Back "home" from a very enjoyable dinner - we dined at the Colavita Center's Caterina de Medici, where they serve some wonderful Italian food. My meal started off with a 6 antipasti dish - cucumber salad, a curried pasta salad, roasted red peppers, tomatoes and anchovies, olives, and a fennel and orange salad. Great way to start off the meal! Judging from my colleagues reactions to their starts, the meal was getting off to a better beginning than last night's dinner, which varied in reactions from loving it to really not enjoying it at all. Oh, just for the record, I missed last night's dinner - I wanted more to get a lay of the land, took some great photos of the Poughkeepsie train station and the adjoining bridges crossing the Hudson, grabbed a slice of pie (pizza), an apple, and some apple juice for dinner. I know, not that much food, but during the course of the day, we've been eating almost every couple of hours, so I didn't really feel any need for food.
So, the antipasti - that was the start, and I had a halibut with fava beans, peas, black kale, and cherry tomatoes for dinner - wonderful! I couldn't pinpoint the flavor of a particular spice on the halibut, but it was really good. Light, not too heavy, proportion was still large, but digestible. Final course, I selected parmesan reggiano w/a balsamic traditionale - parmesan chunks with a drizzle of balsamic. Wonderful finish - salty, sweet, dense, light, all at the same time. Wines also accompanied our dinner, the first was a varietal white, smelled very sweet, but was dry on the tongue. Light, very lightly fruity, not syrupy, and the flavor didn't linger long on the palate post-taste. The red was a valpolicella, fuller bodied. Didn't drink any, but I did have a light taste of both.
So today's program! We had our hands in pan methods - pan-frying, stir-frying, and deep-frying. Each team was responsible for three dishes - my team - Susan, Rebecca, and myself - was responsible for a "rainbow beef" dish, a "garden treasures" dish, and a consomme. The two stir-fries were pretty simple from my perspective - but then, as Hubby pointed out, having our team do the stir fry wasn't terribly fair to the other teams, as he equated our task at hand today to having a Latin-American person take beginner's Spanish. One difference we had was that we blanched the vegetables first, prior to stir-frying - at home, I put everything into the wok and add a touch of water to steam in the pan, instead of separating out the blanching part of the process.
Rainbow beef - we thinly sliced beef loin, and marinated the sliced beef in egg and corn starch. We then (and this was part of today's lesson) prepared all our other ingredients mise en place - everything was ready, chopped, and lined up in individual bowls for the cooking process. Needless to say, this step helps ease the cooking quite a bit, as it allowed us to just throw the ingredients into the pans one by one without having to run all over the kitchen to find just what we needed. The accompanying vegetables for this dish were julliened bell peppers and, improvisation, carrots. We also added the standard stir-fry combination of scallions, ginger, and garlic to flavor the oil. Additonal flavorings were oyster sauce, soy sauce, hot bean paste (which Susan and I had no qualms about putting just a little more bam into the dish - another heaping spoonful into the pan - wha ha ha ha ha ha!), ground black pepper, and sugar. The finishing touch on the dish was sesame oil.
I know, sugar, in a savory dish - it does make sense though, as the sugar helps to cut the salty flavoring of the dish. It does not equate, however, with adding less salt or less soy - the sugar, with the saltiness, helps to create a balance on our tongues. Just trust me on this - Dad and I had a long discussion about this very topic just last week!
Garden Treasures - we blanched broccoli florets, carrots, celery, yellow squash, and zucchini. Quick note - easiest way to shock the vegetables when you take them out of the blanch - have a metal colander in a larger ice-water-bath-filled bowl. Just make sure the water does actually come into the colander. Throw in your veggies, and voila - lift out the colander, and your veggies come free of the ice bath sans the ice. We had a refresher experience with that step today.
We then heated up the wok, with some oil, tossed in the standard scallion-ginger-garlic mixture, and then tossed in the veggies. A quick stir-fry, added some salt and ground pepper, as well as finished with sesame oil, and we were done. Two relatively quick dishes - but prep time is extensive.
Now for my favorite part - the CONSOMME!
I've never made a consomme, but I have read some account of Jacques Pepin's first job in Paris, working at a restaurant, not knowing better and stirring a consomme in the making. What I understood when I read that account was that the consomme consisted of some sort of a foam cloud, of impurities from the broth below, that was not to be disturbed. It simmers slowly, meticulously, to bring the broth to a developed clarity with a lot of flavor. Some may think it's just a broth - it really is much more. Read on...
So we took some stock from yesterday's labors, which had chilled overnight to a gelatinous consistency. We skimmed off the fat from the top and reserved the stock in the fridge to keep it chilled. We had sliced chicken, chopped a mirepoix (onions, leeks, celery, parsley stems, and carrots), and chopped a tomato. We also had egg whites. We mixed in the high consomme pot (tall but small stock pot, open area to height ratio is about 1:3) the egg whites, chicken, and mirepoix. We then mixed in the stock and mixed well. All these ingredients start off cold - very important. We then brought this mixture to a boil, but not to a rolling boil. The egg whites, with the other solid items, start forming what is called a "raft" on top of the stock - this raft is a rather solid layer of egg white foam with other solids. The correct way, the raft would cling to the sides of the pot, and we would allow release of pressure from a small hole we make in the center. Ours, however, was simmering at the edges, but no worry.
As soon as the soup got to a boil AND the raft looked relatively solid, we lowered the temperature as much as possible to allow the consomme to simmer quite gently, so as to not destroy the raft and remix all the egg white into the stock, resulting in a cloudy consomme. The small hole in the center, we made with a ladle, to release the heat pressure, and to also put in our spice bag (we wrapped in cheesecloth some thyme, peppercorns, and some other herbs - I was busy watching the consomme and missed what my team partners wrapped up in the sachet d'epices). This gently simmered for about an hour and a half.
What results is, in theory, and ultra-pure stock, free of impurities and filled with flavor, from the spices and from the vegetables. As we ladled out the consomme, we tipped the pot slightly, and pressed down with our ladle on the raft. The consomme underneath, we ladled into a chinois (Chinese hat seive) lined with cheesecloth. I have to say, it really was wonderful to first make this consomme, and then to enjoy it - the flavor is divine, and really sublime.
So that was our day in a quick wrap-up! It is now getting late, and I best be getting my sleep before tomorrow starts up again. So far, it's been good - no bout of sickness, no problems with hunger or thirst (as the CIA seems inclined to make sure we don't go 2 hours without something for our palates), and I've been balancing my meals with portion-sizing and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Oooh, one more thing - our mid morning snacks (I feel like one of those hobbits "do we get third breakfast?), we've been enjoying some of the fruits of the pastry/baking classes' labor. This morning, our mid-morning (read: 8:15) snack had some scones, with ham, bell peppers, and celery in them. So good - savory scones, I will have my hand at them upon my return home!
Until tomorrow - good night!
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