We had our weekly exam this morning. I think I did better this week, although I thought that LAST week too! They reintroduced product ID-would you believe I missed vanilla extract?!? Ah, well....
Today's lecture was on caviar. The definition of caviar is salted, unfertilized eggs of the Caspian Sea Sturgeon. Did you know that America was once the largest producer of sturgeon caviar until the early 1900s? At least until sturgeon started dying out.
There are three types of Caspian Sea Cavair: 1. Beluga, which comes from sturgeon that can grow up to 2500 pounds and costs $140-300 an ounce. 2. Osetra sturgeon which gets to be 7 feet long and 350 pounds and cost $120-200 an ounce. 3. Sevroga, which is more common and costs $100 an ounce.
They used to harvest roe by killing the fish, then harvesting the roe. Modern harvest consists of gathering in two forms: "C-section"-the fish is anesthetized, the roe is harvasted thru an incision, sewn up and the fish released. The second method consists of catching the fish then "milking" the roe our of the fish then returning the fish to the water.
American caviar comes from Paddlefish, Hackleback, lumpfish, salmon roe and Tobiko. There are many ways to serve caviar-by itself, with blinis (tiny buckwheat pancakes), butter, shallots, mimosa (minced eggs). Caviar does not keep, so eat it up after it's opened!
Lunch was a buffet today. We had Shallots, more oysters, two types of caviar, haricot vert, fried yellow tomatoes, smoked trout stuffed with salad and shredded beets, a lovely composed salad of greens, goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives with a vinaigrette and Pot de Creme. Our wine today was a Rose Champagne.
After I left school, I went to the airport to pick up my friend Vicki. She is here for the weekend. Yeah!!
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