Whew! And this is only lesson 2? (from Baby)

I was expecting this to be an easy dinner -- after all, a simple soup and custard, which I've made in some form dozens of times before, and then sauted meat, which I've done often enough. But the details, the methods of cooking, threw me off. We sat down to eat about 1-1/2 hours later than planned (with hunger-crazed kids). Now I'm concerned about the difficulty of lessons 10-15, not to mention 60-90.

The caramel was the main thing that threw us off. I let my sous-chef take that over (the Texan), and we both forgot to read ahead in the recipe. For us, the worry was about burning the caramel...so after rescuing it at a perfect light amber, while we casually looked up what to do next, the caramel hardened half in the heating pan and half in the custard pan. That alone set us back 45 minutes, because everything had to be cleaned, and it took forever for the caramel to come to a boil. Also, distracted by these problems, I allowed the simultaneously sauteing cabbage to be "colored" (aka, a little burned). But I was able to rescue the majority of it for the soup.

However there were no other disasters, and the soup and mushroom sauce were delicious, as was the final caramel custard. The veal was tasty but tough -- in queasiness about the whole use of the meat, I had purchased scallops that were on sale, and then froze them. I've decided that next time I'll try turkey cutlets (unless beef is recommended?).

Fatty, fatty two by four
I halved the butter and creme fraiche in all cases. The sauce was on the chunky side, more a tasty glop than a sauce, but everything tasted fine. I'm definitely going with less fat in future.

Weird cooking practices
So, is Savoy Cabbage tougher than ordinary green cabbage? We blanched it, then sautéed it, then simmered it for 45 minutes in stock. (One would think the cabbage was an inmate at Gitmo.) Amazingly, it was still the perfect texture in the end, a little crunch still left. I would guess the blanching preserves the color and texture of the cabbage through the sauteing (and removes some bitterness), but it seems like a lot of steps when in the past I've just thrown the greens into the stock. On the other hand, it tasted great, perhaps my favorite part of the meal.

Three oenophiles only, we drank less than one bottle of a Pacific Coast Viognier. Nice wine but a little pungent with this meal. Brother BeerDrinker drank two microbrews.

Prepping for #2 by #3

Mais oui, you must make the stock! Else what's the point? All of us have cooked stocks before, so the difficulty is doing it their way, not the "usual". I thought I read the recipe before I started, but then kept tripping up -- I cut the leeks in half, crosswise, before reading about cutting them into quarters. So I essentially cut them in strips (quartering lengthwise). Then I found out I was putting them into a bundle -- too late to wrap the bundle in a single leek. Still, I managed.

I assumed you truss the chicken to keep it from flopping around in the pot -- it's easier to pull it out after an hour, without getting bits of onion and carrot stuck inside it or under a drumstick. You tie up the bundle for the same reason -- those are the floppiest stuff to pull out, and it's easier to pull out as much as possible before straining.

Here are my questions: Why cut the tips off the wings and then throw them into the soup pot with the chicken? What, exactly, is a "branch" of thyme, as compared to a sprig? I assumed it was a thicker stemmed bit, with several sprigs on it.

Diverting from the Fatness
We have already concluded that we don't need 8 Tbs of butter for the veal recipe. We're planning to use half what is called for (in all recipes) and cooking spray. That should keep the flavor without making it hard to cook. I'll report back if it works. Maybe we can use even less -- but I've never cooked with veal before (I've only ever eaten it once that I know of) so I do want to get a sense of what things are supposed to taste like before altering too much.

A warning about the caramel, which I coincidentally made for Thanksgiving: it goes from clear sugar water to blackened burned in fewer than 10 seconds, after 8-10 minutes of boiling. Watch it carefully. I had to make two batches to get it right (you can use a candy thermometer, if you are lucky enough to have one -- I think the sweet spot is 375°).

If you look at the picture for "chiffonade" (how-to) on page 520 of my edition (1991), they show what appears to be Savoy Cabbage, not ordinary green cabbage as I know it. I've never cooked with it before, so I don't know if it's any different from other cabbages. I haven't located any in town yet; if I can't find any by noon I'll use ordinary.

Given Blithe's comments about help from Larousse Gastronomique (what is French "lettuce"?) I'm considering getting a copy. It's an $85 book (in the new 2001 edition), and even the older editions at Powell's, dog-eared and yellowed hard-to-read pages, at in the $40 range.