Cuisine - more exotic!

Last week, we made quails.  We deboned the whole bird through the opening of the neck and back, so that the bird still looked 'whole' - just 'deflated', and we pumped it up with foie gras laced stuffing.  Man, for so small a bird, it has a lot of blood!!  I felt like a midwife.

Live crayfish, they were crawling around and trying to escape, their claws snapping away.  We have to 'castrate' them by pulling out the mid portion of the tail fin first before dumping them into boiling water briefly.  They are served with Nantua sauce and fish quenelles (French fishballs?)

The last noteworthy dish is the rösti looking potato pancake, which has a mushroom filling.  It entails flipping it in midair!  We all managed quited well.

Cuisine week 2

Starting to get a little more adventurous now, we began recipes with pigeon, langoustines, crayfish.  We made some duck served in 2 styles (salmis de canard en cabouillade).  What happens when you roast a duck whole (at least French style), is that, the breast is nice and rosé, but the legs are not yet done.  So, we serve the duck breast in magret style, and the legs are further cooked in sauce, a little like confit style.  It's one of the more delicious ducks I've tasted.

Seafood stew in dry cider isn't exactly a stew that you expect.  It's very lightly cooked seafood in very well prepared sauce.  We worked with langoustines (they're very very delicate!), crayfish (one of which, we have to turn the claws back as a showpiece!).  Next is roast rack of lamb.  Yes, they are very small, and in restaurants, they are very expensive too.  Because you start with a rather large rack, and as you clean it up, take out the excess flesh and (LOTS!) fats, you're left with the very tender noisettes, which should be most important to you.  The last picture is prob not very clear, but it's not chopped bell peppers sprinkled on fish slices.  In fact, we thread the slivers of bell peppers into chunks of seabass and cook whole, when done, we slice up thinly, much like maki sushi.