Today was a great day in the kitchen, my group scored really well on our dishes. We were making thick soups today. We started off with a smoky split-pea soup, that ended up being the perfect texture and consistancy and had some yummy freshly made croutons for a garnish.

After that, we moved on to the vichyssoise, which I am actually going to try and make today with vegetable stock instead of meat-based stock. It looked soooo creamy and our chef loved it, though we almost ran out of time to chill it in the refrigerator. You have to be creative in the cooking school kitchen, so we were using about 8 different methods to cool it down before service time- ice baths, fridge, ice cubes everywhere! We could have really used a blast chiller…….I can’t wait to try vichyssoise, it’s a soup I’ve never had before and I’ll post it as soon as I make it!

We made a cream of mushroom soup that turn out just okay. It was a bit too thin and as hard as we tried to reduce it, and also thicken it, we just couldn’t manage to get it right before our time was up.

Our New England Clam Chowder was a hit, though!! We were right on the mark, with it’s consistancy of heavy cream, spoo-sized vegetables, and great presentation. We did learn a great tip though when it comes to seasoning foods that use seafood. We had failed to remember that the clams and clam juice already come from the sea, so we added just slightly too much extra salt because of that. It was really great to learn how to make a good roux for each of the soups that we made. I decided to make a vegetable-stock version of clam chowder when I got home because I eat seafood, but not meat). It was delicious, and my parents both loved it.