Essential Skills 2 -Vegetables, Grilled and Steamed

More vegetable cookery today. Our one vegetarian in the class (Jeremy) is quite happy right now. When vegetables are prepared and cooked properly they can be exquisite. When cooked poorly, it’s a waste of time to put them on a plate.We made grilled vegetable skewers and grilled portabello mushrooms, a simple assorted vegetable platter, and some broiled tomatoes with a Persillade Sauce, which is basically bread crumbs, parsley, garlic and butter. The only trick was to make sure that you cut your vegetable uniformly and attractively, and blanche them to the proper doneness. Too much time in the water, and the grilling would turn them to mush, not enough time, and they end up raw on the inside and charred on the outside.

We worked in teams, and while Laurie was blanching her heart, out I made the tarragon aioli for the vegetable plate. I can add aioli to the list of things I have been making all wrong. My aioli has always resembled mayonnaise. This aioli that Chef made was silky smooth and more of a sauce consistency. It's all in the whisking. Too much and you have mayo - not enough and you have oil!Mine came out a little thick but with a bit of warm water it was perfect. We marinated our mushrooms, which I "de-gilled" first. A step I was unfamiliar with. I always have just dealt with the black juice that comes from leaving the gills on. This was much cleaner. We grilled our skewers together along with the mushrooms, starting them at a 10 o'clock angle, then rotating them to 2 o'clock to achieve a nice criss-cross. We popped out the tomatoes in the oven and assembled our dishes. We placed our skewers on top of a little red pepper coulis. Every day things get a little smoother.

Goodnight.