Day 35: Black Box Without the Box

Another fun filled day in the kitchen! Chef tells us that we will be making polenta with a salad and macaroni and cheese. I've never had polenta let alone eaten it. All I know about polenta is that it is made with cornmeal. That you can buy it in the grocery store ~ I've seen it in the shape of a sausage in a yellow wrapper.

We start the day off with making the polenta because we need it to set before we will be using it. Polenta is made by cooking one part cornmeal to approximately three to four parts hot water. Our polenta will be infused with a few ingredients to give it flavour. We have added onion, Thai chili pepper, garlic, bacon all finely chopped. I've also added corn, salt, pepper, basil, oregano and thyme. I sauteed these and then added the cornmeal and water mixing until I got a smooth creamy texture. The polenta mixture was poured in to a loaf mold to set in the refrigerator to be used later to make a salad with.

I made a vinaigrette for the salad. The ingredients used are three parts apple cider vinegar (you can use red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, white vinegar, etc. instead if you like) to one part olive oil, minced garlic, minced Thai chili pepper, lime zest, lime juice, salt, pepper, honey, maple syrup, Dijon mustard (which is an emulsifier), fish sauce, and sesame seeds. Mix them all together and you get your dressing for the salad. Salad today is a spinach salad. We set this aside for later too. It will give the vinaigrette time for the flavours to mingle.

Chef has decided that we will be having macaroni and cheese for breakfast today. It's a pretty easy dish to create. We are adding caramelized onions, with about half a Thai chili pepper minced and minced garlic seasoned with salt and pepper, deglazed with white wine.

In a sauce pan we are making a roux ~ which is usually one part flour and one part butter (or fat). This is the thickening agent that will be used for the cheese sauce. The roux is tempered with hot milk which is the liquid used for the cheese sauce. I used a separate bowl to temper the roux using a whisk to combine to a smooth texture before adding to the milk which has already been seasoned with salt and pepper and a bay leaf. The milk mixture was cooked until it started to thicken. This is usually when it coats the back of a wooden spoon. With the stove off, grated cheddar cheese is added to the milk mixture. The cheese sauce should not be too thick or too thin.

The pasta is cooked to al dente in salted water, drained and added to the cheese sauce and checked for proper seasoning. At this point you can add some more salt and pepper if needed. The sauteed onions and cooked macaroni is mixed together with the cheese sauce and poured in to a casserole dish. The macaroni and cheese is topped with bread crumbs that have been mixed with melted butter and finely chopped parsley and baked in a 450 F oven. When the top is browned, it is ready to serve.

The polenta has set and we are cutting shapes to be pan fried in oil until crispy. With polenta you have to be careful when turning it over during cooking because it is very soft and can break apart easily. Using a spatula the polenta is turned over when it has browned on the bottom and separates from the pan easily. Do not try scrapping it off the bottom ~ because, one: it is not ready, two, because it will break. When the polenta is cooked and draining on a paper towel to remove some of the oil, I hit it with some salt. I start plating my polenta. The spinach is layered on a serving plate and sprinkled with my vinaigrette and topped with my polenta. This is a very good appetizer or starter.

When I was cooking the polenta in oil, the corn from the polenta started to pop. This was happening to four of us who decided to put corn in our polenta. Note to self: No more corn when cooking in enough oil to fry and not saute.

After a little break Chef gives us a black box. There isn't a real black box. The black box is a list of ingredients that we must use in making a dish. We don't know what the ingredients are before hand and must make the dish on the fly in a certain amount of time.

The ingredients in the black box are pasta, spinach, and cream. Chef requires that we complete the dish in 45 minutes ~ this includes plating and ready for Chef to taste and critique. This test is about process and  time management.

With the black box ingredients I am making the lemon dill cream pasta dish that I had already made this week. I get started on making the pasta dough because it has to rest for a bit in saran wrap. Next I start on my mise en place for my sauce ~ sliced onions, leeks, garlic, red pepper, and spinach. The pasta machine I'm using isn't working to well, so I get to break open a new one. I'm having trouble with that one, so Chef gives me a hand. Chef finally gets it going and hands it over to me to finish rolling and then cutting  in to linguine. I leave the linguine to hang and dry while I start sauteing the onions and leeks seasoning with salt and pepper. My pot of salted water is boiling and I add my pasta. Fresh pasta takes about five minutes to cook. I continue sauteing with adding my garlic and red pepper. I deglaze with white wine and add my spinach. I added cream pan and waited for it to reduce before adding in my pasta. I gave it all a good toss and then plated it on a hot plate for Chef to taste and critique.

I had a very busy day with no time to stop. I did not eat my breakfast of macaroni and cheese nor my  polenta and spinach salad. My macaroni went home for later and I offered the salad to a colleague in the advance class.

I need to put more work on my project. Maybe I'll work on the recipes and plan out my mise en place.