We started the day with Chef Bruno Stril by going through kitchen equipment, types of cuts (paysenne, ciseler, juliénne, brunoise and mirepoix) as well as cooking a Potage Cultivateur, which is a kind of a rustique soup with leek, carrots, celery, potatoes, radish (daikon), lardons (or bacon if you prefer), green peas and green beans. It sounds quite robust but it was in fact a very delicate soup with clean flavors. Here's a bad (have to use a lower ISO) picture of it:
So, we needed to the same thing in practical after lunch. It was quite fun, I was expecting a much more rigid approach to the amount of ingredients but the chef that was overseeing the practical couldn't care less, the important was to make fine and regular cuts. The amount of each ingredient was up to you. I guess that this isn't important in a soup like this. Felt like some sort of minnestrone, that you just throw everything you have in the fridge into it.
The chef tasted mine and said it was very good (alert: my ego got sky high). I said to him that I was afraid that it had too much salt since I was Portuguese and he started laughing and agreed that we, Portuguese, use lots of salt. However, after the chef tasted it and said "trés bien" he, very discreetly, added another pinch of salt to the soup and winked back at me, sort of like - 'a little bit more won't harm it'. So, I guess my salt palate is a bit off for the french tastebuds!
The rest of the day was spent with Chef Marc Thivet and learning Fonds de Base (stocks). He did brown veal stock (fond brun de veau) and fumet de poisson (fish stock). To use the fish stock he did a lemon sole with a sauce Bercy. This was really good!!! Though I guess that when you finish a sauce with 200g or more of butter, that will make it taste wonderful! There's goes my non-existant diet! Here's a picture of the chef's plating - please note that the fish filets are in a gravate shape, literally a tie knot.
Well, this is the dish we're going to do this morning on practical, i.e. I'll start the day filleting and gutting fish. What a great way to start the day? I used the extra time this morning to go through the recipe and my notes. In the Le Cordon Bleu you don't get any recipes, just a list of ingredients and you need to make your own notes of the techniques used by the chef so you can recreate it in practicals.
Catch you later!
P.S: Managed to get myself to attend the Introduction à la Boulangerie class that the pastry students from Intermediate are having on the 8th of December. YEAH!
Sounds like you've started on the right foot! Looking forward to see how you managed with the fish :)
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I forgot to take a picture but it was good. The fish was cooked good but the sauce too thin. Oh well, that's life.
ReplyDeleteLast night we cooked poached chicken with sauce supréme and I got scolded by the chef for forgetting to add salt... it was a though day. Today was also tough, too tired to do any post...
isso de não haver receitas deve ser uma forma óptima de aprender. ao menos estarão super atentos, para não perder pitada, e ainda há a possibilidade de adaptarem ao vosso estilo, não é?
ReplyDeletecoragem e have fun!