Once again we got to fabricate Salmon. I'm still a bit rough, but much improved, with many thanks to my classmate and former station partner Brent, who is expert at filleting fish (he ran a fish restaurant for a couple of years) and is always willing to give some guidance. A few more fish and I'll probably have it down.

Today the menu is moist method cooking, for which fish is very well suited. We produced: Poached Salmon with Sauce Ravigote [recipe], Watercress, and Gaufrette Potato Chips; and, Salmon En Papillote with Fingerling Potatoes, Fennel, Olives and Teardrop Tomatoes.

There is not much to say about the preparation of the Poached Salmon. The poaching liquid was a Court Bouillon and you simply had to keep the liquid just below a simmer for a few minutes. For the Sauce Ravigote [recipe] we got to use a drum sieve, or tamis, for the first time in order to turn a hard-boiled egg into very fine particles. The recipe also calls for mincing an entire onion. That's a lot of mincing. Were I do it myself at home, I'd use a food processor. Finally, the gaufrette potato chips take some practice slices with a mandoline to get right. Some students needed more practice slices than others. Good thing we got an entire potato to play with. Other students went home with an entire bag of beautifully waffle-cut potato chips.

"En Papillote" basically means to cook in a parchment or foil pouch. It can be used for a wide variety of ingredients, from fish fillets to whole fish, veal chops, vegetables, and fruit. And, technically, those potatoes wrapped in foil and tossed in an oven to bake are "en paillote." So, it is a handy technique to know.

It can also be a fairly showy way of presenting a meal, most or all of which has been cooked in the pouch. The pouch will rise during cooking and possibly brown slightly. You bring this pouch to the table and open it in front of the diner, releasing a cloud of steam. In fact, this was how we were to present one of our plates today.

One plate was for practice, we still had to present it, but it would already be out of the pouch. The other pouch we had to open and plate in front of the chef instructors as if we were serving a diner. There were a few rules: we couldn't touch the food with our hands, we couldn't use any kitchen implements (none of our knives, just a fork and spoon), and the plate had to be identical to the one already plated.

I sort of had fun with this one, getting into the role of serving staff, plating the dish with a flourish as one might see in a restaurant. It also helped that I keep a non-kitchen tool swiss army knife in my pocket to cut open the pouch smoothly, without having to tear it.

Speaking of which, being serving staff is no simple task. There is a great deal to learn ... something more I'll have to study.