butchering meat!!!

well, another week at le cordon bleu has flown past!

i honestly cannot believe how fast it is going, in a month and a half, i would have already finished basic, and be getting ready to moving on to intermediate! 

lets back track to what i have been up to since my last update...

i went to lincoln for the easter weekend to spend time with my lovely family... and had the most fantastic time. we camped in the garden, and made brownies and cup cakes, and custard and roast chicken, and had enough easter eggs to last until next easter... and we played table tennis and painted our nails with union jacks, all in celebration of the royal wedding which was on friday. so, once again, thank you so much my lovely strange family!!!

so it was a short week this week, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't jam packed full of exciting food and learning!

on Tuesday, Chef john butchered an entire lamb in front of us, with such ease, it was almost as though, one minute there was a sheep on the counter, and the next it looked like we were in a butchers shop choosing what to buy! he sawed away, and sliced and hacked through bones and hey presto... we had a rack of lamb, all perfectly french trimmed and ready to be roasted, which was to be our practical. he mad a bayaldi to go with that, which is like a ratatouille. its layered up aubergine, and courgette and red pepper with a layer of concasse de tomate (deliciously cooked tomatoes with onions and garlic and herbs) in between them, then baked in the oven!!! 

Then we had our practical, using the puff pastry which we had made the previous week... we made allumettes au fromage... which is as i mentioned before, filled with a mornay sauce (a cheese sauce), mine came out pretty well... the pasty was well layered which was a massive surprise to me, as the kitchen was so hot that we all thought that our pastry would be a disaster, as is the butter melts between the layers, it will not rise and for the millions of layers... but it did! so that was a huge sigh of relief.

after that prac, we had another demo with Chef Sonia this time it was a side of beef that was butchered... and my goodness, was that a side of beef! was huge!!! im not going to go into a whole lot of detail here, as once again, this entry would go on for hours, and i want to keep my readers interested!!! but basically she butchered the side, taking off the fillet, and the sirloin steaks and other cuts to make what she was making... which was prep for boeuf bourguingon, and contrefilet de boeuf roti (roast sirloin of beef) with jus, Entrecote sautee a la bordelaise (deliciousness) and steak au poivre (peppered steak).... this was in two demos, the second one was on wednesday morning. but it was amazing to watch her with so much going on at once, and still get everything just about perfect and to come out with such fantastic flavours. and if you look at it all, it is all basic, simple flavors  combined together, with not a huge amount of effort, and come out with the most intense flavours all complementing each other with such subtleness. 

then... we had our pasta prac :) that was such fun... making fresh pasta, rolling it out, making a fresh sauce... wow, italians are geniuses!!! the sauce was made with creme fraiche, and chicken stock infused with black peppers, some (some, phe) butter stirred in, and last minute, fresh chiffonade of basil and oregano.. and it was yum!!!

thursday.... we did puff pastry again, this was for patisserie, and of course made in a different method to what we did in the cuisine class, because thats what the french are like, their own method is always best. but is great that we did have some knowledge of what was going on, and had a bit more experience.

so we made our puff pastry, under the supervision of chef chrstophe. his words of wisdom for the day were... "pastry never lies, only students lie",  "when you drink too much, it doesn't matter, because by the time you have drunk that much, you forget anyway" and a few more... he is just hilarious! crazy french man if you have ever met one. but absolutely ingenious when it comes to pastry. he has such passion, so inspirational.

then, friday was the royal wedding... what an extravaganza!! we never braved the streets of london, but did have a little tea party in celebration with cucumber sandwiched, scones, tea, pimms, g&t, sponge cake... and that was that!!

had our lamb prac on saturday morning... this too was a fantastic prac! had such fun in the kitchen. butchering and cleaning the rack of lamb, preping the veggies, roasting the lamb and making a deliciously lamby (supposedly, but mine had too much carrot so was a little too sweet) and then plating it up. we really are rapidly becoming little chefies!! 

i am loving every moment. 

this week coming up, we have a beef pracs, then moving on to veal and pork, and will be turning veggies again!!! so will keep you updated soon!!

hope the weekend was fantastic for all...

hope to hear from you all soon!! 

x