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!

Class interrupted

I'm interrupting my normal school menu to show you the beautiful brioche I made last weekend.  I made two loaves and one little round brioche (the typical way to make them).  I sliced this, cut rounds out of the slices and made mini BLTs to take to church on Sunday for the volunteers.  I love this dough.

Mini BLTs are a great appetizer, by the way, if you're looking for something a little different.  You can use any bread, doesn't have to be brioche.  Fry up some bacon and break into small pieces, cut up some cherry tomatoes and lettuce and put them all together.  I weighted mine with a plate, instead of putting a toothpick through them, just because I was transporting them.  They were fun - a little time consuming, but fun.  Sorry I don't have a picture of the BLTs.

Here's another view:

MIA

Sorry I’ve been missing in action for the past week. Things are a bit too crazy! I do have updates and even pictures, but I don’t have the pictures with me, so I’ll do the update and post the pictures when I have them.

Last Monday we did a bluefish with white wine sauce on top of julienned carrots and leeks. Bluefish is a firmer fish, with kind of a fishy taste to it. Not my favorite, but it wasn’t bad. I did like the Chablis sauce served over the fish. It had a lot of flavor to it and was good with the vegetables. On the side of the bluefish, we did a sauté of spinach and garlic and couscous. For dessert we did chocolate mousse. Unfortunately, we overstirred the egg whites into the mousse, so, it ended up very chocolatey and dense. Mousse is supposed to be very light, but ours was very fudgy. It was still good, but a real chocolate overload!
Here's the mousse:

and the bluefish with couscous and sauteed spinach

On Wednesday, we did a 180 of Monday’s menu – flank steak on the grill with a Bordeaux sauce. The sauce was made with bacon, mushrooms, red wine and herbs. Yum! I bought a flank steak on Friday to repeat the menu, but I didn’t get a chance to cook it over the weekend. Hopefully next weekend! Too bad I don’t have a grill, I would love to do it on a grill rather than the grill pan, but the sauce is really what makes the meal, so I’m ok with the grill pan. With the steak, we did a potato dish with thinly sliced potatoes and caramelized onions, cooked until tender. I love caramelized onions and thought these were good. Chef thought our flavors were good, but our potatoes weren’t cooked enough. Practice item! Finally, for dessert we made a coconut macaroon. Simple recipe and for not liking coconut, they were surprisingly good! I was going to make them over the weekend, but the stores were out of coconut! (Easter and Passover must have had everyone baking with coconut).

Since I can’t remember much of what we did on Thursday or Saturday – all the days are running together, I will stop and repost tomorrow with pictures.
Happy Monday, everyone!

Picture Saturday

I finally remembered to bring my camera (or at least my phone) into class so I could snap some pictures of what we had made.

We started out the day making Naan, the Indian flatbread.  We made half using these onion seeds and half without.  The onion seeds did not taste good to me or to most people in the class, I think.  The Naan turned out well, although chef said it was a little flat.  This comes from rolling the dough rather than shaping it (think pizza dough).  All of us ate at one long table today and our Naan got rave reviews from the other students, so I was happy about that.

Along with the Naan, we also made the classic French dish, Chicken Curry.  Ha!  I don't know if I've said, but when we write our daily menus, we have to write our recipe titles in French.  There wasn't even a translation for Chicken Curry, we just wrote it "Chicken Curry".  In any case, it was very good.  Ours ended up not being very spicy and a little darker than it should have been, but it tasted very good, I thought.  We had a bit of a problem because our sauce had reduced way too much and by that point, it's hard to add more liquid without diluting the spices in the dish.  And, you don't want to just add more spices because they don't really get cooked into the dish.  Brian, my teammate had a great idea to add the spices to extra chicken stock and cook it down a bit and then add it into the dish.  Worked great, we just needed a little more heat in the dish.

Alongside the curry, we made basmati rice with many of the same spices and also some saffron.  

I really enjoyed this meal and have all the ingredients to make the chicken curry for dinner tonight (and lunches this week).

Finally, we made apple beignets.  When I think of beignets, I think of the classics at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans.  These were nothing like that.  Basically, ours were battered apple rings that we deep fried, more like an apple fritter of sorts.  The batter is interesting, made with yeast, beer and whipped egg whites, among other things.  When they come out of the fryer, you sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar.  Good, but weird.  As you can see, we made our beignets square - trying to stand out.

I have to work on my paper on cinnamon, which is due tomorrow.  In two weeks, we have our second set of exams (both practical and theory).  Hoping for the best.

Risotto!

We made risotto last night. What’s not to love about risotto? It’s starchy, like pasta and you add a good amount of cheese in it, along with other goodies if you want. The only thing is it takes about 20 minutes of almost constant stirring, so it’s a little labor intensive, but so worth it in the end. We added sautéed mushrooms in ours, along with Parmesan cheese and butter. Nice and creamy. Mine was a little undercooked, so had a bit too much bite to it. I will be practicing this one again this weekend! The only problem with practicing it is it doesn’t hold or reheat well, so to make a batch, I might have to waste some. I’m really adverse to wasting cooked food!

Along with the risotto, we made tomato soup. I have a really good tomato soup recipe that I make at home. I didn’t think the one we made last night was as good, but it was good. He said we needed to add a few more onions to the mix to round out the flavor, but it was good. Just not as good as mine.

For dessert, we made Linzer Tart. This is a classic dessert of pastry filled with raspberry jam and then topped with a lattice crust top. This was a new dough that we worked with. The problem that we have in the time that we have is that doughs and things cannot chill properly. In a restaurant (or at home), it would be much easier because you can take the time to chill things like they need to. When we can only chill for about 20 minutes (instead of at least an hour), it makes the doughs harder to work with. But, ours came out pretty well. However! when we make our tarts, we use small tart pans and we don’t use the bottom round in the pans (it really helps the tart bottom to brown better). So, we place the tart pans on a baking sheet lined with parchment and then fill our dough on the sheet. Well, we were a little behind last night, pulling our tarts out of the oven just before service. I went to transfer mine from the baking sheet to the plate and what happens? The whole tart fell through the bottom of the tart pan right onto the table! At least it wasn’t the floor! I got a spatula and scooped it onto the plate. The shape of the tart around the rim held, so I put that on the plate and put the guts inside. Chef’s comment? That’s a hard dough to work with! Uh, yeah, especially when you make a stupid move and try to move a bottomless tart pan without something to support it.

Tonight’s menu is a mystery. By the way, I'm going to start bringing my camera to class to take pictures of our finished dishes, so you can see something rather than just reading the drabble. Happy Thursday, everyone!