Dinner 01-09-10 ($95/person)
Warm chicory salad with goose prosciutto, chestnuts, and chanterelles
Roasted scallops with cauliflower saffron puree and parsley coulis
Grilled quail stuffed with duck liver and raisins; with gratin dauphinois and wilted escarole
Bittersweet chocolate and hazelnut torte with Cognac ice cream
Warm chicory salad with goose prosciutto, chestnuts, and chanterelles
Roasted scallops with cauliflower saffron puree and parsley coulis
Grilled quail stuffed with duck liver and raisins; with gratin dauphinois and wilted escarole
Bittersweet chocolate and hazelnut torte with Cognac ice cream
Warm chicory salad with goose prosciutto, chestnuts, and chanterelle mushrooms
Roasted scallops with cauliflower saffron puree and parsley coulis
Stuffed quail with gratin dauphinoise and wilted escarole
Bittersweet chocolate and hazelnut torte with Cognac ice creamToday was a steadily busy day. I actually got to be more involved with the meal preparation by stuffing all those quails that I prepped the other night (yep, all 110 of them!). It was kind of cool, seeing how something I did the prepwork for just moved along the production line; it lended a sense that the scutwork that I do really is somewhat important.
The stuffing for the quail was pretty good: bread, duck livers, golden raisins, currants, parsley, thyme, and a generous amount of Marsala wine (which was also sprinkled on the birds themselves). Mmm mmm GOOD! The quail (as are all of the meats) are grilled over an open fireplace...yes, a wood-burning fireplace! As anyone who's eaten grilled items can tell you, that smoky wood flavor just can't be beat. [I'll get a picture of the fireplace for Wednesday's blog entry.]
I learned to make crepes too! They were the hors d'oeuveurs for this evening, filled with a ricotta/lemon/parsley mixture. I didn't get to actually make any crepes, unfortunately, but I did watch closely while they were done...and I filled and folded the finished product.
One of the main things I did today was make sausage. I'm sorry: I have a block against the fabrication of red meat...probably because in school, I was one of the slower learners when it came to breaking down beef, lamb, pork pieces (ribs, butt, legs, etc). My instructor would get impatient and frustrated with me, like, "don't you GET it?! Why don't you get it?!" He'd been butchering for so long, what's second nature to him was light years away for me...and he haf no idea how to break it down for those who don't have a passion for butchering (like me). Not to mention, I'd fervently hoped that those two days of sausage in Garde Manger (for which I received my lowest daily marks for the class) were the first--and last--time I'd have to deal with sausage making in this lifetime. :D Ha...joke was on me!
To compound the issue, I am not a fan of the large, complex machinery used to do things like make sausage, saw hard,, large bones in meat, etc. (the meat grinder and the bench saw, respectively). Visions of severed limbs dance in my head (BIG sharp parts!), not to mention the drama involved in using said machinery. For example, to make sausage, you have to take the myriad parts and put them on ice for at least 30 min to an hour prior to using (it helps the meat pass through the grinder better)...and if you even let it sit out for over 10 min., you need to chill it again. DRAMA.
And let's not get into the casings used for sausage. Sausage casings are nothing else but the intestines of certain animals. The animal casing you use is dependent upon the size of sausage you want. For one of those Johnsonville bratwurst sausages, you'd use a hog casing (like we used tonight). Most other sausages (like breakfast sausages) use sheep casings. Really big sausages (like salami) use beef casings. Anyway...tonight we used hog casings, and like all casings, they are usually separated after delivery, knotted in bunches stored in salt and soaked in water before using. Well...these hog casings were all in a tangled, snarled knot that made it difficult to find where the beginning of the knot was. And they were filled with salt, which made it difficult to slip them over the nozzle of the sausage stuffer. We had to re-rinse the casings of salt so that they could slide over the nozzle easily.
(anyone who thinks that sausage making DOES NOT have a phallic component is fooling themselves).
Once the casing was on the nozzle, I turned the plunger slowly that it went down into the canister full of ground meat mix and pushed it down so that it would ooze out of the nozzle opening and into the casing. This continued until the meat was out of the canister. The chef went and cooked two samples of the sausages, then came back and we proceeded to stuff a lot of sausage...three LARGE coils (like the one below) and two smaller coils...had to be over 100 sausages when we were done portioning the coil into individual links and tying them with twine, so they could be hung to dry over the weekend (they are on the menu for Monday..
Pork sausage (large coil)
So, I got through the sausage making. I was nervous when I saw legs and shoulders of lamb in the walk-in...at least I didn't have to do those today, though I know my day is coming. *sigh*
Okay...my eyes are getting heavy, so it's time to wrap this up and get some sleep. I need to sharpen my knives (two of them got pretty dull this evening), take some unnecessary stuff out of my knife bag, and enjoy my days off. Thanks for stopping by, and see you on Wednesday!
T.
The stuffing for the quail was pretty good: bread, duck livers, golden raisins, currants, parsley, thyme, and a generous amount of Marsala wine (which was also sprinkled on the birds themselves). Mmm mmm GOOD! The quail (as are all of the meats) are grilled over an open fireplace...yes, a wood-burning fireplace! As anyone who's eaten grilled items can tell you, that smoky wood flavor just can't be beat. [I'll get a picture of the fireplace for Wednesday's blog entry.]
I learned to make crepes too! They were the hors d'oeuveurs for this evening, filled with a ricotta/lemon/parsley mixture. I didn't get to actually make any crepes, unfortunately, but I did watch closely while they were done...and I filled and folded the finished product.
One of the main things I did today was make sausage. I'm sorry: I have a block against the fabrication of red meat...probably because in school, I was one of the slower learners when it came to breaking down beef, lamb, pork pieces (ribs, butt, legs, etc). My instructor would get impatient and frustrated with me, like, "don't you GET it?! Why don't you get it?!" He'd been butchering for so long, what's second nature to him was light years away for me...and he haf no idea how to break it down for those who don't have a passion for butchering (like me). Not to mention, I'd fervently hoped that those two days of sausage in Garde Manger (for which I received my lowest daily marks for the class) were the first--and last--time I'd have to deal with sausage making in this lifetime. :D Ha...joke was on me!
To compound the issue, I am not a fan of the large, complex machinery used to do things like make sausage, saw hard,, large bones in meat, etc. (the meat grinder and the bench saw, respectively). Visions of severed limbs dance in my head (BIG sharp parts!), not to mention the drama involved in using said machinery. For example, to make sausage, you have to take the myriad parts and put them on ice for at least 30 min to an hour prior to using (it helps the meat pass through the grinder better)...and if you even let it sit out for over 10 min., you need to chill it again. DRAMA.
And let's not get into the casings used for sausage. Sausage casings are nothing else but the intestines of certain animals. The animal casing you use is dependent upon the size of sausage you want. For one of those Johnsonville bratwurst sausages, you'd use a hog casing (like we used tonight). Most other sausages (like breakfast sausages) use sheep casings. Really big sausages (like salami) use beef casings. Anyway...tonight we used hog casings, and like all casings, they are usually separated after delivery, knotted in bunches stored in salt and soaked in water before using. Well...these hog casings were all in a tangled, snarled knot that made it difficult to find where the beginning of the knot was. And they were filled with salt, which made it difficult to slip them over the nozzle of the sausage stuffer. We had to re-rinse the casings of salt so that they could slide over the nozzle easily.
(anyone who thinks that sausage making DOES NOT have a phallic component is fooling themselves).
Once the casing was on the nozzle, I turned the plunger slowly that it went down into the canister full of ground meat mix and pushed it down so that it would ooze out of the nozzle opening and into the casing. This continued until the meat was out of the canister. The chef went and cooked two samples of the sausages, then came back and we proceeded to stuff a lot of sausage...three LARGE coils (like the one below) and two smaller coils...had to be over 100 sausages when we were done portioning the coil into individual links and tying them with twine, so they could be hung to dry over the weekend (they are on the menu for Monday..
Pork sausage (large coil)So, I got through the sausage making. I was nervous when I saw legs and shoulders of lamb in the walk-in...at least I didn't have to do those today, though I know my day is coming. *sigh*
Okay...my eyes are getting heavy, so it's time to wrap this up and get some sleep. I need to sharpen my knives (two of them got pretty dull this evening), take some unnecessary stuff out of my knife bag, and enjoy my days off. Thanks for stopping by, and see you on Wednesday!
T.
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