#22 - In which a lot happens in a few short days...

Not quite sure what happened to the last week, but I will try to catch up.


Brutal day
We had a double practical on Wednesday - 6 hours of meat (the two steaks in the first practical, finished early so a quick little break, then the blanquette in the second practical).



Steak with peppercorn sauce



Well done steak

I think I previously mentioned that there are a couple of friends I made who are in the more advanced patisserie class.  I gave CD a steak with peppercorn sauce (the medium one - I overcooked it), and a serving of the blanquette with rice because I felt bad that I had messed up the potatoes with the steak so badly (black and burned on the outside, not cooked on the inside - yuck!)  CD loved the sauce on the steak - generally thought to be more interesting than the blanquette (which is a much milder dish - LOTS more cream) depending on your preferences.


More evil puff pastry 
So this time was another slice that we made with our own puff pastry.  Chef G (whom I'm not sure I've ever actually met, although he let me borrow ice from his Boulangerie today) looked at my bande and said, "that's not a band - that's an orchestra!"

Bande aux fruits de saison

As you can see, the sides fell over a bit and I have some difficulties with the decorating.  It would help if I had liked more of the fruits, but I chose them for what I felt like eating, rather than what would look prettiest.

I hate wisking the creme patissiere for underneath the fruit.  It always feels like your arm is going to fall off - who needs a gym and do weights when you can get arm muscles from beating the cream?  "I hope I don't get this in the final!"  I managed to gasp to Chef M while I was trying to beat the patisserie cream back into a smooth consistency.

"Really?  You have to do a creme pat in the final?"  he asked innocently.  Um, yes!  It's part of the even more evil Pate a Choux (aka choux pastry aka eclairs, etc.) final.  Pate a Choux is even more evil because if you mess up the dough (which you can do in several places), that's pretty much it - it kills you for the whole basic patisserie course.  The first pitfall is about 5 minutes in.  So pate a choux being evil - more beating (adding the eggs into the batter) and more beating (the cream for the chantilly cream).  Then there's the timing and piping.  But I am getting ahead of myself here.


Really big palmiers and some bowties?

We also put together our dough scraps and made palmier cookies (aka palm leaf cookies aka elephant ears).  We were meant to make them small but I (still) can't cut straight and some of mine turned out gigantic.  The ones that were supposed to be the small palmiers didn't have enough folds so I twisted them and got the bowtie ones (Chef G said too much effort).  The little circle was just so that I could use the scraps of the scraps.  Rufus and the Michaels quite liked the cookies and the not-Bande, actually.  I gave the rest of the bande to the real estate agency downstairs from me.  I didn't want it to take up all that room in my fridge (I had a chestnut filling sponge cake from C in it already) and I was sick of looking at it.

Another brutal day
Saturday was another double whammy - pork cutlets in cuisine and then pate a choux in patisserie, one after the other.

Chef S commented how mashed potatoes are comfort food, then asked, "Who doesn't like mashed potatoes?"  I was the only one who raised her hand.  Hey, I'm from Hawaii - we eat rice with almost everything (not with spaghetti, but otherwise...)  Then she asked, "who doesn't eat pork?"  Guess what?

Anyway - here is the pork cutlet with mashed potatoes - somehow I got lucky and the sauce was pronounced "bangin'".  Thank you EA for helping me get the right consistency!  The chefs seem to be fond of that word - I don't care, as long as they are using it in conjunction with my dish and they mean it's good.  There's also a piece of pork crackling there and the mash potato which had been causing me no end of grief (seriously - I cut it up and it still took the potatoes almost and hour to cook) but ended up fine - thank you tons of butter and lots of cream!  For which LM was also very thankful - she said the mashed potatoes were her favorite part.

Evil choux pastry

And then...choux pastry - a potential exam dish (must practice a LOT)...had problems with piping, as you can see from my sad, lopsided eclairs.  Also had trouble with the fondant icing (you're supposed to pipe a pattern with chocolate on top of the eclairs but I didn't even get that far) - and in the exam, you have to do all this on your own.  In class we worked in teams, so you can see where I'm going with this.  Also my swans didn't have enough fruit (to cut the sweetness of the chantilly cream - there's tones of sugar in it to make it shiny) and I didn't whip the cream enough so it looked fine when Chef M inspected it for marks, it had collapsed a bit when I took it to a birthday party.

I packed all the eclairs, etc. into the cake box, along with Laurie's chestnut cake (a trade for the pork cutlets & mashed potatoes) and took it to TL's 30th birthday shindig.  I missed the gathering at the pub that afternoon because I was in class, but they had all retired to the house so I joined them there.  The sweets were very much appreciated and LM's cake and CD's cake got an almost equal number of votes (LM's cake was preferred by those who liked less sweet, C's cake was preferred for those who liked their desserts more sweet).

I also managed to snap a shot of KP eating one of my (too big) palmiers.  Luckily they were all eaten so I took home an empty cake box, which is good - I need it for later this week.

Basic egg skills - kind of, sort of - not really

Yesterday we did eggs and the remainder of this week is to be spent on soups (cuisine) and bread and sponge cake (patisserie).
  

Way undercooked poached eggs



So - I can't poach an egg.  Or rather - I can poach an egg but can't quite tell when it's done.  It will require lots of practice and tons of poking.  The eggs look so pretty in the dish, even if my mornay sauce split (oven was too hot and I was a little sloppy in making the sauce).  Of course that all changed once Chef J opened the eggs with his fork - the whites (which weren't completely cooked through) hadn't finished in the oven so they were still that disgusting clear runny white by the yolk.  It finished cooking in the dish later, but it was not an attractive sight.  Still, sauce was completely edible - all packed in a tidy container with the 2 eggs which were not pretty enough to present (and which I cooked a bit longer so that LM would have cooked eggs instead of disgusting ones).

  

Good French Omelette



Slightly better luck with the omelette - I knew I couldn't do it the way Chef S did it in demo, with a screeching hot pan and not getting any color on the egg.  So I cheated a tiny bit and had the stove turned a lot lower, then stirred until it was just underdone.  I knew it would be runny when it was all folded - just the way they like it (and just the way I won't eat it).

LM liked both - thank goodness!


Basic Soups - not really

Today was soup.  Possibly the second worst day for me - my chicken veloute (basically a flour & butter mixture to thicken a chicken stock) wouldn't thicken.  I did what the recipe said but it all went wrong.  I suppose it should have been a warning signal when the first roux I did got overcooked and I had to throw it away.

  

Chicken & Mushroom veloute



Everyone had packed up and left before I could present the chicken and mushroom soup.  It ended up tasting fine (bowl was too cold) but I'm not sure I want to try this one ever again...talk about things not working.

Potato & Leek soup with julienned vegetables

The potato and leek went a bit better although this one was too thick and I kept having to let it down with water.  But water makes it so that the flavors kind of separate again - which means each thing is distinct instead of everything kind of jumbling together in your mouth/mind.  However, this is the first time that my julienne passed muster, so that was a happy thing (this picture is after Chef D tasted it, which is why the chervil is off to the side and a bit lopsided).

Still needs more salt!  I haven't trained my palate yet - need to add more salt without going over and adding too much.  One of the chefs said that the usual pattern is - not enough/not enough/too much/too much/just right.  I'm still at the not enough (it's only been over a month!) stage - just hoping I get to the just right stage in time for the exam.  Praying consomme will go better tomorrow.

A taste of Hawaii in London!

LM and I finally made it to Kua'aina Burger in Foubert Place, just off Carnaby Street.  They were really friendly and we took a while to decide because we wanted everything on the menu.  We eventually settled on a mahi burger (me) and an ahi burger (her) - we switched half of each.  Both were a taste of home, but given the distance, I think I will wait till I get home to have another mahi anything.  Next time we have vowed to have the burgers (you know - the kind with meat).  In the meantime, here is a photo of LM helping one of the guys choose a good radio station (or several) for them to stream at the joint.  Good to know we can exert our powers for good and make sure they have good local music in the middle of London.

We were going to put photos of our burgers, but both of us were so food deprived (yes I know - ironic that for people surrounded by so much food, we should miss meals or not eat enough, but that's a discussion for another time) that we inhaled our food and forgot all about photos until our table had been cleared.

So until next time - aloha (and happy eating)!