#94 - Life continues after LCB

After we all received our pass confirmations, it was time for a few well deserved drinks.  It was a warm March day so we all gathered in the courtyard outside the LCB Cafe.  There's a pub there so they provided us with drinks (and me with food) - there's a student discount, which was a bit of a bonus for our very last day as students.


We gathered for the last time - the others would see each other at graduation but I was due to get on a plane the following morning so this was our last chance to say hello.  Several of us also had quite a bit of packing up to do and limited luggage space in which to do it.  One of the things about missing graduation is that I wouldn't get to wear the chef's hat or get the medals from the chefs.  CB, one of the very nice people in LCB administration went upstairs to get my medals because they weren't going to be included with my diplomas which would arrive by post.  I carefully wrapped up the hard-won pieces of metal and packed them in my bag.  Then I had several rounds of repacking, with the result that it took me a couple of days and virtually unpacking everything when I got home to find them again (carefully tucked away in a plastic container).  My sister and my parents requested that I wear them while cooking - all I could think of was the universal horrified look which would cross one of the chef's face at such a suggestion...


Life after LCB...
The last couple of weeks since I got home have been pretty busy.  I'm not sure how, since I'm theoretically on vacation...some of it, of course, has been spent cooking for family and friends.  There's a certain expectation when you come home and you (theoretically) have been trained how to cook, that you will cook for people.


The difficulty is learning to differentiate between cooking / playing time and a cooking / time sensitive time.  That is to say, teaching that difference to well meaning friends and family.  It's sweet people want to participate but as one of my brothers told me, they don't (so he claims) know what they're doing and it's all about fun.  Which is fine, as long as their fun time isn't my time sensitive time because then it just stops being fun for everyone.  (Let's just say that trying to grill stuff on a grill which needs to be fired up and trying to make a theatre time is not the stuff of relaxing and fun dinner preparation.  Neither is fancy plating.)


A simple lunch turned out to be quite a large one.  What was meant to be lunch for 4 somehow rapidly expanded to 6, then 9...an example below of our simple lunch - grilled fresh mahimahi, grilled lemongrass/keffir lime/ garlic shrimp, salad with vinaigrette and grilled veggies.  My brother had been dying for fresh fish and as we had a pescatarian, this was friendly for all.  I still have dreams about cooking, but I'm hoping those dreams will get fewer and further in between.  It's no fun when the dishes are imperfect even in dreams - surely that must say something?


You say potato, I say potahto...
There's a place called Diamond Head Market and Grill here.  Several people are completely in love with their blueberry scones.  I have a slightly difficult time with this because the scones I'm used to (Australian/English influence) have always been circular ones which slightly resemble the biscuits of the American Southern cooking:  slightly crisp-ish on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.  The scones I've had in the US usually resemble...triangular heavy dough things which could take out an eye, so I was doubtful about the blueberry scones.


I was immediately suspicious when I saw these large things because they were so shiny - yup, coated with some sort of sugary thing.  But actually quite delicious.  They put cream cheese in the batter so that gives it extra moisture and it's nice and kind of oozy and gooey when fresh out of the oven (first thing in the morning will do that).  I'm not a huge lover of sweets but I have to say that the next time I have a sweet craving, I might just head over and get one of these.  Perhaps tomorrow morning, if I get up early enough to eat one before ballet class - have to have enough time to digest it so that turning doesn't make you want to hurl.  That's not so elegant - not to mention it's a dead giveaway to the teacher that you haven't been spotting.  For more on spotting, I suggest you watch an episode of Gilmore Girls (the one where Rory is getting ready for her debut with the Daughters of the American Revolution).


Several evenings...with Schroeder and friends
It has been a music filled week leading up to Easter.  There was a wonderful concert last week - the soloist was Something Wolfram or Wolfram Something (from NY?  I don't have the program anymore or I would be able to tell you) and he played Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto.  He was this tall, imposing fellow who was so tall they had to lower his piano bench so that he could fit his legs under the piano.  It reminded me of Schroeder from the Peanuts comics - Wolfram's knees weren't quite up to his ears, but they weren't far off.


The newly reconstituted Hawaii Symphony Orchestra then played Dvorak's New World Symphony.  One of the oboists (coincidentally she's also the English horn) is staying with us so we got a little preview while she practiced - anyway, wow!  I asked later - she and the bassoon had discussed the blend of their sound and it sounded wonderful at the concert.


Later on in the week, we went back for another concert:  Russian Easter Overture (Rimsky Korsakov), the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Tchaikowsky's 5th Symphony.  I forgot how long the symphony was and I kept nodding off in the last movement.  Oh, the whiplash!  Still, an enjoyable night and sweet lullabies...


Easter
The end of this trip is drawing to a close, marked by my first Easter at home in over 10 years.  It was a beautifully (mostly) sunny Sunday.  We started with Easter breakfast by the water.  It was supposed to be brunch but they did a couple of seatings and we left the arrangements sufficiently late that the only table we could get was at 9am.  Slight rate of attrition due to the early hour, but I like to think we acquitted ourselves well.  After the first couple of rounds to warm up (coffee, water, coffee, omelette, bacon, fried rice, coffee, some kind of BBQ chicken) the non-vegetarians went for the meats.  I headed for the prime rib (how could you not?  It's not something you would be cooking at home for breakfast - or at least, not something I would cook at home because you'd have to be up at the crack of dawn to do it), more rice and more bacon.  Bacon makes everything better...


Eventually defeated by the limited capacity of our bodies (stretched to their absolute limits) we headed for the water after applying copious amounts of sunscreen.  Yes, you can get into a swimsuit and get in the water, but to describe what we did as "swimming" would be like saying...actually, I'm in too much of a food coma to come up with a suitable simile.  More accurately, I think you could say we dipped ourselves - just enough to cool off.  I was going to do some reading this afternoon but fell asleep instead - and woke up just in time to make it to Easter dinner (another buffet!  Thank goodness I'm going back to Sydney and cooking for one) where I'm sure I stretched my capacity for food intake once again.  I don't really cook when it's just me so I took the opportunity of having quite a large supply of guinea pigs at home.


Now it's time for a second attempt to read about transferring proceedings from one court to another and the biggest challenge of all:  staying awake long enough to process it so that I can remember it tomorrow.  Finding the time to get caught up on readings has proved to be quite a challenge between all the things I have to do (unpack, repack, etc. etc.), the cooking and the resting.  I've been sleeping a lot since I got back - I think the stress of finals still hasn't fully worn off - I seem to remember not sleeping more than 6 hours or so on a given night during March and there's still a little bit of jetlag although that finally seems to be abating.


So until next time, happy Easter/Pesach and happy eating!

#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...

#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.

#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.

#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!

#80 - 2 pigeons, a chicken breast, a headless chicken and a mock final exam

It truly sounds like a poultry heavy beginning of a joke, doesn't it?  And it kind of was, except perhaps not in the way you might think.


Studying...kind of (and a day of non-stop eating)
Yesterday we spent getting ready for today's mock final.  Part of the preparation involved getting lunch - always an excellent idea.  Since I haven't been here for the first 8 weeks of term, I was excused (as I understood it) from attending the Patisserie tutorial sessions - there weren't any marks to discuss.  There was some discussion after class and a half-hearted study session.  As you can see, we were working super hard.


I noticed that the LCB cafe had a croquembouche on display.  It was one that had been done by one of our Patisserie chefs the day before - well, the assembly and the decorations had been done the day before.  A croquembouch basically means "break in the mouth" - a reference to the fact that the filled profiteroles are stuck together with caramel, which crunches when you eat it.  There are other variations (like filling the profiterole with ice cream and dipping it in chocolate) but then they are known as something else - I don't know what the something else is.  In this case, the actual profiteroles and the praline base had been done the week before.  So here is an example of something we might be able to do in a couple of hours, once we've had at least 15 years of experience and are talented...I know it's hard to see, but those are pulled sugar roses and sugar tendril-y things.  I tried to do something like that in class the other day when I was putting my ugly sugar sculpture together, but had to take them off because they just looked like mistakes from bad assembly.  Inspirational in the skill displayed, discouraging to know just how far we have to go to even begin to approach this kind of ease and skill.


Anyway, lunch...we went to this yummy burger place called Meat Liquor which is actually on the way home from class - a dangerous location.  I had a private giggle to myself that we spend time thinking of ways to plate fancy food pretty, but given a choice, this is what we go for.  There were a bunch of mushroom and swiss burgers, I had a bacon cheeseburger (see below) and 3 orders of chili cheese fries.  One of the guys liked his burger so much that he finished most of his girlfriend's burger, then ordered a second one.




Several beers (for them) and a coke (for me) later, people dispersed - some to go back to school for a couple of things, some to go home and work on their portfolios (basically the school making sure we prepare for our final exams - you have to write out recipes and methods) and a few of us to do other errands.  I went with a couple of guys to drop off some knives at this Japanese knife shop near the old school where they will sharpen the blades on a stone - a much better result than just using a steel before and after each class.  In fact the fellow did such a good job that I didn't even know I had nicked myself today until way later when I wondered why my finger was stinging.

Dinner in Poland and France
Then I went to meet a friend for dinner.  CL started basic at the same time I did for both cuisine and patisserie.  She decided not to continue on as she had a lot of travelling to do (I can't remember if she did Intermediate - they do say that memory is one of the first things to go with age...) so it was good to catch up and hear what was going on with her life.  We went to this Polish place (I think - she had heard about it from other people) and it was really good.  Her dish was kind of like a fancy version of what I fondly believe to be Hungarian Goulash since it was served with something that resembled spatzle (except made with veal escalopes) and I had a topside beef something-or-other braised in consomme - just what I wanted - a beef and vegetable dinner with a beefy veggie soup for dinner.



Then we had dessert at CL's favorite crepe place, almost next door to the restaurant.  I got ice cream with chocolate sauce and she got a chocolate and banana crepe.  Apparently the crepe is usually better (this one was kind of crunchy - not good).  Then I had her try the ice cream.  Also not good - there was something wrong with it, it tasted really fake and chemical-y.  A shame really - they had the right crepe pan / burner things that I've seen on the streets of Paris and it smelled pretty good.  I think they must have pre-made CL's crepe and it got dried out somehow.  As you can see, this photo was taken before either of us had tasted the ice cream.  There was an after photo as well, but I freely confess that vanity has prevented me from posting that photo.


4 hours of confusion...
Jetlag may finally be starting to abate - I slept in until 6am or something this morning - whenever it was that my alarm went off.  Of course that may have something to do with being up a little past midnight, getting ready for this morning's cuisine practical.  Rather, a double practical class - because we were running through our 4-hour final exam to see where we were in terms of timing and results.


There were 15 of us in the kitchen.  I've been in the kitchen exactly once before, so someone had to show me where the numbers were on the ovens so that I knew where I was for my station.  They staggered our start times by 10 minutes per side of kitchen so that we wouldn't all pile on top of each other while setting up.  Fine in theory, but in practice - well, there were a few things we didn't know, so we weren't as efficient as we could have been.  Or rather, I know I could have been more efficient if certain things had been clarified earlier on.  Anyway - a demoralizing morning a little bit.  I knew what had to be done with each component, but I kept losing my place and the induction burners have a few tricks with which I was unfamiliar.  This meant I had to stop a few times to regroup and try to remember where I was in relation to where I wanted to be.  I got told by a friend that sometimes it's good not to think.  


Tartlet Florentine avec Oeuf Poche et Sauce Hollandaise (Tartlet with Poached Egg, Sauteed Spinach and Hollandaise Sauce)
The starter wasn't too bad but I messed up the timing a bit.  Things actually take a little while longer in these ovens, possibly because the old ones often seemed to run super hot.  This means that the 10 minutes I allocated to the tartlet shell was insufficient and I was cutting things close so I wouldn't have to reheat - not a good idea until you know how the kitchen equipment works.  (Really - the ovens have a light, but it took a couple of tries to figure out they don't stay on if you take your finger off the button.)  Then being a bit discombobulated and not feeling really comfortable, I missed a couple of very basic things - like seasoning the Hollandaise sauce.  I tasted it, but only after I had presented the plate - ick.  It needed lots of salt and some lemon juice in the worst way.  Also, it was overcooked - I wasn't sure what that meant because it wasn't scrambled, but eventually found out that it was probably because my sauce was too thick (did I mention the lemon juice?) so it wasn't quite the right consistency.  Spinach needs a bit of work - it's the English kind so quite a bit tougher than the Popeye the Sailor Man kind.  You actually have to blanch it now instead of just sauteeing it, which is what we used to do.


Also, the eggs were old.  How do I know?  The whites just bloomed everywhere when I put in the second and third eggs.  The first one was fine - I'm normally pretty good with eggs, even the slightly old ones, but we don't have slotted spoons and I was having difficulties coaxing the whites to envelope the yolks.  I do know that if it happens in the exam, I'm going to request better eggs or something.  And perhaps take them out of the fridge a little earlier, although I think that has less to do with the whites going everywhere than the age of the eggs.


The main
Verdict: deep fried pigeon legs (instead of confit - yummy, but not what they were looking for) and the pigeon crown was woefully undercooked.  I venture to say that perhaps it was still not cooked at all?  I'm unsure whether the chef was going a little bit easy on me because he knows it's only my second day in the new cuisine kitchens - I hope not because it would suck to feel like you're on track only to find out they were easing you in.  There isn't time to be eased in!


I messed up the lettuce a little bit but I think that's an easy fix for next time.  I wasn't happy with the timing (starter was 15 minutes behind where I wanted to be, 10 minutes beyond actual service time and the main was 15 minutes behind the actual service time - a fail if it had happened in the exam).  Luckily there were a few things that did go right - both sauces (the pigeon and the lettuce glaze), the vegetables (although still need to practice turning - dratted turnips!) and the glazes...and a silly oversight - the parsley chiffonade, which is a stupid thing to lose points for in the exam.  Still a possibility of passing the final, which would make me so happy.  I got my review back - they call you out of the room to give you individual comments - I was so unhappy on the way out but it's always good to be told that it's not bad.  Especially from a chef who is as amazing as Chef EB.  I'm not sure if he ever says something is good - usually he says it's ok.  But then again, he may say that to other people - I just don't hear it and that's fine because the day that I hear that something is good is going to be a day when I skip out of school.


There is hope on the horizon and I just have a bit of focused work to do.


As much confusion as there was in my head today, there is hope that it will be so much easier next time.  Who knows, one of these days I might even figure out the induction burners without actually standing over the silly thing.


So until next time, I wish you ease of focus, clarity of mind and satisfaction in what you do.