Poussin saute a l’estragon, compote de pommes

Cuts:0; Burns:0
After the carnage of Monday, we had a relatively simple dish to make on Tuesday to bring back the confidence which was butchering a poussin (a small chicken but not a baby chicken I was assured by chef), making a tarragon cream sauce, an apple sauce/compote and most importantly the first opportunity to do a cheffy smear on the plate! Everybody needs practice in butchery however we were spatchcocking the poussin rather than jointing it this time which is bascially taking out the back bone and we also cut it down the breast bone to get 2 separate sides of chicken to cook but still had to French trim the winglet. One of mine fell off for some reason – good job I had 2 so I could present the complete one. I will definitely use this recipe if I need to make apple sauce – very tangy and somehow savoury. I was third to plate up and got good marks for everything so pretty pleased. We also had to cook some new potatoes but in the ususal Cordon Bleu way, they weren’t just any new potatoes, we had to remove the skins and eyes after they had been boiled (another job for the lowest of the low in the kitchen) and cook them off in guess what? More butter of course. I should probably track my weight as I do the course with all this butter etc. So far I have resisted all the pastries and muffins etc. in the Cordon Bleu cafe so not doing too bad.
Top Tip: to get good acidity/tangyness in the apple compote, put the granny smith apple peelings in some muslin and add to the pan as you sweat down the apples and add some lemon juice, salt and pepper

Poulet saute aux champaux

Cuts:0; burns: 1 near miss
Well I would have expected that the practice at the weekend would have helped more as I took 20 mins longer than I’ll be allowed in the exam to make this seemingly simple dish. On a positive note, I was the 2nd or 3rd person in my group to present but that just means that the rest are really bad! Several chickens, onions and potatoes will have to sacrifice themselves to help me get my time down to less than 2 hours. Maybe I need to do a time in motion study or something. I was searching around for things in the kitchen today which must be avoided as it wastes time but given that I am doing this to improve my home cooking, the speed isn’t really an issue, it’s more whether the food tastes and looks good that is the most important – must keep reminding myself of this when I get in a flap.
My sauce had good flavour but was too runny, so we are homing in on the sauce making I guess (over reduced and too thick before) or in hystoresis for those techies out there. Chef not impressed with the potatoes so the neighbour will be getting more trimmings or I will have to start eating mashed potato and suffer the wrath of the personal trainer for eating carbs – never expected this type of dilema when I signed up for this. Didn’t have the plate flat on the pan of hot water when was plating up, hence why all my sauce is on one side of the plate – duh! Onwards and upwards to the next attempt!!

Exam chicken test run

Since I am a perfectionist and very competitive, I thought I would get a little ahead of the game and invite some friends around for dinner to practice one of the dishes we could cook for the exam. In conclusion it was a good exercise but a bit depressing as I am way too slow. We had the demo on Wednesday for Poulet sautes champaux so while it was fresh in the mind I decided to give it a go. This involves jointing a chicken and cooking it in the oven then making a sauce using the bones and stock then adding mushrooms and tarragon at the end and it is served with glazed baby onions and sauted, turned potatoes (lots of wasteful trimming of potatoes to make them look like a lozenge and peeling of tiny onions – I’m sure most people have better things to do)

First mistake was to invite more than 4 people as it meant I didn’t have a big enough pan to put all the chicken in so need 2 and filling up the oven so I couldn’t warm the plates. Second mistake was to make a vegetable dish which went in the oven as I was seriously running inot capacity issues. The whole point of having a dinner party is to spend time with your guests; they had been warned that I was unlikelt to emerge from the kitchen until the main course had been served so thank you to Ana for dishing out drinks and entertaining everyone. I also split up the cold preparation of the chicken and vegetables, those lovely turned potatoes and baby onions (don’t ever bother to do these – I think they are a way to torture junior chefs and a rite of passage as most professions have) – my neighbour is feeding her kids a lot of mashed potatoes as I’m passing over all the trimmings to her. I actually got cramp in my hand from doing all the potatoes and onions.

I was aiming for eating at 8pm but it was more like 8:30 not helped by the smoke alarm going off and not stopping and broken wine glasses but I got there. Everyone liked it but the plates were cold. More critically, my onions were a bit over cooked, some chicken had slight pinkness but the pototes were fantastic and sauce was good texture but lacking in flavour. One thing to be noted was that Waitrose beef stock has no taste. I had also made a lemon tart in the morning so everyone enjoyed that and as a bounus I raised 80 pounds for Comic Relief as Fiona’s meal relief.