Week two - posh stuff

[Plongeur]

Chef's pre-school tuition paid off handsomely on Monday; we were each given two mackerel to clean (de-fin and gut - mackerel have no scales to remove) and then remove the two fillets from each of them. We were making 'Lisettes a court-bouillon', 'beurre de nage' and 'pommes de terre vapeur', and my Chef back at the restaurant had strong words to offer about my school Chef's choice of nomenclature; a 'lisette' is a fish in its own right, halfway in size between a sardine and a mackerel. It is definitely NOT a mackerel fillet cut in half. Still.
So we made a 'court bouillon', literally a 'short stock' because it's cooked out over an hour or so, rather than the 10+ hours you'd devote to a proper stock - it's just water (about three or four litres/quarts), three onions, two carrots, half a branch of celery and a bouquet garni (fresh herbs like thyme and sage wrapped up in celery leaves and tied with string, dropped into the cooking) and a few whole pepper grains. When it's done you strain it and use it for poaching stuff like white meat and fish, just to add another dimension and flavour to the end result.
This being a posh cookery school, of course, even the carrots for the court bouillon had to be posh - you 'canelle' them with a 'canelleur', which cuts grooves down their sides (ALWAYS an odd number of grooves, please) so that, when you slice them into rondelles (rounds) they look a bit like flowers. If you squint hard, anyway.
In fact, the rule at school as in the restaurant where I work is that anything that appears in front of a client has to be done up posh, whether it's mashed potato (in quenelles, please, not just slopped onto the plate), carrots (the restaurant has a MUCH more complicated cut for carrots than the school) or whatever. This is gastronomic cookery, after all.
Or, as Chef shouted at a work experience stagiaire the other day, "Here we wear our tea-towels tucked into our waistbands, not slung over our shoulders! This is not a bistro!"
Right posh, as my late grandmother might have said.
Rather like the final cuts of the mackerel, in fact - slicing a mackerel fillet lengthways gives a very slim, attractive-looking piece of fish, especially if you serve it skin-side up. We cooked them very simply by placing them in a 'gastro' (short for gastronorme, a standard-sized stainless-steel cooking dish which you'll see in kitchens all over the world - they may be called 'hotel pans' in the USA, I gather, but then again maybe not) and then just ladled the court bouillon over them; you have to ladle it - if, as one student at school did, you just pour four litres of liquid over delicate fish portions they all go all over the place and it Just Doesn't Look Pretty.
The court bouillon was also cool - always start with a cool liquid when poaching fish; if you start with a scalding hot liquid it cooks the outside of the fish instantly, making is seize up and takes the inside much longer to cook - and the whole thing tastes tough in the end anyway.
Then we covered with clingfilm/Saran wrap and cooked in a steam oven at 100 centigrade/212 Fahrenheit for about five minutes and it came out perfect - the 16 of us cooked enough to feed most of the school at lunchtime (all the food we cook is eaten either by other students in the self-service canteen or served to the public in the school's two restaurants).
The 'nage' - it means 'swimming' - was interesting; take about half a litre/quarter of a pint of the court bouillon and reduce it down by three quarters. Then, into the resulting liquor, we stirred 250 grammes/10 ounces (yes, that's right!) of butter (this is not diet food, by the way) in small cubes, stirring in a few at a time; it's a sauce that you wouldn't eat a lot of at once, but my goodness it tastes good. This process, 'monter au beurre' (to increase in volume with butter - you can use cream or egg yolks too) is usually done with less butter - a few chunks in a sauce stirred and whisked into a sauce at the last moment really do give it a lift and add creaminess.
The Pommes Vapeur - steamed potatoes - were interesting too; I've been peeling potatoes the 'correct' way since I started working in French restaurants 18 months ago, but it was a new experience for most of my fellow students. The aim is to have all your potatoes exactly the same size - six centimetres/two and a half inches long and with seven (an odd number, of course!) of sides. If the potato you start with is big enough you make two 'pommes anglaises', as they're known (lots of posh French food is either à la Parisienne or à l'Anglaise) out of it. Not all my fellow students received this message and many large potatoes were whittled down to a mere fraction of their former size, leaving us enough peeled-off bits to make a good few gastros of pommes dauphinoises.
Back at the restaurant my Chef showed me how to practice the necessary wrist action needed to cut a perfectly curved side in a pomme à l'anglaise - you hold an egg as you would the potato and 'cut' the outside of the shell with your knife as if you were cutting the potato. This trains your hands to make the right movements, and he's right - it definitely helps.

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