Stuffed chicken breasts & mushrooms, more Deliziefollie gelato, Duplicity

Classes are held Monday through Saturday in one of 4 time slots (8:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, 6:30pm). This was the first week I had a Saturday class and it happened to be an early morning one.

I did my usual walk to school and in my practical class, we made the chicken breasts stuffed with mousseline, turned mushrooms, and mushroom sauce from yesterday's demo. First, we removed the breasts and wings from the chicken carcas, then removed the tenderloins, and then made a pocket in the breast for our mousseline stuffine. The mousseline stuffing is made by processing chicken meat in a food processor, adding some egg white, passing the mixture through a drum sieve, adding cream, and adding chives. Then, the mousseline stuffing is put in a piping bag
so that we can fill the chicken breasts easily and neatly. With the leftover mousseline stuffing, I made cannelés, which are bits of the mousseline poached in some chicken stock (yum!).

The remaining chicken carcas is cut into small pieces with the cleaver and browned over the stovetop with shallots and some white wine. Afterwards, chicken stock is added and the chicken breasts are placed on top before heading into the oven for about 20 minutes. We've learned to tell if meat is cooked by the touch so when we pulled it out, we prodded it with our fingers to tell if it was done. I used to buy the boneless skinless chicken thighs or chicken breasts from Safeway back in SF. Before I left, I started buying some of the value packs and deboned the thighs myself, but I would toss out the bones. Now, I know what I could use those bones for and how to make use of a whole chicken!

We made the mushroom sauce by reducing the jus, passing it through a chinois, adding cream, and adding mushrooms cooked in a "blanc." The blanc is a cooking liquid that helps mushrooms retain their whiteness (a mixture of lemon juice and water).


We also had the dreadful task of turning mushrooms, which I incredibly failed at doing. Turning mushrooms means cutting a spiral decoration on them with the turn on your wrist and your paring knife. When Chef tasted my chicken, sauce, and mousseline stuffing, he said it was perfect, super. Then, he covered up my plated turned mushroom with his hand and suggested that I practice turning mushrooms at home. Oh well... at least my dish tasted good!

I've been on an ice cream kick for the last few days so after lunch, Quinn and I headed back to Deliziefollie so I could get the creme caramel ice cream there. I somehow convinced Quinn that we should each get medium sized gelato cones, which came with 3 flavors each. The creme caramel was as delicious as I remembered and I also had the pistachio and chocolate mint to go with it. Yum!

For our evening entertainment, we watched Duplicity at one of our neighborhood movie theaters. Rotten Tomatoes rated it pretty decently, but I wouldn't recommend watching it. It was a bit slow in the beginning and I didn't like how things panned out.