Week 5: Vegetables

Personal Observations:


After a week off from snow it’s back to the kitchen. This week was Vegetables! On the first day we made beer battered onion rings, Brussels sprouts in pecan butter noisette, Broccoli Almondine, and Parsnip Purée. We were supposed to do the Pan-fried eggplant, but it was spoiled so Chef said we could wait until the next day and he might have fresh ones.

To go with the onion rings DJ made this amazing sauce, I’m not sure what was in it, but man was it good. The parsnip purée was surprisingly very sweet, much sweeter than mashed sweet potatoes. The Brussels sprouts were very good as well. It only had a hint of the bitter taste that I associate with them. They were cooked a little too long and so the outer leaves wilted a little, but still very tasty. For a garnish I candied some lemon rind for that extra pop of color. The Broccoli Almondine was good as well, but not all that notable.

The next day it was just me and Mike. We made the grilled vegetable skewers, baked butternut squash, the pan-fried Zucchini with tomato sauce, stir-fried asparagus and the white bean salad. Pretty impressive for just the two of us. We didn’t get to the braised celery, because we ran out of time. The grilled vegetables were good and we were able to get nice grill marks on the vegetables. The butternut squash was very good and very sweet. The sugars caramelized very well. The asparagus turned out extremely well. I added some water to the oyster sauce so that once the sauce cooked and reduced a bit it wouldn’t be overpoweringly salty. Instead of pan-frying the zucchini we baked it instead. To get the bread crumbs nice as crispy, I brushed some olive oil on each side. All in all everything turned out very well.



Chef comments:

For both days, Chef said that our productions were very flavorful and had good texture. Nothing was over or underdone. The Zucchini was a little cold, but amazingly crispy.