Day one hundred eight

Our plate today

Back to the fundamentals...

Today was a new day and the new menu out of four days rotation. Our team cooked the following today:

• Beef Stew with Assorted Vegetables
• Roasted Garlic Puree Potatoes
• Gaufrette Potatoes
• Chicken Consomme (today garnish was vegetables cut julienne)
• Mixed Green Salad with Honey-Poppy Seed - Citrus Vinaigrette.

Gaufrette potatoes is a waffles of potatoes (cut on special mandoline). When you cut them cooking method is deep frying. The result is a crispy potato chips with waffle pattern. We used a couple per plate as a presentational garnish.

Roasted garlic puree potatoes is a way to
introduce flavor to the Pomme Puree. Indeed, you may introduce many different flavours. One of my favorite is basil, when you heat milk or cream to add to your potatoes, add a few stems of basil and strain cream before adding to the potatoes. Here we used roasted garlic as a flavoring ingredient. Cut the top of a garlic head, rub with oil and salt, wrap in foil and roast at 350F for 45 minutes. Then chill a bit, unwrap, and simply squeeze garlic. Push roasted garlic through sieve and add to the potatoes.

Here is a link for the dressing Honey - Poppy Seed - Citrus Dressing

What is surprising in this class is the number mistakes people are still making. Probably it's because many of us constantly trying to change method instead or simply replicating what is required. As the chef said, if the practical was today a half of us would not have passed. Which is quite sad.....