Our week of hard studies finished with an amazing day of regional cuisine of the Provence region. I must admit I was a bit doubtful the previous day that I will enjoy it as much as I did but it was exceptional. We all were assigned to one of 5 groups, each responsible for the making of one course in our 5 course Provence meal. I was a bit upset because Our group was the biggest with 4 members, cooking together a first course only. it was just too many people for that task. I was concerned each one of us will not have much to do and that exactly what happened but I was still very happy this whole day, everything went well and the lunch was good. Actually the best part for me was the plating and helping other groups with that. Everything came out very beautiful.
For starters I will show the pictures of the lunch itself without nonsense, after that the whole details and pictures of the process, through my eyes. This time every group had a different dish to make so I concentrated more in our dish. Like I said, it was not a stressed day so I could see what everyone else is up to.
The Meal:
Anglo A sitting to eat their first Regional menu
Entrée #1: Vegetables with Anchovy dipping sauce (Traditional and Modern versions) with quail safaran marinated eggs
Bread: Focaccia with black olives
Wine #1: Chateau de la Negly. Not exactly provence wine but very good one, was selected as our favorite. In the back is #3 wine which was a red Bordeaux to accompany the meat. There's a good red Provencal wine but school cellar did not have in stock unfortunately
Entrée #2: Petits Farcis a la Provencal (our group dish). A zucchini, onion and tomato filled with lamb, beef, mushrooms and bacon. Créme of roasted peppers and a reduction of white stock with butter.
Wine #2: The Famous Provencal Rosé, was a bit boring after the great first white wine.
Plat #1: Filet of Red mullet with black olive cream, Fish stock reduction, ratatouille, fried marjoram (the greens on top)
Plat #2: Daube a la Provencale: Beef stew with dried tomato, onion, Fennel, mashed potatoes and potato chips
Dessert: Cold nougat, raspberry coulis, tuiles and raspberry sorbet.
Anchoïade:
The anchovy in oil, because the ones in salt are too salty
Little radishes! I love those
Baby fennel, so cute! If a baby bunny would eat one of these baby fennel it would be the cutest thing 🙂
Prepping and cutting the vegetables
Barbara preparing the cauliflower
Garlic in their shells, in olive oil (and a bit of water) cooking slowly
Ready and yammy. yes I came to check this out, I love garlic!
Quail eggs being boiled
Peeled and marinated in safaran and spices
Barbara pushing the anchovies and the roasted garlic through a very fine strainer
This is the classic sauce with the raw garlic
Andreea start the dough for the foccacia
Ready for the oven, olives inside the dough and outside as well
Chef taking the focaccia out of the oven
The proud cooks plating their dish
Looking good.
At the table
I liked the classic one better (it was very garlicy and the other was more strong on the fish side) the eggs were amazing!
chef Antoine pouring us the first glass of wine, Barbara is already in another world
The focaccia will be carved soon. It was amazing and filled the kitchen with the yeasts smell. It was a good one, especially where the dough was thicker.
Petits Fracis:
Fresh little onions
Alisa and Zeynel taking care of hollowing the vegetables. The eggplant didn't arrive with the merchandise, we were also missing chicken breast
The tomatoes are peeled and hollowed
Onions washed
The inside is taken out with a melon baller
The onions were boiled first
Alisa with the vegetables ready to be filled
Making the filling, shallots and mushrooms
Everything is sliced very finely
Surprise! The meat from the Marmite came back for another boil. For the 4th time that it has been boiled
Rob removing the meat from the cooking water
What do we have here?
A bit of every different meat is sliced thinly, it didn't have a lot of taste by then
Bacon is sliced and roasted
Lamb is roasted and then cut
Sweat the vegetables with butter of course
Adding all the meats and also some chopped ham
Adding parmesan and chopped herbs
Filling the tomatoes
Filling the zucchini
Some parmesan on top
To a pan with some stock, olive oil and lemon
Filled onions
Out of the oven
Our white stock sauce is being reduced
The roasted peppers cream. Was not in the recipe but we had time to make something colorful
Ready for plating
The process of thinking how we should plate took time (which we had). This was one of the options 😀
In the end we went for something less crowded
Plating is the best part!
Rob ready to serve
I liked a lot our dish. Everything went very good together, three little bites, that's all.
Like an angel
I'm very happy and proud
The class enjoying their petits farcis
Filet de Rougets a la creme d’olive
Roasting 3 colored pappers
Pulling out all the little bones from the filet
Cooking the Ratatouille, the courgettes cooked separately, less time
Cream of olives
The sauce is resting
Roasting the fish in the salamander
Plating time, Shane and Daniel are ready and Chef helping
The ratatouille is plated in the middle
The two fillets on top
Adrian helping with the wiping of the plates
Beautiful outcome, and tasty as well!
Daube a la Provencale:
Meat has been marinated overnight and now cut and braised
With the liquids and vegetables ready to be cooked in the steel pot.
Adrian tasting to make sure the seasoning is OK before sealing with dough
Sealing like a pressure cooker
Thin slices of potatoes
Chipped
All the rest of the potatoes went to cook in the oven, instead of boiled, to avoid loosing the flavor to the water
Mashed with butter of course
Kept hot in a bain marie
Ihsuan taking care of the art project with the dough
Came out very nice! Though the dinners not supposed to eat that, it would feel like a brick in the belly
Tomatoes dried in the oven
Ihsuan and Ericka start the plating
The sauce was strained from all the vegetables
New vegetables are added by Adrian
This is a fairly large portion!!
The fennel was my favorite here
Like little butterflies of potatoes on top
I guess I liked everything here but the meat itself, I prefer the red bloody meat with this sauce and vegetables
Nougat Glace, Tuiles, Sorbet de Framboise:
Claire making the candied almonds for the nougat
Chilling down
Broke down to pieces
There was a need to check the temperature all the time, for the sorbet
Olive is straining the coulis of raspberry
Nice looking tuiles dried on a rolling pin
The ready nougat out of it's mold
Plating
The nougat on our dinning table. Was very good, I loved the tuiles. The nougat like that was my first time to try, very airy.
This day I wasn't the only one to take pictures!
Getting to the end of the meal
Eating, knowing the next dish we have are the dishes to clean
Alisa and everyone enjoying the final moments of this wonderful lunch
I was a bit tipsy from all the wine while cleaning and then found out I will be the next week’s Sous chef. Behold!
Rob Stauning Alissa Cuellar Deniz Giorgini Sahin Shane Ryan Enzensperger Bárbara Campos Adrian Phillips Andreea Mira Daniel PizarroEricka Marshall Claire Saffitz
This post made me very hungry.
Great photos! Cool to see things that were going on while I was so focused on my dish.
Thanks, yes your dish came out beautiful :>
Wow – you had a very nice provence meal!!
I liked all the dishes and your happy and proud picture.. 🙂
wow! what a spread.
the little angle was so cute…
what was the dough on top of the pot that was so beautiful for??? was it just for fun?
We were told restaurants do this to serve the dish with the dough thing and Ihsuan made it very nice, only to decorate not to eat