Day 38

It may be overdone and out of date but I still really like this presentation. Look at that martini of shellfish. In the center is a mound of Spanish cocktail sauce. I had never had this sauce but people seemed to like it. I thought it was foul. It was homemade mayo, ketchup, tomato paste, hard boiled eggs (chopped), tarragon, capers, parsley and Cognac. It was too sweet. Take out the tomato paste and ketchup and add lemon and I might come around.





We had to present all our food at the same time today. All 5 little dishes. In the picture there are two gazpacho. I still don't know why we had to make two of those.



In the above picture you can see the mushrooms with bacon in the tapas style dish. Those were just quartered sauteed mushrooms with diced bacon, garlic, white wine and parsley. I forgot to deglaze mine with white wine. So did someone else in my class. He confessed before Chef came around to taste. I didn't. Chef said they were good and didn't mention the missing wine. Lucky. We made a court bouillon for poaching our shrimp. Once cooked, we drained them and chilled them.

See the simple little gazpacho below? Its your typical blended gazpacho. But let me tell you about my silent fight with Chef over my brunoise garnish. So he gives a demo on how he wants us to cut our brunoise (fillet the pepper, julienne skin side down, cut across into tiny brunoise cubes) (peel cucumber, and cut thin slices lengthwise, turning the cucumber 1/4 each time so that once you get to the seeds you can throw them away). I was slicing my cucumber (not turning it) and cutting around the seeds and he stormed over to my station, takes my knife and loudly asks me if I had watched his demonstration. He proceeded to cut the cucumber (almost all of it) the way he wanted and walked off. Awkward silence. Note to self: cut only in manner of Chef, unless humiliation is desired. Just to spite him I didn't use any of his brunoise and re cut my own. It didn't make the embarrassing sting go away, though. But my soup looked pretty nice.



The gazpacho had marinated overnight and included roasted bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, celery, garlic, tomato paste, tomato juice, salt, and bread soaked in milk. Blend. Garnish with brunoise and bread cubes fried in butter. The milk part creeps me out but it kinda faded away under the garnish. Below is a monkfish dish with tomatoes and almonds. I didn't dig it. My fam and friends ate it up, though. Maybe I was just sick of my own food at this point. It got served over crostini.

We also did a scallop dish from the south of Spain. It had serrano ham, shallot, garlic, tomato sauce, and green olives. Its in the picture of all the dishes at the top. It was tasty but again I was so over my food. I guess that just happens.

Tomorrow I will have a serious stomach ache from gorging on deep fried potatoes.