Today's lecture was very short! Each of the chefs review their portion of the lunch menu. Chef Pete talked about Oeufs en Meurette (Eggs in a Wine Broth). En Meurette is a Burgundian cooking style, classic bistro fare. It is anything cooked in a wine broth. In our case, poached eggs. However, Chef Pete decided to poach the eggs in water and vinegar as the color the eggs pick up from being poached in red wine is "not very pretty". The wine sauce was made separately with red wine, mirepoix and bacon (just for flavor). (And it did taste very good, like everything at school!)
Chef Dale talked about vegetable puree. Any vegetable can be pureed. You cook the vegetable until tender, then puree it thru a food processor or ricer (so you do not develop starch, which will adversely affect your puree), strain the puree to get out the last bit of fiber, dry the puree in a pan on top of the stove, then season and finish the dish off with either butter or cream (some form of fat). Yummy! We had a butternut squash puree for lunch. Very good!
After our puree lecture, we "fabricated" rabbits (I'm sorry but this word makes me think we are going to build or make something, not deconstruct it!). It was a little hard watching "Peter Cottontail" be carved into pieces! You have to just not think about it. I certainly don't feel that way about chickens, but then again, chickens are not usually "pet material". You remove the front legs, then the "flap" (which is the fascia that covers the entire trunk), then remove the hind quarters (we are having the thigh meat stuffed with proscuitto for lunch tomorrow), then remove both tenderloins that run along the back. You can make estouffade from the bones by roasting them and adding them to remy (remember "remy" or remoulade, a secondary stock usually made from roasted veal bones). Poor Peter Rabbit......
We broke down or "fabricated" 18 chickens before lecture this morning so we would have them for lunch today. We are getting faster at this, lol. When we returned to our kitchens after lecture and rabbit fabrication, we started a busy few hours preparing our portion of lunch. I was in charge of the board again (where you write down what their is to do and how to do it and when to do it). Having been a manager the last 4-5 years makes this part a little easier! I was in charge of cleaning all the chicken breasts to make them boneless and skinless, pounding them out flat. (Chef Dale had a great idea for doing this with a minimum of mess: cut the ziplock portion off a gallon size Baggie, then open up both sides but leave the bag connected at the bottom. Place your chicken breast between the layers and pound away. The bag does not rip as it is very sturdy and there is no mess to clean up!)
We made a chicken mousseline to spread over the center of flattened chicken breast, then folded them up, rolled them and covered them in heat resistent plastic wrap and poached them in a water bath. Once they were cooked, I sliced them up into four pieces and laid them over Sauce Veloute. We made parsnip chips (much better than I thought they would be!) and put some chips around the chicken. On the side we served our butternut squash puree. A GREAT meal! We got lots of compliments today.
Dessert was Creme Brulee, very well done. The bread was French baguette and dinner rolls (better than Parkerhouse rolls!). We had a red wine with the first courses that no one was familiar with, a Breitholder from Italy. We had a white wine with our entree-a Vouvray (chenin blanc).
Then it was time to clean up and head for home. I made Baklava Muffins tonight. Hope the guests like them!
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