Day 24 Le Cordon Bleu Paris

 Today was the last real day of class with one demo and one practical. Chef Bruno Strill had the helm today. The dishes of the day were some of the classics with Duck L'Orange, Ratatouille, Pike perch steak with herb sauce, and snails with wild mushroom in a pastry case. We were responsible for making the Duck L'Orange along with a Parisian style gnocchi with cheese (that we had been taught last week) in the ensuing practical laster today.

The wild mushroom dish was interesting because so many variations of this dish are possible not only with ingredients but with presentation. This particular dish had wild mushroom and snails as main ingredients, but many other substitutes are possible with imagination and good taste as the only boundaries. Additionally, this dish can be made in appetizer, entree, or group sized serving dishes. The filling is served in a short pastry crust made in whatever sized serving dish one chooses. Lots of choices make this a versatile dish.

Next the Chef prepared the pike perch with ratatouille except cod was substituted for the pike. The showcase of this dish is its sauce which is made by reducing dry vermouth, dry white wine, and white wine vinegar to a glaze, then adding reduced veal stock with further reduction, polished with some butter and strained. Then a mixture of chopped parsley, chervil, and tarragon are stirred in with the sauce just prior to serving.

The ratatouille on bottom, topped with the cod and saucedrizzled around the sides.

Finally the Chef prepared the Duck L'Orange. The actual name of today's dish was "Magret De Canard A L'Orange". We learned that the word "Magret" is the breast of a duck that has been force fed for the making of Fois Gras. As a side note, I recalled when a French restaurant in my town of Sonoma had been run out of business a few years ago because of all the opposition to fois gras and the cruelty of force feeding ducks and geese.

Duck L'Orange

The practical session found everyone a little giddy and jovial. The end is so near and everyone is ready to return home, or take a break.

Tasks:

Duck L'Orange:
-Prep duck breast
-cut orange and lemon peels in julienne
-blanch the julienned rinds and set aside marinading in Grand Marnier
-section the oranges into rind-free and ligament-free slices
-caramelize sugar, add red wine vinegar and orange juice and reduce
-add veal stock to the above mix and reduce
-cook the duck A' point. rest
-reheat everything and serve

Gnocchi:
-Make a béchamel
-make gnocchi dough, add gruyere cheese and put in pastry bag
-Drop gnocchi in hot water and blanch, fish out, and dry
-Butter a baking dish
-layer with béchamel, gnocchi, béchamel, topped with gruyere and bake

Phew...busy one. There was a funny moment when Wen bo accidently used some cherry syrup instead of the red wine vinegar for his sauce in the Duck L'Orange and stunk up the whole kitchen with a strong fruit vapor! He got lots of grief from the Chef not to mention a vapor induced cough that he couldn't shake for a while.

Normally my group B is cooking in one of the 2nd floor kitchens and group A is also upstairs in the opposing kitchen. But, I never see the Group C people because they are always on the first floor kitchen. So, today being the last day, I ran down to snap some pictures of the "neglected bunch".

Precision Knife skills by Jennifer

The ever poised Sara who entered this course with zero cookingexperience is already plated, done, and cleaning up. WOW!

Manual saucing the duck under the scrutiny

of the paparazzi

Is Tanya making a grab for the Grand Marnier? Tanya is always one of the first
to finish and rumored to be the front runner in our class

A bee hive of activity in Group "C"'s kitchen

That's it. Time to study for tomorrow's final. Everyone is trying to guess which 2 dishes will be on the final. I think that we'll all do fine and will be ready to celebrate once it's over.