Monday, September 21, 2009

San Gennaro Festival, Greek Food Festival, Poeler Day

Today has been a rough one, since the weekend was so wild. Devin and I went to the San Gennaro Festival on Friday night before our bowling league. It was awesome; we had a sausage and Italian beef sandwich with onions, which was exactly what we wanted. We had one at Lollapalooza last year and it was so delicious; this one was even better! Then we had a meatball sub and a funnel cake. We got both our sandwiches from the same small shop, not the big huge one that gets tons of business.

The Greek Food Festival was pretty good too, except that I was a little drunk (had just been sitting at home watching NASCAR). We had pastichio and some lamb sausage, which was good, but not as good as the Italian one. I'm not the biggest fan of lamb to begin with.

Today was poeler day (supposed to be two dots over the o in that word), and it went pretty well. Poeler is like roasting, except the dish is covered and basted every 15 minutes.

Poeler of Chicken Rossini (3- overcooked foie gras)
This dish was pretty simple; roasted chicken with a sauce made from mushrooms, white wine, and tomato, with a piece of foie gras on top. I am against foie gras so I didn't eat it, but I did have some chicken and I tried a bite with the sauce, which had the fat from the foie in it as well. I love mushrooms and couldn't resist it. Jamierose got the oyster from the chicken this time; I had to find it because no one else could. I can't believe what a well-kept secret the oyster is! If I have my own restaurant, I'm serving chicken oysters as an appetizer. Anyway, we had never cooked foie gras before, so we ended up overcooking it. Whatever.

Pork Poeler (3- sauce too thin)
We didn't have time to reduce the sauce; by the end of the two hours, we had started it but couldn't finish completely. It was still good, just not as thick as it needed to be. This dish was similar to pork roulade from Friday. We butterflied the pork loin and instead of a mushroom stuffing used garlic and herbs. It was delicious; I love pork so much. This was my baby today, at least until it went into the oven. I prepped it and trussed it.

We had lots of time to wait for things to cook today, so we actually cleaned as we cooked and got out ten minutes early! Tomorrow is the last day we work in groups, and then we have our practical on Wednesday; our written final on Thursday. Math is just all reviews right now, so I skipped it today in favor of two more hours of sleep. I'll go for the next three days, though.

4 comments:

  1. Whoa, better than the Lolla Italian beef and sausage sandwich? It was great and exactly what I wanted, but the Lolla one still stands out.

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  2. OH REGINALD...
    http://www.mediazine.net/view/family_guy_drive_by_arguments

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  3. The thought of foie gras grosses me out. And what are chicken oysters? Don't tell me they are balls, please.

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  4. A chicken oyster is a round little piece of meat somewhere between the thigh and the body, and it's the juiciest part of a chicken. I've given the last two away, even though I wanted them, because people had never tried them before. In my last class we made three chickens and I asked for the oysters, and Chef Lauer gave them to me, so it's time to pay it forward. :)

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