Welcome one and all to the wonderful World of Cuisine III, where every night is a food filled extravaganza! No longer are we putzing around the kitchen, composing a dish or two. Now, for every two sessions we are preparing a four course meal, including a soup, a hot appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. The first night of each menu is spent doing all the prep work, and the next is all of the final cooking and plating. While this is a lot of work to undertake after a full day of work, one of the great things about being at this stage in our education is that we can finally do our own plate designs. Before, we had to hang back and see what the chef was going to do and then try to mimic him (which some of my cohorts still do), but now we are given free reign.
The soup du jour for this particular session was a cream of asparagus soup. The recipe was pretty basic, but turned out to be a mine field of mistakes. Even though I followed the recipe to a tee, I needed double the amount of stock to get it to the right consitency. You think someone would have caught that mistake by now- sheesh! We were left on our own to decide the garnish, so I went with a puff pastry round, which was supose to be a raft of sorts for the asparagus saute I was trying to place on top. Unfortunately it failed as a raft, but it still looked good and tasted good. Add a few dots of sour cream and you have a bowl of asparagusy goodness.
The next course was crab cakes, and I mean hello!... you had me at crab. While these crab cakes were perfectly lovely, what truly rocked my word was the roasted tomato vinaigrette that we made to dress the mixed greens. It was sublime! That with the tarragon aioli (tarragon + mayonnaise = yum!) and parmesan cheese cup pushed me over the limits of blissfulness.
The next course was a beef tenderloin en croute, which was kinda a throwaway in my book. Why take a perectly good piece of beef, wrap it in crepes, mushroom duxelles,
and puff pastry? The only thing that saved it was the absolutely delicious roasted garlic demi-glace. It was so good you could have eaten it by the spoon full (which now that I'm writing this, I'm recalling that that is precisely what I did.)
To round out the meal we totally needed something sweet, but not too rich after that mammoth piece of meat (which was destined for Kiari's kong). What better than a trio of strawberries? Ah, NOTHING! Anyone who knows anything about me knows about my profound love of strawberries. If I am going to die tomorrow and I can only have one last thing, it would be a pint of plump sun warmed strawberries. To start our strawberry tasting was a strawberry shortcake speckled with orange zest, filled with a strawberry/mint/balsamic salad (a Jamie creation), and whipped cream. Next on our strawberry voyage was a perfectly lovely strawberry sorbet, made by yours truly, spiked with just a touch of booze, followed by a chocolate dipped strawberry injected with, you guessed it, more booze! Can life get any better?
The soup du jour for this particular session was a cream of asparagus soup. The recipe was pretty basic, but turned out to be a mine field of mistakes. Even though I followed the recipe to a tee, I needed double the amount of stock to get it to the right consitency. You think someone would have caught that mistake by now- sheesh! We were left on our own to decide the garnish, so I went with a puff pastry round, which was supose to be a raft of sorts for the asparagus saute I was trying to place on top. Unfortunately it failed as a raft, but it still looked good and tasted good. Add a few dots of sour cream and you have a bowl of asparagusy goodness.
The next course was crab cakes, and I mean hello!... you had me at crab. While these crab cakes were perfectly lovely, what truly rocked my word was the roasted tomato vinaigrette that we made to dress the mixed greens. It was sublime! That with the tarragon aioli (tarragon + mayonnaise = yum!) and parmesan cheese cup pushed me over the limits of blissfulness.
The next course was a beef tenderloin en croute, which was kinda a throwaway in my book. Why take a perectly good piece of beef, wrap it in crepes, mushroom duxelles, and puff pastry? The only thing that saved it was the absolutely delicious roasted garlic demi-glace. It was so good you could have eaten it by the spoon full (which now that I'm writing this, I'm recalling that that is precisely what I did.)
To round out the meal we totally needed something sweet, but not too rich after that mammoth piece of meat (which was destined for Kiari's kong). What better than a trio of strawberries? Ah, NOTHING! Anyone who knows anything about me knows about my profound love of strawberries. If I am going to die tomorrow and I can only have one last thing, it would be a pint of plump sun warmed strawberries. To start our strawberry tasting was a strawberry shortcake speckled with orange zest, filled with a strawberry/mint/balsamic salad (a Jamie creation), and whipped cream. Next on our strawberry voyage was a perfectly lovely strawberry sorbet, made by yours truly, spiked with just a touch of booze, followed by a chocolate dipped strawberry injected with, you guessed it, more booze! Can life get any better?
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