Peanut Vermicelli
on Nov 5, 2009 in Vegetables and Sides Fill the Freezer I once worked beside a little-known, but top-notch take-out café called The Five Senses. Many times a week, I'd wander over at noon to see what the chef was cooking in his kitchen. Even though he worked the kitchen alone, he was able to create delic...

Beef Dip
on Oct 26, 2009 in Fall Beef Pork Lamb and Veal Fill the Freezer Here is one of our family favorite meals both because it's tasty and easy to prepare. The secret ingredient is a package of onion soup mix! Shh...don't tell the chefs at Le Cordon Bleu! They would want you to make French Onion Soup from scratch and d...

Week 5 at Le Cordon Bleu (Basic Cuisine)
on Oct 22, 2009 in Le Cordon Bleu life Time is flying by so fast here at Le Cordon Bleu. Week 5 seems long ago and was all about soups and compound butters. Well, "soup" is not the right term; "potage" is more accurate. Soup, a type of potage, is derived from the word souper, which means...

Orange Pumpkin Loaf
on Oct 15, 2009 in Fall Muffins and Breakfast Breads Pumpkin This is a recipe from the production kitchen (the kitchen that handles staff meals and prepares ingredients for all the demos and practicals) at Le Cordon Bleu. I was there to practice filleting a Dover Sole and turning mushrooms, and Chef shared a p...

Week 4 at Le Cordon Bleu (Basic Cuisine)
on Oct 8, 2009 in Le Cordon Bleu life Taste, turning, trussing, and tears. Last week, we had a seminar on taste! Spending a morning talking about taste was pretty cool! In many little white tubs, lined up in rows, were a variety of different colored liquids. In groups, we were given a c...

Whisk Wednesdays—Beignets aux Pommes, Sauce Abricot (Apple Fritters with Apricot Sauce)
on Oct 7, 2009 in Le Cordon Bleu Class 30 LCBatH Desserts This recipe completes my goal of working through the Basic Cuisine curriculum on my own, in my own kitchen. I started my blog as a way of documenting my progress working through this Le Cordon Bleu curriculum, not knowing that I'd actually be attendi...

Fresh Pasta
on Oct 1, 2009 in Pizza and Pasta One of my favorite kitchen gadgets is my KitchenAid stand mixer. I’ve thrown some tough doughs its way and it has yet to fail me. Recently, I was pleased to receive the pasta attachment as a gift. The KitchenAid Companions Gourmet Pasta Kit came wi...

Whisk Wednesdays—Carre d'Agneau (Rack of Lamb)
on Sep 30, 2009 in Whisk Wednesdays Le Cordon Bleu Class 30 Beef Pork Lamb and Veal LCBatH This rack of lamb is the second-last recipe as part of the Basic Cuisine curriculum that I've been following. The hardest part is preparing the rack. Watch this video to see how to "French" a rack of lamb. Then, it's just a matter of searing the meat...

Week 1 at Le Cordon Bleu (Basic Cuisine)
on Sep 29, 2009 in Le Cordon Bleu Class 03 Lesson three was all about garnitures (not garnishes!), which are side dishes. It was fun to see the master chef work on so many dishes (six of them) at once without breaking a sweat while we kept flipping pages to keep up with which recipe he was wo...

Week 3 at Le Cordon Bleu (Basic Cuisine)
on Sep 29, 2009 in Le Cordon Bleu life After last week, I was glad to leave the white pepper on the shelf for a bit. During week 3 at Le Cordon Bleu, we turned our attention to desserts. Crème anglaise and charlotte were the first tests of our dessert skills. These desserts are light, ca...