escoffier

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In all my years living in the USA, I have never seen this dish on any restaurant menu. Growing up in Germany, it was very common and popular, served in many restaurants and homes. If I had to describe the type of food this is, I would say “sophisticated home cooking”. Full of flavor and texture, it is often served with rice.
I personally prefer it to be served with pasta (apparently, so did Escoffier – there are two recipes in his Le Guide Culinaire – “Blanquette de Veau a l’Ancienne” , as well as “Blanquette of Veal Breast with Celery root and Endive”, both served with pasta. Some folks like to add carrots when serving a blanquette, a practice to which many professionals object in order to keep the whole dish “blanc” (white). Well, usually I am in the “blanc” camp. However, my choice of pasta today has sabotaged that approach by sporting an impossible yellow color 😦 .
When raw, this pasta looked slightly more yellow than usual egg pasta, but I thought it would lose some of its excessive yellowness during the cooking process. Not so. On the contrary, it took on this neon yellow and I was ready to toss it and cook a less color-popping pasta instead. However, when I tried it, I was pleasantly surprised by the wonderful texture and taste of this abomination of food coloring. It had one of the best pasta tastes of any dried pasta I ever tasted. So, rather than tossing it, I ate it and enjoyed it very much. (Thank God I threw the packaging in the garbage and have no record of the brand, I also have never seen it before or since in any shop and therefore will not be able to buy it again 🙂
In the end, a delicious, classic, old-fashioned veal stew with a helping of not-so classic pasta 🙂
May the pasta Gods forgive me 🙂
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Bon Appétit ! Life is Good !
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Click here for more Veal on ChefsOpinion
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Click here for more Pasta on ChefsOpinion
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Blanquette De Veau

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Preparation :
To read instructions, hover over pictures
To enlarge pictures and read instructions, click on pictures
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: cut 2 lbs veal breast into 1 inch cubes, add 1 tsp fresh cracked black pepper and 2ea bay leaves, simmer in lightly salted water until tender (traditionally, one would also add mirepoix)

: drain the meat, discard the bay leaves, save the stock (you should have about 1/2 qt, if you have less, add water to make up for it)

: make a blond roux ( 1 ea tblsp butter, 1 ea tblsp a/p flour)

: add the strained veal stock, whisk until smooth, simmer for 4 minutes while stirring constamtly

: meanwhile, saute 10 ea med size botton mushrooms and 10 ea blanched silver onions in 1 tblsp butter

: cook and drain 8 oz pasta of your choice (substitute with rice or potatoes if you prefer)

: make a liaison of 1 ea large egg yolk and 1/2 cup heavy cream, mix well

: remove the sauce from the heat, whisk in the liaison, add 1 tsp lemon juice, check/adjust the seasoning

: to the sauce supreme, add the veal, mushrooms and silver onions, mix well

: Blanquette De Veau

: Blanquette De Veau

: Blanquette De Veau

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Can you learn to cook online ?
The Escoffier School thinks so.

Excerpts from an article on “GigaOM” :
By Kevin Fitchard

“The Escoffier School for Culinary Arts has one hell of a namesake to live up to. Auguste Escoffier is the closest thing the cooking world has to a deity. He established the brigade system that governs all modern day professional kitchens. His pivotal Le Guide Culinairecodified French cuisine’s five mother sauces — from which all other sauces derive. The Escoffier School’s owners believe they can now impart some of the grand master’s wisdom on a new generation of cooks through an intensive online course.

Triumph Higher Education, which licenses the school’s name from the Escoffier Foundation, already has two brick-and-mortar professional cooking schools in Austin, Texas, and Boulder. Co. But this week it launched its online curriculum, modeling it after the online degree programs such as those offered by the University of Phoenix. The course costs $5,000, and while half its new enrollment is comprised of enthusiasts looking to learn the basics of cooking, the school’s core objective is to train the professional cooks that make up the rank and file of every restaurant kitchen.

At this point I should mention that I worked as a prep and line cook for several years in college. I had no formal training, and I’m certainly no chef, but I make a decent vinaigrette, can debone a chicken and have developed an unhealthy indifference toward open flame. I also carry the same baggage anyone who has learned to cook in a restaurant accrues.

Sure, your grandma can teach you to cook, but to learn how to cook professionally, there is no substitute for a hairy man in sweat-drenched chef whites bellowing in your ear, demanding to know how you could f#@k up a carrot brunoise.

Auguste Escoffier

I expressed my skepticism to Jeffrey Larson, Triumph’s director of admissions marketing and Brian Sherrill, its vice president technology – and they said they get that a lot. Cooking is such a hands-on profession, an entirely online curriculum seems counter-intuitive, said Sherrill said.

But Sherrill said no one is going to graduate from school’s two-to-four-month program and open their own restaurant. The idea is to teach the rudiments of cooking along with a healthy dose of French culinary theory and kitchen science to students wanting to start out a restaurant career, Sherrill said. Triumph expects its Escoffier graduates will develop the basic knowledge needed to…………”

Read the whole story HERE