Today was Potato Day, and what a day it was. I must have consumed at least 7 kilos of potatoes and 8 liters of butter. (Note: I’m trying really hard to use the metric system as all school recipes come in that format. That’s about 15 lbs. of potatoes and 33 cups of butter). By the end of it all, I was ready to wave my white flag. Turns out it’s true that one can have too much of a good thing.

We started with your basic pommes purée, then moved on to pommes duchesse, followed by pommes dauphinois, pommes Anna, pommes sautées à cru, and finally pommes gaufrette. Chef warned us about pacing ourselves – I guess there have been other Tuber Gluttons before us – but it is doubtful that anyone heeded his advice. I certainly did not, and by 10:15am I had consumed my first preparation (needed more butter).

Pommes duchesse (the pretty piped ones you find on your plate at a fancy restaurant, or at the farthest end of the spectrum, in a TV or airplane dinner) were next. They were rather lovely to look at but not much in the way of taste. Butter, you say? Alas, no. Duchesse is more about presentation. If you add butter the mix won’t be stiff enough to pipe out through your pastry bag. (I ate a few of my toasty pipings anyway).

Pommes dauphinois: Thinly slice peeled potatoes with a mandoline. Toss in bowl with cream + milk + minced garlic + nutmeg + S&P. Place mix in buttered pan, simmer on stovetop, and continue to cook in the oven. When the potatoes are almost done, sprinkle top with gruyère + butter and brown. Sounds good, right? It was.

By this point I was feeling a bit full, but Potato Day comes only once in blue moon and I was going to see it through…or eat it through.

Pommes Anna were extremely pretty and very, very tasty. The sautées à cru so-so, but po-tay-to, poh-tah-to, I like them both.

FINALLY – pommes gaufrette, aka waffle fries. Golden delicious goodies that were perfectly crispy and delicate. Or as a classmate so poetically put it: “These are just like Ruffles.”

High Heels & Frijoles

We’ve been dealing with emulsions for a day or two at school and I’ve been feeling pretty confident. So confident in fact, that at dinner on Saturday night I tasted my mister’s sauce béarnaise and promptly scrunched up my nose saying, “The one I made was better.”

My confidence lingered on and I set out to replicate my better-than-thou béarnaise in the comfort of my own home.

It’s a fairly simple task:

1: Clarify some butter: Check!
2: Prepare reduction of dried tarragon, white wine vinegar, and minced shallots: Check!
3: Finely chop fresh tarragon and chervil: Check!
4: Whisk two egg yolks plus a splash of water in a bowl over a boiling pot of water: Check!
5: Whisk until a lovely, frothy, pale yellow sabayon comes into being: Check!
6: Slowly start pouring in clarified butter while whisking like mad: Check!
7: See glorious, velvety, very French sauce materialize: Houston, we have a problem.

My sauce broke, and with it my spirit…

Well, that’s being overly dramatic, but I am admittedly feeling really depressed about the broken béarnaise. Stay tuned for the sequel when I tackle the wretched recipe later on this week (I’d try it again tomorrow but I’m not allowed to eat red meat two days in a row, per my mister).

High Heels & Frijoles

Last week in school we devoted two days to fish. We prepared round fish and flat fish in a number of ways and it was extremely rewarding to start with a whole fish and end with a snazzy presentation.

So impressed was I by one of the preparations that I made it last Sunday as a special treat to dazzle my mister (I know, I know – I still have to tackle beastly béarnaise. Soon, I promise!). I started writing this post a few days ago and had the full intention of writing down step-by-step the instructions to make “poisson en papillote,” however, what began as a simple how-to quickly evolved – or devolved rather – into a three-volume novel. So I tossed it – well, actually, most of it is saved and if anyone would like the recipe, jus ask – and decided instead to do an illustrated guide to poisson en papillote. Click here to check out the 54 photos that comprise the recipe. Let me know what you think.

High Heels & Frijoles