Because of the “Guest Chef for a Night” event, I was only able to attend last week’s lectures. Since I missed both days of cooking lab last week, this post doesn’t contain any pretty pictures or interesting stores of butchering lamb barons. I’ll keep this one short and sweet and present just some of the highlights from both of last week’s lectures.
Classical French III – we talked about a few different techniques and technical things on this day
- We talked about everyone’s favorite (sarcasm mode engaged) mother sauce…Espagnole. This is an especially unforgiving sauce to make because it begins with a dark roux, which is customarily cooked on its own for about 45 minutes until the correct, mahogany (aka poo-brown) color is achieved before the liquid (usually veal stock) is added. This roux is a very easy thing to burn and once that happens there will be no way to remove the burnt, bitter taste from your final product. Speaking of final product, because this is a mother sauce and thus a basis for many ‘small sauce’ derivatives, the Espagnole sauce shouldn’t have too much of a flavor of its own. It should taste like, well, brown sauce.
- Demi-glace, ‘classically’ speaking, is equal parts Espagnole sauce and veal stock, combined and reduced by half. Further reduction of this mixture by 3/4 will yield a product called Glace de Viande, which has the consistency of slightly melted caramel and is actually quite expensive to purchase (because so much of the product’s volume is lost in the reduction process’). When used sparingly, it adds a tremendous amount of flavor to whatever you add it to.
- We aslo talked about solutions vs suspensions. In a solution, particles are dissolved in a liquid resulting in a uniform fluid (like when sugar is dissolved in water to create a sugar syrup). The liquid portion of the solution is called the solvent and the solid part of the solution is called the solute. A suspension is a mixture containing finely divided insoluble particles suspended in a liquid (like a vinaigrette dressing)….the particles don’t actually dissolve in the solvent.
Provincial French – Burgundy
- The food is considered to be ‘substantial’ and it is regarded as ‘peasant food brought to new heights and new levels of refinement’. However, there is a great deal of variation in the cuisine depending on what part of the region you’re in. For example, in the North, where the subtle chablis wine reigns supreme, the cuisine is also subtle so as to not overpower the wine. In Dijon, considered to be the mustard capital of the world and also a great gastronomic city, the wines are full bodied and the cuisine is hearty.
- The region is one of the main wine producing areas in the country, producing many fine wines from chardonnay and pinot noir grapes. The famous wines that come from the region are a result of Roman influence.
- There are 4 main ingredients that shape the cuisine of the Burgundy region: mustard, beef, wine and cream.
- Snails are also a popular delicacy in the region, with the Helix variety (a land snail) being the most popular. The process of cooking snails is long and complicated in order to yield a tender and tasty final product that is traditionally cooked with ‘snail butter’ (a mixture of butter, shallot, garlic, parsley and salt). When eating out at restaurants in the U.S., you may find that larger and cheaper snails from Asia are passed off as Helix snails. These substitute snails generally thrive in marshes and swamps and as a result, may have funkier flavors when compared to their land-dwelling cousins.
