Le gôut de la France

Last Friday was my second cooking class of the semester, and it was another evening of delicious food and fun cooking! This week's menu featured fresh bread (of course!) and a leek tarte, followed by sesame seed encrusted salmon, and lemon pudding for dessert.

We always let the bread cool on the windowsill

One of the things I like about French cooking is that they often keep it pretty simple. Just a few ingredients that work well together, relying on the natural flavors of everything. The tarte was just leeks, pie crust, and a basic quiche filling to hold everything together, but it was great!

After the tarte, we had salmon for the main course with a side of candied carrots. Bruno arrived with two massive fillets of salmon with the skin still on them. He showed us how to check for stray bones, and then skinned each fillet in one swift motion. It was awesome. The loose skin looked like a silver ribbon, and Bruno offered it to us to make shoes out of it. For once, I passed on having new shoes... Once it had been portioned, we just rolled the fish in sesame seeds and seared it in the pan. I was the one who cooked a lot of the salmon, and I was quite proud I managed to not burn the sesame seeds! After finishing them in the oven, we added a sprinkle of spices and dug in.

Our dessert was technically the filling you would put inside a lemon tarte, but we just ate it plain, like lemon pudding. I love lemon, so this was definitely my favorite part of the meal. Plus, you know, it's dessert, and I love sugar. The key to a good lemon pudding, according to Bruno, is the lemon zest. Lemon juice is fine, but without the zest, you don't get that strong lemon flavor. And he was right! It was a powerful, delicious taste!

I won't have another class until November, after our midterm vacation, but I am excited to see what we cook next! Bruno decides the day of the class what we will cook based on what he can find that is fresh, so we never know beforehand. Fresh ingredients - just another secret to the art of French cooking!