Salad, Salad, Vegetables

Today we had two salads on the agenda, plus a vegetable dish. We did really well today, and I'm a happy girl.

The first salad was to be a beet salad with greens and goat cheese, with a honey lemon poppyseed dressing. We used baby beets and roasted them with onions, sliced them, and arranged them in a circle on the plate. We mixed the beet greens with spinach, sauteed them, and placed them in the middle. The goat cheese was sprinkled over the top, and we sliced some pretty apple slices to garnish. The dressing was really great and the whole salad came together perfectly.

Our second salad was composed with four kinds of baby potatoes and an herb salad. I decided to make a red wine vinaigrette for it, and it turned out really well too. I can't believe there are so many great varieties of potato, yet we only see maybe three kinds in the store. Chef told us that the big farming businesses want to keep it that way, because it's cheaper for them to grow less variety.

The vegetable dish was supposed to be "Mixed grilled vegetables with herb puree." Chef said we didn't have to grill if we didn't want to. None of us thought that sounded remotely good, so we made a broccoli and onion gratin instead. Justin made a mornay sauce with some of the extra goat cheese we had, and it turned out really well. The tanginess of the goat cheese made the cheese sauce really interesting; it was delicious with the broccoli. We were the only group to do anything like that, and Chef was pretty impressed.

See what I mean when I said the day went well?

In Wine & Beverage, we tasted both cognac and rum, which was a little rough for an 8AM class. Cognac was actually fine, but I dislike almost all rum, so that was a bit much for me.

Did I mention that we got out really early today? Double double bonus!