Escabėche de rouget, blancs de pintade et blancmange aux fruit de saison. oh, la,la, c'est bon!

Lesson 21;
LCB calls it 'modern cuisine'. The main course that is. I'll get back on that later.
Chef Lesourd was cooking for us today. That's the little one on the right hand-side in the picture ... he's a great chef, he has super dessert plating skills and he's always talking about little tricks of the trade, selling gadgets and it's just fun to work with him.

For a starter, chef made red mullet 'escabeche' with fennel cream. The fennel cream is easy: Just put some sweated fennel (cooked) with creme fraiche in the blender. An 'escabeche' is a cooked marinade we use for the fish that consists of a brunoise of carrot, fennel and onion, some garlic, vinegar, a bit of herbs (and a bonus: saffron!)
When still warm, pour over the fish fillets. It's best to do that 24 hrs in advance. I can't remember if the dish was served hot or cold - I'd say cold, but I'm not sure. The colourful marinade can be used as a garnish; served on top of a blanched fennel leaf.

Then our 'modern cuisine'..... Guinea fowl breast cooked on the bone with lemon grass 'fricandeau' of legs and a mushroom flan. Well, modern.... I don't think so... 

You start with the standard procedure: Take the fowl, burn the feathers off (it also kills all the bacteria!), cut off the wings, take the wishbone out, cut off the legs (watch the oyster). Debone the legs and take the skin off. Chop off the backside of the carcass for the jus. The supremes are left on the breast bone for further cooking. So far so good. This was easy!

Of course we use the leftover bones and carcass to make a jus.

The meatballs in this dish are made from chorizo, mascarpone, left-over leg meat, some basil leaves and breadcrumbs. Fry the little balls (oh yeah!) in oil/butter. Don't cremate the stuff, just light-brown please.

The little flan is made with duxelles and cream. When the breasts (still on the bone) are cooked in the oven at 170 degC, slice the supreme off the breast bone with the knife. Actually, I thought it was a tasty dish, certainly no modern cuisine (more like old fashioned to me). But it was nice. Thanks chef! My practical for this went really well.

Le dessert; A fruit mixture with a mojito sorbet and a jasmine tuile.

This very refreshing dish was really really nice. There's not much to say about chopping up fruit, making a mojito and cooking a tuile. The blancmange is made from milk, almond milk and agar-agar. To make a frothy foam, just use a 'giraffe' blender. Bon appetite !

Dishes during the course.

Last May, I promised to write a bit more about the dishes we made during the superior cuisine course. I was a bit behind with the blogging back then, but now it's time for the first update. I'm home now for three weeks and I've also been shopping in the kitchen stores here in Amsterdam. The latest purchase is a new KitchenAid blender. This is something we used a lot during the course. It's the perfect tool to make sauces, chop up herbs and vegetables and make ice cream. So we decided to buy one.

Right. Menus. Dishes we made. Turning mushrooms again...

Lesson 14. Classic cuisine.
starter: Roasted jumbo shrimp on a stick of lemon grass
mains: a thick salmon steak with a (butter based!) herb crust, a mushroom flan and a creamy (veal stock based???) jus. Typical LCB - veal stock with a nice fish dish....
and for dessert chef made pistachio creme brulee with a tuile.

The trick with the flan was to clean the ramekins really well and butter them generously. Then keep in the fridge to 'set the butter'. The herb crust was nice and very easy to make. You just blend/grind some herbs like chervil, parsley and coriander, add some butter and almond powder, breadcrums and an egg and roll it out thinly on some parchment paper. Finally you freeze it and when you need it, you just cut it to the right size. Easy-peasy!
And I never thought you could re-use the salmon skin. Chef rolled a (cleaned) strip around a metal mould and dried it out in the oven at 100degC for 2 hours in a convection oven. The result was a dry ring of crispy salmon skin for decoration on the plate. Nice trick!
With the left-over salmon or trimmings you can make a salmon tartare. Don't throw these trimmings away! Ever !
Chef's dish.

starter, shrimp something...

Tuiles in the oven. Let it cool down a bit, then wrap it around a rolling pin to make a nicely shaped tuile. (recipe on request!)

Mayra turning mushrooms.

Adriano struggling...

Comments from Bruno. Meredith's dish.

Carlos listening to Bruno.

Victoria's dish.

more to follow soon.

Sjoerd