CIA Day Two

Hola and Greetings from the CIA! What a wonderful fun stressful day.  We paired up into teams and this is my team.  Aren't the hats beautiful.  

Each student was assigned a different dish to prepare and I ended up having the most complicated one....Mac and Cheese with bacon.  Doesn't sound hard and I have made mac and cheese my whole life.  THIS mac and cheese started out with a velóute sauce which took forty minutes to make.  It had four kinds of cheese (including blue cheese) which I had to hand grate (oh, how I wished for my Cuisinart) and melt plus crisped, chopped bacon and then it had to be topped and baked in the oven.  I made one little goof and put all of the cheese in the macaroni and then realized I was not supposed to put the Gruyere or the Parmesan so I did what any good chef would do....grated some more cheese.  Our instructor told me it was excellent mac and cheese.  I did not fess up.  The most complicated part of cooking today was every time, I needed an instrument ie a whisk or a stainer or whatever, I had to go find it. I had a dickens of a time finding bowls and pots.  I never found any measuring spoons so I guestimated which is exactly what I do at home.  It drove the engineering types crazy.  You don't estimate anything, according to them.  Our class seems to be divided between those who think a recipe is a suggestion (me) and those who measure down to the pinch.

Our team...team #1 had the below dish of fried chicken with gravy, glazed carrots, mac and cheese plus a salad with even more bacon.  

 There are four more teams and they each had totally different menus so we had twenty plus items for lunch.  It was great but a little more lunch than I am used to.  Below are just some of the foot being put out.

My favorite was the Pork Cutlets with Mustard Beurre Blanc (shown in the left front corner.)  It had spätzle and a really nice red cabbage.  Did I tell you that the CIA turns out classically trained French chefs?

Okay, if that wasn't enough food...as we were pigging out... the head chef came over.  It seems that today was a final testing day for the pastry chef soon to be's and they laid out about twenty or twenty five different gorgeous desserts.  He said, "Help yourself."  I don't ever eat dessert at lunch but today, I had to try at least a few bites.  These are CIA graduating chefs...top of the pecking order in the chef world.  I had a sliver of a cheese pie (?) topped with fresh raspberries and something like a caramelized pecan pie bar.  OMGosh!  These issued us two pairs of chef pants.  I am thinking the second pair should be bigger than the first pair!  

So...I am off to walk the River Walk.  I need to walk about twenty miles to even come close to making up for today!  

Bon Appetite!