Maybe you're thinking...hey, that doesn't look so hard, I could totally do that. WRONG. Tournage is quite possibly the worst thing the French have ever invented and it is the one thing that I despise doing in the kitchen. Eventually once I've worked on my technique enough I'll learn to enjoy it more, but until then...death to the tournage. Yesterday, we spent the entire morning tourneeing potatoes, turnips and carrots until my hand was so cramped up I felt like I couldn't go on. To create the perfect tournage, one must perfect the curved motion with a paring knife in the perfect hand position to create the perfect 7 sided cut of vegetable. (Imagine the motion of turning your paring knife over an egg with your thumb on the bottom of the egg and the rest of your hand holding the knife...that's the motion you need to make the tournage) It just so happens that my midget-like hands are not quite large enough to hold the paring knife in the proper position to create the perfect tournage motion, so the carving was quite a struggle for me. But at least I was not alone...we were all suffering together. My suffering was slightly alleviated at the end of the day when Chef Rogers, after a close examination of my carrots, turnips and potatos, said, "Zees ees really not so bad a tournage." Not so bad? I'll take it!Today was stock day, the all important day for learning the basis of most dishes in French cuisine. We were separated into three groups of 8 students, each group making either veal stock, chicken stock or beef stock, also called marmite. My group was in charge of making veal stock, the only stock where every ingredient had to be browned carefully to create a rich and dark colored stock. I had been eyeing several members of my group for the past few days and noticing their how do you say....lack of attention. So when we all got together to decide what to do and to start measuring ingredients, half the group became very confused as to how much of the ingredients we needed and what we had to get done. So I decided to take a little charge of my group.. I measured out the ingredients, to the approximate measurements needed for the recipe and laid out what we needed to do, while half of my group stared with permanent confusion on their faces and the other half helped out. Little did I know this would lead some people in my group to continually return to my station and ask what they needed to do now. But, in the end, everything was done and our veal stock bubbled away, emitting a rich and deep aroma of beef.
After making the veal stock in teams, each partner team had to make a pot of vegetable stock and fish stock, which were pretty easy to do, just a matter of chopping and adding the proper amount of water...and making sure that the stock never comes to a rolling boil so that the impurities on the bottom don't get incorporated. As we were doing this in teams of 2, the other members of my team from earlier in the day kept coming up to me and asking, "How do I chop the garlic? Is it emincer or crushed?" "How do I cut the tomatoes? Do we need to skin them?" Each time I gave a shrug and said this is what I'm doing...I don't know if it's right...why don't you ask the Chef? I'm getting scared for next Monday when we change partners!
After a day of making stock, we were instructed to grab 4 potatoes and make some more...guess what? TOURNAGE! Peeling my potatoes with a little menace, I wished I could tournage one of Chef Rogers fingers for the torture he was ensuing upon us by requesting endless amounts of tournage. I tried to do my tournage as quickly as I could, just to get them out of the way and received a, "Eet is looking much better" from Chef Rogers. Ok..so maybe I don't really want to tournage one of his fingers, but I would appreciate never having to do it again as unlikely as that is.
Tomorrow's lesson...turning our stocks into sauce!
No comments:
Post a Comment