Day 5

Okay, so I get that I might not post Friday's happenings until Sunday. It was for a lot of reasons though. One, I went straight over to a friend's house. Two, we had to drink a bottle of wine at her pool. Three, I was beat. So beat, in fact, that over the course of the weekend I have not stayed up past 10:30 pm. This is by far the worst side effect of my new routine. On day 5, however, we made lobster bisque. It started with a demo by chef on how to murder a lobster. I said a prayer and then proceeded to murder my own lobster by stabbing it through the head. Wow. I had never killed an animal before and it was intense. I almost held the knife like in the horror movies until chef came over and humiliated me before class so I could remember not to do it like that. I was real focused on taking the life of an animal. It didn't do anything weird like scream but I still felt real responsible for ending its life so that I could make soup. It was good soup.

So you take your chopped up lobster, and saute it until browned, add veg, and saute until brown also, season both, of course. Add tomatoes and fumet (fish stock), tomato paste, and lobster paste. Below is just a glorious shot of a just slain lobster, milady.

So then you simmer all above mentioned ingredients for about an hour. Then you add some cream for another 10 minutes.

I can't lie. I love this picture for its random lobster claw sticking out of the pot. So sorry, Sebastian. Once simmered and creamed, we strained the stock and returned it to heat to add the roux. It thickened, we reseasoned, and we grubbed. It was pretty great. Then we tried to cut potatoes and zucchini into ridiculously small pieces that were "turned". To my chef that means you carve a shape with 6 or 7 sides shaped like a small barrel.

Chef demoed a few and his are on the right of my cutting board. Yep, those are them all smug and real nice looking next to my boats. I guess this will take some work. What's up for next week?