(Beauty and the Beast- Gaston)
Intermediate Lesson 05- Burgundy
Our magical Cordon Bleu tour of French regions takes us to Burgundy today, with a dish by the name of "Gaston Gerard" Style Free-Range Chicken with a Morvan-style "Crapiaux."
Pow-pow!
Gaston Gerard was the mayor of Dijon, and this dish was apparently created by his wife in the 1930s. The chicken itself was done pretty simply: pan sear and then braise in the oven. The sauce was a delicious chicken stock mixed with a few spices, cream and mustard. We served the dish with a Morvan style pancake which incorporates potatoes, yeast, herbs and fluffed egg-whites, giving the pancake a particular fluffiness. We also put a herbal salad that I didn't enjoy eating because the class assistant accidentally brought cilantro instead of parsley to use. I guess it's really my fault since I didn't notice when I mixed the salad. I like cilantro, but not when it is served as a salad.....
The weirdest thing about this dish is that the skin of the chicken is supposed to be taken off the meat before serving, but the skin is the best part of the chicken! Sorry Chef, I'm keeping my chicken skin on. My sauce apparently contains too much mustard, even though I already halved the quantity. My pancake was definitely well done, if I may say so myself. I have to admit, if there is one thing I learned how to cook living in America, it is how to make a good pancake. This pancake is extra fluffy because it's got yeast and egg-whites, similar to the famous pancakes at Clinton St. Baking Company in New York City, making the pancakes extra fluffy.
One thing I noticed about this term is that the demonstration chefs have consistently run out of time. They would go through the dish at a reasonable pace, and then during the last half an hour basically fly through the finish of the dish, which is problematic because a lot of us just get lost at the steps that they skipped or didn't explain. There's a lot of "Now in practical you should cook it that way, but I'm running low on time so we will do it this way." So confusing. I hope this doesn't become a pattern.
Quote from this class:
"At Cordon Bleu, each chef has his way of doing things. You may think it's annoying, but some chefs consider this an advantage. When you leave the school, you'll digest all the information and take the things that suit you most."
-Demo Chef Caals,
after a student complained how chefs constantly gave very
conflicting advice on the "right" way of preparing ingredients
"Every country has its weird thing to eat. In France we have escargots. It's something that many people go 'ew...' when they see it on a plate."
- Demo Chef Caals,
On Escargots
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