Flounder, Elise's Way

Ahh creativity. Up until now, it seems like our culinary creativity has been smothered. Smothered by butter and French technique, of course. But today we were allowed to let our creativity shine free, with a few restrictions. We were instructed to create a recipe for "Flounder Your Way." Given a list of limited ingredients, zucchini, haricots verts, mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, rice, garlic, onions, shallots, heavy cream, white wine, butter, chicken stock and 6 others that we chose as a class (lemons, leeks, couscous, parmesan cheese, peas and one more that I can't remember), we had to put together our own recipe for flounder. Over the past few days and late last week, the class began to buzz about how everyone wanted to put together their recipe. Some were going all out, getting as creative as possible, while others were sticking to what they knew how to do. I chose to stick with what I knew, keeping it relatively simple. My recipe was pan-seared flounder fillets with pommes anna, zucchini salad with pea coulis and lemon oil. Here is a picture of how it all came together:


My first idea was to do a lemon risotto, but when we decided what 6 extra ingredients we were going to use, my risotto rice didn't make the cut. So instead I decided to do pommes anna, which is sort of complicated and I probably should have done something simpler. For pommes anna, you have to carve a potato into a curved cylinder, then use a mandoline to make very thin circle shapes, which you then have to layer in a circular pattern and cook with a lot of clarified butter, both on the stovetop and then finished in the oven. The end result is usually very elegant but mine sort of ended up falling apart. For the zucchini salad I shaved a zucchini lengthwise on the mandoline, making thin ribbons, then tossed it with a lemon vinaigrette, toasted pine nuts and shaved parmesan cheese. Next I pan seared the flounder and topped it with a shallot and scallion compound butter and finished the plate with a pea coulis (basically just pureed peas) and a lemon oil, which was made by heating olive oil with lemon zest. I was pretty happy with the result, although I still wish I could have made lemon risotto instead of the pommes anna. It was interesting to see everyone's adaptations of the basic ingredients we were given. Everyone's plate was so different, yet we were all working with the same ingredients.

Yesterday we made pasta and gnocchi, which I was very excited for. The first thing we made was Ravioli filled with the handmade ricotta cheese we made on Monday.

Ricotta-filled ravioli with tomato sauce

When I made pasta this past weekend, I really had no idea what I was doing, so it was nice to be taught how to make pasta the right way. I was pretty close, but I did not knead my pasta dough nearly as long as I should have. We kneaded ours for a good 20-25 minutes in class, until my arms were about to fall off and the pasta had the texture of what Chef Jeff kept calling, "a baby's butt." But it was worth it when we got to taste the delicious ravioli. We also made a spinach pasta dough that we used to make lasagna with meat sauce and bechamel sauce, and mozzarella that we made ourselves that morning. Next we made gnocchi, which I was particularly excited about since I recently saw a butternut squash gnocchi that I wanted to try making. We started with cooked and warm Idaho potatoes that we put through a ricer. Next we mixed flour into the potatoes, making sure to coat the potatoes thoroughly. After that we added eggs and mixed it very very lightly, being careful not to overwork the dough. Next we rolled it out into long thin snakes, and using a pasty scraper, cut the snake into smaller pieces. Using a gnocchi board, we pressed down on the small piece of dough and lightly rolled it, which created a lined side on one end and made the dough into a curved shape. Here are our gnocchi, tossed in a thyme-flavored butter:

The gnocchi were delicious, very light and airy, but still not quite as good as the ones I ate in Florence. I'll keep experimenting so I can get them to taste that good.

And here is a picture of the sugar sculpture that the Level 3 pastry class made:

Pretty cool, right?

Guess what I get to do tomorrow? Taste wine all day! Although we've been instructed that if we attempt to actually drink the wine instead of spit it out, we may be subject to discipline. We'll see how that goes.