Garde manger getting good

We've started the forcemeats in full swing now.  This was one of the reasons I wanted to go to culinary school in the first place, so I'm stoked.  Last night's production: Rabbit rillette, chicken liver pate, country style pork.

Rabbit rillette: fabricate a rabbit and poach its legs, ribs, and backbone in mirepoix and spices for two hours.  (Learned last night why you should always buy rabbit from reputable sources: skinned, the rabbit body looks just like a cat's.  Meow.)  Remove rabbit parts and shred all meat from the legs.  Pitch bones and mirepoix, reduce stock.  In small ramekin, add shredded rabbit and reduced stock.  Top off ramekin with warm duck fat and refrigerate.

Chicken liver pate: (is good!  I am now a liver convert -- when properly prepared...)  Process aromatics, livers, cream, spices, brandy, other yums, and pour into a lined rectangular terrine pot.  Cook, then remove and press down on top of pate with a lined board - to maintain the precise rectangular shape.  Refrigerate.

Country style:  Mix pork, chopped livers, aromatics, with a panada (mix of cream, flour, eggs, brandy, spices) and develop semi-thick, slightly tacky texture.  Scoop into plastic bag and refrigerate.  (This is for tonight's production - we also made a pate dough that we'll roll out, mold into another kind of rectangular pot, and then we'll fill the dough with the country style and cook that bad boy.

The whole notion behind forcemeats is if you're a chef, and your kitchen only has, say 7 whole portions of a certain protein, and you need to stretch those 7 portions into 20 or 30 portions for a dinner service.  So you get creative, use your remaining protein along with big flavors and effective binding agents, then you have enough covers to run a special that night (rabbit pate instead of the roast rabbit you had originally intended, for instance).  And since it's fancy and requires a certain amount of labor and knowhow, you can charge a premium, possibly even more than you would have with just the roast protein.