Cruising Through Cuisine

The last half of Intermediate Cuisine went by ridiculously fast and manifested itself into a giant blur of stress with the cheating fiasco and having to retake the written exam, which --in hindsight-- actually ended up working out in my favor.  I don't know whether it was the extra study time or the fact that what I studied was actually on the written exam (part deux), but I ended up with a 94!  I can say with 100% certainty that a 94 is at least 30 points higher than what I would have scored on the first exam, so I was pretty excited.

Superior is well underway, but I don't want to skip over anything from the past couple of weeks.  I've sequestered myself in my apartment with a bottle glass of wine (and perhaps a few episodes of Glee), and I'll be spending the rest of the evening trying to get y'all up to speed on the happenings this side of the pond. 

I left off somewhere around Valentine's Day, and the dish below is appropriately from the Champagne region of France --- sole fillet and salmon paupiettes with a Champagne butter sauce --- to be exact.  I can't take credit for the plating on this one because as I was drizzling the sauce on my plate, the chef grabbed a clean plate, ran over, and proceeded to re-plate my entire dish.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't really pissed off because he didn't even let me finish...however, I've heard from other people that this particular chef has been known to do that a time or two.  I guess I shouldn't take it too personally, but I was still pretty annoyed.

All I remember about the the braised stuffed cabbage (pictured below) is:
a.  I got a fist pump from the chef for my sauce
b.  It was delicious
c.  I ate it for lunch and dinner at least 3 days in a row

This dish was inspired by the French Riviera, and it is puff pastry with marinated sea bass and a virgin vinaigrette with basil -- très delicious!

Rabbit is a loved staple in French Cuisine, but it is quite possibly the most hated animal at Le Cordon Bleu.  The one and only cuisine practical I skipped during Basic was the rabbit dish because it was the Monday after I was mugged, and I wasn't in the frame of mind to hack up the poor little animal.  I wasn't able to escape in Intermediate, and I had to face the rabbit head on (literally).

The chef rocking the rabbit like a baby...

I can't really explain why rabbit dishes seem so complicated, but for whatever reason, they are.  Three tedious hours later, I had conquered the dreaded rabbit.

Next up, we have the classical French dish:  Bouillabaisse!  Bouillabaisse is a fish stew from the Provence region made with a few different types of fish and saffron, and it is INCREDIBLE!  We had to start out the practical filleting these two beauties below:

Meet John Dory (saint-pierre in French):

 and a Mediterranean scorpion fish:

(thanks to Nicole for the pictures!)

The practical was looooong and lots of work, but totally worth it in the end.

Fish, potatoes, and saffron - oh my!

This was the point during the session when everything started to get a little hazy.  It was right in the middle of all of the drama outside of the kitchen.  Inside the kitchen, however, things were going really well.  I felt like I was in a good place, and I was very pleased with my dishes.

Traditional white bean stew AKA Chili...French style

Monkfish wrapped in bacon with braised artichokes

Pan-fried steak, Madeira sauce with diced truffles, and potatoes fried in goose fat

Pike-perch quenelles in a crawfish sauce

My smooth-sailing attitude came to a screeching halt after the crawfish dish picture above.  During the next practical, we made a lamb fillet stuffed with dates and rosemary served with couscous and dried fruit.  Easy enough, right?  At this point we had worked with our fair share of lamb, and you don't even have to cook cook couscous.  This dish should be pretty difficult to screw up, right?  WRONG!

Don't let the picture fool you.  It was a complete catastrophe (remember? French style: cat-a-stroff).  How do I know it was so terrible?  Well....the chef told me.  He critiqued everything on my plate and told me it was wrong.  Lamb? Raw.  Couscous? Dense.  Jus? Salty.  I believe he said something along the lines of, "You should just go cry now because everything is bad."  One girl in the class asked him if she would have passed had this been the dish on the final.  He looked around the room and said everyone did fine, then looked directly at me and said, "Except you.  You wouldn't have passed."  Fab-u-lous! Just what you want to hear a few short days away from the exam.  I don't get as worked up about their criticism anymore, so I couldn't help but just laugh hope to do better next time.

The demo associated with the lamb dish was very interesting because they brought in a butcher to show us how lamb goes from this:

To this:

Pretty cool, huh?

Anyway, the next practical went much better.  I didn't have to worry about screwing everything up on the plate because, well, there wasn't a plate!

Ignore the pink-ish tint to the crust.  The bowl that was used to combine the ingredients apparently had red food coloring in it...

We made sea bass in a salt crust, and it was SO DELICIOUS!  Seriously, it was fairly easy and the fish was really moist and flavorful --- I will definitely be making this again. 

This next dish may be my favorite of the semester...probably because it had risotto which I have been craving for months, but all of it was very, very tasty! 

Veal tenderloin with a creamy risotto, mushroom duxelle, and asparagus sauce

And finally, we rounded out the session with a pan-friend cod steak, Flemish-style red cabbage, and a beer jus vinaigrette.  The beer jus vinaigrette was a little strange...probably because whatever beer we used was pretty terrible, but it worked out well in the end.

For the last demo, the chef made a pork tenderloin stew cooked in a dough-seal cocotte, and it was phenomenal!  This is another dish I'll be trying when I get home.

That's the end of Intermediate Cuisine!  Next up?  Exams and graduation!

- a tout à l’heure!