Nobody does it quite the way you do......

Why you had to be so good.....
(Carly Simon- Nobody does it better)

Intermediate Lesson 22- Laguedoc

We take the SNCF west a bit today and head to Languedoc. Previously, I only knew Languedoc as a major contributor of the European Wine Lakes. Winemakers in Languedoc have been making sub-par table wine that could not compete against South American and Australian wines in the global market. Instead of responding to competitive pressure, they decided instead that their established way of life is more important to protect and used their political clout to force the EU government to buy up all the wines that they cannot sell. The gastronomy section of our hand out basically sums up how mediocre this place is:

This vast area is rich in arable land, natural resources and culinary traditions.

That's it. This kind of generic friendly description is akin to saying a ugly person has a nice personality. Why are we even studying this place?

At least we made a pretty good dish. We made a traditional white bean stew, or a cassoulet. Sadly we didn't have nice pretty ceramic container to present our dish in, only aluminum take out containers. It was still really good though.

Boom

The dish contained poached white beans (poached), bacon, lamb, sausages, tomato concassé, and a confit de canard. All in all, a really hearty and delicious dish.

The frustrating thing about this class was the demo chef and practical chefs had completely different ways of cooking the dish. Chef Bogen showed us one way, and in practical Chef Ju basically told us to cook it in a completely different way. The end result is I would do something according to Chef Bogen, and then I would have to redo certain steps because Chef Ju had a totally different thing in mind.  I heard the other intermediate class also had the same problem with Chef Gui. This is pretty annoying since the whole teaching method of Le Cordon Bleu is to force students to pay attention in demontration class, take notes, and then replicate the dish in practical. I understand that every chef has a different way to prepare the same dish, and that everyone thinks that his or her method is the best. However, this is quite frustrating for cooking neophytes like me when I'm just trying to learn to cook. 

Why can't the chefs all just have a weekly meeting in which the demo chef walk through the way he wants a certain dish to be prepared, and the practical chefs just go with it? Then in practical maybe the practical chefs can share some personal tips on how they would do things differently without forcing everyone in the class to change. I think students would benefit tremendously from more organization and coordination.

Quote from this class:

"And I am going to add a bit of duck fat into each of these pots. What? I tell you, duck fat is good for your health!"

-Demo Chef Bogen,

As he puts huge slabs of white translucent duck fat into 3 of his pans.

He heard the students (mainly me) gasp at the amount of fat and

felt compelled to explain himself

Kiss Me Hard Before You Go, Summertime Sadness…

I got that summer time - summer time sadness… oh~
(Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness)

Lesson 19- Balanced Menu / Thickening a Sauce with Egg Yolk

Fall/ Autumn has most definitely arrived at Paris, with temperatures hovering stubbornly around 10C (50F) and the sun setting at 7pm. Time to say good bye to those endless days of sunshine and hot nights with cool breezes. Thank you summer 2013, you’ve been beautiful.

Perhaps it is fitting for the cold weather that today we made a traditional veal stew, garnished with button mushrooms and pearl onions made A l’Ancienne, which is similar to glazing but without drying out the cooking liquid or coloring the product. We served this with a Rice Pilaf.

Boom

In French cuisine, when you see the word “traditional,” you can bet that there will be an excessive amount of butter or cream (or both) incorporated. In this case, there’s a mind-blowing amount of cream in the stew sauce. There’s even butter stirred into the Rice Pilaf (Pourquoi?!). I have to admit, though, that this dish is really delicious. Just don’t eat more than 1 bite and you’ll love it.

The interesting part of today’s dish is that we thickened the sauce with White Roux (equal parts of melted butter and flour), cream and egg yolk. The egg yolk is the trickiest because it prohibits the cook from ever boiling the sauce again or the egg yolk will coagulate.

Review of my dish: Flavor was good. Veal was tender. Mushrooms and onions were well cooked. The only problem was that my sauce wasn’t thick enough. For whatever reason, despite following the appropriate ratios, my sauce came out too liquid. The chef recommended that I put some beurre manié to thicken it, but then you need to boil the sauce to activate the thickening agent, and that would cook the egg yolk. Great. Also the chef said I put too much sauce on my dish, but isn’t this suppose to be a stew dish?

No quote from today’s class, but I’m sad to report that I said “Oui, chef” to the train conductor when he asked for my ticket on my train ride back from Bordeaux the other day. FML.