REVIEW: Côte de bœuf grillée, beurre marchand de vin

Lesson 18
Côte de bœuf grillée, beurre marchand de vin


Ingredient List


1 pc cotes de boeuf/beef rib
10ml huile/oil
sel et poivre/salt and pepper
==Garniture/Garnish==
1 bq cresson/watercress
250g pommes de terre, mignonette/potatoes, mignonette
=Tomate provencales/"Provencale" tomatoes=
1 pc tomatoe/tomatoes
2 pcs gousses d'ail/garlic cloves
3 brs persil/parsley
25g chapelure/bread crumbs
sel et poivre/salt and pepper
10ml huile d'olive/olive oil
==Beurre marchand de vin/Red wine and shallot butter==
200ml vin rouge/red wine
100g echalotes/shallots
100g beurre/butter
2 brs persil/parsley
1 pc citron, jus/lemon, juice


Cooking method: Griller


Carve beef, and manchonner the bone.  Tie the meat with string.  On the grill, until it's done.. 10-15 mins per side.


Potatoes are cut to mignonette, roughly batonnet size.  Deep fry @ 300 until half done, and then at 350 to finish.  Should be crispy and salted right after done.  You put them 4 across, 3 high for presentation.


Tomates Provencale.  Cut tomatoes in half, epepiner, line dish with olive oil.  Ciseler parsley and garlic, mix with bread crumbs to make a paste.  Salt and pepper inside the tomato, and in oven at 375 for ~30 mins.

Beurre marchand de vin.  Make sure the butter is soft.  Ciseler shallots and add to wine.  Reduce until it's syrupy and pass through chinois.  Add lime juice and then mix.. be careful, it's messy.  Add parsley to finish.


Comments:  This isn't a complicated recipe, but requires you to use the oven, deep fryer and the grill all at once.  Keep on top of things!!!  Don't forget the papilotte for the bone and also the watercress.


Tools required:  Deboning knife, Chef Knife, scissors, spatula, spoon, tongs, brush, peeler, piping bag, attachments, whisk, paring knife

REVIEW: Merlan frit Colbert

Lesson 17


Merlan frit Colbert with one starch and one vegetable


Ingredient List
2 pcs merlans/whitlings
sel et poivre/salt and pepper
==Panure a L'anglaise/Bread coating==
50g farine/flour
1 pc oeuf/egg
10ml eat/water
200g chapelure/bread crumbs
==Beurre Colbert/Colbert butter==
100g beurre/butter
1 pc citron, jus/lemon, juice
100ml fond de veau, reduit en glace/veal stock, reduced to glaze
1 br estragon/tarragon
1 br persil/parsley
sel et poivre/salt and pepper
==Decor/Decoration==
2 brs persil/parsley
1 pc citron/lemon


Cooking method: Frire


Prep Merlan fish.  Paner a L'anglaise.  Flour, egg mix and bread crumbs.  MARQUER - make sure to flatten and mark lightly in criss-cross pattern.  Prevents curling when cooking.


Colbert Butter.  Make sure that the butter is very soft (pommade).  Reduce veal stock to glace de viande with taragon and parsley stems.  Pass through strainer.  Add lemon juice, and integrate with butter.  Hache taragon and parsley and add at end when mixed.


Dent de Loup the lemon.  Make napkin swan with tinfoil in the middle.


Comments:  Relatively easy dish, just be careful to remove all the fish scales and guts and don't damage the flesh too much.  Have to add one starch (French Fries) and one Vegetable (turned carrots glacer a blanc).


Tools required:  Scissors, bendy knife, paring knife, nozzles, piping bags, Chef knife.
--
Prepping Merlan Frit
Habiller the fish: fins (long one on the top) bottom, gills, be careful not to remove V or the head will fall off.  Cover with plastic wrap and remove scales by scraping gently.  From the line on top, cut on both sides, starting at the head until 1 inch from tail in a smooth motion.  Flatten and snip spine with scissors. Remove guts including gills.

REVIEW: Navarin d’agneau printanier

Lesson 16


Navarin d’agneau printanier


Ingredient List
1 pc epaule d'agneau/lamb shoulder
50ml huile/oil
25g farine/flour
25g concentre de tomates/tomato paste
==Garniture aromatique/Garnish for flavouring==
75g oignons/onions
2 pcs gousses d'ail/cloves of garlic
1 pc bouquet garni
==Garniture printaniere/Garnish "Printaniere"==
400g pommes de terre/potatoes
125g oignons grelots/pearl onions
350g carrottes/carrots
350g navets/turnips
50g petits pois/peas
50g haricots verts/green beans
25g butter
==Finition/to Finish==
2 brs persil/parsley
==Assaisonnement/Seasoning==
sel et poivre/salt and pepper
sucre/sugar


Cooking method: Braiser


Butcher meat into small cubes.  Saisir the meat, half at a time.  Chop up the bones with a meat cleaver, saisir.  Roughly chop onions and brown, pincer tomato paste, and singer the vegetables.  Add cold water to dissolve sucs.  Add meat, bones, garlic and bouqet garni.  Add extra water and bring to a boil.  Ecumer the fat and impurities.  Cover and in the oven for 45 - 60 mins at 350F.  Remove meat, add a bit of jus and cover with plastic wrap. Strain jus through chinois and reduce.  Test seasoning.


Turn carrots and turnips, glacer a blanc.  Pearl onions glacer a brun.  Green beans a l'anglaise.  Turn potatoes and cook a l'anglaise.


Plating:  Meat on bottom, lots of sauce.  Arrange onions, carrots, turnips, green beans, peas.  Potatoes around edge and hache parsley on top.


Comments:  The major difficulty in this dish is to butcher the lamb, after that you have to get it into the oven ASAP because it needs an hour to cook.  Secondly, the dish is for four people so you really are supposed to turn 3 of each veg, so that's 36 total.  It's a speed dish with lots of small details.  This was the first difficult dish we had to do.


Tools required:  Deboning knife, cleaver, chef, paring, turning, whisks, scissors, brush, peeler


--
Butchering Lamb Shoulder


Remove ribs by starting around ribs and digging towards spine.  Cut large piece of meat and expose the shoulder bone.  To remove shoulder bone find the joint bone, and then follow to the shoulder.  Chop into cubes.

REVIEW: Saumon grillé, sauce Béarnaise pommes anglaises

Lesson 12


Saumon grillé, sauce Béarnaise pommes anglaises with one green vegetable and one root vegetables


Ingredient List


500g saumon, brut / salmon, whole
50ml huile vegetable / vegetable oil
salt & pepper
==Garniture / Garnish==
6 pcs pomme de terre/potatoes
==Sauce bernaise/Bearnaise sauce==
2 pcs jaunes d'oeufs/egg yolks
170g beurre/butter
30g vinaigre de vin blanc/white wine vinegar
25g echalotes/shallots
5 pcs povire noir entier/black peppercorns
20g estragon/tarragon
==Finition de la sauce/To finish the sauce==
2 brs cerfeuil/chervil
2 brs estragon/tarragon
sel/salt


Cooking Method: Griller


The salmon needs to be brushed with oil and seasoned before cooking.


Garnish.
Turn potatoes a L'Anglaise, which is roughly egg sized.  Cook from cold water salted with coarse salt.  Brush with clarified butter to finish.


Sauce Bernaise


Clarify butter in a bain marie.


Remove the leaves and put stems in the the reduction with crushed black peppercorns.  Ciseler shallots and add white wine vinegar.  Reduce to about half, and filter through a chinois.  Separate eggs, and whisk egg yolks to foam.  Add strained reduction, whisk to soft peaks over bain-marie.  Slowly add clarified butter, and season with salt.  Finish with taragon and chervil leaves hache.  Cover with plastic wrap and leave somewhere warm, for example, a lot sitting on a pot on top of a bain-marie.


Comments:  The major difficulty in this dish is to butcher the salmon into a filet.  Secondly, the Bernaise sauce needs to be carefully cooked over a bain marie.  Other than that, the dish is quite straight forward.  Note that the lemon is a "Dent-de-loup" and needs to have a minimum of 5 teeth, although more is fine.


Since this is an easier recipe, they make it more difficult by adding a green vegetable and one root vegetable.  I will go with green beans cooked a L'anglaise (don't forget to shock in ice water!), and turned carrots that are glacer a blanc.


Tools required:  Chef Knife, scissors, spatula, spoon, tongs, brush, peeler, turning knife, whisk, scale, paring knife

The Exam Dishes

The exam format will be in two parts.  The first part is to fill out a Bon D'economat for one of the thirteen dishes listed below, according to the official recipe, ignoring any minor changes made by the Chef during demonstration.  The second part is to cook one of the three or four dishes chosen from the twelve from memory, which will be judged by a tasting panel of 3-4 Chef Judges.  You chose your dish at random.   In addition, during the actual test, there will be Chef observers watching for technique, hygiene, etc.

The list of the 12 dishes are:

Lesson 12 - Saumon grillé, sauce Béarnaise pommes anglaises with one green vegetable and one root vegetables

Lesson 16 - Navarin d’agneau printanier

Lesson 17 - Merlan frit Colbert with one starch and one vegetable

Lesson 18 - Côte de bœuf grillée, beurre marchand de vin

Lesson 19 - Petite marmites Henry IV

Lesson 21 - Filet de rouget à l’anis with one starch and one root vegetables

Lesson 22 - Poulet sauté chasseur

Lesson 24 - Osso-bucco piétmontaise With one starch

Lesson 25 - Côtes de porc charcutière, pomme purée

Lesson 26 - Civet de lapin à la française

Lesson 27 - Mignons de porc arlonnaise

Lesson 29 - Côte de veau à la crème, petits pois à la française with one starch

Funny random stories...

One of my classmates is a Psychiatrist from Wisconsin, who just recently finished medical school, and is starting her fellowship shortly after she gets back.  She's really funny and projects a happy-go-lucky attitude that goes a long way to relieving the stress in the kitchen.  She's also (mostly) a vegetarian, who very occasionally eats fish, so it's been quite a challenge for her.  Like me, she's here to learn how to cook, and not to become a professional Chef and work in the food industry.. which makes the whole experience quite a bit different for those who wish to continue into intermediate and superior.  If she happens to turn in a dish that isn't perfect, she just smiles and says "Sorry Chef!  It might be terrible, but those turned vegetables are better than last time, aren't they?!"  Also, when the Chef is harping about how difficult the "REAL WORLD" is going to be, she's pretty much tuned out.

Anyway, the mid-term evaluations were quite brutal.  Chef Gilles was trying to put the fear of God into her, that she wasn't taking it seriously enough, etc.

Chef: "So do you plan on continuing into intermediate and superior?"
Doc: "No, I don't think it's really for me... "
Chef: "You don't want to be a Chef?  Why not?"
Doc: "I'm interested in Medicine.."
Chef: "No, no.. I don't think that would work for you."
Doc: "Actually, I just graduated from med school, I'm already a Doctor."

AMAZING.. I told her she should have gone with it, and listened to him rant for a bit longer, but she said that it would just be mean!  Hahaha soo goooood.
--
As I've made it clear, I'm not a huge fan of the old lawyer lady.  She lives in her own little world, and is completely offended if the world doesn't revolve around her.  The girls were telling me that during the dinner that I skipped out on, she went on and on about her painful divorce.  The girls listened attentively and then she said the killer line:

"The most painful thing is that we had to split our ART COLLECTION.  I had to give up some pieces I really liked."

The class has to revolve around her.  When a practical is over, everyone is supposed to pitch in to help clean the kitchen, put alway pots and pans, wipe down the counters, bring the extra produce back, etc.  She just cleans her tools and chats with those people around her, completely oblivious to the fact that they are running around helping out.  As Sous-Chef, if you give her a task to do, she's like "ya okay I'll do it in a bit" until other people have done it.  However, when she's Sous-Chef, she barks out orders like the Queen of England (although she still doesn't do much).

Yesterday during the Rabbit demo, she was so dramatic about it, took over her glasses, sighed, and generally made a scene about how traumatic it was for her to see a poor bunny being de-boned.  She left the class a couple of times, and told Chef Benoit that she wouldn't be doing the practical.  This is an exam dish, that's a dangerous game of roulette to be playing.

So there's a little fluff content for my dear readers.  I checked my stats, and I've had over 300 page views!

Stay classy,
-THC

Fabulous Friday!

TGIF....

Today there were only two classes, demo and practical, which is a good way to end the week.  However, I was mistaken, and Monday and Tuesday next week I have 3 classes, and then Wednesday only 2 classes, and then final on Thursday.  It's really awkward because on Friday is graduation, but if you don't pass the final, you will get a phone call and are not allowed to attend.  Yikes!

Demo #026 was done yet again by Chef Benoit and featured the dreaded Rabbit dish (due to it's supposed difficulty).  "Civet de lapin a la Francaise", according to Chef is the epitome of French cuisine.  Although I don't really care for the taste of rabbit, the sauce (which uses red wine) is absolutely wonderful.  The other dishes were a Souffle au fromage (cheese souffle, incredible, it melts in your mouth) and Bavarois Rubane (some type of creamy gelatin dessert).

Practical #026 actually went really smoothly.  It involved deboning a rabbit (which looks remarkably like a cat would.. at least I think a cat would) and then marinating it in red wine & cognac and cooking for about an hour, and then making hand made pasta as well.  It was busy, and the major thing I messed up was that I forgot to make the croutons.  I had cut the bread up, but was in such a rush at the end I didn't get around to them.  Partially because I got a small cut, which slowed me down and distracted me.

Ahhh well!  Week four done-zo!  Some studying this weekend and some much needed sleep.  ZZzzzzzzzz..

I have some funny stories to write up, I'll see if I get around to it this weekend.