Week of 4/22/02

"Keeper of cold foods, to be eaten" is the definition of Garde Manger. I think a better definition is "Keeper of aspic, which I prefer not to eat." The Food Lover's Companion defines aspic as "A savory jelly, usually clear, made of clarified meat, fish

"Keeper of cold foods, to be eaten" is the definition of Garde Manger. I think a better definition is "Keeper of aspic, which I prefer not to eat." The Food Lover's Companion defines aspic as "A savory jelly, usually clear, made of clarified meat, fish or vegetable stock and gelatin." Garde Manger is a station of a kitchen where pates, sausages, etc. are made. In most restaurants today, GM is known as the Pantry, where foods such as salads and desserts are made. Classically speaking, only cold foods would be prepared and served from GM. My attitude going into this class was a bit lackadaisical. I am pretty sure it stems from the "short-timer's syndrome" I was self-diagnosed with a week before this class started. I went into this class not excited about making all cold foods, and all covered in aspic. But I eventually got past it and my group put out some pretty good work. Our first platter consisted of a seafood mousse and smoked trout terrine, sea bass rolls, veggie roles, shrimp and mussel, ginger and pasta salad. We received compliments from a couple chefs on the terrine, and the highest compliment was the students ate all of it. That is something not easy to accomplish in our dining hall, especially when covered in aspic. For our second platter we chose beef tenderloin as our main ingredient. The group decided on a pepper-crusted tenderloin, en croute. "En croute" means wrapped in pastry. After we seared our meat and cooled it, we wrapped it in puff pastry and cooked it until browned. Unfortunately, we rolled our puff pastry too thick so when our meat was perfect, the puff pastry was still raw. We tried a few things to get the puff to cook faster, but all we were doing was overcooking our meat. We got to point where the meat was over cooked and the puff was still not done so we said, "en croute is now sans croute." Off came the puff pastry and the tenderloin went out as naked slices. The other main item we added to the platter was a wild mushroom and foie gras terrine. The only issue we had with this was I did not braise the leeks before wrapping them around the terrine. I blanched them, but that did not make them soft enough to hold their shape when I tried to slice the terrine. I patched up a few areas with mushroom aspic and kept chill blasting the terrine between slicing a few pieces at a time. Eventually we had a decent looking terrine (except the mushroom aspic should have been strained before we brushed the terrine with it). Our base aspic was a dark red, made from roasted beets, which my group thought would look nice with the tenderloin and earthy colors of the mushrooms. We thought it turned out pretty cool looking but the chef thought it was too dark. My group was also responsible for an ice carving that did not really turn out. It started as a profile of a fisherman holding a rod with a fish on the end and ended up looking like a closed tulip near death due to lack of water. Since I did not want the ice sculpture to be used as a running joke in the future, I decided to post a picture of unidentified classmates carving an unidentified totem pole instead. My next class is Classical French, my final class. Nine more school days and then I am off to Louisiana. -Logan

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