there's something fishy going on

Woah! I've never known a school to have such a big cock up in my life.

We were suppose to be making 2 fish dishes today, the whiting and the salmon but unfortunately for us, the school had other plans. They had some order screw up where they thought we were to go to this place called the Fish Market which has not been on the school's curriculum for two years. So we did not have any raw produce to create the dishes on the menu.

Fortunately for us, the chefs came up with a plan B, we could not do the whiting but they found some salmon and although it was frozen, at least we had something to cook with. We were also short of some other ingredients such as fish stock and sorrel to name a few. We only had enough fish stock for about 13 people so the other class in the other kitchen did not have fish stock to make their dish with. I heard from them that the fish stock they lacked was replaced with vinegar. ACK! I shun at the the thought of replacing fish stock with vinegar.

Anyway, to deviate from the topic, I realized that I haven't shown the exterior of my apartment so here is a photo of it.

Quaint isn't it? Looks like some sort of homely little cottage. Something a city boy like me isn't very used to. I feel more comfortable with the high rise buildings of Singapore's concrete jungle around me. I feel like a monkey who seeks comfort in hiding amongst the tall trees.

Back to the topic at hand, although we were unable to make the whiting dish, during our demo class, the chef was able to make it. The dish is called Merlan Colbert where colbert is the style in which the fish is prepared. The spine of the fish is removed, leaving a small part of the spine at the tail and the head intact. The eyes are also removed to prevent it from exploding when it comes into contact with the deep fryer. The dish is like a whole fish fish and chips without the chips and instead of tar tar sauce, it is served with a Beurre Maitre d Hotel aka parsley butter.

The Merlan Colbert is the one in the foreground and the one in the background is another whiting, prepared Colbert style but instead of being crumbed, it is coated with tempura batter and served with tar tar sauce. The tar tar sauce was delicious but when it comes down to fish and chips, I think I love Singapore's fish market & bistro alot more. Did I mention that the parsley butter was yummy too.

The other dish which was the salmon is called Supreme de Saumon a L'Oseille. We made a sauce called a Beurre Blanc to accompany the pan fried salmon and by god, that sauce has to be the most unhealthy thing I have ever eaten. It had 200g of butter and 260ml of cream in it and one of my classmates asked in disbelief if 200gms of butter was the right amount. The sauce obviously had other ingredients such as white wine, vermouth, shallots, sorrel and fish stock but the amount of butter and cream looked like it could clog some major arteries.



But on a side note, the sauce was unsurprisingly yummy! Why do I say unsurprisingly? Well it's because unhealthy food = awesome food! And that is a fact. Salt and fat is flavor after all. The top one was done by the chef and the bottom on was done by me. Mine was a tad bit underdone though. The chef said he would eat it, but some people might not. I don't know if it means he likes it or not or if it were good. I was cleaning up when he called me to review my dish so I was not around but a classmate said he said it was good so I don't know, but just in case, if I make this again, I'll go for the more mainstream, medium well (cooked & juicy).

The dish in the soup bowl is the last dish the chef made, it is a sort of thick fish soup called Fish Veloute. There not much I can say other then I felt rather "eh whatever" about it. It kinda tasted a little like a can of cambell soup, one of the cream of something. The soup is usually used as a base for other dishes so I can't really be blamed for thinking as such.

I don't believe I have shown you the kitchen where we work. So here are a couple of shots of it.


So there you go. That's our classroom and with that, I come to an end for this post. I'm tired and I just want to relax and watch some tv so til next time, arrivederci!

i am on a see food diet

As you can tell from the title, it is to most, a poorly orchestrated attempt at humor. Any food I see, I eat... Boy I wish I was born with an awesome sense of humor. Anyway with that little administration work complete, lets get back to my class.

So it is day 2 of week 5 today and we had fish on the menu today. We had to make 2 fish dishes and to tell you the truth, the only problem that came from today's menu was the Hollandaise sauce we had to make to accompany one of the dishes. First up on the menu is Filet de Breme Meuniere. An interesting fact about this dish is that meuniere means miller's wife. This dish was given the name because the bream fillet that we cut from the fish is dredged in season flour and then pan fried til it is golden brown and because the miller's wife always had access to flour. The fish was served with butter that was cooked until nut-brown and sprinkled with finely chopped parsley and lemon juice. The dish was tasty and had a nice zing from the lemon juice. The butter had a nice nutty flavour and accompanied the tender, moist fish nicely.

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Filet de Breme Meuniere

1 Whole Bream
1 Lemons (1 peeled, pift removed and sliced across into circular fillets)
1/2 Lemon's Juice (strained)
50g Butter
Parsley (very finely chopped)
Seasoned flour (flour with salt and pepper)

1) Fillet the bream and remove the skin
2) Dredge in the seasoned flour and fry over medium heat (Put it down on one side in the pan untill golden brown then flip over and fry for another 10 seconds til just cooked, it shouldn't need much longer than that)
3) Cook 50g of butter over a low-medium heat until the butter turns a nut brown and begins smelling like actual nuts.
4) Remove from heat and put in the lemon juice and parsley then immediately pour over the cooked fillets and serve. (garnish with the lemon fillets)
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Next on the menu is a soft poached whole trout with hollandaise sauce. I found the trout absolutely scary. It had a thick layer of slime that made picking the little bugger up nigh impossible and our chef wanted us to minimise the handling and not wash it because he wanted the slime on it. Imagine the number of trouts that became flying fish today.

The trout was poached in an aromatic cooking liquid called a court-bouillon which is made from boiling carrots, onions, water, vinegar, peppercorns, bayleaves and parsley. My chef recommends changing the vinegar component to a nice white wine because the vinegar flavour is too intense and this dish required the court-bouillon to be served on the dish.

Interesting fact #2, the slime was to be kept on because when vinegar was poured onto the fish, the slime would turn a blue color. It was solely for presentation but it was a pretty interesting thing to see. The slime protects the fish against disease and the chef told us that a good trout, in addition to all the normal verifications for freshness and quality such as smell, clear eyes, pink gills etc, should be handled as little as possible and a sure sign of this is the amount of slime on the fish. If you look very carefully at the picture of the trout, you will be able to see the blue color I am talking about.


I think I cut the carrots too cute. They look for some strange reason like flowers and reminded me of this game, LOCO ROCO when I placed the carrots on the plate. Thank you IGN for having the only screenshot of the game that had flowers in it.


The dish also had hollandaise sauce that was not pictured and turned potatoes as well. I have made hollandaise sauce before when I was in Singapore and it did not come out very well. This time round though, the sauce was absolutely yummy, zingy buttery and shiok! I'm so happy they taught us to make hollandaise sauce. Now I can make egg benedicts for Sher. :-D

I did not have time to take a proper photo with all it components in place because I accidently scrambled my hollandaise sauce and had to remake one, which put me very far behind. Everything was going extremely well till then, but despite that, my final products were all pretty good so I'm happy about that.

I'm extremely happy today and as promised, I managed to get a photo of my Creme Caramel in a proper mould so here it is.


And like the photo of the trout, I didn't have time to arrange the things nicely for a camera shot so that's why the photo isn't as awesome as it could be. The creme caramel was served with a nice little whip cream that was made using cream, caster sugar and vanilla essence, mixed together in a bowl and whipped til stiff. It is called Creme Chantilly. I do not have the recipe for it but it looks simple enough. If you want it sweeter, add more sugar. If you want a stronger vanilla flavour, add abit more vanilla. Use your own discretion to make it as it's a very simple thing to make. If you look hard enough, you can see the Creme Chantilly on the Creme Caramel at the back of the photo. A simply lovely dessert combination.

Tomorrow is another day of fish. This time around though, the fish up for slaughter is salmon and whiting. I can't wait for the day when tuna is on the menu. I love tuna! Its lovely reddish colored flesh, its sublime flavour. Ummmmmm delicious, just thinking of it makes me want to go out and get some tuna sashimi.

I'm gonna go dream of some sashimi now because there are no japanese restaurants around my place so I'll leave you with an awesome picture I managed to snap. I bet that after seeing this, you'd wish you could have any number plate you wanted. So til next time, au revoir!

5/1 Basic Crs, Cuisine, Le Cordon Bleu 2009

So I've decided to raise the frequency of my updates because simply put, I have nothing to do. I was told by my girlfriend Sher that I should perhaps put in more recipes. So with her being the senior blogger and all, I'll take her advice.

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!