Today I went to the school's Grand Buffet for dinner.
It was INSANE. It was way better than the last one, three weeks ago, and that one impressed the pancakes out of me.
I got to the one three weeks ago late, about thirty minutes in, and there wasn't much left. I took whatever I could find, and it was a lot of fun. This time, however, I was there on time. There was so much more food, and I just couldn't handle it. It was purely overwhelming. I was just in shock over how much food there was, my inability to carry everything I wanted to try, and my inability to find a place to sit. So many things were running through my head. I knew I had to try as much as I could, ask what the foods were in order to make an initial note in my mind of what I'll be eating, take pictures of everything I could, keep the line moving, balance all of my plates, and finally find a seat among the hundreds of students filling up the poorly arranged dining hall. There were way too few seats.
I didn't get lunch, even though it was also a grand buffet meal, because I wanted to sleep in and then study for my first college final. It was my Gastronomy final, and it started at 1:45. Pretty crazy how my first final is six weeks into school, huh? I have two more tomorrow, too. So, I took my final and then went to the Danny Kaye Theater in the library to attend a lecture from a Boston University professor on the cuisine of Ethiopia. This was in place of my writing class. My writing professor thought that since it was occurring at the same time that we meet, we should see it. I went to the hour-long lecture, and it was pretty interesting, although the speaker's mic wasn't working. After the lecture, I went straight to Farq. for grand buffet.
Just as a little reminder, grand buffet occurs once every three weeks. It is a celebration of, and for, the graduating class, but all students are allowed to join. It's a gigantic buffet that's mostly run by the garde-manger (cold-foods) kitchen, as well as some production kitchens and pastry classes. Everyone makes their best dishes for this buffet, and they encourage students to take as much as they can. Here's the event:
Grand Buffet:
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Parfait of Crab Meat, Avocado, Yellow and Red Pepper Coulis and others
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Grilled Skirt Steak, Rare
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Terrine of Chicken and Pork with Herbs
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Skewered Cube of Grilled Tuna, Rare
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Terrine of Ham and Chicken
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Mini Pita Pocket with Roasted Lamb and Baba Ganoush
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Prosciutto, Marscapone and Melon Canapé
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Mushroom Paté
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Puff Pastry Gougéres filled with Trout Mousse
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Skewered Lamb wrapped in Bacon
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Miniature Salmon Hot Dog with Apple and Mango Relish
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Rose Water Granita with a Sugar Coated Marzipan Flower Pedal
K16:
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Spiced Pork Tenderloin in Apple Cider Reduction with Roasted Red Potato Slices, Golden Beets and Cranberry Sauce
Coulis: A general term referring to a thick purée or sauce
Terrine: The term being interchangeable with "paté", it is a ground force-meat mixture which may include pork, veal, liver, ham, fish, poultry, game, vegetables and more
Baba Ghanoush: A Middle-Eastern purée of eggplant, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic
Canapé: A small, decorative piece of bread topped with a savory garnish; usually served as an appetizer or cocktail
Paté: French for "pie", generally refers to various elegant, well-seasoned ground-meat preparations
Gougéres: Gruyére flavored pastry that is piped before being baked
Just look at that smorgasbord of crazy foods.
I went to Farq., used a swipe, and got on the line with a plate to get some awesome food. By the end of my journey, I had three plates and a cocktail glass, and I wasn't even at the end of the first of two serving tables. I had no idea where to sit. I found the table with my friends, and put my stuff down on the center of their table until I could find other arrangements. Luckily, a person at the nearest table to them was leaving, so I snagged the seat. Apparently I missed french toast with home fries at K16, which I would've loved. But this was definitely worth it.
It was so hard to remember what everything was, especially since the menus didn't even have my things on them. I took a photo of the two menus of sorbets. I thought they were awesome, and so did everyone else. That's why there was a line for them that stretched pretty far. It's too bad I couldn't try more of the foods that were there, but it all gets attacked so fast that I ended up lucky with the amount that I got.
I'll start with the parfait. It's the brightly colored thing in the cocktail glass. It was cold, on purpose, and was so strange. It had the top layer of pepper coulis which was good, followed by a layer of crab meat in some sort of smooth, white purée. Under it was avocado and some other things I can't remember.
Next, I'll go counter-clockwise to the plate with the steak. The steak was also cold, not on purpose, but tasted really good. It was, however, and little chewy. The terrine on that plate was the one with chicken, pork and herbs. There was a lot more in that terrine, but I can't remember it all either. It tasted pretty strong, so I only had one bite.
The next plate is the one with the most foods on it. Starting clockwise at the top is the melon canapé. It was pretty awesome, I must admit, and that melon was very juicy and soft. After that is the pita pocket, which was surprisingly delicious. I'd never had baba ghanoush before, and I like it a lot with that lamb. Then there was the trout mousse pastry. As disgusting as it sounds, it was actually delicious. It was a very light flavor, and I would've had another. Next is the mushroom paté, which was pretty bad. It had a highly concentrated mushroom flavor, as I expected, and it didn't taste very good to me. Moving on, there was the cube of grilled tuna. It was cold, intentionally, and was absolutely phenomenal. The tuna was cooked perfectly and still had the grill flavor. Next was the terrine with chicken and ham. This is the one on the plate with the pink, circular middle. It was pretty decent, and tasted just like normal chicken with ham. The last thing on that plate was the lamb wrapped in bacon on a skewer. This tasted great, but was very chewy, and did not come apart easily.
The last plate is the one with the salmon hot dog. It was surprisingly good, and worked very well with the relish. As I was finishing eating all of these things, I had acknowledged the enormous line (that was constantly growing) of people waiting for the sorbets and other desserts. Believe me, those sorbets and desserts are worth that line, however there aren't enough desserts to accommodate every person who wants them. I then witnessed a pastry student carrying a tray of about eight sorbets in martini glasses to the dessert tables in the back. Someone stopped her and politely grabbed a couple from her tray. I gauged her expression and she clearly didn't mind, so I got up and walked over to get one myself. I bypassed the line, and maybe I should feel badly about it, but it was my only dessert, so I don't care. It was well worth it. I'm not the best person to describe what rose water tastes like, but it was extremely light, sweet, and slightly tart from the lemon juice used in it. They make some fascinating desserts.
My friend had gotten a dessert early on, which seemed so interesting that I had to take a picture. Here it is:
It looked like some sort of tropical fruit in pastry form, with colorful sugar in rock form.
After all of this madness, I was somehow not full. Well, I know exactly why I wasn't full. When I go to events like this one, I only try things. These aren't the kinds of foods that I can just eat a whole bunch of. They're usually incredibly rich, and I just have a few bites. Still, despite how much I tried, I wasn't full. I didn't have lunch, so I went to K16 to see what they had. They didn't have any more french toast, but they had some things that sounded good. I got the pork, put it in a to-go box, and brought it to my room.
I ate it as soon as I got back, and it was pretty awesome. The pork was crispy on the outside, very salty, and very tender. It went great with the cranberry sauce, and the potatoes were good, too. It's unfortunate for me that the root vegetables that they had available were beets. I would've loved some parsnips instead.
Tonight there was a meeting for the Chefs Sustaining Agriculture Club. This was a special meeting, because the club leaders got a member of Heritage Farm in northwestern Pennsylvania to give a lecture about his sustainable farm. His farm has a very unique and respectable system of growing its produce and raising its livestock. They grow all sorts of common vegetables, and raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cattle. They raise their pigs in the forests on their farm, fenced in to a certain point of course, so that they can be happy and live off of the natural area. The cattle are Scottish Highland cows, which is a very interesting breed to raise in Pennsylvania. They raise the cattle, chickens, and turkeys in a true free-ranged setting, so as to produce excellent quality meat.
The speaker showed us a slide show of his small farm, and explained exactly how it works. It's a very understandable, yet complex system that they use when it comes to fertilization and having their livestock graze. They constantly move the areas in which the animals graze, so that they eat all of the grass that the area they're in has. No more than a day later, they move the area again, so that the animals have a new and fresh area of grass to feed off of. By the time they get moved to the original area, new grass has grown. The farm uses a long process of making compost from the remains of the chickens that they slaughter, along with sawdust and wood chips. When it finally becomes a rich, black compost, they use it for the gardens and it shows in the quality of the vegetables. The chickens grazing in each area of the farm makes it so that they automatically fertilize the whole farm constantly, giving the cows an abundance of tall, deep green grass.
They don't pump out much product in a year, but they sell mostly at local markets and to select restaurants in the nearest city. They don't feed the cows any grain, and overall they keep the farm extremely sustainable. After he talked to us about all of this, some of the group members came into the room with trays of freshly roasted chicken and scrambled eggs. They had a blind tasting for us. It was designed to see if we could tell the difference between the farm's chicken and eggs and supermarket versions, all cooked in the exact same manner. I came to a conclusion fairly quickly, as did everyone else. When I told my brother that I was going to taste chicken and eggs, he asked me one very valid question. "Which comes first, then chicken, or the egg?" I wanted to abruptly crack the joke during his lecture, but the guy was so serious, as was the environment, so I contained myself.
Can you guess? I'm not saying it's easy, it's just that I'm the kind of person who is into this kind of thing, so I've learned the certain distinctions between fresh ingredients and things that are more closely related to GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). The food on the right is from Heritage Farm. The eggs on the left were very runny, and not as good. The farm's eggs were possibly the best eggs I've eaten. They were more formed, tasted sweeter, and had a hint of a smoky flavor. The chicken on the left was very dry and tough. The chicken on the right tasted and broke apart just like moist, dark-meat chicken, even though it was white-meat. The whole meeting made a significant impression on me. Even though I still love to eat gushers, dunkaroos, fruity pebbles, and soda which are all full of terrible, processed materials, at least now I have a greater appreciation for how good fresh food can be, and for the work these farmers do to make it that way.
It looks like we have two new additions: marscapone and bab ghanoush. And the list of foods I've never tried before coming to the CIA grows even larger!
Until the next post,
Eat well, then eat more
