Day 1 of Light and Natural Cooking

In Light and Natural Cooking, (if it was even conceivable for butter and cream laden dishes typical of French cuisine), we aim to reduce the use or use reduced fat butter/cream, or use yoghurt in place.

Today, in Day 1, we learnt mainly Entrées. This is unusual cos' most of the time, Chef demo's 1 starter, 1 or 2 mains, 1 dessert. Well, this Chef decided to break up to day 1: Entrees, day 2, fish, day 3, meat, day 4, desserts. Which is a good break from usual as well.

First dish is a soup: Leek and Potato Soup, or Fr: Vichyssoise, which can be eaten hot or cold, according to the season. We placed some poached haddock in the middle, some diced Spanish piquillos in the bottom and on top. Some flaked almonds, and a sprinkling of Espelette pepper.

Chef liked it, though I would have placed more leeks in it. This photo is what I've made. (I thought for a change, I'll put my own creation in place of Chef's, but if you wanna see Chef's pics, lemme know, I'll post them up as well.)

Next are 2 dishes which we didn't make, but were Chefs demo's. The first is Cured Salmon with Ginger and Air-dried Beef (as the red crinkly juliennes in photo).

The second is Poached Tuna with Piperade garnish. Piperade is a delicious blend of blend of bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic. Some onion chips on the sides.

The next dish we made in practical was a toast of tomatoes confits (over dried tomatoes), and marinated young mackerel fish (marinate: garlic, olive oil, espelette pepper, cider, cider vinegar). At the end, the marinate is strained, and whisked into a vinaigrette. This was the dish I presented.

Next dish I presented, was Smoked Tuna on a Galette de Pommes de Terre (actually, a giant blini!). The tuna was first cured in coarse salt for abt an hour, and then washed. It's placed in a improvised smoking device (woodchip on the base of saute pan, fish on top of a round grill, covered and smoked slowly).