Art of Cooking J-term day 6

The second week of the Art of Cooking J-term is upon us, and so with it comes a new wave of foods we must prepare. Monday in specific was spent creating steaks and lobster macaroni and cheese. Chef Avril taught us how to season steaks as he was the designated teacher for the subject, he told us that it may seem like you're over seasoning but most of it will burn off in the pan so it's a good idea to season that much. We followed his directions and started out by seasoning the steaks with what seemed at the time to be an exorbitant quantity of seasoning, but it ended up being alright. After we had finished our steaks we moved into creating the lobster mac and cheese, but due to a lack of ingredients, we started late and most began instead on the mushroom sauce.

The mushroom sauce was a mixture of wine, mushrooms, and other ingredients, it took significantly less time to create then the rest of the dish and ended up finishing before a good portion of other dishes. The Lobster mac on the other hand was the main undertaking of the day. It involved one of the biggest stove clogs we'd ever experienced, as people raced to get their pots on the burner, as we had been placed under an hour time limit to finish the dish. Chaos understandably ensued.

The lobster mac's ingredients involved pasta, cheese, onions, butter, lobster tail, milk, among other spices that were mixed in halfway through. The cheese was whisked into the milk around halfway through which is quite an interesting idea for making a sauce not entirely composed of pure melted cheese but also adding a good portion of milk as well. The lobster was by far the least difficult part, all that we really needed to do was chop it into fair sized pieces and mix it with the lobster mac and cheese.
After the main cooking was placed our mac and cheese mixtures into a dish and covered them in ground up oyster crackers to form a sort of topping to it. We then stuck it in the oven before the wait ensued. The cleaning crew cleaned up the kitchen as we waited, and it was rather peaceful for that short amount of time.

When the lobster mac was finally done we started cooking the steaks. People were called into the kitchen one group at a time, this caused less clogs than what we had seen before, but I didn't have that sort of issue, because I did not eat a steak. In a twist of unexpected divine origins, the chefs decided that because I do not eat beef, I should have a lobster tail instead. I'm not saying I'm not thankful I'm just saying that wow that was sort of unexpected. Either way I was the last one to cook and pan seared my lobster tail, it had already been boiled with the others that were going into the mac and cheese, so pan searing it was just a way to enhance the flavor.

The chefs had cooked green beans as a side, and the lobster mac was served alongside the meats. This caused for a large variety of flavors, though I still believe that the lobster mac was the star of the show.