Vegetables: What Food Eats

Don’t get me wrong, I like vegetables, and I even like many vegetarians.

Cooking for vegetarians isn’t usually a problem. There are millions of cool things you can do with pasta, rice, eggs, etc.  But what does drive me a little bit mental are some of the crazy/trendy food restrictions that people have invented as a manifestation of their deep emotional problems/control issues/overly severe potty training. When someone tells me about their vegan (except for bacon), gluten-free, soy-free, no-carb, and no-garlic diet, I want to punch them in the crotch. And believe me, folks like that want to talk about it, usually ad nauseum while I’m trying to enjoy my duck confit.

The Cordon Bleu curriculum is not suited to vegetarians and vegans.  Nearly every dish is swimming in butter, eggs, cream and veal stock. But even without solid statistics on the number of Canadians who have gone veggie (I was surprised to note that Statistics Canada does not track this), it certainly is a top trend and a market that must be entertained.

So today’s workshop was about vegetarian cuisine.  I was mildly irritated to note that our baskets had all the usual Cordon Bleu suspects (potatoes, artichokes, butternut squash, onions, carrots, celery, a sliver of cauliflower, pale out-of-season tomatoes, and about the saddest shrivelled beet I'd ever seen), and absolutely no fresh herbs or cheese.  In place of herbs we had some slightly bruised watercress.  I stared at the box thinking "What the fuck am I going to do with this crap?"

A reappearance today by Chef 4, who we hadn't had teach or supervise our group since the Lesson 2 practical in Intermediate. Chef 4 has a bit of a different style than the other Chefs.  He wanders around with his tablet computer in hand, peering over shoulders and taking notes.  It's a bit un-nerving.  "All that's missing is the shark music from JAWS." the student next to me noted.

He asked for a vegan amuse-bouche and lacto-ovo vegetarian-friendly appetizers and mains.  And, by the way, the appetizer had to have something crispy, and the main something starchy.

I glared at my basket for a few minutes, willing some cheese to appear.  Nothing happened.

So I decided to try to modify a few recipes I know to suit the ingredients we had.  I started with a carrot and ginger soup.  I tasted it and it could have desperately used some chicken stock, butter, and maybe some nuts for garnish.  Threw in some cayenne (a little more for garnish) and some tapioca pearls. 

 

Next round I could at least use some eggs, so I made cripsy curry fried cauliflower with a salad of watercress, orange-balsamic vinaigrette, and orange confit.

 

And for the main, beet ravioli with butternut squash puree and turned zucchini.  If the beet ravioli sounds familiar, it's because it is - I made it in a workshop a while back.  But this time I had to put potatoes in the filling instead of cheese, and I (again!) had some trouble getting the dough rolled thin enough.  If it worked the way it does at home, the beet filling would be bleeding a gorgeous pink colour through the pasta.  Bugger....
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The verdict:  Not too bad actually.  The cayenne on the soup was a little palate-murdering, the salad on the appetizer was a bit wilted (gee - really?) and the pasta could have been rolled a little thinner (ya think?).   But the comments about mine were quite a bit better than some of the things I overheard.

I suppose it's good that we had the workshop, but I was really rather bored with the whole thing.  At the end of the workshop Chef 4 explained that he deliberately left off fresh herbs - they are too easy to use and a rather forgiving of too much/too little.  The spices we had, on the other hand (curry, nutmeg, cayenne, etc) are all pretty deadly when overdone.  Ok... point taken.  And some of the other things in the basket (quinoa, tapioca, watercress, etc) were put there to challenge us to try something we hadn't used before.  Whatever - I've used them before, so nothing really scared me today.

Speaking of scary though, a couple of days ago we got our ingredient list for our "white box" workshop next week.  The white box is a dry run of sorts for our final exam.  A list of mandatory ingredients and a list of optional ingredients.  Three days to come up with recipes, a bon d'economat, and a sexy little menu.  Then a week to stew/freak out about what we've committed to making.  Recipes are due tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 PM.  I've got my menu worked out (with some excellent advice to ensure that I use all of the mandatory techniques and make it at least a little creative) and my paperwork is mostly done.  Time to let it percolate one more night, then I'll hand it in before class tomorrow.  Heaven help me.

Think I'm going home to eat some dead animals - that will make me feel better.