Some days I have to giggle about the amusing turn my life
has taken in the last few months.
A year ago I never would have imagined that I’d be at the
end of my first week of Superior Cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu and I must say, I’m
having a blast.
After Tuesday’s foie gras pig-out, we had another demo and
practical class making a fish thing with épices
douces, some artichokes, and an eggplant charlotte. It went pretty well. I
didn’t think much of my sauce and I could see a fair bit of olive oil bleeding
out of my eggplant, but it was fine. Certainly more interesting flavours than
some of the tiresome things we made in Intermediate Cuisine.
But the real fun this week was today’s “black box”
workshop. To actually call it a “black
box” is a little disingenuous because we actually knew most of the ingredients
we’d be working with ahead of time. We
had to prepare a squid appetizer and then a veal rib main course. We had a basket of vegetables, some spices
and herbs, and the standard kitchen pantry (butter, flour, eggs, milk, cream,
wine, vinegar, etc).
There was one ingredient in the basket that stood out a
little bit – ground coffee. Hmmm… how to use that? I didn’t think too many people would try to
work that in, and being the contrarian that I am, I figured it was worth a
try. I did a little research from my
overflowing shelves of cookbooks and
trusty old Google. Nothing really jumped
out at me.
But last night as I inexplicably lay awake in bed between 3
and 5AM an idea occurred to me to link veal to coffee. Cognac!
There are lots of veal dishes involving cognac, and you can pretty much
put every kind of booze in a cup of coffee.
In the words of Chef 1 – “Why not?”
Indeed, why not?
This morning I scribbled a few notes, finished the seemly never-ending
pile of dirty laundry, and got to school in time for the workshop. I plated my appetizer of sautéed calamari
with saffron and squid ink at Chef 2’s requested time. Didn’t overcook the calamari, and managed to
only get about half the squid ink on the sleeve of my uniform. Could have cooked the rapini a bit more (yeah…
a little on the “crisp” side) but the Chef’s comment on the plate? “C’est trés jolie.” Booh-yeah!
An hour later I was plating my veal rib. I’m still a bit of a spaz at butchery (do you
see the size of the bone on this thing?!), but I managed to make a decent
looking plate and cooked the veal to the right doneness. My mashed potatoes were not quite as hot as
they should have been (point taken) and Chef 2 thought my reduced sauce of
shallots, cognac, coffee, veal stock and a shit-ton of butter was “interesting”. Interesting good or interesting bad? It’s hard to tell sometimes.
You know what pissed me off though? Getting back to my station and noticing the
almonds I’d carefully toasted as a garnish, sitting entirely unused. Fuck….argh….*facepalm*!
Ah well. As Chef 3 has told me, this is the place to make
your mistakes. And I’m sure I’ll make
more of them, but it was fun to be a little creative today.
The speed is going to pick up a bit in the next few weeks. A wine seminar, more “black box” workshops,
and our first shifts working the dining room and the kitchen in the Signatures
Bistro. A lot of room for learning, mistakes,
and some hilarity.
Perhaps I should start caffeinating more of my sauces – I might
need it!
You would know the chefs better, but I would take that as 'Interesting good'. Surely they would give a tip if it was bad, n'est-ce pas?
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to think "interesting good". Apparently the point of the workshop (though it wasn't explicitly mentioned) was about learning how to use bitterness.. hence the squid ink, coffee, endive, rapini, etc in the boxes. I thought my sauce was pretty good, and it was even better when I finished the leftover the following day.
ReplyDelete