Finished Products

I don't have much time to write, because I am officially on winter break (!!!) and about to catch a flight. But I wanted to make sure that I wrapped up my Garde Manger experience and posted some pictures of the beautiful plates we presented in the last few days. The assortment of dishes above was the end result of our group practical yesterday. Our team of five was presented with a mystery basket of ingredients and from them, we had to make five plates: one cold soup, one salad with emulsified dressing, two appetizers, and one mousseline. I made the mousseline for my group (it's the sushi-looking thing on the green plate) with shrimp, scallops, and tilapia and an interior garnish of bay scallops. My mom hit the nail right on the head when I told her about making mousselines: "That's just fancy gefilte fish." Tastes like it, too!


This is the first of our aspic-lined platters from Monday, with our pate en croute and sauce cups (made of cucumber) filled with the cranberry-ginger chutney that I made. Aspic is just gelatin and water, and you can make different colors using natural dyes--we used spinach for the green and beets for the red. When it sets, you can make designs and fill them with other colors. See our lovely snowflakes? We printed them out, stenciled the design on the green aspic with an exacto knife, cut them out, and filled in with white aspic (made with Bechamel sauce). Very tedious work!

Our second platter, with sliced mousseline and sauce cups (made of carrot) with mango-and-mint salsa. I don't know who actually spends the time making aspic-lined platters anymore, but it was a lot of fun to play with (even for the totally non-artistic like myself).

Not as glamorous a shot, but here's our pate de campagne (in front), the country-style pate made with liver and garnished with pistachios and dried fruit. In the background is our chicken galantine, a chicken forcemeat rolled in chicken breast and chicken skin and poached. Not my favorite--it was really dry. The rest of our pates and terrines were quite delicious, though...classmates who had never tried any of this stuff before and were a little hesitant at first were soon coming back for more.

I'll be back after the break to report on Intro to Baking and Pastry. Very, very excited about this next rotation! But in the meantime, I'm excited for some time off and trips to New Orleans, Costa Rica, and Miami. Happy holidays!