DINNER 107: Monday, April 17, 2006

I started another culinary class this evening, my first class in several months. It’s very nice to get back in. The class I am taking this term, which meets twice a week for 10 weeks, is Garde Manger, or cold food preparation. The class has a bunch of students in it and it feels like it will be a combination of team- and solo-work. Last night, we boned out a chicken and a duck, keeping the skin whole. I can bone out a chicken in under 10 minutes, but doing it in a way that keeps the skin whole is difficult and took a lot longer.

We put the chicken skin into the freezer to firm up so we could scrape the fat off it before stuffing it with the whole marinated chicken breast, some farce that we made from the rest of the chicken meat, pistachios, and ham. The whole thing was rolled up and wrapped in cheesecloth before poaching in fortified stock until it reached an internal temperature of 160 degrees.

We rendered the fat out of the duck skins, roasted the bones, and began making stock. We’ll use the duck fat to confit the legs.

Dinner was a quick drive through White Castle on the way home for a few cheeseburgers and some water.