Stocks to Stock

In this class, we learned a lot about the preservation of food. Everything from smoking to salting to brining. To start, we carefully made and assembled Salade Nicoise which has canned tuna as one of the main ingredients. My partner and I started by putting potatoes on to boil (start in cold water) and hard boiling eggs. Now, there is a bit of an art to hard boiling an egg. First, you must always start with cold water, then add salt and vinegar. Boil for 10 minutes and then quickly submerge the egg in an ice water bath. Promptly peeling the egg under water while hot will significantly aid in the peeling process.

While the potatoes/eggs boiled we prepped the lettuce, green bell peppers, green beans, tomatoes and olives. To peel the tomatoes we cored and submerged them in boiling water for about 30 seconds. This made the skin easy to remove without cooking the rest of the tomato. The green beans were cooked for about 4 minutes a l'anglaise.

After cutting everything and marinating lightly in a champagne vinaigrette we assembled the salad on a plate and garnished with nicoise olives and parsley. Beautiful!

After indulging in some salad we made Potage St. Germain aux croutons (split pea soup with croutons). The soup didn't particularly excite me but the croutons were sinful! The croutons were probably the most fabulous thing that happened all night (maybe with the the exception of homemade chocolate oreo ice cream after dinner). We sauteed cubes of bread in butter until golden brown and crispy. Amazing!

Class finished with the chef demonstrating the preparations for duck confit. This starts with liberally salting the duck and applying other seasonings such as garlic, thyme and bay leaf. On Thursday we will cook it in duck fat and continue the process. He also showed us the preparation for Brandade de morue which I found kind of fishy but interesting. It's one of those things that's probably better with wine.