cooking class

We did a trial cooking class for Chez Chloé with 2 of my best friends, Loren and Jen. I felt almost guilty spending 5 hours cooking during the day on a Tuesday and having so much fun!
We donned our aprons about 9:30 and looked over the menu for the day....savory goat cheese tarte, chicken breast stuffed with asparagus and topped with wild mushrooms and for dessert , profiteroles w/cinnamon ice cream and spiced caramel sauce. We set off and began first with the dessert.......

We did a basic recipe of half milk, half water choux pastry- (email me for more info). The cinnamon icecream was from the Olives Dessert Table and the caramel sauce was done by infusing the cream with cinnamon sticks, cloves, start anise and a couple of peppercorns. Honestly we made it a little too strong and so I made up batch of the basic caramel and put them together. Yum.

Then we dug into the savory goat cheese tarte by using my tride and true pate sablé
250g flour
125g butter
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
50ml water
I know there are times you use an egg and others you don't but we ALWAYS used this for out basic crusts in France - sometimes adding a pinch of sugar. Unless you went all the way to a pate sucree but that's another story and recipe.
We rolled it out into a rectangle and prebaked it. Then a simple topping of goat cheese, fresh thyme and olives was added followed with a little warm up. Carmelized onions would do well added to this.

Lastly we made this killer stuffed chicken. We got some practice in deboning a chicken raw and making forcemeat (stuffing) . The chicken was stuffed and inlaid with asperagus, then rolled and wrapped up. We slid thinly sliced lemons under the skin. The chicken was wrapped in a double layer of cheese cloth and then envelopped in a salt crust. Very cool!

This recipe came from a summer issue of Martha Stewart.
1 large whole chicken
2 lemons + fresh tarragon

FILLING:
coarse salt
2 bunches thin asparagus
2 TB olive oil
1 small leek - white and pale green bits - finely chopped
2 garlic cloves - minced
fresh ground pepper
2 TB cream
1/3 c. parmesan cheee
1/3 c. fine bread crumbs
2 TB fresh lemon juice
reserved meat from thigh

Asparagus are just steamed and set aside whole. Cook onions and leeks and let cool. Transfer to a cuisanart and pulse until coarsely pureed. Add reserved thigh meat and pulse to combine. Add cream and 1 tsp salt-pulse, add cheese, breadcrumbs and lemon juice and pulse till filling is fully combined and finely chopped. Set aside.
CRUST:

6 cups coarse salt (we used large kosher salt)
3egg whites
tarragon (we threw the sprigs in the dish to cook with also)
The egg whites are stiffened and then folded into the salt add a little water if needed. You end up with this paste with which you surround the chicken.
Cook chicken at 400* about 1:10 min. Instant read therm should read 155* - remove chick and let stand at room temp till it registers 165*-about 10 min. (I am very bad about thermometers and rarely use them). But I always , always let meat stand to release juices back into meat. On the right notice the pic with the crust half cut into and the crust fully off w/ chick still in cheesecloth.

WILD MUSHROOMS w/RED ONIONS and SCALLIONS
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 c. olive oil
2 red onions thinly sliced
salt to taste
1# mushrooms - we used a wild mix from India Tree
6 TB champagne vinegar
Melt butter, add onions 3-5min, add shrooms , season , stir in vinegar +oil.

The chicken was good to start with but this garnish really made it. We put extra asparagus and some fava beans with it and used some of the oil from the mushrooms over them.

We had a lot of fun and I love giving classes. I don't know if time will permit them in the future but we'll see. . It's not an easy recipe to skim over nor do if you haven't tried the deboning. But it's not that hard at the same time and I'd be happy to email more details if wanted.