Talk About Old School

Yesterday we did veal and turkey scallopini, the former lightly breaded and the latter just dusted in flour.  Sure, both are very old recipes, but they are classic, easy, and good to have in your repertoire.  However, if you EVER see me plate a dish with the garnish we used for the veal, call a looney bin or a sniper STAT. You can choose, either one is fine with me if I'm that far gone.  What garnish am I talking about?  Capers, hard boiled eggs (the white and the yellow), parsley, anchovies, olives and lemon slices.  If you can't quite grasp yet what is so wrong with that, you will see what I mean when you view the photo below.  It seriously surpasses Old School plating and should be called plating from the Dark Ages. 

The veal cutlets and some of "ze veg" and garnish for the plate.

A little taste of the garnish I was talking about: lemon slices topped with olives wrapped in anchovies.  This was the better part of the garnish.  The worst part comes later but actually has a lot to do with those hard boiled eggs you see innocently sitting on the left, acting like it's normal for them to be included in this dish.

We lightly breaded the veal.

And then made it pretty.

Next we took apart the hard boiled eggs.

And first pushed the whites through this "tamine" and then the yokes.  I'm not going to talk about how old that contraption is or how long that takes simply because you don't want to hear me whine that much.

We start to cook the veal.

And at the end, we add so much butter my heart almost stopped just watching the veal cook.

And now you see what I mean.  That is the plate onto which I had to put the delicious, buttery, crispy veal.  Chopped capers in a semi-circle?  Check.  Boiled egg yokes pushed through a sifter in a semi-circle? Check.  Chopped curly parsley in a semi-circle? Check.  The whites of the boiled egg also pushed through the sifter and in a semi-circle? Check.  Surrounded by carved lemons, wait for it...in a semi-circle?  Check.  My sanity at that point?  Nonexistant.

No comment.

Moving on to the turkey.  I quickly browned it in the pan.

Threw some mushrooms and shallots into the same pan.

Deglazed with a little alcohol.

Poured in some cream and stock to make a sauce and put the turkey back into the pan.

And plated it.  Yes, I know, maybe I put a little too much sauce, but the other day Chef told me that the French people love their sauce.  They love to have lots of sauce on their plates and this sauce tasted darn good, so I was putting all of it.  FYI, the above pic is classic because it shows how Chef just cuts right into our dish the second we put it down in front of him.  I barely had time to snap a pic before he had destroyed what I had worked for all afternoon in order to see if it was cooked properly.  I guess I can't blame the guy since that is his job.  Sometimes, I'd secretly like to, though.