Day 13 of Week Three in Intro to Culinary

Holy Cow Folks!!! Today kicked my toosh. We only had three dishes but if you looked at our trays you would have thought we were cooking for 12. It was amazing the items we did. In fact it was so much work that I didn't even complete all of the dishes if you can imagine that. This was a first for me. I always finish with some time to spare but tonight to me to a new level.

Chef told us this would be the hardest week and boy was he right. We did Potage Parmentier, Pasta Carbonara and Hand Made Cheese Ravioli with a Sun Dried Tomato Cream Sauce.

Potage Parmentier is basically a potato, onion and leek soup that is blended and seasoned with a wonderful potato flavor to it. I really enjoyed it. The Pasta Carbonara is just that... it is a cream sauce with pancetta in it to give it a creamy fatty flavor that goes perfectly on all kinds of pasta. Tonight we used spaghetti shaped pasta. Then we made our own hand made raviolis stuffed with ricotta cheese and parmesan cheese along with some herbs. We actually rolled and then cut out the ravioli shapes and cooked those. We mixed those in with a very complex Sun Dried Tomato Cream Sauce which was actually pretty good I must admit even though I can not stand sun dried tomatoes. For some reason they make me sick just imagining the flavor!

I was pretty excited about the ravioli. Making home made pasta is fun but boy do you wish for someone to clean up after you when you make the huge pasta makin' mess that you do when you make these pastas. The mess just isn't my favorite part. If I could cook up a storm, make a huge old mess and then walk away and enjoy the evening while someone else cleaned... I would be in heaven!

Our class seemed to work better together tonight as well. I guess the stern talking to from the Chef last night helped get everyone on track. Thank goodness.

Well, I am exhausted so I am off to get some rest!

Cheers and Bon Appetit!

Tony