I bagged on the early breakfast this morning, opting for
a little more sleep and a protein bar from my bag. No coffee at the bed &
breakfast where I'm staying, though, so I made a quick dash through the
cafeteria to fill my travel mug with caffeine before class.
Tuesday through Thursday cooking sessions would be
focused on different regions of France. Day 5 would cover bistro &
brasserie dishes. Tuesday's focus: Normandy, Brittany, Champagne and The North,
The Loire, and Paris & Ile de France. Our lecture covered the geography,
primary foodstuffs, and dishes for which the northern and western parts of
France were known.
We were starting to get more comfortable with Chef
Remolina and enjoyed his sense of humor.
He grew up in Mexico but his mother was French, cooking nothing but
French food at home. He regaled us with
stories like of his uncle in France who started drinking wine at 8am--that wasn't
unusual--and explaining the prevalence of pork in this region of France because
it could be kept in the basement during the winter months. Given his upbringing of French cooking at home and surrounded by Mexican food outside the home, I figured he had some pretty diverse food tastes.
"There's a lot of food I don't like," he
commented during the lecture.
Long pause.
"Well, not really," he chuckled. "Even junk food is good." Yep, I really liked this guy.
As we were released to the kitchen, we divided up our
team's recipes and prep work: J would take the Sole Beurre Blanc, I would cover
the Galette Complête, T would take the Salade Tourangelle, and we'd figure out
the Sauté de Haricots Verts along the way. We also had to marinate the beef for
the Boeuf Bourguignon that we'd be making on Wednesday.
My dish translated into English as Buckwheat Crepes with
Ham, Egg and Cheese. My father had been
making crepes since he was a kid, and I had never attempted it, so I thought
this would be fun to try. It also seemed like something I might actually make
again, which was a bonus.
The crepe batter seemed quite runny when I mixed it, so I
checked with Chef and he just shrugged it off.
Then he demonstrated how to make the crepes. Of course, it looked incredibly easy--a little
clarified butter in a hot pan, scoop some of the batter into the pan with a
ladle, let it set, flip it with your fingers, then slide it onto a plate. Piece
of cake.
Not so easy for me.
Keeping an eye on my new friend L who was making sweet crepes next to me, I attempted to replicate the procedure. The crepe stuck to
the pan, I singed my fingers trying to flip it, and ended up with several
pieces of cooked batter. This could not
reasonably be called a crepe. Crepe shards, maybe.
L tried to offer guidance, but I still had trouble
getting it right. My teammates were nibbling on the shards and encouraged me to
place my 'mistakes' into a bowl where L had been placing hers. My stack of
shards quickly overwhelmed hers.
Chef stopped by and looked over my shoulder.
"When are you going to be done with those
crepes?" Chef asked, with what I read to be a tone of impatience in his voice.
"When I get them right!" I retorted with a mix
of irritation and humor. I'll be damned if I'm going to give up now. T & J each took a turn offering
suggestions. More butter? Less batter? The trick was getting the right balance between the amount of
batter, the heat under the pan, and the right amount of butter to get the crepe
to set well enough that I could slide it to the edge of the pan and flip it
with my fingers. More often than not,
the crepe would stick, tear, or otherwise resist my attempts to flip it neatly
and therefore ended up on the scrap heap.
Eventually I had enough crepes for the dish and was ready
to move on to the next step: frying the eggs and assembling the galettes, both
of which appeared to need to be done at the same time. Chef came over to help.
I put the crepes on plates and topped them with shredded gruyere and a slice of
ham. Chef fried the eggs, one at a time, and slid each one on top of the
crepe/cheese/ham stack. Perhaps he didn't trust me to make the eggs given the trying
time I'd had with the crepes? I didn't know, but frankly I didn't mind either
way.
J had plated his sole, and Chef took from his hand the
pan he'd used to prepare the fish. Chef sniffed the now-empty pan and said,
"Too much white pepper."
The three of us looked at each other in amazement. "How can you tell that just from
sniffing the pan?"
"White pepper can have a kind of a dirty smell when
there's too much of it," he said.
"You can smell it in the pan. See?"
We each sniffed the pan. I didn't smell anything. Perhaps
that's why he's the chef and I'm paying for the privilege of being in his kitchen.
It was about this time that I fell in love again.
Completely head over heels.
Shallots.
The love child of onions and garlic.
Sure, I'd eaten and prepared shallots many times
before. But somehow this time was
different. Perhaps it was the excessive
amount of butter in which they were sautéed, or maybe that Chef had us add
extra shallots versus what the recipe required. It didn't matter. I knew
shallots would never disappear from my life again. After being sautéed in the
butter, the shallots were tossed with haricot verts (green beans) that had been
boiled in water, shocked in a bath of ice water, drained and held until we were
close to serving time.
Together we plated our dishes, put the beef in the fridge
to marinate overnight, and put our platters on the table with everyone else's
food. The spread of fabulous dishes was almost overwhelming. Everything looked
amazing, and I wanted to try everything. After snagging at least a spoonful of
everything, I made my way to the dining room to dig in.
Our team's dishes all turned out quite well. T's salad,
which featured bits of pork belly and toasted hazelnuts, was excellent. I
thoroughly enjoyed my galette--the nuttiness of the buckwheat crepe went quite
well with the ham and cheese, and Chef had cooked the eggs so they were just
runny enough to ooze over the entire stack. And J's sole was delicious. Just
the right amount of white pepper, in my opinion.
Galette complête (Makes 6 crepes)
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1-1/2 cups water
1-1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1-1/2 tbsp butter, melted, plus more as needed for the
pan
Filling:
2 tbsp butter, melted
6 eggs
2 cups Gruyère cheese, shredded
12 ham slices
Whisk the flours and salt together in a bowl. Make a well
in the center. In a separate bowl whisk together the eggs, milk, water, oil and
butter.
Add the liquid to the dry ingredients about 1/2 cup at a
time, blending after each addition. Whisk only long enough to form a smooth
batter.
Heat a 12" nonstick skillet over medium heat. Brush
the pan lightly with melted butter and add 1/3 cup of batter. Immediately after
pouring, rotate pan to spread the batter so it coats the pan evenly. Cook until
golden brown. Turn and cook on the other side. Transfer to a warm platter.
Repeat process as necessary.
When ready to serve, place one crepe on a warm plate and
scatter 1/3 cup of cheese on top. Place 2 slices of ham on top of the
cheese. Heat some of the butter for the
filling in a nonstick skillet. Add an egg and cook sunny-side up, just until
the whites are set. Slide the egg on top of the ham and, if desired, fold the
edges of the crepe over the ham and cheese, leaving the egg exposed (we skipped
this in class). Reserve warm while
completing the remaining crepes. Serve warm.
Sauté de Haricots Verts (Serves 6)
1-1/2 lb haricot verts (thin green beans), washed and
trimmed
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp shallots, minced (we used more like 1/4 cup) Salt
& pepper to taste
Bring salted water to a full boil and add the haricots
verts. Cook until al dente. Transfer to
an ice bath to shock (stop the cooking process). Drain well.
When ready to serve, add the butter to a sauté pan set
over medium heat. Add the shallots and sweat until translucent. Add the
haricots verts and season to taste with salt and pepper, and toss to coat.
Sauté until the beans are heated through. Serve on a heated platter.
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