Today was a better day.....and it's Friday!! We had our quiz first thing this morning. They started introducing wine questions again, I need to look at those old tests more closely!
After our exam, Chef Pete gave us a lecture on curing. First he covered confit (con-feet), which is a protein that has been cured, cooked and then stored in it's own fat. This is usually done with duck and goose, which both contain a lot of fat. You can also make chicken and rabbit confit although both of these meats do not contain a lot of fat, so often the chicken is cooked and stored in duck fat and the rabbit in butter or olive oil.
First you take the meat and cure it. You can use 100% salt or 50% salt and 50% sugar to do this. Cook Street uses 2 parts salt to one part sugar (so if you use 2 lbs of salt, you'd use 1 lb sugar). They also add Quatre E'Pice to taste. (You remember that mix of spices? Equal parts cinnamon, dried ginger, nutmeg, white peppercorns and 1/2 part clove. Smells heavenly!) Standard curing time is 3 days in the walk-in. Take the salt mixture and sprinkle it over your meat, then put it in the fridge. This process helps remove impurities from the meat as well as drying the meat slightly. The meat can be cured up to 5 days. The longer the meat is cured, the longer it lasts-up to six months. Once you take the meat out of the fridge, rinse off the salt mixture (otherwise it will be too salty), dry it off, then poach in fat until cooked. Store this meat in it's own fat until you are ready to eat it!
Next Chef Pete went over making Gravlox, which is cured fatty salmon. It is one of the oldest curing processes known, starting with the Vikings, who dug a hole in the ground, put the salmon in it, covered it with salt and left it. Hence, gravlox, or "salt grave". To cure salmon, take 3 parts salt to 1 part sugar (mix 3 pounds of salt and 1 pound of sugar). Put a little in a pan large enough to hold your salmon (we are curing a half a salmon) put less salt on the thinner tail end than at the thicker portion of the salmon, then lay the salmon on top of the salt mix. Cover the top of the salmon with the rest of the salt. Put it in the fridge for three days. Once that time is up, take the salmon out, wash it off, then put it back in the fridge, uncovered for 24 hours. After the 24 hours is up, you can eat or use the salmon as you like. It will develop a film called a pelicle, which is perfectly fine to eat.
After the lecture, we had our first Iron Chef competition. Their secret ingredients were chicken, corn, peaches, mayonnaise and pesto. They could also use anything in the walk-in or dry storage. They were given ten minutes to plan, 30 minutes to prepare four plates and get them to the judging table. Immediately upon serving, the teams had ten minutes to clean up. Both teams served seared chicken breasts. One team made butternut squash/corn fritters to go with the chicken. The other team served corn on the cob, a small salad and a pesto vinaigrette for the chicken. The fritter team won! My turn won't come for a couple more weeks.
Lunch today was a Mushroom and Asparagus Souffle with Saffron Sabayon. Veggies on the bottom of the ramekin, egg souffle poured over, fantastic flavor, piping hot, creamy sauce poured into the top of the souffle, YUM! Hot Plate made Jambonette. You take the hind quarter of a chicken (leg and thigh), debone the thigh, make a stuffing of bleu cheese, walnuts, apples (or pears), bread crumbs and chicken stock, stuff the thigh portion with the leg still attached, truss it up, seared it, then bake it. Pretty good, especially with a mushroom sauce to go with it. We were suppose to have potatoes (again) but Chef Dale decided to go with polenta instead (good choice!). I made polenta first. Once it was done, we added grana cheese and creme fraiche. We then put half of it into a molded oblong container, laid down "drunken prunes" then covered them with the rest of the polenta. We covered the container with plastic then placed it into the walk-in to cool down and firm up. Before serving we took it out of the mold and cut it into ten slices (so the prunes would show up in the center of each slice), then cut the slices diagonally into triangles. We placed the triangles into a pan and warmed them back up. Not bad, even with the prunes, lol. Dessert was the Gateaux St Honore, which I described the other day (brisee dough on the bottom, a ring of pate a choux, then cream puffs on top with chocolate and vanilla cream in the center. Impressive to look at, taste-ok, not the best dessert the school has put out!
I am hoping for a quiet weekend. A few of us are cooking at Cris's house tomorrow and talking about plans for Europe. Carl is hosting a wedding reception tomorrow afternoon, but he and Eric pretty much have things all taken care of. Have a good weekend everyone!
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