The good thing about not having a French keyboard (or knowing where the short cut keys are for the relevant accents) means that I can hopefully just write, leave out accents and people will accept it.
The good...
Good chicken, good onions and good broccoli - all perfectly cooked (although the chicken could use more salt, needed to be washed better inside and the onions were a blanc instead of a brun). I wonder if I flunked colors in kindergarten? Chef J liked the jus - there wasn't much of it and it was a bit thicker than the one in demo, but that may just have been a smaller quantity of liquid that had to reduce down to this brown, shiny, sticky yummy goodness of pan juices with the fat skimmed off as much as possible. I suppose it helped that I measured things exactly when quantities were indicated - apparently cooking is as precise as baking, I just got away with not measuring because cooking at home generally involved throwing everything together and seeing what came out. Super yummy - I had to taste it to make sure it was seasoned after all...
Trussing the chicken was a bit tricky because the instructions in the demo were a little different from the ones in practical. Apparently I now know how to truss advanced style - but I'm not sure I'll ever know how to do it the way they showed us today (in our Cuisine Foundations book with lots of pictures, tricky if you don't know what you are actually feeling around for). The chicken wing section ended up looking pretty, although photos will have to wait - too tired tonight. It may not look as pretty tomorrow, not being fresh out of the oven, rested and then carved but it should give an idea.
Onions - they didn't look as brown as what was in the book but they took a long time and I couldn't be sure - the last time there was no glazing at all so this time I am just grateful they were cooked, shiny on the plate AND they didn't slide around everywhere.
I disagree a tad with the broccoli - I like mine a bit crisper than what ended up on the plate, but on the other hand, if the Chef likes what's there then it's a good thing. I don't think I'd do butter for myself at home, but I can see why they want us to do things by the book the first time around and I know some people who love butter.
Any thoughts I may have entertained of immediately turning vegetarian while trussing the chicken disappeared the moment I smelled and saw the chicken sizzling away in its pan, all golden brown and oh-so-delicious. The skin made that amazing crunchy sound while I was carving it - my fingers were burning but my mouth was watering. If this were a cartoon, everyone would have had drool down their fronts.
Thank goodness for watching Dad carve the joints on chickens for all those years, it made things so much faster when I finally got to the carving stage. The pieces I presented looked fine but I made a hash of the other pieces.
The bad...
Am now doing my third load of cooking school laundry in 4 days - the days with raw chicken just don't do it for me - no way to know if that tiny drop is raw chicken juice so I have to wash it to prevent contaminating my locker and/or my bag - ick. At least with fruits and vegetables you can be pretty sure of what the spot might be and whether you can put off laundry one more day. I always keep a spare jacket in my locker in case I spill something - they require us to be in clean, pressed uniforms. I don't iron, so I have to hang everything up overnight to dry in order to avoid wrinkles.
Somehow managed to get dehydrated despite drinking a mugful of water and lots of the small plastic cups' worth later in the day and a whole bottle of Snapple. Yes, they have Snapple here! (Ok that should be in the good, but it's not.) I got about halfway through the next class before the headache, which had been hovering for a while, really hit me hard.
I was allowed to leave our third class (actually, I had to leave class) and go lie down outside by Reception. Chatted to a couple of people (another girl from Hawaii, doing intermediate Patisserie, and her lovely friend who gave me a croissant they made this morning - for the record, it was delicious) for a tiny bit but mostly drank water and kept my head down to see if the headache would go away without panadol.
Also managed a burn on the palm of my left hand and another on my right index fingertip.
Injury count: Monday (a little of the left index fingertip and nail); Tuesday (burn on the back and side of the right hand); Wednesday (left palm and right indext finger). Stoves and ovens 5, hands 0. Am a bit concerned that I will be out of fingers and hands by the end of the month, let alone the course. Apprentice injuries for an apprentice chef...
The ugly...
I can't remember the last time a headache got so bad that I had to throw up (I did say ugly). I think what pushed things over the edge was the smell of the stock from the production kitchen, which is down the hall from the female locker room. For whatever reason, the normally enticing aroma of soup stock was yuck today and made it a struggle to change back into my street clothes and bolt up to the bathroom in time - thank goodness the bathroom was not engaged.
Am now recovered - 2 panadol, a liter of water and a two hour nap can make such a difference. Have had dinner, shower and ready to go to bed as soon as I hang up the laundry. Cannot wait to crawl into my crisp sheets and snooze the night away.
Roast chicken dinner/s...
The rest of my chicken, which I carved LCB way, is now in my refrigerator. I have a tupperware container which has compartments (which can also be lifted out) so the carcass went into one bit and I used the other bits for the chicken and the broccoli. It's actually great timing because tomorrow and the next day we have class until 9pm - tomorrow is the basic Patisserie Preparations (i.e. whipped cream and variations, pastry creams and a meringue!) and the next day is a chocolate tarte (shortcrust pastry, filling and decorations) so I doubt people will want to go out for dinner or feel like cooking when they get home.
Method
The roasting itself is very different from the way my Mom does it. Maybe we'll learn another way later, but this basic way involved washing the chicken (inside and out), patting it dry and singeing off any feathers (or you can singe, then wash and dry), trim, truss, sprinkle with salt (inside and out), scatter a few knobs of butter over it, stick it in a pan on its side and put it in the oven for 20 minutes each side and 20 minutes on its back. On the side means that it will cook faster on the side that is up (because hot air rises) and legs take longer to cook. (I burned my right index finger on the blowtorch.)
My Mom puts strips of bacon over the breast (keeps you from having to baste it) and she stuffs it. We were told not to because we wanted to get the chicken up to temp as quickly as possible. So I miss Mom's stuffing, gravy and the crispy bacon strips (one of my few exceptions to the no pork thing), but I can try that at home as English style (Australian style?) roast chicken. Someone asked about something else and the Chefs are fond of telling us, yes, but this is a French cooking school so we do it this way. I'm not going to argue, especially if it means playing with things like blow torches and blast chillers, which we haven't gotten to use yet.
Other stuff
Tomorrow is a late start for our pastry - 3pm demo and then class until 9pm. Have plans to go to ballet class - Zena, our regular teacher, is away on vacation until next week but need to move around a bit. Maybe even have a snooze before class - and depending on the weather, a walk in one of many parks around the area.
There is so much greenery around and one of my favorites is to walk in Regent's Park and stand on one of the many bridges while enjoying the day. Another good one is the Serpentine in Hyde Park - some parts of it can look a little ick but the Serpentine Gallery is there - even though it's in the guidebooks, I discovered it by accident on my own so it holds a little extra appeal. The guidebook is merely a confirmation of something I already know.
These late starts are a good time to hit the museums, which can get so crowded on weekends but right now I can't face the crowds. Perhaps when we've all settled into a routine...for now it's all about getting a bit more settled.
So until next time - drink lots of water!
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