Soups, Sauces, and Dressings

I think Blogger hates me somedays...when I do have time to post it refuses to upload pics lately! Luckily today is not the case...but I need to multitask and review key terms and study questions for our first culinary skills quiz today. But its 10:30, I've practiced knife skills, run 6 miles, and made my housing arrangements for July in the city for my internship. The last two days have been crazy and I basically did cookie making up until the time for class and would run eating a larabar to get there. It was so much fun and such a great opportunity to make them for my teacher though so totally worth it.

Anyway, this post covers a few different days with some soups, sauces, and dressings. The day of dressings we also covered sandwiches and salads and plating of said items. Here we go....

Last Friday we made consomme which is a crystal clear broth that occurs from clarification: a mix of lean ground meat, vegetables, egg whites, and something acidic (usually tomatoes). The egg whites coagulate causing everything to bind together and become a raft, this also draws all the fat and impurities from the stock which creates the clear broth. Once the raft forms you can not break it up or the consomme will become cloudy!


We had a substitute chef that day...he added sherry to all our consommes as a preventative for swine flu, lol.


We also made roux this day. Roux is a combination of fat and flour used to thicken sauces and can add flavor. The darker the roux, the stronger the flavor but less thickening power it has. We went through white, blonde, and dark brown.






We also made tomato sauce this day.


Monday we continued on with soups but switched to thick types: a cream and a puree. A thick soup is defined by a soup that is thickened by something starchy. In a cream soup this is typically flour while a pureed soup's main ingredient is usually something starchy. The other difference between a cream and pureed soup is that a cream soup is finished with cream (big surprise) and is strained for a velvety consistency.

Making the cream of broccoli soup





Making Lentil Puree Soup


Finished products


On the cold kitchen day, Chef demonstrated how to make a herb vinaigrette. Vinaigrettes are a temporary emulsion and quickly separate. Chef blended the vinaigrette with an immersion blender to make it semi-permaneant because of the added emulsifier of mustard.


We all made our own homemade mayonnaise. I don't eat a lot of mayo for health reasons but if I'm going to now it has to be homemade!





Chef also demonstarted simple salads (greens, dressing, and garnish) and composed salads which are the same as simple salads with a main ingredient and usually served as an entree or appetizer....think chicken caesar salad. He also made americanized croque monsieur sandwiches and demonstrated various plating highlighting on the rule of odds to achieve balance. The two with space in the middle is where you would pile the accompanying salad, chips etc.


Hmm...well that actually turned into more of a study session for me! I didn't even have to check notes to put all those little tidbits down! My meals have not been too interesting the last few days (and there haven't been many due to cookies!)...basically think the fish from a dish from quantities kitchen combined with a salad from the salad bar and my usualy breakfasts. But several friends and I did go to an awesome Indian restaurant Saturday which I have some not so great phone pics of!

We sat in a traditional style.


I got vegetable curry with chickpeas, vegan style and hot! I also got the brown basmati rice which was so delicious and flavorful.


My friend got this massive mysore masala dosa which I stole several bites of...also super hot!


Ok, time to do some "official" reviewing! Have a great hump day...today is my last day of being 25, its a little sad...

Just for fun...a lovely ice cream dessert from Farq...