemon wedges on the top.

I'm starting to look at places to do my externship - looking at some higher end hotels around the area.  Praying something comes of one of them.

Have a great weekend!

A short break

Tonight was our last night of class until next Wednesday.  Can't say I'm really disappointed, it'll be nice to have the break.  They gave us Saturday off and then Monday, of course, is the 4th of July.  We do have to make up Monday's class, so I will be in school Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday next week.  That's ok, though.

Our last night before the break was also a break.  We had a Master of Wine come in tonight and do a wine explanation and wine tasting with us.  It's the first of 3 times he will be with us, the last time being a food and wine pairing where we will cook (I think) and then pair it with the wines.  There are only 21 Masters of Wine in the US and he is one of them - he's so interesting.

We were done early, so we cooked and ate some duck confit and had some bread to go with it.  Then we had 1:1's with the chef if we wanted them.  I talked to him about my externship and I think I'm going to look at hotels to extern at, rather than a restaurant.  Since I've worked in corporate America for so long, it seemed like a natural transition for me.  The chef was agreeable to that - he said this area has a lot of really big name chefs in hotels here.  So now the fun starts - looking for a job!

Have a great 4th of July, everyone!  I'll try and get some pictures up of things I cook this weekend.

Duck Gizzards

I'm back!  I'm in my second week of Phase 2 of my classes.  What does this mean?  We're building on the techniques that we learned in Phase 1, making our dishes more refined and elegant and continuing to learn. My Phase 1 exam was challenging (putting it mildly), so it'll be interesting to see what Phase 2 holds.

Also, I have to start looking for an interviewing for externships.  My original plan was to do hotels - a little more structured, but the more I think about it the more I realize that I will never learn in a hotel what I will learn in a fine dining place.  Even if I don't do restaurant after graduation, the experience will be invaluable.  So, I'm sort of starting from scratch, researching chefs, restaurants, etc.  It's been a long time since I applied for a job and having to do a whole new resume highlighting my culinary "experience" was interesting.  Luckily I have my personal chef stuff, although even that is pretty slim.

So, what does this have to do with the title of my post?  Nothing much.  However, in starting to think like restaurant chefs, we are starting to think about using everything in the restaurant - it's called utilization.  So, last week we butchered down ducklings, taking out the offals, the liver, gizzards, etc.  Don't throw them out - they can be used.  The original application that we made was seared duck breast with a sweet and sour sauce.  I think I've mentioned before that I'm not really a fan of duck.  It was ok - a bit chewy for my liking.

Last night then, we did utilization - we made a frisee salad using duck livers and gizzards that had been confited.  To confit is to cook something in it's own fat, so if you're in a French restaurant and get duck confit, you are getting a duck that has been submerged and cooked for several hours in the oven in it's own fat.  A delicacy, I guess.  We cooked the livers and gizzards in duck fat last night and then served them on a salad of frisee, watercress and radishes.  It's then served with a warm vinaigrette.  Not as bad as I thought, but I'd never order it in a restaurant (not that I've even seen it).

I'm sorry I didn't get a picture, but we were rushed at service time, so I didn't think about it.

Til next time!

First stretch is almost done

I'm in my final week of Phase 1 of my classes.  Now the fun really begins!!  Class will get harder, I need to start looking for, applying for and interviewing for externships.  How can I look when I'm not really sure what I want to be when I grow up??  The externship advisor talked to us last night and gave us a list of restaurants in the area that we can look at - it's about 12 pages of single-spaced places!  Wow, who knew?

I've been forgetting to take pictures of the dishes that we've made, but I did have a couple from a few weeks ago that I haven't put on.

The first dish we made was braised rabbit.  Yes, you read that right.  Rabbit!  We had to butcher them down, and you really could tell they were rabbits.  A little creepy, but I guess it's really no different than butchering down a chicken.  That's what I told myself.

So, we used the legs for the braise with mushrooms, tomatoes and stock.  It was ok - as I've said before, I wouldn't order it in a restaurant.  We served it on top of polenta.

Along with the rabbit, we also made "brain cake".  Ha!  Not really - it's called Charlotte Royale - made with jelly roll and bavarian cream.  It's done in a bowl, so it's kind of a fun presentation, but it does look like brain cake.  What do you think?

Some non-class pictures coming soon.

Another banquet

On Saturday, we had to make appetizers for a party that the school was having on Sunday.  The school has two locations - one is mainly professional classes (like I'm taking) and the other, the original location, holds mostly recreational classes.  The original location is in an old house-type building and has been under renovation for the past year (it needed it).  They finally opened and wanted to have a grand re-opening party.  So, we made appetizers for them to serve at the open house the next day.

My table made grilled zucchini roulades with goat cheese topped with a balsamic reduction.  A bit of work, but very tasty.

Things made by the other tables included asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, shrimp cocktail and deviled eggs topped with Bombay chicken curry (these were really good!).

      

The reason we have them plated for service is we were supposed to serve about 30 prospective students that Saturday.  They were coming in for an open house to learn more about the professional programs.  Only about 4 people showed up, so we had a feast after they left.  

Coming up?  Rabbit!

A few fish dishes

Hello!  As always, I've been missing in action.  I was going to do a summary of the past few weeks, but we've done some interesting things, so I'll divide the posts up, so you don't get bored reading everything at once.

I'll start with the few days after I left off - which was May 18, I think.
That evening we start off making chocolate truffles.  These are incredibly easy to make - 2 ingredients:  heavy cream and chocolate.  You melt the chocolate with the cream and then chill until you can scoop it and then roll it in cocoa powder, coconut, nuts, whatever you want.  I'm not sure what happened to mine, but they never set up, just big blobs of chocolate.  I've made them before and they are always fine.  The weird thing is I make things at school and can't do it, but I make them at home and they turn out great!  I guess it's the pressure of school (or lack thereof at home) that screws things up.  Anyway, my table mate's turned out good, so this is what they should look like

That night, we also made gumbo - chicken, shrimp, okra, the whole nine yards.  Along with the gumbo we made "dirty rice".  This is similar to the rice pilaf that we make (a lot), but the dirty rice also has chicken livers in.  I tried it and really, really did not like it.  You know me, I'll eat most anything, but I couldn't get around that texture.  

The next night, we did a warm calamari salad.  We roasted red peppers, sauteed the calamari and made a vinaigrette to put over the top.  It's a warm salad.  It was ok - not sure I'd order it, but if you like calamari, you'd enjoy this salad.  The problem with sauteeing calamari is that it can become rubbery very quickly, so you need to watch it carefully.  It's a pretty salad, though, with lots of color in it (which you can't tell from the picture)

Along with the calamari salad, we made potato crusted salmon.  You take salmon filets, wrap them in thinly sliced potatoes and sear them until the crust is brown.  It's quite a bit of work, but really, really tasty.  Underneath is a beurre rouge sauce - butter and red wine reduced down.  We also did braised leeks to lay the fish on - we've made those several times and I love them.  This was a really nice dish, but would be an expensive one in a restaurant because of the effort.

More to come soon - hope you are having an exceptional weekend!

Fish and Pork & Beans

Sorry I'm behind again!  I'm going to combine the rest of last week's classes, so then I should be almost caught up.

On Thursday, we had our pork butchering demonstration - the chef had a full pork loin which he then butchered down into roasts, medallions, etc.  Luckily, we don't need to learn the muscles, joints, etc. on the animals - we just need to know the primal cuts and where they come from.  Science has not really ever been my thing, especially anatomy, so if we had to learn all of the muscles and stuff, I would fail out quickly.

After the demo, we set about cooking, but not the pork.  We did fish instead because it's quicker.  We started out with fried eggplant - pretty standard, eggplant, breaded and then pan fried until golden.  I liked it much better than I thought I would.

We then deboned some rockfish and put it in parchment paper along with olive oil, caramelized onions, zucchini and fennel.  The parchment is then sealed around the fish, creating a pocket.  Put in the oven, where it steams the fish.  Once it came out, we made a sauce of tomatoes, black olives, olive oil, saffron and basil, which was served over the fish.  I'm not a big fan of olives or chunk tomatoes, like that, but it had good flavor - very Mediterranean.

Sorry for the picture - I forgot to take it until I was halfway through eating.

On Saturday, we started out making baguettes again - this time we added sourdough starter for some flavor.  I have trouble rolling out my baguettes - they taste ok, but they are ugly.  Also, because I tend to roll so much, they don't rise quite as much.  Practice needed.

We then did one of my favorite desserts - carrot cake.  It was a pretty traditional cake - carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  We added walnuts to the cake, which I happen to like.  I like that bit of crunch in the cake.  When my table made ours, we added a little too much shredded carrot to our cake, so we called it "healthy".  It was really tasty.  We added a small can of crushed pineapple to the recipe, which made it very moist.

We then used our pork from Thursday night to make pork and beans - yep, you read that right.  However, these weren't just any pork and beans - the pork was seared (with bacon, I might add) and then we made a braise.  While the pork was braising for a few hours, we cooked our beans with some flavor.  The beans had soaked for 2 days before we started cooking them.  When the pork was tender, we combined the pork and the beans for a stew.  It was delicious! (again, ate before taking pictures).

Finally, to go with our pork and beans, we made cornbread - southern cornbread with sugar.  Ours came out really well, which we then topped with butter while warm.  Delicious!  I would definitely make pork and beans and cornbread for guests!

Ravioli

Hi Family and Friends - I didn't think I was so far behind in my posts, but I am, so I'll probably do a few posts to catch you up on this week.

I posted what we did on Monday (fish fingers - still yummy).  Wednesday started out with us making dessert.  We do dessert first a lot of times because (1) you can hold it (usually) and (2) you could need time to let it set up.  This was the case with the panna cotta we made.  If you've never had panna cotta, think of milky jello.  I know, sounds gross, and I didn't really care for it, but a lot of people in my class liked it.  You do add gelatin to help it set.  We infused ours with orange zest.  It wasn't bad, but I'm glad to see there are some desserts that I can just pass on.  With my sweet tooth, that's not easy to find!

I think I mentioned the edible tulip cups that we made the other day for our chocolate mousse to sit in.  The little thing on top of these are almond tuiles.  Same concept - it's really just an almond cookie that's shaped after it comes out of the oven.  

With dessert, we did one of my favorite dishes - ravioli!  We just did a ricotta one tonight - made the pasta and shaped it and then filled with a ricotta/parmesan/basil filling.  My only problem was that my pasta dough was pretty sticky, so when we tried to pull it out of the ravioli plates, it stuck.  We got enough usable ravioli at our table, though.  We topped it with a brown butter and tomato cream sauce, which was outstanding.  I was planning on making it again tonight, but I'm too full from today's meal to think about eating anything else.

Finally, we did gazpacho - cold soup with tomato, cucumber, cilantro, peppers, onions, tabasco - pretty standard.  We topped it with some brioche croutons.  Cold soup is not my thing, but it was tasty - would be a good summer starter, in just small amounts.  

Tomorrow, I'm teaching a kids cooking class for a birthday party.  There will be seven 11-year olds there.  Wish me luck!  We are doing chicken bobs (ground chicken meatballs, rolled in potato chips on a stick - Molly?), lasagna roll ups and chocolate dipped treats.  We are dipping, pretzels, oreos, marshmallows, graham crackers and rice krispie treats (only because I want to make RK treats).

Have a great weekend, everyone!  I'll try to update again tomorrow.

Fish Fingers (or Goujonettes if you want to be fancy)

Last night we made another French classic:  fish and chips.

The fish was cod, which we sliced into "fingers".  It was then just seasoned, breaded and deep fried.  Along with the fish, we made pommes frites (French fries).  We've done pommes frites before, but as far as I'm concerned, we could do them every night!  They are so good.  Here's a little tip that my tablemate of the week told me (and we did it last night):  when you salt your fries, add a pinch of sugar to the salt.  Brings out the saltiness and gives them a little something.  Think kettle corn.

Along with the deep fried items, we also made corn fritters.  These are pretty much corn pancakes, made with cornmeal, flour, corn, jalepenos and scallions.  Ours ended up being pretty dense, we added too much flour to them.  They are tasty, though, when done right.  These weren't deep fried, just pan-fried in oil.  The sauce on the side is remoulade sauce - mayo (that we made) with pickles, capers, shallots, lemon, tarragon, chives and parsley.

Because we needed something sweet after that, we made raisin cookies with two different glazes.  Standard cookies and half were topped with apricot glaze and half were topped with a rum glaze.  I think I was a little heavy handed on the rum, but they were tasty.

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the cookies.  I actually forgot to take a picture when we plated, so I recreated with our leftovers.  Good thing I hadn't eaten all my pommes frites before I took the picture!

Can't remember what we're doing tomorrow night, but Thursday, we're watching the butchering of a pig (or at least half a pig).  I see bacon in my future.

Veal

Later last week we "studied" veal.  The head chef of the school came in on Thursday with part of a veal (it weighed about 55 pounds) and showed us how to butcher it.  Apparently butchering is becoming a lost art - there are not many true butchers around anymore.  Do you have a butcher near you?  I don't know of one, but would like to research that and find a good one.  We use a lot (and I mean a lot) of veal stock at school and veal bones are the only way to make good veal stock.  You almost have to go to a farm to get them.

Anyway, onto what we cooked...  After watching the butcher demo, we took the top round of the veal and sliced it into thin slices, called scallopini.  We pounded the slices out (looks bigger and you get more even cooking because it's pounded to an even size all around) and then breaded and pan fried them.  On top is a brown butter sage sauce.

To the side are glazed carrots.  The last time we made glazed carrots, we had to tournee them (the 7-sided cuts).  You know how much I love doing that, so I was not feeling the love on the carrots.  He surprises us with cutting them in "oblique" cuts - basically just on the diagonal.  Yay!  Much easier. 

Also to the side are Pommes Anna.  I've always seen Pommes Anna where the thinly-sliced potatoes are shaped in a dome-like shape.  These were different - just shaped in a ring and then pan fried to crispy.  Came out tasting like potato chips.  They were good, how can you go wrong with homemade potato chips?  They were not what I'd expect with veal scallopini, though.



On Saturday, we used the bottom round of the veal (it's tougher cut of meat) and made braised veal.  This is done much the same way as boeuf bourginon or coq au vin.  We are starting to see commonalities among the dishes - the techniques are the same, just subbing different ingredients.  Light bulb!!  The veal was good, but there was an addition of orange zest in the sauce, which not many in my class liked.  It was subtle, but not subtle enough.  We made our infamous rice pilaf to go alongside.



Also on Saturday, we made baguettes.  We started out making them in the Kitchen Aids, but chef nixed that - all done by hand.  It wasn't too bad.  Mine was a little denser than I liked, but it was good to soak up the sauce in the veal.  I really like making bread, so I need to practice this more.  Anyone need a baguette?  Each recipe makes about 3 loaves, even I can't eat that much.


Also on Saturday, we revisited chocolate mousse.  Actually, we didn't revisit, it was a completely new recipe.  Our last recipe had us whipping egg whites and then folding them into the chocolate batter.  This one used all of the egg and was very dense and rich.  We also used a pretty high cocoa content in the chocolate, so it was somewhat bitter (the higher the cocoa percentage, the more bitter the chocolate - 60% is a good bittersweet).  We piped the mousse into edible tulip cups that we made.  Make the batter, form it in a template, bake it and when it comes out of the oven, you immediately put it over a champagne flute to form it.  Fun!  They are thin and fragile to work with, but a very fun idea.  That's raspberry coulis underneath.



Up next - fish and chips (another classic French dish :))

Last week

Sorry for being MIA last week - whew, it was a busy week and I had no time to upload pictures or post anything.  5 weeks left in Phase 1 and then a week long break.  I can't wait!  I'm enjoying my time, but not having any downtime is wearing on me.

On Monday we made potato gnocchi.  If you've never had gnocchi, it's basically pasta, but made with potatoes instead of flour.  Blah!  Would much prefer pasta to gnocchi, although ours was a bit starchy, which may have had something to do with why I didn't like it.  It's fun to make, though and I may try it again.  We made a tomato sauce with fennel to go along with it.  It was made with both fennel and toasted fennel seeds.  Different - a bit of anise flavor to go with it.  Of course, we added a splash of Pernod to the sauce to round it out (Pernod is anise flavored liquor).  We also made a quick salad of frisee (bitter), with roasted red peppers and a vinaigrette.  The frisee was too bitter for me, but I ate the peppers.  For dessert, we made jam cookies - sandwich cookies with jam (or chocolate ganache) inside.  The top of the cookie is cut out, so you can see what's in the middle.  Sorry, I forgot to take pictures that night.

On Wednesday, we had a guest speaker, so we had a relatively easy night.  Our guest speaker was the woman from the school who does the placement for the externships.  Nothing really new, just to start to get us thinking about where we'd like to extern.  I still have no idea.  As scared as I am of working in a restaurant, I think it'll be the best training.  Hotel is another option, but could be overnight hours.  At any place, I think it'll be a lot of hours for very little pay.  Really scary to think about.

Anyway, that night we did a whole roasted chicken.  We stuffed the chicken with vegetables and lemon wedges, salt and pepper.  We then browned the whole outside in a skillet before putting it in the oven to finish cooking.  After butchering the chicken, we put the carcass and vegetables back in the skillet with some chicken stock for an au jus.

With the chicken we did mashed potatoes made with garlic confit.  The raw garlic is covered with oil and put in the oven until tender.  You can then use the garlic-infused oil or the garlic cloves.  We used the oil, which was ok, but I'd prefer using butter instead.  The flavor seemed a little funky.

We also did asparagus - nothing big - cooked, shocked then sauteed with salt and pepper.

I'm doing a separate post for Thursday and Saturday - veal days. 

Have a good week, everyone!



Tests are done!

My second set of tests are done!  Sorry I don't have any pictures to post, but you've seen everything we made today.  I did take the day off work yesterday and practiced everything and I'm so glad I did.  I was really nervous this morning.

My morning started about an hour later than normal with our theory (written) test.  The class was divided in two and half took the theory part first and half took the practical (cooking) part first.  We had 3 hours to finish the test.  It took us about 40 minutes.  Then, we weren't able to start our practical until the other class got done, so we went out to breakfast between tests.

At noon started our practical and we had 3 hours to complete everything.  The menu was hot leek and potato soup, chicken breast with the madeira mushroom sauce, "hash browned" potatoes (called Pommes Darphin in French) and the nasty floating islands.

The biggest challenge is getting everything prepared (mis en place) before you actually start cooking - making sure you have enough pans, whisks, spoons, all your ingredients, etc.  While you can certainly go get more if you need it, you want to be as prepared as possible.  I did ok with that, but did forget some things, which caused a little damage to some dishes.

I was really nervous for some reason throughout the exam, even though I had done everything a few times before.  Completely screwed up my creme anglaise for the floating islands, but asked chef how I could recover and he helped me with that.  Points off, but not as many as if I had made it completely screwed up and hadn't asked for help.

So, how did I do?  My soup and floating islands came out very well.  My potatoes were overcooked, so a little bitter and my chicken was a little overdone, too.  My sauce had reduced too much, so was too thick.  I knew how to fix it and tried, but was afraid of ruining all the seasoning.  I felt ok when I was done, knew what I had done wrong, knew how to fix it.

I'm now off to have dinner at a French bistro with a friend of mine.  I didn't eat my meal today, so haven't eaten anything since early this morning.  I'm going to feast!  I'm so looking forward to someone else cooking!  The chef at this restaurant graduated from the school I'm going to.  I'm going to try and meet her and maybe put a bug in her ear about an externship there.  3 miles from my house?  Sweet!!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Test week

We have tests coming up on Satuday - both theory (written) and practical.  I thought with the test, we'd take it a bit easier this week, revisiting things we've made and that could possibly be on the test.  Monday was a good example of that, but last night, wow, it was crazy!  More on that in the next post.

Please know that the pictures I take are with my phone in not the best lighting, so I know they are not the best looking pictures, but you get the idea of what I'm making.

Our entree on Monday was seared scallops over leek fondue.  The scallops were pretty straightforward - seasoning and oil and then add some butter to the pan when they are searing.  Love scallops - could have eaten a lot more than the three shown.  The leek fondue was basically braised leeks.  Great side dish and really good with the sort of salty scallops. 

We started out with leek and potato soup.  This will most likely be on the test, either hot or cold (which is vichyssoise).  A good easy soup - tastes just like the title, both leeks and potatoes.  We have this heavy duty blender at the school which is what we puree our soups in.  They are about $400-$500, but wow, do they do an amazing job of pureeing!  Finish the soup with some cream and you're all set.

Finally, we made brownies.  Pretty straightforward, but they were good, not cloyingly sweet.  The one does look like it has a bite out of it, because I forgot to take the picture before chef came and tasted.  He just broke the piece off, but it does look like a perfect bite though.

Happy Thursday, everyone!  I'll post more about my overwhelming adventure last night.  I think I'm still sweating from it!

Duck two ways

We made duck a couple times last week.  I'm not really a big fan of duck - it's too rich for me, but in small portions, it's not bad.  Wednesday night we made Duck a l'orange - duck in orange sauce.  The sauce starts by making caramel and then adding vinegar to it.  The fumes when you add the vinegar were really intense, you need to step back or your nostrils will get cleaned out!  The sauce is finished with orange juice.  We then seared the duck breast and served the sauce on top.  Yes, that is fat on top of the duck slices below.  It's seared, so crisy, but like I said, too rich for me.

Alongside the duck, we made French Peas - peas with onions, lettuce and bacon.  We cooked ours just a bit too long, but the flavor was very good.  I would make this again because I love peas. 

Finally, we made dough and rolled it out in tarts for a zucchini and tomato tart.  I was rushed with mine and didn't put enough tomatoes and zucchini in, and it reduces down, so I was a little short.  For my palate, I could have used more Parmesan on it, too.  There was Parmesan underneath the vegetables, too, but still not enough.  There's never too much cheese in my mind.

On Saturday, we made duck confit.  Do you know what duck confit is?  It's duck braised in duck fat.  Basically, you take the duck legs, completely submerged them in liquid duck fat and put it in the oven for about 3 hours until tender.  Then you sear the leg to get it crispy.  It was not as bad as I thought it would be, but I won't be ordering it anytime soon.

Alongside the duck, we made braised cabbage and apples.  This is a sort of sweet and sour cabbage dish.  I thought it was good, much better than I thought it would be.

We also made Gran Marnier souffles.  Mine fell a bit because it had sat for just a bit too long before I took the picture.  Souffles are weird to me.  Pretty, but they are very eggy-tasting.  It would not be my first dessert choice, although I guess it's rare to find them on a menu because they have to be made to order and there are a few steps to getting them made, none of which can be done ahead of time.  Eggy though it was, it didn't stop me from eating almost the entire thing.

Finally, we made foccacia.  Had I known how easy it is to make, I would have been making it years ago.  Of course, it's probably good that I didn't know how easy it was to make.  Great bread for soup or an appetizer.  Yum!