A Perfect Week

... from a kitchen score basis, that is. No points off on any of our dishes, all week long. (I'll take some of the credit, but Aaron is a great partner.) Today we continued braising, moving from large pieces of meat yesterday to stews today: veal blanquette and lamb navarin. Both dishes start out with seasoned and floured cubes of meat, cooked in oil. With the navarin, the point is to get good coloration on the meat, and it's just the opposite on the veal, because that finished dish will be cream-colored. So you need to remove it from the fat before it gets brown at all. This caused some grave distress for the team at the other end of the hot line (stove, to you non-cooking-school types).

Chef Joseph is back (a day later than expected, but on a Friday! which shows true dedication) and we're again doing things his way, which means exactly as he says. Good training. We had to serve the navarin spooned around a disc of soft cheesy polenta, which was topped with tomato concasse (blanched, peeled, seeded and diced, if you have forgotten). We also made gremolata, a beautiful zesty garnish: equal parts minced garlic, lemon zest, and parsley. (Don't forget to rinse and squeeze out the minced parsley in a paper towel. It removes that "grassy taste". Would I have noticed a "grassy taste"? I think not. But I wouldn't put it past the Chef.) We sprinkled the gremolata on the lamb stew. Oh man.

We used frozen puff pastry to make a "vol-au-vent", a little box to hold our blanquette. We spooned the stew into the "box" and leaned the lid alongside, with some minced parsley over the stew. Some tasty food, right there.

When we were discussing these recipes in the classroom before preparing them, Chef asked if anybody had ever tasted tomato paste. "You should taste everything!" he said. "Who knows what cardboard tastes like?" Everybody raised a hand, though tentatively. "Of course you do! And how do you know?" "Uh, because I ate it once," somebody offered bravely. "OF COURSE that's how you know! And you know what keys taste like, and coins, and dirt! You don't have to eat them all the time! You have taste memories! ADD TO THEM! YOU ARE AN ARTIST. YOUR TASTE BUDS ARE YOUR TOOLS."

With encouragement from both Chefs Glen and Joseph, some of us brought containers to school to fill with veal demiglace, to take home. The demiglace accounts for much of the richness of the coq au vin and swiss steak that we made yesterday, and it would be hard to duplicate ("practice") these dishes at home without all the ingredients. And most of us, even if we're not living in the dorms, will not be making an 8-hour stock from veal bones, and then reducing it by half. So I scored a decent 48 oz. of beautiful brown gelatinousness, valued at $139.20 retail (not counting sales tax and shipping). Hey, at $300 a day in tuition, I'm going to get my money's worth where I can.

And it'll be Coq au Vin for Sunday dinner.