Week 3 SOUPS!

Forgive me i forgot the camera on the first day of this week so i only have the second day. This week we worked on soups. On the first day we did consumme, minestrone, and french onion. Can i just say who eats consumme? There's nothing there. You're basically eating a bigger flavor broth. I'm a girl who likes some meat or veggies in her soup. I knew i'd like minestrone but i wasn't sure about french onion. We did the whole put a piece of toast and some cheese on top of it and put it in the over to melt.....and my verdict: GROSS! I love me some onion but ehh not so much in this context.

Ok so on to day 2:

On day 2 we made the "thick" soups: Cream of Mushroom, Split Pea, and Chicken Waterzooi (basically a chicken noodle). The picture at the top is of these soups. The left is the mushroom, middle is the chicken, and the right is the split pea. I mainly worked on the split pea. Now when i think thick soup i think THICK. right? Chef Pierre said it should be the consistency of heavy cream. When he came around to critique the soups he stuck a spoon in mine and it stood up in the soup and he was like "no no no too thick." I thought it was delicious and i like it that thick so oh well. Atleast he said that my seasoning was "very nice." Next week is grilling and breakfast....i'm very very very excited! Cya next week!

Week 2 Day 2

Week 2 we were still focusing on sauces and also some knife skills. Before you ask....no I didn't cut myself on this day either. WAHOO

This is the infamous Chef Pierre. He's from switzerland and has quite a heavy accent. He's very funny though and takes his time when showing us how to do something. This first picture is him showing us how to concasee a tomato. Basically you cut a small cross on the top of the tomato then put it in boiling water. Then, you take it out and shock it in the ice bath and then voila you can peel the skin off.....Pretty cool huh?

We also worked on segmenting oranges...

HOW DID I DO?

I couldn't resist the temptation of the orange. As soon as he came by and checked mine it went straight into my mouth haha.



Next on the to do list: MAYONNAISE

After this day i loathe mayonnaise even more than i did before. I literally whisked for an hour. That is why this picture looks like my mayo was runny because after i was done i couldn't life my arms to even take a picture. It was brutal.

Just when i thought i was done whisking it was time for the Hollandaise. I have never had it before.

I was pretty surprised. It's not bad. I seasoned mine with a little bit of cayenne and a couple drops of tabasco.....good stuff!

After all the whisking i just wanted to sit down for the last hour. But there's no such thing as sitting in Chef Pierre's class. He whips out this recipe for Creme Brule and all of us are looking at each other thinking "isn't that going to be hard?" As Julia Child would say DON'T BE AFRAID so as you can see we tried it and they came out pretty well.

For those of you non-culinary buffs, there's a cutting technique called Tourne. This picture is of Chef Pierre doing a demo of this technique. Basically you cut a potato into 4ths, then with a pairing knife you trim the sides so that it is a 7-sided football shape. So hard to do. Mine didn't turn out good at all. Chef Pierre told us that if you can tourne you will have every chef's respect...guess i'll have to work on that a little but more.

During week 2 we worked on sauces. I go to class 2 days a week so this is day 1. We usually work in teams and unlucky for me the 2 people at my table didn't show up on this day. I was so scared that Chef Pierre was going to make me work by myself. Fortunately i have great classmates and 2 of the boys moved over to my table to help me out.

So what are the Mother Sauces you ask?

1. Espagnole (top)
2. Bechamel (middle)
3. Tomato (bottom)
4. Veloute
5. Hollandaise

We decided that it'd be more time efficient that we each work on one sauce by ourselves and then work on the last together. I know it seems crazy that we only make 4 sauces in a 5 hour class but the time goes by so fast.


Brian did the Espagnole.
Leonard did the Tomato I did the Bechamel.

I think we had a pretty successful class as you can see by the pictures. It's always a good day in class when you don't get burned or cut yourself.
I've learned that the trick with sauces is being able to season them right. A good chef has to have a good pallet.

Sorry i'm still new at blogging so i don't know how to rotate this picture.
My Bechamel was YUMMY!!!

Week 1 of School

Well let's just say it's been an interesting first week...

I neglected to take any pictures of this but i'll start off with a funny story....

So there i was chopping up a storm. I think we had to do 2 carrots, 1 potato, 1 celery, and 2 onions. I knock everything out so fast and just when i thought i was almost done...TERROR!

I was chopping my last onion and BAM i slice my finger. I immediately wrap it up in my apron and run to the sink...AHH it wont stop bleeding. My buddy comes over and is like wow you're really pale. So i sit down on a stool and next thing i know i'm waking up on the ground and Chef Pierre is going to get me some juice. So embarassing. What a way to get some attention!

After the bleeding stopped and i composed myself, we began working on our chicken stock and beef/veal stock. It was actually really time consuming and a lot of just watching bones cook. Needless to say our stock was one of the clearest and Chef Pierre ended up using it as an example for the rest of the class.