Week 4 was lit! From the exam to the rabbit fabrication to FINALLY cooking something for real. I mean we each were cooking in our own pot on our own burner. We cooked some of the five mother sauces and made several roux.
Exam 2
So, can I just say, I know I killed that exam? I mean I’m pretty sure. We were tested on making stocks, and meat and fish fabrication. The next test will be our first practical. The practical is the exam that we have to execute hands on tasks like medium dice of potato, making a mayonnaise, and maybe fabricate a fish or chicken. This is just an example, but I’ll share what I do in a couple of weeks when I have the actual practical exam.
Little Bunny Foo Foo
This week we started at our stations by cutting up a little rabbit, just like we cut up or ‘fabricated’ our chicken.  It was kind of cool to learn that the rabbit was very similar to the other meat that we have been learning to fabricate, just on a smaller scale.

Roux
We finally got to cook on the stove, something other than stock.  We started with making roux to create several sauces, called the mother sauces.  We did an uncooked rough, called beurre manie or white roux, that we later made into a bechamel, this is the creamy sauce that is the base of a mornay sauce that we made.  The Mornay can be added to macaroni for a tasty macaroni and cheese.  Very soon I will share my recipe for Mac n Cheese.  The next roux was the blonde roux.  We learned to make velouté, doesn’t that sound fancy?  Well I was surprised to learn that velouté, is nothing more than a gravy, yup, like the gravy at the buffet, or the gravy on the fake mashed potatoes at KFC, only tastier.  We simply brought chicken stock to a simmer, and added the blonde roux to thicken and salt and pepper, to taste.  I will definitely make that again soon.  The next roux that we used this week was the dark brown roux to make espagnole sauce, that one I will have to play with to begin to enjoy, but we get to play with that one next week, so I will keep you posted on how we make it more delicious.   But to make the espagnole sauce we used the darkest roux that we prepared, the dark brown roux was added to a brown veal stock (brown veal stock is made with caramelized vegetables and tomato paste and roasted veal bones with a sachet despise or a bag of herbs and spices), tomato paste, and mirepoix with salt and pepper to taste.  And finally, we made tomato sauce (who knew that was a mother sauce?).  The tomato sauce required us to blend it once it was cooked.  It is made up of a mirepoix of garlic onions and carrots, cooked with tomatoes, veal stock, tomato puree, pork bones and the lighter brown roux.  All of this was put in the Vita Mix after we cooked it.  I’ll definitely recreate this as well, maybe not with veal stock though.   Keep in mind we were making all of these sauces somewhat simultaneously with chef hurling instructions, so, by the time we got to the tomato sauce, my notes got sketchy.  We made 4 rouxs but I, for the life of me am not sure if the lighter brown roux was really what we added to the tomato sauce, I will confirm that in a later post.  Wait until I make my gumbo again though, now that I know how to really do roux.  Can you believe that all 4 of the rouxs below were made up of the exact same amount of butter and flour.  The darkest one will absolutely be the one I will use for my gumbo, we didn’t have to make that one…yet.  Next week, I have no idea what is up next, we have 1 more of the 4 mother sauces to learn though, Hollandaise, hello eggs benedict.  Who is coming over for breakfast?