The Class With Hours of Simmering

Interesting Fact: Eating a 1/2 a raw onion a day, will increase your HDL cholesterol (the good kind) an average of 30%. Onions also increase circulation, lower blood pressure, and prevent blood clotting.

Let the cooking begin! Last night when I walked into our kitchen classroom, there were no chairs set up around the table. For the first time we had no lecture but went straight to our cooking. My group began immediately thin slicing 3 pounds of onions to carmelize for our onion soup gratinee. While those were cooking down we took approximately 30 oysters scrubbed the hell out of them and shucked them putting them in a bowl with their liquor (that's the liquid that's in the shell). We diced 3 oz of onions and sauteed them with 2 oz of butter. We strained the oysters, and took the liquor and 50 oz of clam juice and threw it on top of our translucent onions with approximately 3 oz of rice. We brought it all to a boil and then reduced to a simmer until the rice was soft. While that was going on, we began peeling, coring and slicing 6 pairs which went into a pot with white table wine to boil and soften.

We waited. Our rice got soft, so we took the pot off the stove and pureed with an immersion blender. Our bisque was not thick enough, so we had to take action and make a roux to thicken that puppy up. It worked like a charm and now our soup was at the right consistency as well as tasty, we put that soup on low heat to reduce a little bit more (but not too much otherwise it would have gotten wicked salty).

In time our onions finally carmelized (this took about an hour or so), we then deglazed the pan with Calvados, threw in three sprigs of thyme and a bay leaf. Added chicken stock and brown veal stock and let that bad boy reduce.

Chef had demanded that all of our soups be done by 9pm for tasting, and they had to be plated as she was going to note our presentation skills as well. We cut large croutons for our onion soup and grated Gruyere. We added cider and pear nectar to our softened pears cooked for a few and then removed from the stove and pureed with immersion blender. We put our onion soup into crocks topped with a crouton each and covered in grated cheese. We popped the crocks under the boiler to brown. We heated up our bisque and slid in our oysters and let them cook for about 3 minutes we heated our bowl. Took the pear and put it in a bowl that we placed in a bowl of ice to chill. We minced parsley. Took the crocks out of the broiler, ladled our oyster bisque into a heated bowl and garnished with the parsley. We put the chilled pear soup into a chilled bowl and garnished with pear slices. It was 8:57.

This may sound like organization, but it was all quite fast paced and required quite a bit of multitasking, even with three people working on three soups, we weren't quite confident in our abilities. But something clicked because chef raved about our soups again. I may, just may, have a knack for this after all.

Monday we begin sauces. Have a good weekend.