Flat Chicken

This was the most delicious thing we've made since January. Bar none. Hands down. Flat chicken is delicious. Cut out that backbone flatten it and grill it. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on it, salamander for crispness and boom. Done. Deliciousness. We grilled tomatos and mushrooms, fried some waffle chips and made a peppery diablo kind of sauce that I didn't enjoy. Easy day, delicious dish.

They gave us an easy day before our market workshop, which I will post about tomorrow. I must go to bed now and I feel the market workshop deserves more time and thought than I can give it right now. I leave you tonight with flat chicken.

Plated Dessert Workshop

I honestly don't know what this day was supposed to be. I know that what it ended up being was all of us having no idea what to do or how to do it with a chef that speaks no english, left to our own devices to make 2 random plated desserts. Who knows? I made these. Pretty, no?

The first one is some kind of millefeuille with a weird crispy batter sandwiching cream and fruit.

The second, a poorly made macaroon (chef's fault, everyone's were crap because he kept macaroni-ing the batter too much until it was soupy).

My neighbour broke my chocolate decorations while they were in my fridge, so they aren't as pretty as they could be. I was pissed. What she was doing in my fridge all day, I have no idea, but she couldn't keep her shit straight and kept putting things in my fridge until she finally pulled out my baking tray with my choco decoration squeezed in between and CRASH. They hit the floor. Then the chef told me later that if I had put the choco decoration on that I would have received a 4.0 instead of a 3.5 for marks. Greeeeat.

Black Box

Oh the black box. Basically this means that we showed up in the morning, were taken downstairs to a counter full of ingredients and told to choose what we wanted in order to make an appetizer and 2 mains out of the same protein. No dessert, which was sad. But we got crabstick. That's right. CRABSTICK! Ridiculous tuition costs and they give us fake crab to make our appetizer. I still can't believe it. All this hoity toity French crap and hifaluten ingredient talk and they give us crabstick. So I took the crabstick, and I took a chicken. The other proteins were also poultry, but I didn't want to deal with the tendons in the pheasant and the game hen was too small.

So we ALL made some kind of crab salad for the app because you can't really heat crabstick to a good result, and mine was fine. He didn't say much about it, which is usually a good thing. It's crab salad on tomatos on endive. The crab salad has a tarragon and other herb mayo on it that I made.

Then came some crazyness. I deboned my chicken, took the legs and pounded them flat and made a leek and mushroom roll out of it. Seared it, braised it, done. No prob.

Then I took the breasts, "breaded" them in pistachio nuts, seared and finished in the oven. I made 2 different sauces, both had to be from the chicken bones. Then we had to make different garnishes for each. I made a backup garnish...the carrots, and it's a good thing I did because I accidentally burned my pommes noisettes while chasing after my mustard that the idiot took from my fridge. Sigh. But that's why you have a plan B, right? The chef had seen my potatos and knew where I planned to put them, so I got some points for that I guess (they were beautiful too, perfectly round....sigh). But then I did pasta and I had the carrots. Whatevs, it all worked out fine enough. I shall live to cook another day.

Rabbit Three Ways

Oh rabbit. I still believe that you have bones that connect your arms to your body. Why are you so easy to take apart? And yet not always that delicious? Such a kitchen contradiction.

On this rabbit day we watched the chef make this dish and thought we wouldn't finish before midnight for a 6 pm class. We had to take the rabbit apart and marinate its various pieces. But the legs stayed dry and you had to debone them and flatten them and make a leg roll with mushroom and truffle inside. The whole roll was wrapped in caul fat and then seared and braised. We then had to saute the shoulders and ribs and tie the loin. So I guess technically it was only rabbit 2 ways....but it was kind of 2.5 ways because we had to do some weird stuff to the loin that we didn't have to do with the other bits and pieces (mainly tie it and then untie it to cook it through...really weird). Plus we had to manchonner (french, the language and the english verb "to french") the ribs. Loyal readers will remember the rabbit rib from last session. When frenched and cut it is barely larger than a small mushroom. Its ribs are like toothpicks. Insanity.

We also had to make stuffed mushrooms (though the verb "stuffed" is up for debate when all you do is pour onion puree into them) and fondant potatos, which just take longer than they should but are quite delicious. You cut them in half and shape them lovingly...then you brown them in butter, stock to half height, cover, oven until soft....reduce away liquid on stovetop - but not too hard or you'll boil apart those soft (fondant) potatoes....so they're glossy and gooey on the outside. It doesn't sound like that much, but trust me, it was. I did finish on time. Three of us did. So Phew! But it was a challenging day. And it was a Friday. On the plate clockwise from noon: the leg roll with sauce under, the tenderloin, mushrooms, ribs, potato, shoulder.

Another Shiny Happy Cake

Put on your shades because it's time for another high-gloss cake. How do you like the reflection of the microwave in this shot?

Why they grouped all the shiny cakes together at the end of the course, we'll just never know. But this one was WAY more delicious than the other ones, even if the gloss on the sides leaves a little something to be desired. Oops.

My glazing paste was the right temperature, but sadly, a pastry chef cannot rely on thermometers alone to tell her when to glaze. She must trust her eyes. I went with temperature and watched my beautiful glaze coat my beautiful mousse like a chocolatey curtain...and then I watched it melt off the sides leaving it ugly and mottled. The top still looked damn good though. And you have to cover the sides with chocolated decorations anyway. Sadly, my chocolate decorations were too thin that day and didn't do a great job of camouflaging my glazing error. Whatevs.

So it tasted MUCH better than it looked. On the bottom is a hazelnut dacquoise...a nutty kind of spongey cakey thing....(just icing sugar, egg whites, hazelnut powder and sugar) a yummy praline crispy layer, chocolate mousse, thin milk chocolate layer, more mousse....precarious glazing. It was yum.

What is this?

I looked at my pictures, in chronological order, and I was like "what the hell IS this??" Not only did I have no recollection, but it didn't look like anything I could have made....sadly I did. And even sadder, it was pretty close to what the chef had made. Snails my friends. Little snails in a thick red soupy sauce. They were pretty delicious, but they will never rival the ones we ate on the cruise that time through the pastry.

Slimy little escargots and some pretty boring cod with endive cooked any way we wanted. What freedom! I just sauteed straight up. Endive is not that thrilling, may as well give it some butter and colour. A boring class where not much was learned given that we handed a big ol can of escargots and a ready-to-go filet of cod. Snore.

I know I'm a terrible person.

I'm sorry!!! I know I have taken yet another 2 weeks to post anything. This session is hard and I'm working on being a superstar. It's taking all of my energy and there hasn't been anything left at the end of day in my brain to remind me to bring my camera home. But I have been remembering to take pictures, so I will do my best to update everything as quickly as possible. Exams start on Monday and I need to study.

So here is the Bavarois. It's one high sheen cake, no? That little blip you see in the middle of my perfect glazing is where the chef put his finger. You see, as in life, the inside just isn't as pretty as the outside of this baby. My third and top layer of mousse was a little domed and wouldn't spread out because the cake was too cold and so it set rather quickly. As a result I had glaze on top of that that was thin in the middle and thick around the edge. The chef needed to check that I wasn't lying by sticking his finger into the middle apparently. White chocolate, milk and dark mousses layered. Not shabby. A little "wooby wooby wooby" gelatinous for my refined tastes, but not too shabby.

Here's a shot of the small one from the side so you can get an idea of what the inside of the big one looked like.