The Culinary Tales Week 31: Vive La France!
Finally, we reached the last official class before we embarked on real-life practice during “rotation.”
International class was supposed to push us even harder than any class we had up to that point. (If I could survive Garde Manger, I supposed I could survive International.) There were so many recipes that we weren’t going to be able to make them all. But still expected to know how to make them for our final test.
True to form, and by “form” I mean the gods’ sadistic compulsion to punish me, we ended up with Chef Good Cop from Intro I as our chef. Since she ended up being the evil one, we shall call her Chef Evil moving forward.
We were told we were going to be assigned her again, and Chef Nazi let out in a sinister chortle when she broke the news.
We started the week off doing community chores and prepping ingredients that will be called upon in a few days (duck confit, preserved lemons, creme fraiche, frog legs and sweetbreads.) Then it was down to the nitty gritty. The theme of Week One was France.
We got to learn French recipes in haute cuisine and rustic style. I like rustic style a lot more because it’s a lot easier to wing it and fewer steps to make (read: no straining).
There were two menus of soup, appetizer and entree; we were on the hook for one set. As was the case when we only had one chef assigned to the class, we took turns acting as “sous” chef. The sous chef had an extra dish to prepare. (Lucky them.)
We started with a practical on steak au poivre with haricots verts (green beans) before the real fun started. Then I got to make bouillabaise, Veal Sweetbreads with a vol au vent, braised rabbit with fava bean and mushroom ragout (we got to fabricate the rabbits), cream of celeriac soup, lobster souffle, and daube d’agneau provencal (daube = shoulder, agneau = lamb). The week’s sous chefs got to make cassoulet and escargots bourguinonne.
In addition to the stress of getting all the dishes done, we also had to turn them in during specific windows. It’s no wonder I didn’t get to take any pictures of my work. I was just too harried.
But as a treat, here’s a video demonstration of how to make a lobster souffle. Enjoy!
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