Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Sweetbreads are NOT Sweet!

Phase 3, Week 4, Day 18

OK, this is a fun one. Obviously, sweetbreads are not sweet. They are the thymus gland of a cow. The texture alone is enough to make you hurl, and those of you who know me know I don't really have much of a texture issue. But this one got to me. So, why do they call them sweetbreads? A brief internet search concluded that no one really knows why they are called that. I can't believe the internet didn't come through on answering something, I think that's a first for me. Apparently, I can't eat them but I can rock them in the kitchen.

Menu for today:

Veal Stew Vol au Vent
Tourned Potatoes

Sweetbreads with Sauce Maltaise
Pureed Butternut Squash

A couple of weird things for today. We are serving our sweetbreads with a sweet flavored hollandaise sauce, gross. During the demo the chefs commented how the sweetness of the orange cut down on the alkali flavor of many offal or varietal meets (cooking terms for stuff you wouldn't normally eat). I made a mental note.... Second weird thing is the vol au vent or puff pastry. It's not too weird but puts a different spin on presenting stew. Third, how the hell are we going to incorporate pureed squash with either of these dishes?

Production of both dishes was fairly easy. The fact the I always eff up stew has become a standard for me, and I just roll with it now. I have now added stew to the list of things I can't do well. The sweet hollandaise was a bit challenging to get it to the right consistency, although orange is an acid, it didn't quite act the same as vinegar or wine. Puff pastry, easy. Pureed squash, easy. Putting it all together, interesting.

Remember the last day of F2 when Adolf and Ava said you have to plan your entire dish ahead of time. I've tried to do this during F3 as best I can, and this is what I came up with this time around. A taste of seared sweetbread and candied orange peel w/ a quenelle of sweet squash puree w/ sauce malaise. Mini vol au vant filled with veal stew and tourned potatoes.

A taste of Sweetbreads

Veal Stew Vol au Vent



Result:
Sweetbreads- Both chefs liked the presentation, a bit too much sauce in the dish. They enjoyed the addition of sugared orange peel I added as garnish to cut the sweetbreads. But my sauce could have had more flavor...

Stew- Nice presentation, sauce was too thick and the potatoes were not quite done. Oops...

Grade for last two days, 87%. Not great, but not bad.

1 comment:

  1. I hope you are doing ok. Haven't seen new posts for a while. We all enjoy reading your culinary adventure. Please keep going.

    best wishes for the new year and hopefully a new successful career of your dreams.

    ReplyDelete