#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.

#84 - Sebastian the Lobster, Interactive dining and the Little Mermaid

But first - a lobster, half a beetroot and some ratatouille
Friday was our lobster and ratatouille practical.  For some reason, people seem to dislike beetroot, sometimes before they've even tried it.  I was guilty of this particular dislike until a few years ago.  I had always been put off by the color and the fact that beetroot seems to stain everything it touches so I'm not sure what possessed me to try it that nameless day sometime in the distant past, but try it I did.  It was love at first bite.  It has a firm, but soft texture if that's possible, similar to eating a skillfully cooked turnip but much sweeter.


So the dish was a pan fried lobster, but only at the last minute.  We had to (mostly) cook it in the shell so that we could remove the shell first, to use to make something almost like a bisque - cooking off the shells and making a bouillon, then clarifying it with beets and egg whites.  Somehow getting the lobster out of its shell was a lot harder than I remember and this one had a ton of eggs.  It was actually kind of disgusting because they got everywhere and I kept having to clean my board, knives and work surface.  Plus I accidentally cut through the meat on one of the claws and completely mashed the other one.  Sebastian (yes, I know it's a boy's name) got some of her own back when one of her knuckles twisted in my hand while I was deshelling her - so there is a puncture on my left thumb and a slice on my right thumb (no idea how I got it).


I have yet to have a practical class in Cuisine where I haven't boiled something over - on Friday, it was the court bouillon to cook the lobster.  The clarification was quite nice although I had to discard some egg white part way through because it looked like there was too much egg.  Not enough sauce left to make an emulsion foam at the end, but the dish finished on time and the beetroot consomme was surprisingly good.  The ratatouille was pretty yummy, but we ran out of olive oil so I thought it was missing something.  I tried it at home after adding a little olive oil and it made a huge difference - part of the reason why I don't cook with extra virgin olive oil unless I am looking for the flavor.  It also took a little while longer than I would have liked to cut all the vegetables because I had to spend so much time trimming.  It's easier to get even cuts if you cut off the top and the bottom of the bell peppers and since none of the veggies had flat sides, you had to trim off and discard quite a bit.  Chef EB didn't say anything about them but I bet if I hadn't gotten them pretty similar sized, he would have noticed and said something.  As it was, he could tell I hadn't added the basil chiffonade at the right time.


Lobster was followed by a trek down to the pub, a fine after-class tradition which is not quite as regular as back when we were in Marylebone Lane.  A definite must though, after a Friday class.


Minor rejoicing
And finally, the biometric scan for my finger works!  I've forgotten, but one of the gates works to let me in and a different one (and those ones only) work to let me out when I scan my finger.  Suffice it to say that the working finger is not the middle one.  And it finally worked at the cafe so my prediction that the scanner will never work during my time at LCB will not stay true.  The new ID card is a different story and I'm still not sure that I will learn everyone's name in my group before the exams.  We're still working on remembering who's actually in the group.


Practicing...and bloody pigeons

Saturday was a practice session with JE.  We met at Borough Market because we needed some ingredients (pigeons, baby onions, a few other bits and pieces).  And of course, we both got a delicious toasted cheese sandwich.  JE was actually going to get something else, but a look at the steam rising in the air from a bitten corner of the sandwich and a tiny little bite convinced her that she wanted one of her own.  I remember ages ago when LM and I went to get one, we shared it and I thought it was so delicious that I could eat a whole one by myself.  Well, no, as it turns out.  I got most of the way through but the cheese was so rich (and I'm pretty sure there were lashings of butter on it) that I was defeated before I got to the end.

Spent part of the time practicing turning turnips.  I remembered that I wasted a little time during the mock exam doing extra ones (obviously losing some time there) but reminded myself that there would only be a couple of backups during the actual exam so some time should get picked up there, as well as the vegetable cooking.

I hate pigeon - the meat actually smells kind of vile.  After we thought it was cooked, I poked the meat when we roasted the crown and one felt pretty close to medium while the other one still felt really rare.  When I carved my pigeons, the parts that felt medium were medium, but the part close to the bone was still not cooked and even though it didn't bleed (much) when I carved it, blood got in the sauce when I put the sauce on the plate.  I'm not sure how I'll get the whole pigeon crown to medium at this stage because it looks like if the part by the bone is cooked, the rest of the breast might be overdone.  It's not quite as serious to be slightly under with the pigeon as it is with chicken (they want the pigeon medium, chicken has to be cooked through) but it can't be good if I can't roast the stupid thing.

We did manage to get the braising liquid from the lettuce sufficiently reduced to get a glaze and plate most of 2 plates.  No second lettuce and we skipped the chicken mousse because it's a component which is hard to mess up once you learn the tricks of the trade.  However, not particularly happy with the result of our practice and have to remind myself that conditions at home are very different from te ones at school.  For one thing, I'm not sure anyone has 7 pots at home and we spent part of our 4 hours washing up.  We did mark time for when we expected to be doing other elements during the exam (i.e. the chicken mousse for the lettuce, the poached eggs, spinach and Hollandaise sauce) but all in all it didn't turn out too badly, other than the pigeon which is still causing me problems.  Perhaps a longer sear - I'll have to ask the chef because the whole bleeding on the plate thing doesn't work for me.  The picture on the right above looks like one of those find the difference games they have for you when you're a child, the purpose being that the plates presented during the exam ought to be identical.   JE was unhappy with the sauce but I thought it was pretty good, taking into account we used the wrong stock (we didn't have veal and I haven't been able to find it) and the wrong wine (we didn't want to open a nice bottle of red wine and we had only gotten white wine from when we did the Hollandaise earlier in the week.

Made the tartlet but not the eggs, spinach or the Hollandaise.  For one thing, we ran out of pots and pans - they were all in use for the various components of the pigeon dish.  For another, JE had a little trouble with her dough and we don't know why.  And the moulds we used yesterday were a bit bigger than the ones we use for the exam so this was actually meant for practice lining and baking the tartlets anyway.  Not necessarily perfect (we don't know why the potatoes tasted better the last time we did them) but we learned quite a bit so it was definitely not a wasted day.

Dinner

There's this restaurant on Regent Street that I've passed by quite a few times and each time it seemed like one I would like to try.  Luckily one of my friends here had heard from someone that it was good so he booked 4 of us in.  It had interactive tables so we all had fun playing with it - it's pretty much like having a video screen of a computer screen on your table via projector and you can order food, drinks, ask for service, there's a Chef Cam which I thought was really cool (a bit blurry but watching the kitchen was kind of fun), each pair sitting across from each other played Battleship, you can flag down a waiter and change the decor on your table, to name just a few highlights.  I was going to take photos but the boys pooh-poohed the idea.  Well, they said boys don't take photos and I didn't want to embarrass them.  Food on the whole was good but my miso fish wasn't - couldn't taste the miso if there was any (really - but there was plenty of Thai sweet red chili sauce) and it was dry and super overcooked, so a little disappointing.  The fun factor pretty much made up for it though and we had a lot of laughs discussing whether it was a good idea or a bad one for a first date - consensus being it could be either one, depending on the date.

The restaurant had been described as a "funky Asian fusion" place so I put on pretty shoes to go out.  They were fine when I first put them on, but have come to the conclusion that they are more of the "sit there and look pretty" variety than "run down the street in high heels" kind.  We stopped by a bar on the way home, saw some wild gyrating in the direction of a hen's night (bachelorette party, for those of us not from the UK or Australia), then walked home.  By the time we got home, my feet were hurting.  Maybe it's just being out of practice walking in heels, but I suspect not.  I did think that perhaps this was the Little Mermaid's problem (the Hans Christian Andersen version, not the Disney one - where the price for being human was the loss of her voice and feeling like she was walking on knives while she followed her heart to her Prince and her death) - I bet she was wearing pretty but uncomfortable shoes.

Next on the agenda - writing out my recipes for the Patisserie exam runs this week and working on the portfolio.  I wanted to go to ballet this morning but am not sure whether my feet have forgiven me for subjecting them to high heels for an entire evening after weeks of sneakers, soft boots and kitchen shoes.

So until next time may your endeavors be more successful than our adventures have been thus far.

#83 - And down the stretch they come!

Entering the home stretch
Somehow it's sinking in that two weeks from tomorrow, it will all be over (assuming all goes to plan).  I can't believe that I have been in class for almost 2 weeks now.  In some ways it's like I never left and in other ways, I still feel a little like a headless chicken.  Hopefully that feeling will abate prior to exams, although there's a mild panic at the thought that my cuisine final will take place in a kitchen where I have never set foot (except to get a couple of band-aids).

Today's dish was the rabbit trio.  I was a little traumatized when Chef JB asked in demo who had had pet rabbits as a child.  Several hands went up - the most common name being Fluffy. Chef JB then dubbed his rabbit "Fluffy" before proceeding to dismember it into several pieces.  I named mine Peter (obviously whoever caught him was more successful than Mr MacGregor of the Beatrix Potter story).  Marinated the wrong legs for the confit so I got a little behind this morning - the thing is, you can't get flustered when something goes wrong or you lose a lot of time.  I got a little flustered so to hell with French trimming the rack of rabbit - it's a lot of work for a tiny rack, especially since the bones are so delicate.  I didn't serve it, but I did cook the racks.  The final dish had a few slices of roulade, confit, a braised leg and some baby artichoke.  There was also, of course, a sauce - a bit over-reduced, but according to the chef, still tasted good.  I wouldn't know, I didn't actually taste the sauce.  Or the rabbit.  Or the artichokes.  Actually - nope, didn't taste anything at all.


I packed half a rabbit with sauce and veggies for a friend from Cuisine who is now doing Basic Patisserie.  I notice the order of some of the desserts have changed.  Anyway, he likes rabbit so some of Peter went home to become breakfast (or so I was told).  I packed a bit more of the rabbit and brought it home for other people to taste.  I've had enough of it to know that it doesn't taste as bad as I thought the first time, nor does it smell as strong - maybe it has something to do with the fact that this time we cooked it a little after noon instead of first thing in the morning.


Anyway, we then went out to dinner to celebrate GS's birthday from earlier this week.  It was an early night - he wanted to hang out a bit more with NH (who also finished Cuisine last term and is doing Basic Patisserie this term) and me, but I was too tired and I think so was she.  We've actually had quite a lot of hours in class and I have been falling asleep for the last couple of days in the middle of the day.  Dinner was at the Senior Citizen hour of something close to 6pm...


Cooking with your heart
The chefs used to tell us that if you are happy, your food is happy.  If you're not happy, your plate will reflect that as well.  Maybe it's knowing that the worst (not being able to finish) has already happened or maybe it's something else - it doesn't feel like much has changed but somehow the cooking seems to have improved.  "More love, less passion" as one of our Patisserie chefs likes to say.  I mentioned this to other friends who finished Cuisine on time and they said they noticed the same thing - on the days when there was unhappy conflict in the kitchen, their plates were invariably "shit".  Hopefully things will continue to improve - we only have a few more classes to go before we hit finals.  I have been using classes as an opportunity to strengthen my hand as well - somehow there's always a little adrenalin rush - maybe it's the knowledge that there's continuous assessment every day, maybe it's that exams are almost here and the time is fast approaching when things will be over, one way or the other.  In any event, it will be a relief once it's all over - I have a feeling that there will be a few tears of tension finally receding when we have presented our pieces.  There's definitely a plan for people to get together and get some dinner after the 6-hour Patisserie marathon.  Still seriously considering whether to get Astronaut diapers - you know how it is, you always have to go to the bathroom at the most inconvenient time.  My current time plan does not have a bathroom break built in because I have used that time as a cushion against something going wrong.  Too much information?  I wonder if anyone has ever done it - I've heard of people who complained they didn't have time to go to the bathroom...


Monday and Tuesday will be our Patisserie skills test - a run through of the exam pieces.  Recipes will be refined/finalized after chef comments and we will see where we are with organization and seeing how long it takes to execute things.  There's a bit of waffling with a couple of components, but otherwise things look like they are on track.  Then it's the last minute panic of printing out our portfolios.  A bit more to be done for Cuisine, a lot more to be done for Patisserie.


Must go now - it is early but definitely past my bedtime.  So until next time, may your cooking adventures be full of more love, less passion...

#82 - Taking home the bread...

In which I have discovered new levels of stress
Whatever thoughts I might have had last term about getting ready for finals and doing portfolios was trumped yesterday.  An email reminder arrived from a course I enrolled for back in September - related to my job and obviously before I got injured.  The reminder email was to confirm technical setup with our lecturers in Sydney.  Yes, I am beyond silly in that I now have to finish my Patisserie portfolio, finalise the Cuisine portfolio, practice for the exams and...do readings for a dispute resolution course.  That could always go on the back burner but I have a couple of assignments due during the period that I am away so what I had thought would be easy down time at home over the Easter holidays now bid fair to be rather involved in catching up on the reading that I don't really have time to do over the next couple of weeks.  Between study / practice sessions and classes finishing full pelt, I have little free time as I have to pack up pretty much right after finals in preparation for leaving London for the foreseeable future.


Finals have started to permeate every aspect of life, from allowing no time for ballet classes to taking over conversations and any conversations I might have with anyone.  There has been random browsing on the internet as well as trying to think of flavor combinations within the list of ingredients which don't sound horrible (cinnamon and white chocolate made various faces screw up at the very thought).  Thus far we have had some good natured guinea pigs as evidenced by the mousse and raspberry thing the other night.


Good influences
There are good influences everywhere you look.  One of the girls from Cuisine has kicked my butt into actually making a practice schedule for our cuisine final.  That influenced a slightly less ambitious one for Patisserie - less so because there are a few things I can't practice at home (sugar and brioche).  In the meantime, our first practice session is tomorrow.  She has kindly offered the use of her kitchen and equipment - I will provide the things she doesn't have.  I have high hopes for the upcoming finals as I have only practiced on my own in the past.  If nothing else, this will teach me whether I am capable of practicing with other people or whether I need to do it on my own.


Gather ye roses...
In the meantime, we have been using the boulangerie module to practice brioche.  Mondy and today resulted in more bread items than we could carry - a happy bonus for friends not doing Patisserie.  We made a few breads for the day, then prepped a few other things for Tuesday (a second brioche recipe, the croissant doughs, etc.) which we did first thing in the morning - not a bad breakfast / morning snack.  We actually had so many that I gave a few to various people.  The porters like these days because they also get to share - we need assistance in making our take-home packages manageable and they get to have fresh bread - a win/win situation for all concerned.

After all the Viennoiserie was baked, we all had to do a quality control/taste test.  As you can see, they looked quite nice (my croissants are the two outer columns and the pains au chocolat on the left - we shared trays).  For hygiene reasons, I've been wearing a mask while I cook, but that doesn't interfere with tasting time.  The others in the background are ladling hot water in their cups so they can have coffee with their croissants.  Milk and sugar were already on hand for other ingredients so we were well supplied.

In which we eat - a lot...
Tuesday's afternoon session was for finishing a few other breads, then time for some fun.  We have these enormous deck ovens which can make their own steam so you get a really nice crust on bread.  The only thing is, these are apparently the small ones so it makes it a bit harder to have one at home.  You can make do but it's a bit more dangerous to make your own steam so I just do simpler ones.  The Viennese baguettes are baking on the left (just before we went for lunch).  Then we had to turn out and cut our pains de campagne in the second session.  It gets a really nice crust, it freezes well and it's really good when you defrost and toast it.  This is the one I had in my freezer when I got injured last term - really good with beans on toast - even better if the beans and toast is topped with melted Gruyere and a fried egg on top.

  

Pain Surprise
This is one we make with a rye bread mix (pain de siegle).  We baked the bread the day before, then chilled it over night - apparently that makes it easier to slice.  It's something you can do with any bread (so we were told) and traditionally people make them for parties - either as a finger food, part of a buffet or whatever - easy to eat and the display is quite nice.


Hollowing out my Aloha Honu ("honu" is Hawaiian for turtle) was a bit of a pain, mainly because I missed a little bit on the bottom and it was uneven.  Did manage to disguise the layers - the one on the left below is Chef's turtle, Terry.  Mine is in the centre and on the right below - the girls work at the dentist's office on the ground floor of the building where I'm staying.  They saw the turtle and they made the same impressed sounds I made when I first saw a Superior student taking home her hedgehog back when I was in basic.  Anyway, both girls are from Australia.  One didn't like smoked salmon so she just sampled the prosciutto one and the other one tried both.

As you can see, Honu was quite popular.  Knowing just how much butter I had spread over the various layers when making the sandwiches, I couldn't face eating so many more for dinner, especially since I had already had a pain au chocolat by then.  All I want was a nice salad - so this was dinner.  Of course I ended up having a second dinner a few hours later - apparently eating lots of butter and refined flour doesn't satisfy your body's need for food and it still demands the good stuff after you've given it tons of bad (but oh so delicious) stuff.

One of the girls who lives here asked why we make such a random thing as a turtle while we make such beautiful bread.  I had to think about it - but I think it comes back to Chef's explanation of the bread.  It's good for parties and canape-ish type things.  They teach us this stuff because some of the people will leave LCB wanting to open their own businesses.  This might not be appropriate, but then for those who go into catering or events type things, it might be a great way to do something that looks quite impressive and might make you a good profit.  I have to agree with my hosts though - the turtle did look a bit random just hanging out in the fridge while waiting to be eaten.  One of the guys doesn't like hard crusts on his bread so I told him this was perfect because there was actually no crust on the sandwiches whatsoever.


The remainder of the evening was spent doing more laundry - the baking trays have been cured over years of use but the whole not washing them thing means that they get crap on the bottom of the trays - so each day the pristine white uniform gets random rusty looking streaks not too long after you handle the trays.  I've washed my oven gloves but they still look a bit cooked.  Hopefully they don't affect hygiene marks.


Today is a late start - 3pm demo, then a 6:30pm practical.  Luckily the main time of the practical will be waiting for the lemongrass / ginger/ other spices bouillon to come together so there should be some yummy goodness to bring home for dinner.  There's enough time to drop off a Kugelhopf bread to a girlfriend (not cooking school) who had a baby not so long ago, with some of the bread from yesterday, then it's on to meet a friend from Cuisine to go over a couple of things for finals.  I can finally get some things out of the fridge, like the wood pigeons I bought over the weekend -I'm not sure if that means they were wild but we have to look for shot in them - and some of the vegetables.   Busy day ahead - must go.


So until next time, happy eating and sleeping!

#81 - Practice, practice, practice...

Hopefully not where they shop...

Yesterday I was meeting a friend to go make a practice schedule for our exam dishes.  While I was waiting, I happened to notice one of the ubiquitous sights we all take for granted.  However, the noticing ended up in a rather icky place - the street pigeon was just strutting his stuff on the sidewalks of Sloane Square.  Which is fine, except I was thinking of the cuisine final, saw this thing walking around and had the horrified hope that this was not where they source our pigeons!

I found out last night that it was one of my hosts' birthdays so what was going to be a pretty plain Sunday night dinner gave me an excuse to start practicing my plated dessert.  For the moment I was just practicing a couple of elements - got some good feedback so now the recipes need to be adjusted a little bit.

Sunday dinner

The main and starter had nothing to do with exam dishes for anywhere.  It was freezing today so a nice Sunday roast seemed to be in order.  Then because it was a birthday and I wanted to make sure there were some veggies in evidence, I ended up making a starter.  Good thing I had a couple of different kinds because one of the people isn't a huge fan of smoked salmon.  I've come around gradually to the cold smoked one but I agree with her - the flavor and texture isn't the nicest if you're not a fish person.  I am, but I still prefer the smokiness of hot smoked salmon.  Luckily I had enough greens to make more salad so everyone got to eat something they liked.

Then it was on to the mains.  I bought the beef at the farmer's market this morning from one of the butcher guys there - I think they had 3 or 4 guys.  Anyway - this was a nice, dry aged (29 days, I think) beef, still on the bone.  They had taken the fat rind off, which was a bit of a shame, but it still turned out ok.  I also did roasted vegetables - personally I'd rather have my roast beef with rice but I'm in the UK so I did as they do here.  The butcher had given me some meat trimmings because he didn't have any good bones and he couldn't sell the pieces he gave me.  Nice jus although it was a bit heavy - I didn't have veal stock so I tried a beef one instead.  It came out tasting kind of strong, but still good.  The meat was rested while we had our starter so even though it was cooked to about medium, I would describe it in the photo as closer to medium well.  Drat, missed the cooking point!

Playing with dessert
Not a happy camper - I couldn't do a joconde for various reasons and the genoise recipe is not meant for this.  Even worse, I hadn't thought it through very well and let me tell you, genoise doesn't seem quite appropriate for this dessert.  I didn't spread it well and it overcooked so it was hard to make it line up enough when I lined the moulds.  Had a bit of a problem with the which chocolate mousse when the chocolate hadn't melted enough by the time I needed to mix it with the angalise for the mousse so I had to warm it carefully so that I wouldn't kill the gelatine.


The end result:  white chocolate mousse (needs flavors adjusted), red wine and blackberry jelly and a raspberry sauce which should have been a glaze.  Need more jelly for the balance of the dessert and I'll need to rethink the glaze because it currently looks like something is bleeding onto my mousse.  So much to do, so little time.


So until next time, happy cooking.

#80 - 2 pigeons, a chicken breast, a headless chicken and a mock final exam

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.  

#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.