Show Me Something New

 

If you are like me, it’s easy to fall into a food rut and make and eat the same things over and over again.  Sometimes it’s because you happen to have a lot of something on hand, other times it’s a comfort thing, and sometimes it’s because you just can’t be bothered to come up with new ideas.

The theme of this week’s “black box” workshop (on paper, at least), was “Le Principal Inédit”, a term that was not familiar to me.  Our book provided no explanation beyond that. I looked it up, and “inédit” seems to mean “novelty”.  That idea, and the rumours of eggs and duck breast as our proteins, got me thinking ….what can I come up with that might be “new”?

In many ways, in my mind anyway, cuisine and literature are very similar.  Both are constructs of human civilization and imagination (yes, I’ve been reading Northrop Frye’s “The Educated Imagination” again!), and both essentially “tell the same stories” over and over again.  The characters/ingredients and the settings/styles may be different, but the “stories” are the same.  No one truly invents something new – they simply put a different spin or flavour on it.  Even with something like molecular gastronomy and its foams, gels, powders and pop rocks, there really isn’t anything new going on - just a different set of tools at work.

You can see that I was well and truly over-thinking this.

So I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t about to invent anything that Chef 2 hadn’t seen before.  But what I could do is come up with something “new to me”.  One thing that I discussed with the Chefs at my meeting last week is my tendency to revisit the same plating techniques – a scattering of vegetable brunoise, a splattering of sauce – essentially a deliberately Jackson Pollock-esque style.  So perhaps this workshop was a place to switch it up a bit.

The other group of Superior students started their workshop in the morning and were a good source of intelligence about what Chef 2 wanted to see.  He wanted an egg appetizer that also used artichoke and asparagus, and duck breast for the main with three garnitures.

My egg appetizer was oeufs brouillés in an eggshell, in an artichoke “nest”.  Kind of cute, a little whimsical, and seasonally appropriate for our much-delayed spring.  I was a little disappointed in my plating of the red pepper sauce.  I fell back on my old style out of pure necessity – just minutes before plating I seared the tips of my right thumb and index finger on a hot metal bowl and simply didn’t have the steadiness in my hands to do something neater.

After a short break (and some burn gel), I buckled down to work on the duck.  I was determined to redeem myself on this one after earning a withering look from Chef 3 when I served him raw duck in Intermediate.  Other than getting the duck right, I was going for some colour and drama on the plate. I think I pulled that off.  Beet and apple puree, rice croquettes with parsley and mace, some little carrot curly things, a pâte à choux “breadstick”, microgreen salad with confit lemon zest.   Chef 2 seemed pleased.  And the duck?  Properly cooked this time – redemption at last!

So a little time off to think about next week.  Two more lessons (including one I’m not looking forward to because it involves a pike mousse) and a workshop on vegetarian cuisine – now that will be something new!