Saturday, November 26, 2011

Second Week of Culinary Techniques Class! Tournage & Glacage!

Week 2 - more knife work, as well as the proper way of caramelizing onions.  We learned the art of tournage, which is basically paring down vegetables by turning it to form a rectangular shape.  This was really hard, at least for me - my partner, on the other hand, got it immediately.  Here are the fruits of our labor (most of these were by her hand).

The carrots and turnips are cooked glacer a blanc - you add enough water to cover the vegetables halfway, add butter, salt, and sugar, and bring to a boil.  Once it boils, reduce the heat to low until the water is gone (the veg should be cooked with a nice butter glaze).  We also prepared fresh peas, which sit atop  a whole artichoke that we prepared.  A lot of knife work all around - my hand was definitely starting to cramp towards the end.

Here's a pic from my home application of this week's lessons - as a bonus, I got to practice my jardiniere cuts from week 1:


Next week we start on stocks and emulsified sauces!

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