Reinventing Reality

French Cooking Class Part 2

The way Jim structured the cooking class was that we would learn new skills and practice during the week, and then on Friday (last day/night), we would plan, prep and make a two course farewell dinner.  Early in the week the group began discussing what we wanted to make (an entree and dessert), and Jim specified that it had to be something special and - of course - cheffy.  After much debate we settled on rabbit with a mustard sauce and crepes suzette with praline ice cream.  I petitioned hard for the praline ice cream because I don't usually like orange desserts, but more on that later.  With that nailed down, we continued with the class.

One of our favorite things we made during the week was baked mini camemberts with garlic, orange croutons and raspberry confiture (aka jam).  They look and taste impressive with hardly any work.  

Pity, we aren't going to give you the recipe because you must come to Tahoe where we will make them for you.  We promise, this dish alone will be worth the trip and thats not even counting swimming in the lake, skiing, snow shoeing, hanging by the fire, etc.  

But we aren't all bad, what about a lovely creme brulee recipe with homemade berry ice cream (just ask if you are interested)?  YUM.  This time we were prepared for the small portion size due to the richness and ironically everyone at the table agreed they could have eaten 3x the amount of creme brulee that was in those tiny squares.  

We used vanilla pods that were fresh from the market and you could see/taste the vanilla in the brulee - Red and I agreed that the pods are amazing if you can find them fresh - don't bother with dried version.  But no judgement, we will still have vanilla extract in our pantry.

Next we made moules marinieres (mussels) and sorry, again no pictures, but this one is definitely worth making at home.  We cleaned about 400 mussels and then made a lovely garlic, lemon, white wine cream sauce - definitely one of the best dinners because it was so simple and fun - and the french bread was heaven dipped in that sauce.  

Ok, now the pics.  We had quite the time making the pancakes for our dessert - I was first to make one on the special crepe hot plate and I had to concentrate very hard...maybe a little too hard:

 

After comparing notes, American men really are bigger.  Ok she was actually clapping because I had done a half decent job with the crepe, and then I got really excited after I flipped it:

Its harder than it looks, ok??  I was really proud of myself.  But then Red did this and showed me up (and yes, it landed right in the pan):

Anyway, then we moved on and butchered some rabbits - this is really neat if you can get over having a skinned head still attached to the body of Bugs Bunny (the head still had the eyes and the tongue was hanging out of its mouth - actually that looked morbidly funny).  We portioned out the "rack" (its so tiny!), the loin and legs, and the rest went into our rabbit stock for the sauce (except we did make an appetizer with the liver).  Later in the day we seared the meat:

 

And then made a delicious mustard white wine sauce which we served with the finished dish (we also served mashed potatoes, blanched green beans, honey glazed carrots and a shallot tatin):

Rabbit is actually a very healthy protein and we learned an interesting recipe for the sauce which can be used on many other meat dishes: reduce some stock (preferably made from the carcass that you butchered), add white or red wine depending on the dish, reduce/cook off the alcohol, add jams, special vinegars, mustard, cream or any other flavor enhancing ingredient and voila, you've got a delicious sauce.  Best part - our meal was really tasty!  

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for dessert.  While the actual crepes were good, the sauce was awful (my distrust of orange desserts continues)...thank god for the praline ice cream, it saved the day! But it wasn't worth taking pictures of (aka we forgot).

Anyway, that meal marked the end of our class in France.  We learned loads of kitchen/cooking skills and have been practicing them ever since.  While some of the food was not our taste or style, we really appreciated the lessons and definitely walked away with a few recipes that we will use or tweak to fit our life at home.  Can't wait to try them out on you!

French Cooking Class Part 1

So timing is of the essence when eating lunch in France.  The observance of the "siesta" is strictly enforced making it difficult for weary road trippers to grab a lunch on the go.  As a result yours truly have had to grab meals at McDonalds on a few occasion because this is the ONLY PLACE to find any sort of food between 2-6pm.  How does this relate?  When we rolled up to our french cooking class a collection of McDonalds wrappers and happy meal toys spilled out of the car soiling the pristine grounds of the Cook In France facility.  A great first impression from the future restauranteurs.    

The French cooking class started with Jim, our chef, making us a dinner of cold tomato soup, leg of lamb (poached in the cool sous vide machine) and panna cotta with berries.  The sauce on the lamb was so good I wanted to drink it, so we knew good things were coming.  He also served this garlic butter popcorn as a snack with pre-dinner drinks...um yeah, I hounded him for that recipe (which turned out to be a simple trick - butter infused with garlic and drizzled on after popping the corn!).

So we should come clean: we were more hands on in this class, so there are fewer pics...we lost track of time.  That said, the first day started with us making chocolate mouse and ice cream.  The mouse was fairly easy (although you must be careful with the egg yolks/whites) and the result was an incredibly rich chocolate bomb.  The ice cream was also not difficult but the method needs to be seen in person and you need to have an ice cream maker - so maybe if/when we get a machine we will have an ice cream nerd party for fellow ice cream fanatics (the simplicity of the recipe/method is amazing).  Finished dessert plate:

Everyone said, "those towers are kind of short and that ice cream scoop looks small"...we thought we were getting short changed.  Sigh.  Although delicious, Red and I did not finish ours.  They were so rich (and Red thought too bitter) that we simply had to stop.  That taught me.  But anyway, we prepped all of that in the morning and then moved on to the main course.

Duck.

We got to butcher whole ducks (that was actually really cool and informative) and then learn how to make duck confit.  In theory its simple: duck legs, salt, more salt, more salt, more salt, let them sit for several days so the moisture drains out of the meat, rinse the salt off, softly boil/cook the legs in duck fat for several hours.  Really healthy.  But unfortunately, like all things salty and fatty, pretty tasty.  After the cooking-in-fat part, you stick them on a baking sheet and broil them for a few minutes to crisp up the skin.  The chef, and all of our British classmates, call the broiler "the grill", so they kept saying, "stick it under the grill"...we had such a hard time with that at first.  Number one, mates, how do you stick something UNDER THE GRILL?  Number two, how do you crisp the skin on the grill from the top?  It caused confusion...but then again, so many of their sayings had us confused or laughing - needless to say we loved our new friends.  Ok, back to the duck - here was the finished product (with a delicious duck-stock/wine/fig jam sauce - the French do know their sauces):

The next day we made fougasse (Focaccia bread) but we don't have a single picture - too busy making the dough, kneading, topping, baking and eating.  But if you come to Tahoe we can make some...that is supposed to sound inviting.

The next day we went to a market in the local medieval town of Sarlat and tasted fois gras, saw great fresh fish stalls and were tempted by the most amazing spice vendor ever - his place truly smelled incredible.

That was half of his display.

So during the first few days we also made a cheffy little salad (Garden Veggie, Orange and Chorizo Salad with Orange and Walnut Vinaigrette) but unless you like making your own dressing (which we highly recommend), then you won't find it interesting and as luck would have it we don't have a picture...so you are off the hook (those interested, ask for the recipe!).  Oh, Jim's favorite word was cheffy...a cheffy pinch of salt (aka a decent bit), a cheffy glug of wine (a big glass into the pot), some cheffy chopping (chopping veggies properly/quickly/small/whatever) - just do it with style and its probably cheffy.

Anyway, to end the first half of the week, he let us play around with caramel.  We whipped up a batch of incredibly hot liquid sugar and proceeded to make caramel baskets:

Jim told us that these would be coming back into style any decade now.  I suppose he was trying to tell us that caramel baskets are not cheffy.  Despite his warning one of our British friends has promised to go home and do an 80s party featuring caramel baskets.  

Anyway, although Jim didn't like our baskets (his assistant crumpled them up while no one was looking to make sure we didn't use them for dessert that night!) he did show us what he considers to be cheffy caramel:

Apparently it is quite the "in" thing to experiment with unsweetened caramel...sounds like an oxymoron, hmm?  Yes, well real chefs know where to find these sugar substitutes that you can melt and play with but are quite a bit less sweet than real sugar.  They manipulate the faux caramel with various tools, in our case a metal tube used for molding food, and then you can add things into the middle of the caramel as it dries (usually various oils):

Jim is in the middle looking quite pleased with the results.

Anyway, it was really fun and all of the food we made was yummy (those interested in recipes please email!) - but thus far both Red and I had actually gotten more out of the skills/techniques he was teaching us.

Up next: creme brulee, baked mini camemberts with homemade croutons, moules marinieres (mussels), butchering rabbits and praline ice cream.  

Miss you guys!