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.