The Count Today: Fish - 0 Me - 3

What a tragedy it was when I got to the kitchen today and realized that I had forgotten my camera at home.  I seriously felt naked without it, lost even.  I thought, "how will I ever update my readers on my adventures in the kitchen today?"  Well, the answer was simple, I was not going to be able to post photos of the Limade and Lieu Jaune fish that we were making.  So, I had to get over it and just focus on the fish.  Well, that paid off because both of my dishes today were cooked perfectly and the sauce was really good as well.  So, take that fish and sauce!  I plan to bask in the glory all day because it is always short-lived in culinary school.

Speaking of culinary school, below is an excerpt from an interview with Chef Daniel Boulud, a seriously famous Chef with a seriously good restaurant in NYC called Daniel.  Thanks to Chef Boulud for giving Ferrandi a shout out.  Here is a link to the entire interview, if you'd like to read it.

http://www.cookingschools.com/interviews/daniel-boulud/

Based on what you hear in the industry, what do you think are the five most respected and prestigious culinary schools in the world that really make a difference to students who graduate from these schools?

Le Ferrandi in France, French Culinary Institute in New York City, Culinary Institute of America in New York, The Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's New York Cooking School), California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, École des Arts Culinaires et de l'Hôtellerie in Lyon, And there's a school in Japan called Schuchi - I'm not sure if I'm spelling it correctly

Since I don't have any photos from school today, I'll leave you with a few photos of some of the gorgeous architecture in Paris. Enjoy.

Up to My Eyeballs in Fish!

And I thought I was fishmonger a month ago. I now officially feel like all I have ever done my whole life is scale, gut and filet fish and yet at the same time I haven't mastered it yet. So, I have to keep trudging forward into the abyss of fish.

If you're going to hack through a whole salmon, it pays to have a knife that looks like it could belong to Freddie Kreuger on steroids.

Chef demo-ing how to use said knife.

Daurade

One fish left whole, the other fileted, both scored.

Today we grilled saumon (salmon) and daurade (sea bream), cooked fennel, and made a bernaise sauce. Too bad that the whole time we were making the bearnaise sauce I just wanted a steak frites. I mean nothing tastes better with bearnaise than a juicy steak and some crispy french fries. Alas, that wasn't what I would be cooking or eating anytime soon, so I snapped out of my food day dream and back into the realm of fish.

The salmon was grilled quickly, finished in the oven and plated on top of the bearnaise sauce. Lucikly today, I conquered the sauce. After two days of problems with my sauces, I finally got it right. Nothing separated or thickened; it was just right. Believe me, just the fact that I had on two socks and my sauce was done right was a huge sigh of relief!

We cooked the fennel two ways. First, we used a bag vacuum and baked them in the oven with olive oil and seasoning. Second, we thinly sliced the fennel and sauteed it with essentially the same seasoning and olive oil we used in the bag vacuum. This way, we had two different textures of the fennel but the same flavors. Unfortunately for me, as I was reheating my fennel to plate it as garnish with the daurade someone who shall remain nameless in the group decided that even though a copper pot was full of fennel and being heated over a high flame that it was probably nobody's and should be thrown away. Yep. Someone threw away my fennel. I was astounded, flaberghasted even. When said person finally owned up to having thrown it out, I seriously couldn't even respond to him because I was so shocked that he would have thought for a split second that that was an appropriate action to take with someone else's food. Just because some people had finished and started to pick up the kitchen did not mean that it was time to start just throwing things away, especially when they were obviously being heated on the stove. Common sense, people. Use it. Lucikly, someone had leftover fennel, and I was able to use that to plate. Crisis averted, but not yet forgotten.

We cooked the daurade two ways as well. First, we fileted one fish (which by the way was a LOT easier than fileting the "treutle" on Tuesday). So either I am getting better or daurade is simply easier to filet. While I am sure it is a bit of both, let's just you and me pretend that it was all about me improving and not about one fish being easier than the other. Agreed?

Ok, back to the fileted daurade. We were originally going to grill this, but considering the following facts: it was 6:30 pm, we were supposed to be finished by 7 pm, there were 12 of us tryng to use a grill the size of my pinky finger and we hadn't started grilling anything yet, Chef made the executive decision to saute the filets in a pan. The other daurade we kept whole, stuffed it with fresh fennel, dried fennel and fennel seeds (you'd think that Chef is obsessed with fennel) and then grilled it and finished it in the oven.

In the end, two out of three of my dishes were acceptable: the whole daurade and the salmon. Unfortunately, the filets of daurade were slightly undercooked and Chef was more than slightly miffed about it. Oh, well, at least my sauce was good, my feet were clothed and it was quitting time!

One of the many bulbs of fennel we used.

Fennel in the bag vacuum.

And into a low heat oven.

Reduction that will be turned into the yummy bearnaise sauce.

Fearlessly whisking the egg yolks on the hot stove (which by the way we call a piano for some inexplicable reason).

Adding clarified butter to the sauce.

Sauce Bearnaise!

Grilling the salmon.

Ready for the oven.

Marinated daurade.  You might be asking yourself why did she put tree branches on her fish.  They are actually pieces of dried fennel.  I told you there was a fennel overload, but don't look at me.  Not my idea.

Grilling the daurade.

Finished daurade on top of someone else's fennel.

Finished salmon on top of bearnaise.  It's a sad looking plate.  Needs some "veg" in my opinion, but I only do what I am told.

Daurade filet on top of my own fennel before it was thrown away like trash!

Just one of those days

Have you ever had "just one of those days" where nothing goes right no matter how hard you try? Well, I had one today. It all started at 7:15 am this morning, when I should have been walking out the door, but was still sound asleep. Leaping out of the bed and throwing on some clothes, I barely remembered to grab a few euros so I could pick up something to eat on the way to school. We all know how much I love an almond croissant, but I just did not do it justice this morning as I shoved it down while half running to school. Something as tasty as an almond croissant deserves to be appreciated when eaten and I was guilty of treating it like a regular ol' pop tart (and a non-frosted plain one, at that).

Breathing a sigh of relief since I had arrived just in time to change into my chef's outfit and be in the kitchen on time, I realized something was wrong...


Yep. I only had one sock. Awesome.



Trout or "truetle" as Chef inexplicably called it all day ready to be scaled, gutted and filleted.



I chose my seven trout and got to work. Scaling went ok. As did taking the fins off. The minor cuts I told you about yesterday weren't too happy when I shoved them into a dead fish to pull out its internal organs, etc, but hey that's my job and I got over it fast. Then, all of a sudden on my last fish, I felt something a bit different. "What in the world is that," I thought to myself (although to be honest I'm pretty sure I said something other than world and which undoubtedly contains just four letters).



Eggs! One of my 'truetles' was preggers. Sorry Mama Trout!

Chef took all of the not so nice looking fillets that we did and ground them in the Robot Coupe to make a stuffing for the final product. Did I mention that he added a ridiculous amount of cream when making the stuffing or is that just a common assumption these days? Because it should be.

We took the fish carcasses (is that the correct plural form of carcass?) and made a fish stock or a fumet de poisson.

Then came what I like to call torture, but what Chef calls turning. Chef took about 4 seconds to demo how to "turn" a potato and then told us to "Allez" as if after that lightning bolt of a demo we were going to be able to miraculously turn 16 potatoes perfectly despite the fact that most of us had never done it before in our lives. Off we went, mumbling that a miracle is exactly what would have to happen to produce anything near his example.

After filleting and painstakingly taking out as many bones as could be found, we took the stuffing and placed it on one fillet and covered it with another. Sidenote: I forgot to mention yesterday that having millions of tiny bones is another way that fish seek their revenge.

Next, we rolled it into some plastic wrap and tied the ends.

Finally, we poached it in our fumet de poisson.

On to making the sauce. This stage is called "monter au beurre," where you add a lot of cold butter at the end of a sauce to finish it.

My attempt at turned potatoes. Yikes - not so great, but you have to start somewhere, right? At this point, things were starting to look up. Fish was poached, potatoes were as turned as they were going to ever be, and the sauce was tasting good. I was conquering the bad day. All my deep yoga breaths were working. I was cool as a cucumber.



That is until I plated the final product - stuffed trout with a reisling sauce - and I saw that my sauce had separated. Well, s**t. Not much could be done at this point other than take the plate to Chef. I guess I hadn't yet conquered my bad day, but at least it was almost over. I took the plate to Chef, fully knowing the onslaught of "C'est impossible! et C'est quoi ca?" (for my non-french readers: That's impossible and what is that?) would come my way for bringing him a broken sauce. And, it did. Along with "ze fish is undersalted and overcooked." Ouch. However, I disagreed with him on both counts regarding the fish. I think he was just mad at me about the sauce and decided to add injury to insult just for good measure. This technique is something you apparently learn somewhere on the road to being a French Chef, because they all seem to have it down pat.

Never fear, I wasn't going to let my bad morning ruin my whole day. It was a beautiful and warm day today. A perfect day for a picnic. So, B and I grabbed a big blanket, some cheese, a 4 euro bottle of wine and set of towards Place des Vosges (the oldest square in Paris) to lie in the grass, soak up the sunshine and enjoy a delicious French picnic. Along the way, we found a Jewish bakery and bought some amazing breads (pletzel and challah) to go along with our cheese and wine. We were prepared for the ultimate lazy afternoon. Until...

We encountered this noisy construction when we arrived at Place des Vosges as well as a sign saying that in the winter, the grass rests so no one can lie on it. Who made up that stupid rule? That's right. If you are reading this and you are the person who made up that rule, I'm calling it stupid.

Yet, being that it was "one of those days" I can't say that I'm too surprised that our fairytale picnic didn't turn out to be absolutely perfect.

After all of that, we made the best of it though. We grabbed a park bench away from the construction and broke out all our goodies and FINALLY the day started to turn around a bit.

I mean, how can it stay bad when you are in a park as gorgeous as this and you live in Paris? It was a perfect setting to forget all about the separated sauce and the so called overcooked 'truetle.' Thinking back, maybe I should have told Chef that perhaps the 'truetle' was overcooked but my trout was cooked just fine, Thank You!

Revenge of the Fish

Fish have a way of getting back at us humans for plucking them from the lovely ocean in which they live. First of all, their gills and fins are still dangerous weapons well after having gone "belly up." Why is it that a tiny little fin can make a tiny, yet sharp little cut on your finger and it hurts worse than, oh, I don't know, breaking a leg or perhaps getting guillotined? It's through those small, painful cuts that fish get revenge, especially when you later have to salt the water you are poaching them in and then squeeze lemon over them, inevitably getting both the salt and the lemon in the miniscule wound. They LOVE it in fish revenge heaven when that happens.

The other thing I have learned is that fish love to make you smell. Today is the first day of "fish week" and, well, I smell like a rotten, old fish. It doesn't really help that the fish we had today was just that - rotten and old. (Please take note of this and NEVER eat fish at a restaurant on Monday - it's usually not very fresh).

I have washed my hands more times than the CDC and Obama mandate you to in order to avoid the Swine Flu emergency. I have showered for 15 minutes in hot water and just for good measure washed my hands again. But to no avail. I should just give up. My husband is essentially living with fish woman and will be doing so for at least the next week.

So, fish, my beret is off to you. You've won at the revenge game, and quite frankly I'm ok with that. It's day one, and I already have battle wounds on my hands and smell horrendous. Could you maybe take pity on me the rest of the week? At least for the sake of my husband and anyone walking within a 3 foot radius of me on the street. Thanks.


They just look like they're out to get you, don't they?



I chose this lovely specimen to take on today.



And here is what was left of him when I was finished.

Sorry, fishy, but I had to take your eyes out so I can use your head in my court bouillon.

Garniture aromatique. Check. Smelly fish head sans eyes. Check. This just needs some white wine, water and seasoning and I will have something in which to poach the fish later.

In the meantime, we made rice pilaf.

Chef demonstrating how the French make hollandaise. Water bath? Double boiler? Puhlease, people, Chef seemed to sigh as he put his egg yolks in a copper pot and right onto the gas fired flat top. We were stunned as you can tell by the expressions of those in the photo. Later we were impressed when he didn't need a cheesecloth or a china cap/strainer because he was that confident that there were no pieces of cooked eggs in his sauce. Wow.

There he goes, just whisking the sauce into submission.

Then comes the bucket of clarified butter.

Which Chef ladles into the sauce. And with a quick hand clap, tells us to "Allez." Time for us to try.

I finish my sauce, not entirely confident that I shouldn't have passed it through a strainer, but confident enough to go ahead and plate and leave it up to the food gods. Good thing they were easy on me today.

The first fish, poached in the court bouillon looks like this. What's sad is that it is supposed to look like that. Now, don't everyone email me for the recipe of this one all at one time.

Moving on the the Skate.

Watch where you grab the Skate. It's a spiky little fellow.

And a slimy one at that!

After being poached, it comes out looking like this. Not too bad looking once the top layer is lightly scraped off.

However, when you take it off the wing/bone, it looks like this, which is just wrong. I mean, really. This looks like something you would find at a halloween haunted house party.

At least the day wasn't a complete bust. I took the ridiculous amount of rice pilaf we made at school and turned it into as good a version of beef fried rice as I could muster in my "little kitchen that could" for dinner tonight for B. He at least deserves a good meal if I'm going to be smelling like this all week!