Back To The Grind... Ing Of Meat, That Is.

After Rob left, so began a seriously intense week at school. Six days straight of cooking and demos from 8am most days and often not ending till 9 at night. We made roast duckling, guinea fowl pie, duck breast with bordelaise sauce, lobster a l'americaine, chicken ballentine stuffed with pork and fois gras, and sausage. That's some serious french cooking.

Things started to get really interesting around chicken ballentine day. We affectionately named the lesson "removing a chicken's meat jacket 101." To create the outer shell of the ballentine we had to remove every single bone from a chicken while keeping his skin and flesh in tact. After carefully extracting every bone, we lay the chicken skin side down and spread it with ground pork before laying a log of pate de fois gras in the center. We then tied the chicken up, attempting to create the illusion that he had never been cut open. What weirdo Frenchman decided one day that it'd be a good idea to take of a chicken's meat jacket, fill it with weird shit, and then tie it up to look as good as new?

Chicken in the process of being derobed.

I wish I could tell you that was the end of chicken ballentine, but ooh no! Once the chicken was securely wrapped around the meat filling, we wrapped it in plastic wrap and poached it in water steeped with chicken bones. The next day we clarified this cloudy chicken water until it was crystal clear. Once clarified, the liquid was mixed with gelatin to create an aspic, aka meat jelly. Why would anyone want to make or eat meat jelly, you ask? Because nothing goes with sliced chicken ballentine quite as well as a jiggly layer of chicken jelly! Bien sur!

I made that rose out of a tomato and a leek!

 
If meat jelly wasn't gross enough, we completed the practical by making our own sausage.  I have to say, I was pretty excited about this because sausage to me is sort of an exotic food, at least in the way of home made goods.  As it turns out, I'd like to keep it in the exotic realm and will not be making it at home any time soon.  After making a puree of meat and liquids matching the consistency of a chunky milkshake, we piped it into pig intestines, tied it up and boiled it in milk.  I couldn't make this up if I tried...

Culinary school is one long dirty joke.