#93 - Finally! The wait is over...

Today was a day of tears:  tears of stress, tears of nervous anticipation, tears of worry and unalloyed terror and finally...tears of relief.


Yes, it's official - I passed both of my practical exams although the Patisserie one was a very near thing.  It wasn't anywhere near what I would have called even a good effort in terms of technique, having done every single element better previously (and actually, same for the Cuisine final) - but it was done and it was enough to get me through.  I heard someone who is progressing through the levels tell someone else that now they are nervous - well, I can't help the tears which came with the relief of finally knowing, one way or the other.


The rundown
Friday's Patisserie was a nightmare.  It started with a dream during the night in which I was already in my exams, but then I woke up and I actually had to do it.  Who knows how long the dream lasted, but I was working on my sable biscuits in it - and in that odd, dreamlike way that time passes, it seemed like it had been going for days.


It was time to get equipment and things ready for the exam room - my bag had been packed the night before and all extraneous knives had been removed from my knife kit.  Eventually found the bread knife and the cleaver I had removed for the Cuisine final - in a box with odds and ends when I tidied up my room.  See, it might look more tidy with things put away, but then I can't get my hands on things so tidy is not the same as organized.


The first 3 hours of my exam were great - the brioche was done on time and proving in the prover (although I had initially written down the wrong time, I had written the start time so it was easy to fix) and the sable dough was done.  The bain maries were set up for the chocolates, my lemons zested, juiced and on the stove, ready to start reducing when we were allowed to turn on the heat and the raspberries with the sugar on another burner, ready to go for the jelly.  They have a rule that in the 1st hour, you may not turn on your stoves.


Turned the stove on as soon as I was allowed to so that things could do what they needed to do.  I set up my tray for the truffles (paper, wire rack) and baking trays for the jaconde biscuit (the cake sponge for my dessert) and tuiles.  The brioche was chilling in the fridge so I tempered the chocolate and checked on the lemon juice and raspberries, both merrily heating but not boiling away - perfect, right?


In which the cascade starts
Somewhere in the 4th hour, things started to go wrong.  I was all of a sudden starting to get a little behind and I'm not sure why.  The melted butter for my sponge had disappeared off my stove when I wasn't looking and I thought I had messed up the sponge (no, it turned out ok) but it was time to make the mousse.  The jelly was already setting in the blast chiller and the chocolate twirls were in the fridge but all of a sudden - my lemon juice and zest for the mousse were no longer on my stove.  There was no chance of sabotage because everyone was making different desserts and I wouldn't have taken the pots to the washup because I needed them - but where was the lemon juice?  The chef went to investigate but all of a sudden my timing was off.  The sugar couldn't get started because the mousse had to set while I did the sugar and my truffles hadn't been capped - already a problem because it was so cold in the Patisserie that the chocolate was too cold when I flooded the mould and the shells were very thick - I knew they weren't going to score high...what do you do when you know that things aren't going well and you can't fix it?  You keep on going and hope that somehow it works out. Had to keep going but there were a few moments when it would have been nice to curl up in a little ball under my station and just wait to wake up so that I could do my exam for real.  Except this was real and it was starting to feel horrible.


Towards the end, I knew I wasn't going to get the biscuits done in time because I didn't have enough time to chill them down as much as I needed to - a lightning decision to salvage what was possible - take them out early (delineations of the colors got lost, lost a bunch of points for technique and presentation) and presented them less than half baked because I was already 5 minutes over (automatic 10% deduction) and didn't want to get disqualified by going over the maximum time.  There is a certain agonizing pain that comes with presenting something you know is sub-par but there was nothing to be done except hope for the best and hope it was enough.


Debrief
Waiting for the results was absolutely excruciating.  On the one hand, not knowing means that there's always a glimmer of hope - you haven't failed until they tell you that you did.  On the other hand, waiting to know one way or the other leaves you unable to think of anything else. Despite everything I could do to keep my mind off it (tons of laundry, packing and re-packing,   multiple ballet classes in the same day, going out with friends) somehow it always came back to the nauseating finale of the Patisserie.  I knew the Cuisine exam wasn't as good as the mock exam but the Patisserie - it was touch and go as to whether I had passed.  Failure meant no Patisserie Diplome, no Grand Diplome (and trust me, it's a big piece of paper) and could almost seem to be a waste of having returned to London to finish the last month of classes.  Of course there's a bright side (seeing the new school, using the new equipment, being back in London)  but the silver lining was hard to see under the doom and gloom of a possible failure.


So - how did it all go?
Cuisine:
Chef EB told me I should go to France for 5 years and eat out at restaurants more.  Yes, chef!  I think he told a lot of people that they should go to France and eat there more, though - at least 5 other people in my group were told the same thing.  Oddly enough, the dishes were better during the mock exam although the timing was definitely better for this one.  Managed to have a respectable plate although the detailed comments weren't available due to a computer glitch.  Good - I don't need to know about my hollandaise or my tartlet which I know could have been better.  I'm sure they would have said the turning could have been better, some veggies overcooked (turnips again?), some veggies undercooked (carrots?) and who knows for the rest of it?


"Congratulations - you passed."  Even though I had felt quite confident about the Cuisine final, I didn't realize how tightly I'd been strung while waiting to hear those words until the tears started.  The release of some of the tension was almost unbearable, especially as Patisserie debrief was next and the tension ratcheted back up almost immediately, even worse than before.  I exited the debriefing room for a hug from classmates who were going through the same thing.  Some concern from the others as they saw my tears - "What happened?  Did you pass?"  A sigh of relief as I nodded, then congratulations all around as we said them to each other as each person exited a debriefing room (the Cuisine and Patisserie debriefs were in adjacent rooms - I am guessing it's because a few of us had to go to both rooms).


Patisserie:
Chef CB's comment about my tuiles - "cremated".  Well, that's about right - I'm not sure what happened - the temperature in the oven at home must be a little different from the one at school - hard go gauge, I didn't use the oven thermometer at home.  Also - a tuile and the backup broke during plating so marks were deducted for the plates not being identical, although since all the elements on the plate were present, I got credit for that and the portfolio.


And then the compulsory items...brioche - a bit tasteless (needed more salt) and the head was crooked.  Otherwise, ok.

Truffles - white chocolate went out of temper (again!) and the shells were too thick, the caps uneven, but the ganache had a good texture, technique was fine and tasted very nice (yes, the extra 5 drops of Framboise helped, I think).


Sable biscuis - were not cooked, not chilled enough before cutting, etc. etc.  No points for taste because it wasn't cooked so they wouldn't have tasted the biscuits.  Evil petit fours - I saw some on a menu the other night and ended up pushing it away with a shudder, unable to think about the ones I had presented on the cakeboard.


Coulis needed more sugar, the glacage was a bit too runny, mousse was nice, jelly was too jelled and at the bottom of the mousse instead of in the middle and the sponge needed more syrup (which also had Framboise in it.  I soaked the sponge well, but maybe I should have done the sides too...)  Messy plate, messy sauces...it could have been so much better.  The white chocolate twirl was way too thick - I probably should have used the small teeth on the comb but was too nervous I'd melt through them while plating - my fingers tend to run hot which sucks when working with dough or sugar or chocolate.


Then the sugar...oh dear - let's just say it was not good - but I'm glad I managed to get it done at all and it was still standing when it got downstairs - a relief since the sugar kind of got overcooked at the initial stages.  I don't have a photo of it (for my reference only) but let's just say that it fell far short of what I had hoped to produce.


"Despite all that, you passed."  More tears, a hug and a kiss before heading downstairs to clean out my locker.  What a relief to know that it hadn't all been in vain and although the day produced a crappy performance, it was enough to get me through to the end.


Nor was I the only one to cry from the sheer relief of knowing finally - and knowing that we had done it.  There was more than one person who was still upset about the performance we had handed in on the exam days and we compared notes in terms of what we had been told - quite a few of us were told our dishes didn't taste so nice (hence the the suggestions that we live  in France and eat out more), as well as other problematic areas of our techniques and things.


I do want to re-do and try out some of the suggestions the chefs made - I'm sure I can do better than I did.  Now just to figure out a way to do it...some things are easier to try at home than others and although my sugar pretty much sucked, I am so glad I don't have to do it again.


So until next time, may you find that the effort you put in is worth the final result.

#92 - It eventually goes away...

For better or for worse...
Cuisine final is over and I am still recovering.  15 of us going into the kitchen - they had people going in 2 by 2 (opposite sides of the kitchen) and I was second to last - had to wait almost an hour before I got to go in and set up my station.  There was last minute panic in the hallway, a few questions for the Patisserie chefs who were walking past as they set up for their tasting from Group C and a few nervous trips to the bathroom.  At least it was before and not during the exam...


There have been sporadic instances this week where I just wanted to curl up in a little ball on the floor and have a nervous breakdown.  But we don't do that - we're chefs and we deal with it.  Or as one of my friends told me when I told her I just wanted to die, "do it after the exam."  As you can tell, we're a sympathetic lot.  The bright side is that the feeling does go away - eventually - and there are 4 of us from my cuisine group who will be repeating this experience on Friday morning in staggered starts.  The enthusiasm with which we look forward to Friday is as palpable as that which might accompany a doctor's appointment which involves taking off your clothes and being put in positions you normally wouldn't engage in with someone who isn't your spouse / lover / [insert word of your choice here].  It has also reduced even those of us with pretty extensive vocabularies to mostly 4-letter words which you wouldn't say in front of the very young or the extremely elderly, especially when something boils away.  You will note that I have not said "boiled over" - I stopped doing that last Thursday.


The exam...
I didn't take in my time plan because I figured if I had to check it too often I'd been in deep s#$* and looking at it wouldn't fix matters whereas looking at my mise en place told me where to go next.  It was a busy but not horrific 4 hours and if it hadn't been for the couple of things which went wrong (and if I had had another couple of pots and burners) I think I could have done it in a little less time.


Things were pretty on track in terms of timing right up until I had to plate my starter.  Of course that's when things start to go pear shaped.  I recovered from burning my carrots (had to scoop out a couple more, but luckily I had a whole extra carrot so that was no drama) and burning away my wine (for the Hollandaise) twice.  Then...as I was starting plating, disaster struck - my egg broke and the backup wasn't usable because it looked awful.  So I had to poach another egg.  This then threw off my hollandaise schedule a little bit and it was cold by the time I had to plate it - so I tried to recover it with a little hot water - hopefully it didn't split but it started to look thin although it went over the egg fine.  This time I remembered the lemon and the salt so although the tartlet didn't look as pretty as during the mock exam (and I didn't make a spare) hopefully it will taste better.  Also - I presented 2 minutes early!  I suppose I could have used those 2 minutes to try to fix the hollandaise a bit more, but really, I wasn't in the mood to mess with it any more than I already had.


Then the main...everything on track again except for a minor hiccup with the mousse which I will tell you about after the debrief on Monday.  I also dropped the bowl which had my pigeon legs marinating in it, so I had to clean up the floor and wash the legs (I was going to do that anyway).  I don't know how that affects the hygiene marks - I didn't have any spare pigeons and I had to make the legs so since they were going to cook in gently boiling oil for about an hour or so, I figured any bugs would be long since cooked away.  The dish ended up looking quite nice - I think everything was there, including the parsley chiffonade.  And finally the pigeon was cooked, but it's possible one of them was slightly over - ugh, will it never go right???  Time - 2 minutes over because I had to clear my station down so that I could plate - and there were a lot of components:  glazed vegetables, cutting the bottom off the braised and stuffed lettuce, the sauce, the chiffonade, the potatos fondant, the confit pigeon legs where we have to debone the thigh, then pan fry to get the skin crispy (and which took forever), the glaze for the stuffed/braised lettuce and the sauce.  Think one pot or something similar for each of those things which then has to go on 2 very hot plates.


My station was a shambles.  It seemed like crap was proliferating everywhere, but never the stuff I needed.  Another small pot would have been nice (we had an extra one during the mock exam so it was a real nuisance not to have one today).  Also, they said we could trade our used pots for clean ones, but there weren't any in the washup area for the first hour of my time so I either washed my own or I had to do other stuff while waiting for my pots to get cleaned - I can tell you where my 2 minutes went.  In the meantime, there was quite a bit of "hot pan!" and "mind your backs" but otherwise, it was intensely quiet in the kitchen except for the sound of pots going on stoves and oven doors opening.  Oh, ridiculous - I couldn't open my oven unless I used both hands, which meant a little bit of juggling.  Small in the grand scheme of things, but awful when seconds count.


Good night...
The next time you hear from me, hopefully the Patisserie will also be finished and I will be able to tell you that it felt good.  Until then, may you have enough pots and pans (or whatever) to do what you need to do.  And may you beat the clock...

#91 - All clear for exams

(No photos so stop here if you want photos...)


Final hand check
I went for my final check at the hospital yesterday.  As usual, it took an hour to get out to the burn unit at Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton.  It's out past Hammersmith so you switch to buses at Hammersmith Station.  There's a little bit of meandering around, then you go over the bridge.  For some reason I had thought it was blue (a la Tower Bridge) but actually it's a pistachio ice cream green color.  Then it's about another 20 minutes or so to get to the hospital which is pretty much right next to a university.


Luckily the appointment was at 8:30 so I had time to get a coffee before I got on the tube.  The physical therapist and plastic surgeon both inspected my hand.  They were pleased with how well the skin had healed - the PT asked what I had put on it and I told her anything anyone gave me:  Vitamin E oil, Vitamin E cream, kukui nut oil, coconut oil, whatever moisturizers I can get my hands on, etc. etc.  Any residual discomfort is because the nerves and ligaments are still healing, which could persist for another 14 - 20 months at which time they can do surgery to release any ligaments which are still catching.


Preparing for exams
For the moment, I am just resting my hand as much as possible in preparation for the upcoming 10 hours of ordered chaos.  Ordered, because there's method to our various madness, chaos because there will be 15 of us in a kitchen and the porters will have to go full speed in order to keep up with the rate at which we use pots.  We have a set of 7 pots and pans at the beginning of the Cuisine final.  I know that I will have to exchange the 3 littlest pots at least once in order to finish glazing my vegetables and to reduce my pigeon sauce, as well as the smaller saute pan and the medium pot.  It would help if we actually had a whole fridge to ourselves instead of only one shelf.  I suppose the school thinks it's adequate space because we have shelves at eye level as well as below the counter, but having experienced the Mock Final, we use all the space and I'm sure people could use more if they were given more.


I'm sure today will be more efficient, but still - you never know what's going to happen on exam day, what with nerves and things.  All kindness of silliness can ensue:  I forgot to put my sauce through muslin last time so hopefully that won't happen this time.  I've heard of people forgetting their parsley chiffonade - it won't change the world but it's a bummer when you've cut it, presented your plate (or plates, this time - 2 servings of everything) and then you turn around and the parsley is just sitting there.


The battle today will be getting the two portions plated.  I didn't manage to plate 2 portions at the Mock so hopefully it will be better today.  For better or worse, the next time you hear from me my Cuisine final will be over.


Until next time, may each subsequent attempt at whatever you're doing improve on the previous attempt.

#90 - The C word...

Committing...
There it is - the "C" word...once we turn in our Patisserie portfolios, we are locked in with our desserts, decorations and plating.  I'm going to have to take in a photo of mine so that I can remember what I committed to on paper.

I spent Sunday afternoon experimenting with tuiles, puree and plating.  If there was ever a time that drove home how unartistic I am, today was it.  There was also the scientific curiosity which made me see if I could marble blackberry puree with white chocolate for a tempered decoration.  I know that a small amount of water (or other liquid) can make chocolate seize.  I just wasn't sure what the quantities were.  So the unscientific part of me didn't measure, but it doesn't matter.  The puree on chocolate was an unmitigated disaster - if the chocolate stayed tempered, you couldn't see the purple.  If you could see the coulis, it took the chocolate out of temper in a spectacularly disastrous fashion that I would be ashamed to present to the chefs at the Patisserie finals.  What to do, what to do?  I was still dithering as I fell asleep last night...plate design depends on so many factors (like, what if I accidentally overcook my coulis?  It turns out blackberries do have pectin so cooking it too long or cooling it too much will make it lumpy because it does something or other to the water.  I'd tell you more but that would require going into permutations and I'm still finishing the portfolio which just makes me want to curl up and eat Snickers bars.)  You'd think with all the chocolate, sugar, butter, milk and cream around, I'd have no problems making myself something sweet in the absence of any Snickers bars, but no - you'd be wrong.  Making any sweets would require cooking and I am pretty much through except for the exams.  As for the Snickers bar...well, I already ate it so another one would be massively naughty.  And I only had one so actually...


Anyway - the tuiles.  A slightly more successful attempt at the lattice but I am beginning to give up on it.  Part of it is that the equipment at home is a little bit different - like I don't have a blast chiller or a fridge large enough to accommodate the baking tray once I've spread the diamonds on the silmat, before I pipe the connecting batter.  The rest of it was that I was experimenting with the piping but since I didn't use a proper piping bag, the batter melted and I ended up with a closed lattice instead of an open one.


Praticing the plating took a lot of plates.  I think for some of them I tried a couple of designs on the plate.  All I have to say is thank goodness for dishwashers!  This is what the sink looked like after I had cleaned up any and all mess from the preparation and cooking part.  It's a good thing no one needed the kitchen because I had things everywhere (plating area, photography area, rubbish area, etc. etc.)  I got really lucky with accomodation in that the kitchen is actually usable for most of the practice things.


It's all starting to feel real
I have been sorting out my knife kit and Patisserie tools bag only to discover the acetate that I use to line my moulds for the dessert is not thick or strong enough to use for my chocolate twirls (I want a larger circumference on the twirl so I need a less flexible acetate strip).  Ah, the dilemmas of being in culinary school.  They're real in the sense that some people will do this for a living.  On the other hand, they (most likely) won't change the world or bring about world peace or do anything useful to better someone's life or the world so it's not as real as some other jobs I could name where every day you make a difference to someone's life.


There has been substantial panic in the kitchen as tuile paste refuses to cooperate and I keep forgetting which way I bent the tuiles.  Hopefully if it goes on backwards on the day, they won't deduct marks for getting it backwards.


The portfolio has been submitted (with literally just a few minutes, if that, to spare.  Formatting took way longer than I had wanted to spend on it but this is Patisserie - how pretty it is counts.  How pretty everything is counts.  In Cuisine, sometimes you can wing it.  As long as your techniques are good, you can always try to save it by saying it's "rustic" - unless of course, that's not what they're looking for, in which case you're just in trouble.


Must go and start mental review now of my game plan.  And do laundry.  And pack my kit for school.  And organize Patisserie tools.  And pack my bags.  So much to do, so little time.


There won't be much cooking between now and the finals but still a lot of thinking to do.  So until next time, may you have as fun a week as mine will be.

#89 - Death by tuiles...

Replating the desserts... 
I keep thinking it's Friday night but it's not.  My lattice stencil arrived yesterday and I picked it up from a friend today so that I could have a practice run at my plating with all the decorations.  Yech - another try tomorrow...it's a pain because I don't feel like I have a natural talent for putting the shapes and things together.    Nothing came out quite the way I imagined or hoped except for the white chocolate twirls.  I had to make my own blackberry puree so I had to guess a bit.  It turned my tuile mix purple instead of a dark pink or deep red.  I know part of it is the the tuile batter but still...lavender?  And the pretty tuiles broke because I overcooked them so I had to use the crappy one for the plating.

Had to be kind of ruthless with the chocolate twirls.  Hopefully I'll get the same shape or be able to snap it around the same place during the exam - it's hard to get the angles exactly right and depending on the acetate you get, sometimes it's easier than others to get the twirls to be around the same circumference/curve as what you're aiming for.  Got lucky today with the twirl, but still ended up breaking the long twirls into a better height to go on the plate.

Have been having trouble coming up with a design on the plate where I would have enough sauce and still have something that looks clean and interesting.  This still isn't quite what I was looking for, but it's an improvement over what happened during the exam skills class with our plated dessert earlier in the week.  I've been lucky enough to get some suggestions from friends who did this exam two terms ago.  They had a couple of ideas which I think I can try tomorrow so that I can put photos in the portfolio.  At this point if it takes too much time, I'm not doing it for the exam (except for piping the poppyseed tuile and even that has me whining that it sucks when the batter is melting).

The Anglaise came out this time but the coulis is still really thick even though I didn't boil the sugar as hot as the other day.  The coulis gets this weird skin on top - I think blackberries must have some kind of pectin because the coulis looked like it might set if I left it to its own devices for a while.  In any case, the Anglaise wasn't as runny today and the coulis not as lumpy so I think I've fixed my technical difficulties.  Hopefully there will be time to do them again tomorrow - just in case, and also to try out the suggested platings with the sauces.  We've got a few ideas on the go so hopefully one of them will look good.  I don't want to try anything fancy because I know my hands will be shaking by the time I get to plating the dessert and wobbly hands don't do good piping or other fine, delicate work.

JB has been a very good sport and tasted each of the components I made today - a bit of a feat given he was trying to eat dinner and go out while I was plying him with the Anglaise (he wanted to know what it was.  I could only explain it by saying it's kind of like a custard), the coulis and tuile.  He declined the white chocolate - probably just as well, I need the twirls after all so that I can try a couple of more alternative platings.

Dinner

Then it was time for dinner.  I was really craving the goat's cheese and the baby beets I bought last night.  Also the mac 'n cheese.  And I bought some chicken today - baked it wrapped in Serrano ham.  It sounded good in theory but not good in practice.  The bottom part of the chicken  / ham roll kind got steamed / boiled so it wasn't crispy like I had thought it would.  Super classy dinner, non?  I think the best part of dinner was the salad though - the chicken was boring and the mac 'n cheese stopped being nice right around when the breadcrumbs started to go a bit soggy.

Tempering is really taking it out of me.  Somehow managed to get the white chocolate twirls done but my hand has started to peel.  Have decided that I will not cook again before finals after I've turned in my portfolio (well, except to cook dinner or something).  I want to rest everything as much as possible for the big days.

Anyway, it's time to go to sleep.  I've been sitting here trying to formulate a sentence for quite a while now and am afraid I have said something silly further up.  Thank goodness for artistic friends who can make a judgment call as to whether something is pretty or not.  Or clean looking or not.  So until next time, may the suggestions you get from your friends be as good and useful as the ones I have received from mine.  

#88 - Final practical class

Seen and heard
So I got asked if my duck was spam.  Um, no.  Although I can see from the photo how it might be mistaken for spam, seeing as how perfectly it was cooked, rested and sliced.  Well, I'm going to tell myself that instead of it being understandable because there's still fat under the skin.  Also seen, which was really disturbing:  leather hotpants with sheer pantyhose.  Really? I mean, c'mon, be considerate of people's eyes even if you are a fashion victim and don't care how you look!  Those shorts would have been short on my 4 year old niece.  And given the cold weather, I've seen far too many (super) short skirts and cankles.  You may wonder what cankles are - they are, apparently, when the leg fails to taper from the calf to the ankle and makes the abrupt transition from calf to ankle - hence the name.  I didn't use to notice them much until someone mentioned them the other day. Suddenly it seems I see an awful lot of them.  Or perhaps I'm just obsessed with legs since I started going to ballet again.


A confession
I've been having chocolate cravings, which is highly unusual.  If my parents read that last sentence, I'm sure they're going to wonder if they wandered onto the wrong blog.  Anyway - the danger of having food ingredients around and doing Patisserie is that you have - yes, you guessed it - chocolate!  The other night was disgusting enough when I ate the white chocolate straight out of the bowl, but tonight has been even more classy - eating my dark couverture chocolate chips by the handful.  Mind you, these are the ones we have to temper for truffles so I could always try to convince you it's all about quality control, but really, who are we fooling?


Sleeping in

Preparing for the last practical - and
having a Croque Cordon Bleu at the Cafe

The morning started perfectly.  I had already taken my written exam so after my alarm went off this morning, I went back to sleep instead of hitting snooze.  Or maybe I hit snooze once before I went back to sleep.  Whatever - the point is, I got to sleep until the luxurious time of 9am or so.  Then I finished printing out and making last little tweaks to the Cuisine portfolio.  I think it  due at 5pm and I had it printed out and ready to go at about noon - so energizing.  And then at some point my get up and go got up and went - without me.  If it hadn't been for the fact that I had to turn in the portfolio, there's a chance that I might not have gone to the practical, even though I hate missing class.  However...


Queue de lotte poele, encornets farci avec risotto avec langoustines et coriandre - Pan fried monkfish tail, squid stuffed with langoustine and coriander risotto)
Tonight was our last practical class.  Ever.   So off I toddled, clean uniform and portfolio in my bag, ready to take on the stupid monkfish.  I am not a fan of monkfish - the fish itself is nice - white, kind of firm, not fishy at all.  But skinning the thing - ugh - it has a layer of slimy skin that comes off easily but underneath it is a layer of silver skin that you also have to take off.  If you don't take it off, it either turns gray or makes the fish curl up.  Or both.  There's a way that you can kind of skin off the silver skin the way you take the skin off a fillet of fish, but it still leaves bits and pieces on.  Not to mention, if you accidentally cut through the silver skin on the fillet like I did on my first fillet, you have to do it the long and annoying way.


FYI, coriander and cilantro are the same thing, just different languages (I forget which is what).  We didn't have coriander so I ended up chopping up some dill for the risotto - it could probably have used a bit more dill but still tasted pretty good.

So it was supposed to be a fast and easy practical except the monkfish's silver skin was annoying me.  Then we had to brunoise some carrot, celery and onion.  Which is fine except I didn't think the celery through and I got a very nice, fine julienne which I then couldn't use for my brunoise - which I needed for my risotto.  Finally got a good risotto!  It was a little dry looking on the plate but apparently it tasted good and it was cooked the way chef wanted it.  A little too much flour on my monkfish and squid (I patted it off, I did!) but the sauce was good - langoustine-y, saffron-y and buttery (but my sauce split at the end because my plate was too hot).  I got a very encouraging comment - Chef JB told me to cook like this during the exam and I would be fine.


It was also a fun time because no one was taking it seriously.  There was a lot of laughing as we made fun of each other and some of the students who usually don't talk ended up participating as they channeled different chefs from the school.


After class...
My classmates and I went to the pub in the courtyard after class.  Knowing that I wasn't going home soon and that the food wouldn't be nice later, I gave it to one of the guys at the front desk.  By the time I got home, it was too late to buy groceries at Waitrose so I went to Tesco instead.  It's true what they say about not doing grocery shopping when you're hungry - I caught myself looking at things I normally wouldn't - Doritos and Pringles especially.  Managed to stifle those urges but I ended up buying a packet of mac 'n cheese, then some baby salad leaves, baby beetroots and tomatoes to make a salad with goat's cheese I had in the fridge.  Only thing is, I got home and remembered that I still had 2-minute ramen noodles in the cupboard which have to be eaten before I leave London.  Well 2-minute noodles aren't that nutritious and I really wanted some vegetables.  Luckily I had lugged home my knife kit so julienning some veggies took very little time.  I wanted some protein, so a scrambled egg later and having drained the noodles, I put everything together and got this.  I'm not sure if it's blasphemous to the cooking gods, if they exist, for me to put my skills  to fancying up instant noodles.  Whatever - it tasted good and I probably got my day's serving of vegetables in the dinner.


It's too soon after dinner but I am too sleepy to be able to stay up much longer.  Until next time, may you have unbroken and satisfying sleep.

#87 - Last Demo - Ever!

A bittersweet day in Cuisine this morning - our last demo ever.  I'm already feeling pangs of nostalgia and we haven't even finished yet.  We are so over it already that there was the most talking I've heard in a demo in a long time.  Chef JB asked people to share their best memories of their time at LCB - there were a lot of chef FJ stories (one of the guys apparently had been likened to an animal, after Chef FJ looked at him in his hair net (you have to wear one if your hair is longer than collar length) and beard net (if they can see stubble, you have to wear one).  Another guy had been chased around the kitchen by Chef DM with a crayfish - I'm going to guess that was in Intermediate when they had a crayfish sauce.


Although I didn't say this one, I think the best part of having gone to LCB is being able to cook something for my family and friends which isn't necessarily hugely difficult technically but can end up looking really pretty if you manage to plate it right and taste good.  That's still a work in progress, but I do seem to have an endless supply of guinea pigs, for which I am grateful.


Duck, duck...mushrooms
We had a practical soon after the demo - but it was for a dish that was demonstrated last week so I had to check my notes.  Somehow I managed to get the quantities off on my mushroom flan and I'm not quite sure where.  The volumes were right but I had a lot of mix in the bowl compared to others in the class.  And then I overcooked the flan and it souffleed - crap.  The duck needed just another couple of minutes to get the last of the fat out from under the skin but otherwise was ok - a pleasant surprise because it felt really overcooked - so I have to remember what that felt like so I can duplicate it with the pigeon.  The sauce - well, needed a lot more salt.  He could taste the foie gras and the duck (good - I didn't taste it after I added the foie gras) but it was underseasoned.


I was sous chef today - no idea what I was doing so JE had to show me what to do.  Things have changed a bit since the old school (she had to explain the dummy lift - apparently a goods lift that you can send places) and I ended up wearing some duck blood when I chopped the bones for people to have for sauce.  More laundry - ugh.


Tomorrow night is our last practical class ever.  After that will be the last minute frantic dash to get the Patisserie portfolios done.  I remember friends in previous Patisserie classes who practiced so much and I feel like I'm going into it a bit too casually.  I've thought out the recipes and they need a little tweaking, but last week...no wait - earlier this week was the first time I actually made the plated dessert with all the correct ingredients.  I was going to say it was the first time I made the plated dessert as it was meant to be, but realized that would be inaccurate because there were various mistakes which needed to be addressed.  Hopefully we'll still make it but it seems like there are some people who have practiced a lot and some people who haven't.  I still haven't done a full run through for either Cuisine or Patisserie, although Patisserie is a bit more forgivable as we need some specialty ingredients and tools.  No excuse for the Cuisine one except that everyone is freaking out about our Patisserie portfolio and practical exam.


Must go - my eyes are starting to feel happiest when they are closed.  so until next time may you not experience any freak outs.

#86 - Finals Practice Day 2 - Free Interpretation Plated Dessert

Well, it's Day 2 of the finals practice runs and there is some recipe rewriting to be done.  It seems everyone else is finished with their portfolio but I was stuck in a quandary of where to start.  I think it's one of those things that was so overwhelming that only the impetus of knowing I had to execute today made me rewrite today's recipes on my computer rather than having scraps of recipes and various different versions in my notebooks (sometimes starting from the back).

Compulsory Elements

Certain elements are required but we get to choose between options for those elements.  However, other requirements (i.e. the dessert has to be at least 50% encased in something) do mean that our desserts are going to have certain things in common.  I think a lot of people are encasing in oval or round cylinders, although I saw a lovely elliptical one with pointy ends (ladies - think Marquis cut).  They all have to have a jelly in the middle (you can see it in the cross section after it got destroyed in the tasting).  It has to have a glacage that's a different flavor from the jelly in the middle of the mousse/bavarois/chibouste (basically the filling has to have some sort of whipped cream mixture component).  We all have to have tuiles, although my poppyseeds got somewhat lost and a tempered chocolate decoration and a couple of sauces, one of which I managed to get completely lumpy.  It's not supposed to be.

I had done components of the dessert, but not all of them together so today was an interesting run through.  It's amazing how much you forget in a short period of time so thank goodness I wrote my notes with a view to what I might need to know a few years from now.  They don't need to be as detailed when you do it for so many days on end but it's inconvenient when your brain prunes various neurons which encode the information you deem vital but they think are superfluous.  I suppose knowing what the joconde biscuit ought to look like isn't a survival imperative, but it is if you want to pass Patisserie!

The last 3 hours of our final

Anyway - so it kind of seemed like things were on track and then it kind of felt like they weren't.  For instance, I didn't make back ups of my piped chocolate decorations so when I knocked one over, that kind of sucked.  Luckily I had enough time and I still had chocolate in my bowls, so I quickly warmed up the chocolate and piped it again.

We were meant to keep track of how long it took to do what, but other than things like baking times, I didn't do a very good job of it at all.  I wrote the times of a couple of things, then got lost in just making stuff.  There was a little bit of "and then what?" going on, but I think I'm just going to do a big checklist on the day so that I can cross things off my list as I do them.

Chef GB didn't like the decorations because he said they were too fussy (below left) and the hearts were too old fashioned (he didn't say that to the other person who had hearts on her plate - what's up with that?).  Something was wrong with my coulis so it messed up his plating (below centre).  I'm still fighting with knowing that my plating is not pretty and since I don't have a Kitchen Aid at home (nor the right puree) I don't intend to try this again before the exam.  Perhaps you can weigh in with your preferences or any suggestions you may have:

It was so hot in the kitchen that I came home with a migraine for the second day in a row.  I'm not sure how we ever made it in the kitchens at the old school.  I heard a couple of girls in the locker room complaining about the heat and thought, "They have no idea."  Our kitchens are air conditiioned!  Made it to the osteo who put me to rights (to the accompaniment of cracks and winces) and finally it's to bed and getting ready for tomorrow.  I'm still waiting to hear whether I have to take the theory exams again (please no!  I already took them and I don't have my notes anymore) - the trouble is the first theory exam is tomorrow so if I find out that I do have to take the exam, it will be with just a couple of hours' notice.  It almost seems premature - perhaps they ought to wait until 5 minutes before the exam.

On the other hand, if they let me know earlier, maybe I can take a dance class in the afternoon to make up for eating the white chocolate after I piped a message to V...because after dinner, just for fun and to make up for that bleeding raspberry white chocolate mousse from last Sunday, I decided to have a little piping practice...

Tomorrow is another day and as always, there's a ton of stuff to be done.  It's getting close to my bed time so I will say good night for now.  And until next time, may your dreams be sweet but not filled with white chocolate mousse.

#85 - Finals Practice Day 1 - Compulsories

It's almost like the old school figure skating competitions.  We worked on our compulsory items today and tomorrow we work on our free plated dessert.


Disclaimer:  Keep in mind the following while you look at the photos:  I haven't made chocolates since October and this is my second sugar sculpture since November.  I have never before made the spiral sables (and it shows!) but I made the brioche a few times last week.  You can see what was practiced recently and what wasn't...I'd fix the formatting but it's difficult to keep my eyes open and I have an early class, so must get on with it.

Compulsories started well enough.  The first hour was a frantic rush - the brioche got made, the sables were finished and rolled and by the second hour, the chocolate shells for the truffles had set and were filled with ganache.  It all started to come apart in the third hour - my sables ended up way too big (I'll make a half recipe next time) and the brioche took twice as long as it should have to prove.


Then the truffles - the seal went on well enough, but they were really stuck when I tried to get them out at the end.  Chef asked if I had cleaned my mould well - yes I had, and I had the extra spilled over bits of chocolate which had gotten into other holds in the mould which had come out easily, all shiny and pretty.  The culprit was my white chocolate - it had gone out of temper when I brushed it onto the mould because I wanted to get a lot of definition on the white lines.  Too many brush strokes and it kills your chocolate - the truffles stick to the mould and they don't come out cleanly, if at all.  The result - broken chocolates.  Since we have to present 6 identical chocolates on the day, this is a bit of a failure unless you count the broken-ness as them being identical.  I think the chefs might consider that an identical lack of skill... 

I don't know what happened to my sugar but it was all bad.  It crystallized, which it had never done before, so it was hideous when I tried to stick things together.  Then the main piece was too top heavy (and answers the question of which way the teardrop window should face) and it broke before I managed to present it to the chef.  In the exam you have to somehow glue the pieces back together and present something because the compulsories are just that - compulsory.  Failure to present one is an automatic disqualification - i.e. you fail the exam and the course - or at least, that's how I understand it.  If you manage to stick something on a cake board, you might eke out a half point, keeping you in the game - as long as the rest of your work is good.  I think most people had a shocker of a day today, although not all.  In my case, most of the tasting seemed ok but the execution of the techniques - oh my.  I so don't want to put up photos because it was all a bit of a disaster, but the whole point of this is to share the good (sometimes) and the not-so-good (lately feels like an awful lot of the time).


The brioche wasn't so bad although the head was on crooked.  I felt so disorganized this morning - my kit and bits and pieces had all been left at home because I had taken things out of my bag or put them back in or I thought I had put them back in.  When I found I didn't have a few things, there was some mild panicking for the first hour or so.  Hopefully tomorrow will go more smoothly now that I kind of have a better idea of what I want to do and I've reviewed my knife kit / Patisserie toolbox.  It's kind of stupid - there's a rule that you can't bring in a bag other than your knife kit because people were stealing stuff from the old school.  The thing is, we need a lot of extra stuff in Patisserie so you actually do need that extra bag for things like our paint scrapers, grout spreaders (I'm not sure if that's even the right term), extra palette knife - and since there are quite a few of us who seem to want to do the same thing, I've packed my own moulds.  This way I am guaranteed to have the correct sized moulds for various things, like my chocolate and tuile decorations, as well as the actual dessert itself.


Lunch provided a sop to the OCD part of my personality -a sink right in the middle of a casual Portuguese chicken place!  No need for hand sanitizer, I could wash my hands after I paid for my food and before I sat down.  How could any germaphobe or a self-professed clean freak not be happy?


Wish us Merde - we will need it in order to survive our feedback and the subsequent change of recipes.


Until next time, may you feel more competent at whatever it is you're doing than I have felt today.

#84 - Sebastian the Lobster, Interactive dining and the Little Mermaid

But first - a lobster, half a beetroot and some ratatouille
Friday was our lobster and ratatouille practical.  For some reason, people seem to dislike beetroot, sometimes before they've even tried it.  I was guilty of this particular dislike until a few years ago.  I had always been put off by the color and the fact that beetroot seems to stain everything it touches so I'm not sure what possessed me to try it that nameless day sometime in the distant past, but try it I did.  It was love at first bite.  It has a firm, but soft texture if that's possible, similar to eating a skillfully cooked turnip but much sweeter.


So the dish was a pan fried lobster, but only at the last minute.  We had to (mostly) cook it in the shell so that we could remove the shell first, to use to make something almost like a bisque - cooking off the shells and making a bouillon, then clarifying it with beets and egg whites.  Somehow getting the lobster out of its shell was a lot harder than I remember and this one had a ton of eggs.  It was actually kind of disgusting because they got everywhere and I kept having to clean my board, knives and work surface.  Plus I accidentally cut through the meat on one of the claws and completely mashed the other one.  Sebastian (yes, I know it's a boy's name) got some of her own back when one of her knuckles twisted in my hand while I was deshelling her - so there is a puncture on my left thumb and a slice on my right thumb (no idea how I got it).


I have yet to have a practical class in Cuisine where I haven't boiled something over - on Friday, it was the court bouillon to cook the lobster.  The clarification was quite nice although I had to discard some egg white part way through because it looked like there was too much egg.  Not enough sauce left to make an emulsion foam at the end, but the dish finished on time and the beetroot consomme was surprisingly good.  The ratatouille was pretty yummy, but we ran out of olive oil so I thought it was missing something.  I tried it at home after adding a little olive oil and it made a huge difference - part of the reason why I don't cook with extra virgin olive oil unless I am looking for the flavor.  It also took a little while longer than I would have liked to cut all the vegetables because I had to spend so much time trimming.  It's easier to get even cuts if you cut off the top and the bottom of the bell peppers and since none of the veggies had flat sides, you had to trim off and discard quite a bit.  Chef EB didn't say anything about them but I bet if I hadn't gotten them pretty similar sized, he would have noticed and said something.  As it was, he could tell I hadn't added the basil chiffonade at the right time.


Lobster was followed by a trek down to the pub, a fine after-class tradition which is not quite as regular as back when we were in Marylebone Lane.  A definite must though, after a Friday class.


Minor rejoicing
And finally, the biometric scan for my finger works!  I've forgotten, but one of the gates works to let me in and a different one (and those ones only) work to let me out when I scan my finger.  Suffice it to say that the working finger is not the middle one.  And it finally worked at the cafe so my prediction that the scanner will never work during my time at LCB will not stay true.  The new ID card is a different story and I'm still not sure that I will learn everyone's name in my group before the exams.  We're still working on remembering who's actually in the group.


Practicing...and bloody pigeons

Saturday was a practice session with JE.  We met at Borough Market because we needed some ingredients (pigeons, baby onions, a few other bits and pieces).  And of course, we both got a delicious toasted cheese sandwich.  JE was actually going to get something else, but a look at the steam rising in the air from a bitten corner of the sandwich and a tiny little bite convinced her that she wanted one of her own.  I remember ages ago when LM and I went to get one, we shared it and I thought it was so delicious that I could eat a whole one by myself.  Well, no, as it turns out.  I got most of the way through but the cheese was so rich (and I'm pretty sure there were lashings of butter on it) that I was defeated before I got to the end.

Spent part of the time practicing turning turnips.  I remembered that I wasted a little time during the mock exam doing extra ones (obviously losing some time there) but reminded myself that there would only be a couple of backups during the actual exam so some time should get picked up there, as well as the vegetable cooking.

I hate pigeon - the meat actually smells kind of vile.  After we thought it was cooked, I poked the meat when we roasted the crown and one felt pretty close to medium while the other one still felt really rare.  When I carved my pigeons, the parts that felt medium were medium, but the part close to the bone was still not cooked and even though it didn't bleed (much) when I carved it, blood got in the sauce when I put the sauce on the plate.  I'm not sure how I'll get the whole pigeon crown to medium at this stage because it looks like if the part by the bone is cooked, the rest of the breast might be overdone.  It's not quite as serious to be slightly under with the pigeon as it is with chicken (they want the pigeon medium, chicken has to be cooked through) but it can't be good if I can't roast the stupid thing.

We did manage to get the braising liquid from the lettuce sufficiently reduced to get a glaze and plate most of 2 plates.  No second lettuce and we skipped the chicken mousse because it's a component which is hard to mess up once you learn the tricks of the trade.  However, not particularly happy with the result of our practice and have to remind myself that conditions at home are very different from te ones at school.  For one thing, I'm not sure anyone has 7 pots at home and we spent part of our 4 hours washing up.  We did mark time for when we expected to be doing other elements during the exam (i.e. the chicken mousse for the lettuce, the poached eggs, spinach and Hollandaise sauce) but all in all it didn't turn out too badly, other than the pigeon which is still causing me problems.  Perhaps a longer sear - I'll have to ask the chef because the whole bleeding on the plate thing doesn't work for me.  The picture on the right above looks like one of those find the difference games they have for you when you're a child, the purpose being that the plates presented during the exam ought to be identical.   JE was unhappy with the sauce but I thought it was pretty good, taking into account we used the wrong stock (we didn't have veal and I haven't been able to find it) and the wrong wine (we didn't want to open a nice bottle of red wine and we had only gotten white wine from when we did the Hollandaise earlier in the week.

Made the tartlet but not the eggs, spinach or the Hollandaise.  For one thing, we ran out of pots and pans - they were all in use for the various components of the pigeon dish.  For another, JE had a little trouble with her dough and we don't know why.  And the moulds we used yesterday were a bit bigger than the ones we use for the exam so this was actually meant for practice lining and baking the tartlets anyway.  Not necessarily perfect (we don't know why the potatoes tasted better the last time we did them) but we learned quite a bit so it was definitely not a wasted day.

Dinner

There's this restaurant on Regent Street that I've passed by quite a few times and each time it seemed like one I would like to try.  Luckily one of my friends here had heard from someone that it was good so he booked 4 of us in.  It had interactive tables so we all had fun playing with it - it's pretty much like having a video screen of a computer screen on your table via projector and you can order food, drinks, ask for service, there's a Chef Cam which I thought was really cool (a bit blurry but watching the kitchen was kind of fun), each pair sitting across from each other played Battleship, you can flag down a waiter and change the decor on your table, to name just a few highlights.  I was going to take photos but the boys pooh-poohed the idea.  Well, they said boys don't take photos and I didn't want to embarrass them.  Food on the whole was good but my miso fish wasn't - couldn't taste the miso if there was any (really - but there was plenty of Thai sweet red chili sauce) and it was dry and super overcooked, so a little disappointing.  The fun factor pretty much made up for it though and we had a lot of laughs discussing whether it was a good idea or a bad one for a first date - consensus being it could be either one, depending on the date.

The restaurant had been described as a "funky Asian fusion" place so I put on pretty shoes to go out.  They were fine when I first put them on, but have come to the conclusion that they are more of the "sit there and look pretty" variety than "run down the street in high heels" kind.  We stopped by a bar on the way home, saw some wild gyrating in the direction of a hen's night (bachelorette party, for those of us not from the UK or Australia), then walked home.  By the time we got home, my feet were hurting.  Maybe it's just being out of practice walking in heels, but I suspect not.  I did think that perhaps this was the Little Mermaid's problem (the Hans Christian Andersen version, not the Disney one - where the price for being human was the loss of her voice and feeling like she was walking on knives while she followed her heart to her Prince and her death) - I bet she was wearing pretty but uncomfortable shoes.

Next on the agenda - writing out my recipes for the Patisserie exam runs this week and working on the portfolio.  I wanted to go to ballet this morning but am not sure whether my feet have forgiven me for subjecting them to high heels for an entire evening after weeks of sneakers, soft boots and kitchen shoes.

So until next time may your endeavors be more successful than our adventures have been thus far.

#83 - And down the stretch they come!

Entering the home stretch
Somehow it's sinking in that two weeks from tomorrow, it will all be over (assuming all goes to plan).  I can't believe that I have been in class for almost 2 weeks now.  In some ways it's like I never left and in other ways, I still feel a little like a headless chicken.  Hopefully that feeling will abate prior to exams, although there's a mild panic at the thought that my cuisine final will take place in a kitchen where I have never set foot (except to get a couple of band-aids).

Today's dish was the rabbit trio.  I was a little traumatized when Chef JB asked in demo who had had pet rabbits as a child.  Several hands went up - the most common name being Fluffy. Chef JB then dubbed his rabbit "Fluffy" before proceeding to dismember it into several pieces.  I named mine Peter (obviously whoever caught him was more successful than Mr MacGregor of the Beatrix Potter story).  Marinated the wrong legs for the confit so I got a little behind this morning - the thing is, you can't get flustered when something goes wrong or you lose a lot of time.  I got a little flustered so to hell with French trimming the rack of rabbit - it's a lot of work for a tiny rack, especially since the bones are so delicate.  I didn't serve it, but I did cook the racks.  The final dish had a few slices of roulade, confit, a braised leg and some baby artichoke.  There was also, of course, a sauce - a bit over-reduced, but according to the chef, still tasted good.  I wouldn't know, I didn't actually taste the sauce.  Or the rabbit.  Or the artichokes.  Actually - nope, didn't taste anything at all.


I packed half a rabbit with sauce and veggies for a friend from Cuisine who is now doing Basic Patisserie.  I notice the order of some of the desserts have changed.  Anyway, he likes rabbit so some of Peter went home to become breakfast (or so I was told).  I packed a bit more of the rabbit and brought it home for other people to taste.  I've had enough of it to know that it doesn't taste as bad as I thought the first time, nor does it smell as strong - maybe it has something to do with the fact that this time we cooked it a little after noon instead of first thing in the morning.


Anyway, we then went out to dinner to celebrate GS's birthday from earlier this week.  It was an early night - he wanted to hang out a bit more with NH (who also finished Cuisine last term and is doing Basic Patisserie this term) and me, but I was too tired and I think so was she.  We've actually had quite a lot of hours in class and I have been falling asleep for the last couple of days in the middle of the day.  Dinner was at the Senior Citizen hour of something close to 6pm...


Cooking with your heart
The chefs used to tell us that if you are happy, your food is happy.  If you're not happy, your plate will reflect that as well.  Maybe it's knowing that the worst (not being able to finish) has already happened or maybe it's something else - it doesn't feel like much has changed but somehow the cooking seems to have improved.  "More love, less passion" as one of our Patisserie chefs likes to say.  I mentioned this to other friends who finished Cuisine on time and they said they noticed the same thing - on the days when there was unhappy conflict in the kitchen, their plates were invariably "shit".  Hopefully things will continue to improve - we only have a few more classes to go before we hit finals.  I have been using classes as an opportunity to strengthen my hand as well - somehow there's always a little adrenalin rush - maybe it's the knowledge that there's continuous assessment every day, maybe it's that exams are almost here and the time is fast approaching when things will be over, one way or the other.  In any event, it will be a relief once it's all over - I have a feeling that there will be a few tears of tension finally receding when we have presented our pieces.  There's definitely a plan for people to get together and get some dinner after the 6-hour Patisserie marathon.  Still seriously considering whether to get Astronaut diapers - you know how it is, you always have to go to the bathroom at the most inconvenient time.  My current time plan does not have a bathroom break built in because I have used that time as a cushion against something going wrong.  Too much information?  I wonder if anyone has ever done it - I've heard of people who complained they didn't have time to go to the bathroom...


Monday and Tuesday will be our Patisserie skills test - a run through of the exam pieces.  Recipes will be refined/finalized after chef comments and we will see where we are with organization and seeing how long it takes to execute things.  There's a bit of waffling with a couple of components, but otherwise things look like they are on track.  Then it's the last minute panic of printing out our portfolios.  A bit more to be done for Cuisine, a lot more to be done for Patisserie.


Must go now - it is early but definitely past my bedtime.  So until next time, may your cooking adventures be full of more love, less passion...

#82 - Taking home the bread...

In which I have discovered new levels of stress
Whatever thoughts I might have had last term about getting ready for finals and doing portfolios was trumped yesterday.  An email reminder arrived from a course I enrolled for back in September - related to my job and obviously before I got injured.  The reminder email was to confirm technical setup with our lecturers in Sydney.  Yes, I am beyond silly in that I now have to finish my Patisserie portfolio, finalise the Cuisine portfolio, practice for the exams and...do readings for a dispute resolution course.  That could always go on the back burner but I have a couple of assignments due during the period that I am away so what I had thought would be easy down time at home over the Easter holidays now bid fair to be rather involved in catching up on the reading that I don't really have time to do over the next couple of weeks.  Between study / practice sessions and classes finishing full pelt, I have little free time as I have to pack up pretty much right after finals in preparation for leaving London for the foreseeable future.


Finals have started to permeate every aspect of life, from allowing no time for ballet classes to taking over conversations and any conversations I might have with anyone.  There has been random browsing on the internet as well as trying to think of flavor combinations within the list of ingredients which don't sound horrible (cinnamon and white chocolate made various faces screw up at the very thought).  Thus far we have had some good natured guinea pigs as evidenced by the mousse and raspberry thing the other night.


Good influences
There are good influences everywhere you look.  One of the girls from Cuisine has kicked my butt into actually making a practice schedule for our cuisine final.  That influenced a slightly less ambitious one for Patisserie - less so because there are a few things I can't practice at home (sugar and brioche).  In the meantime, our first practice session is tomorrow.  She has kindly offered the use of her kitchen and equipment - I will provide the things she doesn't have.  I have high hopes for the upcoming finals as I have only practiced on my own in the past.  If nothing else, this will teach me whether I am capable of practicing with other people or whether I need to do it on my own.


Gather ye roses...
In the meantime, we have been using the boulangerie module to practice brioche.  Mondy and today resulted in more bread items than we could carry - a happy bonus for friends not doing Patisserie.  We made a few breads for the day, then prepped a few other things for Tuesday (a second brioche recipe, the croissant doughs, etc.) which we did first thing in the morning - not a bad breakfast / morning snack.  We actually had so many that I gave a few to various people.  The porters like these days because they also get to share - we need assistance in making our take-home packages manageable and they get to have fresh bread - a win/win situation for all concerned.

After all the Viennoiserie was baked, we all had to do a quality control/taste test.  As you can see, they looked quite nice (my croissants are the two outer columns and the pains au chocolat on the left - we shared trays).  For hygiene reasons, I've been wearing a mask while I cook, but that doesn't interfere with tasting time.  The others in the background are ladling hot water in their cups so they can have coffee with their croissants.  Milk and sugar were already on hand for other ingredients so we were well supplied.

In which we eat - a lot...
Tuesday's afternoon session was for finishing a few other breads, then time for some fun.  We have these enormous deck ovens which can make their own steam so you get a really nice crust on bread.  The only thing is, these are apparently the small ones so it makes it a bit harder to have one at home.  You can make do but it's a bit more dangerous to make your own steam so I just do simpler ones.  The Viennese baguettes are baking on the left (just before we went for lunch).  Then we had to turn out and cut our pains de campagne in the second session.  It gets a really nice crust, it freezes well and it's really good when you defrost and toast it.  This is the one I had in my freezer when I got injured last term - really good with beans on toast - even better if the beans and toast is topped with melted Gruyere and a fried egg on top.

  

Pain Surprise
This is one we make with a rye bread mix (pain de siegle).  We baked the bread the day before, then chilled it over night - apparently that makes it easier to slice.  It's something you can do with any bread (so we were told) and traditionally people make them for parties - either as a finger food, part of a buffet or whatever - easy to eat and the display is quite nice.


Hollowing out my Aloha Honu ("honu" is Hawaiian for turtle) was a bit of a pain, mainly because I missed a little bit on the bottom and it was uneven.  Did manage to disguise the layers - the one on the left below is Chef's turtle, Terry.  Mine is in the centre and on the right below - the girls work at the dentist's office on the ground floor of the building where I'm staying.  They saw the turtle and they made the same impressed sounds I made when I first saw a Superior student taking home her hedgehog back when I was in basic.  Anyway, both girls are from Australia.  One didn't like smoked salmon so she just sampled the prosciutto one and the other one tried both.

As you can see, Honu was quite popular.  Knowing just how much butter I had spread over the various layers when making the sandwiches, I couldn't face eating so many more for dinner, especially since I had already had a pain au chocolat by then.  All I want was a nice salad - so this was dinner.  Of course I ended up having a second dinner a few hours later - apparently eating lots of butter and refined flour doesn't satisfy your body's need for food and it still demands the good stuff after you've given it tons of bad (but oh so delicious) stuff.

One of the girls who lives here asked why we make such a random thing as a turtle while we make such beautiful bread.  I had to think about it - but I think it comes back to Chef's explanation of the bread.  It's good for parties and canape-ish type things.  They teach us this stuff because some of the people will leave LCB wanting to open their own businesses.  This might not be appropriate, but then for those who go into catering or events type things, it might be a great way to do something that looks quite impressive and might make you a good profit.  I have to agree with my hosts though - the turtle did look a bit random just hanging out in the fridge while waiting to be eaten.  One of the guys doesn't like hard crusts on his bread so I told him this was perfect because there was actually no crust on the sandwiches whatsoever.


The remainder of the evening was spent doing more laundry - the baking trays have been cured over years of use but the whole not washing them thing means that they get crap on the bottom of the trays - so each day the pristine white uniform gets random rusty looking streaks not too long after you handle the trays.  I've washed my oven gloves but they still look a bit cooked.  Hopefully they don't affect hygiene marks.


Today is a late start - 3pm demo, then a 6:30pm practical.  Luckily the main time of the practical will be waiting for the lemongrass / ginger/ other spices bouillon to come together so there should be some yummy goodness to bring home for dinner.  There's enough time to drop off a Kugelhopf bread to a girlfriend (not cooking school) who had a baby not so long ago, with some of the bread from yesterday, then it's on to meet a friend from Cuisine to go over a couple of things for finals.  I can finally get some things out of the fridge, like the wood pigeons I bought over the weekend -I'm not sure if that means they were wild but we have to look for shot in them - and some of the vegetables.   Busy day ahead - must go.


So until next time, happy eating and sleeping!