PICA: Adventures in Culinary School part 2
Today was hungry hippo day where I survived on energy bars. Then Chef Scott had to show up with a plate from the advanced class showing us duck two ways: duck breast, and confit, with nectarine jam. Accompaniments on the plate are a berry? reduction, freshly foraged berries (by Chef Scott himself!), and duck crackling bits. Chef Patrice took a bite and then told the rest of the class to try some so we could get an idea of what was to come :) It was super tasty. We also got another plate later with quail eggs and stuff but I only had a bit of mushroom, but it was really tasty mushroom!
So really what we worked on today was more knife work. We went over pont-neuf, bâton/large dice, bâtonet/medium dice, matchstick/small dice, and turning. I was competent enough except for the turning... the poor class! We all started with whole potatoes and as we worked and tried to fix our mistakes our potatoes slowly shrunk more and more... Chef Patrice made it look so easy and natural, but it's really much harder than it looks! I'll definitely need to use Chef Julian's tip and practice on some eggs at home...
We started off with potatoes, and after we made a bunch of bâton sized pieces they were set aside for deep frying as pomme frites for later! Chef Patrice tossed them with some salt and they were delish! Well, I was also hungry so I gobbled quite a few down...
I didn't take too many photos, but I did try to get one that showed the difference between small dice, medium dice, and matchstick. Then of course we finished off the rutabagas so I had a whole pile of matchstick and small dice pieces on my chopping board.
I really have to work on my precision and knife skills for the future!
Also, here's Tony cutting up some butter :D
So really what we worked on today was more knife work. We went over pont-neuf, bâton/large dice, bâtonet/medium dice, matchstick/small dice, and turning. I was competent enough except for the turning... the poor class! We all started with whole potatoes and as we worked and tried to fix our mistakes our potatoes slowly shrunk more and more... Chef Patrice made it look so easy and natural, but it's really much harder than it looks! I'll definitely need to use Chef Julian's tip and practice on some eggs at home...
We started off with potatoes, and after we made a bunch of bâton sized pieces they were set aside for deep frying as pomme frites for later! Chef Patrice tossed them with some salt and they were delish! Well, I was also hungry so I gobbled quite a few down...
I didn't take too many photos, but I did try to get one that showed the difference between small dice, medium dice, and matchstick. Then of course we finished off the rutabagas so I had a whole pile of matchstick and small dice pieces on my chopping board.
I really have to work on my precision and knife skills for the future!
Also, here's Tony cutting up some butter :D