(SMiLE.dk- Butterfly)
Lesson 11- Chicken Stuffed meat
Ooph another 4 class day. We are now one week into the intermediate intensive class, and we are already on lesson 11.
We prepared half a dish for this class, a chicken stuffed with foie gras mousse and pistachios called a ballotine, along with practicing how to make hollandaise sauce, which we've made before in basic. Therefore, sorry, but there's no pretty dish photos for this class. Here's a picture of my hollandaise.
Pew Pew!
The school didn't provide a recipe for the hollandaise sauce, and honestly I don't remember how to make one at all. I remember that you put in lemon, because last time I added too much lemon. I think eggs are involved because we have to emulsify it with some kind of fat, clarified butter I think? Also I remember we have to heat it over a bain-marie while whisking it until our arms come off. But I had no idea about the proportions. Oh it's 3 egg YOLKs, not regular eggs. And what? Cayenne pepper involved? Do we need to season it with salt? I wa so confused. Apparently the hot water I had in my bain-marie was not hot enough, and I whisk a long time for my eggs to become ready. It should turn from a bubbly texture to a creamy smooth texture. Then you take it off heat and whisk in clarified butter very (very) slowly. I've never knowingly eaten Hollandaise sauce outside of cooking school, and I really didn't know what kind of flavor we were aiming for, so I asked my friendly neighbor Christian to taste my sauce. " Hmm needs more lemon." "Really? I put in less lemon this time because last time I put in too much." "Yeah it's too buttery right now." So I went off to find any lemon juice I could find. Since all of my classmates have used their lemon, I had to scavenge for any residual juice on the used lemons, which gave very little juice. When Chef Ju tasted my sauce, she said it was "too much lemon." Great. Second attempt, same result.
We spent most of our time preparing our stuffed chicken. The trick was to cut out all of the meat of the chicken from the top (spine) of the chicken, instead of the breast side where we always started from, and try to keep the entire chicken meat in one piece. We then took out the leg and wing bones. That was pretty cool. It's like taking off the meaty jacket of the bird. When I spread the single piece of boneless chicken on the table, it looked like a butterfly and was quite beautiful in a macabre way. Oh god I sound like that creepy dude from American Beauty.
Anyways, we wrapped pork forcemeat and pistachio into the chicken, with a long piece of foie gras in the middle, and rolled it like a maki roll, then cooked it in a court bouillon. The process should take at least 1.5 hours, but I only had time to boil it for 1 hour. At 45 minutes my internal temperature was still at 59C, when the target temperature was 65C. I really hope the extra 15 minutes in the water was sufficient to bring up the temperature. We will return to the dish tomorrow.
Anyways, we wrapped pork forcemeat and pistachio into the chicken, with a long piece of foie gras in the middle, and rolled it like a maki roll, then cooked it in a court bouillon. The process should take at least 1.5 hours, but I only had time to boil it for 1 hour. At 45 minutes my internal temperature was still at 59C, when the target temperature was 65C. I really hope the extra 15 minutes in the water was sufficient to bring up the temperature. We will return to the dish tomorrow.
Wrapping the top of my stock pot with tin foil to maintain the temp.
Hopefully the chicken will keep cooking inside. Hopefully..
The biggest surprise today was actually how we received the chicken. As mentioned, I feel pretty comfortable with preping a bird by now. However, the chicken we received today still had its head attached, and its internal organs completely where they are not suppose to be. I therefore had to chop off its head, deal with its trachea, and stick my hand up its @$$ and pull out all of its organs anal-probe style. At least it's already plucked and bled. This is before you do any of the other required steps in preping a chicken.
Is it looking at me??
As mentioned, we will return to this dish tomorrow.
Quote from this class:
Midway though demo class:
Student 1 talking on the side during class: Is the French word for ambulance ambulance? Or Smur?
Demo Chef Poupard: Nonononononononono! Ambulance, c'est ambulce en français, not Smur!
Student 1: Really? Are you sure?
Chef Poupard: Yes, I am very sure. There are two meanings of ambulance, ambulance for transporting supplies and ambulance for transporting people. Both are for medical related reasons.
Student 1: Then what is a Smur?
Chef Poupard: Smur has a doctor on board. Ambulance don't.
Student 2: Why are we talking about ambulances in the middle of class????
Chef Poupard felt pretty strongly about this subject because he used to be a fireman, and firemen in France have ambulance responsibilities as well.
Chef Poupard felt pretty strongly about this subject because he used to be a fireman, and firemen in France have ambulance responsibilities as well.
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