Regional Cuisine: Midi (Fingers in the Fat)

A full four people were absent today: Natasha, Roundhead, Dora the Explorer, and the Long Island Lolita (who did show up --late). Energy again at near-empty level, and Chef K began with a lecture about....yesterday's region!

I tuned her out a bit until she mentioned the tarte flambée: named as such since they were cooked on the bottom of the baker's oven, thus caught the drippings from savory dishes above, like smoked pork. Sometimes it would be flaming.

As a class, for the past few days we've been making confit -- duck legs stewed in duck fat. According to Chef K, duck fat was popular with the Jews of France, as it could replace pork fat pretty well.

Today's recipes included Cassoulet (white bean stew with lamb n' sausage), Poulet á la Basquaise (stewed chicken), Salade

Cévenole (Duck Confit with ref cabbage, chestnuts and watercress), and Pommes á la Sarladaise (a decadent truffled potato pancake cooked in duck fat). Speedy and Chef Jr. took the Casoulet, Dirty Dave took on the chicken, I did the salad and we all did individual pancakes.

The salad was pretty straightforward, with thin sliced red cabbage soaked in a simple walnut oil vinaigrette. Walnuts and chestnuts were toasted in the oven with a little sugar, duck from the confit was taken off the bone and shredded a bit, watercress and shredded carrots added to it all. I served the duck in three little lumps, and the salad on top of a bed of carrot. I must admit, digging into a tray of congealed fat to pull out duck legs was kind of...unappetizing.

The potato dish was similar to the fried potato disc we did with Chef A a couple of weeks ago. Cut the potato into a tube, mandolin-slice, then lay in an overlapping circle in a non-stick pan coated in duck fat. Add some slices truffles, salt, a little more duck fat, then another concentric circle of taters, 4 layers of tato and 3 of truffle all together. Cover with a pan smaller cover to press the disc and help it steam inside as it fries. Turn out to flip, until brown and crispy. It was tricky to get the flip, mine fell apart a little, but I sliced it up for the presentation to hide the oopsy.

Chef K gave a few demos during class, again interrupting the flow. She called the class in to show us how to use the stand-mixer. I, as well as most of the other people in the class, just got quiet and ignored her -- it's a very easy device to use once you know how to use it. She stood there glaring and eventually everyone came over, but she was annoyed and berated us -- we were in school to learn because we don't know everything, blah blah blah. Not cool. Later she demo'd how to break down a whole chicken into 8 pieces -- now that's something that can be shown by every chef and each time it'll be different, it's worthy of repetition. Not how to snap a bowl into a stand.

Tomorrow, off to Provence.

ADDENDA:

Spent a good part of the day at home making stuff for tomorrow night's dinner party: vanilla ice cream (added 4tbsp instead of 4tsp of vanilla, wonder how it's gonna taste), Sicilian chocolate gelato (corn starch instead of eggs and cream as the thickener), and a raw tomato sauce for pizza, using locally grown tomatos instead of canned. And laundry. Who says I don't make an excellent househusband?

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, organic cheerios with good milk, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 10am, Pommes a la Sarladaise, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

A bit salty, very decadent with all the duck fat and truffles.

LUNCH:3pm, school-made pork & kraut with spatzle, chocolate cashew cream vegan ice cream, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

Set out to eat double the amount of pork n' spatzle, but found myself close to full halfway through, so I stopped. Added the sweet about 20 minutes later because I don't want to be hungry or craving sweets when I try to get to bed early.

DINNER: 8:45pm, 2 good pretzels with good peanutbutter, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

Just not very hungry. Too hot out.