Le Premier Atelier

Atelier in French means "workshop" and here in Superior Cuisine, we are given (told we must?) the opportunity to create and cook our own menus for a grade.

However, there are some rules.

1. A la Chopped or Top Chef or whatever, we are given a list of ingredients and we can ONLY use ingredients from this list for our Atelier. 
2. Some of these items are marked with an * and MUST be used in one of the two dishes
3. There are some components that must be completed for each dish.

I'll give examples starting with the first Atelier. For the first one, we were given a list of ingredients with the following ingredients marked by an *:

1 Lamb Rack
1 Lamb Neck
1 Sea Bream
4 Jumbo Shrimp
150g Cultivated Mushrooms
250g Fingerling Potatoes
350g Peas
1/2 bunch of White Asparagus
1/4 bunch of Cilantro
1 Zucchini

Other ingredients not marked by asterics were 2 tomatoes, 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk, 1/2 head of garlic, 2 shallots, 1 onion, 1 leek, parsley, chervil, 1 red bell pepper, milk, eggs, breadcrumbs, veal stock, fish stock, Gruyere, Parmesan, butter, red wine, white wine, Madeira, Cognac, Port, assortment of spices, flour, tomato paste, pine nuts, honey, yeast.

Our guidelines (#3) were:

1. The entree must have a brunoise
2. The main dish must include a forcemeat/stuffing
3. The main dish must include a sauce or jus
4. The main dish must include the following garnishes: 1 flan, 1 composed garnish with 3 ingredients and "gratinee", and 1 turned vegetable
5. You must plate 2 servings of the entree and 2 servings of the main

There are some other "no-no's" that we are not allowed to do. Namely, no reductions of balsamic vinegar, no use of vacuum sealed bags or the vacuum sealer machine, no outside dishes or pieces for serving. We have 5 hours to complete both dishes.

So, the menu I devised from these rules was as follows. (Sorry- I totally spaced and forgot to take pictures)

Entree: Sea bream croquettes with a red pepper brunoise, pan seared shrimp, and a roasted red pepper mayonnaise.

Main: Lamb rack stuffed with braised lamb neck, peas, pine nuts, Tandoori spices, honey, cilantro; tomato flan with suspended peas; zucchini, mushroom, lamb neck composed garnish au gratin.

The result?

Well, I ended up making the croquettes too big so they weren't fully cooked in the middle. Oh well! Next time I know to not make them quite so big. The roasted red pepper mayonnaise? Now that is a funny story.

So, anyone who knows me, knows that I love mayonnaise. When I eat most sandwhiches, I order a side of mayo or as my brother calls it, "Elyssa's Dipping Mayo." Because yes, I dip my sandwiches in the mayo- just for that extra flavor.

I can therefore obviously make mayonnaise. Or so I thought. You may have noticed on that list of ingredients that I gave you that there was no mustard listed. Now, I knew that it was possible to make mayo without mustard- I had just never done it. What I didn't find out until later is that while it is possible, the mustard is the stabalizer for the emulsion- without it, you need a drop of water or something to start the emusifying process.

Well, I get in there and I've got my egg yolks, dash of vinegar, salt and pepper, and I'm slowly adding oil and whisking and NOTHING. It is a liquidy-runny mess. Not mayonnaise.

I panic. Start over. Then I start again. And a third time. By now, I'm whispering at my friends around me asking for their advice or help. They can't really help me. And keep asking things like, "2 egg yolks?" "Did you add too much vinegar?" And while nice, not super helpful.

Finally, the chef walks over and because he knows me from working at Omnivore, can tell I'm having a minor panic attack. He asks me if I'm okay, what I'm trying to do, and if I know how to make mayonnaise. He then decides to help me by slowly pouring the oil while I whisk.

Well, that ended up working well enough and tasting fine (especially when I whisked in the roasted bits of red pepper), but I was not expecting the most stressful part of my day to be the mayonnaise.

Now, the main.

Well, my lamb neck stuffing was amazing if I do say so myself (and I do). My tomato flan, loved it. It had peas suspended in it and tasted very good. My gratin dish, delicious.

As the chef said, everything tasted great- it was just the way it looked.

Here's what happened. Apparently I did not take enough fat off of the wrap around the lamb making it pull apart in the cooking and why it wasn't a perfect circle at serving.

And then, there was the problem of not having enough time. See, we have to plate at a specific time and I was running literally one minute late, throwing every part of the dish on the plate, including the sauce and it just looked a bit messy. Plus, the lamb was a little under-done.

So, my main advice from the chef: More finesse. Everything was good, but lacked "finesse."

So for the next atelier, I focused a whole lot on Finesse. I'll let you know how that went tomorrow.