It was all a bit fishy

Grilled Pork with Pommes Purée

Escalope de Veau à la Crème

This week's blog is not for vegetarians; it's been a fish and meat week at school. As we are increasing our skill level, the dishes we are preparing are becoming more complete (starch, vegetable, protein) and the recipes become more sophisticated. On Monday we started with grilled pork and veal escalope and finished on Friday with first filleting and then cooking fish. In the days in-between we trimmed chicken, trussed chicken, de-boned chicken, roasted a chicken and stuffed the de-boned chicken legs and breasts.

So, if you, like me, want to know all about fish and meat preparation it's been a really good week. If not, it was a hard week to get through.

Flounder, partially filleted with roe sack

Salmon skeleton

Sole Meunière

Poached Salmon with Beurre Blanc

Although to be perfectly honest, I would have to admit that preparing the chickens has been an easier task for me than filleting the fish and cleaning the fish bones. Although I have no rational explanation to why I feel this way. Perhaps we are generally less familiar with preparing whole fish; fish fillets are readily available in every supermarket whether it is pre-packed or from the fish counter. And even at a fish mongers, one would seldom buy whole fish these days.

Chicken, set up for preparation

In contrast, as a society we seem to love our chickens; whole or in pieces. Rotisserie chickens are sold in every supermarket and very popular judging by the speed with which they disappear from the warming-shelves. Pieces of chicken meat seem to be on special offer on a weekly basis. Whether the low prices, the abundance and quality of chicken available is ethically correct is a different discussion and perhaps not one for this blog (at least not for today).

The chicken is ready for roasting

Roasted chicken, breast and leg pieces

I have included a lot of pictures this week of dishes we prepared. The veal, pork and fish dishes I will need to re-create for our final Culinary Foundations II exams tomorrow (Monday) and Tuesday.
Yes, that's right. Another 6 weeks have gone by and I will be finishing my second module this week. I've been working all weekend on my book report (I've reviewed a book about the history of peanut butter, for which I have a great affinity) and on preparing ingredient lists and prep sheets for the dishes I have to cook. Which, unfortunately, has left me less time this week to dedicate to this blog. I hope you enjoy the pictures, get an appetite and I will come back to you with more elaborate stories next week. I promise.


Have a great week and happy eating.

Prepping for Easter

Before we talk about Easter, let me say:
                                            "Happy St Paddy's Day everyone!"

We have just come back from a dear friend's house where we had a little bit of a celebrations. A fab afternoon with a couple of Irish friends, some Germans and a Brit. What better mix can there be?! :-)






Easter is coming,  I can see the signs everywhere. The snow is melting, the days are getting longer, and at a friends house I ate my first chocolate Easter egg this week. Quite timely, at culinary school, it's been a week of egg, lamb and fish preparations. All things I associate with Easter.

Perfectly poached eggs

Wednesday was 'Egg' day at school. My husband and I love eggs and so I have been preparing eggs for weekend brunch for years. Despite all this practice though, I am the first to admit that cooking a perfect egg is not that easy. I think cooking the perfect egg it's a task one has to perform with love. For example, my husband really likes poached eggs. A simple dish, right?!? Well not quite, for me anyway. I grew up with soft-boiled eggs, so poaching the eggs perfectly has been a challenge for me ever since I tried it first. I have also gone to great length to convince him that other ways of cooking an egg are so much more interesting; to be honest simply because I felt much more comfortable to boil and egg or fry in in the pan. Not anymore! I have finally mastered  the art of poaching an egg and it is divine. It's so simple but so delicious (given one uses very fresh tasty eggs) that I cannot believe I spent so much effort convincing my husband otherwise.  As you can see on the picture, the egg white should just be set, while the egg yolk is very easily oozing out when cut. Perfect.
 

Deep fried egg

French omelet with fines herbs

One of the things I really like about eggs, is their versatility. There are so many different ways to prepare an egg that one could easily put a weekly breakfast menu together and never get bored of eggs. That day at school, we also prepared a French omelet, an egg over-easy and a deep fried egg. Yes, even eggs can be deep fried. How decadent is that? We placed it on top of a noodle dish that one of the chefs from the other classes brought in for us to try.The french omelet is a much more delicate omelet compared the ones we mostly eat here in the US. It is has a shorter cooking time so that the egg is just set and instead of flipping it over to cook both sides it is folded into a neat oval shape. Some chefs place the filling inside the omelet before it is folded, others cut a pocket into the top of the oval shaped omelet and place their fillings into it. Above picture shows you my version with a pocket cut into the top of the omelet.

Navarin of Lamb

Semi-boneless leg of lamb

The other item I associate with Easter is eating lamb on Easter Sunday. I happen to very much like lamb what ever time of the year. Usually I would prepare a leg of lamb, based on a recipe by Nigel Slater who is one of my favorite food writers. And I like to eat it on the rare side of pink. What I hadn't tried yet, was to prepare a lamb stew, and that is excatly what we did in school on Thursday. I was a little disappointed first because I have prepared many beef stews before (we call them Gulasch in Germany), so I thought I wouldn't learn much that day. But, trust the French to make it interesting, they prepare their stew on a much more sophisticated level. Navarin of Lamb (brown lamb stew) is certainly not a one pot dish. The meat is braised very much in the same way than I would prepare it for Gulasch; however, the vegetables are a whole different story. First , some of the vegetables are tournéed, that means they are cut in the football shape called Tourné I talked about in one of my early blogs. Then, all the vegetables are prepared separately. That means the green beans are blanched, the tournéed root vegetables are steamed in a buttery liquid and so on. In addition to this, the sauce of the braised meat is strained to create a perfectly smooth texture but with all the flavor of the mirepoix, herbs and spices.  So, about three or four saucepans later, all the components are finally arranged on the plate, with the perfectly cooked vegetables still showing their natural bright colors rather than being a brown-ish, over-cooked part of the stew. And because they are cooked and seasoned separately, they create a more complex flavor profile for the stew. Very nice indeed; rustic Gulash no more. From now on, more stews will have a sophisticated edge.

Finally the fish for Good Friday. We did have our 'Fish and Chips with tartar sauce' day at the college last Friday and we eat some fish at night for dinner at home. At college the fish was breaded and pan fried. Although I love all things fried (especially french fries), at home we opted to steam the fish and therefore create a more healthy version. The item we didn't skip on was the tartar sauce I had made at school earlier that day. We prepared a  basic mayonnaise and added ingredients such as lemon juice, capers, shallots, gherkins and fresh herbs (parsley, chervil and tarragon). Delicious.

So, all there is missing is for Easter is the pastry. At school we won't be doing any baking just yet, but at home I will. A few years ago, I found a good recipe for a traditional German Easter Bread. I am certainly looking forward to baking it and i will let you know how it turns out.

Until then, I wishing you a good week and happy eating.

Vegging out, perfectly starched

I know, I know. It's already Tuesday today and I am two days late with my post for this week. I apologize for that. I've been cooking  a lot and time is flying when I am having fun in the kitchen. It was pizza party on Sunday night which unfortunately meant I wasn't able to write this post.

But back to my school curriculum; we have finally moved on to solid foods, vegetables, legumes, grains, potatoes and other starches. It's been a very rich learning experience cooking all those different foods last week and we are continuing with the theme this week.

The first couple of days last week was all about vegetables and legumes. So, we prepared dishes such as Cranberry beans and Asparagus salad with Parmesan shavings; Frijoles Refritos (re-fried beans) with cheese and deep fried tortillas; Green Bean Sauté; Carrots Vichy; Hummus; etc. The purpose of preparing all those different dishes is that we learn the technique of properly cooking legumes, of how to correctly blanch vegetables, of how to prepare individual ingredients and then putting them together as a dish. So, for example, in order to keep the vivid green color of green beans and asparagus, the vegetables have to be blanched in rapidly boiling water and then they are 'shocked' in an ice bath to stop them from further cooking, while the Cranberry beans are getting their final seasoning or the lardons (French beacon pieces) are being sautéed in the pan. Carrots Vichy are carrots that are steamed in their own juices and with the help of a dollop of butter, since very little is done without butter in French cooking. But, of course, they taste really great. Frijoles Refritos (re-fried beans) are actually cooked twice; that means first they are simmered to soften them, then they are mashed up with seasoning and fried in a pan with some oil. To be honest that was news to me. Okay, I am not a big fan of re-fried beans, and now I think I may know why. Most of the Mexican restaurants at which I have eaten  seem to have omitted the last (re-fry) step and serve the beans at a consistency that is more comparable to mashed potatoes. The ones we made at culinary school, were much better in taste and texture and, since my husband likes the dish I will continue to experiment with it at home.

Rice Pilaf & Green Bean Sauté

Okay, lets move on to grains, that is rice, wheat berries, cracked wheat, Italian cornmeal, etc. Since I already cook a lot of different grains at home and none of the grains we discussed at school were new to me, the most interesting thing I learned about grains last week, was cooking rice in the oven, i.e. braising rice. It's called rice pilaf, and although the rice used in the dish is basmati rice, it has none of the seasoning I know and would have expected from the rice pilaf served in Indian restaurant. However, it is an interesting change to the way I usually cook rice (boiled) and the rice itself had a great flavor and texture to it. As you can see at the picture to the right, for our practical we served the rice with the green bean sauté.

Roesti Potatoes

Pommes Anna

The grains were followed with two days cooking potatoes, which everybody thought I would very much like because Germans like potatoes. Guess what, I am the exception to the rule. I am not a great fan of the potato and I prefer to cook grains if I can. So I didn't get excited about the Gratin Dauphinoise, Pommes Anna or Pommes Duchesse. The only one I really liked preparing, were the Roesti Potatoes. My dad used to make them and, although I never asked him for the recipe, I think they were very much just like we made them at home. Mine may have looked a little too 'rugged' around the edges for my french trained chef instructor, but I didn't care. That's how my dad used to prepared them and that's how I prepared them that day.
By the way, did you know that potatoes should not be stored in the refrigerator? Temperatures below 45F turn the potato starch into sugar. Ideal storage temperature is between 55F and 60F.

Ravioli with egg yolk and ricotta filling

Fresh Pasta

 Now, I left the most fun for last. Monday was pasta day. We had kneaded the dough on Friday and stored it vacuum packed in the refrigerator over the weekend. So, Monday morning, we were ready to go. We experimented with different shapes and sizes but in the end I settled on Ravioli with a ricotta filling and Tagliatelle to go with a Sauce Alfredo. Yummy. The pasta was absolutely delicious and the shapes were really fun to make. You might be able to see the hand-cranked pasta maker in the back of the picture. Basic, but very effective. It's professional restaurant size. I think I'll have to put one of those on my next birthday wishlist. Good times to come. :-)


With that thought, have a good week and happy eating.

All souped up

Week two of Culinary Foundations II has passed and I have been able to hold my own in the kitchen. Hurray!
And after completing two practicals this week, one for sauce making and one for soup making, we are moving on to vegetables. Hurray!
But for today let me first talk a little bit about soups.
I am not usually a person who makes or eats soups with great enthusiasm, but I have to say a few of the soups we've prepared this week piqued my interest.

French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup - Did you know that you can create quite a lot of flavor from only 3 main ingredients - onions, a little clarified butter and water? It all comes down to technique. In this case slowly caramelizing the onions in a little clarified butter and then transferring the onions to a sauce pan, adding water and slowly reducing the soup to the desired thickness and consistency. After that it gets seasoned with salt and pepper and '... oh la la ...' as my lead chef instructor would say, we have a great tasting soup. Very simple yet delicious soup with a fancy name. But to be honest, for most people ( and that includes me) French Onion Soup is incomplete without gratinéeing it (i.e. melted cheese covering the surface of the soup crock), or in my case special super-sized cheese croutons -  baguette slices with melted Gruyere cheese on top. Only now are we talking super yummy French Onion Soup. An extra slice of baguette anyone?

The other soups that I prepared with interest this week, were New England Clam Chowder and Shrimp Bisque.
The chowder is something I never really warmed to because a) I am not a big clam fan and b) as far as I am concerned, most chowders I've eaten contained way too many pieces of potato and not much else. It's a cheap way to give body and substance to the chowder. However, it is a traditional New England dish and after preparing it myself this week and talking to people in class about it, I feel obligated to experiment with a few recipes over the next few months before passing my final judgement on the subject. I will let you know in a later blog posting if I have found a recipe I like.
With regard to the Shrimp bisque, I similarly, as with the chowder,   really never felt compelled to give it a second look on the menu of a restaurant or in the hot-soup section of Whole Foods. It always struck me as slightly bland. However, as I learned this week, that does not need to be the case. We prepared an excellent tasting shrimp bisque based on a flavorful fish and shrimp stock and with the addition of a little cream and, of course, shrimp. As with any sauce and soup I prepared over the last two weeks, it again has proven to me that a strong and flavorful stock is the essence of a really good sauce or soup. Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the shrimp bisque, because we ate it before I remembered to photograph it. However, from the picture I have uploaded you might guess that my next bisque will be a lobster one. We saved all those shells for the stock. :-)
... By the way, did I mention that, originally, the term ' bisque'  refers to a cream soup made with shellfish. The next time you see a 'tomato bisque' on a menu, you should remember that the restaurant is probably using the term because it sounds better than 'tomato soup' and it most likely will not contain any shellfish.

The raft

Consommé with julienne veg

Last, but by no means least, my favorite and the most interesting and challenging soup we made this week, was the Consommé. It is considered the height of french culinary sophistication. A Consommé is a clarified clear soup with lots of flavor. The number one ingredient is a strong flavorful stock (there it is again, that one ingredient that matters). In simplified terms, the clarification process is happening when the protein coagulates. The protein collects all the impurities, tiny particles in the stock that make it cloudy, as it heats up and binds them when the protein starts to coagulate at the point of simmering (185F - 205F). The protein builds a raft, which cannot be disturbed. The end process is extremely clear soup with lots of flavor. To finish it off, one can, for example, garnish it with a few pieces of julienne vegetables. Very tasty.

That's it for this week.
Happy eating and have a nice week everybody.