a view to a fill

"The genius of love and the genius of hunger, those twin brothers, are the two moving forces behind all living things. All living things set themselves in motion to feed and to reproduce. Love and hunger share the same purpose. Life must never cease; life must be sustained and created."

Turgenev, Little poems in prose, XXIII

I came across that in a book. A little interesting poem that I think is both meaningful & romantic.

As promised, here are some pictures of the food that was made on Tuesday & Wednesday. First up, we have an artichoke salad with prawns. This was a teacher's demo only so we did not have to make it but something funny happened because the chef had prepared the artichoke and he forgot to put it into the finish product of the dish, seeing as it was an artichoke salad and all. The greens are lamb's lettuce and it was yummy, simple and yummy.


Next on the menu was a tournedos of beef. This one we made and thankfully I got it right. I've been having a problem with the doneness of all my meats but it seems like I'm getting the hang of it now. Just in case, I bought myself a meat thermometer. No more undercooked or overcooked meat for me anymore! And I am certainly not going to take a risk like that during my up coming exams if a steak is called for.

The tournedos of beef was served with a sauce choron which is a derivative of bearnaise sauce. The sauce choron was gratinified over the steak and served with parisienne potatoes, which is little globes of potatoes covered with glace de viande which makes the potatoes gooey, sticky, beefy and salty. Simply yummy! The pictures don't really show how sticky they are but just imagine beef caramel and you'll get an idea. Bearnaise sauce and hollandaise sauce are both warm emlusion sauces and strangely though, when I make these sauces, they always have this tangy flavour in it which I thought was bad but apparently the chef said it was good so I guess that is how it's suppose to be. YAY!

On Wednesday, we made Veal Cutlet Bonne-Femme, which just means veal cutlet prepared in a homely manner and shortbread biscuits. The veal cutlet was not bad, I'm not a great fan of beef being cooked more than med-rare because it gets a very irony taste which I dislike but unfortunately, the chef wanted the cutlet medium so I did not have a choice.

The chef then made this pretty little dessert with the shortbread biscuit and fruit coulis.

We weren't suppose to make the biscuits but because the lesson was easy, he asked us to try making it and boy I didn't eat so many biscuits at one go in my life. I made 9 large biscuits and ended up eating 7 of them one of the other. Apparently my chef noticed me eating the 7 and started nagging me about eating so many.

I just couldn't stop myself, it went nicely with the whipped cream that was made to accompany the biscuits. It was sweet and crumbly. Om nom nom nom. Below is the picture of the cookies I made. Little devils!


During the weekend, I mostly stayed at home because of the cold, but I did go out for dinner with Kevin and we went to this place called Sapore Della Vigna which served some pretty lovely italian food. I'll talk about once Kevin sends me the pictures of the food.

Next week, we'll be cooking kangaroo meat. Grrrrrr giant rodent meat. So anyway, till next time, adio.