Ballotine brick - France is 'appy!

This week, we made a ballotine. This is like deboning a whole (oh yeah) chicken, but leave it sort of whole - don't break or cut the skin. Then you stuff the thing with a pork and chicken filling and top it off with a nice roll of fois gras. "Close' the bird, roll it up in plastic, tie it firmly together and cook it in the consommee. To be served the day after making it. It's fantastic to eat this when you're on a diet!
I took a few slices from chef's ballotine home and gave it to my 80+ year old neighbour - she was very very pleased with it - mais c'est tres gentil! yes, I know...

When my brick of fat was ready the next day, I took it home and I contacted my landlady - and oh yes, she wanted the 1.5 kg thing.

This was a pretty rich brick; It tasted nice, but only a few slices, that's more than enough for me... And I'm not really on a diet.... I think!

Seems like the French LOVE these kind of dishes; Lots of fois gras, and they prefer their meat served pink (rose). Too pink, I'd say!

Bye for now,

Sjoerd

Ze schedule for this week and the next; not that bad!

Basically it's a very doable two weeks - starting at 8.30 in the morning until roughly 18.00 hrs.

Creativity and playing with aspic (gelatine)

Tuesday, we had a very special day - we had to play with aspic. (Gelatine)
After we had made a very nice consommee (that's a very clear clarified 'soup') we ruined the consommee by putting loads of gelatine sheets in it - horrible!

Consommee - before and after clarifying. Quite a difference.

But afterwards we got to play with it, because the casing for the saucages that we were supposed to make were not there - so it was playtime!
Interesting to see that some people in this world think you can actually plate a WHOLE tomato on a plate in aspic and put the ballotine on top - but chef Poupard corrected it and sliced the tomato thinly (2 mm thick) and put it on a plate.

Picture time! B-class, you did a SUPER plating of the aspic, it looked great. Very very creative.(by the way, I'm in A-class...)

Levi was champion 'playing with words' - VOILA! On a day like this, he would fit right into the Amsterdam/NY/Vancouver gay-scene. Oh-la-la!

The best plate of all, I think!

Chef Poupard destroying, I mean tasting the stuff.

The tomato slicer....

Judging Catharine's plate

Chef T's creation. Nice!

Visitor in class and the Spanish girls

Yesterday, we had a visitor in class. Cristina brought a very good friend from Mallorca to class - Carlos. He stayed for the choucroute, flammenkuche and nougat session. I think he liked being at the demo (not the food..?) and he also wanted to wear a LCB jacket, so I borrowed him one. Yes Carlos, you looked good in it - basic pastry for you next year??? (Later that day, we had a few drinks together and went out for dinner. Very nice evening with lots of laughs! thanks Carlos, it was good fun.)

The Spanisg girls in class - Cris & Monika.

Turned veggies, filmcrew, stuffed trout & smokey lamb

Today is an easy day. And the menu looks sort of promising:

Yesterday's demo was about flammenkuche, truite farcie and choucroute. Yes, you guessed right: It's all about ze Alsace area. I only know this area from the wine (as one does!), and certainly not the food.

The first one, flamething, is a pizza, nothing more, nothing less, but light and tasty. The choucroute, sauerkraut, was a lot (and I mean a lot) of work. It looked good in the end...

We had to make the trout dish in practical. I kind of liked it.

We had to debone the suckers (2 each) from the the top of the fish (back) and take out the backbone. Easy peasy! Then fill it with mushroom stuffing (Duxelles), make your own sauce from ze bones AND TURN CARROTS and a mushroom! This time it was 'Vichy style'. Not a torpedo shap, but more like a humming top. Interesting....

Cris turned the mushroom for me - thank you!

Plating a fish on a plate goes like this : Tail (skin on tail-end) to the right handside and the belly of the fish always faces the customer. Sauce around the fish, never OVER the fish. Voila!

Then a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg demo of Chef Thivet. I sort of fell asleep during class and eventually I went outside to get some fresh air. Sorry chef!

Dishes of this demo:

Carpaccio sardines (no sardines available - seabream as a replacement)

lamb (stuffed of course!)

nougat (mailto:#@@$! not for me, thank you)

The lamb dish was also the practical. We got a 1 kg very nice piece of lamb, with all the fat/bones etc still on it. After deboning and trimming there was a whopping 250 grams left on my plate - before even cooking it! So, to cut a long afternoon short - make sauce from bones, strain and reduce, cut balls with a melon-baller from potatoes and fry them, make mushroom garnish and prepare an onion/tomato garnish. Finally bake the lamb and serve rose. Et voila ! C'est tout.

The rest of the day: Filmcrew in class. This time they were really nice people. Not like the Korean filmcrew we had last year in our class. If I understood correctly, it will be a LCB (promo?) film.

And we had to make our class photo. Fully dressed up, without the badges/spoon and smiling like.... well, you get it!

Few people missing during the photo session - like China was late, D.from Paris didn't show and little C. was probably sleeping somewhere in the building. We had lots of photographs taken by others of our group, so Mr.BIG photographer will probably not be making much money from this group....

enough for now,
bonsoir and see you all later!
Sjoerd