Religion, Oils and Fried Chicken?

Monday was an interesting day. We had to make an emulsion for our salad.  That would be a salad dressing.  Our choice of ingredients.  I made an olive oil, champagne vinegar with a little garlic paste, salt, parsley and tarragon dressing.  Then we had to plate two different dishes on two plates exactly the same way.  So like, if you went to a restaurant with your significant other and both ordered the same thing, both plates would look exactly the same.  The food was what was interesting.  We had Pork Rillettes with Lyonnaise Potatoes for our first dish.  Pork Rillettes is sort of like potted meat.  It's shredded pork.  The potatoes are fried with caramelized onions.  Our salad was on the same plate.  Our second dish was a Norwegian potato, Smordampete Nypoteter, and Shrimp Beurre Monte.  Butter steamed potatoes and poached shrimp in butter.  I'll just say I wasn't happy with my plating and my salad tasted like salt lick.  But, my shrimp were killer.  Shrimp and butter is a no lose combination.

Today we made a North African Sausage called Meerquez Sausage packed in Oil.  We use lamb instead of pork, it's a Muslim religious thing.  I also made Bang Bang ji si.  It's a poached chicken breast that's shredded and covered with a emulsion of sesame seed paste, soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil, sichuan peppers and chili oil.  I added some chili sauce to kick it up a notch.  OMG, an Emeril reference.  It's served at room temp and garnished with scallions.  Also on the menu were Mongolian Beef, Som thum which is a unripened papaya salad, and just to make it interesting, deep fried Chicken.  This was suppose to be  about cooking oils and fats in Asia and Africa.  I'm not sure where the fried chicken comes into play here.  Our very nice Armenian lady made the chicken.  It looked great.  Unfortunately it was under cooked.  All except for one thigh.

Chef Romero was really happy with our plates and dishes.  We got done on time, everything tasted really good and we even had a few minutes to eat and enjoy our food.

Except for the chicken.

Som Thum Salad

Mongolian Beef

Bang Bang ji si and Fried Chicken