Once again, we ROCKED the lobster (not to be mistaken with ROCK LOBSTER!!). In fact we did a great job on the lobster, mussels, and scallops. Seafood, oddly enough, is easy to screw up, but easier to get right. If you think you've cooked it too long, you probably have, and if you think its undercooked, then its probably perfect.
The recipes we transcribed at home did not actually suggest we were going to make whole lobsters, so when the chef whipped out some live lobsters, it was a pleasant surprise. More importantly, we made a lobster sauce (Sauce Americaine/Amoricaine - there are two ideas where the sauce came from, but ultimately its the same game, different name) We had some already hollowed out lobster shells, and we cleaned and crushed them, then sauteed and boiled them in water. Some recipes call for boiling them in fish broth, but many people don't want the taste of fish, but instead just lobster. Can't blame them. That sauce was phenomenal, and we served it with the lobster. It smelled great too.
Those lobsters were feisty. They did not want to meet their boiling death. but it had to be done. However, not before the little S.O.B. sliced me wit its sharp tail shells. I didn't feel bad for boiling it. Nor tearing it apart.
We slightly undercooked our lobster, which was PERFECT, because the dish called for the lobster meat being finished in a sauce pan with the sauce, so it would finish cooking perfectly. (took about 8 minutes in the boiling water). I've always hated whole lobster because of the painstaking process of cracking and eating it. I found it to be messy and classless. Though in fact it is perhaps one of the classiest foods. Go figure. But Chef showed us the method of cracking the shells, which although it was messy, it was pretty easy. Needless to say, I brought the lobster to my girlfriend who loved every bit of it.
That's all I have to say about the lobster. Pretty simple. Not so intimidating anymore. And I can make it for some romantic occasion or something.
We also made Scallops. Scallops are different from most of the other shelled mollusks we eat because the flesh that we eat is the muscle that opens and closes the shells. Most of the time, we discard this muscle and eat the rest of the flesh. But for some reason, we eat this part of the scallop, and its quite delightful. Again, this was really simple. Sprinkle with a touch of salt, saute in some oil on high eat until a beautiful crust forms, flip, finish. Done. We made a beautiful coulis sauce for these. That is, we took a reduction (I don't remember exactly what it was) and blended in a blender a bunch of parsley leaves. The leaves were first blanched in simmering water until a deep green formed, then shocked in an ice bath to prevent further coloration and cooking. The coulis was a beautiful bright green. A little bitter due to the nature of parsley, but complimented the scallops well. Again, they were perfect.
During dinner/lunch, we had a few clams and oyster that we were practicing opening. The oyster was pretty damn easy. You slip the tip of the knife into the joint and pop it open. The clams gave me a little more difficulty. I blame the fact that the chef told me to use the wrong side of the knife (not on purpose). As I was using the wrong side of the knife, he was saying, come on, use your hand, push harder. And I pushed harder into the "sharp" edge of the knife. (quotations because it wasn't necessarily sharp, just sharper than the blunt edge). And I was saying... hmmm, feels like I'm cutting my fingers. I turned the knife around and did it one two three. Just goes to show you that you need to be aware of little things like this. I also tried the raw oysters with a little cocktail sauce. I was skeptical at first because I never liked raw oysters before, but I loved them. They were so fresh.
After a job well done, I was feeling pretty good. Until clean-up time. Everything was going well, washed my knives, my station, etc. Then as I was drying my brand new vegetable peeler with a paper towel, I manged to peel into my nail. My finger was welling up with blood, and it didn't feel so hot. In short, my new peeler is the ish. I now wear a rubber finger condom over a band-aid to prevent anything from getting in it when I cook. It does the job. It was an awful way to end a good day of cooking. But I'm sure it gets worse.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Cool kid update (No. 2)
Ahem... cool kid coming through. Well I assure you its going to take a lot more than a knife roll (or satchel) to make me a cool kid. But I purchased one, and I put all of my knives in it, and quite frankly, I think its going to save me a lot of hassle.
I bought a Wusthof 8 pocket knife roll. It was on sale for $30 plus a 10% discount with my student ID. It came out to $30 including tax. That's pretty good, and it looks pretty sleek, and its pretty high quality.
So hopefully it will make my life easier, and bring me a few steps closer to cool-dom. I'll let you know if it works. (I also bought a better vegetable peeler, with a swiveling blade and a digital scale. Gettin' there...)
I bought a Wusthof 8 pocket knife roll. It was on sale for $30 plus a 10% discount with my student ID. It came out to $30 including tax. That's pretty good, and it looks pretty sleek, and its pretty high quality.
So hopefully it will make my life easier, and bring me a few steps closer to cool-dom. I'll let you know if it works. (I also bought a better vegetable peeler, with a swiveling blade and a digital scale. Gettin' there...)
It must have been a fluke..
Yeah, it was. This past Saturday we moved along to flat fish. Namely flounders and fluke. The cool part of a flat fish is that it has 4 distinct fillets, rather than two. There are two on each side of the fish, with the meatier ones being on top.
I think I've decided that I hate scaling fish. I don't think any amount of scaling will remove all the scales, but any amount of scaling will send scales flying EVERYWHERE! They will coat your cutting board, your floor, your arms, etc. Its really not fun.
The other night I bought 2 trouts to practice filleting and to cook for my girlfriend and friends, and thank the lord, they scaled it for me (with a scaling tool that looked fantastic). But even in the store, scales were flying all over the place. I was thinking I would have to sit on the roof and scale them so I don't get the scales all over. Good thing I didn't have to worry about it. (For the record, the trout dinner came out great).
Back to flounder. We made two dishes, one was fried flounder strips with a delicious remoulade and red pepper cream sauce. The other was a braised/steamed flounder "en sauce." Again, my partner and I were ON OUR GAME! I am loving how successful I have been with these fish recipes. I think the best part is filleting them and getting all that meat off the bones so nicely. I had a little bit of a hard time with the skin, but it worked out well. I can imagine if I have to do 50 of these in a night, I'd get a lot better at it pretty quickly.
For the fried flounder fingers (doesn't sound so gourmet, does it? it had a French name I can't recall at the moment) we had to make potato baskets for the fingers to sit in. I put a lot of thought into potato baskets after the first ones we made. My logic was that the bottom of the bowl usually gets overlapped and a little thick. Therefore it doesn't fully cook and brown as nicely as the rest of the bowl. So I made the gaufrettes (waffle cuts) and laid them in the bowl with minimal overlap, and uniform sizes. I received a few compliments, not only from my new partner, but from another student in the class who seems to be one of the more organized and focused students in the class. It literally looked like a flower cup made of potatoes. I was absolutely pleased with our creation.
The pepper sauce was magnificent as well. We were criticized by Chef Tom that it could have been blended (in the blender) a little better, but taste wise, it was phenomenal. It was really simple, too. The sauce consisted of sliced red peppers, sweated in olive oil with a clove of garlic. After they were tender (in French cooking, mostly all vegetables are cooked until tender), we added a little cream, reduced a touch and pureed in a blender. Simple. DELICIOUS. The remoulade was a mayo (we made ourselves) but with chopped parsley, chervil, tarragon and cornichons (tiny pickles). It was a lot like a tartar sauce, but different. Very delicious. We enjoyed this recipe with dinner. (Oh! To plate, we took a section of zucchini, hollowed it out a bit with a melon baller, and put the remoulade in it. We then put a little of the red bell pepper sauce on the plate, and the fish in the potato basket. It was quite a display!) Come to think of it, I bet if we mixed the red pepper sauce with mayo, or even the remoulade, it would taste great.
The other fish preparation was interesting as well. We cooked the flounder on top of some mushrooms with fish fumet (stock we made from the flounder bones themselves), and a splash of wine. We covered with a cartouche (parchment paper lid), and let it steam. The fillets were actually folded on themselves in 3 sections. We finished by removing the fillets, reducing the sauce with some cream, topping the fillets with this cream and mushroom sauce, and placing in the broiler. It was a very delicate taste and very delicious. Chef Tom claimed the sauce was on the salty side. My partner and I were in strong disagreement.
I rushed a little bit of the above descriptions because I'm antsy to talk about my new partner. As I said in one of my previous posts, Chef Tom reorganized the class. I was under the impression that my partner was a little slow and lethargic. BOY was I wrong. She admitted however, that with her previous partner, she had "given up." She felt like everything she did and all her hopes were thwarted by her old partner. She was telling me how she was so happy that she was no longer working with her, and she was working with me. That made me feel good. I wanted to tell her that it was awesome working with her as well, but I didn't want to insult my old partner, who wouldn't have heard it anyways. BUT IT WAS AWESOME. She was more confident with her skills, and she was quite on top of her game. She was more lively than before (despite a tooth ache) and I could tell she found out what it was like to work on a team (her old teammate was pretty thickheaded apparently). Its looking good, and more importantly, I'm glad she hasn't really given up. She's a great partner to work with! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my last partner, but, I am very versatile, and we will get along great.
I think I've decided that I hate scaling fish. I don't think any amount of scaling will remove all the scales, but any amount of scaling will send scales flying EVERYWHERE! They will coat your cutting board, your floor, your arms, etc. Its really not fun.
The other night I bought 2 trouts to practice filleting and to cook for my girlfriend and friends, and thank the lord, they scaled it for me (with a scaling tool that looked fantastic). But even in the store, scales were flying all over the place. I was thinking I would have to sit on the roof and scale them so I don't get the scales all over. Good thing I didn't have to worry about it. (For the record, the trout dinner came out great).
Back to flounder. We made two dishes, one was fried flounder strips with a delicious remoulade and red pepper cream sauce. The other was a braised/steamed flounder "en sauce." Again, my partner and I were ON OUR GAME! I am loving how successful I have been with these fish recipes. I think the best part is filleting them and getting all that meat off the bones so nicely. I had a little bit of a hard time with the skin, but it worked out well. I can imagine if I have to do 50 of these in a night, I'd get a lot better at it pretty quickly.
For the fried flounder fingers (doesn't sound so gourmet, does it? it had a French name I can't recall at the moment) we had to make potato baskets for the fingers to sit in. I put a lot of thought into potato baskets after the first ones we made. My logic was that the bottom of the bowl usually gets overlapped and a little thick. Therefore it doesn't fully cook and brown as nicely as the rest of the bowl. So I made the gaufrettes (waffle cuts) and laid them in the bowl with minimal overlap, and uniform sizes. I received a few compliments, not only from my new partner, but from another student in the class who seems to be one of the more organized and focused students in the class. It literally looked like a flower cup made of potatoes. I was absolutely pleased with our creation.
The pepper sauce was magnificent as well. We were criticized by Chef Tom that it could have been blended (in the blender) a little better, but taste wise, it was phenomenal. It was really simple, too. The sauce consisted of sliced red peppers, sweated in olive oil with a clove of garlic. After they were tender (in French cooking, mostly all vegetables are cooked until tender), we added a little cream, reduced a touch and pureed in a blender. Simple. DELICIOUS. The remoulade was a mayo (we made ourselves) but with chopped parsley, chervil, tarragon and cornichons (tiny pickles). It was a lot like a tartar sauce, but different. Very delicious. We enjoyed this recipe with dinner. (Oh! To plate, we took a section of zucchini, hollowed it out a bit with a melon baller, and put the remoulade in it. We then put a little of the red bell pepper sauce on the plate, and the fish in the potato basket. It was quite a display!) Come to think of it, I bet if we mixed the red pepper sauce with mayo, or even the remoulade, it would taste great.
The other fish preparation was interesting as well. We cooked the flounder on top of some mushrooms with fish fumet (stock we made from the flounder bones themselves), and a splash of wine. We covered with a cartouche (parchment paper lid), and let it steam. The fillets were actually folded on themselves in 3 sections. We finished by removing the fillets, reducing the sauce with some cream, topping the fillets with this cream and mushroom sauce, and placing in the broiler. It was a very delicate taste and very delicious. Chef Tom claimed the sauce was on the salty side. My partner and I were in strong disagreement.
I rushed a little bit of the above descriptions because I'm antsy to talk about my new partner. As I said in one of my previous posts, Chef Tom reorganized the class. I was under the impression that my partner was a little slow and lethargic. BOY was I wrong. She admitted however, that with her previous partner, she had "given up." She felt like everything she did and all her hopes were thwarted by her old partner. She was telling me how she was so happy that she was no longer working with her, and she was working with me. That made me feel good. I wanted to tell her that it was awesome working with her as well, but I didn't want to insult my old partner, who wouldn't have heard it anyways. BUT IT WAS AWESOME. She was more confident with her skills, and she was quite on top of her game. She was more lively than before (despite a tooth ache) and I could tell she found out what it was like to work on a team (her old teammate was pretty thickheaded apparently). Its looking good, and more importantly, I'm glad she hasn't really given up. She's a great partner to work with! Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my last partner, but, I am very versatile, and we will get along great.
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