The kids reading last night

Jennifer sent me this picture last night, the kids reading together while I was at school.  These children, they grow so damn fast.  We've got a couple of old souls with young energy here.  Cool kids.

School Monday was more soups, this time cream soups.  Cream of mushroom soup, shrimp bisque, potato watercress (potage) something something.  We got new partners, I'm cooking with M now which is rad, M is very good.  She cooks during the day too, so she's on her game. 

First step of the night was to start the shrimp stock.  Shell shrimp, mirepoix, agua, bouquet garni, simmer.  While that was going we started onions and mushrooms for the mushroom soup, then threw in small tosses of flour until roux-like.  Chicken stock, simmer.  With the shrimp stock and the mushroom soups underway, we prepped for the potage, cutting julienned leeks and selecting bunches of watercress. 

Cream cream, simmer simmer, blend blend, present and grade.

Presented the mushroom soup first, Chef liked it very much.  I think our mushroom soup was awesome and actually I'm convinced Marcel - who HATES mushrooms - would like it.  It was so delicious.  We forgot to add sherry, so we were docked one point.  M said she is an alky and she drank it all, but Chef didn't buy that line.

Our potage, which I built, had a bit too much pepper in it.  The watercress also gives a kind of peppery, fresh flavor, but you could tell it was my white pepper by where it hit on the tongue.  It was yummy though, great pastel green hue and perfect consistency (which was the result of some soup CPR - at first it was too thick so we added more stock, re-pureed, re-reasoned, and did that a couple more times until the texture was more velvety).

Now, I'm in this program to learn from the process, not to get perfect grades.  THAT said, M and I worked together on the bisque, seasoning a bit at a time (after that potage and the sherry mishap), because it involved cayenne and white pepper, and we didn't want to make a shrimp mouth bomb.  Chef said our bisque was perfect.  20 out of 20.  Something amazing, while we were making the bisque, I got a good understanding of how the heavy cream influences and rounds out the overall flavor.  I tasted our pureed soup before we added the cream, and I panicked because it tasted thin and carroty.  But when the cream and seasoning were added, the shrimp stock came to the forefront, carried largely on the fats of the cream.  Very cool.