Tonight's class was in large part a review of the different cuts. We prepared a number of different vegetables, all of which we had to cut in different sizes. I am not sure why they had a whole class in this or why we had it now rather than earlier. In fact, we had so much down time, chef showed us a few different preparations of pasta at the end. But back to the vegetables...
We made an "assiette de crudites" or a plate of simple salads. We started by making two dressings, a lemon vinaigrette ("citronette) and a white wine vinaigrette. We julienned carrots and put these in the citronette. Then we threw tomatoes in boiling water for a minute, shocked them in cold water and then peeled and seeded them. Once we salted them and let them sit for a while, we put some vinaigrette on them. We also sliced red cabbage and put this with some vinaigrette. We also made a mushroom salad. We sliced the mushrooms and tossed them with chopped tarragon and vinaigrette. I actually really liked the mushroom salad and I don't usually like raw mushrooms.
That was all for the vinaigrettes. The next salad was with celery root and was basically a celery root coleslaw. This was my favorite salad we made for the night. I typically have my celery root cooked but this gave me a whole new set of ideas of what I can do with celery root. We julienned the celery root and put salt & pepper, white wine vinegar, mayonaisse, mustard, and a little lemon juice on top. We also made a cucumber salad with creme fraishe, lime juice, and mint. I thought this was a bit creamy. I like cucumber salad but I have made it with yogurt in the past and I think I'll continue making it that way.
We also cooked macedoined carrots, turnips, and string beans with peas alanglaise (in boiling salted water). After we drained these we mixed this with mayonaisse and learned a technique for plating. We took a round metal cookie cutter looking thing and pushed the veggies into this round and then removed the cutter so that we had this beautiful looking round of colorful veggies. Apparantly, this used to be an extremely popular salad in parisian bistros.
Our final preparation was vegetables a la Grecque. In this method, we cooked the vegetables in a mixture of olive oil, onions, white wine, toasted coriander, black peppercors, lemon, and a bouquet garni. We made zucchini, caulflower, and mushrooms in this method. We tasted these in the next class because they are supposed to get more flavorful after a few days. I thought they were okay but nothing special and most of the class agreed.
Since we had extra time, chef, who previously worked in one of Mario Batali's kitchens, demonstrated how to make some simple and delicious pasta dishes. First he explained that cooking with dry pasta is perfectly acceptable, but you should use a good one that looks powdery and feels coarse because it will absorb the sauce better. Chef also dumped a huge amount of salt into the water for cooking. He made a pasta aglio e olio with chili flakes in which he put good olive oil, crushed garlic and chili flakes in a pan and toasted briefly. He then added some of the pasta cooking water and the cooked pasta and finished with a bit of olive oil to plate. The next pasta was a cheese sauce. He added the cooked pasta to melted butter and then added pasta water and a mixture of parmesan cheese and pecorino and cooked and stirred until the cheese melted. This one was excellent. It was like an alfredo sauce that was less heavy and had a stronger cheese flavor rather than being excessively creamy. The next pasta he made was a tomato and pancetta sauce. He ran a plum tomato through a ricer and then added this to diced pancetta and diced red onion and tomato paste that he cooked slightly in a pan. He added pasta water as needed to keep this sauce moist until he added the pasta and plated it. This was also very tasty and something I'll try at home.
Glad that we're on to fish next! Until then,
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