Day 21

We are now in France. Chef likes to group his dishes of a certain cuisine into a week of study so that we understand the flavor profiles. We started our day with a lecture on some of the famous foods of major regions (burgundy = snails + Dijon mustard). So then onto French onion soup. Start by meticulously slicing onions very fine. This sounds simple. But when your eyes are burning so bad that you feel dizzy its really fucking hard to cut small thin slices of onion all the same size. I recommend goggles or really large sunglasses. I had to sack it up at school though. I was such a pussy. So you put the eye needles (onions) into a soup pot that has been heating up with clarified butter. They need to brown right away. If the pot is not hot enough they will just steam and then release liquid and then boil. I know this because that is how mine started today. The pot was a really thick bottomed pot and it did not seem to hold and keep the heat. I had to grab another pot and heat the shit out of it and then transfer my boiling onions into it to try to get color on them. This was annoying. Especially after the eyeball searing. I did finally get them brown, though. They have to get dark and have lots of bits on the bottom of your pan to scrape up later.


Then I deglazed with sherry. Chef said we could use whatever liquor we chose. He prefers marsala. Many classmates used brandy. I thought my sherry was too sweet when all was said and done. Then we added stock (we only had veg stock on hand, so that's what we used). You could add clear beef stock if you wanted too. Too much stock will dilute your flavors, so you have to be prudent in your amount of added stock. Season and simmer for about 20 minutes. Your soup is now ready to be topped with crusty baguette and gruyere and baked until melted. If you don't have a broiler but have a blowtorch you can brown your melted cheese with that. We don't have a broiler. What the f? So then you happily eat a bowl of your soup. I debated telling my husband that I had made it so that I would not have had to share. Luckily, I filled him up with my next dish and he didn't want soup too.


This was the start of our flamiche (a leek pie/tart). We made pate brisee (flaky pastry) and filled it with leeks. First we sauteed a whole mess of leeks. They went in to the fridge to chill on sheet pans while we made our dough. The dough gets blended by hand and given a rest in the fridge. This pic is of chef blending the dough to ensure no butter pockets that will steam and create holes in the pastry when baked. One of my cookbooks calls this step "fraisage" in French. Once dough is rested it gets rolled into shells and rests again to prevent shrinkage. Heh heh. Shrinkage.


Filling is made from cream, eggs, salt, pepper and nutmeg. It is smooth and sort of thick. And white. And fattening. To assemble we spread leeks in shells and poured filling over the top. It got a sprinkling of gruyere and went into the oven for about 40 minutes. We checked the underside of the crust for doneness. At one point the tops were browning too much so chef reduced the oven heat while we waited for the crust to finish baking. I am not sure why we didn't blind bake the crust. I'll have to ask him tomorrow.

The tarts/flamiches came out searingly hot. We took them home and I ate mine for dinner with a salad. Its really rich tasting. I love the leeks. They are sweet and wonderful, right? I luckily got to take home leftover sauteed leeks that we didn't use in the pies. I plan on mixing them into some mashed potatoes later this week.

So that was our first day in France. I love France. Its one of my favorite places to travel. I am looking forward to learning more about the food from chef's prospective. A classmate and I were asking him if you could make this with milk or a lower fat filling. He first said "why?". Then we explained that people might shy away from the super rich filling. He looked at us, slightly annoyed, and said "This is French food" and walked away. I guess that means no. Sor.

Tomorrow? Chicken in a pot. Later this week: duck and sweetbreads and escargot, oh my!