Market Basket (Fall Back Onto Noodle)

Today was the second day of Market Basket, this time with each student making one appetizer and one entrée, with one protein for each: sea bass and poisson (baby chicken). Again, lots of ingredients in the pantry for us to work with.

First thing was deciding on what to make. I decided to go as simple as possible: an appetizer of poached bass in court bouillon, and an entrée of roast poisson with rice pilaf and sauce Allemande. Gently poach fish in broth, roast chicken with fluffy buttery rice and a rich, chicken stock. How could I go wrong?!

The fish was dissembled and filleted, cut into 1 ounce tranches. The court bullion is simply vinegar, carrots, onions, parsley, bay leaf, cracked peppercorns, and thyme simmered for an hour, then strained. Poaching takes place right in the liquid.

While that was simmering, I made a simple rice pilaf. Sauté some minced onion in butter, toss in the rice, fry until translucent. Add 2x the amount of rice in chicken stock, a bay leaf and a bit of thyme. Bring to a boil, cover, into the 350-degree oven for about 20 minutes, until the water is absorbed.

Sauce Allemande is based on the mother sauce, sauce veloute. Veloute is simply taking a small amount of blond roux (cooked flour and butter) and whisking into chicken stock to thicken it. For the Allemande, shallots and mushrooms are sweated, the veloute added then simmered with some herbs, then strained. It is finished with laison (egg yolk mixed with heavy cream) right before serving for that extra mouth feel.

Fish done in a jiff, I was the first one out the gate to present a dish. To say Chef Al unimpressed would be a dire understatement. First, he told me that the portion was too small (1 oz of fish), the parsley I used as a garnish looked "childlike," and finally: One never presents court bouillon; it's a poaching liquid only, not a broth (which makes sense, as it tasted like vinegary ass)! Chef Al bluntly asked me why, if I'm going to spend x amount of dollars on culinary school and take the time, I came up with only this. I was told to complete the assignment again. To which I respectfully said, "thank you, Chef," and went back to my station.

Yeah, it was a lazy dish, and I should have known better about the bouillon, but I just wanted it to be done. After taking a moment to recover, I thought, OK, I already have poached fish, maybe I can put it on a bed of something that'll work well with a garnish. Something...fast! Nothing faster than rice vermicelli, drop it in boiling water, turn off the heat, and in 2 minutes, voilà: noodles.

In a small sauté pan I heated up some canola oil and dropped some ginger in to sweat and flavor it. Got rid of the ginger, dropped in the dried-off noodles, grated some ginger juice on top, added some soy sauce, quickly diced some red pepper for color. Put in in the center of the plate, put a trio of pieces of fish on top...and it looked like crap. It needed sauce. And time was running out. So I grabbed some soy sauce, put it in a pan with an equal part water, and tossed in a few pinches of corn starch. With heat, it turned brown and thick, sauce-like! Dribbled it around the border of the plate, dropped some olive oil droplets on to the fish to make it glisten, played with some small sticks of red pepper for visual interest, then back for round two.

This time, Chef Al's comments were mostly about visuals, and how a bit of green garnish, say, would have made sense with Asian cuisine (like cilantro). At least he didn't question my motivation for being there. So that was an improvement!

Still, I was unsettled by what had happened earlier. Roast chicken, rice n' sauce -- not the most earth-shattering choice, but I found myself too late in the process to change my direction. Rice was done, poussin was out of the oven and resting, all that needed to be done was finish the sauce. So I put a ring on a hot plate, pushed rice into it, propped up the half-bird on it, then finished the sauce. I drew a ring of sauce around the top two thirds of the plate to highlight the chicken, put some dots of finer-minced parsley for some green, and sensing it needed something more, added a little fan-triangle of pepper to the spot where the chicken met the rice. Didn't quite look right to me, but I didn't want to start second-guessing myself.

Again, Chef Al's criticism was about the plating. He did give me tips on how to place parsley powder on sauce with a knife tip for more precision. He thought the plate looked empty at the bottom, and the better approach would have been to place the chicken on top of a pool of sauce, with the rice to the north of it. He did compliment me on my pepper fan, and even grabbed it off my plate to illustrate to the next student how to decorate his plate.

Tomorrow is the third and final day of Market Basket, and also our final practical exam. I don't know what the protein or ingredients are yet, but I'm thinking something I've made many times at home....either pizza or ravioli!

ADDENDA:

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed so to speak, didn't feel hungry, and nothing but yogurt to eat anyway. As the food I made I geared towards presentation, didn't taste very good and I didn't bother eating, which was weird.

AM TASTINGS: 10-11am, a bit of prosciutto, a taste of bacon, quart of water

LUNCH: 1pm, spinach salad with carrot dressing, hijiki tofu patty, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM WATERING: 2:45pm, quart of water

DINNER: 6:15am, green salad, 3/4 of a frozen pizza, 2/3 of a pint of ben & jerries, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5
Did not eat enough today. Was at the market, wanted to get dinner, but didn't feel like cooking, so did some "research" by picking up some shee-shee brand of frozen pizza. It was ass. The crust was too thick and not enough chew, the cheese was layed on like a wet blanket, there was barely any tomato flavor to speak of, and the "herbs" were so tamped down to be non-existant.