I love steak

Today was a busy day of which we spent the majority in the kitchen, yes! The red meat theme continued with a medley of steaks with various accompaniments, I was very excited to get my hands on sirloin and my absolute favourite fillet, steaks and do them justice. Until today I hadn't had a good piece of steak since I left New Zealand in February and that would have probably been one of my Mums famous 'Holy Cows'. Yes I will admit I miss my mother......her meat providing and cooking skills that is!!

Just kidding love you Mum, anyway here are the plates I produced today:

Roast Sirloin of Beef with Garden Vege, Pommes Chateau and Artichoke

or its unfathomable French name:

Contrefillet de Boeuf Roti Accompagne de sa Jardiniere de Legumes, Pommes Chateau & Fonds d'Artichauts Cuits dans un Blanc

For those who speak French I apologise for the numerous missing accents in the above description. I'm trying my very best to learn all the French terms but I find the pronunciation difficult, it was a lot easier in France I picked it up so much faster!

As for the dish, it was hardly groundbreaking but it was good. I was happy with the cooking of everything except my potatoes. Dealing with the artichoke was interesting, I'd never dealt to one before and I'm not sure what it adds to the dish but it tasted nice. I was hoping for a darker, tidier jus but c'est la vie, tasted rich like it needed to.

Steak au Poivre et Pommes Darphin

Peppered Steak with Darphin Potatoes

In this dish I was a victim of my own personal tastes and perhaps even where I come from! Most people I know back home, including myself, habitually add a mountain of cracked pepper to everything. I'm the guy that even puts pepper on his fries from Burger King and McD's, thats right I'm hardcore for cracked black pepper! Don't fret though! I didn't lose my mind completely, it was only my pepper sauce that was a bit too rich..and......peppery. I personally liked it and so did my classmates, but the French Chefs at school do truely detest any more than the slightest amount of pepper on anything. In my mind it defeats the purpose of a pepper sauce but its something I need to work out of my system anyway. To me everything tasted beautiful so  I was very happy, I still need to work on my presentation though, it honestly sucks. At the time in the heat of the kitchen when plating it always looks so good to me, but on reflection later it really isn't as aesthetically pleasing as I thought. Apparently we focus more on presentation later on in the course so I'm looking forward to that.

Tomorrow we have a wine lecture, hopefully we get to try some nice wine. The last nice drop I had was with Giles in Bordeaux, we went into a wine tasting place and tried numerous large glasses of red and had a good time. He tried to teach me French and it was going really well I until about glass #2 where I had to stop him and say; "Sorry mate, I just can't do this right now..........but would you like a glass of Medoc perhaps?" The response being an emphatic yes. We couldn't believe our luck finding the place, the glasses were huge, the wine excellent and dirt cheap, like they were almost giving away the stuff. Suffice to say we made the most of it. We did find out later though that the idea of the place is that you go there for a tipple, and when you leave you buy a box of it. Well we had a tipple or 5 and didn't buy any......oops!!