Filets de Barbue Dugléré

Demo pic Brill Fillets in White Wine Sauce
I was absolutely last to have this plated and checked by the chef. My first time trailing the pack but it's got to be someone, doesn't it?

The potatoes held me up 'cause I started them too late. I forgot the basic "start first on the items that take the longest time". Duh. Also I boiled them too hard so they banged against each other and had smashed edges. And not enough salt.
Not enough in the sauce either; nor enough pepper; nor cayenne. Fish was overcooked. Forgot to put the colorful sauce over the fish. :-( All in all, a bummer.
Oh, but the thickness of the sauce and the taste was okay! (even though it needed seasoning). So that was something positive. Okay then, that was the only thing positive.

In the demo Chef made mayonnaise. I didn't know that 1 egg yolk can be used to "absorb" up to a liter of oil!

Food history: Dugléré (as in the sauce) was a pupil of Carême. See Food Reference.

This should have been dead easy. Poached fish, a few turned potatoes "Anglaise" (medium sized, cooked in salty water) and make a sauce with the fish stock (made from the trimming after filleting). Doesn't sound too complicated, does it? But again it was the deceptively simple one that caught me. A question of planning.

In celebration of finishing half the course we went to a local café after school for a drink. The waiter took a look at the group (we were in our civilian clothes) and asked "Are you in cooking or pastry classes?". He knew we were Cordon Bleu students because 1/2 of us were walking around Paris at night carrying translucent plastic containers of food.