As we prepare for our last week in the kitchen with our finals in the kitchen and theory we put together a full meal. The day starts with an appetizer that needs to be plated by 9:00 a.m. followed by the main of stuffed chicken supreme with a white sauce, ratatouille, and tourned potatoes to be plated at 11:00 p.m. and a dessert of chocolate mousse plated by 12:00 p.m. It's all about the timing and mise en place today.
After yesterday, I don't have the panic attack and get started on preparing my mise en place. I've got sliced onions sprinkled with thyme, sliced bacon and garlic macerated with salt. The pan is hot and I start with sweating the onions. Chef would like to taste the caramelized onions in this dish. I've got my veal stock in a pot heating and my arborio rice ready to add to the pan.
It's going well for me and I'm working on my garnish. Chef has pancetta in the box and I decide to take three slices and place them in a large pan and cook them in the onion. What I'm trying to do is keep it's shape of a round. I think that the oven also allows for less grease. It's working for me and I have three rounds for the garnish. I do well with this dish on my plating as well as taste. So far so good.
Our next dish is more complicated with the number of ingredients and the techniques required. For the chicken supreme we need to butcher a chicken. The chicken supreme is deboned chicken breast and drumette stripped of it's meat so that you see the bone only. With the bones we are making our own chicken stock that will be used for the white sauce. The first thing to do is make the farce (stuffing). I've got this on the go and leave it to cool because I'll be adding the meat from the thigh of the chicken and then grinding it with the mushroom, parsley, onion mixture in the Robo Coup. My chicken is seasoned with salt and pepper and I'm stuffing it with the farce. Skin side goes down on the pan of hot oil to sear for nice colour. Once it's ready (the skin will loosen from the pan) I put it in the oven to finish cooking.
My mise en place for the ratatouille is ready and I've got that going in the pot. I'm adding an extra vegetable of brussel sprouts to my plate and need to blanch them. I so busy working on my tourne potatoes and have forgotten about my white sauce. My onions were burnt and so was the pan :-(. I have to start over and it sets me back. But I don't forget about the sauce this time around. I'm quickly running out of time now and I can only tourne two potatoes. I need to get them in the boiling water or they won't get a chance to cook. I know that I won't have time to saute them so instead I toss them in some butter and salt. I think they look nice, but I know that they don't have the colour that Chef wants.
It's getting close to 11:00 p.m. and I'm starting to plate my dish. I manage to get my plate over to the staging area a minute or two late. Chef likes the appearance of my plate and that my chicken has been cooked perfectly, but does mention a few technical errors. I'll need to work on my tourne potatoes in picking up the pace. I need to make sure that they are cooked and sauteed giving them good colour. My ratatouille is overcooked but has nice flavour. The vegetables should be al dente ~ I'll need to time them better next time.
Two dishes under my belt and one more to go. Yesterday we did most of the prep on our chocolate mousse dessert and we only need to plate it today. I've got one more garnish to create and I've decided on some sugar work. I'm going to use a random pattern because I don't have a lot of time. A few raspberries, mint leaves, candied lemon zest, blackberry couli and sugar work will be used to plate.
My plating doesn't go as I'd like it to. I forgot to bring my squeeze bottle and trying to plate my couli doesn't go too well for me with a spoon. I need more work on this dish to perfect my chocolate mousse to get it more light and airy. I couldn't remember how to make the sugar for the sugar work so tried to make it with lemon juice and sugar instead of water and sugar. It's all about trial and error. You only learn from your mistakes and from this you get better. My candied lemon zest was an experiment and that went well. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose. As long as you learn it really doesn't matter which.
Back at home I play around with plating thinking about how I can plate my chocolate mousse dessert. Not only is it fun plating ~ it's also fun eating what I plate.
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