#118 - Happy New Year!

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.

#93 - Finally! The wait is over...

Today was a day of tears:  tears of stress, tears of nervous anticipation, tears of worry and unalloyed terror and finally...tears of relief.


Yes, it's official - I passed both of my practical exams although the Patisserie one was a very near thing.  It wasn't anywhere near what I would have called even a good effort in terms of technique, having done every single element better previously (and actually, same for the Cuisine final) - but it was done and it was enough to get me through.  I heard someone who is progressing through the levels tell someone else that now they are nervous - well, I can't help the tears which came with the relief of finally knowing, one way or the other.


The rundown
Friday's Patisserie was a nightmare.  It started with a dream during the night in which I was already in my exams, but then I woke up and I actually had to do it.  Who knows how long the dream lasted, but I was working on my sable biscuits in it - and in that odd, dreamlike way that time passes, it seemed like it had been going for days.


It was time to get equipment and things ready for the exam room - my bag had been packed the night before and all extraneous knives had been removed from my knife kit.  Eventually found the bread knife and the cleaver I had removed for the Cuisine final - in a box with odds and ends when I tidied up my room.  See, it might look more tidy with things put away, but then I can't get my hands on things so tidy is not the same as organized.


The first 3 hours of my exam were great - the brioche was done on time and proving in the prover (although I had initially written down the wrong time, I had written the start time so it was easy to fix) and the sable dough was done.  The bain maries were set up for the chocolates, my lemons zested, juiced and on the stove, ready to start reducing when we were allowed to turn on the heat and the raspberries with the sugar on another burner, ready to go for the jelly.  They have a rule that in the 1st hour, you may not turn on your stoves.


Turned the stove on as soon as I was allowed to so that things could do what they needed to do.  I set up my tray for the truffles (paper, wire rack) and baking trays for the jaconde biscuit (the cake sponge for my dessert) and tuiles.  The brioche was chilling in the fridge so I tempered the chocolate and checked on the lemon juice and raspberries, both merrily heating but not boiling away - perfect, right?


In which the cascade starts
Somewhere in the 4th hour, things started to go wrong.  I was all of a sudden starting to get a little behind and I'm not sure why.  The melted butter for my sponge had disappeared off my stove when I wasn't looking and I thought I had messed up the sponge (no, it turned out ok) but it was time to make the mousse.  The jelly was already setting in the blast chiller and the chocolate twirls were in the fridge but all of a sudden - my lemon juice and zest for the mousse were no longer on my stove.  There was no chance of sabotage because everyone was making different desserts and I wouldn't have taken the pots to the washup because I needed them - but where was the lemon juice?  The chef went to investigate but all of a sudden my timing was off.  The sugar couldn't get started because the mousse had to set while I did the sugar and my truffles hadn't been capped - already a problem because it was so cold in the Patisserie that the chocolate was too cold when I flooded the mould and the shells were very thick - I knew they weren't going to score high...what do you do when you know that things aren't going well and you can't fix it?  You keep on going and hope that somehow it works out. Had to keep going but there were a few moments when it would have been nice to curl up in a little ball under my station and just wait to wake up so that I could do my exam for real.  Except this was real and it was starting to feel horrible.


Towards the end, I knew I wasn't going to get the biscuits done in time because I didn't have enough time to chill them down as much as I needed to - a lightning decision to salvage what was possible - take them out early (delineations of the colors got lost, lost a bunch of points for technique and presentation) and presented them less than half baked because I was already 5 minutes over (automatic 10% deduction) and didn't want to get disqualified by going over the maximum time.  There is a certain agonizing pain that comes with presenting something you know is sub-par but there was nothing to be done except hope for the best and hope it was enough.


Debrief
Waiting for the results was absolutely excruciating.  On the one hand, not knowing means that there's always a glimmer of hope - you haven't failed until they tell you that you did.  On the other hand, waiting to know one way or the other leaves you unable to think of anything else. Despite everything I could do to keep my mind off it (tons of laundry, packing and re-packing,   multiple ballet classes in the same day, going out with friends) somehow it always came back to the nauseating finale of the Patisserie.  I knew the Cuisine exam wasn't as good as the mock exam but the Patisserie - it was touch and go as to whether I had passed.  Failure meant no Patisserie Diplome, no Grand Diplome (and trust me, it's a big piece of paper) and could almost seem to be a waste of having returned to London to finish the last month of classes.  Of course there's a bright side (seeing the new school, using the new equipment, being back in London)  but the silver lining was hard to see under the doom and gloom of a possible failure.


So - how did it all go?
Cuisine:
Chef EB told me I should go to France for 5 years and eat out at restaurants more.  Yes, chef!  I think he told a lot of people that they should go to France and eat there more, though - at least 5 other people in my group were told the same thing.  Oddly enough, the dishes were better during the mock exam although the timing was definitely better for this one.  Managed to have a respectable plate although the detailed comments weren't available due to a computer glitch.  Good - I don't need to know about my hollandaise or my tartlet which I know could have been better.  I'm sure they would have said the turning could have been better, some veggies overcooked (turnips again?), some veggies undercooked (carrots?) and who knows for the rest of it?


"Congratulations - you passed."  Even though I had felt quite confident about the Cuisine final, I didn't realize how tightly I'd been strung while waiting to hear those words until the tears started.  The release of some of the tension was almost unbearable, especially as Patisserie debrief was next and the tension ratcheted back up almost immediately, even worse than before.  I exited the debriefing room for a hug from classmates who were going through the same thing.  Some concern from the others as they saw my tears - "What happened?  Did you pass?"  A sigh of relief as I nodded, then congratulations all around as we said them to each other as each person exited a debriefing room (the Cuisine and Patisserie debriefs were in adjacent rooms - I am guessing it's because a few of us had to go to both rooms).


Patisserie:
Chef CB's comment about my tuiles - "cremated".  Well, that's about right - I'm not sure what happened - the temperature in the oven at home must be a little different from the one at school - hard go gauge, I didn't use the oven thermometer at home.  Also - a tuile and the backup broke during plating so marks were deducted for the plates not being identical, although since all the elements on the plate were present, I got credit for that and the portfolio.


And then the compulsory items...brioche - a bit tasteless (needed more salt) and the head was crooked.  Otherwise, ok.

Truffles - white chocolate went out of temper (again!) and the shells were too thick, the caps uneven, but the ganache had a good texture, technique was fine and tasted very nice (yes, the extra 5 drops of Framboise helped, I think).


Sable biscuis - were not cooked, not chilled enough before cutting, etc. etc.  No points for taste because it wasn't cooked so they wouldn't have tasted the biscuits.  Evil petit fours - I saw some on a menu the other night and ended up pushing it away with a shudder, unable to think about the ones I had presented on the cakeboard.


Coulis needed more sugar, the glacage was a bit too runny, mousse was nice, jelly was too jelled and at the bottom of the mousse instead of in the middle and the sponge needed more syrup (which also had Framboise in it.  I soaked the sponge well, but maybe I should have done the sides too...)  Messy plate, messy sauces...it could have been so much better.  The white chocolate twirl was way too thick - I probably should have used the small teeth on the comb but was too nervous I'd melt through them while plating - my fingers tend to run hot which sucks when working with dough or sugar or chocolate.


Then the sugar...oh dear - let's just say it was not good - but I'm glad I managed to get it done at all and it was still standing when it got downstairs - a relief since the sugar kind of got overcooked at the initial stages.  I don't have a photo of it (for my reference only) but let's just say that it fell far short of what I had hoped to produce.


"Despite all that, you passed."  More tears, a hug and a kiss before heading downstairs to clean out my locker.  What a relief to know that it hadn't all been in vain and although the day produced a crappy performance, it was enough to get me through to the end.


Nor was I the only one to cry from the sheer relief of knowing finally - and knowing that we had done it.  There was more than one person who was still upset about the performance we had handed in on the exam days and we compared notes in terms of what we had been told - quite a few of us were told our dishes didn't taste so nice (hence the the suggestions that we live  in France and eat out more), as well as other problematic areas of our techniques and things.


I do want to re-do and try out some of the suggestions the chefs made - I'm sure I can do better than I did.  Now just to figure out a way to do it...some things are easier to try at home than others and although my sugar pretty much sucked, I am so glad I don't have to do it again.


So until next time, may you find that the effort you put in is worth the final result.

#85 - Finals Practice Day 1 - Compulsories

It's almost like the old school figure skating competitions.  We worked on our compulsory items today and tomorrow we work on our free plated dessert.


Disclaimer:  Keep in mind the following while you look at the photos:  I haven't made chocolates since October and this is my second sugar sculpture since November.  I have never before made the spiral sables (and it shows!) but I made the brioche a few times last week.  You can see what was practiced recently and what wasn't...I'd fix the formatting but it's difficult to keep my eyes open and I have an early class, so must get on with it.

Compulsories started well enough.  The first hour was a frantic rush - the brioche got made, the sables were finished and rolled and by the second hour, the chocolate shells for the truffles had set and were filled with ganache.  It all started to come apart in the third hour - my sables ended up way too big (I'll make a half recipe next time) and the brioche took twice as long as it should have to prove.


Then the truffles - the seal went on well enough, but they were really stuck when I tried to get them out at the end.  Chef asked if I had cleaned my mould well - yes I had, and I had the extra spilled over bits of chocolate which had gotten into other holds in the mould which had come out easily, all shiny and pretty.  The culprit was my white chocolate - it had gone out of temper when I brushed it onto the mould because I wanted to get a lot of definition on the white lines.  Too many brush strokes and it kills your chocolate - the truffles stick to the mould and they don't come out cleanly, if at all.  The result - broken chocolates.  Since we have to present 6 identical chocolates on the day, this is a bit of a failure unless you count the broken-ness as them being identical.  I think the chefs might consider that an identical lack of skill... 

I don't know what happened to my sugar but it was all bad.  It crystallized, which it had never done before, so it was hideous when I tried to stick things together.  Then the main piece was too top heavy (and answers the question of which way the teardrop window should face) and it broke before I managed to present it to the chef.  In the exam you have to somehow glue the pieces back together and present something because the compulsories are just that - compulsory.  Failure to present one is an automatic disqualification - i.e. you fail the exam and the course - or at least, that's how I understand it.  If you manage to stick something on a cake board, you might eke out a half point, keeping you in the game - as long as the rest of your work is good.  I think most people had a shocker of a day today, although not all.  In my case, most of the tasting seemed ok but the execution of the techniques - oh my.  I so don't want to put up photos because it was all a bit of a disaster, but the whole point of this is to share the good (sometimes) and the not-so-good (lately feels like an awful lot of the time).


The brioche wasn't so bad although the head was on crooked.  I felt so disorganized this morning - my kit and bits and pieces had all been left at home because I had taken things out of my bag or put them back in or I thought I had put them back in.  When I found I didn't have a few things, there was some mild panicking for the first hour or so.  Hopefully tomorrow will go more smoothly now that I kind of have a better idea of what I want to do and I've reviewed my knife kit / Patisserie toolbox.  It's kind of stupid - there's a rule that you can't bring in a bag other than your knife kit because people were stealing stuff from the old school.  The thing is, we need a lot of extra stuff in Patisserie so you actually do need that extra bag for things like our paint scrapers, grout spreaders (I'm not sure if that's even the right term), extra palette knife - and since there are quite a few of us who seem to want to do the same thing, I've packed my own moulds.  This way I am guaranteed to have the correct sized moulds for various things, like my chocolate and tuile decorations, as well as the actual dessert itself.


Lunch provided a sop to the OCD part of my personality -a sink right in the middle of a casual Portuguese chicken place!  No need for hand sanitizer, I could wash my hands after I paid for my food and before I sat down.  How could any germaphobe or a self-professed clean freak not be happy?


Wish us Merde - we will need it in order to survive our feedback and the subsequent change of recipes.


Until next time, may you feel more competent at whatever it is you're doing than I have felt today.

#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.

#45 - Planning, planning, planning...dessert!

Reprieve
Saturday was supposed to be a double session - 8am - 11am, plan out an entremet (fancy dessert with multiple layers and textures filled with a mousse or a mousse-type filling) and decorated with things to show our artistic and technical skills with chocolate, possibly sugar, tuiles, flavor combinations and creativity, then 12 - 3pm making the bases for our desserts.  Um, ok...it all sounds really good in theory, except sometimes it takes a while for ideas to come.  So the first 3-hour set (or rather, a bit later) was spent trying to get our ideas together.

Lucky for us our chefs had pity on my group.  We were slated to start building the bases for our desserts that day (!) and finish them today with all decorations, etc. then get our feedback this afternoon.  It wouldn't have given us a chance to put in special requests for items not on the list of available ingredients or to figure out how to make certain items (for example, how to deal with wanting pineapple flavor in my mousse when pineapple contains some enzyme which keeps the mousse from setting).  After checking schedules, we were offered the chance to leave early on Saturday and have the feedback session on Tuesday at noon instead, giving the chefs time to order in special ingredients between Saturday and Monday afternoon.  Since all of us appear to be endowed with a certain amount of intelligence (or a sense of self-preservation), we all elected to wait until Monday afternoon to start the bases for our entremets.  I am hoping mine will be quite delicious.  Surely they will be able to guess the general theme given the request for coconut, pineapple and Malibu rum...

Starting at the end
Obviously I am not any good at starting at the beginning and continuing until I get to the end.  I seem to start at the end quite often, then loop back to the beginning.  Thankfully my name is not Alice and I don't have to worry about hearing "Off with her head!" in reference to the separation of said head from my body due to the inability to start at the beginning.

Back to the beginning - sort of
The last post ended with the chocolate box, truffles and finally having an item finished for presentation.  The lid fell out of the package on my way home and smashed into a zillion pieces.  The box and the truffles went to one of the girls in Cuisine - she likes chocolate and I am happy to see the end of chocolate - until Monday afternoon when we will be doing more work with it.

Return of the Evil Puff Pastry - Take...9,783,301
Ok, this heading might be guilty of a tiny bit of hyperbole and just a little drama queenishness, but it's quite true.  We had to make puff pastry on Wednesday in preparation for Part II of our Beef Wellington practical.  Beef Wellington Part I involved making the puff pastry in a cuisine kitchen, which we have aready established is not cool.  In addition, foie gras needed to be seared, truffles sliced, a lot of mushrooms chopped, a few other things chopped, sliced and diced and a chicken mousse made.  In between various steps the puff pastry needed to have a few more turns and the beef stuffed with cooled cooked foie gras before being tied and cooked to rare.  Doesn't seem like a lot except that after the last time I made a mousse, I was too nervous to rush it this time.  I'm not sure where all the time went, but went it did and I was left at the end of the practical wondering what alternate dimension I had been in while everyone had been cooking in this one.

Fortunate ones
Thursday morning did not start well for a couple of the Cuisine groups.  Somehow the cool room, where they had stored their puff pastry, prepared beef, chicken mousse and the remaining mise en place from the day before, had had the power turned off overnight.  The result was that anything that contained protein was not usable and they had to start again (although apparently they were given puff pastry from the rolls the school has when we don't have to make our own and the chef made more mousse for them), then finish their Beef Wellingtons.  I have to say, the students in those groups were very cool about it all.  Maybe it was different in the kitchens, but when we saw them outside later, they were fairly philosophical.

My beef ok - a bit overdone on the very outside because I didn't sear it quickly enough, although it was rare in the middle, which was the aim.  The good part about it was that LM had been wanting to try the Beef Wellington for a while.  This piece was supposed to serve 2.  It ended up more as about 3-4 meals.  Neither of us likes foie gras as a general rule.  I picked mine out and she managed to eat hers.  There was no sauce left to speak of since it had all been poured on the meat which had soaked it all up by the time I got it home.  As always, the meal was much more enjoyable when shared with a friend.

The next day was a red mullet in crispy potato scales - a signature dish at Bocuse.  It seemed straightforward enough - make a broccoli flan, clean 2 scallops, boil the shells, butcher a fish, make a sauce, cover the fish fillets in scales made of potato slices. Except somehow that managed to take all of the time allotted to the practical.   One of these days I will have something that is good pretty much all around.   Fish day was not one of them. We had to mount the sauce in butter at the end but it kept reducing while I was waiting to plate. The result - a thick, buttery sauce which was to heavy for a plate where the fish was basically fried, covered in fried potato scales (yes, we had to lay them on one piece at a time) and a flan with double cream in it. Saffron also tends to get pretty strong when it reduces for that long, so must learn to keep from forgetting about the sauces on the stove while doing other things.

We happened to make it and finish just in time for lunch.  3 guesses as to what I had for lunch that day (and the last 2 don't count).

Friday night was a quiet-ish one.  That is to say, there was a brief stop at the pub before heading off to ballet class.  A teacher whose class I haven't taken before - learned a lot, still feeling it in the legs...

A perfect afternoon
Then of course there was the Saturday morning and the reprieve mentioned at the beginning of this post.  It turned into one of those relaxed afternoons - I met up with LM and we had a late lunch in Chelsea, then wandered around a bit.  It was the usual perfect girly afternoon - we chatted about a zillion things but if you asked what they were, I couldn't tell you.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, a little on the cool side - perfect, because it's not as nice to walk around it if it's hot.  We passed the Chelsea (Farmer's?) Market - it only took a glance at each other before we headed in the entrance.  I think we were both expecting something like Borough Market - a big, sprawling market with lots of stalls and things.  It was actually a few restaurants / pub-type things and an organic store.  It was cleverly designed so once you went in, you kind of got funneled past the shops and restaurants.  There was also something that looked like a giant green house, once you got past the little atrium of flowers which just looks like a flower stall.  We didn't make it in because it was getting on in the afternoon and we were headed to lunch at a bar whose name I can't remember.  There was a garden area but it was such a nice day that it was crowded out there (and the smokers were outside, which I find tends to spoil the taste of your food if you aren't a smoker).  Inside it was, and a very unhealthy but yummy lunch.

The nice thing about being a grown-up (or at least being able to go places by yourself and do mostly what you want to do) is that if you want to, you can have crispy fried chicken bits and nachos and a chili dog (all beef - my first chili dog ever) and no one will say anything.  For those of you who know me, I shared all that food...it appears that London has revealed the limits to even my appetite.

After a late lunch we headed to Oxford Street and John Lewis - LM wanted a particular cake pan (they didn't have it) and we both needed to do some baby shopping.  She had a godson whose christening is coming up and I have a niece or a nephew arriving soon.  And of course since it was close to the children's section, she and I both ended up shopping for our respective nieces.

At the end of it all, we both had quite a few items and had to take ourselves out.  It helped that the store was closing!  We dropped off a few things, then had a quick bite (well, hers was quick) while we discussed what she was going to do for the dessert after the christening.  There were certain constraints on what she could do and they limited her options.  The result was something that she is going to try out this week, using the big pan I bought which has adjustable dividers.

(Our bite - because it's French food.  The beef bourguinon was delicious and she loved her feuilletine with chocolate mousse thing.  True to form she went for the sweets and I went for the food.)

Then I remembered I still had leftover puff pastry from beef wellington and it needed to be used.  We have a student event dinner coming up and the palmiers I made with the leftover pastry were so cute, I proposed them as a possible petit four to my team mates.  I also finally see why we don't use this puff pastry for croissants. 

Sunday morning and a tense morning of watching the Rugby World Cup and lamenting the Wallabies' form. Occasional flashes of brilliance and a general improvement over some of their previous problem areas, but not up to their best standard. Playing against the All Blacks, I'm not sure that a team can afford to play less than their best. Especially since NZ was trying to break away from their tendency to lose to Australia during the World Cup - well, at least during the last couple that I've seen.

This was followed by brunch, which turned into lunch in Islington.  I was meeting ACP and KP for lunch, whom I hadn't seen since late August or so.  They are expecting Baby P so ACP is a bit restricted in what she can eat.  Fortunately palmiers are on the list of "can eat".  Lunch was ok, but the company was excellent.  Quick dinner with a friend from Australia (who has now relocated to London) at a pub, then home to prepare recipes, etc. for class.

Entremets (aka fancy dessert of our own design aka Tropical Sunset - because I didn't want to put Hawaii in the title)

Thank goodness I checked my schedule last night.  I thought we had class from 3-9pm, which has been the case for the last couple of weeks.  Of course if I had turned up at 3pm today, class would have been over.  That's right, it started at 8am.

Am rethinking making fruit glazes - reducing juice takes a long time and you have to reduce the amount of water to concentrate the flavor, as well as other technical things which I can't remember right now, but it's important because of our final exam (which is 8 weeks away).  Have realized that my time plans are completely unrealistic.  They might be fine if I were SuperChef or something, but since I'm just me...we'll see how it comes out tomorrow.  One of my jellies didn't set today - thank goodness I'd made a second one (and added a tiny tad more gelatine to it).  We put everything together and we unmould them tomorrow, then finish our decorating.  My chocolate was really bad today - it set so fast that I couldn't bend it without cracking it.  Hopefully they broken pieces will be big enough to use.  The tuiles kept breaking because of the toasted coconut in the mix - I forgot that if you put things in the batter, they can make it more fragile.  We'll see what's left tomorrow...

In the meantime, have made a pina colada mousse, poached pear and compote, passion orange jelly, have reduced the passionfruit puree and orange juice for the glaze tomorrow and kept back some of the Malibu for the pina colada coulis.  Haven't worked out what I'm going to do with the crunchy biscuit layer yet...photos forthcoming.  I believe there will be tasting (and judgement?) tomorrow.  For now, I am doing more laundry to combat the insidious appearance of chocolate in odd places - hardly ever on the front of my jacket, but frequently on the left sleeve or the right elbow...

One of the other girls did something with pina colada too, which I only found out this morning.  No problem, we shared the coconut milk.  She is extremely artistic and ended up tempering white chocolate, some of which she colored, before piping her chocolate decorations.  I expect it will all be very impressive and am looking forward to seeing it tomorrow.  Chef GB had a little taste and said it was a sexy mousse.  Great to see passion for food doesn't fade.

So until next time, share a bite, share a story and have fun with your loved ones.

(I actually started writing this on Saturday, so please ignore any lapses in the chronology.)

#44 - Jinxes, chocolate and more chocolate.

It has been just a few short days since the last post and already it feels like things are starting to ratchet up about 100 notches.  For one thing, we now have our briefs for our final exams for each of Cuisine and Patisserie.

Let the Panicking begin
The Patisserie final is 6 hours long and designed to take up pretty much every second of those 6 hours.  Am seriously contemplating the need for those astronaut diaper things - they don't stop the clock once it starts.  We are having 6-hour stints in Patisserie at the moment as quite a few of our practicals require 2 parts (we get a break in the middle, our pieces get a chance to set before assembling) so it's almost a chance to get used to working for that time.  This entire term is basically going to be spent going over things to prepare us for our final (3 compulsory items, poured sugar sculpture and our 2 identical plated desserts which have 8 components by the time you get to the sauces and decorations).

The Cuisine final is 4 hours long - and includes my current bete-noir, Hollandaise.  Hopefully we get an extra egg or two because poached eggs have known to break during reheating under the stress of plating.  We have to plate two identical starters (savory shortcrust pastry tart with what looks like sauteed spinach, poached egg, Hollandaise and garnish) then two identical main course plates (pigeon, chicken mousse[?], more turned vegetables, confit something or other and sauce).

Recap
Ah, but I am ahead of myself here.  First, a backtrack to the last two Cuisine dishes from last week:  the herb crusted salmon steak with mushroom flan and Madeira jus, followed by the grilled Lamb Noisettes with Potatoes Maxim and Asparagus with Hollandaise.

The Salmon Steak
I think I am jinxed when Chef FJ is in the kitchen.  Every single practical we have had with him has ended with sad food...in this case, the salmon was overcooked (I like it cooked all the way through but they wanted it medium) and the mushroom flan was too egg-y, even though I followed the recipe.  I can't tell if the photo I have is of Chef's demo plate or mine, so I have left it out.  I suspect it's the demo plate because the mousse looks fine on it and mine had problems.

I have promised Chef FJ that one of these days I will get him a good dish.  He said he is waiting...

Lamb Noisettes
This one was a bit of a Three Bears and Goldilocks plate - I thought I sliced the pieces evenly but somehow ended up with one overcooked (just how I like it), one just right (medium) and one undercooked.  Part of that was running out of time - I'm not quite sure how or when, but it happened.

Return of the Evil Hollandaise
Well, a variation of the evil Hollandaise, anyway.  I'm not sure if the difficulty here is that the sauce is actually so difficult or whether I've gotten psyched out by its reputation.  In any case, it seemed to be going well, then split while I was adding my butter before service, which is why it is missing from my asparagus stems.  The result was a slightly acidic butter coating on the asparagus (which needed more salt - go figure).

A deep breath
Then it was a lovely weekend of catching up with friends (World Cup Rugby breakfast on Saturday, lunch cooked for me by a friend, dinner with another friend from Sydney) dancing on Sunday and trying to figure out my recipes for Cuisine and Superior finals.  Oh - and laundry.  Somehow I ended up doing laundry every day last week due to chocolate mysteriously appearing in random places on my uniform and the heat in the Cuisine kitchens (a cool and breezy 33C).

Chocolate nightmare
Monday was not a good day this week.  It started out well enough with tempering the chocolate.  The problems came when it was time to unmould our large egg moulds - my chocolate egg halves came out of the moulds like they were supposed to when I flipped it.  Unfortunately, I happened to tap the mould down to release the last egg (there were 3 halves) just as one of them dropped out of the mould.  The result:  unmitigated disaster.  I tried to fix the egg but ended up having to borrow Chef's egg in order to finish the windmill.  Having handled the base so much, my fingers left smudges all over it which is why it's not shiny in the photo.

Then of course there was the cracking of the windmill blades (?) themselves.  Oh dear...the only thing that turned out ok were the practice milk chocolate truffle shells, although they could use a bit more white chocolate by way of decoration so that it doesn't look like a mistake.  We have to use 2 different colors of chocolate and temper both simultaneously.  This was just a practice run - I am so glad they built in so much practice time for these.  If something must go wrong, better to do it while there is a chef in the room so they can tell you what you did wrong (other than being stubborn and not listening to them).

We don't need no stinkin' gym!
One of the things about tempering chocolate (other than trying to keep your own temper when things are not going well) is that the initial melting and tempering becomes easier (not easy, you'll note).  The hard part comes with trying to keep it at the right temperature to use.  The Chefs can tell pretty much by looking at it.  I have to check by using the back of my finger.  So as it gets cooler, it gets thicker and more viscous.  Which isn't fun when you have to keep stirring it to get it back to temperature.  I haven't been to the gym in longer than I care to remember, but all the aching arms (both of them, from switching when one gets tired) have resulted in getting stronger.  Moms have babies, Patisserie students have chocolate.  And dough.

Sweet success

Today went much better - the chocolate tempered, the shells for the truffles got made (ok, a little thick at the very top) and the chocolate box was (mostly) ok except for the little bit where I didn't spread enough chocolate for the bottom.  There was a certain amount of hurry up and wait because you have to work fast with the chocolate when you work with it, then you have to wait for it to set.
Somehow the mistakes got salvaged with the result on the left.  This is my Chocolate Box (entirely made of chocolate) and a couple of different types of chocolate technique thrown in - or rather, required by Chef CB.  I wanted to do a swirl but the pieces kept breaking (hence the skinny ones) and the ones I had meant to make swirly ended up being the larger curls.  At this point, I was just happy to get them on the box.

One of the girls in class didn't want her white chocolate truffles so she offered them to me - I put them in my box because they all look so pretty together.  And I dropped the box lid on the way home, so it's good I have the couple of extra truffles kicking around in there - it doesn't look quite as incomplete.

Tomorrow we get going in Cuisine again - Beef Wellington Part 1 (the puff pastry, chicken mousse, beef and a few other bits and pieces).  Wish us luck with the puff pastry.  I have a feeling we are going to have to work on the baking trays again because we don't start cooking until noon.  I am guessing the kitchen will be hot.

Until next time - enjoy the eating.  And now I know why chocolates are so darn expensive!

#43 - Cutting off feet...and wet dog smell?

(Intermezzo)
Thank goodness I tried to make a couple of things when I was back in Sydney.  They may have been partly unsuccessful and I still bear marks from mysterious sources (ok, the cut on my thumb was my chef's knife, so not a mystery) but at least I hadn't completely forgotten how to cook.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your brains...

Truffles - to set overnight

I think everyone's brain is still a tiny bit switched off.  Or it may have something to do with the fact that we started at 8am on Monday morning (which means we were in the locker rooms at 7:30 or so) and then did things with chocolates, nuts and other messy but fun things for the next 6 hours.  Well, there was a 30-minute lunch break...then we got to do it all again the next day because some of the things we made on Monday needed to chill overnight before we could finish them.  The result:  6 kinds of truffles, 6 kinds of ganache, 3 confectionary items (one of which went onto a ganache) and 3 praline things.  It actually looked quite impressive once we laid out the trays with all the goodies.  I took home 2 containers full of the things we made, which eventually made the rounds to several friends.

Cutting off feet

Deciding which ones to take home
(all of them, of course!)

When we had finished our initial allocated tasks, people help others finish theirs.  My team was lucky that our tasks seemed quite straightforward and were not time consuming (although the brittle took a lot longer than we thought it would).  One of the things I was supposed to do to help was to cut the feet off the dipped nougat.  It's when you trim off the little bits of chocolate that spread out past the base of the thing you're making to neaten them up for presentation.  EA gently reminded me I was supposed to just trim the feet, not cut off the chocolate dipping on the sides.  Whoops!  Luckily I only did that on one nougat piece and the remainder were fine.

We even finished the second day early enough to have a quick run at making the shells for our exam truffles.  Good thing we did, mine were a fail and will need lots of practice - something some of my guinea pigs are already cheering.  The good thing is that I got to figure out what NOT to do in the exam.

Seriously - start your brains.
Then first day of Superior Cuisine which started off with a bang.  Actually, it was more of a squeal as I fell up the last 4 stairs on the way up to our demo (note to self:  heeled sandals on stairs + running does NOT = good idea when caffeine has not yet been ingested).

The first demonstration was a wake-up call in working cleanly.  I'm not sure I will ever be able to work as neatly and tidily as Chef EB.  I noticed during class that my station had stuff everywhere - so now it's time to be more organized.  Although that would imply things were organized before.  Anyway - Chef EB managed to go over our course manuals, prep 3 (or was it 4???) livers for the terrine tomorrow, give us a break, then prepare and cook 4(???) mallard ducks, plate and feed us.  We students did 1 duck apiece in our practical and still managed to go a little over.  Most people managed to get satisfactory results with their dishes (my duck breast was a tiny bit overcooked and the legs a tiny bit under, carrots and duck legs needed more salt and the sauce was over reduced.  Ahhhh!!!!!  Still coming along - but will it ever arrive?  It's like waiting for Godot - and I fondly think of Doc Bassford and Doctor Gorsky from high school as I think of Godot).  Presentation needs work, but at least most of it tasted fine.  Have managed to find a loving home for one serving tonight and tomorrow will see the other serving go to another home.

Wet dog smell
You might be wondering what the smell of wet dogs has to do with cuisine if we're not actually out there hunting down our own wild ducks.  Here's the thing - apparently it's the smell of game.  It bothered most of us to a greater or lesser extent and all I could think of was large, hairy, wet dogs.  Chef DM was convinced that I must have stuffed wet dog smell up my nose.  Of course he was also teasing me about my "delicate" hands as they were covered in duck blood while I was ripping out the spongy bits left behind from the lungs when I took out the heart and whatever other things they left inside the cavity of the duck.  It took scrubbing my nails like TV surgeons do in order to get the smell off my hands.

Tomorrow is salmon steak.  Must go to sleep - things are starting to feel floaty and we have class from 8 - 6.  There's a lunch break in there somewhere, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it to ballet after school.  Monday and Tuesday were only 6 hours of class but they felt much longer.

So until next time, happy cooking.