Chicken Cordon Bleu

People like poultry for its tenderness, delicate flavor, less fat than mammals' meat has, relatively short time of cooking,  and diversity of cooking methods applicable to this type of meat. We fry it and bake, and boil to make broth and stew with vegetables, finally, we stuff chicken and make stuffing from chicken. One of the first dishes of second phase was Chicken Cordon Bleu, but for beginning we learned proper way to butcher chicken.

I have experienced processing chicken from dispatching the bird to serving on the table, yet I've learned a bunch of information and skills how to cut a peace people will pay for. One of those fancy cuts, I can do now, is chicken airline breast, or chicken supreme. 

How I can cook supreme, I'm looking forward to learn later, but this class was about boneless chicken breast stuffed with ham and cheese, breaded and deep fried. Chicken Cordon Bleu. From the beginning it looked like we were going to cook individually, but then cooking became a process shared by all. It was... challenge. I do not know about everybody, but I didn't complete all steps of cooking this dish even though I watched and understood all of them. It's why I decided to cook Chicken Cordon Bleu for my husband for dinner and Kiev Chicken for me as well. The beginning of the process is same for both of them, so I put skinned boneless filets between of plastic wrap layers and pounded them with meat mallet. 

 After that, both breasts I seasoned with salt and pepper and the one for Cordon Bleu I sprinkled with parsley, while Kiev Chicken I dusted with dill. To make the first one I put seasoned breast on the new piece of plastic wrap and laid on a top few thin slices of ham and swiss cheese. I also added some grated Grier, I just can't help it - I'm a really cheesy person.

Then I tightly rolled the chicken in wrap and put it in the refrigerator minimum for 15 minutes. 

The same process is used for Kiev Chicken but the stuffing is the frozen dill butter.

Meanwhile, I made orzo with garlic and cherry tomatoes, and, off course, cheese. I heated minced garlic with olive oil in a saute pan until it became light gold color and added chopped cherry tomatoes; sauteed them until beautifully reduced

Then I added al dente pasta well drained and reheated it with grated Grier. Don't ask me about proportions in making this side - all to taste and for individual preferences. 

That time my chicken was ready to be breaded and fried, so I started this process.

One of the very useful things our Chef taught us was to use two hands in breading process, so one stays dry and another is wet. In the picture above you can see the order of breading: flour, egg wash (eggs with little bit of milk), and bread crumbs. Because I don't like to fry anything until a dark color, I fried my chicken about 5 minutes and then I put them in an oven preheated to 350*F for 5 minutes more. Even though my chickens had same side, I served them differently. Chicken Cordon Bleu I plate with Hollandaise sauce and garnished with parsley.

Chicken Kiev doesn't require sause due to a bunch of own juice and melted butter inside, so I cutted it and  finished with baby arugula. 

My Manhattan Clam Chowder

I already wrote about Manhattan Clam Chowder which we cooked in L'Ecole lab. It said a lot about the real flavor of this soup and different ways to cook it, and I just for interest looked up online varieties of Manhattan style of Clam Chowder. I've learned some interesting facts about this soup.   For example, the Americans have been loving and eating it for more than 100 years; this soup was developed in Delmonico's restaurant, New York, in 1880th or 1890th (this question and about inventor as well, my online research wasn't unique) Also, I found a lot of different recipes where some of the ingredients were the same and some were different. Therefore, I highlighted some ingredients and cooked my own Manhattan Clam Chowder. It was successful, and I had couple feedbacks from the Americans who weren't fans of this soup but ate mine with appetite; so, I'm going to share with you my recipe, and, maybe, you will like it, too.

First of all we need to complete our miss in place and prepare
3 cups of water
 5 oz of diced (or chopped) bacon,
12 oz of small diced mirepoix (6 oz of onion + 3 oz of carrot + 3 oz of celery)
8 oz of medium diced potatoes
3 oz of small diced bell pepper
1 can (14.5 oz) of diced tomatoes
13 oz of canned clams, minced with juice
14 oz of squid rings (defrost and dice just before use)(It is not a main ingredient of Manhattan Clam Chowder, so you can dismiss this item at all or change it for shrimps as many of online recipes recommend)
2 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
dry thyme, bay leaf, salt, ground black peppercorns, cayenne pepper I use to taste and adjust many times during the cooking process (especially salt and pepper)

For beginning, I put my bacon in the pot and let it release its fat, then I add a couple of bay leaves, a generous pinch of thyme and peppers and leave my dry seasonings in heat up to 20 seconds to open their flavor.  Then I add mirepoix and slightly caramelize it.

Bell pepper I add to mirepoix when it is almost ready because I want my pepper only soft. All this process takes about 7-8 minutes. Next, I add water, bring it to a boil, reduce to simmer and leave for a couple minutes.

Add potatoes and clams with juice and simmer 5 minutes more.

When my vegetables are soft and almost ready, I add worcestershire sauce and tomatoes. These acids keep my vegetables firm and prevent them from breaking and making a mess. On the other hand, adding acids at the end of cooking significantly reduce the time of cooking potatoes and everything else in my soup. In a couple minutes after that I add my diced squids.

Only 60 seconds are need to cook squid completely, so you want to add it to soup if you serve this immediately; reheating will make it robbery. My recipe good for 6 servings, so if you need less, just divide it.

Garnish soup with chopped parsley and Bon Appetite!

Grilled eggplants with onion and cranberry relish

In the beginning I'd like to say that I'm very thankful to people who read my blog and, especially, those who give me their feedback. Thank you!
One of my friends asked me about some recipes and today I'm going to share with you my lunch and say couple words about a beautiful vegetable which I cooked. It is an eggplant which is botanically not a vegetable but a fruit,actually, and India is proud to be the homeland for it. America can thank Thomas Jefferson for the introduction to eggplant in 18th century. Eggplant comes from the same nightshade family of plants with potato, tomato and pepper even though all of the members of this family have such different characteristics of appearance, taste, and cooking methods. By the way, even eggplant by itself has more than 700 varieties around the world which can be slightly different in taste and cooking method used.

 I like eggplants for this huge variety of cooking methods you can use to prepare them and different tastes you can create.  Today I played with the original recipe of Baked Eggplants with Pomegranate and Mint from Julia Visotskaya, and had fun cooking Warm Salad from Eggplants with Onion and Cranberry Relish.

For the beginning I had eggplants and no idea what to cook with them. A long time ago I cooked Julia Visotskaya's dish, but I haven't saved the recipe nor had pomegranate in my house. For a good start I opened my refrigerator and pantry room and took from them anything which, in my opinion, I could mix. 

To make relish I poured 1/3 of  Modera in the saute pan and reduced it on a medium heat about half; then I added 1 tbs of honey to the reduced wine and warmed it enough to melt completely, about 1-2 minutes. 

This liquid I added to 2 oz of the chopped onion with 2 oz of mashed cranberry, juice of half of the lemon, 1/2 tsp of balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp of the worcestershire sauce, and 2 tbsp of virgin olive oil. 

Next, I sliced my eggplants in thin slices

and seasoned them with salt, black pepper, coriander, and thyme. After mixing eggplants well to spread seasonings evenly, I brushed them with a little amount of olive oil and started to fry them on the grill pan

Meanwhile, I tried my relish and found that I would like to chop it more nicely, so I used my chopper 

and adjusted taste by adding a little bit more honey and cranberry. When eggplants were done, I layered  them and brushed each with relish

Mint chiffonade on the top of this salad is the perfect garnishing. Meaty resilient eggplants with sour crunchy relish and mint aroma made me enjoy their taste so much that I forgot about my main dish.

This salad would be a great appetizer for the family supper, but for feeding guests you can make nice bites.

Plating as finishing.

Soon we will finish our First Phase of studying, and personally I desire to organise the whall bunch of information given to us by L'Ecole Chefs. For now, I can compare my knowledge in Culinary Fundamentals with sea where I swam being afraid to become food for fishes called Termes, Names and Definitions. I have been studying all this stuff, but feel like everything was blended in my head as Puree of Split Pea Soup. The situation is little bit better with ServSafe, and I even have my first certificate in the USA:

However, it is not 100% knowledge which allows you to answer questions surely and without any multiple choice help. Therefore, I'm looking forward to work hard for many months and have lots of "mug after mug of strong dark roast" as my Chef said. 

Today, I can hold a knife in my hand, hopefully, not bad, know that chicken is supposed to lay on the lowest shelf in the refrigerator, and prohibit my husband to touch food before I make a picture of it. Recently, we've had dinner in Oceano Bistro, and I was delighted by my Grilled Branzino and Daniel's Fennel Dusted Scallops:

Perfect appearance, perfect smell, and perfect taste of these dishes made me excited again " I'm going the right way. I want to do like this. I want to do better."

I absolutely agree with my Chefs in school that wrong plating can really screw up even a delicious dish, so I try now to plate any food we eat at home keeping in mind colors, temperatures, and flavors of my cookies. 

 Crab meat casserole and salt cabbage salad
















Baked vegetables and fresh cabbage salad
( In this case to put a cold salad and hot vegetables on the same plate wasn't a good decision)






Baked salmon with cheesy-spinach mashed                                                                                              potato and a fresh avocado rose

Breakfast again.

Previously, I told about the most common food for the breakfast, the eggs. However, many of us have one more preference in the morning, and this is griddle cakes and crepes. There are thousands of recipes and advice on how to cook the best pancakes or crepes in books, magazines, online, and in the family recipe book we have. Anyway, I've never seen the recipes that we used in the school and I fell in love with them. Our pancakes were nicely moist inside and golden out. I fried crepes, and this process has never been so easy without any of the oil that I usually use. Then we created stuffings for our crepes, savory and sweet. One of our group made sweet stuffing from caramelised apples. Flavored with vanilla and honey, his apples were rich and delicious. The savory filling was developed by another classmate, and she did a great job. Fried spinach with melted gruyere cheese we mixed with fried mushrooms and leek, and I'm going to use this filling recipe in my home kitchen because it is just the perfect taste, especially, in the crepe.

One more exciting experience I got was to make Lemon Curd. Once I tried to cook it at home, so I found lots of recipes and even a video guide, but my lemon curd was too sour, liquid and pale. Using the school recipe I made Lemon Curd with balanced taste and the perfect appearance.

Basic sauces

What does the sauce mean? Is it the compliment to the dish or a compliment from the Chef, or, maybe, it is just masking an undesirable taste? I heard a statement that a good sauce can make you eat anything, even your plate. Definitely, the plate is not delicious. Even though I love to cook meals at home from scratch, I've never cooked real sauces, so L'Ecole's Chefs opened for me a new page in realizing tastes with learning sauces. I was taught that sauces have their own "genealogy" and five families with the main "mather sauce" in the beginning. The basic white sauce is Bechamel, and sauces like Mornay, Cream, etc are made by adding different ingredients to its milk-roux mix. Espagnole's "children" are Bordelaise, Robert, Duxelle, and many more. Bolognese and Spanish sauces are produced from Tomato. The sauce that is a "mother" of emulsified butter and yolk sauces is Hollandaise. Finally, the basic blond sauce is Veloute, and its delicious "descendants" are Supreme and Allemande, for example. All of those basic sauces and some of the small ones we produced in our school kitchen, and I was excited to try their classic tastes. Everybody is different, so we like some tastes more than others, and I found that my favorite sauce from those we cooked is Hungarian. This is a small Supreme Sauce from the Veloute family. Also, I was happy to learn how to make emulsified sauces even though my arm is not strong enough to produce it easily. One of my "beaten" sauces was Herb Mayonnaise:

Cheese

Nutty and crunchy. Creamy and soft. Rubbery and bouncy. Herby and salty. Delicate. Pungent. Sweet and fruity. I can continue forever because I'm talking about the most delicious food I know. It is cheese. We have this name for such a huge number of tastes and forms, so if you ask one hundred people to imagine cheese, you, probably, would not find any two same images. Especially, if those people are from different cultures. However, all cheeses have the same beginning - a mammal's milk. Off course, it is about natural cheeses. Then, the type of the mammal, features of processing, and the environment, including even air movements, make the cheese's flavor distinct and special. Many of natural cheeses are impossible to reproduce in any region but only in the region in which they originate. Even though, I really love this delicious food, I found that I know almost nothing about it. Endless fields of "cheesy" information I have to browse and learn in case to be aware of cheese on a professional level.

Breakfast

People have the great advice about daytime meals "Eat your breakfast by yourself, share your lunch with a friend, and give your dinner to your enemy". During the centuries, people have observed importance of the time of eating, and those observations show that the most important meal of the day is the breakfast. Unfortunately, I'm allowed to cook a proper breakfast only couple times per week when my husband and I can have the morning together.

 I wasn't surprised that we are going to learn breakfast in the first phase of our studying as one of the kitchen basics. Our Chefs taught us to identify and cook the most common breakfast dishes from eggs such as Eggs Benedict, Frittata, etc. We learned the proper way to fry eggs  in different styles and boil them to certain conditions. For example, I didn't know before that boiled eggs should never be boiled. Yes, they should be simmered. In this way we can avoid blue-green-grey color covering yolk after boiling. Also, my classmate taught me to flip "over" eggs. I did it! It is an amazing feeling when you learn the skill which you've seen only in some movie before. Thank you for this. 

Below I put pictures of breakfast dishes made by my classmates in egg-lab. 

Frittata

Quiche with spinach 

Cheese Quiche

 Eggs Benedict

Ravioli

The stuffed dough is the incredibly popular dish around the world. You can find different names for it in different cuisines: Chinese wontons, Russian pelmeni, Central Asian manti, Ukrainian vareniki, Polish pierogi, and etcetera, etcetera. In school, we learned how to cook Italian ravioli which is basically stuffed pasta. My first experience in cooking ravioli was full of mistakes and therefore useful. My dough was okay, but I made the stuffing with fresh cheese which became hard during the cooking process and no juice was found inside when we tried them. Also, I exaggerated the size of my ravioli and made them giants.

Finally, I plated them in the wrong way, too. Instead of putting the tomato sauce in a separate ramekin, I poured it on a top of my fried ravioli, and, in this way, just wasted their crunchy texture. 

The good thing is my knowledge about what I should not do making ravioli. Also, I was interested to know that frying Italian Ravioli was invented by accident in Charlie Gitto's, St Louis restaurant. This is not official information, so do not judge me if I'm wrong.

Pasta

Pasta has always been a wonder for me.  What makes flour and water so nutty and distinctive? In L'Ecole we made fresh pasta, and I was happy to learn how to do it. It turns out that semolina flour makes pasta hard and nutty, so we added semolina to our pasta in school.

Chef has shown us the proper way to make dough and we learned that it's needed to add eggs and water to flour but not vise versa.

The light-yellow semolina gave our dough warm color and needed hardness. Then I used a pasta machine the first time in my life and I was excited and successful. That day we were taught to cook Fresh Pasta Alfredo and our  group did great. Our pasta was al dente, firm and tender, and the sauce was rich and cheesy, so it was real Pasta Alfredo.