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.
