Early morning Chook.

Oops... last weeks...

College started at 8am with the dissecting of a raw chook. 8am is a little early for slimy raw chicken with fat, skin, bone cracking and popping. Not to mention the giblets I found when finally splitting the poor chook in half. (Giblets for those who don't know are the inside goodies like the heart etc.) I know it has to be done and I wouldn't say I'm the squeamish type when it comes to food but 8am in the morning, really? the smell of parmesan cheese was too much the other week.

We washed and dried our chook, learnt how to truss it then cut our chook into saute pieces which is 8 pieces. Four white meat and four dark meat. You usually serve one dark piece and one light piece when serving in a restaurant. Trussing is tying with string so your bird doesn't flap around in the oven or your roasting pan (also for even cooking and presentation).

When I cut my chook I took off the marylands (thigh and drumstick as one piece) first and looked for the oysters. The oysters on the chicken are located on its back, one on each side of the back bone. It's a fleshy piece of meat that sits in what looks like a little oyster shell which is part of the chickens back bone. After removing both marylands I took the drumstick off the thigh bone and frenched the bone on the drumstick. Frenching the bone is cutting the meat away from the bone to expose the bone. We also removed the knuckle but Chef explained that some chefs don't do this because the bone can split.

Next was the boobs. This is a lovely process because first you have to remove the back bone from the breast bone. You hold your chook up and cut downwards then pop the shoulder blades out and remove the back bones from the breast bone. This was not my favourite part of the whole early morning experience. I removed the boobs by placing my chefs knife on one side of the breast bone and pushing down then scraping the meat off the remaining bone. I did this for both boobs then we split them in half so we had 4 even sized pieces with the wings still attached.

This all sounds a little groosem. But I respected my chooky and my 8 peices of chicken were neatly cut and not mongolated. We made a delicious thai curry with the chicken pieces. I made a thigh curry, the boys made a boob curry - as chef put it.

We made pilaff rice to go with it and guess what? SUCCESS! The stove time was minimum so I got away with less time to burn it. We sweated onion off in butter, added the rice, stirred it so all the rice was coated then whacked it in the oven until it was done. Delicious and nutty... will definitely be repeating this at home.

To go with the curry and pilaff we made cucumber riata (chef's recipe) which consisted of yoghurt, lemon juice, salt, cumin and cucumber. Wow, yum. We jumped through different cultures and countries this lesson but it all tasted great for lunch.

Thanks for reading! Keep watching for lasagne (my favourite) & anglaise sauce (scrambled eggs? or custard?).

Trick of the hand.

Bit late on my post about College last week but I've been a busy bee with to be honest, goodness knows what. The job search is still happening, I think I'm being too picky now... not sure if its a good thing or not. They say you should stay at your first place for a year so does that make it ok to be picky? I will be washing dishes and chopping onions for the first few months anyway.

Back to the fun stuff. College was great! We cooked all day and then to top it off theory was cancelled in the afternoon. Could it get any better?! The day was about shallow frying and grilling. We cooked;  Shallow fried breast of chicken with a tomato reduction sauce served with buttered beans and glazed carrot batons. AND... Grilled sirloin steak with grilled tomatoes and potato gratin. I remembered my container this week so I could take my food out side and eat it for lunch rather then scoff it down in class. Not sure if this was a good idea or not. I ate so much and felt incredible sick after by then end and would have probably gone into a food coma in theory anyway so it being cancelled worked out well.

Butter. I smelt like butter after class, I could still taste butter after class and I know for sure that there was butter in or on everything we cooked.

The chicken was cooked in olive oil but the delicious creamy sauce started with butter, onion and garlic. Yum or what? stock and wine was added, reduced then strained. I had never done this before and at the time Chef demonstrated it to us all I could think was what a waste of those delicious goodies. Turns out the sauce is a lot smoother and looks a lot better presentation wise without all the goodies. Cream and a little french mustard was then added and reduced. Tomato concassee and parsley tossed through then served over the chicken which was resting on buttered beans which literally speak for them selves and glazed carrot batons which are carrots chopped into Jardiniere's, simmered in water, butter, salt and sugar covered with a cartouche and cooked until tender.

Whats a cartouche you say? It is a piece of baking paper which covers the contents of the pan not letting out any steam which therefore stops food drying up and locking in flavour. Jamie Oliver quotes in Jamie at Home that the italians often use procuitto instead of baking paper, getting the extra flavour of the procuitto in the cooking.

Onto the steak. I have to admit now that I am a total girl and before college cooked steak to buggerey and sausages on the BBQ until they were charcoal. That is of course until now! I learnt the trick of the hand of how steak should be cooked. If you touch your  thumb and pointer finger together and press with your other hand on the meaty part between your thumb joint and wrist, its rare. Thumb and rude finger, medium rare. Thumb and ring finger medium and finally thumb and pinky and if the meat feels like this you know you should throw on a new steak and start again.

To go with the steak we served potato gratin which consisted of garlic and onions cooked down in butter then layered in between cream drenched slices of potato, topped with cheese and baked until done. Parsley butter and grilled tomatoes with parsley butter and cheese on top.

Julia Child would be so proud of me.

Theory test on food presentation was better then expected (fingers crossed). Off to do homework from last week.


Thanks for reading and keep watching for Poultry Preparation. Doesn't that sound appealing!?