Sausage Madness II

Phase 3, Week 5, Day 23

Ok, sorry for the crude post yesterday. In all seriousness, Sausage making and the preserving of meats is actually an art form called Charcuterie. Derived from Char meaning flesh and cuit meaning cooked, charcuterie is the process of salting, smoking, or curing meat. The ancient Romans actually regulated the trade of charcuterie and in 15th century France local guilds regulated tradesmen in the food production industry. The guilds that produced charcuterie were those of the charcutiers. The members of this guild produced a traditional range of cooked or salted and dried meats, which varied, sometimes distinctively, from region to region. The only "raw" meat the charcutiers were allowed to sell was unrendered lard. The charcutier prepared numerous items including pâtés, rillettes, sausages, bacon, trotters, and head cheese (brawn).


Charcuterie is a dying art form, in culinary circles you will still find die hard individuals who prefer to make their own sausage and dry their own meats. But these people are few and far between. Chef Bruce is one of these individuals, he had a great passion for explaining the heritage and methods of this art.


For production today we made:


Plate 1: Over easy egg, with hash browns, and sausage patties
Plate 2: Sausage links, Polenta, and Tomato Sauce.


Again today, no issues. It all fell into place and I finished the dishes very quickly. The longest part really being the fact we had to make the tomato sauce from scratch. I did have to remake my baby hash browns because I got distracted dorking with Jarod's egg and I burnt them. Oops!


Results:
Plate 1: Upside- "Aw, look at the cute little presentation you made." Downside- totally over salted the the hash browns. Dang it! 92%


Plate 2: Chef Tim said "I have no negative criticism of your dish." 92%. I would have thought with no negative criticism the score would have been higher. Go figure.....

A "little" breakfast

Sausage and polenta w/ sauteed peppers and onions

Sausage Madness

Phase 3, Week 5, Day 21

Today Chef demoed sausage making. Have any of you ever seen sausage made? Have any of you witnessed it being made while surrounded by a bunch of grown men with the maturity of a 13 year old? Well, now I have. There was no getting around all the innuendos from today's lesson. It was impossible. If you take a look at Chef Bruce while he is filling the casing you can get the drift of what I'm talking about. Here are some actual phrases/words that are used in the production of sausage. I mean, really!?

Natural Casing
Synthetic Casing
Forcemeat
Inject
Tickler
Moist
Grind
Penetrate
Lubricate
Shaft
Among Others.

This is not to even mention the appearance of loading the casing on the shaft and then pressing the forcemeat into the casing while keeping it lubricated. Let's just say the class was on the floor laughing. We even got to Chef Bruce on a few of the comments and he turned red and giggled. Too funny. I figured he would have heard everything by now.

Chef Bruce making Sausage

We produced our own sausage at the end of class and we'll cook with it tomorrow. I'm not sure I will be able to look at a bratwurst the same ever again.

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.

Update

WOW! It's been over a month since my last post!!! Not to worry, nothing tragic has happened. Thanks so much to several of you that have hinted around via Facebook and email that I was a bit behind in my posts. I know. At this point it's like digging yourself out of quicksand. To sum up; the last two weeks of Phase 3 were crazy. Along with class and finals, I was also working 30+ hours at the Club, taught a children's cooking class, and wrote articles for Patch.com. Needless to say, I ran out of time during the day to keep up on my posts. Which is sad because some pretty good stuff happened over those two weeks. Once school finished up for the Phase we broke for the Holidays.  I spent an entire TWO weeks at home in Springfield! I spent the entire time with my son at home and I actually got to live in the house I bought back in August. The few times I sat down to write I found trying to write a cohesive sentence with a three year old hyped up on cookies and presents is not an easy feat. Thus, the only computer work I did during that time was two more patch.com articles and checked my email.  Additionally, for extra cash I also washed dishes at a restaurant in town. It was fun, but humbling. The one big thing I learned is you can never take your dishwashers for granted, with out them your ship will sink like the Titanic.

Last week I returned to St. Louis for Phase 4, Baking and Pastry. However, I was without my computer, as it was on loan to my Ex for the week. So, here I am, now a full three weeks + behind in posts. I will do my best to include as much detail as I can in the posts to make them a bit more authentic. Please bear with me as I begin to bust them out...........beginning tomorrow.

Happy New Year!!!!!

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.

New Opportunities

Phase 3, Week 4, Days 16 & 17

Basically, these two days consisted of lectures about lamb and pork, three demos, and one cooked dish of Lamb Shank and Risotto. Nothing worthy to note, besides trying to plate an entire lamb shank was ridiculous! Talk about a truck stop portion of food, it might as well have been a turkey leg. Geeze!

I'll take this time to fill you in on some other stuff that's been going on. In the span of one week I got two new part-time jobs in the culinary industry. I got a job as a free lance writer for a St.Louis based online news periodical, calling it a news paper doesn't seem right. It's called Patch.com. It's is actually a collection of local online sites focusing on "local" news. Mine is based in Ballwin and Ellisville Missouri. I've written two stories so far and hope to have more published soon. I also got hired on as a demonstration cook for Your Commercial Kitchen in Springfield. I'll be teaching cooking classes on the weekends. So far I have started a Little Chef Culinary Series targeted to kids and of course, the first class is Holiday Cookies. I'll be scheduling more classes in the near future.

To keep up with all this stuff I attached a Twitter link to the bottom of my blog as well as starting a "fan" page on Facebook called Always Taste Enough. Feel free to follow either one to get the latest updates regarding my new ventures.

Whew!!!!

A ridiculous portion size....

Late for an Important Date

Phase 3, Week 4, Day 14 and Day 15

Looks like I have a little catch up to play here recently. Last Monday, was the half way point of the class, and I attended my regular class time since I had had the long weekend at home. In class we reviewed for our midterm written test and watched a demo on pork carnitas and strip steak. Seems lately the class has had a much more leisurely pace to it. We are only cooking every other day. Lecture and demo days are enjoyable, but tedious at the same time. Three and a half hours is a long time to stand and watch someone cook or discuss the primal cuts of different types of meat. And the cooking days move along pretty well but are much less frantic than they used to be, which is a great feeling to have!

Tuesday morning started off badly! I awoke when I hear my Uncle down stairs (I'm staying with my Aunt and Uncle while I attend school). This was not good! When I opened my eyes I saw light streaming through the window. Also not good! I looked at the clock, it was 6:20 am! NOT GOOD! Class started at 6:00 and we had a test and a practical!!! I shot out of bed, threw on my uniform and rushed out the door. I got to school in 25 minutes, in what was typically a 35 minute commute. I walked in just as the class was beginning the prep for the practical. I had missed the written test.

Ok- I just had to calm down and focus on the task at hand; which was:

Pork Carnitas

Salsa Cruda

Avacado and Sour Cream & Cilantro Quenelles

Grilled NY Steak

Maitre d'hotel Butter

Duchess Potatoes

Butternut Squash Gratin 

Working with Jeremy we got all of the dishes knocked out in record time. I couldn't believe it! It was actually pretty easy. Even the Duchess Potatoes, you'll remember from last phase, were pretty easy. Our only issue was I almost dropped our squash gratin when rearranging all the pots in the oven, but I saved it. Whew!

Result:

Steak- Great job, medium rare (who would have thought I would like mine that way now). Potatoes good color and flavor. Squash could have been dices in larger pieces and had a bit too much liquid in them. Otherwise very tasty.

Carnitas- They loved the presentation (took it's picture, always a good sign). Chef Bruce said it looked like the St.Louis Club was rubbing off on me. Good flavor over all. 

No Grade Yet. Good come back from a crappy start to the day.

I got docked 25% of my daily grade for being late, but Chef let me take my test right after class. Scored and 83%, not great but apparently par for the rest of my classmates. They keep sticking some zingers in there to keep you on your toes. What the hell is a Fourth anyway? I still don't know.

Sexy Carnitas

I'm hooked on the d'hotel butter