Well today was day 1 of week 5 of my course and we made a Chicken en Cocotte Grand Mere, which is a whole roast chicken with bacon, butter saute-ed button mushrooms and glazed button onions topped with a sauce made from veal jus and the chicken juices. I had to stick my hand up the chicken's ass and pull out its heart when I was cleaning it. Quite a strange experience, felt like some fatality out of Mortal Kombat!
I actually thought it tasted pretty good despite of my lack of love for chicken. The sauce was rich and tasty and made the dish pretty good. I realized that French cuisine is more than just about techniques. They use butter in practically all their dishes and that makes their food very rich and tasty. If I were to eat chicken, I would only eat it in Hainanese Chicken Rice and maybe in French Cuisine.
The other thing that we made was Creme Caramel.
This was one of mine. I had to put it into some stupid ugly mould therefore I had trouble trying to get it out. That is why was sits before you is a grotesque monstrosity. I have 2 more in school which are in proper moulds so I'll take a photo of it tomorrow. It should be alot better.There isn't much I can describe about Creme Caramel. It's pretty good, nice caramel flavour with a hint of vanilla. And because I have never made this before, I'm amazed that the caramel which I thought had set was actually a liquid and when i removed the Creme Caramel from the mould, the caramel just flowed down the side of it. Simply amazing!
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Creme Caramel
180g Sugar
60ml Water
500ml Milk
1 Vanilla Pod
3 Eggs
2 Eggyolks
First up, create a caramel with 100g of sugar and 60ml of water. Slowly dissolve the sugar in 40ml of water and boil the mixture til it brown and turns a nice golden brown color. Take care not to put anything inside to stir the caramel. Just swirl the pot around, and when the color is obtained, add the last 20ml of water and immediately pour the caramel into moulds. About 1/2 cm deep.
Next, boil 500ml milk with a vanilla pod in it and mix 2 eggyolks and 3 eggs together in a seperate basin with 80g of sugar. When both tasks are done, combine them and give it a nice whisk to mix them thoroughly. Take note to allow the mixture to sit a while to remove as much air from the mixture. Scooping out the foam that forms at the top fo the mixture and knocking the mixture also helps facilitate the removal of the air.
When as much air is removed as possible, pour the custard mixture into the moulds with the caramel and allow to bake at 165 degree celsius in a long deep basin about 1/3 filled with warm water for as long as it takes the custard to set.
You can make sure the custard is set by shaking the moulds and see if it wabbles. If it wabbles, it means that it needs more cooking. The rough time for cooking is about 35-40 mins.
Do not serve the creme caramel immediately, allow to cool in a fridge before serving.
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Last thing that was made during the lesson was a Warm Goat Cheese Salad that was a teacher's demo. Let me tell you a story about myself. It wasn't only until recently, that I started eating vegetables, much less salads. With the awakening of my dream of becoming a chef, I have become more open regarding the types of food I eat. I still do not eat bean sprouts but they are still bland disgusting noodle wanna-bes.
Anyway back to the salad.
The dish is essentially a salad served with a piece of goat cheese on a crouton with a red wine vinaigrette. The goat cheese was marinated overnight with walnut oil, basil, rosemary, lemon thyme and dried bay leaves and the vinaigrette was made from the emulsion of red wine vinegar, the same walnut oil used to marinate the cheese. It also had shallots, garlic and dijon mustard in it. Imagine the flavors that the dressing was packing. It was a lovely salad. Short and sweet.
Tomorrow we have fish on the menu. I'll update more tomorrow, it should be fun. Til tomorrow, zai jian!
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