Day 6

Its crazy how 2 days away from school can make you feel out of touch. We got a lot of pots going today. We started with a simple vegetable stock. We filled a pot that would hold a small person with vegetable trimmings of all sorts (after sauteing mirepoix) and water and simmered for abotu 4 hours. Drain, chill, done. We also made a sauce espagnole. Beef trimmings were sauteed until very dark and then mirepoix and tomato paste were added and sauteed. Brown stock was added to that and simmered for 2 hours. After the simmer, roux was added to thicken and then the whole brown mess was drained and chilled to used for demi glace later this week.

So next was potato leek soup. I have made this at home a few times but never using a mirepoix first. We used a white mirepoix (no carrot) and sweated it before adding leeks, potatoes, bouquet garni, and chicken stock.

After simmering until the potatoes were just tender, we added cream and simmered 10 minutes more. Then into the blender and strained to desired thickness. Below is the thickness I desired.


I thought, as well as some of my classmates that it was slightly oversalted. Then chef walks over to taste it and proceeds to add at least 2 tablespoons more of salt. It didn't make it taste salty. I still don't get it. It just tasted stronger. This seasoning thing is taking me longer than I expected to figure out.
One thing I didn't do to embarass myself today: Not one, but two of my classmates attempted to puree their bouquet garni along with their soup. As you can imagine string + blender = bad news. I can't tell you how happy I am that it was not me.
Then we made a court bouillon. A poaching liquid used for fish, and seafood. Ours had water, white wine, white vinegar, and the rest of what you see here.

We combined all ingredients and simmered for 20 minutes. I plan on using mine to poach some shrimp later this week and possibly make a homemade remoulade sauce to go with them. Smug and smug I say!

So those were today's major activities. I am glad to be moving on to sauces and away from soups. I think I would be appreciating the soups more if it wasn't still in the mid eighties everyday. I forgot to mention the tourneed carrots. Yes we took the most annoying vegetable to cut and tried to cut it into near impossible football like shapes. I don't care for football or carving hard vegetables into football shapes. And I am pretty sure after a while you would get carpel tunnel.

Up tomorrow: Mother sauces motherf***er!