We made 8 different potato recipes on Friday in class, pommes gaufrette (fried waffle shaped potatoes), pommes pont neuf (a thicker version of pommes frites), pommes anna (a dish of circle shaped potatoes arranged in circular rows and then sauteed and baked to a golden crisp perfection), pommes duchesse, pommes puree (mashed potatoes), pommes darphin, gratin dauphinoise, and croquettes. Each recipe was delicious from the crisp pommes pont neuf that put McDonald's french fries to shame to the creamy and cheese-encrusted gratin dauphinoise. Who would have known that such an ugly brown vegetable (tuber, technically) could turn into so many delicious recipes?
Here is a picture of my Pommes Anna:
So after cooking all those potato recipes, I was literally dreaming about cooking potatoes on both Friday and Saturday night. "More pohtayoes, more pohtaytoes, we need more pohtaytoes!" Chef Rogers yelled in his French accent in each of my dreams. I guess something from that lesson stuck with me.
Today started out with our second test (I got a 98 on the first one, woohoo!), which was pretty easy, but longer than the first. It took everyone about 45 minutes to take the test and then we moved on to our recipes for the day: Trout en Papillote (baked in parchment paper) and Trout al Meuniere (in a brown butter sauce). After Chef Rogers instructed us how to fillet the whole fish, we were sent to the refrigerator to pick up our own fish. When it was my turn to pull out the trout from the cardboard box holding them, they kept slipping away from my hands, covered in their own slime (which is apparently a good indication of their freshness). Each time I reached in to grab one of them, my hand would slip until finally I managed to grab one, only to have it's sharp pectoral fin stab my finger! And this was right after Chef warned us to be careful about being cut by the fins because of the "nasty infections" they cause. Awesome. So I brought back the fish to our station and quickly tried to rinse out the cut, which really wasn't so bad at all, just a little slice. My finger hasn't fallen off yet, so I think I'll live.
I set the whole fish out on my cutting board and stared it in the eye, determined to fillet this thing right. I started by cutting off all the fins with my scissors, whispering a little, "take that" to the fin that tried to slice my finger earlier. Then I flipped it so it laid horizontally on my board and began to cut along the backbone until I reached the ribs, where I took out my scissors again and cut the rib bones to free the fillet from the skeleton. It wasn't really so bad after all. I managed to cut a recognizable fillet of fish, and then proceeded to do the same with the remaining half of the fish. Since the fish was so fresh and firm, it was relatively easy to slice away the bones and then the skin on the bottom without touching the fillet too much, which can inadvertently cook the fish. After we were done filleting the trout, we started on the remaining ingredients to cook it en papillote: tomato fondue, mushroom duxelles and julienned carrots, leeks and celery. We put it all together, a layer of tomato fondue and duxelles on the bottom, then the fillet, then topped with a delicate julienne of vegetables, a sprig of thyme and a splash of wine. Then we carefully folded the parchment paper and put it into the oven, where it puffed up and turned a deep golden brown on top. It won the approval of Chef Rogers, our fish was tender and moist and the vegetables were properly seasoned with enough salt for his salt-loving palate.
After our lunch break, we moved on to the trout, which was slightly harder to fillet because it was not as fresh and therefore fell apart very easily when touched too much and the bones are much thinner, making it harder to find the proper places to cut. And then I had to pluck out about 30 teeny little bones, which caused the flesh to break apart even more from the heat of my fingers and because I had to press down on the flesh to find the bones. Next we got everything ready to cook the trout in a sautee pan and make the brown butter sauce with lemons, capers and parsley. For the plating, we also had to make a tournage out of red potatoes, which we spent a considerable amount of time perfecting. When we had everything ready, we started to cook: first we coated the skin side of the trout with flour and put it in a sautee pan with clarified butter, cooking it slowly so the heat would permeate through the whole fillet and we would only have to flip it for 5 seconds to cook it fully. Once the fish was done, we prepared the plate with three tournage potatoes, with one edge dipped in chopped parsley, and topped the trout with a few capers, freshly made croutons and small lemon segments. Next we started the brown butter sauce, which on our first attempt burned and filled with black bits of burned butter. Not what we were looking for. So we started again, this time bringing the butter up to the proper hazelnut color quickly, while swirling the pan. Once it was at the perfect color, we hit the pan with a splash of lemon juice to stop the cooking. Then we added parsley and more lemon segments to the sauce and carefully spooned it over our fish. After bringing it up to Chef Rogers for approval, we got to taste the rich deliciousness of the butter sauce on the moist trout, the tang of the lemon juice adding to the intensity of the flavors. It was delicious, although with all that butter, a few bites was enough for me!
Tomorrow we continue with our fish, moving on to flounder. It better not stab me this time.
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