#21 - Evil puff pastry and too much (?) red meat

Evil puff pastry

Last week was more pastry in cuisine.  Puff pastry, to be precise.  We had to make our allumettes au fromage (i.e. cheese matchsticks - it doesn't translate very well).  They're actually more like cheese rolls instead of sausage rolls, with mornay sauce in the middle.  The sauce was really good.  If only the pastry had been as good.  Alas, alack - the holes in the layers (because I have such hot hands, you know) meant that the butter leaked everywhere.  You can see it on the paper...

Evil puff pastry - before

Allumettes au fromage

 





Then it was pasta with alfredo sauce.  (This is when I found out my hands were hot - something to do with how the dough was/not coming together - I forget).  I didn't manage to take a photo of the pasta when it was fresh so it doesn't look as good, but trust me - it tasted delicious.  You can take the girl out of Hawaii but you can't take the Hawaii out of the girl (note the chopsticks...)

Patisserie - more puff pastry (!) and a dear friend

Then we made jalousie (aka in Australia as pear slice, so I was told by a friend from class) - poached pears, puff pastry (out of a packet because ours have to rest until the next pastry class - next week!)  See how nice it turns out when the pastry is made right?

Also, my dear friend PC came to town for work.  We nearly didn't get organized in time, but somehow we managed to catch each other right after I'd made my pear slice/tarte/whatever.  It had been a few years since we had seen each other so there was a lot to catch up on, including what brought him here (work).

  

Before...

 So - pictures of our civilized dessert - he was suitably impressed and made the requisite yummy noises.  Of course finding the ice cream to go with it was a bit of a thing - I think we tried 3 convenience stores before we found our Haagen Daaz to go with it.  He isn't dead, so I assume that the dessert was safe to eat.

and after...

   I left the rest of it with him to share with his friends the next day while they watched the royal wedding.

All of this is quite hard work actually - it took me a while to figure out on Friday or Saturday that my arms were tired from rolling out the puff pastry on Thursday night.  It's actually easier if you have more leverage - I had been standing on the ledge under my counter but it was a bit of an awkward position (why couldn't I be 6' tall???) - luckier than one of the other girls whose hands were bruised on the heels from the rolling pin...

Royal wedding
EA did an amazing English tea for us on the day of the Royal wedding.  I made it to her house after ballet in time to catch the highlights (good - the ad-free version).  Here are some of my classmates from LCB.  The picture has representatives from South Africa, Chile, Portugal, Colombia, Australia and the US (including me).

EA made scones, cucumber sandwiches, a cake with strawberries and had all the fixin's for various alcoholic beverages - people managed to hold out until around 3pm...she is the most amazing hostess.

Last week's demonstrations

Then there were the demonstrations for the upcoming practical classes.  It included butchery - I have only ever seen that much raw, red meat in one place so early in the morning:  the butcher shop on my way to work in the morning in Sydney.

We made lamb first thing on Saturday morning.  Given the timing of everything, we are a few days behind schedule (i.e. lamb is practical 11 but we have had demonstrations up to class 13).  This is much rarer than I like my meat - but we have to serve it the way they want it, not the way we like it (the words "this is, after all, a French cooking school..." keep ringing in my head).

It took most of us about an hour to French trim the rack of lamb.  I eventually got the hang of it, but it was tough going until I did.  (For the record:  trimming was very nice and the lamb was perfectly cooked - if you like your lamb still baa'ing on the plate!)



What happens after we present
our dishes for inspection

Then I packed the food to take home - dinner...we actually got to use olive oil for the bayaldi (i.e. like ratatouille) so it didn't feel quite so disgusting after I ate it for dinner last night.  Yes - I cooked the meat some more.  The dish below is what it looked like after SL and I butchered it while getting out the pieces for presentation on the plate at the end of class.

Vegetables bayaldi -
NOT ratatouille

One of the girls was going away for the weekend and didn't want to take her lamb with her because she couldn't cook it (travelling and all that) so I took it home with me.  Both Michaels and Rufus were in the art shop on the way home so I gave the guys a bit of a taste.  Rufus was not offered any...

This Michael (on the left) likes his meat cooked "properly".  This other Michael loves rack of lamb but likes it a bit more cooked (I sympathize).  He ate it though - and pronounced it good.

Rufus's Michael and I have made a deal:  he will provide a home for various culinary experiments and in return, he will frame my Grand Diplome when I get it.  Now it's just a matter of actually passing all my classes...i.e. not setting the kitchen on fire during finals!

Seen and overheard...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...I was at Starbucks when I wrote most of this yesterday afternoon.  The conversation involved snatches of phrases like "...but, like, I can't wait for him forever" and "like, there's never, like, a perfect time to break up with someone"...initially I thought they must be in their late 20s/somewhere in the 30s (except for all the "like"s).  Then one of them said something about being 23/24.  Oh puh-leeze!

There was a fellow sitting at the next table with an older woman - possibly his mom.  Both appeared to be following the girls' conversation quite intently but trying not to look as if they were interested.  All I could think was that this conversation would be much more urgent for these girls in about a decade...and that perhaps Starbucks isn't the place to have a deep and meaningful conversation, especially if you don't want anyone to overhear what you are saying.

We have to cook a roast beef on Tuesday.  Served rare (ew!) so until next time...baa baa, moo moo...