Day 13 - October 9, 2009

Day 13:

Today I started off by finishing the 50 pounds of Au Gratin potatoes that needed to be done for Saturday's event. We peeled and diced the potatoes. Chopped 5 more pounds of onions and mixed them all up.

After that, I helped Rex finish up what he needed to get done for a lunch we were catering. We just covered everything in plastic wrap and filled up containers of ranch, etc.

When that was all finished, I went to work on a turkey noodle soup with my leftover turkey stock and turkey chunks from my tetrazzini.

It turned out pretty good (so I heard). I also learned that sage and thyme go well with turkey and oregano goes better with chicken so to jazz the soup up a little I added some ground sage and thyme leaves to the soup.

I also took all of our onion, carrot and celery scraps and made a vegetable stock. I added a sachet to the stock to give it a little more flavor. Normally you use cheese cloth with a bunch of herbs and/or spices in it, and tie it up with butcher twine and just let it steep in the liquid, but at school we just use coffee filters instead. In my sachet I used parsley stems, a few bay leaves and some whole white and black peppercorns.

I also learned that for vegetable stock, you don't want to over cook your vegetables or the sulfur will start to come out. You only need to simmer for about an hour and a half. (Don't stir, it will make the stock cloudy).

After it was finished, we took everything out and strained it. My stock was bright orange! We had way too many carrot scraps and it just dyed the whole thing. Also when we tasted it, it tasted like carrots. I'll have to try it again, with less carrots.

When everything was finished, I just cleaned for a little bit and that was about it for the day.