The Profane Chef

Okay.  I admit it.  That absence was perhaps just a little too long!  What have I been up to?  I actually did finish culinary school!  Graduated and everything!  Work went incredibly well for me; so much so that, for the first time in memory, Franco’s offered to sponsor a work visa for me which would allow me to stay in London, cooking at that beautiful spot for quite a while!  I admit, it was incredibly tempting.  However, after tons of thought, soul-searching, and achingly overwhelming homesickness, I decided to return to the US.  Not Minnesota, though.  I had to do quite a lot of thinking about where I actually wanted to live!  New York seemed the obvious choice, but was that really what I wanted?  The grind, the noise, the weather (I was leaving good old MN for a reason!), the cockroaches!  I wasn’t sure about facing the prospect of living in a tiny shoebox of an apartment and dealing with everything that makes NY what it is. Finally, it hit me.  California! The weather is perfect and the local food is unbeatable.  The produce!  Oh, the produce!  I’d been reading about the culinary scene in northern California for years.  I thought I’d really love to head to Napa, but I didn’t dare plan on making it in such a highly esteemed (and very small) food scene.  San Francisco would be a dream!  I know, it’s foggy.  And rainy.  And also just about perfect!  I’d spent my life in Minnesota and the last year in London!  San Francisco couldn’t hold a candle to the weather I’d seen!  Full of doubt and trepidation, I bought a ticket, packed my bags, and headed to California!

Lamb.  In class, we got to watch découpe d’un agneau (butchery of a whole lamb, showing primary and secondary cuts) and then it was on to practical to make Carré d’agneau rôti et persillé and Ratatouille nicoise.  Roast rack of lamb with a parsley crust and ratatouille from Nice.

Now here’s the problem.  Chef Franck is from Nice.  Chef Franck is tough.  Chef Franck has a reputation for tearing apart every student’s ratatouille.  Mine was no exception.  I did get off pretty easily, though!  My vegetables were a little undercooked and I could have used more seasoning.  Not the end of the world.

The fun part was where we got to take apart a rack of lamb in order to make that beautiful rack of lamb with the bones showing on the end.  My sharp, glinting boning knife is truly a work of art.

We had a lot to do in a short amount of time, so Chef Franck kept us going and going at full speed until the very end.  The end of class, I mean.  Fortunately, I finished on time!!!  I was one of only two people to do so.  When we were out of time, Chef yelled that no matter what people had done or what they hadn’t completed, everybody just had to plate what they had and show it to him for assessment.  Thank goodness I completed my plate!  Time really is a constraint in class, just like it is in the restaurant world.  It’s amazing how much Le Cordon Bleu has been teaching us in only a few weeks!

Eggs.

Oh, eggs.  How could I possibly not make eggs well?

Oh!  I know!  I could be making the eggs the way that we were taught today!

Here’s what I think:  I think that runny eggs are disgusting.  Little chunks of eggs swimming in their own mucus-y juices.  Not appealing in any sense on any level.

That’s what I had to make for our practical today.

Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon (not just runny, but sitting in a pool of egg liquid) and an Omelette aux fines herbs.  Omelette with finely chopped herbs that has standing liquid in the center.  When you cut into the pale white rolled omelette, it should ooze liquid onto the plate.  I had to make mine three times before it was considered acceptable.  Cooked gently on one side, not cooked at all on the other, and then carefully rolled into a smooth cigar shape tapered to a point on each end.

Look.  I know I’m being judgmental here, but really.  Runny eggs???  We also made œufs pochés à la florentine (poached eggs with sauteed spinach, gruyère cheese, and sauce mornay, a white cheese sauce).

In demo, we saw eggs sur le plat, which were sunny side up, each cooked to order in its own little serving dish, we watched soft and hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs served in the shell in egg cups, we got to watch coddled eggs with parsley and tomato coulis, and we saw quite possibly the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.  Fried eggs.  These are not your mother’s fried eggs.  These eggs are poached.  In a deep fryer.  You slide your eggs gently into a pool of blazing hot oil, and working quickly with two wooden spoons, shape and mold your eggs into small balls. Crispy and golden on the outside, runny and amazing within.  Served with bacon, I could easily envision myself cutting years off of my life eating these amazing creations day after day after day.  All in the name of research, of course…

 two days, we watched butchery of a rump and loin of beef and we made Bœuf buourguinone with pearl onions, button mushrooms, croutons, and lardons (that’s bacon bits to my friends out there at home!) and Contrefile de boef rôti et ses accompagnements: carottes glacés tournees, haricot vert, and pommes châteaux (roast beef with turned and glazed carrots, french green beans, and roast potatoes) and pommes à la vapeur (steamed potatoes for the bourguignon).  We also watched entrecôte sautée à la bordelaise, which is pan fried sirloin steak with a red wine and shallot sauce, as well as stèak au poivre (pepper steak) and pommes darphin (sort of like mini-hashbrowns), pommes frites (deep fried potatoes), pommes pailles (potato straws), pommes gaufrettes (waffle fries), and pommes allumettes (fried matchstick potatoes).

Busy couple of days!

I was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to make roast beef.  My cooking point was dead-on and got compliments.  I am happy to report that even under pressure I can cook a roast beef to medium rare!  The butchery was quite a sight to see.  The rump and loin of beef were half the size of our demo chef!  I was completely and totally awestruck watching our chef take apart such a massive piece of meat, talking and joking as he worked.  His cuts were (to my untrained eye) absolutely perfect.  He is a magician with a boning knife.  And a hacksaw.

I’m not kidding.  A hacksaw.  It was awesome.

Unfortunately, the carrots needed to be turned.  The potatoes also needed to be turned.  Both the roast potatoes and the steamed potatoes.  Not exactly my favorite activity in the whole world.  Practice does help, though!  I’m getting faster with this torturous activity and my vegetables actually looked like they were coming together into the correct shape!  Unfortunately, for the roast potatoes, I overcooked my poor little spuds a bit, which made presentation a little unpleasant.  You boil the potatoes until they’re a third of the way done, sautée them in butter, toss them into the oven for a little while, put them back on the stove, and then finish them with more butter.  You want them to be smooth and golden on the outside and perfectly cooked in the center.  I boiled mine too long, so they looked like they had a terrible case of facial warts and a bad fake tan.

Bœf Bourguignon was also not the end of the world!  You really do want to take the time to marinate the meat for 12-24 hours before you cook it.  The meat should be tender and falling apart in the end.  Trim all of the fat and other various white bits off before marinating it.  It’s actually a relatively simple dish!  After the marinade, you sear the beef and then add flour (singer) and tomato paste, the reserved marinade liquid, and beef stock and just cook it for a about and hour or an hour and a half, depending on the size of your chunks of beef.  Our pieces were pretty small, so mine was actually done after about 50 minutes.  We had lardons and sauteed mushrooms with the beef, pearl onions on the side, and a crouton.  Stale bread cooked in clarified butter and a little salt on both sides until it’s golden, then dried on paper towels or put it in the oven to dry it out even more.  You don’t want a crouton that’s dripping with fat.  For presentation, we cut the crouton into a triangle (mine was a bit too large, so my (rather flirtatious) chef for that day recut my crouton into a smaller heart shape and we dipped one side of the crouton in the liquid from the stew and coated that end with finely chopped parsley.  It actually makes for a pretty lovely presentation!

We will be making the pepper steak later in the course, so here’s hoping that I remembered to take a couple of notes!

Have I mentioned my knife kit?  Have I really, really mentioned the loveliness that is my knife kit?

I have these:

Knife Case

Cook’s Knife- 9″

Meat Fork

Paring Knife

Filleting Knife

Turning Knife

Boning Knife

Light Cleaver

Scissors

Sharpening Steel

Trussing Needle

Vegetable Peeler

Flat Icing Spatula

Bent Icing Spatula

Zester

Melon Baller

Apple Corer

Channeling Knife

Pastry Brush

Piping Bag- 350mm

Piping Bag- 430mm

Plastic Scraper

Thermometer/Timer

Spatula- 30cm

Whisk- 30cm

Table Fork

Soup Spoon

Teaspoon

Stainless Steel Nozzle- U6

Stainless Steel Nozzle- U8

Stainless Steel Nozzle- U10

Stainless Steel Nozzle- U12

Stainless Steel Nozzle- U20

Stainless Steel Nozzle- A7

Stainless Steel Nozzle- D7

Plastic Nozzle- StH

Plastic Nozzle- E6

Plastic Nozzle- E8

Plastic Nozzle- PF16

These make me very, very happy.

Les Farineux et Riz!!!  Starches and rice!!!

For the practical: Nouilles Alfredo (fresh pasta noodles with parmesan cream sauce)!!!  In demo: Risotto à la Milanaise (risotto with saffron, parmesan, and tomato) and Gnocchi with sauce tomate, which we will be making later on in the course!

“Anne.  I think today is your best practical yet!”

Could any other words make me happier than those?

I finished more than an hour early!  My pasta was good, my sauce was creamy and lovely, and everything worked out perfectly!  Chef Franck tasted, and then ate, and then tried even more!

We made the Pâte à Nouilles (pasta dough) from scratch and the Alfredo sauce was incredibly simple.  Chicken stock infused with black peppercorns, crème fraîche, butter and parmesan with some fresh basil and oregano.  I expected the sauce to be a soupy, watery mess, but it actually turned out to be quite thick and creamy!  We garnished it with vine plum tomato concassé and some basil tops.

I can’t wait to make the gnocchis!!

Okay.  This week was a little hectic for me (read:  I’m totally and completely terrified of pastry).  I’ve decided to combine this week into one pastry-filled entry.  It went well!  My pastries actually turned out well!  Not perfectly, but I’ve got to admit that I was expecting complete chaos and failure.  Tiny little tarts bursting into flame.  Pools of molten lava pouring out from my little oven.  Locusts.  You get the idea.

First up:

Pâte brisée salée: Quiche Lorraine and Pâte sucrée: Tarte aux fruits de saison.  Bacon and egg quiche with savoury shortcrust pastry and a seasonal fruit tart with sweet pastry.

We made our pastry dough from scratch.  Don’t work it too much and make sure to chill it multiple times in the refrigerator.  If you don’t do these things, when you go to bake your crust, it will snap back down like a rubber band and you will end up with a tiny little pastry that can’t hold any filling.

I definitely learned a useful lesson about blind baking today.  You really want to pack those beans or weights into the crust, bake the crust until it’s pretty well done, and then take the weights out and really basically bake the crust until it’s done.  I expected my quiche to keep baking after I added the filling, but that most definitely didn’t happen.  My poor quiche was quite undercooked.  The filling was good, though!  My fruit tart was much better!  I cooked the pastry correctly, the dough was flakey and lovely, and my crème pâtisserière (pastry cream with milk and flour, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla bean) worked out quite well.

The second time.

Here’s a tip:  when the recipe calls for milk, you definitely do not want to accidentally grab the bottle of cream by mistake.  Read the label!!!!  I can tell you, from experience, that if you follow the recipe exactly and bring the cream back up to a boil after adding all of the ingredients, your pastry cream will be ruined.  You will have to start over.  My little tart finally worked out so well that it was used as an example of a decent tart for another student who had limited experience with making and eating pastry.

Next up: Pâte feuilletée (puff pastry dough from scratch!!!) day one, and crêpes aux citron (lemon crepes).  We also got to see Pâte à brioche day one, but we didn’t make brioche dough in practical.

Class went well.  Class went well!!!

I had been dreading today’s class all.  Weekend.  Long. Wicked, wicked technical on making French puff pastry dough from scratch, and crepes may be the easiest thing in the world for for many people, but I’ve never really made them before, particularly not with an award-winning French chef breathing down the back of my neck and waiting to grade me.  Eeeek!!!

My first batch of pastry dough was too wet, so Chef grabbed it out of my hand, threw it in the garbage, and told me to start over.  I did, and the second batch was great!  Then, I managed to get my brick-o’-butter softened to the right stage and NOT break it or make air bubbles while I rolled out the dough!

On to the crepes!  Seasoned the pan, made the batter, and threw it in the fridge.  Made the lemon sauce.  Rolled out my pastry dough two more times (you need to roll it out and turn it and roll it out and turn it six times, making sure to stash it in the fridge between rolls so that it doesn’t get warm.  Made crepes!

I got good reviews!  Chef said my crepes were very good!  My lemon sauce was good, my crepes were the right thickness and color, and the taste was good!  He ate more than one bite!  I’ve got to say that class today made me extremely proud.

Puff pastry day two, Allumettes au fromage (cheese allumettes using the puff pastry dough and a Mornay sauce with a roux, milk infused with onion studded with cloves, a bouquet garni, and then egg yolks and gruyere cheese) and Pâte à choux: Gougère (savoury choux buns).  We also got to see Saucisson en brioche in demo!  Gorgeous, heavenly Morteau sausages poached in a court bouillon and then wrapped in the brioche dough from yesterday’s demo and baked in the oven with Pommes en l’Air (apples caramelized with butter and sugar) on the side.

My allumettes puffed up beautifully and were golden on the outside and flakey in the center (though they could have used even more cheese filling) and my choux buns turned out quite well!  The choux buns are actually more like a dumplings!  You cook the flour with warm butter and water and keep heating it until it forms a coherent dough ball.  You want to cook it and heat it as you stir vigorously.  The we added the eggs and some gruyère cheese and piped the dough through piping bags to make lovely little buns.  You flatten the top and cover it with a simple egg wash for baking.  We also used an egg wash for the allumettes, but that one had a pinch of sugar and salt in with the egg (yolk only) and water.  It really made a lovely color on the allumettes!

And finally, pastry week number one is finished!  I can finally relax!  Back to entrees for me!

Poulet rôti et ses accompagnements  : jus rôti, purée de pommes de terre, fleurets de broccoli, petits oignons glacés à brun.

Roast chicken with all the trimmings!  Mashed potatoes, broccoli, and caramelized baby onions.

This will be our first assessment in a few weeks, so I’m sure I’ll have more to add later.  We had to clean and truss the chicken again, sear it on all sides, and roast it in the oven for ten minutes on each side and then about twenty minutes on its back on a bed of mirepoix.  Check the temp before you serve it!  You want the chicken to be golden in color with a crispy skin.  The mirepoix adds the flavor that you will need to make the jus.  Not a sauce!  No cream or thickeners; just the beautifully chicken flavored jus, reduced down to the consistency that you like.  Make sure to strain and skim the jus so that you get all of the excess fat out.  Pools of fat on the plate are not appealing!

We boiled the broccoli after trimming it into florets and scoring the base of the stem in order to insure even cooking.  That doesn’t sound too complicated, but remember; we’re being asked to cook everything to the perfect point of doneness!  (For those of you following along back in the U.S., that’s overcooked to you!)  Refresh them in cold water when they’re done so that they retain their beautiful green color, and then just quickly reheat them when you’re ready to serve in a little of the cooking water with a dab of butter to make them shiny.

Baby onions?  Peel them (if you soak them in hot water first, their skins come off extremely easily!), and then put them in a pan with water, butter, sugar, and a little salt.  Toss a cartouche on the top and then cook them away until the liquid has pretty well evaporated and the butter and sugar have colored them a lovely caramel.

Mashed potatoes.  “These are not like English mash.  These are potatoes with finesse.”

You want to cook the potatoes until they’re thoroughly done, drain them and then quickly pass them through a chinoise or other fine strainer.  Then you add some hot milk and some butter.  Mix well.  Add more butter.  Then add more butter.  Then, just for fun, add a little more butter!  You also want to season the potatoes, but with salt only!  No pepper!

Get your plate clean, heat it up, and serve!

There is no secret ingredient.

There’s just believing in cooking.

-Chef Laurent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcgg6YLVj28