Soups and the Top Chef-like practical exam...

Our final chapter of Module 1 was soups. One thing that I never really thought about before starting culinary school is that all hot foods need to be served on hot plates (150 or so degrees) and cold foods need to be served on cold plates. Obviously, this means that we had to heat our bowls before serving our soups. There are a lot of different types of soups, but most start with sweating some vegetables for the base. I've made a lot of soups that started with sweating an onion, etc but I realized after this class that I didn't sweat them for long enough or on low enough heat. The key here is you don't want to brown the veggies because that caramelizes them and tends to overwhelm the other flavors in the soup (although there are exceptions to this like some onion soups).

The most important soup we made was the Cream of Broccoli soup. I know it sounds weird that this would be the case...what's so gosh darn important about broccoli?! Well, it's the soup we had to make for our final practical exam for Module 1 of culinary school. The first time we'd be graded on what we cooked. So rest assured we all paid really close attention to this one. The soup began with sweating diced onions, celery, leeks, and broccoli stems in butter (remember broc stems have an enormous amount of flavor so they're perfect for a soup base). While these sweat, we made a veloute by making a roux and then adding in chicken stock and a good amount of salt and a pinch of nutmeg and cayenne. Once this was done, we added the veggies to the veloute along with some chicken stock and cooked this until the veggies were tender. At that time, we pureed the soup and returned it to the pot to heat it to a serving temperature. Then we served it with some broccoli florets.

Beautiful Broccoli Soup - I'm ready for the Test!

That same class we also made a puree of carrot soup that I really, really liked. We began the soup by sauteing ground ginger, cumin, and fennel in some clarified butter than caramelizing some onions in this. After the onions were caramelized, we added some celery and carrots and sweated all the veggies. Next up was the liquid - some white wine and vegetable stock, which we simmered with the veggies until they were tender. Then, we pureed the soup and garnished it with some toasted pine nuts and fennel fronds. You know a soup is good when you don't mind eating it on an 80 degree day and I finished my bowl!

Puree on a hot day!

The final soup of the night was a consomme, which is a clarified stock. It's pretty gross to make because you mix together egg whites, a lean ground meat, veggies, and tomato and put this in a broth. You then bring this to barely a simmer and wait until all this floats to the top and forms what is called a raft. Then you make a whole in the raft and cook this at a simmer until the broth is clear. I'm not going to lie, its pretty wild to see how clear the broth becomes. See for yourself...

Let me clarify something - making consomme is a pretty gross process!

Our next soup class was hearty soups, bisques, and cold soups. There is something about cold soup that creeps me out...it just seems so wrong. I mean its not as low on my list as processed food but I'm about as likely to eat both. So, I'll write about the gazpacho we made first and get it over with. It was pretty easy to make - blanch, peel, seed, and chop some tomato. Then, add pepper, cucumber, onion, jalapeno, garlic, and some white bread and pureed this. Put in some tomato juice to thin it and some chopped cilantro, salt and pepper for seasoning. It just doesn't seem right to me to eat this with a spoon...I feel like it should be on a tortilla chip!

And now for the good stuff from this class...Lobster bisque and onion soup. In traditional bisques, the shells are actually cooked and pureed with the soup, but because shells are tough on blenders/processors we didn't puree these with the soup (I'm pretty glad about this because the idea of eating pureed shells is a bit disturbing). For the lobster bisque, I took on the lobster cooking...I am terrified of cooking lobsters because of the whole its still alive when you toss it in boiling stock to kill it thing and I want to overcome this fear because I really enjoy lobster. I killed 5 lobsters this class and now I feel a lot better about being responsible for murdering lobsters. While we removed the meat from the shells, we sweated some mirepoix in a pot. We put the lobster shells into the fish stock we were going to use and simmered this to add more flavor. When the mirepoix had sweated sufficiently, we added tomato paste and strained the shells from the fish stock and added this to the pot. We simmered this mixture with some rice and pureed it when everything was softened. Separately, we sauted the lobster meat in some butter and then flambed it with brandy (yes...yum!). We added some cream to the soup base and some seasonings (our group opted for some tarragon) and then ladled some soup over lobster meat in a bowl with some croutons. This bisque was every bit as delicious as it looks...

Lobster Bisque with lobster meat slaughtered by yours truly!

The onion soup we made was pretty sweet (in a sugar content way not in the slang for excellent way). I love onion soup, but this one was not rich enough for me. Although, we served it with a toast with melted cheese on top, which just brings a big goofy grin to my face regardless. We caramelized the onion until it was an amber brown, then we deglazed the pan with some apple brandy (which was a bit over-powering) and added veal stock. This was simmered for about 40 minutes. We seasoned it with salt and pepper and then ladled it into gratin bowls which we topped with toasts and cheese. This went under the broiler to melt.

Onion Soup that'll bring a smile to your face

The next night was our practical exam for all of module 1. We had to medium dice a potato, cook a cream of broccoli soup, and make a mayonaisse. To ensure that we would all finish in a staggered time line, we each picked a number from a hat to decide when we would start cooking. The first person began immediately and then each subsequent person started 5 minutes apart. I picked number three, which I thought was ideal. I have to admit I was very nervous. So when I got into the kitchen and began to chop veggies for my cream of broccoli soup, I decided that I should maybe do something else first, because my hands were shaking enough to make any activities with knives an ill-advised idea. Once I calmed down, I was able to finish my soup, make my mayo, and dice my potatoes without too many problems. When I was within 5 minutes of finishing, I had to announce that I was ready to the chef. Then, I had to present each of the three items to him for my grade. The soup portion included requiring that the bowl was heated. The only part that I didn't do very well was the dicing of the potato. Everything else was A-okay! When I finished this exam, I couldn't believe that I was already done with a fifth of culinary school. I feel like I have so much more to learn and I really can't wait to learn it!

One Module down, four more plus an externship to go!