#26 - In which studying has commenced and I have no idea what happened on what day

In which the size (or lack thereof) of British refrigerators is really brought home at last
The last post gave a tentative menu for dinner on Sunday night.  Well - my refrigerator only fits so much in it (it is rather mini) and it is still filled almost to capacity.  I had to give in and the eggs are now residing in my microwave - I expect they will be gone within the next few days.  Patisserie goes through eggs, butter, sugar and flour like nothing else I've ever known.  Of course I know a very teeny tiny bit about law (in Australia only), a teeny tiny bit about bees and...that's about it, so I suppose it's a rather limited statement.

The fridge in this photo contains 30 large eggs (63 - 73 g), 3 medium eggs (50 - 60g), 3 kgs of unsalted French butter, 2.4 kgs chicken, 2 containers of left over ganache, 3 cheeses, 2 containers of cream cheese, smoked salmon, miso paste, salad, green vegetables (not the ones for dinner) and other fridge staples.  Unbelievable - can you believe it's just one person who lives here???
I had to have a rest after I lugged home all the groceries.  I then had a quick visit with Michael and Rufus a couple of doors down.  I can't remember if it was just to say hi, but I suspect I dropped off some food - I can't remember now.  Anyway, I was tired and I needed a hug.  Rufus was kind enough to oblige me with a solution to both mini-dilemmas.  Yes, we are lying on a sidewalk - but actually, I am laying on Rufus (who has had a bath and is consequently better than the sidewalk).

The best laid plans - or perhaps not...
Things did not go according to plan.  For one thing, I never made it to the fishmonger to check out the fish and for another, I didn't use the salad that I bought at the Farmers' Market.  You might quite rightly wonder why, to which I can only say - when space is as limited as it is in my kitchen and you spend as much time as I do wondering "where did I put those blasted shallots?  I just had them a second ago!" the two hours allocated run out quite fast.  Of course if I can do it in a kitchen where I don't have enough pots and pans, my pan doesn't fit in the oven for the braising and I don't have space for mise en place (i.e. putting everything in its place) I can probably get it done in the space and number of pots allotted to each station in the kitchen at LCB.

Not one of my more clever ideas
I had this idea I would be super efficient and do all kinds of things at once and amaze myself.  Well, there was amazement, but not in the good way.  I hadn't realized quite how limited the counter space was until I had butchered my chicken on the space where I normally dry 2 glasses and a pair of chopsticks (or in this picture, where the bowl is drying). 

There was no room for all the washing up or a place to put the dishes/pots once they were washed, especially since my dishwasher chose that day NOT to work.  It is now perpetually not working and the agents, despite promises to get onto it straight away, have done their usual stellar job of...well, nothing, as far as I can tell.  Must remember to give them the benefit of the doubt - they may just have forgotten to tell me that someone is coming to fix the dishwasher.
I have no idea how long each thing took so I can't compare it against the tentative timing set out for each task.  Note that the timing didn't allow for having to wash so many dishes and pots because I was doing two practices at once.  Yes, that's correct, I tried to run through two exams simultaneously.  Luckily the fricassee wasn't too bad (no carrots because I had no room and was trying to wash pots and pans while making the meringue for the tart and chilling the lemon curd which refused to set).  Any defects in the dish are mine and on purpose due to various constraints, I swear.  Except for not having enough salt.

Not ready yet
I know I am not quite ready for either exam because I forgot a couple of crucial steps in my Patisserie run - like leaving the rice on the table instead of putting it into the tart pan when I did the initial baking (blind baking) of the tart lining.  It was in the oven, I looked at the table and then had to think why the rice was sitting there instead of in the tart case which was already in the oven, which explains why the tart kind of fell over but not why I lined it badly.  I can say that it took 4.5 hours to do both dishes though - so dishwasher breakdown notwithstanding, I kind of passed both practicals, assuming I get the lemon tart on the final.  I still have to practice the other two (tomorrow we are taking a run at eclairs in cuisine as part of making easy classical French desserts).

My verdict:  Not horrible, not great.  They all tasted pretty good, taste comprising 20% of the marks for each exam, so I have hopes of at least passing, barring any silly mistakes.  LM and MA liked dinner.

This week...
is not over yet.  It is Friday night/Saturday morning and I have to go to sleep soon.  We finished our class tonight just before 9pm - there was no way to go faster because we had to rest our dough so many times.  It was 28.8C in the Boulangerie - which doesn't sound too bad except the butter didn't like it and consequently, neither did the dough for our petits fours.  Tomorrow we have a double Cuisine Practical - Beef Stroganoff (with more julienned vegetables), a quick lunch / water break then back to the kitchens for the eclairs.  But I am getting ahead of myself here.

Evil sabayons
I forget which day we did the grilled steak.  Tuesday, I think.  Once again I had trouble with my sauce - Bearnaise (i.e. Hollandaise but with added vinegar, peppercorn, tarragon & white wine reduction) - it was too thick and then - it split on my bain marie in less than a second.  We managed to bring it back, or rather Chef J did.  I had been told the theory but this time I got to put it in practice.  Um yeah - I did it on purpose so that I could learn how to fix a split sauce...really.
Fries were "way too small, Chef" and the steak unevenly cooked. Apparently it was medium rare, our target. It still feels squishy and rare to me. I had to cook it more when I got home. LM also thought the steak was rare, so it was perfect for when she had it for dinner whichever night it was. Luckily everything tasted good, according to the tasters. I wouldn't know - I haven't been able to smell anything since Monday. Hopefully the cold will be completely gone by Tuesday - seasoning is going to be difficult if I can't smell / taste.

Lord I don't want to be one of their number
We had one day where we didn't have to cook.  I think it was Wednesday - there was a demo (it must have been the eclairs) and then the ice cream/sorbet tech class for Patisserie in the afternoon.  I had to throttle the urge to ask one of the people if she was hard of hearing - I looked for a hearing aid (or two) and didn't see any.  She is one of several annoying Americans who asks the thing the chef just said 5 seconds ago.

     Chef:  "This is called a Pate a Bombe."
    Annoying person:  "Chef, what is this one called?"

Argh!  It's called "If you had been paying attention, you would have heard its name AND how it's spelled!  And if you were paying attention, why are you making him repeat himself and killing the rest of us with irritation???  So glad your mouth works - you have demonstrated it often over the past few weeks - can you please do us a favor and also demonstrate how well it stays closed?"  Ok - rant over.  Too much?  I have stopped asking questions for others and gone back to my previous policy - ask only if I have a question that I think is or might be relevant, they have laryngitis and I think their question is or might be relevant, or they are paying my firm - in which case I wouldn't have any questions for the chefs anyway.  Am also hoping that particular person is going to stop after basic...

Anyway, have decided it is better to throttle the urge than to throttle the person.  I have a feeling that giving expression to your annoyance in anything beyond loud sighs, groans, eye rolling and banging your head against your desk or the wall would be frowned upon by the school.  Plus it would inconvenience others in class and we're not exactly blessed with lots of wiggle room in the demo rooms.  At the moment I suppose it's a good thing if you happen to be trying to squeeze your way past the cute girl/guy you've been eyeing in class.  I have been told by others that we haven't exactly been blessed in the eye-candy department, but I've been too busy taking notes and watching the chefs to notice one way or the other.  Lack of wiggle room is not a blessing when the person sitting next to you is...um - fragrant and not in the just-got-out-of-the-shower or wearing-clean-laundry way.

Practice, practice, practice...
Some friends and I got together yesterday afternoon to practice our piping for last night's class.  You'd think after all that practice, things would be fine.  Well, it worked for the others, but my chocolate was cold by the time I got around to having to pipe my continuous border and...oh dear.

Mousse phobia (Charlotte au Cassis, Mousse aux Framboises, etc. etc. - aka Sponge cake with raspberry jam, blackcurrant mousse and blackcurrant glaze)

Side view


So this (left) is what happens when your chocolate is too cold.  In addition to my problems with the mousse.  This is the second time I had a problem with my mousse - last week it didn't set.  This time the gelatine hardened and made my mix lumpy - it was going to take too long to fix - luckily the recipe was enough that there was more than enough for each cake.  Three classmates kindly donated their excess mousse so that I could finish the stupid thing and go home.  Anyway - mousse problems led to too much time doing other things and cold chocolate resulting in awful piping.  The side view is from today so the mousse has collapsed a bit, but the stripes are layers of sponge and jam, which are actually quite delicious.  I can't bring myself to eat the mousse and it doesn't help that I keep misspelling it to "mouse".

Bad pastry hands
And this brings us back to tonight and our Petits Fours Secs, so called because they were baked in small ovens.  It was really hot - somehow my dough was ok for the first time, probably because I kept my hands out of it for as long as possible.  Warm hands are not good for what we were doing, so I used my scraper as much as possible and worked on a tray that I had chilled in the refrigerator almost first thing.  Piping decoration was another story altogether but the sable biscuits (like shortbread cookies) turned out not to badly.  I can't call them cookies because Chef NH almost fell over and died in a very French and melodramatic fashion when I called them cookies.  The meringues are the lady fingers and the other little disc shaped things (the little ones stuck together with raspberry jam and the slightly larger ones with almond cream piped in the center).

Chef NH said he hopes I don't make such a mess of my chocolate piping at the final given tonight's performance.  "I think you piped more chocolate on your hand than on the batons marechals.  Show me your hand."  I refused - my hand was covered in chocolate and it was oozing between my fingers - and you lose marks for being unhygienic / not working cleanly.  I blame it on lack of sleep last night.

Sleep may be overrated but I still want it
I haven't had nightmares about food and turning, mainly because sleep has been noticeably in abeyance for the last few nights.  I think I managed a 15 minute nap this afternoon but it doesn't really make up for a mostly sleepless night.  I am more impatient (witness the annoying American above, although more people are getting pissed off at her) and grumpy.  Some of the other people seem to be taking this as a bit of a lark - I don't know what their lives are like outside of school - whether they have other jobs, whether they really want to do this - because we don't see them often.  Maybe they are just really good and nothing ever goes wrong.

I am still waiting for the day when I don't have at least one major hitch in my practicals.  Until then, I don't care about the vacations they are planning when the Chef is explaining what happens if the oven is too hot or why you have to do something a certain way.  Could we please keep the conversations down to one side conversation if you have to talk?  Thanks - that way I can try to tune you out with one ear and listen to the chef with the other.  I run out of ears soon after that...

Indications of true chef-ness starting to emerge?
Have also come to the stage where I can no longer tell you how I got which scar on which hand.  There are too many and sometimes I don't know I have a cut/burn until much later - squeezing lemons is always a surefire way to discover any open cuts.  I notice my knife kit has been getting heavier and heavier - the first indication was when it pulled me over one day before I stood up from my locker and it was over my shoulder.  Anyway, I am guessing that this bruise is from the kit...finally fading...it was quite impressive a couple of days ago.
Ok - must try to get some sleep now.  Stroganoff and then eclairs - maybe I won't need to cook dinner tomorrow night - although I still have to cook the other practice chickens...

So until next time - happy sleeping.  May your days be filled with conversations that you are interested in hearing.  Incidentally - it is too late and I am too brain dead to check grammar and spelling, so apologies for the last few posts and this one.