#119 - Party time!

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a huge fan of junk food, sugar or deep fried food unless I have a particular craving for that food.  (Also - apologies for how this looks - I don't know what's wrong with it so I can't figure out how to fix it...)

Fried mac 'n cheese balls

Aka deliciously disgusting things from Cheesecake Factory:  fried mac 'n cheese balls (try saying that 5 times fast!).  So generally I'm not a big fan of Cheesecake Factory.  Probably because I find that a lot of their food tastes sweet to me - I'm not sure if they actually add sugar to their sauces and such but I suppose I prefer my savory foods to be really savory.  These mac 'n cheese balls tasted like an old college favorite from diners on the East Coast - fried mozzarella sticks.

Parking can be a bit of a hassle in Waikiki, so we did the clever thing:  tag team!  One person (yours truly) ran inside to pick up and pay for the telephoned order - no joke, it was early on a Saturday night (almost late afternoon) and there was a long line.  I think I heard someone say it was a 1-hour wait.  Say what?!  So I passed by all these poor souls who hadn't thought to call in and got caught in the take-out line which is where you pay for your telephone order.  They had a lot of different cheesecakes - good to get a preview of the cheesecakes we'd ordered:  red velvet and original for me (yes, I ordered 2 different ones), a mud something-or-other (the most chocolate-y one) for another friend and...the oreo one for my sister.  Not sure why but I preferred the cheesecake layer of the red velvet best.  I can't find my photos but I think you can probably google photos so I won't bore you with those.

A simple dinner

Usually my sister starts a list of things she wants me to cook for her about 2 weeks before I come home.  Coincidentally, this stopped when she had the babies...but I do still get requests.  On one occasion, I didn't actually have the ingredients nor had I prepared so we had to improvise a little for the Korean sushi (kim bap) by using vegetables and things from take-out dinners.

Of course the next time we were a bit better prepared - including having bought side dishes (pan chan) because seriously, who can be bothered to make all of these little sides at home?  We got all these at Palama Market.  The meat was from a different place that we tried for the first time - the marinade was lacking ginger and some "oomph" but it was adequate given everything else was seasoned sufficiently to hide its meaty flavor (rather than the flavor of the marinade).

I think we have fairly eclectic taste, given the Asian influence in Hawaii, my Mom's Aussie influence and the French cooking which I learned in London.  All of which sounds like the set up for a foodie joke about fusion cuisine but it isn't.

Roast Chickens

My sister also had a request about learning how to roast a chicken.  Since DC was still in town, she and I thought we could have a roast chicken dinner party - that is, we would demo the roast chicken, then my sister would make one a few days later under my supervision.  (They should allow supervision by responsible adults only - since there were none to be had, the job fell to me.)

Anyway - DC and I each roasted a chicken with our individual trussing methods.  She had a very complicated looking, very impressive trussing technique - even more impressive since she was still recovering from surgery.  I used the simplest trussing technique from Basic Cuisine.

A couple of different methods as well - DC's chicken gets roasted breast down for 45 minutes, then breast up for 45 minutes (times have to be adjusted for the size of chickens).  Mine got roasted on one side for 30 minutes, the other side for 30 minutes, then on its back for 30 minutes.  With lots of butter.

Of course that's not a complete meal.  We nixed the salad because there was so much food, but we needed to feed people veggies.  How do you get people to eat them?  Depending on my audience (especially this one) - I add cheese.  And since DC and I were trading tips (i.e. playing) we collaborated...a white cheese sauce on cauliflower and broccoli (aka bechamel with gruyere, topped with tallegio).  We used skim milk because some of the people at dinner don't do well with whole milk - but as a nod to "cutting calories", it doesn't really affect the taste or the texture so feel free to substitute skim milk in your bechamel sauce.  Once you add all the cheese, it doesn't make that much of a difference.  DC made green beans with black bean sauce.  Yum!  The veggies were a hit - not something I expected to say but if it works, why not?

And then - because it was kind of French, we did a sauce - too thick by conventional standards but since we were at home, we got to have it thicker.

A few nights later, my sister made a roast chicken with gravy.  Gravy, because she wanted to make it how Mom makes it.  Except she used butter on the chicken which makes the skin so crispy and delicious instead of Mom's bacon strips.  Big success, though true to anyone with talent, her chicken was not up to her standards.  Luckily for us, that means another roast chicken dinner for us to "taste"!  I couldn't really remember how DC trussed her chicken so we had to guess a little.  My simple method wasn't going to do it for lil sis...

She also made some really good zucchini (aka courgettes) with Ono salt (Hawaiian rock salt blended with herbs and spices for those of you who don't live here), garlic and olive oil.  Yum, I have already stolen this recipe though she doesn't know it yet.  I'm sure my willing guinea pigs will be happy to try my sister's zucchini!

Let the partying commence

I really wanted to ignore my birthday this year - it's just a reminder that time marches on while so many things on my list of things to do and places to visit grows faster than I can cross them off.  Since ignoring was not an option, I elected to go all-out.  That is to say, we did it my way.  Birthday dinner with family and close friends and for those who couldn't make the dinner, cooking parties planned over the next couple of weeks.  This didn't prevent us from having other cooking parties because what could be more fun than cooking with friends, then enjoying the fruits (or vegetables) of our labors?

But first, the most important meal of the day.  It's usually a bit of a chore to eat anything before early afternoon.  Typically I eat my first meal anytime between 1pm - 4pm (especially when I'm at work).  Don't worry, it only means my meal times are a bit skewed - not that I actually miss them because let's face it, you can't say someone skips meals if they have breakfast at 4pm, lunch at 7pm and dinner at 11pm - 12am.  Getting old is so much work...so of course I had to fuel up.  It didn't help that the company of my very cute niece consisted of an announcement "I'm hungry!" and luckily I had already been awake for over 4 hours by then.

It must also be remembered that one of the functions of family and friends is to ensure we don't take ourselves too seriously.  I successfully dodged earlier attempts, but unfortunately by sheer persistence, I eventually got caught sitting in a seat not meant for me.  Um...not much more to say than that!

Let's just go on to more partying - because what I really wanted for my birthday was just to hang out with my loved ones.

After a very quick shopping expedition for groceries (the ever reliable Palama Market providing almost everything we needed), AA and I planned a Korean dinner at my sister's house.  Lil Sis had to run a few errands so we cooked while she did her thing, then she came home to this and provided a little photobomb in the shape of bunny ears.

Before:                                                                                          During:

Mun Doo (dumplings)

Duk Kook (mochi soup)

Korean Kim Chee Stew (jigae)

After:

There are more parties yet to come so photos later - until then, may the small imperfections of your days only serve to highlight that which is happy and right.

#96 - But the meals go on...

Apologies for the long silence, but here are photos...not much commentary, but hope you enjoy the food...


Sunday night dinner with the family...

 Breakfast omelettes 

A cupcake made on the iPad followed by an afternoon tea...

#69 - Happy Hannukah / Merry Christmas / Joyous Kwanzaa / Happy [insert relevant holiday here]

Have just experienced one of those unfortunate and irritating things about automated "smart" whatever things these programs do - i.e. lost the post and all the clever, witty things I wrote about over the last couple of days.

I'm not sure I can face writing it all again - not to mention I can't remember what I wrote so I will have to try to reconstruct it using the photos I had for this post.

Packing and Moving
The day after I got back from Germany, it was back to reality.  I had to sort everything.  The movers packed all the things going back to Australia and when they were finished, there was a distressing amount of stuff left in the flat - it hardly looked like a dent had been made.  The rest of the day was spent packing, schelpping things to a friend's house for storage and throwing away rubbish.  I'm not quite sure how much crap can accumulate in such a small space.  Luckily for me, I had made dinner plans with a friend from LCB for that night, which gave a welcome cut-off time for all the moving and packing nonsense.  It was much needed and we had a delicious Mexican meal at a place called Lupita just off the Strand.  They even made guacamole in front of us, which brought to mind a scene from The West Wing in which President Barlett has a conversation with his daughter about guacamole in a restaurant in LA.  We had the fresh guacamole with the chips (the fried cheese in the bottom photo came with guacamole which was already made in the kitchen.

Don't quit your day job...
In which I discovered I will never be a criminal mastermind...one of the things that could strike fear into any traveller, no matter how seasoned, is the thought of having to make a connecting flight through LAX with an international to domestic transfer and a short amount of time in which to do it.  When the time is about 3 hours and one has to clear customs and immigration after picking up one's bags to switch from an international to a domestic flight, the anxiety level escalates dramatically.  This becomes an exponential thing as the first (international flight) becomes later and later - in our case, an hour late.  Somehow I got through the disorganized customes and immigration, collecting my boarding pass for the second leg from a British Airways groundstaff member and it looked like the connection might end easily.

The only problem came with the second security checkpoint - LAX has one of those body scanner things and given that a lot of doctors say they don't know how much of the bad x-rays or whatever go through you, I thought it would be better not to chance it.  Pat down finished, there was (I thought) undue interest in my bags.  In my defence, I had only slept about 6 hours out of the previous 48 hours so it took a little while to see what they were seeing when they pulled my quick cure salt out of my bag:  1kg of white, powdery substance in 2 layers of plastic baggies, one of them a zip lock.  Then I twigged.  Oh - white, powder...I asked the security guard what it looked like in the x-ray.  "Very interesting" was the answer.  Luckily the security guy had had confit duck before, so that made the quick cure a lot easier to explain.  He laughed when I said, "This is what comes of even contemplating cooking for your fmaily over the holidays!"  and I had no objection to there being no testing of the quick cure.  Guessing they must have decided that no one would be stupid enough to schlep a kilo of a naughty white substance in their carry on...

Cleared security just in the nick of time - just enough wiggle room to grab a bottle of water in the airline lounge, then it was time to board for home.

In which we channel Dorothy
There's no place like home.  We didn't even have the smell of jet fuel tainting the air when we landed - warm, flower scented air as soon as we stepped out of the gates and into the terminal.  Managed to overlap with Brother #2 and family - my first night was their last.  I had to laugh as my nephew picked me up and twirled me around.  It's always nice to be greeted so enthusiastically by a handsome (and buff) young man - even nicer when you know that you're on his list of favorite people who always merits a hug and a kiss.  On the right is one of the beautiful and rather common sights.  I can generally count on seeing a rainbow in the late afternoons most days.  It used to be on the way home from the ballet studio, but since the studio moved, I now just look up the hill from my little balcony.

A couple of days of catching up with friends followed my arrival.  One of the things you can always count on over the holidays is that people somehow make their way back here.  It might not be often or on a regular basis, but sooner or later we come back.  I suppose part of it is that it's a great excuse and place to take a break from cold and dark days when one lives somewhere where the days tend to get quite short as the year draws to a close.  Any of that is more bearable if you are heading for warmer climes...

'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house, little creatures were stirring.  My little niece was restive and not inclined to go to sleep because Santa was coming.  She had started making some cookies for Santa but it was temporarily put on hold while my sister tended to my new nephew - at which point I took over supervision of Santa's cookies.  My white hairs multiplied by a magnitude at several points - once when the 2 year-old picked up the blade attachment for the food processor before I could stop her (luckily by the plastic handle) and again when her hand got too close to the moving parts of the stand mixer.  Eventually she lost interest (when it was time to cook the cookies) but only after she added the chocolate chips to the cookie dough.  The quality testing of the chocolate chips was a big hit.

It was almost midnight before both kidlets were finally settled in for the night at which point my sister and I finished wrapping various presents.  I then went back home where I had a few more presents to finish wrapping - possibly a good time for jet lag to hit.

Christmas morning dawned too early for those of us who had been awake until 5am.  This jetlag thing from the opposite side of the world is just not that conducive to a good night's sleep on local time...a few bites of breakfast, then I toddled down the hill to watch the opening of Christmas presents.  My niece was very excited that Santa had eaten the cookies and drunk the milk.  Here is one of the little dresses I bought in London - they were so cute I couldn't resist buying several of them.  Lucky for me she wants to wear all of them although it's a bit doubtful whether she meant all at once (each dress was greeted with the comment "I want to wear it Mommy").

2nd Breakfast
And then came my Hobbit impersonation.  How can anyone turn down an offer to make them breakfast?  My brother-in-law kindly offered, extending this month's tradition of having meals cooked by other people's spouses.  In this case, 2nd breakfast was "hapa rice" (2 parts brown rice : 1part white rice), Portuguese sausage and eggs scrambled with vegetables.  FYI, eggs needed just a little something to give them a little kick.  I tried Tobasco (the best one), Frank's Red Hot or something like that (it's the one they use for Buffalo wings) and the ubiquitous Vietnames "cock" sauce - the plastic bottle with the green top and a drawing of a rooster on the front.  Father and daughter then went to a basketball game, which left my sister and me free to prepare for the afternoon.

Attempting to cook...

We had set up the vegetables at my sister's house so that there wouldn't be any issue as to space / stove / fridge / time while I tried to cook with my gimpy hand.  Thank goodness for shortcuts - I used canned tomatoes and a mandoline to help with all the slicing.  There were 5 people attending who were unable to eat gluten, 3 of whom were also allergic to eggs and 1 of whom was vegan (but willing to make an exception for Christmas dinner).  I was a little stuck for ideas until my sister said something about stuffed cabbage, at which point I tried a variation of the stuffed cabbage we did at school.  Then it was a matter of praying that it would turn out ok - there was a terrible moment when I tasted the tomato concasse and found it too acidic / flavorless / un-tomato-y.  I adjusted with a little sugar, but it was too much sugar and on went the adjusting.  Eventually satisfied with the taste of the sauce, I readied the rest of the mise en place.

The only thing is that I very carefully assembled the stuffed cabbage lasagne / gratin bayaldi with the outside of the cabbage facing out - that is to say, the wrong way out.  I blame the lack of sleep and jetlag for the snafu.  It turned out ok although I could hear a chorus of Chefs' voices in my head when we ate it that the zucchini was undercooked and the assembly uneven, not to mention it wasn't hot.  As a trial run, it could have been better but it could also have been worse.  For the moment, the notes I have are to cook the zucchini longer before assembly, drain everything much better, to have the cabbage with the inside of the leaves facing out, to make more tomato sauce and to heat the thing for about 15 minutes before service instead of 10 minutes.  For whatever reason, we always seem to end up with not enough tomato sauce and it needed rather a lot of adjusting the seasoning and acidity with red wine, salt and sugar.  It ended as one of those things where the people you cook for enjoyed the food but by the standards which I now expect of myself, the dish was lacking in several crucial ways - hence the chorus in my head of what feedback I would expect for the dish.  I remember early on that we were told that the chefs expected perfection.  Of course you never achieve it but that doesn't mean that you don't strive for it anyway, or else why would we be there?

Dinner was the usual food extravaganza for 15 people.  There was a very large turkey, a ham and a backup turkey as well as all the fixings and several side dishes.  Also as is usual for us here, appetisers were poke (pronounced "pokay" for those of you who have not been to Hawaii) with beer and tortilla chips with hummus.

My eldest brother made the roast turkey.  There was gluten free gravy and gluten free stuffing.  I found some of the gluten free alternatives to food rather disappointing because either the taste or the texture is usually not as nice as the normal one.  One of our guests also made mochi (pounded glutinous rice, sometimes with stuffing) and colored it - with the effect that it blends in with the plate.  Find the mochi on the tablecloth on the right...quite a good camouflage, I thought.  Given the amount of contributions, I thought we did quite well with consuming most of the food on the night.  The turkey leftovers were gone by the next day except for the carcass which is slated to make broth for a turkey stew I am going to try to make.  BS isn't a huge fan of soups but he will try a stew...

There was also a mini cask of rum.  Not some gimmicky thing or a scary home made attempt but rather proper rum which was stored in an aged French oak barrel (or something like that).  I'm hoping I said this correctly - I don't speak specialist alcohol language.  All I know is that generally alcohol makes everything better (and sometimes the food too).  This was to go with the figgy pudding - I've forgotten the song but I know it's one of the latter verses of "We wish you a merry Christmas".

It was wonderful to spend such a happy night with friends and family.  So until next time, may you have as wonderful a holiday and family time as I have.

#31 - A New High...

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#30 - Um, where did the time go?

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

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

Braised endive with
Beurre Meuniere

Pumpkin Soup

Braised fillet of Sole
with seafood sauce

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

Carbonnade of Beef

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot cross buns



Brioche




Croissants and Danois

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


Braised trout wrapped in lettuce
and braised lettuce



Vanilla Souffle











Roast quail with glazed
veggies, potato rosti and jus

Selle sur cher with glazed
beetroot, grape and poppyseed
vinaigrette








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

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


Baguette viennoise, pain de siegle and focaccia


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