chaud-froid

One day we had little to do in meat lab, having butchered all of the meats that the upstairs kitchen(s) needed, so Chef Oakley told us we had some time to play.



So we arrived that morning to a giant bowl of blanched vegetables. Turns out we were going to do chaud-froids. (Chaud-froid, meaning hot-cold in French, refers to foods that are made hot but eaten cold.)



In our case it involved roasted chicken with breasts made skinless for display purposes. The breasts were glazed with a mayonnaise/gelatin mixture, which provided a white background for decoration.



The blanched vegetables, as it turns out, were meant to be sliced thinly, have shapes cut out of them with different mold cutters, then pasted on with more liquid gelatin. As luck would have it, when I started thin slicing some red bell peppers, the natural grooves in the pepper led me to cutting these petal shapes, which ended up forming the basis for my flower/butterfly design.



Working across from me, Jason created a whole organ system for the chicken.



Working next to me, JD created his dream vacation.

(More of my classmates' chicken art can be found in this set on flickr.)



In the end Dustin had the painful task of washing away all of our art. Chickens are for eating, after all.