Hello Food Diary and hungry Blogger!!!
Play the song so the poor potato has something to dance to! No one wants to dance without music! (The song is about potatoes...maybe you will learn something!! lol )
How do you describe an angry potato? Boiling Mad.
hahahahaha...Anyways....
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| Pommes Anna |
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Demo on piping the
Pommes Duchesse |
Did you guys know that there are more than 600 ways to cook a potato!!? I knew there were a lot of ways you could cook them...but not nearly THAT many! Geeze! Today was potato day. I went into class with my four recipes thinking it would be an easy day...I mean I can make one rockin bowl of mashed potatoes....but boy was I WRONG!! Today friendly Mr Potato head turned out to be my arch enemy! (I am being a tad bit dramatic...but seriously.) We had to make Pommes Anna, Pommes Duchesse, Pommes Roesti, Grati Dauphinoise....I will describe in a minute. Pommes Anna or potatoes Anna is that wonderful thing you see to your right. It is finely sliced potatoes layered in a circle and cooked in a LARGE amount of butter (the French love they're butter!).Pommes Duchesse are mashed potatoes made by mashing freshly boiled potatoes with a ricer or food mill. Then you put them in a pipping bag and squeeze them out onto a plate or baking sheet and bake them until they are a light golden brown. Pommes Roesti is a panckae made of grated potatoes and fried in butter. Grati Dauphinoise are commonly know as potatoes Au Gratin and Im sure you have all had them at one point or another! They are thinly sliced potatoes covered in cheese and drenched in cream, then baked until the top is nice an crispy. They are sooooo delicious...but very bad for the heath conscious person!
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| Pommes Anna |
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| Grati Dauphinoise |
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| Pommes Roesti |
I made all four of these dishes and turned them in on time...but I had a few technical difficulties! I started with the Pommes Anna. For this dish you have to line them up in a cute little overlapping circle in a pan, fry them until the bottom is browned (Do not flip them! The side facing down is meant to be the top, so you only flip it once and that is when you are plating it to be served! The goal is to keep the whole thing in one nice looking piece.) Once the bottom is browned, you take the whole pan and place it in the oven to finish cooking. When it is tender you take it out and flip it onto a plate...hopefully to reveal a beautiful spirally panckae of potatoes. I did all these steps correctly, but once I flipped it onto my plate...it wasn't browned enough...so sneakily I put it back in my saute pan and cranked up the heat on the stove. Bad idea. I over cooked it a little bit. Such as life. Next up was my Grati Dauphinoise. I put the potatoes into the pan, covered it with cheese and cream and placed it in the oven...easy as pie! Moving on to my Pommes Duchesse. I made very smooth mashed potatoes, threw in an egg yolk, salt and pepper, and put everything into my pastry bag. Then I pipped the potatoes out onto a sheet pan and put those in the oven as well. Last but not least I started my Pommes Roesti. I took my partially cooked potato and grated it on the cheese grated. I sesoned my pile of grattings and formed a pancake shape, then threw it on my hot, buttered pan....YIKES!! Toooo hot! My pan had heated up way to much! It was starting to burn on the outside, while the inside was still raw. I turned the heat down and tried to fix what was already done....oh well. All of my dishes ended up being done around the same time. I neatly plated everything, doing my best to make them look better than they were, and turned them in. My chef was absent today, so I had to turn in my food to the HEAD CHEF of the school!!! So nerve racking! He told me everything I already knew was wrong..."too brown, heat was too high, and too much salt." But he also said I did a very good job for my first time and only practice will make perfect! This is a very true statement! It brings me back to my childhood when I would watch the "Little Engine that Could," he taught me that optimism and hard work is the key to success. I just need to try and try again! Practice will make me perfect! Looks like I will be eating a lot of potatoes this weekend - and making more appearances at my gym in the near future! I hope you all have a great weekend!
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| Pommes Duchesse |
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| Pommes Duchesse |
I will leave you all with some words of wisdom....
“I think...therefore I yam” - the sweet potato
Tata!
-Chef Kass In Training
one day i will also take these classes..one day..Sounds like so much fun Kass-you are my idol!!
ReplyDeleteThank you!! That is a nice thing to say! Just keep reaching for your goal!! Try out your own recipes as much as you can!! It makes you a much better Chef!
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