Lesson13 - Pork

In lesson 13, we learned about pork.  The thing I found most interesting was where the phrase 'sweating like a pig' came from.  It is meant to refer to someone sweating heavily, but in actuality, pigs do not have sweat glands on their skin.  But pigs do bathe in mud, and the phrase came about by meaning a person could grow so hot that they would rather bathe in mud than sweat.

Also, eating raw pork can cause trichinosis, which is a parasitic infection involving a roundworm that can form cysts in the muscles of the body.  It is much more rare these days because the hogs are no longer fed table scraps or garbage contaminated with the parasite.  To be sure, pork should be cooked until it is 160 deg. Fahrenheit.

Chef Bruno took us to see some of the charcuterie class's work.  This is one of the loaves covered in aspic that he made:

A side view:

This is the pork that we used to make rack of pork with braised lettuce:

This is the first aid kit that I visited frequently during our class:

I tied our pork with twine:

For the chicken dish we made (chicken breast, Viennese-style), we had to use this huge mallet.  After the chef demoed it, Coba said, 'should we go pound our meat now?', and we all started laughing hysterically.  He then said, 'I knew that was wrong the minute I said it!'.

This was the finished pork with braised lettuce, which is made with carrots, onions, a bouquet garni, bound veal stock, butter, white wine, chervil, potatoes, braised lettuce, bacon, stock, vegetable oil, salt, parsley, watercress, and pepper.  It was really good.

This is the chicken, Viennese style, which is made with chicken breasts, clarified butter, salt, and pepper.  The chicken is breaded in flour, eggs, and bread crumbs and then fried in some oil.  The finished chicken is served over shredded potato cake, hard boiled egg whites and yolks, parsley, and capers.  The topping is a green olive wrapped in an anchovy atop a lemon slice.  The dish was good, but I could definitely do without the anchovy!

This is the room our class is in:

That was it for Lesson 13 - next lesson: lamb!

Lesson 12 - Duck

For this lesson, we were to prepare two dishes: duck with orange sauce and grilled chicken, sauce diable (diable is a sauce made of crushed black peppercorns, shallots, white wine, white wine vinegar, water, brown veal, chervil, tarragon, and butter), which is pretty spicy.

The difference between chicken and duck is that duck has a higher fat content, larger skeleton, and lower meat yield.  Ducks are typically not grilled because of the high fat content, which can melt and ignite over open flames.

While we were prepping, Chef Bruno was checking out his facebook page:  ;)

Chef Bruno demoed how to cut the duck which is very much like quartering a chicken:

These are the finished pieces of duck (the breasts are scored to help it cook faster because the breasts are so much bigger than the legs):

Amy & I showing off our duck:

While Amy cut the duck, I prepared our chicken for grilling and then baking (the chicken is cut open and flattened and then the drumsticks are placed into incisions in the skin - this keeps it flat for grilling):

The duck breasts cooked in the oven, so at one point, Sheryl asked Chef Bruno if he wanted to come and check out her breasts.  There was a long pause, and then he said, 'ah... no, thank you'. We laughed for the rest of the class!

This is our finished duck, which has a leg under the thinly slice breast pieces over orange sauce:

We grilled the chicken and then baked it and arranged it with sauce and served with grilled tomato, mushrooms, and bacon.  This is our chicken:

That was it for duck.  Next lesson is pork and yet more chicken.

Lesson 11 - Introduction to Poultry

Well, mastering the filleting of the fish had me feeling invincible, but it turns out that poultry is a lot harder because it is fatty and full of water.  Here in America, we pack our chickens in water, which makes them very hard to cut.  At some markets, you can find drier chickens, which cost more, but are a lot easier to deal with.

As we discussed the different types of chicken, Chef Bruno put up a slide of a bunch of chickens with no room to walk around and said, 'these are free range chickens'.  We laughed, but that is probably the truth.  They have room, but they are so close together that they cannot go anywhere.

We made two types of chicken.  One was Sauteed chicken, hunter style and the other was roasted chicken, grandmother style.  We quartered one chicken and trussed the other.

Things to keep in mind while sautéing are: 1. make sure the pan is very hot before the food is added, otherwise it will stick 2. The food to be sautéed should be dry 3. Do not crowd food in the pan 4. Do not cover the pan and 5. Do not shake the pan immediately after adding the food.

Sauteed chicken hunter style is one whole chicken, quartered, with an enriched brown stock and carrots, onions, mushrooms, shallots, brandy, white wine, tomato fondue, butter (of course!), chervil, tarragon and a bouquet garni.  The sauce is very rich.

This is the sauteed chicken, hunter style:

Roasted chicken grandmother style is made with a roasting chicken, oil, butter, onions, carrots, potatoes, pearl onions, bacon, mushrooms, salt, pepper, parsley, white wine, and veal stock.   

Amy roasted our chicken, which is first browned on all sides and then baked in the oven.

This is the final dish:

Both chicken dishes were very good.

The school was having an event with Jacques Torres, so we were able to go see him and take a picture with him.  Jacques Torres is known as Mr Chocolate - his website is mrchocolate.com.  This was a sugar sculpture centerpiece made for his visit:

This is us with Chef Bruno:

And all of us with Jacques Torres:

I had the unfortunate luck to have cut both of my thumbs that night, so I was wearing blue bandages and bandage covers.  When I shook Jacques Torres's hand, he noticed and asked me what happened.  I said that I had cut my thumb.  Chef Bruno said 'luckily she only has two thumbs because she cut both of them' and everyone had a good laugh.  ;)

Next lesson: Duck.

Lesson 10 - Potatoes

Lesson 10 was potatoes.  6 different kinds of potatoes, in fact.

There are 2 types of potatoes.  There are starchy potatoes, which are the denser, and often fried, baked and mashed.  The other type of potato is a waxy potato.  Waxy potatoes are typically used for gratins, soups, salads, stews, and potato cakes.

Idaho, Yukon gold and Russet potatoes are examples of starchy types.  Red Bliss, Red Pontiac, and Yellow Finnish are examples of waxy potatoes.

Potatoes should be stored in the dark, between 45 and 50 degrees.  If potatoes have been kept in a warm, light environment for too long, they could turn green.  When they are green, they contain high levels of solanine, which is toxic.

Of course, one of the dishes we made was french fries (technically pommel pont-neuf, which are thick cut fries).  A few points about deep frying: you can reuse oil, but it needs to be strained and filtered after each use and stored in a covered container.  If the oil is foaming or smells bad, don't use it.  Don't mix fresh oil with used oil.  Be sure oil is completely hot before adding the food.  Add food in small batches.  Do not salt food before frying - do so soon after removing from the oil.  Finally, rinse and dry potatoes thoroughly to remove excess starch.

Random info: French fries were actually created in Belgium.

We also made potatoes gratin, which is made with milk, cream, nutmeg, Idaho potatoes, garlic and gruyere.  These are sooooooo good!

Chef Bruno made us this wonderful steak in wine sauce to go with our potatoes:

We made pureed potatoes:

We also made Pommes Duchesse, which is nutmeg, egg yolk, butter, and potatoes mixed and put through a food mill and then piped and baked.

This is the chef's:

This was mine:

This is Amy's:

We also made Pommes Anna, which are sliced potatoes layered in a skillet and drizzled with clarified butter.  The potatoes are then cooked on the stove and then baked in the oven.  We were pressed for time and mine didn't turn out so well, so there is no photo.

The final type of potatoes we made were Pommes sautés a cru, which is really good.  They are potatoes sliced and sautéed in oil, then in butter and seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.  

After class, we walked around and I took some pictures of the pastry class projects:

That is all for lesson 10!

Lesson 9 - More Fish!

For Lesson 9, we made 2 more fish dishes and the Chef demoed mousseline.

I didn't really discuss anything we learned in the prior post, so I'll go into some detail here.

First item: how to choose fresh fish. The way to make sure a fish is fresh is to make sure the eyes are not sunken, it should smell like the ocean or river (yes, a fish should not smell fishy, so why is it called a fish?), and it should have a shiny, brilliant appearance.  Our book also says to make sure the fish has a firm, intact stomach and a tightly closed anal cavity. Yum!

Second item: classification.  I mentioned round fish and flat fish.  Flat fish are bottom feeders, meaning they live at the bottom of the ocean.  Examples of flat fish are flounder, sole, halibut, fluke & turbot.  Round fish live in oceans, lakes and rivers.  Some round fish are sea bass, monkfish, salmon & tuna.

Third item: random facts.  Most fish are 70 percent water and 10 to 20 percent protein.  Examples of fatty fishes are salmon and herring.  Some leaner fishes are bass and barramundi.  I wish we had made salmon, because I don't care for it and everything we have made so far has been really good.

When I was pulling the innards out of the fish during lesson 8, I do have to admit to being a little nauseous, but by lesson 9, I was not freaked out at all.

In this lesson, we made bread crumb coated sole with 2 sauces.  We deep fried the fish, and it turned out much like fish sticks, but fresher and better tasting.  The 2 sauces were a red bell pepper sauce and a remoulade (which is much better than tartar sauce).

The other fish dish we made was sautéed trout, grenoble style.  I was not looking forward to this one because the fish is cooked with the skin on.  However, it turned out to be really good!  The fish is fried in a sauté pan with clarified butter and capers and topped with croutons.

The chef demoed mousseline, which I thought would be just like that fish paste from lesson 5 (brandade), but was actually much better.  It is basically fish and cream that has been blended using a food processor.  The mixture is then shaped with a spoon into quenelles (dumplings) and boiled.  Here is a picture (large shapes are moussline and smaller shapes are potatoes):

That was it for the fish.  Next lesson: Potatoes!

Lesson 8 - Fish

I was extremely nervous about this class for 2 reasons.  One reason is I am very picky about the types of fish I eat (I like fresh white fish from Hawaii - not so much trout and fishes like that) and the second reason is that I had never cut a whole fish before.  Turns out that all of us felt the same way, and we had another chef and person auditing the class, making it even more nerve wracking!

We learned to fillet both a flat fish and a round fish.  The round fish are easier because they are larger and only have 2 fillets - one on each side.  The flat fish are smaller and have 2 fillets on each side.  There is a lot more cutting involved with the flat fish.  I am so glad we learned how to do this! It wasn't really as tough as I thought it would be.

Here are some beginning pictures:

Flat fish:

Me cutting the fins off of my flat fish:

Flat fish Fillets:

Round fish:

Leftover bones & guts (yummy!):

With the flat fish, we made a white wine, shallot and cream sauce.  Needless to say, it is very rich!

With the round fish, we baked it in parchment paper.  The fish in parchment paper is FABULOUS!

Fish in wine, shallot and cream sauce (with potatoes):

Fish baked in parchment paper:

My classmates and I eating our fish:

Lesson 9 is also fish, so we got more practice filleting!

Lesson 7 - Soups

I was really excited about this class.  I loooove soup!  And we were making some good ones: cream of cauliflower, farmer's style vegetable soup and french onion.  We also made a beef consommé.

There are two types of soups: bound soups and clear soups.  Clear soups are transparent soups such as consommé.  Bound soups are opaque soups that are thickened with starch, fish, meat or vegetables.

The cauliflower soups was made with leeks, butter, flour, chicken stock (or water can be used), cauliflower, egg yolk, heavy cream and salt & pepper.  The soup is put through a food mill and then a blender, but there should be some pieces of cauliflower floating in the soup, so you need to cook some of those separately a l'anglaise (in a large amount of salted water).  This is my cauliflower soup:

The cauliflower soup is REALLY good, but very rich.  The Farmer's style vegetable soup, however, is light and great.  I have made it for my sons because they like it so much.  They eat a little bit of the soup as the vegetable portion of their dinner.  

Farmer's style vegetable soup is made with leeks, celery, green beans, carrots, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, peas, bacon, vegetable stock, salt & pepper.  The soup is topped with large croutons (slices of baguette covered with shredded gruyere cheese and toasted).  This is my favorite soup!  It is not pureed, so is very simple to make.

End result:

I was really looking forward to the french onion soup.  But I was really disappointed with it because it turned out really sweet and peppery.  Apparently, that is how it is supposed to taste.  :(

French onion soup is made with lots of onions (duh), butter, garlic, flour, sherry, chicken or beef stock (or marmite, a beef stock made with blackened onions), salt & pepper.  It is also topped with the gruyere and gruyere covered croutons.  After the soup is cooked, it is covered with the croutons and the cheese and baked in the oven.  The result is beautiful:

If only it tasted better!!!

We also made a beef consommé, which is just a rich, clarified, translucent soup that is amber in color.  I have no pictures...  I do remember that we had to use 10 or so paper towels to absorb the grease from the top while we were cooking it.  Yuck!

Chef Bruno demoed Aspic, which is basically broth jello with a design in it.  I don't think that flavor would have made it if sold in stores next to the strawberry and orange jello.  It was pretty though:

That was all for soups - next lesson: Fish!