Modern Culinary Masters-- Daniel Boulud

Today was the best day of my life.

Just kidding, although I did have a wonderful day. Whenever we ask Chef how he's doing, he always responds "today's the best day of my life" in a serious voice. I love it.

Before class I stopped at Starbucks to eat my lunch and have some tea. I had the lovely pleasure of meeting Edward, the man who sat next to me and decided to strike up conversation. Actually, that's an understatement.. he actually decided to tell me his whole life story. I learned about his long trips to Mississippi and what he likes to do in his free time on the weekends. Things got weird when he asked me if I wanted to listen to his ipod with him, so I chugged my tea and bolted. He gave me a Lifesaver mint as a parting gift..... weird.

I got to class nice and early to help set up the kitchen. There is a lot of prep to get the kitchen exactly how Chef likes it. Once we went over the recipes, Kim and I started working on the Soupe au Pistou. The soup used vegetable stock as a base, so we decided to "fortify" the stock that was given us by adding more vegetables, herbs, and spices to it. This increased the depth of flavor, which really affected the outcome of our soup.

The soup required a lot of prep work and chopping. It is basically a French version of minestrone, so we prepped a lot of different vegetables and aromatics. Once our soup got going, we made an awesome pesto sauce to top the soup with. We made this sauce to taste by blending fresh basil, parmesan cheese, lightly toasted pinenuts, and garlic. While these ingredients were pureeing, we streamed in extra virgin olive oil. After adding more cheese, pine nuts, salt, and pepper, this pesto was perfect! It was the perfect topping to our soup.

We also changed the recipe of our soup a bit by adding tomato puree. This added a nice sweetness and made the broth my hearty. We also added some torn basil for a bit of freshness. The end result was perfect. Chef complimented us on our soup and even said it was one of the best minestrone soups he's tasted... I'll take it!

Matty and Allison made a Crisp Paupiette of Sea Bass with Red Wine Sauce. It was a beautiful presentation and a very delectable dish. The sea bass was coated with paper-thin slices of potatoes and sauteed until the outer layer of potatoes were crispy:

Rob and Nora made the Baby Chicken and Squash Casserole with Rosemary. They also dried some tomatoes and used it as a garnish. This was another wonderful dish!

The other groups made some other impressive dishes. My favorite was the Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Sage Croutons:

Obviously, I also loved the Lobster Ravioli on Spinach Leaves in a Ginger Cream Sauce:

Lamb Chops with Lemon -Pignoli Crust and Oven Roasted Vegetables:

Billi-Bi Cressonniere (Vegetable cream soup with mussels):

Maine Sea Scallops in Black Tie (Layers of scallops and black truffles in puff pastry):
Creamy Rabbit Casserole with Nine Spring Herbs:
After making these recipes, I am dying to go to Daniel Boulud's restaurant (appropriately named "Daniel") in NYC.

I was kind of bummed because Chef asked the class if we would want to skip Thomas Keller's recipes tomorrow and have a class of knife skills. Most of the class said they wanted the knife skills lesson. The recipes for tomorrow looked sooo good. Oh well, at least I'll get some much needed practice. Chef said that we can make some of the recipes, although we will spend most of the class on knife skills. At least tomorrow's FRIDAY!!!!