Week Two - Garde Manger Class

Alright. So this quarter in school i am taking Garde Manger. This is the "cold kitchen". It is responsible for salads, cold soups, hors d' oeuvers, and smoked meats. The first week was really boring because the first day was all note taking and lecture. The second day we made brine's for meats (bacon, pancetta, corned beef, and pickles), and cheeses (Farmers and Chefs).

This week was salads and cold soups. The first day we preped all the ingredients for the salads, and made the soups so they could chill over night. I didn't get any pictures of the soups, well because soups are boring, but we made Tomato, Leek and Potato (Vichyssoise), and cantaloupe soups. Keep in mind that these are all chilled soups meant to be served cold. They all actually turned out very good, especially the Leek and Potato soup. SOOO Good!

Each of the Salads below has lettuce on the plate. The lettuce is a bouquet of red leaf lettuce, bibb lettuce, spinach and frizee tied with a chive. The bouquet is dredged in the infused oil and reduced balsamic.

Above is a marinated salad with infused garlic oil and a reduced balsamic. The vegetables that were marinated are: asparagus, mushrooms, julienne carrots, fine julienne red onion, small dice tomatoes, and tourneed English cucumbers.

Above is a composed grain salad in a blood orange gastrique. the grains we used are: barley, wild rice, and wheat berries. Each grain is boiled separately and then mixed together to soak in the blood orange over night.

Above is a Tuna Nicoise Salad. I decided to do the tuna in the blackened style. I used Roy's recipe for blackened Ahi and cooked it to medium rare. There are grilled potatoes, which were tossed in garlic and olive oil before grilling, green beans, grape tomatoes, olives, fried capers, and a deviled egg. I refused to put an anchovy over the top because their GROSS. There is infused garlic oil and reduced balsamic spotted around the plate and drizzled over the top.

Above is a composed Salad with protein. The shrimp and scallop were soaked in a basic brine for 2 hours before being smoked with green hickory wood chips. There is chef's cheese on the plate, which was made with goats milk the week before. The sauce is a mustard sauce which was DELICIOUS.

Well that's it for this week. Everything was delicious! I wasn't able to eat the salad with protein because i am allergic to scallops, so i gave it to the culinary director at the school. He ate it soo fast, it had to be good. The only critiques that i had was that the ahi needed salt, because i forgot to add it to the crust, and the wild rice was a little under done. I got perfect scores on my plating because i did the bundles correctly, they were very tight and looked really pretty, and the plating was "elegant". Let me know what you think!