As I mentioned from the previous post, we had another kitchen week in ISCAHM! This is actually our first time having 2 consecutive kitchen weeks.
Making mise-en-place, practicing knife skills, and making stocks has become a routine for most of us by now. However, there was something different that made this week quite interesting though…
We made consomme!
I was very excited seeing this made from scratch. I always used to hear horror stories about making consomme especially from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook! He really emphasizes the point that making this soup is pretty damn hard such that it is almost impossible to get it right the first time you do it!
Good consomme is clear and has a strong flavor! The picture above does not seem clear because of the steam. But yes, it was really clear. You can even place a coin at the bottom of the pot and still manage to see it!
And lastly, our pastry batch also made wedding cakes!
The finished products are shown in the picture. So there really was nothing new this week except for the consomme. It’s too bad I wasn’t able to get pictures of a step-by-step procedure in making it! Well, maybe I’ll make one at home next time and write about it.
Posted by Didi Paterno on October 25, 2010 at 2:32 am
Yey! I read about consommes in The Making of a Chef (my current foodie read at the moment) and it says that you have to see the coin at the bottom of the pot
Hehehe.
I’ve had lobster consomme at an officemate’s wedding in Makati Shang. I found the soup a bit malansa. Do they have a english counterpart for malansa? fishy smell? But anyways, I didn’t finish the soup because the smell was not pleasant at all. a fishy smell is not normal right?
Posted by Hershey on October 29, 2010 at 1:18 am
ya, it means, the quality is really low and they didn’t put enough wine