I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to be in culinary school. I enjoy the demos as much as the practicals. Matter of fact, I enjoy the practicals even more, because I get the opportunity to make tweak and personalize my dishes, like I did with this one. The new syllabus focuses on meat, which means we will be preparing lots and lots of meat dishes. We begin with poultry, which includes, but is not limited to chicken and ducks. Can you believe I forgot my camera?!!! I didn’t get to take any photos of the Chef’s demos. Sigh. The entire class already knows that I’m the food paparazzi.
Chef Wooden is our new chef, until we move on to the next level, which would be pastry. He is extremely funny, and had me laughing out loud when he described the difference between a rooster and a capon. They are one and the same, but the capon is a rooster that has been castrated, so he never gets to mate with the hens. The capon is probably angry due to the castration, however he becomes more plump, and as a result of getting absolutely “no action” from the hens, his meat is tender, moist, full of flavor and incomparable to that of the rooster. I find Chef Wooden’s style of teaching rather interesting. I’m really feeling him, as I have accumulated a wealth of information from him, in such little time.
The class is divided into groups. Once the chef finalizes the demos, each group completes the practicals. I had the honor of preparing the Chicken Paillard with Grilled Vegetables. The grilled vegetable were simple: olive oil, salt and pepper, however the Grilled Chicken called for a rosemary, garlic and lemon juice marinade. I decided to tweak/reinvent this dish, by chopping up other herbs that were not included (in the recipe from our text book) and added it to the marinade, which I used for both the chicken and the vegetables.
My Chicken Paillard with Grilled Vegetables turned out to be soooo amazing, that I decided to use the same marinade at home. I adjusted the recipe once again with my selections of vegetables, which were chayote, golden beets, purple beets, eggplant, corn and bell peppers. It was just totally awesome!
As you can see, there is no chicken on my plate below. I prepared pork to accompany the roasted vegetables. By the way, these photos are not from school. It’s my dinner that I prepared at home, which is why there is pork on my plate. Yes, my family eats well. Matter of fact, all the photos on this website are either my breakfast, lunch or dinner. If it were otherwise, I would have informed you. Yes, my family eats well. We are truly blessed. Why do we eat like this at home? I’m a foodie, remember?
