Le Cordon Bleu Tips and Tidbits

The Intermediate written exam is less than a week away.

Prowling through my notes I noticed quite a few little tips and interesting tidbits. I thought that I would share these random ideas with you.

Le Cordon Bleu Tips and Tidbits

• Adour River in Basque country is a great source of wild salmon
• If you’re going to eat celery, always peel away the fibrous outer-layer
• Peel white button mushrooms for a smoother, more consistent texture
• Mushrooms absorb acidity of alcohol
• Crawfish digestive-tracts need to be removed when they are still alive
• There is a lot of guinea fowl production in South Africa. They are raised to 11 weeks old
• Always free-range
• Salt destroys fat matter
• Aromatics should be 1/3 of meat trimmings when making a jus
• Leaving the joints in meat keeps the skin in place when cooking
• Dough is allowed to rest after rolling to prevent shrinkage during cooking
• Butter molds twice (once, rest in fridge, re-butter)
• Sweetbreads are the thymus glands of lamb and calves. The outer membranes need to be peeled off after cooking
• When plating the head of the fish always goes on the left (swimming left)
• Round off vegetables when roasting. Rounded edges don’t burn
• Snails are always served in multiples of 6
• Snails are allowed to starve before harvesting – cleans out the digestive-tract
• Morvan produces some wonderful beef
• Squab are killed by suffocation to prevent excessive bleeding
• Salmis is an abbreviation of salmigondis
• Vert cuit = mi-cuit
• Canette duckling is a crossbreed between colvert (a wild duck breed) and barbary (a farmed duck breed). Colvert is a mallard. Barbary is Muscovy duck. This produces a mid-sized duck.
• You’ve reached a sabayon consistency when the bottom of the bowl becomes visible during whisking
• Vegetables start to break-down at 87 degrees Celsius
• Sweating raw vegetables (sprinkle with salt on a rack) helps prevent the vegetables from absorbing too much oil when cooking
• Seasoning farce – forcemeat stuffing – is always 20% salt. 0.4% pepper
• Only use sugar on tomatoes if they are out-of-season
• Heavy cream can be boiled and reduced down in a sauce. Light cream can not (it will curdle) and can only be added at the end
• Butter has reached brown-butter-stage once it stops sizzling
• Fruit rinsed in water/vinegar with a slight soak will help them preserve on the final dish
• Most of the flavor in herbs is in the stems, not the leaves
• Amer – means bitter
• Auvergne and Périgord are best known for walnuts
• Only cut basil with stainless steel and never in a food processor. Always add at the end of cooking
• Toasted flour helps to prevent lumps and takes away the glutinous taste
• Virgin oil comes from the first press of olives. First press is never heated. Subsequent presses are heated to extract maximum oil, but some flavor is lost
• Stuff calamari inside-out so they’ll close up when cooked (otherwise they’ll open up)
• Boil potatoes in skins to keep potatoes dry – prevents them from becoming over saturated with water
• Ventrèche is kept flat in France. Rolled in Italy. Pancetta to the Italians.
• Vinaigrette should be too acidic and too salty on its own, because you are using it to flavor something else
• Brittany is the second place region for prune production
• When skinning rabbits start with the legs and rip towards the head. Monkfish and eel is the opposite (start at the head and rip towards the tail)
• Monkfish only has one central, large bone
• A small bit of water in the bottom of a sauce pan will prevent milk from scorching
• Cooking celeriac in milk prevents it from oxidizing and keeps the color pure white