Three days of Vegetable soups

This week was all about knife techniques and soups. It got easier with practice but harder as more elements were thrown in and more pressure to hurry up was given. Chef Sebastian keep pushing us to be focused and faster and we try our best to finish on time or earlier (unlike Anglo A, taking their time 😛 ). Everyday starts with us getting a cart with the products, dividing it according to the recipe to all the members of the group, arranging our working place. Then we are instructed by Chef next to the white board, and we start the recipe. In between we have some more demos and explanations. In the end of the day we have a window of time to present our dish to the Chef, he tastes it and look at the presentation and gives his remarks.

Soupe Au Pistou

It’s like a minestrone soup with the vegetables cut into squars with the addition of pistou which is like pesto but without pinenuts.

Dividing the ingrediqnts:

Explanation of the recipe

Demo of the cuttings for today, squares of 1cm

We made the Pisto in the meantime.

It was a very plain soup, I had to put a lot of pesto at home to eat it, but the chef said it’s cooked well but has to be served more hot!

 

Potage Julienne Darblay and Creme Vichyssoise

These two soups are based on leeks and potatoes, puréed and can be served cold. The Darblay is made from the whites of the leeks and served with Julienne vegetables; the Vichyssoise made from the green part of the leeks and we served this one chilled with chives.

The comments I got for these two were that the Juliennes have to be cooked longer (we don’t want any crunchy veg in the french classic cuisine), and I apparently made a mistake by adding the cream while the soup was not boiling enough, caused small dots of seperated cream and the consistency was not perfect. You can even see that on the picture. The Vichyssoise was better but the one remark was that it had to be more chilled. We had time constrains that made it hard to get chilled so fast but other than that it was good!

Potage Saint-Germain Aux Croutons

After puréed fresh vegetable soup came the time for puréed dried vegetable soup. This day we made a split peas soup and added white veal stock that we cooked before. We also used some pork belly to enhance the flavor and made croutons. It was the most complicated recipe so far.

The end of the week arrived so fast (though there’s still the last soup of the week to write about). The days are hectic and crazy but time in the kitchen flies. One minute I’m crossing the door of the “gare manger” (where all the food is divided, next to the kitchen) dressed with white clean apron and uniform, the next minute I’m out the same door sweaty and dirty, holding my finished product. It’s an exhilarating feeling coming out of the kitchen, always energetic and excited. I don’t realize how tired I am until I arrive home. I feel that I have tons of things left to learn but I’m in a good position in the group. The last hour or so of preparation is always the hardest, the pressure is building up, people running around, strainers gets stolen, it’s great.