Before we took our final exam, Chef demonstrated our last soup. Split pea.We were all soup pros by now so it looked pretty simple. While that was simmering we took our written final for this Essential Skills 101 class.If you had read the chapters in the book it would be pretty hard not to pass. It also helped that Chef had let us review the test the day before. He suggested that we do our knife skills competency test today instead of tomorrow. That way we would have the whole class time to make our cream of tomato soup and our Demi-glaze and sauce Robert for the practical. We all voted to take the knife test.We made our split pea soup in teams. We had a wonderful smoked ham stock to work with and while our soup simmered away we made these nice soup croutons. So easy. You slice a small baguette lengthwise at an angle. You ladle a bit of clarified butter on a sheet pan toss the bread over a few times to coat it, sprinkle a little kosher salt on it and pop it into the oven until it is golden. Pureeing the soup was a bit of a mess. It was reminiscent of when my kids were babies. Pureed green peas everywhere.I have to say that my partner Laurie and my soup came out beautiful. Perfect consistency and beautifully garnishedChef tasted it and said "downtown"
We also finished off our vichyssoise by putting a small dollop of a diced potato salad in leek vinaigrette on top. This was my favorite of anything we had made so far, I brought home some for Jim, (the taste tester) with a dessert from the angels. Well? Jim, are you out there? Wake up and tell me about the soup and the sponge cake.
We mise en placed for our knife drill, which was;
Produce 2 ounces of julienne carrot
1 onion-fine dice1 potato -medium dice
Two small tomatoes peeled seeded and small dice and pulp concassed.
1 potato cut into brunoiseProduce
4 T. minced and rinsed parsley.
Ready, set, go!
30 minutes later Chef yelled knives down and came around to grade us.I didn't get to my parsley. Darn.Then he said that was just for practice. See you tomorrow.
He enjoys toying with us.
Goodnight.
1 comment:
Jimmy Alan is still day dreaming about your last meal so let me speak for him....The other night he woke up yelling "More, more!" Of course I was thinking he wanted something else until he started mumbling something about "soup and cake" and then it dawned on me...He was dreaming about Bethina...or at least her food! You know, I'm actually grateful for all of these cooking classes...It's getting me off the hook from cooking-which don't get me wrong-I enjoy but Bethina LOVES it so why would I deprive her!
Go Bethina!!!!
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