(Natasha St-Pier - Tu Trouveras)
Lesson 12- Stuffings - Part 2
For today's class we learned how to fillet a raw chicken and stuff forcemeat into the breast meat. As we learned last class, forcemeat is a mixure of ground lean meat with fat. This class, we created the forcemeat with a food processor (Robo-coup en français), turning chicken breastmeat into a very lightly textured purée called mousseline forcemeat. We stuffed the purée into the chicken breasts and served it with a delicious mushroom cream sauce.
Yummy food.
To my surprise, the challenge today was in fact not cutting the bird, but instead learning how to "turn" a mushroom.
We're suppose to cut a mushroom like THIS?
Needless to say I completely screwed up my mushrooms. Luckily no one in my group did really well here.
However, even the mushroom paled in comparison to my biggest challenge today- leaving my keys in my apartment and locking myself out. I had no access to my knives and uniform until 9pm, and my class would start at 6:30pm. After a few frantic phone calls, I managed to convince Jonathan, a friendly Canadian classmate from another section, to lend me his equipment and uniform. Thank you Jonathan. I don't even know your last name.
Still I didn't have my notes to cook with, and I had to fly blind, trying to do everything from memory. I was so angry at myself for this screw-up, but I guess nobody is perfect.
Quote from this class:
"You should be glad that I am too tall to see your face. But I know who you are. You should know you really shouldn't sit in the last row. There's a seat in the first row calling your name. Come. Really, come down and sit in the first row. It'll do you wonders." - Demo Chef Legué, after a student in the last row asked a question with a fairly obvious answer.
