Epic Meal Time: Cordon Bleu Style

While we're all stressing out over the recipes for our Black Box exam, we still have class to attend.

Today was a seminar on "Cuisine D'Assemblage"  (Kitchen Assembly), essentially an overview of the categories of preserved, frozen, pre-made and processed items available to the modern kitchen.  While we've used fairly few processed items here at school (with the occasional exception of things like tomato paste and frozen pastry), most kitchens use at least some pre-made items.  And, to be honest, the time savings and quality difference sometimes justifies using preserved or pre-made.  I, for one, will happily take excellent San Marzano canned tomatoes over the sad, underripe fresh tomatoes we get here in Ottawa most of the year.

That said, Chef 1 decided to have a little fun with us.  He handed the class a box of horrible processed junk food - Oreo cookies, Kraft Dinner (Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to you Americans!), canned cocktail sausages, corned beef, powdered poutine gravy.... I mean, look at this shit.....

Then he set us loose on the kitchen to come up with a few dishes using this garbage.  I'm sure the exercise was more for fun than anything because we ended up with nearly 20 students crowded into the one person demo kitchen.  Chaos ensued, but in a good way.

My idea?  Croquettes of Kraft Dinner (tightened with béchamel), with canned cocktail sausage and a tortilla chip breading.  Found some black truffle oil in the cupboard and threw a bit of that in for giggles. Haute cuisine, oui?

Verdict?  Tasted um... processed.  Gee really?  I thought something tasted a little off with the cheese powder anyway, and Chef 1 assured me that the box might have been sitting around for a year or two.  Yuck....

That said, I think it was better than the corned beef and spinach dip pasta that another group thoughtfully browned under the salamander, as if that would make it better.  It looked a little (and I imagine tasted a little) like cheap dog food.

So a little fun to break the tension as we get our recipes together for our final exam.  I think I know what I'm going to do now - just a matter of getting it on paper and handing it in tomorrow.  Then two weeks to practice, pray and panic.