Leçon dix-neuf et vingt. (Early May)

OK, after some sort of successful atelier, it's time for a normal demo again. Lesson 19 and 20. (3-4 May 2010) Chef Terrien in control in both demos.

Lesson 19; They call the main course 'creative cuisine', well, that has to be seen.
starter: Green asparagus and crab charlotte with a citrus vinaigrette.
mains: Roast beef tenderloin, 'mi-venaison' marinade with soy, daikon radish and beet 'brochette' and a parsley potato crisp - oh yeah! how creative.
dessert: Frothy caramel with Guerande sea salt, coffee and cognac chantilly.

I remember the starter. That was delicious! And the picture looks nice as well. A very nice summer dish with cold asparagus and fresh crab meat.

The main course was quite good. 'mi-venison' marinade means that you marinade the beef for a short period of time in the fridge. Very easy to do. And a sauce is made from the beef trimmings of course...

The skewer is daikon and beet(root).

Dessert; A great presentation by chef of this dessert - and ruined within a second by our fat class idiot!

'It' ate the whole glass before we even realized it. The $%#@!

The caramel is made with a creme Anglaise (egg yolk, add hot milk, whisk like hell) and caramelized sugar/cream/milk. Finally some gelatines leaves are added. Strain, add some salt and keep cold.

Decoration with angel hair makes it the perfect dessert!

Carlos and Miguel are about to plate-up.

Stephanie getting feedback from chef T.

The main course for lesson 20 is creative again.

The starter was an egg white with a runny egg yolk in the middle. Now that was quite a nice trick chef did. This is a great starter when you have guests - with a surprise element!

The egg whites are beaten stiff (with a bit of salt and a drop of lemon juice) first. Then line a mould with paper and butter well. Make 2 rounds with this mould from a sandwich and put in the oven at 180 degC to make toast.

Put one slice of toast at the bottom of the mould, fill with a bit of stiff eggwhite (1/3), put in the (left whole) egg yolk with a bit of salt, fill the mould with the rest of the egg white and platten the top of the mould. Put in the oven for 2-3 minutes at 70 degC. Put the second pice of toast on top right before serving. Garnish; sauteed morels and some green leaves like parsley or chervil. And a sauce made from morels and beurre....

Trick: You can also finish dish dish in the microwave. That just takes 8 seconds at the highest power.

The name of the dish: Egg blancmange with a truffle and morel mushroom coulis.

Mains: Crispy sea bass with French toast, capers and lemon and a chicken jus.

A chicken jus??? Yes, we ruin the dish again with a chicken jus....

I like this dish. Easy to make and the fish is surprisingly tasty, despite all the clarified butter we use. Already made this at home and we're going to make that for our friends this weekend. (They're German - I make BIG portions.... ha,ha!) I'm not making the chicken bit. 

For dessert chef Terrien made us craquelin aux pommes, sorbet ananas et sirop de melisse-citronnelle.

It's some kind of crumble (craquelin) and compote  with a pineapple sorbet on top. Nice. I liked this as well. Instead of using apples for the compote you can also use pears.

pictures of the week and recipe update

I'm a bit behind with my blogging and publishing of the dishes we made. First things first: I like superior cuisine class a lot ! It's just great. So far, I think I'll make all the recipes again; at home, for somebody else etc. Maybe with a few small adjustments, but I do like like it a lot so far.
Please let me give you an update of the week;

1. the class idiots; you remember those two ? They are quiet. Maybe chef said something to them or they might have read my blog post... I don't know. The 'big one' is still asking stupid questions and she's still filming chef's demonstrations; every day...
2. (pictures of) this week's menu; sea bream/squid/risotto practical on Tuesday evening, demo first, (Wednesday we had the day off), on Thursday the flying rat (demo and practical), Friday - fish again, also a demo and a practical (red mullet with potato scales and artichokes) and on Saturday early afternoon a demo on lamb shanks. In one word: Nice !

Tuesday; Tasting of the fois gras terrine chef made last week (not bad!), dorade poêlée, encornets farcis au risotto de langoustines et coriandre, and for dessert a lemon grass cream with a citrus jelly and a rhubarb crips. Nice! And sweet....

The sea bream was the evening practical.


Wednesday, nothing to report... That is, I forgot what I did on this day.

Thursday; Lesson 8. Franck Poupard in the lead. Shortbread with crab, lime and lemon balm with a green mango and lemon grass sauce (don't remember this one, sorry), flying rat wrapped in cabbage (pffffrrrrrttttt - yes, that was a fart! it's the red meat and the cabbage again, sorry. It still sounds and smells like during those cabbage classes in Intermediate cuisine last year.) with a tartelettes de champignons mélangés and for dessert a coconut meringue with a yoghurt sorbet, blackberries and a parsley coulis. Right.

Of course the pigeon was the corresponding practical - and served pink. Bugger. Pink. And not overcooked! Mine was borderline.

Starter of crab, something with shortbread, dried ham, a sauce and other stuff.

Pigeon, served pink, with mushrooms. That creapy thing on the plate, in the top right corner. is a stuffed leg. Horrible tough piece of meat. It looks like a thing from the Harry Potter movie !

And a meringue dessert. A bit messy, but it had a nice taste to it. I think. The pictures are from Meredith - thank you! I forgot my camera today.

Friday; Chef Clergue- - 'Bonjour tous le Monde ! ' He made a courgette blossom with langoustines, red mullet with spud-scales and an orange beurre (blanc) = LOADS of butter and for dessert candied tomato stuffed with red berries and a lavender shortbread.

2x Langoustines picture, a red mullet and tomato shortbread.

The practical was the red mullet with the potato scales. A bit of therapy! We used the mandolin, a Japanese one - the most dangerous there is, and we all survived. First you peel a potato, then you use an apple corer to drill through the spud and finally you slice the small cilinder over a mandolin to get really really thin slices and stick them on a fish. As I said, therapy.Will I buy a mandolin ... not sure yet.

Chef Xavier Cotte in charge during our practical. He was in a good mood today (yesterday he wasn't - he had quite an argument with somebody in another class next door to ours) and joking around as usual. Al in all, a good lesson. Easy fishdish, although I didn't brown my 'scales' (potato slices) enough. Raffaele called my dish 'shitty'- thank you very much. In a way he was right, I could have done better... next time. Maybe.

My dish...., sauce good (but needs more salt, I don't agree), the fish should have been more browned and NEVER ever pour the butter sauce over an artichoke - always use the jus where it's made in. Yes, I'm an idiot, according to chef X.C. Merci to you too!

Saturday; well, that's tomorrow's blog post I guess. I've had enough of it today.

A demain,

Sjoerd

entertainment in class; class idiots and a drunk....

Last Friday, we had quite a nice demo. Chef Clergue teaching. For mains, chef made the lamb dish. It became a bit of a funny session after a few people went out to go to the toilet, get a quick coffee, glass of water or do whatever. It bothered chef. And he remembers... he always remembers.

Then he found out that somebody was filming the demo all the time. So he stopped that (but she started filming again later..). Filming is not allowed at LCB, taking pictures is not a problem at all. It has all to do with copyrights of recipes.
Later during the demo, Ms.D from Peru went out; noisy ! Later, he (indeed) came back in class with many of his 'gestures' and he just didn't shut up. Chef didn't like it at all and it actually pissed him off quite a bit. So he made a comment (with the same 'gestures' ) to ms.D. and told him to behave. Laughter all over.

The two class idiots

(picture taken from behind so nobody can recognize them...)

But then, the stupid thing sitting next to Ms.D. , the one that is filming every lesson since the beginning, used her last brain cell to get a coffee and return WITH it.... How stupid can you be ! Imagine chef's reaction.

Ms.D. was on a roll. His last comment to chef was: 'Vous êtes très bien chef; bravo !', or something like that. Chef turned all red, was ready to explode, but he didn't say nor did he do anything. If only eyes could kill this idiot....
And we had a smelly drunk guy sitting next to us; I think he came straight from the pub to class. It was kind of funny actually. I don't think he showed up at the practical afterwards.... and that was a smart move of him!

'Want another beer ?'

And last but not least, the two in the front row, Ms.D and 'no brains', already started having quite a few tasters at the end of the class; You know, we actually get to taste the food that chef is making in a demo. Sometimes there is more then enough, sometimes there's not that much. Even before everybody else had their first taster, they were already on 3.... it pissed a few people off. Actually, most of the time after a demo, she has emptied 5 or 6 tasters by the look of all those empty plates near her seat. So,no wonder why she's so large.... (didn't I just say that soooo nicely!?)

The big question remains: Why didn't chef remove these two out of class immediately?

Then there's the absentees: Well, there are quite a few people not showing up in class for whatever reason; but just going on holiday abroad instead of being in class and now being on 6 absent points already is a bit too much I guess. (The maximum amount of points we are allowed to lose is 6. The course is 11 weeks, and we're only in the second week now.) Some people are already on 4 or 5 absentee points, this one is on 6 and the chefs have commented on that. This guy, who's on 6 points,  just doesn't take this course seriously. It's very disrespectful; Not to chefs, not to the school, but certainly not to the other students in class. One more point and he should be out! No matter what. But I guess LCB will let him stay anyway.... unfortunately. Obviously, money is not a problem here if he will fail this course. But hey, it's his problem I guess.

In short: A lesson to remember. There's a lot happening during a demonstration...

Update Tueday, one day after publishing this post: Quite a bit of support from people in class. General reaction: 'Finally somebody is saying something about this/them..., but LCB needs to take (more) action'.
We actually signed a contract when we started in basic cuisine or pastry that we'd behave/do not film/ be on time etc. It was quite a list! So the issue is easy to solve.