Pan-Fried Chicken Breast with Pan Gravy

The first dish of our second phase was fried chicken, and it is a way that I never use to cook chicken at home. My favorite place to cook any food is an oven, actually, because this way is always successful, simplest, and really healthy. Therefore, I was really interested in that class. So... To make fried chicken tender and juicy you need to season it well and bread it properly. Our Chef taught us to season chicken breast with salt and pepper to our taste first, then put breast in mix of buttermilk and egg, and then bread it in flour with added seasonings like pepper, salt, cayenne pepper, dry thyme, etc. After that, our chicken laid in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, we prepared baked finger potatoes and sauteed zucchini. I learned that taking out seeds from zucchini makes them more firm while cooking, reduces time of sauteing, and makes the finished product more attractive. We plated our dish and I found my way not really creative, because , in fact I repeated plating of somebody else. I've just seen photo with this plating before and unconsciously repeated it.

Fish. Salmon.

One day, being in Ukraine, my husband made a joke "Oh, I know what she will order - fish and greek salad". It was funny, but it was true. I prefer fish in a restaurant to any meat. An exception is kebab restaurants because they have excellent meat and no fish. I grew up 25 miles from the sea coast, plus our town was surrounded by a number of natural ponds, so our table was always full of a variety of salt and freshwater fish: carp, sturgeon, mackerel, eel, flounder, and, finally, goby fish are some of the most popular species in our family. On the other hand, we used just few methods for cooking fish such as pan frying, roasting with vegetables and fish soup "uha". Therefore, I was excited to start learning fish fabrication in L`Ecole, especially since we started from salmon which has a distinctive rich flavor and fatty body.
After Chef demo how to filet salmon properly and beautifully, we tried to do it by ourselves. The result was far from desirable but better than expected. Then we cooked salmon using two recipes with different marinades and different methods of cooking. The first one was Teriyaki Salmon, and we grilled it and served with sticky rice, and the second portion of our fillet we soaked in a lemon marinade and cooked in parchment paper. Both fillets we vacuumed for 15-20 minutes to enrich fish with marinade as quickly as possible. I`ve seen the vacuum machine for the first time in my life and was impressed... and scared a little bit - bubbling and jerking accompanies the process of vacuuming.
Next, salmon in teriyaki marinade went to the grill and our Chef helped us a lot to make our fish presentable and fully cooked in the same time. Steamed Salmon en Papillote we wrapped in a piece of parchment paper cut in a heart shape and put it in a oven. The result of grilling was just perfect to me. Thank you, Chef!

 Steamed salmon was beautiful but a little to dry. Probably, I just overcooked it at some point.

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.