(Grouplove- Tongue Tied)
Intermediate Lesson 23- Brittany
We go back up north today, to the northwestern region of Brittany. It's right next to Normandy and shares a lot of similar characteristics with its neighbor. I remember visiting Rennes and Saint-Malo 3 years ago. They were really lovely towns and I'd love to go back and visit other cities in the area.
Our dish today is a Monkfish wrapped in bacon with braised artichokes, broccoli and cauliflower "pannequet."
For this dish, we had to fillet the monkfish, which is so ugly people have to sell them without their heads or no one would buy them. I'm personally not a fan because of its texture. At least we didn't have to scale the thing. We also made blini pancakes with cauliflower and broccoli fillings. Finally, we had to turn two artichokes for the garnishing, and you know artichokes go way back....
We finished a bit late today, at 6:05pm, and as assistants we had to clean up the practical room. Since we had a demonstration class at 6:30pm, most people rushed through their cleanup work and wehad to do more cleaning, in addition to returning the supplies to the storage room in the basement. These two basic cuisine students came in and started nitpicking about how dirty the room was in front of me. Seriously, do you not see us cleaning the place? You still had plenty of time anyways. I told them they had plenty of time, and they just snapped back. "We are assistants! And we need the room now!" I looked at the clock, they still had 10 minutes. Assistants from 2 different classes working together is rather common in this school, since the classes are so tightly packed. Whatever, some people in this school just take themselves too seriously. I've heard of crazy psycho students who steal supplies of other classmates or go into shouting matches with each other over shared space. I'm so glad that my classmates in my last two classes had been normal and cool. We're still very demanding ourselves and work really hard, but I've never had the hostile work environment that some people apparantly experienced.
It's been a long day and we've just finished our third class. After I had everything organized, I was so exhausted that I took a 1 minute power nap before our fourth and final class. Of course my very loving classmates all decided to take photos of me outside of the demonstration room.
Nap Time. Photo credit: Nour
I'm wearing a mask because I'm still pretty sick and don't want to get anyone else sick, and also because we deal with so many food products everyday.
Quotes from this class:
Student: Chef? There's a worm in my fish!
Chef: Yes it's quite normal that there are worms in the fish. That's how you know that it's fresh.
Student: ITS STILL MOVING
Chef: Just throw it out. You'll be cooking the fish anyways.
... 1 minute later....
Student: CHEFTHEREISANOTHERWORMINMYFISH
Chef: Just throw that out too.
Student: I can't do this anymore. Give me a zero for this class. I'm fine butchering chickens filleting fish but I can't take this!
Chef: Just work on your vegetables first and we'll talk.
The student was a good sport. She finished her dish anyways.
"They say even a blind person can make beurre noisette. It is ready when the melted butter stops sizzling on the stove."
-Demo Chef Caals,
On how to make Beurre Noisette (Brown butter)
No comments:
Post a Comment