SUNDAY FEAST

As part of my studying for next Friday's midterm I planned a six-course dinner for Sunday evening using recipes I wanted to go over in preparation for the midterm next Friday. I ordered most of the food from FreshDirect and bought the rest from Tops, the Williamsburg grocery store that I'm embarassed to admit I didn't know was as extensive as it is (though I couldn't get unfilleted sole there). I was cooking for five and the food completely filled the fridge. I started cooking at 2:20 p.m.

While I've cooked large meals before I've never cooked such complicated dishes at once. The practical difficulties in such an undertaking are the size of my kitchen, the little available counterspace and only three working burners. If three stocks are simmering, my dining room table is covered with mise en place, and I'm cutting on my movable counter-island I'm not left with much room to plate. There was some juggling. Did I mention I was my own dishwasher (no machine!).

Though the goal was to practice for the midterm I did not have the luxury of time so I used my mandoline to slice the separately dressed carrots, celery root and turnips for the first course, Assiete De Crudités, Plate of Cut Raw Vegetables.

From left to right, starting from the top center of the plate: mushrooms marinated in tarragon and oil, cucumers in cream with chopped mint, carrots in a lemon and oil dressing (citronette), tomato wedges with vinaigrette and chopped chives, celery root in mustard-mayonnaise and last, in the center, finely chopped red cabbage in a vinaigrette dressing.

The second course was the Potage Julienne D'Arblay, a Potato Leek Soup. The toughest thing about making this soup was freeing up burners. I put aside the stocks. After slicing and sweating the leeks then adding the potatos and waiting for them to soften, I sweat the vegetable garnish and sauteed the croutons. Then I pulled down the food processor, pulsed then strained the soup and put it back on the stove top, added cream and got back to cleaning. My company could hear all of the action and see some of it, and started discussing how we might make money by having an open kitchen for the public at a reasonable price, a 'chef's table' in Greenpoint so to speak. '

The soup tasted good but I made two significant mistakes, 1) I overheated the bowls and the soup was crusting a little along the sides as I served it; and 2) I must have used a little too much of the leek green because as you can see, there was a a green tint to the soup. No public meals quite yet, Sam I am.

The next dish was the Poulet Sauté À l'Estragon, Sauteed Tarragon Chicken, a crowd-pleaser. Again, the biggest problem here was freeing up a burner to sautee the chicken and reduced the sauce. I plated the dishes and served them, realizing after putting down two dishes that I'd forgotten to throw the fresh, chopped tarragon into the sauce at the last second. Despite the name of the dish, Tarragon Chicken, in the heat of things it's something I've forgotten once before. I tossed tarragon into the remaining sauce and on top of the dishes already served-- not ideal.

It was late and I was flagging. I'd overlooked buying watercress and hadn't found canned, brine-soaked green peppercorns. I soaked hard peppercorns overnight but they hadn't completely softened and seemed to have lost flavor to the soaking water as they weren't as flavorful as I was used to. That may be because they were dried.

I pushed onwards, using the mandoline to cut the potatos for the potato pancake, but made the mistake of soaking them in water. By doing this the starch needed to make the strands sitck together while they are sauteed leeched into the water and I had a tough time keeping the strands together.

While the dish was tasty it wasn't excellent. The green peppercorns though cooked weren't soft enough and didn't flavor the sauce as well as the canned ones do. Also, the chops weren't butchered correctly- they were too thick and some came two bones thick. Now that I've learned how to butcher meat and filet fish it's irritating to buy poorly butchered chops and to not find whole fish locally.

It was 9:30 p.m., I'd been cooking for over seven hours and it was time to regroup. I had planned to serve one last entree, Filet De Sole Marguery, a Filet of Sole in White Wine Sauce with Mussels and Shrimp, but I was beat and my guests proclaimed they only had room for dessert. I decided to practice the Marguery the next day and moved on to dessert. I rolled out the tart shells, baked them, and a little shakily but separately whipped up the yolks and whites. No coulis with which to garnish the plate so I cut up a strawberry, served the plates, washed up the last few dishes, took a deep breath and sat down on the couch.

I'd planned a six-dish tasting menu and from 2:20 p.m. to 10:40 p.m. served a five-dish, full-entree dinner. Six dishes made in 8 hours for a dinner served from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. As this was my first time at a several courses and the midterm is two dishes over three hours and this was almost three times the number of dishes, I'm not disappointed. Hopefully, this will make the midterm seem easy.