Day14: Shellfish

A jolt of adrenaline rushed through my body as I ripped the tail off of my lobster. Followed by the claws, one at a time with its severed tail still flopping away on my cutting board.

I ran a skewer through the tail just to keep it straight while poaching, then I threw the claws in the court bouillon (short stock) and let cook for 4 minutes, then added the tail and let cook for another 3 minutes. We served the poached lobster over a bed of rice pilaf and a sauce americaine (identical to a bisque minus the heavy cream).

We also made mussels today with a basic white wine and butter sauce

and pan seared scallops with a parsley coulis.

And for the snails…not really much to write about except that they were dredged in butter and garlic and flambeed with pernot. A little chewy but not as bad as I was expecting. Tomorrow, another test and an Introduction to Poultry. Should be a good one.

Day13: Additional Methods of Cooking Fish

I haven’t looked forward to my weekends in a very long time and I’m definitely enjoying the extra sleep on Saturday mornings.

Last Fridays lesson was an addition to thursdays fish lesson with the introduction of flat fish. Flounder was the fish of the day and we learned how to filet it and cook it using two different techniques. The first was Paner A’lAnglaise which means to bread and fry. First step is two slice the flounder filet into goujonettes (small strips) dip them in flour, then into the seasoned egg mixture and then the bread crumb. After they are all breaded and our deep frying oil is set to 350 we fry them off. We served them up with two different sauces, one was a red pepper coulis and the other was some kind of tartar sauce variation.

Next we served up a braised variation of the flounder with shallots, white wine, mushrooms, and a double cream reduction called filet de limande bonne femme. An extremely heavy dish in my opinion, that poor flounder was completely over shined by the sauce.

Tomorrow we have shellfish, and for the first time in my life SNAILS!