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.