Le Cordon Bleu - Lesson 7

Today's menu included Roast Sirloin with Chateau Potatoes, Glazed carrots and Sautéed beans and zucchinis, but sadly today I was not the the top of the class, and in fact had a a bit of a disastrous day.  Admittedly it wasn't my fault, but still.  An on the up side, I did take my disaster home and Ryan still loved it.

So, what happened?  Well, my workbench oven doesn't have a thermometer but instead a dial that reads 1-7, so i didn't have the temperature right for my roast sirloin, so head chef offered for me to use the electric oven, close to my desk.  This is a far superior oven compared to my workbench gas oven and chef suggested and showed me how to use the built in meat-internal thermometer attached to the oven.  I actually have my own meat thermometer that works pretty well, but according to chef, this one is really accurate.  Well actually it isn't because i waited and waited for my medium-rare sirloin roast to hit 55 degrees, but eventually we had a manual check and it was nice and hard, and also when checked on another thermometer read 68 degrees (medium well)  :(  Arg!  Also, my turning is a bit disastrous and well it's pretty hard to make a plate look attractive when the main attraction is a piece of leathery looking meat.  Chef said he wouldn't penalise me for the over-done bit and he said he though my veggies were done well, but I'm still sad!

But on the up side, Ryan was impressed with my turning (this is when you take a perfectly good veggie and cut most of it away until you are left with a whole bunch of barrel shaped, uniform sized smaller versions of the initial veggie), which is encouraging as he's already seen many attempts of mine.

Above:  This is Chef's beautiful pink roast sirloin

During the demo, Chef also demonstrated Seared Pepper and her crusted tuna with English spinach, picked ginger and roasted tomato.  We also got to try the Chocolate Semi Freddo that Chef Elke made during class last Saturday.  It was divine!!!  Yum yum, with fresh raspberries.

Above: Chef plating and serving Seared crusted Tuna

Chocolate Semi Freddo served with fresh berries and double thick cream. Yum!