Disaster Strikes

This was a rough class. NOT the end of the world, but a couple of things went wrong.

We started the class VERY well. We watched the chef hack away at the ribs portion of a pig. We each had two bones worth of rib section which we needed to prepare. It was actually a beautiful, fresh looking cut, and it came out quite well. It wasn't pink in the middle, which it could have been. Many people believe pork needs to be cooked until rubbery and well done. But contrary to this belief, pork is relatively clean (arguably so), and it rarely carries pathogens that make us sick. With that said, we barely overcooked it because it wasn't a touch pink in the middle. But it was still moist and delicious.

Picture a pork chop. now picture two thick pork chops. Now picture them uncut, so it looks like a really thick pork chop (3-4 inches thick). That's what we started with. We needed to machonner the ends of the bones. That is, make them bare and beautiful (like a prepared rack of lamb). This was easy, but we lost a little bit of the meat. That's ok, because we preserved the beautiful "eye" meat. Then we tied it with two pieces of string so the eye meat stayed nice and round. After sauteing it on all sides to develop a beautiful brown crust we covered it and popped it in the oven til it was done.

Everything is going a-ok.
I guess you want me to get to the good part...
We needed to roast the chicken. First I forgot to take out the wishbone. Eh. No biggie, we just took it out afterwards. I also forgot to salt the cavity before I trussed it. Again, no biggie, but these are flaws that I need to pick up on.

More importantly, I messed up the potato rissoler. Instead of blanching in water until it hits a boil and air drying, I full on boiled them. This wouldn't be as big an issue if we didn't already tournage the potatoes into cocotte size (cut the potatoes into 5cm footballs, which takes a bunch of time). So as we dumped the potatoes and tried again, we didn't notice the pearl onions burning under our noses. They didn't burn to a char. They looked borderline ok, with a glacer a brun as it called for in the recipe. But the fact that they did burn made them a bit bitter. Just wasn't right. Finally, when we plated, we went overboard (to my accord), and the chef basically said it looked awful, the potatoes, which we re-did, and were pretty good, were too bland, pearl onions were bitter, and just too much going on on the plate.

It was a learning experience, though it didn't feel great. HOWEVER, the chicken itself was delicious and moist. He gave us that much. I didn't walk away a happy camper, and I actually lost some sleep over it.

I personally take most of the blame for the follies of this class, but I must give an honorable mention to the fact that my partner's toothache acted up pretty bad and I needed to take matters into my own hands. Other people in class worked alone for this lesson and did a fantastic job, however, when you have a partner, there is a certain amount of interdependence that is involved and if that flow is broken it can leave a lot of room for error. This isn't an excuse, and trust me I was up to 3AM (sober) thinking about it in bed. It won't happen again.