Day 8

Tuesday, April 6th I have another day of classes, classical European today. First I was supposed to go work at a butcher shop this morning for internship hours. We went there just after 7:30 which is when they opened. That's kind of difficult, because you have to walk in and tell them you are there to work, when they obviously don't speak English. I just told them I was sent to work by Chef Lorenzo and I managed to figure out that he was saying that he didn't need us till next week. So, Randy and I who were supposed to be working together there, went back to the restaurant and told Chef we couldn't work there, so he just had us start working there because bread needed to be made. Bread here is made fresh every day. The basic recipe is so simple, and its always made by hand. We usually make massive amounts at one time. Today we made about 5 kilos of dough, which is about 11 pounds, but of course as it rises, it becomes huge. We take that dough and break it down and make many things out of it. The chef loves you to be creative so anything you want to try, go for it. First we made 4 loaves of basil bread, with fresh chopped basil incorporated into the dough and its topped with basil oil right before its baked. I made some rolls with a cured pork cheek, diced and incorporated into the dough with parmesan, finished with an egg wash and parmesan on top. We made the 4 loves, 3 pans of rolls and still had a lot of dough left over, so we made one large pan pizza with an olive dough, topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and some leftover shrimp we had to use up. Then I took the rest of the dough and made mini pizzas with spicy tomato sauce and 3 cheeses. That was one hell of a breakfast for the class. I spent the rest of the morning helping out the class that was in there, helping Chef Polegri, or doing dishes. When lunch came around we all ate fennel and red onion salad, shrimp souffle (which was awesome with a mustard sauce and glazed shallots on top), Roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding (the first red meat I've had since we left, and it was perfectly cooked), and for desert we had strawberry shortcakes. As soon as dessert was done, it was off for my turn with British Isle cuisine. Our menu was Scotch Broth, which is a soup made with mutton, we didn't have mutton, the chef wanted to use lamb, but all he had were these beautiful lamb chops they use for the restaurant, so sure enough i had to cut the usable meat off of those, but I took a few whole ones to get some of the flavor from the bones in the stew. The stew had leeks, carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, garlic, barley and fresh rosemary. It came out very good and I had a lot of compliments because it was a homemade like soup that a lot of people had been craving. I also helped Chef make a Guinness stew which was just a mirepoix, carmelized with some cubed pork shoulder and then we added about 6 bottles of Guiness and just let it boil down along with just some salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder. The final dish was rich and had a bit of bite to it at the end. We also made fish and chips, which the chips (french fries), were well done with a bit of tabasco on them for heat. The fish had a Guiness beer batter and that was also very good. We also made a roast pork stuffed with apples, sundried tomatoes, and fennel, colcannon (which is a classic Irish dish of mashed potatoes mixed with cabbage), for dessert was a dundee cake. We all did well, but because of the late start, dinner was late, and we still had to clean up the kitchen afterwards so we didn't get to leave till after 9. So again I had to come home and quickly get another paper done for class in the morning, although it was much easier to write than my last, because I just wrote about Spanish tapas. Tomorrow is day 2 of World cuisine, we are doing Spain again, so I will be up early.