Francophile

Phase 3, Week 6, Day 25

We took our written final today (80%- ouch!) and prepared two more dishes and neither of them French. Which is interesting for a French cooking school. We do a lot of non European cooking in our last class, CAC, but you'd think being a Foundations class we'd stick to basic French Cuisine. Not today, we are doing an Asian dish and a primarily Middle Eastern dish.

#1- Calamari, tartar sauce, and vegetable tempura.
#2- Lamb Kabab, cucumber raita, and grilled portobello.

Again, both fairly simple to prepare. I have to admit I was a bit squimish preparing the calamari. We were given small octopi and requited to skin them, remove the quill, beaks and eyes. Popping the eyes out was pretty gross, even worse than processing the rabbit. Otherwise easy peasy.

Chef Bruce called me "Country Club" when I presented my first plate today. Not sure if that was a compliment or not.

Plate 1: Chef Tim liked the presentation, one suggestion was not to place a fried food on to a sauce. The sauce will immediately begin to make the food soggy. Tempora batter was a bit too runny, as the extra moisture in the veggies made it difficult to get a good coating  on the sticks. Otherwise good. 96%
Plate 2: Kabab was a bit rare, but very flavorful. He liked the way I chose to  separate the vegetables on the skewers. Both the kabab and portobello had nice grill marks and the sauce was good. 96%

Just 3 days left!!! I'm getting tired of having to present dishes all the time. But I guess that's what being in the industry is about. People judging your food on a daily basis....

Lamb Kabobs and Grilled Portobello

Calamari and Tempera vegetables 

Ouch!!!

Phase 3, Week 4, Day 19 & 20

Day 19 was a demo day of Veal Cordon Bleu and Rack of Lamb.

Day 20, Practical.

Menu: Dish 1: Veal Cordon Bleu with Bearnaise, Potato Anna and Tourne of Glazed Carrots.
Dish 2: Rack of Lamb, Dauphine Potatoes, Brussel Sprouts Paysanne with a balsamic reduction.

At first glance, the veal was going to be challenging because it was not a very pretty dish. Even Chef served it up truck stop style. It was going to require some creativity. The lamb dish shouldn't pose any real problems.

The day started off pretty well. Started off with the preparing the Anna potatos because they take the longest to prepare, and worked on getting half way descent tournes. They are event harder to get a descent one out of carrots because they are so fibrous. Ended up with 3 ok ones. The actual veal would not take very long to prepare so I moved on to dish 2 by getting the lamb ready and seared off and put to the side. Back to dish 1. In this version of Potatos Anna we were required to flip them so the top would get tosty as well. A maneuver that requires some balance and fast action or potatos and melted butter would go flying. Result; success! Yea!

It was time to finish us Dish 1. My solution to the presentation problem was to stack the potatos, veal, ham and cheese. Kind of making a tower. Prior to searing off the veal, I cut circles out of the filets. I bread them and seared them and then stacked the cutlets with ham and cheese and put them in the oven to warm. The veal shrank a bit more than I would have liked, but I pushed on anyway. I then cut out a circle of potatos and stacked the whole thing on the plate......

Veal Cordon Bleu

Result: 94
Chef liked the presentation, good flavor overall. I forgot my garnish for the dish and herb in the glazed carrots.

Time to finish up dish 2. The lamb would get coated with a ground hazelnut mixture and go back in the oven. Veggies got blanched. And began the Dauphine Potato process. We learned a shorter version of making these potatos yesterday than the one we learned last phase, I hope it works out. This dish was weird from a plating aspect. The rack could be split or left intact, the sprouts are like little marbles, and the potatoes are fried. Talk about a weird combo.

So I though I'd play around with the shapes a bit. Chef demoed a quinell of the Dauphine Potato yesterday, in F2 we had piped them out into little logs. So I thought it'd be fun to make a nest of the potato by piping thin strips of the mixture into the fryer. It kind of worked but kind of not, it actually looked a lot like funnel cake. So my nest didn't quite work out. So I just took a part of the nest and used that.

Rack of Lamb, Sprouts, and Dauphine Potatos

Result: 90

Chef was not amused with my potatos. Apparently the quinell was required. Oops! Lamb was a little rare as well. Not my best showing.

Final note: 

You always have to be on your toes in the kitchen. Not only paying attention to what you are doing but also what everyone else is doing. Today, my partner, Jeremy, got a little heavy handed with his oil while searing his veal. His pan actually caught on fire and POP! I got splattered in the face with hot oil. I received a descent sized burn. I hope it doesn't scar.

My burn the next morning.