Culinary Demonstration – Chefs de France – Epcot International Food & Wine Festival 2012

Laurent Carillion, Chefs de France, France Pavilion, Epcot

October 4, 2012

Pam Smith and Chef Laurent Carillion

Wine: Chateau Trocard, Montrepos – Bordeaux

B&B’s French Wine Club

Bob Perkins and his friend, Bill, are the B&B of B&B’s French Wine Club. How did it get started? Someone gave Bob a wine tasting for his 40th birthday. He and his friend Bill started to drink wine and discovered that they consistently liked Bordeaux – so they decided, let’s just learn everything we can about Bordeaux and ignore everything else. In 2007, during a visit to Bordeaux, B&B (not yet the wine club) discovered that there are 8000 Bordeaux wines and only about 1000 of them are imported into the United States. So, they started the Wine Club as a way to import wines for the club members (and yes, you can join).

French … Think about PLACE

Americans… Think about GRAPE

The Club is mostly Bordeaux wines. Today’s wine is an oddity, it is 100% Merlot and most Bordeaux are blended wines. Bob had a meeting with the Chefs from the France Pavilion earlier, this wine will be at Bistro de Paris when it reopens.

Chateau Trocard, Monrepos (Bordeaux)

Our notes:

• density – very viscous, strong legs
• color – deep wine red color, opaque
• nose – deep, rich, fruity (Bob says you should detect some licorice)
• taste – very spicy & a little bit creamy

Menu

Escargot Provencal

Escargot Provencal served inside puff pastry with a small salad

Our chef, Laurent Carillion, has been at Chefs de France  for 12 years (note: originally, we were supposed to see a different chef… This falls into the Disney World disclaimer that things are subject to last minute changes.) Chef Laurent was quite talkative and entertaing while he cooked, nora took lots of notes…

• He says “receipt” instead of “recipe”
• As a child, he would go for walks with his grandfather, they would pick up snails along the way, and take them home & cook them up
• Chefs de France sells a lot of escargot, its their number one item. They use tinned snails not frozen. Because Disney World has stringent policies about food allergens, the tinned snails are drained and then reboiled in court boullion for TWO hours to thoroughly cleanse the snails and remove all the preservatives.
•  Tinned snails come in a court bouillon broth (they’re boiled for 5 hours during the preservation process). At home you should just rinse them off and dry them before cooking (don’t need to boil them again for 2 hours!)
• We’re amazed that escargot don’t have the texture of old car tires since they’re cooked so long!
• Frozen escargot can be okay, test them before having friends over to eat any brand of frozen escargot
• Grade refers to size… Grade A are larger than Grade C
• Escargot is a celebration food
• Restaurants don’t use natural snail shells for presentation because of health code rules. At most French homes, you’ll find a stash of natural shells that are used for serving escargot.
• If you want the stock, don’t salt it. If you want the thing(s) you’re cooking in the stock, season/salt the stock.
• Don’t put pepper in your potatoes, it overpowers them.
• When cooking, start with the heat on high… turn it down if it gets too hot (big difference between professional and home cooks, at home people are more afraid of heat.
• Butter does NOT like high temperatures, it burns easily and when it does – yuck.
• Suggestion: mix butter and parsley, make into little discs (like one or two tablespoon sized), freeze them, then when you need butter during cooking, it’s there ready to go

A different plate, this salad was more heavily dressed

The interior… the tomato is cooked down to the point that it seems like tomato paste