Geoff was back at school today, albeit a little slow. He made Pate Brisee for our dessert and I made the Roasted Strawberries with honey and thyme. Getting that all together and done, took about an hour. Corey and Sean worked hard on getting French Toast to the breakfast table for the hungry hoards. Chef Lexie made a bread pudding out of my panettone bread from the other day, threw in the custard I had made along with the caramelized "schmoo" from yesterday. It turned out very well!
We had a blind wine tasting at 8:45am. It turned out to be a chardonnay from the central coast of California. I was right about most of it but I thought it might be a pinot grigio. Silly me! Then we had our exam. Not as bad as I thought is might be. It was our last exam. All that's left is our day of practical exams and then our final!
Chef Dale showed us how to put together Cassoulet, a French casserole dish made with white beans, duck confit, lamb, sausage and bacon. Yummy! This was the dish we made back when I did my Chef for a Day this last March. It was better than I remembered!
Then we had our Iron Chef competition. It was Corey and Cris against Alta and Sean and Kim and Vanessa. The protein was Cornish game hen, otherwise the playing field was open. Alta and Sean, Kim and Vanessa had chicken that was not quite done, which pretty much took them out of the running. Although Kim and Vanessa had great sides! They made orzo with a Mediterranean flair-olives, feta cheese, and tomatoes, served with roasted Brussels Sprouts. Cris took the bones out of the game hen and pounded it to flatten it out, so they got a cooked meat with a wonderful pan sauce. Their polenta was a little rubbery, but their dish was the one every one wanted to eat by the end of the competition. Corey and Cris were both given a bottle of wine as a prize. They were very happy!
After that, Chef Pete showed us how to make our own bacon. Pretty cool! He had two slabs of pork back that he had placed in our salt/sugar mixture for two days. He removed it from the walk-in, rinsed it, dried it, then took it out onto the patio to place it in the smoker. The school has an expensive smoker that can also be used as a grill. It runs on electricity, gas and wood pellets. Again, pretty cool! He left one pork back plain, but put a flavored mixture on the other slab to "funkify" it. Hopefully we will be able to try them both next week. I am amazed how into charcuterie and curing Chef Pete is. He is very good at what he does!
Once we were done with that, we went back to our respective kitchens to get ready for lunch. GardeMo made a salad with roasted beets and blue cheese. The greens were dressed simply with a vinaigrette. The main entree of course was our Cassoulet. For dessert, we had the Roasted Strawberries with honey and thyme.
We got our early today and I was home by 3pm!! So I am going to enjoy my weekend, do some studying and pack up some of "stuff" to ship home. Time to think about getting everything back to Reno!
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