#79 - more cooking...

Almost back to basic
This morning was my first practical (that I was scheduled to take) in over 3 months.  New kitchen, new policies, a huge fridge that I need both hands to open after firmly planting both feet, finding the foil, the aluminum cups, the greaseproof paper...and finding out 2 hours into a 2.5hour practical that I get to use all four burners on my stove.  It was almost like the first or second practical back in basic where we were all looking for things, only in my case, I was the only one doing it.


Better than yesterday when I kept going back towards the boulangerie after getting things from the washup area, only to go running past the door I needed and towards the emergency escape. Hopefully that's not some Freudian thing.


Cooking again (or, Picking Up Where I Left Off)...
So 8am today, I got my station kind of set up then gloved up.  We had to take apart a dover sole and I didn't want to smell like fish all day.  It took a little while longer to fillet and skin the fish than I would have liked - I'd like to blame my knife (I hadn't sharpened it properly in a while) but I'm afraid it's just being out of practice.  The good thing is the induction burners work really well.  The bad news is that I am getting used to them so I was either boiling things over (the crayfish water for blanching, the sauce after I added the cream) or they weren't really going (the champagne sauce was under reduced so still a bit too acidic from the champagne).


This was the last practical I did before injury back in November so I really am picking up where I left off.  The sauce stayed in the timbale this time and although it seemed to leak everywhere when I initially unmoulded it, it looked fine once Chef JB took it apart.  I have a feeling he might have been lenient on the grading today - or perhaps he was making allowances for my being in an unfamiliar kitchen.  It looks easy from the outside when you just look, but if you have to actually put your hands on a cutting board, it's no longer by the washup area which is shared by 3 porters, who actually do the washing up for both kitchens on the various levels.


The super good thing is that there is a lot more equipment.  Cuisine kitchens have maurices (silicon spatulas) again.  We have a lot of little pots to strain our sauces into when we are finishing and holding them for service.  and the 4 burner thing?  The others have had a chance to get used to it, but I almost didn't know what to do with myself, having so much space.  Tomorrow will be a chance to get organized because we have our mock exam the next day, so I have to review my knife kit and take out anything extraneous, then ensure all my blades are sharp and ready to go.


There's also a little downtime over the next couple of days.  There are a couple of blocks of time which are not relevant to me because they are for feedback for the students who have been here for the entire term.  I also have a chance to get rid of some of my ingredients because everyone is getting ready to try their desserts.  For the Grand Diplomes, the plated dessert portion of the final Patisserie exam is probably the most stressful thing because we have to make up our own recipes and methods (or adapt from things we learned previously) and there are multiple components.  The result is a group of people who freak each other out over various things - I'm sure some of them are silly, but it's hard to see that when you're in the middle of it all.  We all had a chance to discuss, bitch and moan between classes - there's a cafe with both indoor and outdoor seating.  And of course, I've already told you the food and coffee is good.


Tonight was dinner with UP.  Jamie's Italian on Threadneedle Street.  I'd write more but I'm so tired I fell sleep for a while when I was trying to complete the preceding sentence.


Tomorrow is a demo only, so hopefully I'll be able to post photos of the pigeon.


So until next time, good night.

#78 - How many pilots does it take to fly an A380?

I was waiting to board the plane when I saw 4 men walk past in what looked like pilots' clothes.  It could be that there was a navigator or a first officer (I don't know if he does any of the flying) or a couple of co-pilots - ages ago a pilot said it took two co-captains to take the place of a captain.  Anyway, I was wondering why they needed 4.  Maybe a couple were relief crew?  It was a 7hour 55minute flight to Singapore, then a 14hour flight to London.

Safely back in London

There was a moment of panic at the airport when I said something about a visa.  Note to self:  let the immigration guy do all the talking.  We managed to get my wording sorted out and he, not wanting to look through an entire stack of documents, looked at 2 pieces of paper, then sent me on my merry way.  You can bet if I hadn't had all the other papers, he would have wanted to see them.  Oh well, better to be over-prepared...

Had to run some errands before heading back to LCB - my first time at the new campus, so my camera was charged and ready to go.  Oh, and I had to get directions.  Lots of little things to do and I saw the amount of stuff I left at my friend JB's place - goodness there's a lot!  Luckily the largest box was full of supplies and ingredients and part of the smaller box had my uniforms.


So the first class was a demo - fun demo - it was the last dish I did back in November before I burned my hand - the practical is tomorrow morning at 8am - back to fish mongery (to be precise) and killing crayfish first thing, then a champagne sauce.  The champagne sauce was good and so was the crayfish one, but the dover sole wasn't my favorite that day.  Maybe because I'd been travelling for so long it was hard to tell which way was up.


30 hours of travelling then having to stay awake for another 15 hours was enough to make anyone pass out at the oh-so-partying-hard hour of 9pm.  You'd think that would help one sleep, no?  Well yes - for three hours anyway.  I was wide awake at midnight and didn't get back to sleep until sometime between 4 - 5am, then awake again early in the morning.  I was pleased to find out the cafe at school opens at 7am...except I didn't go in the side entrance and spent several minutes fighting with the biometric scan which actually doesn't turn on until 7:15.  Yes, they have biometrics - they scan in your fingerprint which opens the gates to admit you to the locker rooms and kitchens.  Um...they have reset my fingerprints several times - index, thumb...I was tempted to give the scanner the middle except that probably wouldn't have worked.

Our new digs are in Bloomsbury Square - opposite some enormous building which looks like it could be a museum or an academic institution of some kind.  I got there early enough to see the milk and other dairy delivery.  I'm not sure if it's a daily thing, but wouldn't be surprised if it were.  I love the idea that it's cold enough that they can leave the milk outside and that it's delivered daily.  There's something so anachronistic about it.


Luckily the cafe still gave me the student discount even though my finger didn't scan - probably because no one would wear the uniform as a fashion statement.  The time difference was sufficient that I actually ate breakfast - and the croissant was still a little warm from the oven.  What can I say, coffee and croissant are definitely worth waking up early.  It's nice to have the cafe - the breads look good and I can attest that the croissant is excellent.  I haven't tried the sweets, but they resemble some of the ones we made for the Superior Tea Party so I'm not really in a hurry to try them, although some of the banana bread type things would be nice to take over to people's houses or good with tea.  Or both.  Why choose if you don't have to?

First practical
I feel like I got started on the wrong foot today.  I got caught with my coffee mug in class (although I had it more for the fact that it was a warm drink which helped with a vicious cough, rather than because I didn't care about not having a hot beverage in class).  Then a surprise:  Chef JW expected me to take part in class from 8am this morning - blown sugar and a few other things.  I was under the impression that I would be watching only (so said my schedule), which was why I didn't have my knife kit or any equipment with me other than my uniform - the uniform being required if you are going to be in the kitchen.  My mistake - I got the knife kit and participated in the second session - a run through of the sugar centrepiece for the final exam, for which I am very grateful.  Verdict:  need a lot of work, but today was the last day of my group's sugar module so I have some catching up to so.


The photos...not so good.  My notes are somewhere between London and Sydney so I had to try to remember things.  The sugar sculpture is literally 3 ingredients:  sugar, water and glucose.  I just couldn't remember exactly when the glucose was supposed to go in.  The induction stoves are amazing - they heat up really quickly.  This is both a good thing and a bad thing:  good because you don't sit there forever, waiting for the sugar to get to the right temperature.  Bad because you could turn your back for a second and the sugar is all of a sudden much too hot (about 10 degrees too hot, although somehow I managed to save it).

I thought the sugar would be ok, but...well, not so much.  I got some good feedback, constructive criticism and a few useful tips, but it just makes me realize just how much I lost by being out of it for so long.  Perhaps I should have repeated Superior after all, but I didn't have the energy to sustain such a pace nor was my hand strong enough to handle it.  But back to the sugar - it was very plain - so much so that it showed all the flaws in the piece.  There was no movement and the whole thing just didn't look very good.  You forget all these little things (like a support for the backdrop) and try new things (which resulted in not having a very good color or assembly of the sculpture in general.  Someone asked me if I had to do the sugar piece for the exam - I'm guessing they asked because of the accident last term.  I told them it wasn't optional.


My group then had a cuisine practical - I didn't go because I had missed the demo for it last week.  I suppose I could have done it but I was a bit done in and I still had to prepare for tomorrow's class.  I decided I'd give the cafe another try - lunch.  This is cream of mushroom soup with croutons.  I assume the green on top of the soup is drizzled olive oil.  The bread which came with the soup wasn't very good though, so I ended up leaving it.  Notes are done and I feel a little more organized for tomorrow morning's class.  It's now a decent hour to go to sleep, so off I go to the land of Nod.


Apologies for any errors in this post - it's late enough that jetlag is making my thoughts extremely silly and disjointed.


So until next time, may you be free from misunderstandings and miscommunication.

#77 - Death by paper

No photos but some bitching and moaning
Oh good grief.  As much as the burned hand hurt (and the corresponding inability to cook for a few months) the preparations to go back to London have taken on a whole new dimension.  I caught the plane tickets early enough to amend the dates (i.e. before I paid for them) but I ran into a couple of new wrinkles today...the first being my prescription medication and the other being the paperwork to go back to London.  I forgot that going to school in a foreign country means visas and paperwork and lists of more paper to provide.  I think I'll need a file cabinet in my suitcase to present to immigration upon arrival.


Hearing faint laughter in the background - the universe laughing...
I think various karmic forces laugh at you when you make plans.  I thought I was supposed to take classes the week before the mock cuisine final, then the week of exams - that is to say, about 2 weeks of class.  It now appears that I will be attending most classes for almost all of March...which is great, except it looks like there might be grading in the practical classes.  Agh!  Cooking for exams is great...extra cooking which isn't for exams - oh dear, cuts into my practicing time for the plated dessert.


On the bright side, I found gelatine in sheets today.  They have something called Titanium gelatine here - I think it might be just different terminology - which might be the Platinum gelatine in London.  I have to check the gelatine weights but unfortunately my notes are somewhere between London and Sydney in a container somewhere.  More papers to track down and organize, in addition to the ones for entry into the UK.  Yikes.


The paper requirements have blown out any plans I might have had which do not involve meals (a girl has to eat) or planned for business hours.


The next 35 days
It may be that any attempts to go to Covent Garden are doomed based on the class schedule that just got emailed through a few hours ago.  It appears that there are only a few late nights which is all to the good, given the time difference and adjustment needed.  I believe there was a line in the email about being in class by Monday afternoon - so let's hope there are no delays at the airport - like an argument with some immigration guy about whether my paperwork is sufficient for their purposes.


So until next time, may your paperwork be simple and bureaucratic red tape be minimal.

#76 - Substitution please!

No pigeons
I forgot pigeons are out of season for another little while.  Luckily there's a rather good butcher (reflected in the prices) just up the street.  They were kind enough to order in some large quail - I figured it would be kind of similar to pigeon in size (although I didn't have to look for birdshot so hopefully that won't affect the timing during the Cuisine final).  The options were to get smaller quails (6 in a packet) or the larger ones (the 4 in the packet below).

So you may ask how it went and the answer is...gloves are the answer.  They keep the blood from sticking to your fingers and any worries about anything yuck being stuck under your nails - it still feels like there's crap under the nails even after scrubbing under them several times with a nail brush.  Ugh.  I'm ashamed to say that there was a little bit of distressed squealing when the tube-y things in the quail wouldn't come out easily and there had to be some yanking and pulling to get it out.



Anyway - there's a bit of an ick factor because you have to get all the spongy bits out of the ribs and things so that they don't cloud the sauce and make it taste yuck.  The wine tonight is from a drier year - about twice the alcohol content of the one from last night, although it's the same grape and the same vineyard.



Ok - enough bitching and moaning. Back to the quails...the lucky (?) guinea pigs are my neighbors downstairs. They both had plans Friday night bu the quails had to be cooked so the plan is to have the plates and dinner the next night...  the good butchers also had some duck fat - very nice, very clean - and expensive, of course.  Luckily you can reuse the fat as long as you clean it so the plan is to filter it through coffee filters (I can't find the muslin cloth), then store it in the refrigerator.  It's a pretty good incentive to make confit anything when you have the right fat.

It was kind of a tight fit to get the 8 legs into the pot but everything eventually settled down and the confit smelled quite nice, especially considering that I don't think quail tastes that nice.


Forgetting almost everything
So I had to check cooking times again because it's been so long since I cooked anything.  The timing is for pigeon, so I have a feeling the legs are a bit over - the meat was kind of falling off the bone, which isn't quite the aim.  Soft, but not falling apart...so will have to rethink the timing again.  On the other hand, the rest of it seems to be on track.  Somehow it's a lot harder to focus at home - so many distractions (laundry, dinner...Harry Potter and a quiddich match, etc. etc.)

Bloodless dinner
Given the blood from the quails (and having to clean out the spongy bits from inside) dinner was perch, hapa rice and broccoli. In case you didn't know, hapa rice is what my sister and I (I think we got it from in-laws) call the white rice/brown rice mix. The white rice is because it tastes better, the brown rice is a nod towards being healthy. I'm not sure how effective it actually is, but it doesn't feel so much like the husks from the brown rice get stuck in your teeth and it cooks faster.

A Saturday Lunch

I promised my friend JB that I would cook for him a while ago.  It's taken us a little while but we finally managed to get ourselves organized.  He tends to eat quite healthy so I had to think a little bit about what to make which would fit in the healthy, not too heavy (it was a hot afternoon) and edible meal.  He said he would be happy with whatever I cooked, but since we both ended up laughing at the possibility of my making him beans on toast, a decision was made to have something that required just a little bit of technique.  We ended up with stuffed mushrooms and garlic shrimp (prawn) starter, sauteed zucchini and pan fried salmon main and a burnt fig and caramel ice cream with mango for dessert.  I didn't make the ice cream but I did play with it a little...

There was a moment of panic when the acetate wouldn't come out of the mould with the ice cream and I could see the ice cream slowly starting to ooze.  Luckily we got it out and took off the acetate (I remembered this time).  Normally I don't like mango, but it went surprisingly well with the ice cream and the mint.

We ate on the balcony, looking down to the water - sorry, somehow I didn't manage to get a photo but a lot of sailboats were out.  The sun has since moved on and the clouds have rolled in.  Perhaps the forecasted rain will still arrive.

Dinner
It seems the reheating can take quite a while - the fondant potatoes were giving me conniptions.  It seemed to take at least another 15 minutes longer than I expected.  The guinea pigs (AC and VB) were good choices - as they are both familiar with French food, I got a nice comment that it tasted like France.  There was a bit of panic over the confit legs because the flesh kept falling apart so that I had difficulty getting a nice piece for presentation.  Baby onions weren't available so I didn't plate them (or the green - parsley? - garnish) and I forgot to buy green olives so it wasn't an olive sauce.  So far it seems like the dish will be ok - except the timing needs a bit of tightening up.  Or a lot of tightening up...

I'm not sure if you've ever smelled duck fat.  If you haven't, let me just say that it's quite a strong smell - so much so that before I was even finished cooking, I didn't feel like eating much.  The result - some vegetables, confit potato (turned for mine) and a quail leg - for a taste.  Actually it tasted quite nice, but I still didn't want anything heavier.  Lucky for me, AC made a delicious salad and I ended up eating most of that instead.  Then grapes for dessert - I think such heavy scents made the salad and fruit seem much more appealing because they are so much lighter.

Verdict - could be better, could be worse.  Timing needs a bit of work and a few details need to be refined.  Hopefully it will be a smooth run for the mock exam.

So until next time - may you be able to enjoy the meals you prepare with your friends and loved ones (instead of just meal times).



#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.