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.   

Last night's stage

Last night will be my last stage for a while, I think Jen and Marcel are going to key my car if I'm away from home any more on these weekend nights.  Works out fine, because I have my externship set up there, so the effort's paid off. 

The specials last night were crazy good - 'retarded good' as the sous chef put it.  A watermelon and feta salad, topped with wild arugula and a pink peppercorn vinaigrette.  That was seriously retarded good.  And batonnet cut chickpea fries, also retarded good.

The chef de cuisine prepared me a small order of the pork belly crostini, topped with green apples and microgreens.  I also tried the bacon wrapped, chorizo stuffed dates.  THOSE are good.  The food is insane and the flavors are huge.  Also new desserts last night: goat cheese cheesecake.  And bitter chocolate semifreddo.  The food is retarded good, and I'm going to get retarded fat during my externship.

Fruit and veg carving

One of the coolest nights in culinary school so far.  We did fancy carving into fruits and veggies.  First we watched a video demo by a woman from Singapore who is one of the world's best decorative carvers.  Then chef demoed an ornate floral pattern across the side of a whole watermelon.  Then we each got a turnip, peeled the white half of the turnip, and mimicked a part of his design on our turnips.  Chef was cool, very supportive, emphasizing the therapeutic quality of fruit carving.  We were cracking jokes, asking him if next Friday we could do basketweaving.

After we practiced the flower on the turnip, we did it again on a honeydew melon.  The larger surface lent itself to larger petals and the space to do cool leaves.  After honeydew, we got two roma tomatoes.  The first one, we peeled in one long strip (nailed it my first try!), then rolled the peel up to look like a rose bloom.  The second tomato, we cut in half the long way, then took one half and finely sliced into many small pieces.  Then, we spread the pieces out into one fine, long line of tomato slices, then curled it into itself over and over, making yet another tomato rose.

After tomatoes we cut swans out of granny smith apples.  Parallel patterns for the wings, spread them out far, then popped in a little head. 

He also let me practice more on a cantaloupe but I was getting tired so I just diced it and ate it instead.  I also ate a couple tomatoes, some honeydew, and my friend P's amputee apple swan.  That's more fruit than I've had all week; I need to wear a Depends this weekend.

Jen took the kids to Likkity's last night

Holla

Great news - today I met with chef Jason and he's going to let me do my externship at Fino.  This is huge for me, I feel like I now have clarity on what the rest of the program looks like for me.  I'm happy!

Thursday already?

Criminy, where's this week gone?

Last night was duck night in garde manger.  We smoked duck breasts that had been cured overnight, then browned them in the oven.  Then pan seared the skin to get it crisp, then sliced it extremely thin (chef: "one duck breast should give you at least 27 pieces") and arranged over an Asian slaw.  The slaw dressing turned out nice, but I only managed about 14 pieces of our breast, and my cuts were jagged.  Not my best knife work.

We also had duck leg and thigh on the stove in a confit - poaching the duck in its own fat.  we let the duck confit go at 190 degrees for about three hours.  When done, the duck meat slid off the bone like a slow cooked bbq rib.  (I reserved most of the duck confit and made Marcel a duck sandwich for lunch, thought that would be pretty gangster.)

The night before last was slow, sauce building.  Nothing earth shattering.  Tonight will be cool though, getting in to forcemeats.  We're making three different kinds of sausage.

Also today, I have a meeting with chef J from Fino; I'm trying to secure a spot for externship beginning in August.

First night of garde manger

Our classes have recombined, so there's once more around 40 students under one classroom roof.  Some students hate this, thinking they won't be able to use all the pans, bowls, whisks - and they're right, there was tons of stuff unavailable tonight - but I'm in favor of the disarray, it more accurately reflects life in the professional kitchen.  Plus it's cool seeing old friends.

Tonight we pounded out mayonnaise, vichyssoise soup, and two red pepper sauces, all four chilled and served cold.  One red pepper sauce was spicy, prepared with fire roasted peppers - the other was sweet, with oven roasted red peppers as a base.  It was incredible to learn how red peppers can have two such different flavor profiles just from different roasting techniques. 

R and I paired, and he made the mayonnaise while I made the vichyssoise.  The soup was so delicious!  I made it a little too thick but the rich leek flavor was just wonderful.  My family is not too amped on potato soup; otherwise I'd love to make this for them.  Maybe my mother in law would like some vichyssoise.

The red pepper dishes were amazing.  Easy to make and super sexy and rich.  R and I were both stoked and amazed at the range of flavor coming from the same damn veggie.

Garde manger is all about the cold side - salads, cold sauces, terrine, forcemeats.  This class is the one I have been looking forward to since day one.  I want to master garde manger and apply its cold side sensibility to dishes in Ithaca.