Last Thursday’s class was all about huge (stock) pots and pans:

B checking on their chicken stock

…and a lot of imagination:

Smoked salmon topped with tomato and basil sauce and paired with potato noisetes

Here’s what we completed under the supervision of Chef Mike:

• Beef Stock
• Brown Veal Stock
• Chicken Stock
• Fish Stock
• Vegetable Boullion

• Béchamel Sauce
• Beurre Blanc
• Cilantro Chimi Churri Sauce
• Hollandaise Sauce
• Mushroom Cream Sauce
• Peppercorn Sauce
• Red Wine Shallot Sauce
• Tomato Concassé
• Veloute Sauce

I don’t really have much photos for you to salivate on because we were too tired after the class to take photos and we were too hungry to keep the sauces waiting.

The sauce pairing Chef Mike taught us was priceless. For a while we had to stare at ceramic plates with pencil marks, trying to imagine what meat goes with what sauce plus what sidings we should serve with it:

Like wine (and dish) pairing, sauce pairing is as crucial. While you can always learn the basics from guides, the room for hit discoveries is just vast and bottomless. Chefs are rewarded with this skill after countless trials and errors, painful slips and burns, and years of working in piping hot kitchens. It is something that is indeed, not easy and cannot be hurried.

As it was with the previous class, the best part of the day was the end where we get to taste what the entire class made for four hours.