Day one hundred thirty one

Pasta with a lobster, asparagus, and
shiitake mushrooms

Pasta with a lobster, what can be better for a lunch.

This short course is going to the end. We have one more day left to cook lunch. After that we are going for the externship.

In the morning our chef was in a really bad mood. That was related to the fact that yesterday a few people did not do exactly what he was asking for and somebody even tried to argue with the chef. In the class we found quotation on the board 'I have never learned a single thing while I was talking'.

The production for our group was quite easy. We suppose to make spaghetti and meatballs, however the class doing fish sent us lobster meat and our dish was changed to a lobster pasta with shiitake mushrooms and asparagus.

The most time consuming task was to make a sauce. We used
lobster shells to make a stock. We added water, white wine, and brandy to the lobster shells and simmered it for about an hour. For flavor we added tarragon stems. After simmering for an hour we used immersion blender to break down some shells and extract an additional flavor. After that we strained the stock, added heavy cream and continued to simmer until it was reduced by half.


Pasta was pre-cooked and to finish the plate was not so difficult, as we cooked it to the order. However orders were coming at the steady stream, so two of us were really busy to cook for the whole duration of the service. A bit oil in a pan, add asparagus cut on a bias, sauté, add sliced mushrooms, add sauce, add lobster, add pasta. A bit of chopped tarragon for the flavor, toss, plate. The difficult part was to plate. The pan we used to cook three portion at a time was quite heavy. Holding the pan in a left hand and distributing three portions evenly was not so easy, after short time the left hand was really tired.

Again that day we had a dish of the day and the feeling was amazing. The lobster meat was a restrained ingredient for us, we had to stop five minutes before finish, as we run out of the lobster. We did not have much asparagus and mushrooms left (may  a couple more portions), which was also good, as we did not have to through away other ingredients.