TOURNAGE | toor-naj |

The word "tournage" comes from the French verb tourner, which means "to turn".  To tourner vegetables is to cut them into faceted-oval shapes--usually with seven sides--with blunt ends, a.k.a. I'd rather participate in a 500 question telephone survey. I mean, what's wrong with a simple rectangular prism?

While it looks very pretty on a plate, producing a bouquetière or cocotte (tournage cuts have varying names depending on their length) is easier said than done.

Gripping a tiny piece of carrot with only your left index finger and right thumb, you try to shave off a thin curved strip. You rotate the vegetable and repeat, in hopes that when you're through, your carrot will look something like a cubist's interpretation of a football.

In reality, what should take 7 cuts, ends up taking 20; and, what you're left with may or may not even have 7 sides.

After a demonstration and practicing the knife movement with an egg as our guide, we began whittling away at our carrots, turnips and potatoes.

Our patience thinned as our piles of shavings (and number of muttered expletives) grew. Not long after, hands started cramping. (This delightful sensation is best compared to how your hand might feel after cutting at a piece of cardboard with dull scissors for two hours straight.  Not pleasant.) Thankfully it was soon time for family meal.

When the other students learned it was day 4 for us, there was an immediate outpouring of empathy.  Miss Tournage, it seems, is rather notorious, and has made many an enemy in her day.

After lunch we learned to make la bouquetière garniture (lah boo-ket-y-ehr gahr-nee-toor) with our finely-shaped vegetables.  La bouquetière garniture is composed of various vegetables, always including carrots and turnips, and is used primarily for meat dishes.  This involved preparing artichoke bottoms à blanc (i.e., boiled in a solution of flour, water, lemon juice and oil to prevent oxidation), peas and string beans à l'anglaise (i.e., the English way, which is boiled to death, shocked, then reheated), carrots and turnips glacer à blanc (white glaze), pearl onions glacer à brun (brown glaze), and les pommes rissolées (lay pum ree-ssoh-lay i.e. potatoes that are blanched, sautéed, then roasted.)

We had an hour to cook all this in teams and then present our dish to chef.  It was a bit cramped in the kitchen since there were 14 of us, and we each had about 5 pots going on at once.  Other than almost forgetting to plate the onions, and entirely forgetting to coat the peas and beans in butter before plating, we managed.  Everything was at least cooked through (which, not everyone could say).  Chef's comment: It needs more salt!  We have a loooong way to go.

One week down.  Stocks on Tuesday!

À la prochaine!