Day twenty

Have you seen how Belgian endive grows?

The second day in the kitchen this week. Unfortunately the last one for the week. I would be happy to have four of them in the kitchen. Today we cooked chowder, English style fish chowder. I have to admit that I love it. I like a combination of cream with some veggies and fish. Yummy...

After our kitchen class we had a lecture from a guy who has endive farm here in California. Do you know that Belgian endive is grown in a complete darkness? I thought
about this, but I have no idea about full details. So they start from the growing chicory root first. These roots are collected and kept in a cold storage for up to ten month. They have to be in a cold place for at least two month (winter feeling for a plant). The best period of time to keep them is a cold storage is between three and five months.

When they are ready to grow further, these roots are sorted and placed in a special containers with a soil solution. They are placed in a dark place (I mean absolutely dark) and endive start to grow. A full cycle of growing from a root is four weeks. In a four weeks time these nice endives would be fully developed and ready for a harvest. After they are harvested, the root is going to compost, as it won't be able to produce another crop.

OK, back to Fish Chowder.
As this is really elegant soup and not so difficult to prepare at home, I think I will place here a recipe for it.
What you will need (yield 1 qt):
1 oz clarified butter
1 oz salt pork minced to a paste
2 oz onion 1/4 '' dice
1 oz celery 1/4 '' dice
1 tsp thyme finely chopped
1 oz flour
3 cups fish fumet (or stock) (I saw fish stock at Berkley Bowls last time at the frozen section, it looked quite good, in case you want to make your own, will happily share a recipe)
3 oz potato small dice (1/4 '')
8 oz cod fish fillet, medium dice (1/2 '')
1 c heavy cream
2 tsp parsley
Lemon juice to taste
Salt, pepper to taste

Method:

1) heat clarified butter over low heat, add pork and render fat (slow, do not rush, you do not need any color, just render the fat)
2) add onion, celery and sweat until translucent, then and thyme (again, no rush, no color needed, this is white soup!)
3) singer the flour and form blond roux (nice words, but explanation is needed. Singer means dust a bit of flour and mix then dust again and mix. Do not dump flour at once - you will have lumps and get rid of them is not easy. Roux - means to cook flour in fat. In this case with addition of minced pork and veggies).
4) Whisk in stock (better to use wooden spoon, because all you veggies age going to be inside of the whisk. Add a little bit stock at a time and mix well, then add a little more and mix again. If you put all stock at once the mixture will be lumpy and to get rid of it is a pain)
5) Add potato, cooke till tender (potato are small so may be 7-10 minutes)
6) Stir in cream and add fish simmer a little bit till fish is cooked (3-5 minutes)
7) Adjust seasoning (salt, pepper, lemon juice, add Tabasco if you like it)
Serve!

We had our first quiz on the Culinary Fundamentals. I think I did well, not sure about one question (out of thirteen). Will see on Tuesday.

We also did cut trays. Again, average for me is 7.5 out of 10. I have to work on my cuts. The consistency is good, but the shape is a bit off. This is how the tray is look like.

There are two different cuts of onion, two cuts of potato, shallot, garlic and parsley (almost invisible).

I gave my knives to a specialist to have them marked (to engrave them with my name). Almost all students have the same knives and I don't want to mix them up or to lose a knife. Should be ready this Friday.

And this is it for this busy day...