#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!

#31 - A New High...

I have heard the saying "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."  Well, we are living that saying - yesterday was a new high in class - we had the first practical at 8am (41C/105.8F) and the second practical at 3pm (45C/113F).  But as always, I am getting ahead of myself and need to go back a few days.

Busy Wednesday
After the focaccia and other breads, we had a practical for patisserie which included a skills test.  Yes, mini-test on making more pastry shells (the pate sucree from the apple tart back in Basic) and piping.  I am not going to bore you with photos of substandard work which might only be of interest to people who are into technical-ish pastry type things, so I'll move right along to the food.

Later that same day
We are starting to do a lot more in classes.  As I've said, the course is cleverly constructed so there isn't really any way for us to stand around and do nothing.  On the rare days when we finish early, I think it has been noted for any future amendments to the curriculum.

Surf and turf
Our schedule has also changed so we occasionally have days when we don't cook (two days this week) but we make up for that with double practicals on the other days.  On Wednesday, we started with mouclades which is a regional mussel dish from...near Normandy, I think (I haven't checked my notes).  It appears that the defining difference between that and the moules mariniere, which is the one more people are familiar with (white wine, shallots, etc.) is the addition of curry.  Yes I know - curry and cream sounds so not right, but it's actually really good if you can get the balance right.  The demo one Chef FB did was really good - mine had a few things that weren't quite right about it.


Anyway, we did the mouclade and a lamb stew as well.  Somehow I got lucky and the lamb was actually tender, even though we only had a couple of hours to do it and the mussels turned out pretty well.  I don't know if it's the heat that killed the other stew that we did last week or whether it was the cut of meat (or the age of the animal?) but the lamb stew which was made with a secondary cut, was much more tender and delicious than the beef one.  So if you are looking for hints about stews and things, use the cheaper cut with more connective tissue - it's a much better dish!  I also checked with one of the chefs - don't use bad wine.  If you can get a good one and it's not expensive, great.  I think a good rule of thumb is that if you won't drink it, don't cook with it.  Which goes with the mantra "one for the stew, one for me..." which I have been thinking about suggesting in class.

Then we had a cheese lecture on Thursday - Tom the Cheese Guy is as entertaining as ever and we got some really good cheese.  I still am not a fan of the bleus and I don't think I ever will be.  The smell really puts me off and the texture of the mold cultures in my mouth - kind of grainy and raspy against the smoothness of the cheese itself - is not for me.  Kind of like having seared fish or seared meat where you can really feel the difference in textures, as opposed to when the flame has only just kissed the fish or meat and you get that delicious smokiness but otherwise you wouldn't know it had been touched by flame or heat.

Super hot Friday
It's kind of hard to feel fresh and clean when you can feel your clothes sticking to you.  The 8am class wasn't so bad, it was still cool outside and there was a bit of a breeze which came through the open windows and doors (until we had to close the doors so that we wouldn't set off the fire and smoke detectors).  Again it was a double dish class:  warm asparagus salad with walnut vinaigrette (my asparagus died when I reheated it for service).

Then we did a fillet steak (mine was just on the verge between rare and medium rare - they wanted medium rare).  I couldn't remember what time I put the steak on the stove, so I just poked it with my fingers - I thought it would be slightly over, which just goes to show how much we have to go before we know.  We served it with roast potatoes (or rather fried in lots of clarified butter - mine weren't brown enough), broccolini and wild mushrooms.  It would have been a really good dish except my mushrooms and broccolini got cold by the time I got the dish to the chef, even though the broccolini had been really hot when I stuck them on the plate.  Makes you wonder why we bother.  It is now all sitting in my refrigerator in containers and since I have to reheat the meat anyway, I suppose it's perfect because it won't be overcooked unless I do it that way.  I find it amazing that meals on a student budget include prime cuts of meat and amazing food (as long as we don't mess it up).

Then - duck.  Our class started really late because the class before us was still there at 3pm (they're supposed to be finished half an hour before we start).  They were finishing up their asparagus with walnut dressing and their steaks.  We were wondering what took so long because I'm still the slowest one in my class and we pretty much finished on time in the morning (except for me cleaning up my knives and dishes).  Someone stuck their head in and had a look at the clock to see how much time we were losing and reported back that it was 43C/109.4F - all the stoves were off.  By the end of class, when we had left most of the ovens off and only used the stoves, it was the 45C/113F that I reported at the start of this post.  I think almost everyone had lost some weight by the time class ended and one of the girls in Superior Patisserie joked that she was considering cuisine as a weight loss method.  A lot of people have been desperate to go home and wash their uniforms - which I like because the locker room can be a bit...fragrant on a hot day.  Also - flame retardent clothing isn't that cool...

Butchering a duck is very much like butchering a chicken except for the fact that it is a lot more fatty so your knife gets greasy and slippery and you have to be much more careful to clean all the handles well.  Oh, and the feather shafts are much more stubborn so I feel like it took too long to scrape them off, take off the legs for the confit next week (a little harder to see the oyster by the hips on a duck) and to get the meat off the breast so that it is boneless.

It's meant to be served pink (or medium rare - yech!) and we had to do roast vegetables which weren't really (we parboiled them in water and shook them around in butter just before service) and sauteed fruit (apples and pears) and things with oranges and lemons.  The sauce from the demo was much too sweet for me so I put in much less sugar in my sauce.  Chef FJ, whom we hadn't seen since orientation (he had the other group more in Basic) didn't like my sauce because it was too sour.  It turns out I roasted the bones too long - but it took a few questions to figure out where I went wrong.  I think I have the wrong palate for French cooking - I always seem to have not enough salt (except for that pumpkin soup) and now, not enough sugar...

Also, I had my dish evaluated by another student - nerve wracking, to say the least.  I'm glad Chef was there to overrule him because he thought my vegetables were undercooked (they weren't) and there was something about my duck (which was exactly the way the chefs want it - and exactly the way I wouldn't eat it, so that's always a good measuring stick for me).  I agreed that the sauce was greasy (maybe adding the juices from the duck after I'd degreased it wasn't such a good idea...

So the difficulty was also in making the dish pretty.  I have to say that I don't think it's pretty at all but I also had to get the various bits and pieces onto the plate.  You know how it is, you run into a situation and 6 hours later you think of what you should have said or what you should have done.  I have some ideas for next time, but I find creativity for presentation tends to flee when I am under pressure.

Hopefully next week will be cooler.  We start our exam cakes in Patisserie and I haven't looked at Cuisine.  There's a duck confit in there - we marinated the legs yesterday and rinsed and dried them off - they ought to be in their little vaccum packs by now and waiting for us to do things to them next week.  As for the rest of the week...well, I suppose I will know tomorrow when I start getting organized.

Anyway, it is now a rainy Saturday afternoon and I have slept quite a bit.  On the agenda for this afternoon:  finding a home for the duck (I think the 2 Michaels are a good place to start), a snack and some coffee, then Harry Potter in 3D this afternoon.  A reward for the hot kitchens and doing laundry on a Friday night...

Sneak peeks and previews
I am looking forward to going to the Tea Party by the Superior Patisserie students and the Supper Party by the Superior Cuisine students.  Unfortunately the Supper one is only open to students at the school, which is sad because I have friends who would love to go.  The Tea Party (at the Mandeville Hotel on Marylebone High Street) is open to the public but you have to book in advance because it tends to sell out really quickly.  It's also harder for people to get to  because it's held in the afternoon - 3-6pm and most people work.

It's a good chance to get a preview of what we will be doing next term, assuming we all pass this one.  I am still of the opinion that it's something not to be taken for granted, but a lot of people are finally starting to feel like they are no longer so lost in class.  Superior students have said that Superior is mostly spent in consolidating, refining and putting together everything that went before.  Apparently Intermediate was the most work - which makes me gulp a little in alarm.  There is still a lot to learn and given the shake up of various groups (and some new additions) people are still on their best behavior.  After all, Monday signals the start of only the 4th week of Intermediate - and we already have mid-term assessments.

Well I must go and find a home for my duck - it has not found a loving home at my place, so until next time, I wish you cool or warm weather, according to your preference.  If you are cooking, may your sauces be grease free and your pastries happy with the relevant temperature and humidity.

#30 - Um, where did the time go?

Somehow the first week has gone by in a complete blur.  Then the second week...I'm not sure where the time went, but here is a quick recap:
The end of June had Pithivier (right) and Mille-Feuille cake (left), both made with the Evil Puff Pastry from Hot Monday (aka the first day of Intermediate) - and I was so tired by the end of the day that I got the two mixed up on their labels when I put the photos up on Facebook.

Then we had three practicals for Cuisine - a (too salty!) pumpkin soup and Flemish style beef stew with braised endives on Wednesday, a Dover (?) sole with seafood and cream sauce on Thursday and a braised salmon fillet roulade with sole and scallop mousse, turned mushrooms and broccoli on Friday.  The salmon dish, by the way, is one of our potential exam dishes for cuisine this term.

Braised endive with
Beurre Meuniere

Pumpkin Soup

Braised fillet of Sole
with seafood sauce

Salmon stuffed with
scallop and sole mousse,
mushroom cream sauce
and steamed broccoli

Carbonnade of Beef

FYI, it was 39 degrees in the kitchen on Thursday and on Friday it was 40 degrees.

Saturday was a lovely day of nothing, ending with a delicious meal (Lebanese?) in Islington.  I don't think I've been there before, so it was a nice little adventure.  Then came Sunday and the highlight of my week - a cruise down the Thames followed by a pub lunch and a long walk in the English countryside.

I was invited by a friend of my eldest brother (from their university days).  There was  some unfortunate miscommunication at Paddington station involving my asking for the next train to my stop, the lady (it appears) not knowing and telling me that the trains only run once an hour to that stop (they don't) and my arrival much later than originally planned.

Anyway, I arrived and we took the canal boat from Abingdon to...I've forgotten the name of the little town.  During the trip we went through a couple of locks and I got to steer for a little while.  I gave back the rudder when we approached the first lock, mainly because it required steering in a straight(ish) line and my steering had the boat basically waggling along down the river.

We saw lots of swans, coots which look like ducks a little, ducks and gulls with black heads.  There was a cricket game going on - it wasn't over when we came back 5 hours later - and we passed by little village churches, under various bridges and past fields of wheat and barley.  The wheat has already started to turn golden but the barley is still somewhat green.  In the meantime, I had Sting's Fields of Gold running through my head.  Until we arrived at the second lock, anyway.

KTQ hopped out of the boat to push buttons to open the sluice gates or the lock gates to adjust the levels of water so that we could get into it, T had the rudder and one of the big ropes and I got to play deckhand and loop the rope around one of the things on the side of the lock while they lowered the water.

We made pretty good time and stopped by the bridge of this tiny little village where I didn't even know which direction was the town center.  We had lunch by a pub which had delicious looking food.  I couldn't go past the traditional roast beef (very traditional beef!), Yorkshire pudding and some vegetables.  I feel bad I couldn't finish the potatoes but we had a lot of walking to do and we were starting to feel tired from all the food.

Then came week 2
There was baking - lots and lots of baking.  We did various buns, pastries, more fish and for the first time, quail.  Quail is a lot harder to carve once it's cooked because it's so small and you don't want to mess it up - bones aren't nice for anyone.  I'm so happy that there are more vegetables on the menus this term.  I'm not sure if it's because we have to work faster or if it's more advanced stuff, but depending on the day, we sometimes make a starter and a main in our cuisine classes.  It will take too long to write about all the food, but here are the pictures:
Patisserie

Hot cross buns



Brioche




Croissants and Danois

Cuisine
I couldn't find my camera to take photos of the roast pork filet with prunes that we did the day before the quail so I don't have any photos for that one, unfortunately.  They are starting to do desserts in our cuisine classes as well, hence the souffle.


Braised trout wrapped in lettuce
and braised lettuce



Vanilla Souffle











Roast quail with glazed
veggies, potato rosti and jus

Selle sur cher with glazed
beetroot, grape and poppyseed
vinaigrette








Also, finally made it to the British Museum on Saturday morning.  There are just as many tourists as I feared there might be, but I did get to see things I haven't seen before.  Last time it was most of Ancient Egypt (the ground floor part) and part of Assyria.  This time it was some of Ancient Egypt, then on to Ancient Greece and Rome with a wander through the Celtic region and Britain during the Iron Age.  It's amazing how so things have survived, virtually intact, for a few thousand years.  Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of eeling through hordes of people who stop in the middle of a sidewalk to check their maps.  You tend to run into them if you're walking quickly and then they give you a dirty look and you just have to smile sweetly and apologize.

Yesterday was bread day...I officially have bad boulangerie hands.  The dough for the rye (pain de siegle) kept sticking to my hands.


Baguette viennoise, pain de siegle and focaccia


No cooking today, but tomorrow it will be back to two classes in the kitchen.  Wish us luck - we start going over our exam cakes next week.
So until next time, may the tourists not be with you.

#23 - Things I don't understand about the UK...

There are a few things that have puzzled me since my arrival in London and I still haven't worked them out.

Miscellaneous
For instance, why does the deodorant/anti-perspirant need to work for 48 hours?  Camping or being somewhere without hot running water and soap for a certain period of time (like my apartment when the boiler pressure turned off) is understandable.  But if you are home and have access to a shower/bath - why?

And speaking of boilers - mine wasn't working the other night.  It was late, it was freezing and I was tired from class.  I eventually figured it out - there was a certain amount of desperation because the boiler controls both the hot water and the radiators.  Also, because I cannot get into my bed when I am dirty.

Differences in language can be amusing too.  In the US, saying someone is "spunky" usually refers to their personality.  In Australia, it refers to their appearance, in a good way.  In the UK, apparently it refers to...hm, how to put this...male bodily emissions.  So not a compliment here to say that someone is spunky.  There's also a whole thing on thongs, but I won't get into that.  Suffice to say that between the US, Australian, South African and Hong Kong interpretations of the word, it gets interesting.  The conversation in our locker room, by the way, was in reference to rubber slippers.

So - words that can cause confusion, depending on where you are:
thongs, slippers, spunky, next week (geography seems to determine interpretation).  Feel free to add any suggestions to this list because I am too tired to think of any more.

Liquid soap - they have the usual arrows (one way makes the pump pop up, the other way makes it go down and you can usually lock it down).  I haven't been able to make them work, so I just refill the one bottle that got unlocked (but a friend who lives around the corner) and refill that.  Yes, I am not smarter than my soap pump.  Who cares?

OCD is only a problem if it functions with your normal daily functioning.  I haven't done the research (if you do, I will believe you as long as your source isn't Wikipedia).  Anyway - I had tutorials for my Cuisine and Patisserie classes yesterday.  My Patisserie mentor told me to stop cleaning so much (in response to my question as to why I am so slow in class).  He said, "in the time you've taken to clean, you could have made something."  Which is true - I am going to test it next week and see if I get pulled up on it.

Am very disorganized.  Everything looks so organized, but it's all a facade.  Nowhere is it more apparent than in the kitchen when I have neglected to collect the other 3 bowls you will need when you got the first two.  It seems the chefs all have eyes in the backs of their heads.  They seem to see everything (and they talk).  Apparently they notice when we make 5 trips to the sink area to get various pieces of equipment.

Fashion - I think I am sartorially challenged.  Spending most of my time in uniform makes for a lazy attitude towards every day dressing (I walk 4 minutes to class, change, then might go out for quick dinner with friends before coming back home).  Total time spent traipsing around London in street clothes on a school day:  10 minutes - 4 hours...anyway - back to my point.  During the 4 hour window, I have seen many inappropriately short skirts.  A (male) taxi driver told me that is the fashion now.  See?  Fashion challenged - I am being told what is in by a taxi driver.  So I thought I was being a granny but one of the younger girls in my course (she turns 19 in a month) also made the comment that the girls in London dress like prostitutes.  Might be a bit harsh, but accurate nonetheless.  If you have to keep tugging the hem of your skirt/dress down (and you don't have to lean a little to do it!) then it is probably too short, and possibly too tight.

Back to food
Somehow this week has whizzed by and I now have to update more photos.

I can't make soup...no time to take pictures of my chicken and mushroom soup (the soup wouldn't thicken...but the chicken julienne was nice) or the potato and leek (?) soup with julienned vegetables (watery soup flavorwise, but the first time my julienne was acceptable)...



French Onion Soup
with burned croutons

More troubled soups:  burned croutons on the French Onion soup because I forgot about them, and soup a bit bitter because I overcooked the onions.



Beef consomme
with too-brown savory crepe

Beef consomme was still a little too oily and the crepes were too brown.  Agh!  I will never make soup!!!

Basic Breads:
Soda bread and dinner rolls

Basic bread and cakes
Went a bit better.  The bread tasted a bit boring but everyone I gave rolls and bread to seemed to like it - possibly because it was made with a certain something (like, I don't care as long as it's pretty).

Basic cakes:
Lemon cake and madeleines

Cakes - were edible.  A bit too much baking powder in the madeleines resulted in air pockets, but otherwise any stuck edges were on the side not being presented.  I tasted one madeleine and a tiny edge of the cake - the one and the edge were enough.

   





Sienna eating a madeleine

SO & Sienna came down from Oxford to visit their friend Bernice. We managed to meet for coffee before lunch - so Sienna got to do some tasting. Evidently the madeleines have met and passed kid testing - she ate three immediately.


Some research:
Comparing to my test eclairs...

    



Wouldn't you visit this store?

 

This week - more meats and stuff...

A dish to help practice butchery because my chicken fricassee was way behind schedule - where does all the time go?

Poussin with apple compote

The poussin - had problems with potatoes.  I can't cook potatoes either - this is the third time something has happened to them - I hate potatoes!  and forgot to trim the drumstick ends.

Luckily JK and ML each had some spare potatoes so I could plate because mine were not cooperating.  The apples were a bit tart for Chef J, but I thought they were perfect...cut through all the butter and cream.  Oh well - still developing the palate (is that a good thing?)

Then it was offal - yech.  I tried them in demo and told the chef that if I liked liver or sweetbreads, I would have loved the dishes.  As it was, I hated them both.  So today we had to make them...I'm not sure whether I smelled the liver or the sweetbreads while we were in the kitchen, but any residual hunger I might have had from tasting the amazing sole from demo before (on the list for next week) was completely buried.
 

Chef EB refused to taste anyone's liver because he had already done 3 classes worth of tastings today.

Veal liver
with onions & sauteed potatoes

I don't blame him - my one teeny taste yesterday was enough to turn me off liver pretty much forever.  I can confirm that my policy of refusing to eat anything that has ever been on my dissecting table (or a variation of said item) is completely sound, along with the certain discrete exceptions (i.e. fish).  So the liver was well done, as per Chef E's directions, the onions burned to a crisp and beyond repair (I checked my photos from the demo - should have stopped when I had originally stopped) and the potatoes were good except they needed more salt.  Maybe everything needs more salt because we are always so hot in the kitchen that everyone pretty much sweats buckets.  Yes, yes, I know - ladies don't sweat.  Well, we're not ladies - we're chefs!  And I defy anyone to stay cool, calm and collected (and not to sweat) when it is 40 degrees C / 100 degrees F in the kitchen with the clock ticking and the dishes misbehaving.

Veal sweetbreads with
asparagus tips and parisienne potatoes

The sweetbreads (say what?) were beyond yuck - they looked like brains.  Just because something doesn't have latex running all through it like in our fetal pig which we had to dissect for 4 weeks, doesn't mean that it doesn't smell bad or look good.  They also feel kind of rubbery, but not firm - a bit squishy, actually.  So I can make it look pretty on the outside, but this one, which was super thick, should have been cut into small escalopes, then breaded and fried.  As it was, Chef E tasted the potatoes, asparagus and jus - bitter jus and the asparagus had been peeled too much...but the potatoes were good (ok, maybe I don't suck at potatoes quite as much as I thought I did).

So we finished class on time (even me!) and everyone headed to the pub for a drink.  There was a deep sigh of relief as we started drinking down our various beverages (Coke, beer, Pimms...)  I had run out of water during the practical so have been chugging for the last couple of hours.

De-offaling...


My dinner after all the awful offal

I took the longest shower ever - getting the feel of the greasy smoke, even if only in my imagination, took forever.  Then it was scrubbing the day off before I could even think about dinner.  So - the results of looking at innards for two days in a row:  yes, I cooked.  Yes, this is kind of an attempt at presentation, but I really couldn't be bothered.  There's all kinds of fussing about to make things pretty and put them in shapes, which is fine if you are getting graded on it - or being paid lots of money to look it that way.  At home, it's just more dishes to do and I have to do my own dishes - so just as soon throw it all together.

So until next time - no more offal!