Welcome Back To ME! & Salads I +II

I haven't posted for basically a million years because I have been studying for a very important shmidterm, so I have been focusing mostly on that. BUT lucky for all of you, my midterm was TODAY(yesterday technically cause it is 12:56am) so now I have pa-lenty of time to write all about my sordid life. (Sordid is not really the right word, but sometimes I just use words because I want to. Hi Linds.)

For the midterm we had to make a creamy carrot soup(there are pictures of it in this post), poach a pear (there are no pictures of it) and make a salad with a vinaigrette. We had two full hours, so it was not a big deal. I feel like different chefs like things different ways in terms of consistency and flavor so it's hard to know exactly how to cook things to get the best grade. Grades are pretty irrelevant in culinary school though. I know how to make soup, poach and make salad so...I'd say it was a success.

There was also a written portion which was so annoying. I'm going to be up all weekend thinking about these three stupid questions about oil...OIL! Uch.

So where we left off.....

Salads!

Salads seem like they wouldn't need a school to necessarily dedicate an entire class to them, and yet, my school decided to dedicate two classes to them. How reasonable.

These salads are a bit more complicated in that they are not just vegetables and dressing. To me, they kind of stretch the meaning of salad and go more into general cold appetizer, but, you know, I'm not here to judge.

Salads I:

 Antipasto Salad

Carrot Olive Salad

Green Bean and Hazelnut Salad

Caesar Salad 

A rare treat for a vegan

Spinach and Garden Vegetable Salad w/ Creamy Horseradish Dressing

 Pasta Salad

Broccoli with Roasted Peppers, Capers and Olives

 Wilted Green and Red Salad

 Wild Rice and Hazelnut Salad

This recipe even looked delicious on the page; enough to make me write this when we were going over recipes in the beginning of the class.  

(Though I write little romantic notes to a lot of my recipes (seriously) so, this is not incredibly unusual.)

I'm sorry about these last few pictures. Sometimes it's hard to get a photo in before the vultures attack. (False: I totally space out and it isn't until people have already started eating that I realize I've only taken pictures of half the food.)

 Russian Salad

Mushrooms a la Grecque

Bean Curd(tofu) and Peanut Salad

This was my favorite. I probably ate half of this myself(with Michele of course).
Anything with peanuts makes my tummy smile.

Salads II:

In this class we focused on some plating techniques as well. These were my favorite platings of each salad:

Watercress, Orange and Fennel Salad

 Butter lettuce with Cucumber Ice and Raspberry Vinaigrette

 Cabbage, Dulse and Cucumber Salad with a Creamy Dill Dressing

 This had a special name that I forgot but it was cabbage, bean sprouts, cucumber and 

green beans with an AMAZING peanut dressing

Buckwheat Salad with Mushroom Dressing