culinary school flashback: soups & salads

I’m back with another flashback to share my original post about our day at school. I also share photos of the first few recipes we learned. Rereading this made my mouth water, and now I can’t wait for it to be fall so I can go make a giant patch of french onion soup!

If you missed the first two, you can find them here and here.

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soups & salads

The first week of school flew by and my body is slowly – very slowly – getting used to the 4:15am wake up call!! As soon as I come home around 3:30/4 pm, I write my recipes, do my reading, think about what to make for dinner (I have to admit it was not home-made every single night this week), spend time with my husband (D) and go to bed in time to do it all again the next day. A few days this week, I even managed to go to the gym. I know I keep saying this, but I am truly having a blast!!

Here is what a typical day looks like:

• 4:15am: My alarm goes off
• 5am: I am on my way to school, usually getting there at around 5:45
• 6am: We change into our chef clothes and head into the kitchen to prep for the day. That includes setting up the Chef table for our lecture/demo, putting in place all the ingredients we will need to make the meals that day (called Mise en Place) and setting up our own kitchen stations for the day
• 7am: The lecture starts. Chef tells us what we will make that day (usually 2-3 courses), demos it for us and answered any initial questions
• 9am: We head into the kitchen ourselves and have about 2 1/2 hours to cook until its time to serve. Each student has to cook enough for at least two people – one of the pastry students and ourselves. In turn they contribute the final course: dessert! While we cook, Chef walks around the kitchen – watching to make sure we are working clean (meaning our stations are orderly & clean), helping us whenever we have a questions (from knife skills to tasting our food), and making sure we are enjoying our time in the kitchen (telling lots of jokes)
• 12pm: We start cleaning, scrubbing & organizing. We have to leave everything sparkling clean from the kitchen we use, to the classroom and the commissary (which is where all the food is kept)
• 1pm: Afternoon lecture. Sometimes Chef will hold another lecture (about equipment or knife skills), sometimes we take a quiz, have an opportunity to ask questions or have a guest speaker
• 2:30pm: Dismissal

Ok, let’s get to the good stuff – the food!!! This week’s menu was all about soups & salads.

LA SOUPE A L’OIGNON & LA SOUPE A L’OIGNON GRANTINEE

The only difference between the two soups mentioned is the crouton and cheese on top. The first time we made the soup we left both off to focus on the technique, i.e. learning how to properly caramelize onions. Day two we added the delicious goodness onto, which takes the soup to a whole new level!

LES CRUIDITES

LA QUICHE LORRAINE

We learned how to make the dough from scratch (so easy that I will never buy the dough for quiche again!!), the custard, and then put it all together

LA SALADE VERTE (Green Salad)

LA SALADE CONCOMBRES ET TOMATES

LA POTAGE CULTIVATEUR

Potage means it is leek based (as opposed to onion base, which is what defines a soup), with various finely diced vegetables. In this case, we used squash, potatoes, string beans, carrots, peas, tomatoes, turnip, celery and corn

I apologize for the terrible photo. I

LA SALADE COMPOSEE

As times goes on, I promise to take more photos of the kitchen, my food, and the overall process to share with everyone!

Here are a few more photos from this week featuring all menu items listed above:

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It’s funny to reflect back onto that first week of school because I remember how tired and overwhelmed I was. It took us hours to make those first few recipes, thinking that we would never finish in time. As time went on, our skills improved, we gained speed in the kitchen and the recipes became more and more challenging. But to see all that, you’ll just have to tune back in for more flashbacks 😉.