Tuesday - the morning off; soup too salt and a great (dead) chicken

update: with the pics of today now.

Today, we had the morning off. Start of our first class at 12.30.
I went for coffee and a sandwich first in the cafe, then to school. Our first practical was the finishing off of the consomme. That's basically a nice bouillon with a LOT of work put into it.

Some are really creative with puff pastry.........Here is how the clarifying of the consomme goes: you make a mixture of finely chopped vegetables like carrots, onion, leek in a bowl and mix it with egg white and lots of minced meat. After the (stock) consomme comes to the boil you put in the mixture with the minced meat, stir quickly and let it rest. Simmer for a while and make a hole in the top layer. It's quite hard now because of the egg white. Using a ladle, pour the juices over the crust over and over again.

After a while you get a clear bouillon with lots of flavour/taste. Run through a sieve. Plate up with nicely cut vegetables. Cutting the veggies is very therapeutic...
I left my sieved bouillon too long on the heat - result was an awful (to me) salty soup that just looked nice. Too bad, better luck next time.

Second class was a demo. Snotty egg omelettes - French style.
French style means always three eggs and the omelette should also be a bit runny. Not my kind of omelette.... Well, chef made about 6 omelettes. Looked good and tasted OK.
Then he did a roast chicken (oven). Yes, the oven again at 200C, using a nice metal pan, easy to burn-burn-burn your hands... yes, I did it again, but not too bad at all.

I'll spare you the details, but my chicken turned out to be great. (Little) chef loved it.
We also did 'turning artichokes'. You need really sharp knives for that. It was quite easy actually when you use the right knife - the breadknife. Who would have thought..?

This was the vegetable we had with the chicken. It was also filled with nicely cut strips of crunchy carrots, daikon and celeriac. Not bad, I did a pretty good job.

Class finished at 21.15 . It has been quite a long day.

Took home the rest of the chicken (90%) and just ate it all with a nice glass of red wine. It's now 10.30 pm and I'll have a quick shower and go to bed

PS: we only had one petit bierre between classes.....
who said that chefs are always alcoholics....