I've wanted to do culinary school forever and looked into it when we first moved to Seattle, but didn't want to spend the money for another useless degree. Thanks to my loving and patient husband and of course Julie, in whose footsteps I followed, here I am just completing week number two of a 36 week program.
The first week was all about the knife skills, well and learning how to peel and block a potato. We learned julienne, paille, mignonettes, alumette, pont neuf, bouchon, émincer, tourné, fondantes, macédoine, brunoise, brunoisette, demi lune, paysanne, concasser, ciseler and I'm sure a few more. I do have to say, for all the times my Dad has given me a hard time about studying French, it has come in quite useful this past year!
Thursday was the first day we finally cooked! We took all the vegetables we'd been cutting for the last week and learned the proper way to sweat onions, create a basic vegetable soup and of course the proper way of tasting. Always using two spoons or forks you TAAT: taste, analyze, adjust, taste again. Now, it wasn't the best soup I've ever had, I gladly opted out of taking any home with me, but it was fun nonetheless.
Today, was a highlight we made stock, or as the French say Les fonds et les fumets. We did a lovely fond brun de volaille (brown chicken stock) and a fumet de crustacés (crustacean fumet). Apparently the perfect stock is about getting the tissues in the bones to break down which creates a natural gelatin giving the stock it's body. It was delicious. Next week we begin the mother sauces starting with velouté and béchamel!
