Troutacular

Oh jellified trout. Let me preface this post by saying that our chef told us that normally this dish is made in 10 hours and we were asked to do it in 2.5. Why 10 hours? Because that's how long it takes to properly do the following: make a court bouillon, skin a trout, poach said trout, cool down same trout, clarify poaching bouillon, make veggie designs, cook veggies designs, make jelly out of clarified bouillon, dip each veggie design in gelatin of perfect consistency with a toothpick, let jellified veggie design set, jellify trout, place jellified veggie designs on jellified trout in a beautiful and planned out pattern that shows the fish "in motion, as it would be in nature" on a bed of white rice that acts as a "sculpture" to support your trout in his "natural" movement. A white river of rice cooked in milk if you will. Natural.

So we had no time to plan our design after seeing the demo. No one told us not to cover the whole trout with our veg designs...nor did they tell us what the traditional ways of doing this are.

We all just did a variation of what the chef did in demo. Which was a trout in its natural state: flat and dead, laying on the bottom of a cooler. A white styrofoam cooler of rice cooked in milk if you will.

We also didn't do any of that toothpick stuff. I basically had time to throw my veggies into my bowl of gelatin, fish them out (har har) and try to stick them on the fish (pre-jellied at that point). I was wishing for some of that ice in a can we use in pastry to set our chocolate faster for decoration. That would have been handy today.

My individual veggie cuts were creative and lovely, they just couldn't cover the broken disaster that was my fish. Remember the idiot from the last workshop? He bashed into me as I was bringing my fish to the flash fridge and given that fish is a fragile (especially when hot) it basically shattered into a million little pieces. I challenge you to cover that up with some carrot flowers and zucchini cut to look like leaves. Hilarious.

Chef also said that what we see in school and its frequency reflects what we will see out in the "industry" or "ahndoostree"as they call it. Then he said this is the only time we will see this in school...and probably in our lives. Unless we go and work on a cruise ship that likes to jellify things....Hey family, remember those jellified penguins made out of hard-boiled eggs and black olives on the cruise? I bet I could make them now....Keep in mind that these pictures were taken after the chef deconstructed it. But it wasn't much prettier before.