Blood bath and bloody meats

This week we begin to "turn" vegetables. This tricky technique involves sliding a razor sharp knife towards your thumb (aren't you supposed to slice away from fleshy body parts?) to make 7-sided veggies. After watching the chef demonstrate this much despised and dreaded French technique, a fellow student proclaimed to the chef "it's going to be a blood bath in the kitchen".

On the topic of blood, we reviewed how the French prefer their red meats: Grade 1: still mooing, Grade 2: a faint moo; Grade 3: bright red and lastly...why would you eat meat cooked?

Seriously, there are 4 levels our chef described:

1. Bleu--basically a minute each side on a very hot grill--about 52 C/ 126 F to center


2. Saignant (translates to bleeding)--very rare, cooked just a bit longer than bleu--55-56 C / 131-133 F


3. A point ("a pwan") just a bit more cooking than saignant but still pinkish colored--62 C/ 144 F


4. Bien cuit or ‘well cooked’ which is still juicy but lacking color--65 C / 149 F


5. Last category which was not even mentioned as a grade is Très bien cuit which would probably get you the lowest quality of selected beef, afterall, supposedly you are ruining it anyway by ordering it cooked.