Day 15 Le Cordon Bleu Paris

An important message for one of our translators: Deborah, if you're still keeping up with my blog in between having fun in Georgia, We all MISS you. Also, my friend Chris knows Curley and says that he met you at a Christmas gift exchange a few years ago! Will you be back for our graduation? Reply in the comment below.
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Beef Bourguignon is the name of today's game. This is probably Julia Child's most

famous recipe in the United States. In the movie "Julie and Julia" Julie made this dish for the Food Editor of the NY Times (I believe), she burned it and had to remake it. Julia Child always made a big fuss of individually drying each piece of meat with a paper towel so that the meat would brown better as was portrayed in the movie. Well, there was no mention of this technique by the demo Chef yesterday, but today's Chef made a point to tell us. Also some good trivia is that the word Bourguinon (which means Burgundy) is given to this dish because it was a regional dish from Burgundy. Thus Burgundy wine was used to make it and the meat used was from Burgundy cows.


Lots to do in this demo, so we got right down to business. Drain meat from yesterday's marinade, boil wine and skim, brown meat, heat vegetables along with added bacon salt slab skin, heat veal stock and skim, add some tomato paste and flour to meat, combine all the above and shove into oven. PHEW!  Ok, with that done it was time to concentrate on the garnish vegetables which are glazed pearl onions, sauteed mushrooms, bacon slab, croutons, and the dreaded turned boiled potatoes. I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that pans were flying. We all got through it. It actually was not bad once the meat and juice were in the oven because we had to wait around 2 hours for it to cook which left plenty of time to prepare the garnish vegetables and croutons. Above is my plate. Today's experience had no resemblance to when I had leisurely made this dish at home with music in the background while sipping a glass of the leftover wine.

Next was a demo covering "Deep fried jumbo shrimp with Tartare sauce", "Veal Marengo with Fondant Potatoes", and a "seasonal fruit flan". Great demo. Too much to type, so I'll let the Chef's creations speak for themselves.

Tonight is the class dinner which I chose to skip because I am too tired. Feeling a little guilty because it's held at a nice restaurant and the cost is covered with my tuition.
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Allis sent out some pictures from the class dinner that I thought I would post. Looks like it was a good time.