Frankie the Flounder

Last Wednesday, we continued on our journey of fish. The night was filled with gutting, filleting, prepping and cooking flat fish. In this case it was a flounder, and of course, mine was given a name - Frankie!



I discovered that flatfish are much easier to fillet. I think just because of their shape. With the round fish (bass, trout, salmon, etc), I think it takes a little more skill to follow the contour of their body with the knife.

Frankie (and his brother who my partner filleted) turned himself into 2 nice dishes for the evening. Lots of breading and frying, but luckily we were not forced into eating it for dinner and were still brought a "healthier" family meal alternative.

The first dish my partner and I prepared was a bread crumb coated flounder with two sauces. I have to admit, I feel kind of bad for my partner because I totally took over the cooking on Wednesday. It was not intentional, but I am trying to improve my multi-tasking and speed for which we complete our dishes. On Monday we were often one the the last to finish, and I was not happy about that. So my goal on Wednesday was to be more efficient.

With that said, I gave my partner the option of which sauce he wanted to make - the remoulade or the red pepper coulis. I actually thought he was going to choose the coulis since we have never done that before, but he choose the remoulade. I was actually happy about this - it is mayo based and my tired whisking arm was in no mood to make a mayo :-)

Anyway, the red pepper coulis sauce has some down time while it simmers on the stove for about 20 minutes, so after I got that going, I started on the rest of this dish. I made a waffle potato basket and then breaded and fried the fish. The breading is a 3 step process (technically called l'anglaise) which includes first dipping the fish in flour, then an egg mixture and then breadcrumbs. While I was frying away, my partner made the cucumber shell for the remoulade and finished off the coulis by pureeing in the blender.

Here was our finished plate - and I'm very happy to report that we finished in the first half of the pack! Such and improvement! We were also told that everything was cooked and seasoned perfectly, with the exception of adding more herbs in the remoulade next time. I also tasted this dish and thought it was good too. The red pepper coulis is a yummy sauce for fried fish!



Next up was the Bonne Femme, or a braised flounder with mushrooms, white wine, shallots and cream sauce. The only thing I was not happy about with this dish is that to allow us to practice those football shaped potatoes, my partner and I each had to do one - as you can see they came out completely different sizes and made an otherwise nice presentation look funny. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Easter Dinner

Nate and I teamed up and cooked Easter dinner in Connecticut on Sunday. The menu included a clementine glazed ham and carrots, twice baked potatoes, green beans with toasted almonds, fresh raisin walnut bread and a tossed salad with strawberries, gorgonzola cheese and a sherry walnut vinaigrette. I had never cooked a fresh ham before, and it was a lot of fun!

Fillet O' Fish

I'm not talking about the one you can get at McDonald's.

Last night, we started working with some real protein - Fish! From now on, we will be making 2 complete dished per night that include the protein, vegetables, sauces, garnishes, and in some cases a starch. This also means that our family meals will be scaled down, as we are expected to eat what we make for dinner.

Yesterdays dishes were a poisson "en papillote" and "a la grenobloise". The papillote is a method where the fish is cooked in sealed parchment paper with it's garnishes. A little white wine is added - when the wine cooks in the oven, the steam it gives off will make the parchment puff up. For service, the dish is served to the customer in that way and then opened at the table to release the aromas. The tricky part to this dish is learning the timing, since you can't see the fish to check to see if it is done before serving.

Before I get into the dishes, I would like to share that I filleted my very first fish last night! I was definitely apprehensive, yet quite surprised that this did not send me running to the nearest trash can to get sick! My partner handled the trout, and I the sea bass. I immediately named my guy Sammy the sea bass. Poor little Sammy, I bet he had no idea what life had in store for him. The fish was already gutted, but still had the gills which I had to remove. Then I was off to fillet him, skin him, and prep him for the first dish of the evening. Below are a couple pics. I could not take too many because my hands were often gross and slimy and my camera asked to not get involved. While my fist attempt at this was definitely not a smooth cut, the chef overall was pleased with us since many of us had never done anything like this before.

Smiling Sammy:



Sammy fillet:



"Sammy" en Papillote:







Trout a la Grenobloise:



(I know, totally unappetizing. I cooked it too long and burned the skin. Should be nice and crisp):



It was a fun night. Monday we will be doing more fish dishes before moving onto shellfish. One final note about last nights class - I ended up providing the class with a nice fire demonstration. The sauce on the trout is a brown butter sauce, which at the end you add citrus juices and fruit. When my partner poured the citrus in the entire pan went up in flames about three feet high. I was surprised I did not panic. I just moved the pan off the flame and it started to come down a little and then I heard our Chef's assistant say to him "she's OK". Those words totally put me at ease, and slowly the flame went out. Chef said the flavoring of our sauce was really good. I attribute that to my flambe ;-)

Pommes Dauphinois

Ok, Erik, this one is for you :-)

250 ml cream (1 cup)
500 grams Idaho Russet Potatoes (about 2)
1 garlic clove, minced
grated Gruyere cheese, about 1 cup but you can use more or less depending on how much cheese you want to put in
nutmeg (optional)
salt and fresh ground pepper

-Bring cream close to a boil, remove from heat, season with salt, pepper, nutmeg.
-Peel the potatoes (peeled potatoes should be held in cold water to prevent browning), cut into slices about 2-3 mm thick (mandolins are handy)
-Place potatoes and into the warm cream, return to heat, bring to a boil and simmer over medium heat, stirring carefully so nothing sticks to the bottom. Cook until the liquid is thick.
-In a gratin dish, rub the bottom with a little butter and sprinkle with some minced garlic
-layer the bottom with potato slices, season lightly with salt/pepper and sprinkle with cheese.
-continue layering with potatoes, seasonings and cheese until the dish is full. Try to get in as many layers as possible, it will baked down in the oven.
-Top dish with enough cheese to cover.
-Bake in oven at 375 for about 30 minutes or until brown and potatoes are tender.

A Potato a Day

I spared you a recap of last Fridays class, where we basically spent hours shaping different vegetables into footballs that were 5cm in length. Sounds fun, huh? The French term for this is "tournage" and basically it sets standard shapes and sizes for different vegetable cuts. The purpose behind this is uniformity and aesthetics. Basically, if 5 people are asked to produce 20 "cocotte's" of potatoes, you should be able to put us in different rooms and we would all produce identical sized football shaped potatoes. This will also ensure they all cook at the same rate. We did get to cook the various vegetables too. My favorite was the caramelized pearl onions (however this was the one vegetable we did not shape!)

Anyway, back to potato night. It was fitting that the family meal for dinner was steak, because by 8:30 we had made our own french fries and Chef made some amazing ketchup. His method included mangoes in the recipe which added the perfect sweetness to the ketchup that balances out all the flavors...and you would have never known it was in there if you did not see him make it!

I have included below some the dishes I made - my favorite was the Pommes Dauphinois. This consisted of thinly sliced potatoes that get cooked lightly in cream and then layered into a ramekin with Gruyere cheese and baked until browned. So good!


Pommes Dauphinois:





Pommes Darphin:





Pommes Anna:

Bao Down

One of the best perks about school are the Chef demonstrations. It's as if we have our own Food Network cooking show, but at the end of the show we actually get to TASTE the food! So awesome!

Yesterday, Chef Michael Bao Huynh came and gave us a demonstration on a 3 course Vietnamese meal. It was delicious. Chef Huynh has multiple eateries around the city, including Mai House, Bao 111, Bar Bao, Baogette, Bao Noodles.....the list goes on. If you remember Spike Mendelsohn from the Top Chef season in Chicago, you may know that he was the Chef de Cuisine at Mai House when he was cast for the show.

The Chef cooked up a great meal starting with a shaved fennel and tiger shrimp salad, followed by a bean curd glazed cod and then finished with a braised pork belly. Every course just melted in your mouth!

It was interesting to see so many new ingredients and how they are used, including a salted lemons (brings a great taste to the dish!):



and daikon rice cakes.



Salad:



Black Cod:



Pork Belly:



Thank you, Chef.

(More pictures in the photo album!)

P.S. Anyone who is interested in any of the recipes for the dishes, let me know and I can send to you.

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 ;-)