Last Week Livin Large

Monday through Thursday last week were all about spreads and forcemeats.  We made a chicken liver pate that was honestly real yummy.  i was not sure at all whether I'd like it, but yep it was good.  We also made a vegetable terrine using thin grilled vegetable pieces and gelatin. 

Since making pates and terrine, I've read a couple references to vegan pate.  Honestly I have no clue how to make these, but I think they'd be more complex and flavorful than the gelatin-based ones.  I have no problem with the flavor of gelatin, other than the fact that it is limited. 

Another forcemeat we made, the country style pork pate.  This pate was shaped in a mold and contained a rabbit tenderloin running down its center.  We then wrapped the molded pork with a pate dough and baked the sumbitch. 

The fourth big forcemeat from last week, the chicken gallantine.  This one was gnarly: fabricate a whole chicken, separating the bird from its skin, leaving the skin 100% intact.  Process the meat; reserve the breasts and isolate the legs and thighs.  Pate up the dark meat, along with gelatin, chicken livers, and seasonings.  Hammer the breasts into one thin rectangle o' flesh and slap it on the chicken skin.  Spread the pate onto the breastmeat, then roll it up nice and tight so that the outside is like a a big thick cylinder of chicken skin, like a skin football.  Wrap the gallantine in cheesecloth, then wrap that in plastic wrap, then either roast or poach.  We roasted, due to volume, but poaching is more traditional.

Once the gallantine is cooked, unwrap it and then it gets three thick coats of a 'chaud froid', a Bechamel-based gelatin outer coating. 

So then on Thursday we took these forcemeats and arranged them on a massive oval mirror.  Each one required eight identical slices and a thick solid base.  We had to display the slices in a fancy, curved order, and we also had to show our rabbit rillette, the rabbit forcemeat we had done earlier on and packed in a rammekin and topped with a layer of duck fat. 

My friend L took a few pictures of my group around our mirror; I need to plunder her facebook and get the pictures of our display.  It's rad.

Then on Friday, we got to 'relax' with some old school cooking, only this evening was timed.  We had a couple hours to fabricate a chicken, execute batonnet and and julienne cuts on some carrots, do a bunch more shit, baste an airline chicken breast, serve a pilaf and carrots au buerre, and then once it's all done drink beer in the parking lot with your friends.  We're actually not graded on the parking lot part, but if I were to grade us, I'd say we execute it like pros.       

****
And on to the next one!  This week we are doing another mirror display on Thursday, and we're having our garde manger final on Friday.  This week's mirror is for canapes and tartlets.