It's Not Easy Being Green

The excitement had been building in anticipation of last nights class....salad! Ha, ha, just kidding. However, given that salad is served raw (for the most part), it is important to understand the proper handling and serving of the dish. The French also have certain classic salads and specific ways they must be served. We also had to make all the different dressings for each dish.

The fun part of the evening was also getting to plate and present our dishes to the chef, and within a specific time frame. On the fist dish I was just starting to plate when Chef yelled out, "one minute left". Um, is this Top Chef?

Macedoine Salad - A "macedoine" is just the cut of the vegetables (small cubes). The salad is traditionally tossed in a French style mayonnaise. On Monday we focused on emulsified sauces, such as mayo, vinaigrette's, sabayons, etc. My poor little whisking arm is so sore from this week! Here is my plated dish:



Next up was the "traditional" Nicoise Salad (this one was done with my partner) - Our plating below represents what the traditional version is supposed to look like. Well, with a few exceptions. The egg is actually supposed to be quartered into wedges. We had an issue with the eggs in that we were running out of time and were not able to let them cool the standard 5-10 minutes in the ice bath before cracking. As a result, when we tried to get them out of the shell, they cracked in the middle making it impossible for us to cut into wedges. So, we had to slice them as seen below in order to get them on the plate with out looking like a mess. Chef was not too happy about that. Additionally, our green beans were apparently cut too short and we plated too much tuna. All things to correct, as this dish can end up on the midterm. Anyway, as you can see below, the tomatoes and green peppers need to be peeled, and each item needs to be dressed separately just before plating. It's all about moderation - the French would never pour dressing all over their salad like we do here. The dressing for this was a white wine vinaigrette.



Finally, we did a plain frisee salad with tomatoes that was tossed in a sherry/mustard vinaigrette and topped with fresh herbs. We had the option of plating this with the duck confit we had made. Or, we could take the duck confit home with us. I chose option B - the duck will probably end up on the dinner table at home in some way tonight ;-)