Cuckoo for coco puffs
I had my first coco puff a few nights ago. They're from Liliha Bakery which is known for several things, this being one of them. (My friends wanted to know how I had grown up here and never had one of these.) My favorite part was the pudding inside - it's one of the few things I have always liked. Unfortunately the climate here (and possibly the moisture in the filling) means that the pastry was not crispy like it is when you have a croquembouche. Trying to figure out how to make some at home is part of the fun when you eat something and you think of things people like (or don't like, as the case may be).
In which certain traditions are upheld
I'm not sure when a tradition becomes a tradition - is it the number of years or the number of occasions in which a certain thing is done? Or do I go with the lawyer answer of "it depends..."?
In this case, it has been a tradition (both by reference to the number of years and the number of occurrences) that I stop by my friend SM's house on New Year's Eve if we are both home for the holidays.
It is a newer tradition that he makes truffles as his contribution to the festivities. And because he loves chocolate and I just love to talk about cooking and the fun things you can do with food, of course we always talk about food in between our catch ups over what has happened with each other's lives over the intervening year.
Last year, still relatively fresh out of cooking school, I happened to mention something about tempering chocolate and we shook on it. Well we followed through this year but because I forgot my truffle moulds in Sydney (aw shucks) we decided to do something a little different. That is, I had my first coco puff from Liliha Bakery only 3 nights ago - something local people know about but which I had not had until now because I refused to eat desserts or sugary things until just a couple of years ago.
Coco puffs were something with which I was relatively unfamiliar and it took a little while to settle on the filling. Pudding might have been a better idea but we thought we'd go with ganache because SM was going to make some anyway.
A walk down memory lane
In addition to not having my truffle moulds, I couldn't remember what equipment I had left here and what now resides in Sydney so there was some digging through my bags/closet and the kitchen.
Equipment and recipe in hand, it was time to make choux pastry. So...a couple of years makes a very big difference because I couldn't remember how long I used to cook out the panade (the dough ball). Then I had to add an extra egg to get the right consistency because I had cooked the panade a little too long. And then the piping...uneven and...let's just say that you find out how much you need to practice when you start doing things again, even things which used to be second nature.
We used mystery flour - that is, it was in the fridge in the ziplock bag and I was really hoping it wasn't self-rising flour. We baked the choux pastry in batches, experimenting with the timing because we guessimated / approximated the temperature setting. (190 - 200 C for 20 - 25 minutes translated to about 380F for 20 - 22 minutes). The optimum time for us seemed to be 21 minutes...
Then the truffles...there was one made with the cream infused with genmai cha and another which had plain cream but parmesan mixed through it after it the ganache cooled, for the sweet/salty combo that SM likes. I'm not usually a huge fan of the sweet/salty but I have to say this was pretty good. The genmai cha infused truffle was rolled in kinako powder (from soy beans) and the other truffles were dipped in tempered chocolate.
Do what you're afraid to do (again) - aka cooking nerd speak / skip to Nerdy Portion Over (below)
One of the things they used to tell us is that you have a couple of degrees' leeway to bring the chocolate back up to temperature after you melt it and cool it. The thing is, we always used Callebaut at LCB (it's what I have in my kitchen) but SM bought Valrohna because that's what he could find. A very good chocolate but I remember the chefs telling us you have to be very precise when you work with it because it has a smaller range of temperatures for it to stay in temper.
Until I took my Patisserie finals, I felt pretty confident about tempering chocolate, once I got the hang of it. On the day of the final, I remember the kitchen was freezing and my chocolate got too cold, too fast and I had bad truffles. I hadn't tempered chocolate since and all of a sudden I was going to temper chocolate - with a brand that was too expensive to mess up (especially since I hadn't bought it!) - talk about performance anxiety.
Luckily, I seem to have this perverse quirk of personality where the more stressed another person gets (SM was upset he couldn't find the right butter) the calmer I get. He thought he messed up his chocolate for the ganache - he didn't (we split it into two separate bowls for the different flavors).
Look Mom, No hands! (The tea infused truffles)
We had a little bit of a thing because he didn't want to roll the ganache for truffles (his hands melt it) and my melon baller was too small. So I quenelled the ganache then he rolled it around in the kinako powder and patted it into the shape he wanted with spoons.
Assembly required (The truffles with cheese)
This one did require us to get our hands dirty. Well, chocolate-y, anyway.
The ganache had set quite hard so we had to dig it out to roll it, but then since the chocolate had passed the test (small amount on knife blade or parchment paper, it should cloud over relatively quickly and set) we had to dip the truffles. I did not think this through - I think next time we should skip the wire rack - you get feet on the truffles but you don't lose the bottom of the shell when it gets stuck to the rack. Oh well, you learn (or re-learn) and mistakes help consolidate the lesson. Of course I told people to keep it refrigerated because of the cream, and to eat it within a couple of days (because the shell wasn't intact).
Nerdy portion over
So the final results of our efforts: a plate of truffles and a plate of "coco puffs" with ganache instead of chocolate pudding filling and no "chantilly" which is some sort of frosting they put on the coco puffs. You can see the inside of our coco puffs below...
Not perfect, but actually quite a successful experiment.
So until next time (and for the rest of this new year) - Happy New Year and may all your experiments and forays into the unknown / slightly intimidating be as happy as our was yesterday.
It truly sounds like a poultry heavy beginning of a joke, doesn't it? And it kind of was, except perhaps not in the way you might think.
Studying...kind of (and a day of non-stop eating)
Yesterday we spent getting ready for today's mock final. Part of the preparation involved getting lunch - always an excellent idea. Since I haven't been here for the first 8 weeks of term, I was excused (as I understood it) from attending the Patisserie tutorial sessions - there weren't any marks to discuss. There was some discussion after class and a half-hearted study session. As you can see, we were working super hard.
I noticed that the LCB cafe had a croquembouche on display. It was one that had been done by one of our Patisserie chefs the day before - well, the assembly and the decorations had been done the day before. A croquembouch basically means "break in the mouth" - a reference to the fact that the filled profiteroles are stuck together with caramel, which crunches when you eat it. There are other variations (like filling the profiterole with ice cream and dipping it in chocolate) but then they are known as something else - I don't know what the something else is. In this case, the actual profiteroles and the praline base had been done the week before. So here is an example of something we might be able to do in a couple of hours, once we've had at least 15 years of experience and are talented...I know it's hard to see, but those are pulled sugar roses and sugar tendril-y things. I tried to do something like that in class the other day when I was putting my ugly sugar sculpture together, but had to take them off because they just looked like mistakes from bad assembly. Inspirational in the skill displayed, discouraging to know just how far we have to go to even begin to approach this kind of ease and skill.
Anyway, lunch...we went to this yummy burger place called Meat Liquor which is actually on the way home from class - a dangerous location. I had a private giggle to myself that we spend time thinking of ways to plate fancy food pretty, but given a choice, this is what we go for. There were a bunch of mushroom and swiss burgers, I had a bacon cheeseburger (see below) and 3 orders of chili cheese fries. One of the guys liked his burger so much that he finished most of his girlfriend's burger, then ordered a second one.
Several beers (for them) and a coke (for me) later, people dispersed - some to go back to school for a couple of things, some to go home and work on their portfolios (basically the school making sure we prepare for our final exams - you have to write out recipes and methods) and a few of us to do other errands. I went with a couple of guys to drop off some knives at this Japanese knife shop near the old school where they will sharpen the blades on a stone - a much better result than just using a steel before and after each class. In fact the fellow did such a good job that I didn't even know I had nicked myself today until way later when I wondered why my finger was stinging.
Dinner in Poland and France
Then I went to meet a friend for dinner. CL started basic at the same time I did for both cuisine and patisserie. She decided not to continue on as she had a lot of travelling to do (I can't remember if she did Intermediate - they do say that memory is one of the first things to go with age...) so it was good to catch up and hear what was going on with her life. We went to this Polish place (I think - she had heard about it from other people) and it was really good. Her dish was kind of like a fancy version of what I fondly believe to be Hungarian Goulash since it was served with something that resembled spatzle (except made with veal escalopes) and I had a topside beef something-or-other braised in consomme - just what I wanted - a beef and vegetable dinner with a beefy veggie soup for dinner.
Then we had dessert at CL's favorite crepe place, almost next door to the restaurant. I got ice cream with chocolate sauce and she got a chocolate and banana crepe. Apparently the crepe is usually better (this one was kind of crunchy - not good). Then I had her try the ice cream. Also not good - there was something wrong with it, it tasted really fake and chemical-y. A shame really - they had the right crepe pan / burner things that I've seen on the streets of Paris and it smelled pretty good. I think they must have pre-made CL's crepe and it got dried out somehow. As you can see, this photo was taken before either of us had tasted the ice cream. There was an after photo as well, but I freely confess that vanity has prevented me from posting that photo.
4 hours of confusion...
Jetlag may finally be starting to abate - I slept in until 6am or something this morning - whenever it was that my alarm went off. Of course that may have something to do with being up a little past midnight, getting ready for this morning's cuisine practical. Rather, a double practical class - because we were running through our 4-hour final exam to see where we were in terms of timing and results.
There were 15 of us in the kitchen. I've been in the kitchen exactly once before, so someone had to show me where the numbers were on the ovens so that I knew where I was for my station. They staggered our start times by 10 minutes per side of kitchen so that we wouldn't all pile on top of each other while setting up. Fine in theory, but in practice - well, there were a few things we didn't know, so we weren't as efficient as we could have been. Or rather, I know I could have been more efficient if certain things had been clarified earlier on. Anyway - a demoralizing morning a little bit. I knew what had to be done with each component, but I kept losing my place and the induction burners have a few tricks with which I was unfamiliar. This meant I had to stop a few times to regroup and try to remember where I was in relation to where I wanted to be. I got told by a friend that sometimes it's good not to think.
Tartlet Florentine avec Oeuf Poche et Sauce Hollandaise (Tartlet with Poached Egg, Sauteed Spinach and Hollandaise Sauce)
The starter wasn't too bad but I messed up the timing a bit. Things actually take a little while longer in these ovens, possibly because the old ones often seemed to run super hot. This means that the 10 minutes I allocated to the tartlet shell was insufficient and I was cutting things close so I wouldn't have to reheat - not a good idea until you know how the kitchen equipment works. (Really - the ovens have a light, but it took a couple of tries to figure out they don't stay on if you take your finger off the button.) Then being a bit discombobulated and not feeling really comfortable, I missed a couple of very basic things - like seasoning the Hollandaise sauce. I tasted it, but only after I had presented the plate - ick. It needed lots of salt and some lemon juice in the worst way. Also, it was overcooked - I wasn't sure what that meant because it wasn't scrambled, but eventually found out that it was probably because my sauce was too thick (did I mention the lemon juice?) so it wasn't quite the right consistency. Spinach needs a bit of work - it's the English kind so quite a bit tougher than the Popeye the Sailor Man kind. You actually have to blanch it now instead of just sauteeing it, which is what we used to do.
Also, the eggs were old. How do I know? The whites just bloomed everywhere when I put in the second and third eggs. The first one was fine - I'm normally pretty good with eggs, even the slightly old ones, but we don't have slotted spoons and I was having difficulties coaxing the whites to envelope the yolks. I do know that if it happens in the exam, I'm going to request better eggs or something. And perhaps take them out of the fridge a little earlier, although I think that has less to do with the whites going everywhere than the age of the eggs.
The main
Verdict: deep fried pigeon legs (instead of confit - yummy, but not what they were looking for) and the pigeon crown was woefully undercooked. I venture to say that perhaps it was still not cooked at all? I'm unsure whether the chef was going a little bit easy on me because he knows it's only my second day in the new cuisine kitchens - I hope not because it would suck to feel like you're on track only to find out they were easing you in. There isn't time to be eased in!
I messed up the lettuce a little bit but I think that's an easy fix for next time. I wasn't happy with the timing (starter was 15 minutes behind where I wanted to be, 10 minutes beyond actual service time and the main was 15 minutes behind the actual service time - a fail if it had happened in the exam). Luckily there were a few things that did go right - both sauces (the pigeon and the lettuce glaze), the vegetables (although still need to practice turning - dratted turnips!) and the glazes...and a silly oversight - the parsley chiffonade, which is a stupid thing to lose points for in the exam. Still a possibility of passing the final, which would make me so happy. I got my review back - they call you out of the room to give you individual comments - I was so unhappy on the way out but it's always good to be told that it's not bad. Especially from a chef who is as amazing as Chef EB. I'm not sure if he ever says something is good - usually he says it's ok. But then again, he may say that to other people - I just don't hear it and that's fine because the day that I hear that something is good is going to be a day when I skip out of school.
There is hope on the horizon and I just have a bit of focused work to do.
As much confusion as there was in my head today, there is hope that it will be so much easier next time. Who knows, one of these days I might even figure out the induction burners without actually standing over the silly thing.
So until next time, I wish you ease of focus, clarity of mind and satisfaction in what you do.
I had my first coco puff a few nights ago. They're from Liliha Bakery which is known for several things, this being one of them. (My friends wanted to know how I had grown up here and never had one of these.) My favorite part was the pudding inside - it's one of the few things I have always liked. Unfortunately the climate here (and possibly the moisture in the filling) means that the pastry was not crispy like it is when you have a croquembouche. Trying to figure out how to make some at home is part of the fun when you eat something and you think of things people like (or don't like, as the case may be).
Equipment and recipe in hand, it was time to make choux pastry. So...a couple of years makes a very big difference because I couldn't remember how long I used to cook out the panade (the dough ball). Then I had to add an extra egg to get the right consistency because I had cooked the panade a little too long. And then the piping...uneven and...let's just say that you find out how much you need to practice when you start doing things again, even things which used to be second nature.
We used mystery flour - that is, it was in the fridge in the ziplock bag and I was really hoping it wasn't self-rising flour. We baked the choux pastry in batches, experimenting with the timing because we guessimated / approximated the temperature setting. (190 - 200 C for 20 - 25 minutes translated to about 380F for 20 - 22 minutes). The optimum time for us seemed to be 21 minutes...
Then the truffles...there was one made with the cream infused with genmai cha and another which had plain cream but parmesan mixed through it after it the ganache cooled, for the sweet/salty combo that SM likes. I'm not usually a huge fan of the sweet/salty but I have to say this was pretty good. The genmai cha infused truffle was rolled in kinako powder (from soy beans) and the other truffles were dipped in tempered chocolate.
Until I took my Patisserie finals, I felt pretty confident about tempering chocolate, once I got the hang of it. On the day of the final, I remember the kitchen was freezing and my chocolate got too cold, too fast and I had bad truffles. I hadn't tempered chocolate since and all of a sudden I was going to temper chocolate - with a brand that was too expensive to mess up (especially since I hadn't bought it!) - talk about performance anxiety.
This one did require us to get our hands dirty. Well, chocolate-y, anyway.
