Sauces, stock experiemnts, and inspired food!

So here we are again, another week in review. I just can't seem to get to it during the week, and now that I've finished my first two flex assignments (My Favorite Food, Food Borne Outbreak...I know, nice combo, huh?), I'm wide awake at 1 am, thinking about zabaglione and salmonella poisoning (unrelated, fortuntately). So, I figured I'd do a quick catch up, and post a few pics of my self-imposed homework of making stocks, as well as some yummy food I've been inspired to make.

I completed both a veal stock (a bit heavy on the tomato, but I like it) that took 24 hours plus to make. I didn't follow a standard recipie (what y'all are used to looking at, with specific quantities of ingredients, preparation and cooking times, and other assorted directions), but instead followed what's called an instructional recipie, which basically means they list the basic ingredients that can be used, but not in specific quantities, and mainly discuss the procedure of how to make it. It gives a student (or anyone) a chance to think about how it's made, and gives flexibility on the rest...Escoffier's first cookbook Le Guide Culinaire (one of the first cookbooks ever to be written) is mainly filled with these. He's also credited with coming up with what's known as the brigade system, a.k.a. kitchen job titles and rank (i.e. modern day: executive chef, sous chef, saucier, etc.). He's pretty much the father of modern day cooking, the world over. Oh, those Frenchmen, they've been obsessed with food for quite some time. :-) In any case, the veal stock turned out well, and is now bagged and frozen for future use in soups and sauces, and I moved on to a very successful chicken stock. Even better this time, perfect color, clarity and taste! I could practically taste the chicken soup et al that will come from it!

So this week we've been learning about the five "mother sauces," from which all other "small sauces" are made (makes me think of "the One Ring" in Lord of the Rings, but enough with the geek stuff), and we even were able to try our hand at making a couple. We witnessed our Chef Instructor's demo of Espagnole sauce, which is basically a brown sauce with added tomatoes, thanks to the Spanish bride of Louis XIII. This is one of the mother sauces, from which you get your demi-glace, that you make things like port wine mushroom sauce, Bordelaise, Robert or Charcutiere sauces. The other mother sauce we saw demoed was Veloute, essentially white veal stock combined with roux (clarified butter & flour). Thursday we got to make our first Bechamel, which I have to say, my cooking partner and I made an extremely nummy Mornay sauce from. Triva for you: Mornay is the original French sauce version of Alfredo, which isn't Italian at all but a corrupted American invention of the same sauce. I had my friend Maryam over that night for dinner, I put it over shell pasta and added some procuitto...delish!!! She said she's really liking this "Jen going to culinary school" thing. :-D I also made a caprese salad with fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, finished with olive oil, Mediteranean sea salt and aged cherry balsamic vinegar. Mmmmm...I may have to repeat that meal at some point.

Friday was all about emulsion. We made our own mayonaise (a condiment of which I'm not fond, but I do have to admit, homemade is MUCH better), and Hollandaise. The thing you have to watch out for is breaking the eggs, and I don't mean the shell. You can easily end up with curdled or scrambled eggs doing both these recipies, and as we were doing this with wire whips (no blenders!), I was glad to have a male partner to use his "brute force" as he put it. Yes, I let him do a lot of the whisking, but not until after I'd started and my arm started aching badly. Apparently, I'll need to go to the gym and lift some weights or something, or maybe I should invest in one of those Shake Weights. ;-) One of the most interesting things I found out about emulsion in mayonaise is that it creates a very stable, safe food, that doesn't have to be refrigerated. This is totally contradictory to what I thought before, I always avoided pasta, egg or potato salads at picnics (you know the ones that look like they've been sitting in the sun all day...ewww!) because I figured the mayo had gone bad. Our instructor corrected this falsehood, and said it's actually everything else in it that goes bad. Mayo does not have to be refrigerated, as the eggs chemically change in the process...the other ingredients (salad oil, vinegar, mustard) can all be stored in your cupboard without refrigeration, and once the eggs are emulsified with them, the whole kit & kaboodle is ok. Facinating!

Ok, enough with the food trivia, I've got to finish this post before 2 am...we're making tomato sauce (the last of the mother sauces) tomorrow! Until then, enjoy the pics of stocks in progress and inspired foods I've been making! I didn't get a picture of the flourless chocolate cake I made this evening for Trisha and Corina, as it wasn't pretty (time to get a new springform pan, mine leaks), but it tasted great! If I can find a good recipie for individual chocolate tortes/cakes, Chef Blanca might feature it on her new menu! :-D I met Chef Blanca and her business partner Hector (who will be in charge of front of the house) and they're both great! The restaurant looks fantastic, even in "construction mode," I can see their vision, and it's coming together nicely. Really looking forward where that might take me in my culinary education...