#67 - (Not) Graduation and variations on a theme

The variations are not on a theme by Paganini.  It's more a theme by Le Cordon Bleu London - that is to say, hygiene.  Kind of.  Sort of.  What can I say, it's more laundry.  But as usual, I've begun in the middle so must loop back to the beginning.

Good bye Dinner
On Thursday night I had dinner with a friend of one of my brothers (they of the walk in the countryside and trip on canal boat fame) - she and her partner took me to a lovely restaurant called Alba near the Barbican - really good Italian food - definitely comfort food.  I took a photo of the dessert as research.  As delicious as my vegetable soup and slow cooked lamb were, they weren't something I might put in an exam.  Probably not the pear either, but it was good for taste, texture and potential ideas (the marscapone cream was really good - definitely on the list for a future dessert).  The Alba is a family owned and operated establishment and my hostess had been going there for years.  I must say that I will definitely go back - what's not to like?  Small but thoughtful menu with something available for the carnivore, the vegetarian and the pescatarian (they're the ones who eat fish but not meat, right?).  I was tempted to get the set menu which had a truffle dish on it, but couldn't go past the lamb.

Graduation Lunch
As of Friday, 16 December 2011, the term has officially ended for my fellows in Superior Cuisine and Patisserie - they are now chefs, some of them entitled to wear the toque at least for the last few minutes of the graduation ceremony.  Today was graduation day for most of those who began this long quest to learn how to cook, improve technique and to share our love of all things food.  The party was at the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane.  Much better food than what I remember being served when we had our graduation from Basic.  This is the final graduating batch of Superior students from 114 Marylebone Lane.  From next year, students will be taking classes in Bloomsbury Square.

It was nice to see everyone dressed up and out of their school uniforms.  It appears that people dress up more for the Superior Graduation - not that I remember much from when I was in Basic (and I wasn't here for the Intermediate one) but I have to admit people cleaned up very well.

Everyone had put their best shod foot forward and you could feel the palpable air of relief, excitement and (possibly it's my imagination, but who knows?) the need to catch up on just a little more sleep after the marathon Patisserie exam a couple of days ago.  Some of people said that a few problems had occurred in one of the exams and sometimes it was little but important things which just went wrong on the day.  I think it's always frustrating when you have an element which normally is not a trouble maker all of a sudden causing problems on the day because it tends to throw you off your stride.

The Dorchester was very pretty - a little OTT perhaps, but then again, this was a big occasion for everyone - a culmination of a lot of work and in many cases, some blood, lots of sweat and a lot of tears.  Possibly also some grumpy moments, loss of sleep and monumental self control when something didn't go right in class and continued not to go right.  Yes, it is personal experience talking...

Having had so much time in class, I have to say I cast an eye over our lunch as though we were having it presented to us for tasting and judgment.  Maybe not Iron Chef - but definitely consideration on a couple of levels:  the first being, could I do this?  (Sometimes yes, sometimes maybe...) - and the second one being, what might the chefs say if this was a dish that we were presenting to them.

So I do not have a 3 Michelin star palate - even after al this time and the incredible ingredients we used in class, I still do not like foie gras (although today I hated it less than usual).  The toasted brioche was a nice touch although I observed a demonstration of someone's objection to it which is that you get this large slab of foie gras but only a little bit of bread and salad.

The menu said cannon of lamb.  I thought the cannon was part of the leg but this looked more like a steak-ish type of cut.  Also, it didn't taste particularly lamb-y, but maybe the tastebuds were confused by the foie gras and a piece of the toasted brioche (yummy, by the way) which had preceded it.  Again, left the sweetbreads behind.  I think they are considered a delicacy nowadays - certainly they seem to be trendy at the moment, both as part of the head-to-tail philosophy of using every part of the animal and as part of the offal-is-trendy-because-it-sounds-kind-of-weird-and-no-one-knows-what-it-is.

Dessert was a mocha and something-or-other parfait, macadamia nut brittle, coconut ice cream (milk ice cream?) and sauce.  This one got particular scrutiny as there were several patisserie students at my table from all the levels as well as our head Patisserie chef.  The students looked at it from the view of a plated dessert and Chef JW looked at it, comparing it to what had been served during the tasting (when they chose the menu) as well as technical points.  The only really technical point is that a parfait is frozen, which these weren't.  I thought the mousse might have been a tad heavy on the gelatine, but that might just have been me.

There was some discussion as to how well the chocolate was tempered, some people at the table having had rather recent and harrowing experience with uncooperative chocolate.  Split verdict - I thought it was fine, someone else thought not and Chef JW did not weigh in with her opinion.  She did observe that there are two LCB graduates who worked in the pastry team of the Dorchester and at least one of them had worked on these desserts.  In any event, it tasted good and was quite pretty.  They stuck the tuile and chocolate in the dome though, so I'm not sure what Chef GB thought of that - he told us particularly not to do that to our plated desserts.

I also found out one of the girls who just completed Basic Patisserie has been reading this blog - rather a compliment.  I asked her how she had found it and she said it was because she had been searching for photos of the dishes we had been making in class.

Chefs!
Anyway - they made it and have the medals, papers (lots of papers) and the hats to show it.

Well done chefs!

As for my graduation, hopefully I will be able to time my finals with the next batch of graduating Superior students.  This was supposed to be a year of food, but it's turning out to be a bit longer.  It's been more of a year of building character - in which food played a large role.  I will know more once I hear back from the Academic committe but for now, there will be photos of practice sessions (once my hand is back in shape), possibly some bitching and moaning and now I have a great excuse to eat a lot of things at a lot of places.  After all, it's a chance to collect ideas for finals without trying to get too clever.  It wasn't far to find a very large silver lining (a break to reorganize, get warm at home for the holidays with family and friends and a chance to see the new school).

So until next time, happy holidays - may your year end as positively as mine bids to do.

#51 - Mystery Basket

AKA - thank goodness I have a day job!
Today as our Mystery Basket.  It wasn't actually such a mystery for my group because we had class at 6pm, by which time the first 3 groups or so had already done theirs.  The main ingredient:  duck.

We were given a list of 27 ingredients.  I used 18 (plus substituted one flour for another).  Chef's comment was that I hadn't used that many ingredients.  I'm really not sure how I would have gotten away with putting pasta and potato on my plate when it already had a savory short crust pastry (trial run for the exam - timing will be fine but technique needs a bit of work) and a few other things.

Like a cooking show - but not
This is apparently like cooking competitions.  You have ingredients, you have some time and you cook.  Sometimes it's a compulsory item and sometimes it's do whatever you want.  Which would be fine, if I were an Iron Chef, this might have been a breeze.  Since I'm not...and since we're all students...let's just say that we heard "2 hours" and everyone froze up for a split second.  It's the time aim for our practical classes but because people take time to present their dishes and take comments, sometimes you have a bit more time to refine a couple of things on your plate (i.e. fix your sauce 3 times like I did yesterday).

Lead up to the Mystery Basket
But first - back to the beginning.  Some people had been stressing about the Mystery Basket.  Me, not so much - mainly because I kind of forgot about it until yesterday.  We also happened to have class today from 12 - 6pm so by the time the not-so-mysterious Mystery Basket was on the agenda, I was already brain dead, having half- fallen asleep for part of the 3pm cuisine demo.  Interesting notes...it looks like a chicken walked across the pages and mixed up the methods (wild mushrooms on the scallop dish which doesn't list mushrooms anywhere on the ingredients list).

We'd also had a review of 3 of our compulsory Patisserie pieces for the final (as in, even if it's crap, turn it in.  Otherwise they disqualify you - I assume this means a fail for the course even if everything else is splendid) so that was a bit of a sit-up-and-take-notice time block.

Clueless much?
I have to say, I saw the list and the tray and didn't even think - I just butchered the duck and hoped that inspiration would strike.  Also I wanted to keep things pretty simple - simple, clean, neat.  Well, that was the idea - probably not a bad one.  The execution, on the other hand...not so much.  I braised the legs (not enough time to confit them, although I tried to confit the tenderloins - "try" being the operative word - they were really bad.  As in, I would eat them and like them, so they are definitely not something I would present to the chef) and produced a nice sauce.  The breast pieces felt like they were going over so I took them off.  Nope...way, way under.  And looked very strange.  There was a certain amount of quiet panicking when it was time to plate.  Only idea was about the tarte but the rest of it was all a blur.  They say to diagram it out - but that's a bit hard to do when you have 2 hours to do the dish.

Humiliating - Wild Mushroom Tartelette,
Braised leg of duck and roasted duck breast with
Poached Pear in Red Wine glaze

Learning time - aka "Chef - this is what I won't do for the final"
I finished the tartelette but it was overcooked - so I know what NOT to do for my Cuisine final when we have to do the tarte for the poached egg and Hollandaise sauce.  I totally messed up the Jerusalem artichokes so they didn't make it on the plate (should have made them into a puree like Chef "suggested" at the beginning of class).  Luckily he liked the sauce, but other than that, today was pretty much a write off.  I liked the pears but Chef wasn't such a big fan.  On the other hand, he had been tasting pretty much all day and if even half of the dishes were as miss as mine, it was a looonnnng day for him.  As for me, I am so very glad that I have a day job already.  We laughed at the chefs when they said some people will never pick up a knife again after the course.  I wouldn't go that far, but I have to say that I am not confident enough to cook restaurant style dishes without a recipe.  Certainly you could throw something together, but the questions today were:

1.  Was the technique correct?
2.  Would someone buy this at a restaurant?  If yes, would they eat it?
3.  Chef's personal preference...

"Home cooking" after a long day - a confession
It's almost bedtime and I have my uniforms in the laundry.  To tired to do much of anything except to try to unwind so I can sleep.

So I made 5 minute noodles.  They're actually 3 minute noodles but I had to wait for the water to boil, while cleaning a leak in the fridge and getting out the vegetables for the noodles.  So if you had a vision of fancy food at home, you just heard my deep, dark secret.  Beans on toast with gruyere cheese were on the menu when we did our Boulangerie module a couple of weeks ago.  Very gourmet, non?

Tomorrow:  Bath.  I need a break, then it's on to work on the portfolios for Cuisine and Patisserie with a classmate on Sunday.  On the one hand I can't wait for this to be over.  On the other hand, I am already waxing nostalgic for student days.  I've run out of hands so it's time to say good night and scrub off the day.

Until next time...may you have the satisfaction of a job well done.