#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...

#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...

#75 - Preparations for finals (again)

So handy...
I have evidence of having assisted in putting together a bookshelf.  The assistance was mainly of the moral support variety although I did hold some of the pieces together while putting them together...as you can see.  It looks so simple, but somehow it always takes longer to put furniture together.  Such was the case here.



Then I got spoiled - friends made me lunch.  It's something that you always appreciate and I agree with others that somehow it always tastes better when someone else cooks.  It must be the TLC because I have had meals at restaurants that I hated, but on the whole, food made by friends (or family) just tastes better.  Sometimes people apologize for something being "really simple" but I don't think they realize that what we cook isn't necessarily something we want to eat.  I think even Jamie Oliver says in his shows that what he cooks at home wasn't what he made when he worked in restaurants.  I'm not sure anyone could possibly eat those quantities of butter, cream, sugar, white flour, etc. etc. on any kind of frequent basis and be able to adhere to any kind of healthy eating plan.


Another High Tea

Went to High Tea again over the weekend - one of the girls organized it and I went - for research purposes, of course.  An observation was made the other day that I seem to love High Tea.  Well, kind of - I like the little sandwiches.  Generally the sweets aren't my thing, although the past year has been more of an exercise of tasting.  There was a certain amount of critiquing based on what I am hoping to turn out for the exams.  Not these...these weren't shiny and the white chocolate was pretty thick on the shell.  I didn't taste the filling that much because I didn't like them, so couldn't tell you what they were.

The chocolate centrepiece was quite pretty - someone saw me taking a photo and when I told her I thought it was chocolate, she touched it.  Apparently it was.  Anyway - I liked the bending of the sculpture and the twigs they made out of it.  The rose isn't as pretty as the one Chef NH does in Patisserie, but it was still pretty.  I couldn't tell if it was marzipan or something else.


Exam Prep
Got my emails from LCB - I got the finals papers and plane tickets are booked - after several emails.


How do you make sables again?
Have started preparations for exams.  I don't have all my equipment here so the practice is limited - that, and the fact that once again, I am London bound in the not-too-distant future.  The only thing is, I seem to have forgotten how to cook.  Oh dear...

I haven't figured out why these cracked - maybe I should have turned on the fan in the oven.  Something to do for next time.  Also - the scales must be off a bit - the weight of salt looked like a lot and the biscuits actually tasted quite salty.  Amazing when you consider that it's only 2g compared to the 100g of sugar.

They are still nice and crunchy - but a bit on the salty side.  Panic has started to set in as it appears that things I thought I had worked out are now having problems.  They're not kidding -  you need to do this several times to get it down.  Oh well - if we haven't gotten things worked out, hopefully I'll find out during the skills tests in 3 weeks.

So until next time - happy Valentine's Day for those of you who celebrate / observe it.  And happy Un-Valentine's Day for those of you who refuse to put pressure on yourselves and your significant others by letting Hallmark and commercial hype dictate when you should be loving to each other.  After all - a just-because present is better than one that is given because an occasion dictates it.

#74 - Getting back into it...

I forgot I had gone on a tour of a cocoa plantation (a very small one) as part of a chocolate festival.  Apologies in advance regarding the formatting - it tends to look different on my screen than it does when it posts and I don't know how to fix it.

But first - breakfast by the water...
They were doing yoga and big surfboards (left).  Kite surfing on the right.  Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the guy who went airborne with a big gust of wind...

   

I had the small omelette.  A friend had the poached eggs (the sauce was a bit split - rats, I see my sister's point about how it could spoil their fun a little when I apply school's criteria to food when we eat out.)

The Chocolate Festival was a bit disappointing.  I suppose given the name, I thought there would be more booths or something.  They were at the end of the Haleiwa Farmers' Market (pronounced Ha-lay-ee-va for those of you not from the Islands).  It seemed like there were only two producers, although I may be mistaken.  I remember the Wailua Estate and one from Manoa - ok, but not something I would go out of my way to buy, unless as a way to supporting the local economy.  It may be that my palate is not sufficiently developed to appreciate all the bits and pieces that our guide (yes, we did a tour) said had won rave reviews in London for a Chocolate Festival (or something like that) from critics.  So that was that for the chocolate tour, tasting and education.

Am now  back in Sydney, once again unpacking only to start packing again.  Have received exam dates for my finals - and a date for the Mock exam, which happens to be quite a bit before the exam.  Great, except I had already booked my plane tickets before I knew about the mock exam date.  Whoops, once again a little bit of procrastination might have helped.  Have started reviewing recipes again and found out to my horror that I have forgotten quite a bit - especially in relation to the main plate (pigeon - haven't seen it anywhere, must ask the butcher), so study will once again commence.  Commence panicking now.

So until next time, may your organization be less stressful and more enjoyable than mine is.

#51 - Mystery Basket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#44 - Jinxes, chocolate and more chocolate.

It has been just a few short days since the last post and already it feels like things are starting to ratchet up about 100 notches.  For one thing, we now have our briefs for our final exams for each of Cuisine and Patisserie.

Let the Panicking begin
The Patisserie final is 6 hours long and designed to take up pretty much every second of those 6 hours.  Am seriously contemplating the need for those astronaut diaper things - they don't stop the clock once it starts.  We are having 6-hour stints in Patisserie at the moment as quite a few of our practicals require 2 parts (we get a break in the middle, our pieces get a chance to set before assembling) so it's almost a chance to get used to working for that time.  This entire term is basically going to be spent going over things to prepare us for our final (3 compulsory items, poured sugar sculpture and our 2 identical plated desserts which have 8 components by the time you get to the sauces and decorations).

The Cuisine final is 4 hours long - and includes my current bete-noir, Hollandaise.  Hopefully we get an extra egg or two because poached eggs have known to break during reheating under the stress of plating.  We have to plate two identical starters (savory shortcrust pastry tart with what looks like sauteed spinach, poached egg, Hollandaise and garnish) then two identical main course plates (pigeon, chicken mousse[?], more turned vegetables, confit something or other and sauce).

Recap
Ah, but I am ahead of myself here.  First, a backtrack to the last two Cuisine dishes from last week:  the herb crusted salmon steak with mushroom flan and Madeira jus, followed by the grilled Lamb Noisettes with Potatoes Maxim and Asparagus with Hollandaise.

The Salmon Steak
I think I am jinxed when Chef FJ is in the kitchen.  Every single practical we have had with him has ended with sad food...in this case, the salmon was overcooked (I like it cooked all the way through but they wanted it medium) and the mushroom flan was too egg-y, even though I followed the recipe.  I can't tell if the photo I have is of Chef's demo plate or mine, so I have left it out.  I suspect it's the demo plate because the mousse looks fine on it and mine had problems.

I have promised Chef FJ that one of these days I will get him a good dish.  He said he is waiting...

Lamb Noisettes
This one was a bit of a Three Bears and Goldilocks plate - I thought I sliced the pieces evenly but somehow ended up with one overcooked (just how I like it), one just right (medium) and one undercooked.  Part of that was running out of time - I'm not quite sure how or when, but it happened.

Return of the Evil Hollandaise
Well, a variation of the evil Hollandaise, anyway.  I'm not sure if the difficulty here is that the sauce is actually so difficult or whether I've gotten psyched out by its reputation.  In any case, it seemed to be going well, then split while I was adding my butter before service, which is why it is missing from my asparagus stems.  The result was a slightly acidic butter coating on the asparagus (which needed more salt - go figure).

A deep breath
Then it was a lovely weekend of catching up with friends (World Cup Rugby breakfast on Saturday, lunch cooked for me by a friend, dinner with another friend from Sydney) dancing on Sunday and trying to figure out my recipes for Cuisine and Superior finals.  Oh - and laundry.  Somehow I ended up doing laundry every day last week due to chocolate mysteriously appearing in random places on my uniform and the heat in the Cuisine kitchens (a cool and breezy 33C).

Chocolate nightmare
Monday was not a good day this week.  It started out well enough with tempering the chocolate.  The problems came when it was time to unmould our large egg moulds - my chocolate egg halves came out of the moulds like they were supposed to when I flipped it.  Unfortunately, I happened to tap the mould down to release the last egg (there were 3 halves) just as one of them dropped out of the mould.  The result:  unmitigated disaster.  I tried to fix the egg but ended up having to borrow Chef's egg in order to finish the windmill.  Having handled the base so much, my fingers left smudges all over it which is why it's not shiny in the photo.

Then of course there was the cracking of the windmill blades (?) themselves.  Oh dear...the only thing that turned out ok were the practice milk chocolate truffle shells, although they could use a bit more white chocolate by way of decoration so that it doesn't look like a mistake.  We have to use 2 different colors of chocolate and temper both simultaneously.  This was just a practice run - I am so glad they built in so much practice time for these.  If something must go wrong, better to do it while there is a chef in the room so they can tell you what you did wrong (other than being stubborn and not listening to them).

We don't need no stinkin' gym!
One of the things about tempering chocolate (other than trying to keep your own temper when things are not going well) is that the initial melting and tempering becomes easier (not easy, you'll note).  The hard part comes with trying to keep it at the right temperature to use.  The Chefs can tell pretty much by looking at it.  I have to check by using the back of my finger.  So as it gets cooler, it gets thicker and more viscous.  Which isn't fun when you have to keep stirring it to get it back to temperature.  I haven't been to the gym in longer than I care to remember, but all the aching arms (both of them, from switching when one gets tired) have resulted in getting stronger.  Moms have babies, Patisserie students have chocolate.  And dough.

Sweet success

Today went much better - the chocolate tempered, the shells for the truffles got made (ok, a little thick at the very top) and the chocolate box was (mostly) ok except for the little bit where I didn't spread enough chocolate for the bottom.  There was a certain amount of hurry up and wait because you have to work fast with the chocolate when you work with it, then you have to wait for it to set.
Somehow the mistakes got salvaged with the result on the left.  This is my Chocolate Box (entirely made of chocolate) and a couple of different types of chocolate technique thrown in - or rather, required by Chef CB.  I wanted to do a swirl but the pieces kept breaking (hence the skinny ones) and the ones I had meant to make swirly ended up being the larger curls.  At this point, I was just happy to get them on the box.

One of the girls in class didn't want her white chocolate truffles so she offered them to me - I put them in my box because they all look so pretty together.  And I dropped the box lid on the way home, so it's good I have the couple of extra truffles kicking around in there - it doesn't look quite as incomplete.

Tomorrow we get going in Cuisine again - Beef Wellington Part 1 (the puff pastry, chicken mousse, beef and a few other bits and pieces).  Wish us luck with the puff pastry.  I have a feeling we are going to have to work on the baking trays again because we don't start cooking until noon.  I am guessing the kitchen will be hot.

Until next time - enjoy the eating.  And now I know why chocolates are so darn expensive!

#34 - Panic, panic and more panic...

Exams for Intermediate are fast approaching and once again people are starting to sleep less, be a bit more grumpy and buckle down for reviewing and practice.

There have been tears, downcast moods after comments and a happy dance...tears from slicing shallots (practice for the salmon exam dish), downcast moods (overcooked monkfish and dry pork in the stuffed squid) and a happy dance for the St Jacques (scallops) Parisienne - although I can't really take credit for that.  But back to the beginning, for those of you who want the details.  Everyone else can stop here - there's nothing left except a couple of photos.

Due to the Riots
It felt very odd not to have cooked for the first couple of days of the week.  We are usually in the kitchen 5 days a week - occasionally 4, but those weeks have a day with two practical classes.  I just checked next week though...a couple of days where we aren't cooking - that will still feel decidedly odd.

Anyway, they have promised a make-up class for the one that was cancelled last week - truffles.  Which is also good because it involves tempering chocolate, which we might have to do for the exam if we are unlucky enough to get the Sabrina in Patisserie - the one where people tend to fail for going over time...

The riots may have started as a protest against the shooting last week (?) but the looting and violence seem to have extended far beyond that.  Newspaper articles were written encompassing the government/PM being out of touch, disenfranchised youth and a host of other problems.  I only wonder if the message to the government was lost in the tumult of police being deployed, shops emptying and closing early while people pretty much went home and stayed there.

After the rioting
So back to cooking...on Wednesday it was a monkfish stew and a stuffed squid - including cleaning it, taking off the skin, etc. etc.  You know how it is - they like to give us the whole animal - you can always buy it already prepared, but at least this way we know what's been done to it.

I finally get what they were saying about the transition from Basic to Intermediate being quite difficult - we are now occasionally preparing two dishes and they each have several components.  Both the squid and the monkfish were new to me in terms of preparation.

Wednesday
The squid feels really slippery and slimy after you get the skin and all the other bits you don't want off of it.  And of course in my attempts to be organized and have things set aside for later, I accidentally threw out my prepared tentacles and squid wings.  Luckily one of the guys in class had prepped an extra squid so he gave me one set of tentacles and wings, which I could plate with the rest.

The monkfish is an ugly fish.  They only gave us the tail because you buy the thing by weight and the head is almost as heavy as the body and is about the same size from what I can recall during the bouillabaise demo.  The skin peels off pretty easily - no issues.  The silver membrane between the skin and the flesh of the fish is really tough and you have to trim it very carefully because it also looks really ugly, as Chef SD pointed out on my plate.  How lucky - it's a bit harder to see in this photo, but I have to admit that it was not an attractive plate.

There was also a ton of garlic in the recipe - I have to admit I cheated and only used about a quarter of what I was supposed to.  Good comment:  the sauce benefitted from less garlic (the one positive thing about my dish).  They always try to end on a positive note - I think it's so we won't get discouraged when pretty much everything else on the plate is junk.

Then we had to run to our next class.  Patisserie kept right on with its schedule so we were due to temper chocolate and make a centrepiece with it.

I had photocopied the pocket from my bag and got this.  In case you can't read it, the boy is saying, "Let's talk."  The girl replies, "Let's not.  I'm eating."  I have been accused of being that girl, but let me just say right now - I can eat and have a conversation at the same time.

As you can see, the border is a bit lumpy and uneven.  Chef N told me it was because I was stubborn and hadn't listened to him about my chocolate being too cold.  It's entirely possible - I remember having the conversation, but I can't remember if it was for the border or something else.  And the piping for the blanket is crooked and the decorations were a bit much (the dirt under my coconut tree just looks like a mistake instead of a dirt patch - maybe I should have done Pigpen from Charlie Brown)...by the by, the base is also chocolate - a white chocolate disc poured and cut over painted cocoa butter...

I think this one is close to 750g (or 1.5 lbs?) of chocolate - which I left with the nice guys at the Turkish restaurant which is on the way home from class.  I wanted to stop there to pick up dinner anyway since I didn't feel like cooking any more after 9pm and I had given my dishes from class to a friend as I had no desire to eat either one.

Thursday was trout - filleted, braised and served with vegetables.  There was time built in for practicing our turning of mushrooms - Chef DM said to think of it as peeling the mushroom with...style?  panache?  something along those lines.  Anyway - my mushrooms were undercooked and the sauce was too thick.  It seems the sauces are always either too thick or too thin.  Part of the difficulty is that adding cream changes the consistency and we have to re-adjust the seasoning. 

So under the trout is a bed of green beans which you can just see, and between the two is a layer of spatzle.  They're kind of like mini deformed dumplings or gnocci, if gnocci were made of dough.  We had to press the spatzle batter through the holes in a colander to get the right size - I ended up pulling my sleeves down because the heat radiating from the stove while I was pressing dough was too hot without the protection of the sleeves.  So the things that were good - cooking and cleaning the fish, the green beans and the flavor of the sauce. The things that were not good: not enough salt and pepper in the green beans, spatzle and mushrooms which were also undercooked, plus the too-thick sauce.

You may wonder, how do you know if the mushrooms are cooked?  Apparently when they are soft.  Maybe if you can cut through them with a spoon?  Mine were quite resistant to being cut with a plastic spoon.  Or you could squeeze it - but I'm not sure what that's supposed to feel like since mine were wrong.

TGIF
There was a collective sigh of resignation last night - the week was almost over and we had class scheduled from 6pm.  We needed to make two dishes - it didn't sound that hard and it didn't seem like it would take that long:  make the dough for the tartelette, make the mushrooms while the dough is resting, prepare the scallops for the scallop dish while the potatoes are boiling away, then make the preparations for the hollandaise sauce, poach eggs and hold for later, then finish the scallops.  Right - but it took us the whole time to do it and we worked in teams for most of it.  The things we really had to concentrate on were in the tartlette:  the pastry, the mushrooms (which we've been doing since Basic), the hollandaise and the poached eggs because they (or a variation of them) are all currently part of the Superior Cuisine final exam, which happens to be 4 hours long.

Will need to continue working on the Hollandaise (not enough butter) and poaching eggs.

I'm not quite sure what happened to my egg dish after I presented it.  I was a tiny bit delayed because I broke one of my poached eggs as I was taking it out of the water from reheating and had to do another one - not as pretty, but apparently cooked correctly - which is to say, I wouldn't eat it that way.  All this time at cooking school and I still like my eggs well done, red meat medium well and my salmon either completely raw or completely cooked.

For the moment, it is back to studying and practicing...maybe later - right now it's time for coffee and a lazy morning.

As much as I love seafood, I'm not a huge fan of how the smell tends to linger. I'm not sure if it's still on my hands or in my head, from smelling it in the kitchen - all I know is that I have been washing my hands a lot to get the smell off and there will be more of the same as I practice my salmon paupiettes.

So until next time...may your fish come to you prepared!