Sometimes It Tastes Better Than It Looks

Before we began working this morning, Chef carved radishes a dozen ways, then showed us how to make the ubiquitous apple swan. "I personally don't like it, but everybody wants to know how to make it."

We discussed the parameters of our Canapé Competency which we will have on Monday. We will have one hour to make 10 canapés, all identical, with what we have in the kitchen. It's a 15 point quiz, with 5 points each given for presentation, consistency, and taste ("And it's all or nothing. Five or zero. Either it's presentable, or it's not.") I'm thinking I'll make some mini-pie shells (a la Aunt Gert's little pecan pie cookies) with a savory filling. Maybe smoked salmon. I'll have to practice during the weekend.

We had a full team today. Sylvia sliced our two pans of cheese, then finished the marinated mushrooms she began yesterday, then peeled some roasted beets. Better her than me. Andrea made a sushi platter. Travis made some salmon mousse and we worked together on a salmon en croute using a sheet of puff pastry and a nice center cut of fish — it doesn't exactly qualify as garde manger but Chef encouraged us to experiment. Travis made it look like a fish. Fun with a rolling pin, with lots more to come as we'll begin Baking and Pastry the week after next.

I worked with the mousseline that we made yesterday: poaching and refrigerating the roulades and the terrine, to be unmolded and served tomorrow. Then I made quenelles. It was a mixed experience, mostly because the scallop/saffron mousseline that Chef Duffy made yesterday was very soft, so the quenelles ended up looking less like precise three-sided spoonsful and more like raggedy poached oysters, sort of jiggly and soft. But they were so delicious! Andy took a bite of one, just out of the poaching liquid, and said, surprised, "These taste like heaven!" so my goal was to make them look presentable on a tray. I made little rectangles of black bread and toasted them, then spread them with herbed goat cheese thinned with a bit of creme fraiche. I set a quenelle on top, then dabbed a bit more creme fraiche on top. I garnished half of them with a bit of dill and the other half with three salmon eggs. They were not amazingly beauteous. But they tasted like heaven.

No more so, though, than the chicken liver spread that Chef Duffy demonstrated mid-morning. He began by sautéing diced onions in butter, and adding salt, pepper, ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg and oregano. He added the livers, which had been soaked overnight in salted milk, spiked with brandy. When they were mostly cooked but still pink in the middle, he flambéed them with more brandy. He let them cool a bit, then processed them with cream cheese, and strained them through a tamis. Livers are definitely an acquired taste: Andrea had to go stand in the back of the room during the entire demonstration, at times holding a side towel over her mouth. Others of us were gobbling up little croutons thickly spread with the stuff. It really isn't good-looking in the least. But it's so good!