Lesson 5: Blanching and Par Boiling

Today was a verrry yucky day!  It's not very fun going into the city when it's rainy and windy out!  But, my day brightened up a bit when I met up with my dad before class (because he was on 27th street for the morning working on a recording for an ad) and I showed him my school and my kitchen.  It was a bit crazy on the 14th floor when I brought him up there because the morning classes were just getting out, but I was happy to show him where I go to school every day.

I had a quiz today, so after I showed my dad around I went to the library to study and eat lunch.  I'm a HUGE nerd and typed up my study guide... I got made fun of, but everybody ended up taking turns looking at my guide before the quiz.  Annnd i got a 100%! Plus the extra credit!  :)

Next, we set up our cutting boards and medium diced a few potatoes.  We also julienned a carrot, chopped a leek, and cut up some broccoli in florets.  Whenever I used to make broccoli, I would throw away the stems.  Today we just peeled the stems and chopped them up to cook with the broccoli florets.  The stems actually have a lot of flavor!

We worked in groups today and set up 2 pots of water to boil and salted them VERY generously.  I'm talking like a huge overflowing handful of salt.  We also had our potatoes in another pot and just covered them with water.  We also put a HUGE amount of salt in and brought that up to a boil.  We made the potatoes like I explained yesterday.  In the other pots of boiling water, we put in the broccoli (and carrots during the last minute), and the haricot vert that we trimmed.  We blanched the vegetables in cold water and later on sauteed them in butter.  All of the veggies were delicious and buttery! Warm french bread with butter was also put out as we had our feast of vegetables and potatoes.  Then, Chef brought us a buttercream frosted cake from one of the pastry classes!  The frosting was sooo soo good, but the cake part was a little dry.  There was also a layer of berry preserves in the center.. YUM.   We left the kitchen for the weekend with some potatoes to bring home and practice on.  I think I'll dice them up tomorrow and practice par boiling them and sauteeing them in butter.

Next week is fish and poultry fabrication....AND I will have to dispatch my very first lobster!!!  ahhhhh!