Day 22: Fred's Brother

You guessed right, lobsters are back. Thankfully we worked in teams and my partner Juan played butcher. We are now in Module 2 so our new chef instructor taught us a new way to kill these poor lobsters: snap the tail off, snap the head off, simple. Oh. Juan was a trooper but told me he would have nightmares tonight (as he snapped the 3rd lobster). As he prepared the lobsters, I worked on the base for Lobster bisque. The new chef instructor is short too so he taught me a few tricks to help me in the kitchen. Unfortunately he neglected to recognize how much smaller and weaker I was. Instead he told me it was time to lift a stainless steal pot with 3 pounds of lobsters in one hand, pour in alcohol with the other (off the flame so we didn't blow up) and then lean the pan into the stove to let it catch on fire. I looked at him like he was out of his mind, he returned the look, and there I was lighting pots on fire, with one non-muscular hand. Success!

The broth was made, and the lobster was cooked. Now we needed to puree the shells that add the flavor. We used a jumbo sized immersion blender that chopped up the shells. Below is a picture of my classmate Annisa using the tool. Once the shells were crushed we put the entire set of ingredients  through a chinois (super fine strainer). This removed all of the shells but let all of the flavor slip through. We completed the soup with a handful of pieces of lobster as garnish. Our chef said our soup was well done, woohoo!

Next up we made Onion Gratin. We caramelized the onions for over an hour until they were brown. Then we added in the remaining ingredients and placed them in individual serving dishes. We made croutes which are slices of bread pan fried in oil until they crisp. We placed 2 croutes on top of each soup dish, and piled on a massive glob of Gruyere cheese (smaller now that I ate a handful). We place these under the broiler and had a completed, very delicious soup.

Last up we made Gazpacho. This was simple and flavorful. All of the vegetables were placed, uncooked, in a blender. The one ingredient I didn't expect to see was chunks of bread added to the blender. Once blended together this cold soup was extremely refreshing and delicious!

Note: Day 21 was skipped because we had our practical test. We had to make Cream of Broccoli, Mayonnaise, and Medium dice potatoes.