Week 4 Wrap Up

Well, that week flew by...wha' happened??

This module of Nutrition and Stocks, Soups, & Sauces is winding down, and that means that the assignments, reports, and tests are coming at a blistering pace.

Week 4 was much like week 3, just a lot more studying. My black box practical test for Stocks, Soups, & Sauces is on Monday. This is where I go into the kitchen, draw a stock or a sauce out of a pot (stands to reason), and then I prepare what I've drawn. No recipes, no help from anyone else. The possible choices are:
Stocks: brown, white, or vegetable
Sauces: bechamel, veloute, espagnole, or tomato

I have step by step instructions on a brown stock in this blog, so I think I will do ok with a stock. I'll do all right with bechamel and veloute sauces. The two iffy choices right now are espagnole and tomato, since these are fairly involved either in ingredients list and/or technique.
With recipes, this practical test would be a snap. I've made these sauces so little that I haven't had the time/practice to make them "automatically" yet. I might try making a tomato sauce this weekend to get a fell for the technique and ingredients list. One of my classmates made the tomato sauce on Thursday night, and drew tomato sauce for his blackbox on Friday.....worked for him.

Lots of great lunches this week, but because I've been delinquent in keeping up the blog, I'll just list yesterday's lunch. Here is what I had:

Turkey Vegetable Soup
Madras Chicken Curry (my group made the curry sauce)
Starch: Coconut Rice (on its own this would not be my first choice,  but it went well with the curry sauce)
Veggies: Honey Glazed Parsnips, Green Beans with Shallot Butter
Raisin Bread
Coffee

In the kitchen my group made a creamy tomato basil sauce, a maple glaze, chicken gravy, and we clarified a pound of butter each.
Clarified butter is removing the milk solids and water from butter, leaving behind only the purified butterfat. This is accomplished by heating the butter to a simmer. As it simmers, the water is evaporated of and the milk solids fall to the bottom. At just the right point of caramelization of the milk solids, the pot is removed from the heat, set aside to cool slightly, and then strained slowly through a fine mesh strainer.
The tricky part is knowing exactly when to remove the butter from the heat. Caramelizing the milk solids slightly gives the clarified butter a rich, nutty taste; caramelizing the milk solids too much gives the butter a burnt taste and ruins $5 worth of butter.
Clarified butter is used in veloute, espagnole, and hollandaise sauces as it gives a far more stable sauce than if whole butter is used.

Ok, it's Saturday morning, the coffee is kicking in, time to get an assignment done, then off to the engraving shop to pick up my newly engraved knives. Someone suggested engraving on the first day in the kitchen and after a few instances of "Is this your knife or mine?" I thought I'd better get it done.

Week 5 is going to be like flying into Charlottetown on a Beech 1900 on a windy day, but bring it on!