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So check this out: the answer to the final Jeopardy question yesterday was "What is the Sargasso Sea?" and I knew the answer, thanks to Chef Alain (that's where the Portugese eels come from).

Chef spent some time this morning giving us his personal rebuttal to the SF Weekly article yesterday. (By the way, Chef Afreen said, "I've lived in San Francisco for 25 years. Nobody takes that paper seriously. It's a tabloid. And the important thing is who you are.") Anyway, Chef Alain acknowledged that "students have the right to succeed and fail." He told us that he's mentored many a now-famous chef. "Here, you pay me. That means you are my customer. But in my restaurant, I used to fire people based on the thickness of a pancake. Out there, I would make you cry. It's not for my benefit. It's for yours." He reminded us that after 15 months of school, we will be in no position to call ourselves "chefs." And if we think otherwise, we are sadly mistaken.

On that note, let's take a look at this morning's lovely sunrise:



But back to the subject at hand. Once we learned about French chickens and oysters, we took control of the kitchen. I was signed up to make a foie gras dish today, but Chef overcooked our two beautiful lobes of Sonoma liver yesterday, and we didn't get more. (I found myself becoming quite perturbed about that, driving home today: one of the most expensive ingredients we have the good fortune to obtain, and no student put a hand on it, and it wasn't even edible.) Chef suggested I make some aspic. Instead, I assisted Andy with the preparation of stuffed quail, and isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen??



We first made a forcemeat by combining shallots, ground pork, ground veal, an egg, seasoning, brandy and cream in the robocoupe. Then we stirred in some pistachio nuts. The quail came boned, thank goodness, so all we had to do was salt and pepper them, then fill their little selves with the stuffing mixture. It was sort of like blowing up a balloon, if a balloon had tiny wings and drumsticks. We wrapped them in bacon, tied them up, then roasted them in a hot oven on some mirepoix. Julian and Tashana made some scallopped potatoes as an accompaniment.



We haven't been eating enough greens, a situation that Andrea resolved to rectify, so she made an endive/walnut/blue cheese salad (I didn't think I liked endive, but apparently I do), and a classic frisee salad with poached eggs and bacon lardons. "Yummy!" proclaimed Chef Alain. And he ate it all up.