Regional Menu: Provence

In an effort to broaden our scope of French cuisine, we periodically focus on an important French region and make dishes common in that area.  Last Friday was our first menu and our first time cooking for and serving each other.  The class was broken into small groups, each responsible for a portion of the meal.  It was surprisingly calm and stress free.  Everyone did a great job and we had a tasty meal to share with each other.  

Anchoïade

For the starter, the first group prepared select veggies with an anchovy "dip" and hard boiled quail eggs.  Anchovies have a bad reputation, people (myself included) turn their nose up just at the name.  But in this form the anchovies present mostly as a salty taste.  The dip was made like a mayonnaise, with anchovy puree, crushed garlic, and olive oil.  The quail eggs were soaked in some vinegar mixture after they were de-shelled, giving this yellow color.

I don't remember the details,
but this group also made this black olive bread

Petits Farcis A La Provencale

For this dish, zucchini, onions, and tomatoes were hollowed then stuffed with lamb, pork, parmesan cheese, garlic, shallots, and mushrooms and baked in the oven giving a crunch to the top layer of stuffing.  Then plated with a chicken stock reduction and a roasted red pepper puree. The tomato was my favorite.  And every thing tasted great with red pepper puree.

 Filets de Rougets A La Crème d'Olive

 et Marjolaine, Fine Ratatouille

The group in charge of the fish course prepared broiled red mullet served on a bed of ratatouille, finely chopped bell peppers, zucchini, onions, and tomatoes, plated with reduced fish stock, and a black olive sauce.  Very tasty, and not a single scale (which, after scaling 2 foot salmon, I will never take this for granted again).  

Daube A La Provencale

This group had the best dish! I'll give one you guess why...

This is beef stew, but not like the kind I used to make in my crock pot, I wish it was that easy.  The day before, I some how got the job of cutting the beef into small pieces.  This must have been the biggest cow ever because the shoulder was massive!  I almost threw out my shoulder trying to cut it into smaller portions; it was so tough and had huge tendons running through it.  The pieces were then put in a marinade with garlic, onions, carrots, white wine, and olive oil. 

The next day we removed the beef and I seared it as the marinade simmered.  

The floating thing is called a bouquet aromatic:
chervil, thyme, and bay, tied in the green part of a leek

P.S. No matter what you "Chef" tells you, go with your gut.  We baked these explosive devices, I mean potatoes, without poking them first, because our "Chef" said we didn't need to.  So later when I poked one to check if it was done, it erupted like a volcano, spewing burning hot potato on me and the windows 5 feet away.  Later he said we should have pierced them first...seriously dude?  

One of my group partners had the wonderful task of dough making, but not to be eaten with the meal.  This one was for decorative purpose only (boo).   But another ring was used to seal the inner rim of the dutch oven to allowed the keep the moisture in the stew during the 2.5 hour cooking time.  

I also had the pleasure of using this amputation machine.  Ok, I only have a cut on my thumb but it hurt (sad face).  Making these potato chips were a labor of love.  In case you don't already know, over heating oil happens quicker than you think, but it takes FOREVER to cool.  More time than I had so these were slightly over-dark, but still so tasty.

When the stew was done, the meat was separated from everything else (again), which proved quite difficult.  It was definitely quite tender, thus frustrating difficult to separate.  The remainder was strained and the juice was poured back over the meat with black olives.  (essentially we removed the carrots, and onions don't ask me why we had to go through all of that).

Final product, plated with tomato confit (baked tomato slices), green pepper, fennel bulb, peril onions, potato puree, and the chips.

Notice the clean plates!

Sorbet Framboise avec Nougat Glace et Tuiles

My happily fed classmates!
As you can see, we are all camera happy

Last group worked in a chilled room next to the kitchen to prepare the desserts.  I don't remember much of the recipe, so this is a rough stetch.  The nougat base was meringue folded into whipped cream with dried fruit and nuts folded in next and then chilled.  The tuiles is just carameled sugar poured over chopped almonds.  Then poured onto into ovals on a silpat sheet to bake.  The ovals were then curved around a rolling pin while they cooled to get the curved shape.  The sorbet was made by boiling mineral water, mixing in glucose, a stabilizer, and sugar.  This mixture was chilled before adding raspberry puree.  And finally put in the sorbet machine.  Like any dessert, precision is key.  Specific temperatures were needed for nearly each step of these desserts.  But the final product was so yummy!

It was great to work with people I had not worked with yet, and to see how well the class as a whole can come together for a collaboration like this.   But this is only the beginning; a baby step towards working in our restaurant!  Oh, right, thats next week!