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Jolanda learns to cook! A self-experiment, part 1
by Jolanda Hunziker
Jolanda learns to cook. A self-experiment, part 2
6.7.2017
Translation: machine translated
As the saying goes: You have to spoon up the soup you've cooked yourself. And so, after announcing my ambitious cookery bet, I am faced with quite a challenge.
The little amuse bouche in the form of my last text certainly fuelled my motivation: Dare to try something new, learn something new, make friends happy. But now I have a lot of work to do! Today's goal: to understand what I've actually taken on. Which dishes do I use to put together an eight-course meal? What do I need to pay attention to? And most importantly: today I want to define the menu that I'm going to conjure up on my plate in December!
The suspicion that I have quite a mountain of work ahead of me is confirmed when I start clicking through the internet in search of answers to the above questions. The forums, blogs and cookery websites are full of tips and tricks, recipes and instructions. Inspiring, but also scary if you don't have a clue. Fortunately, there are a few rules for a French menu like the one I've set myself that make it easier for beginners to get started. From the wealth of information, some of which is contradictory, I'll pick out the following as a guide:
- A French menu always consists of several courses. With my eight-course menu, I'm venturing into the middle class. There are actually also thirteen-course menus! I got off lightly on that one.
- The menu starts with an amuse bouche (does not count as a course), soup and starter, a fish course, several meat courses and finally a dessert. Of course, there are beautiful French terms for all courses.
- Composing the menu in terms of food composition is considered a true art. Here, too, there are a few pointers: Neither ingredients and flavours nor preparation techniques should be repetitive, and intense flavours should alternate with milder ones.
- Organisationally speaking, the oven is the multi-course cook's best friend. It is therefore recommended to choose dishes that can be prepared in advance and that take a long time to bake, giving you time to devote to your guests.
- A beautifully laid table is half the battle and may also conceal minor cooking slip-ups. The fact that there is a separate etiquette entry for the place setting - "couvert" in French - suits me just fine. Nothing can go wrong now.
The real challenge, however, is to pick out the recipes from the endless abundance of recipes that, firstly, you can cook even as a beginner and, secondly, that result in an artful composition in terms of flavour. To make matters worse for me, I can't stick to a specific season. As my self-experiment will take more than half a year, I shouldn't use winter ingredients that I can't practise with now, nor summer ingredients that I would have to travel to the Caribbean for in December.
However, I also realise that food is a matter of taste and that there isn't one right menu. The aim of the exercise is to create a delicious meal and not to follow old French cooking rules as slavishly as possible. I like this creative approach and it takes away my fear of making the wrong choice. And after a lot of research, fiddling and brainstorming, I decide on the following target menu:
Amuse bouche (the so-called greeting from the kitchen before the big meal begins): Crostini with goat's cheese cream
- Course: Potage (the soup): Carrot and ginger soup
- Course: Hors d'Oeuvre chaud (the warm starter): Stuffed mushrooms with tomato and herb paste
- Course: Poisson (fish): Fish gratin with ratatouille roses
- Course: Large pièces (large meat course): Pork fillet à la Provence on a bed of broccoli
- Course: Entrée (cold or warm intermediate dish as a prelude to the second part of the menu after a break): Avocado sorbet
- Course: Rôti (roast dish): Roast beef bourguignon with vegetable garnish
- Course: Entrements (intermediate dish before the "finale" in the form of dessert): Cheese platter with pears and nuts
- Course: Dessert: Chocolate macarons with orange compote
That all sounds delicious. But before we can eat, we have to cook. My first culinary attempts lead me - still without any time pressure - to the production of the hors d'oeuvre and the fish gratin, which always succeeds according to the recipe. I'll report on whether it works for me too in my next article.
Missed the first part?
I like to get to the bottom of things, sometimes even with diving goggles and snorkel. Nature is my home, regardless of rain, temperature or time of day. I like to be on the road, sometimes even deliberately off track.