#27 - And the examining begins...

A quick rundown of the last couple of days...Had a cuisine demo and a practical on Monday.  Then we had our Patisserie theory exam.  I have invented a new recipe which combines the bread dough and the eclair recipe.  I will not be trying it at home and I'm quite sure that the chefs looking at the recipe will probably need a bottle of cognac to get through them.

Whose stupid idea was this?
Have asked myself whose stupid idea this was and then remembered it was mine.  Wit and wits have temporarily (I hope) deserted me - all I can remember are numbers and sort-of patterns/ratios.  Like, short crust pastry is 2 flour to 1 butter.  Sweet pastry is not quite that ratio.  The sponge (Genoise sponge, not one of the other 5 or something that we've done in the last couple of weeks) is 1 flour to 1...sugar?  Butter?  Eggs???  Drat - have to look at it again!  Luckily that practical exam isn't till Monday morning.  At 8am we will be assigned our stations and exam dish which we draw out of a bowl.  It would be a hat except that this is a cooking school, not a millinery school.

Still having classes!
There is no study period as such.  We had class on Saturday - 8am, then again at 12pm.  It was eclairs but they changed the quantities so although the ratios are the same, I can't use it to consolidate the recipe in my mind for next week.  Or rather, I could, but then it would be wrong for the exam and they deduct marks for the first 9 minutes or so that you are late, then after 10 minutes, they fail you.  Basic Cuisine and Patisserie are full for next term...

So Saturday we did a beef stroganoff, then eclairs in the afternoon with the pastry cream filling - yum.  Too bad they are still lumpy and sad looking.  On Monday it was meringues shaped like eggs and poached in a syrup and a creme caramel.  No photos of the caramel - because we did it in the 2nd week (I think) of Patisserie, but also because I had a problem with mine and it was only just set as we finished class 2 hours in.  There wasn't time to cool it and unmold it (it would have gone splat on the plate).  Luckily there were two, so I left them for the nice porters who washed so many of our bowls and pots.  Have also managed to burn my finger because it slipped when I was checking on the creme caramels in the oven.  Ah such is life - as long as I don't do it as part of my practical exams, it's all good.  Anyway, this picture is of the oeufs a la neige avec creme Anglaise (aka snow eggs with vanilla sauce).

Have unearthed chicken scratches in my notes where I clearly fell asleep during class and was still trying to take notes.  I must have had my eyes open, no one nudged me awake and the chefs usually ask people to poke whomever is sleeping through a demo or lecture.  Have found further chicken scratches in my study notes.  Ability to sleep is currently only in evidence when I am sitting up with my notes.  Said ability immediately departs upon trying to go to bed as evidenced by my attempt on Monday at 6:30pm following little sleep and a couple of classes, one of them rather unsuccessful.  Of course as soon as I get up to study again, I will fall asleep on my chair...

People have been short of sleep and occasionally, tempers, for the past week or so.  Some of them have had their eating patterns affected - even more so than usual.  We are getting used to late dinners after our classes which finish at 9pm - hopefully not so many of those next term if the incoming Basic students have a similar schedule to what we had...some of the girls have said that they can't stop eating because they are stressed.  Others can't eat and still others can't stop once they start, but they are too stressed to start...

No signs of Iron Chef-hood
Today was my Cuisine practical exam.  I went over by 3 minutes.  Our kitchen chef was counting down ("Station 3, you have 30 seconds...20 seconds...10 seconds...).  I wanted to tell him that although appreciated, he wasn't helping but I was too busy trying to take a deep breath and make sure that I got something on the plate.  Also he made me calm down and make sure that I plated accurately.  The sauce wasn't reduced enough, not degreased none of my vegetables were cooked enough and there was a bit of disastrous knifework with the parsley chiffonade but at least I had the right ingredients and all of them on the plate.  I didn't think we were supposed to brown the potatoes so I didn't.  We'll see if that was correct or not.  Hopefully a certificate will still come out of this.

Thoroughly demoralized by 2:33pm but I packed the chicken and took it home.  I had a friend from Intermediate Patisserie coming over for dinner after her theory exam - and possibly a class, I can't remember.  Had a little rebellion against French food and ended up serving smoked salmon and cream cheese to go with the baguette, although the cream cheese was in (messy) quenelles as a nod to presentation (being plan B after I couldn't get the cream cheese out of a mold neatly).  Note:  cream cheese can be quite crumbly and is hard to quenelle neatly.  Also made some poke which I shaped with a tiny measuring cup (see the bowls).  Yes, I know - the picture is blurry.  Obviously my acquaintance with the focus thing on my camera is still marginal at best.

There was no time to taste anything during the exam to check for seasoning.  However, if dinner was anything to go by, it should still have tasted pretty good - assuming the chefs doing the tasting don't like to have chicken with their salt.  No, I don't have a picture of the fricassee, either from the exam (I can't believe I even thought there was a chance of getting a shot!) or from dinner (which we ate with rice and broccoli - to hell with glazing vegetables) but you can take my word for it that LM and I both enjoyed it.

Cannot wait until noon on Monday.  For better or for ill, our exams will have finished and our classes as well.  For now, we will have finished 3 out of our 4 exams by Wednesday afternoon this week, but we still have classes on Thursday through Saturday.  Interestingly, we have a demo for Patisserie on Friday at the same time that we are scheduled to have our debriefing sessions with our Cuisine chefs about our exam results.  I am curious to see how the school is going to arrange for us to be in two places at once...

Until next time - take a deep breath and remember - it's just food.  And get some rest!

#26 - In which studying has commenced and I have no idea what happened on what day

In which the size (or lack thereof) of British refrigerators is really brought home at last
The last post gave a tentative menu for dinner on Sunday night.  Well - my refrigerator only fits so much in it (it is rather mini) and it is still filled almost to capacity.  I had to give in and the eggs are now residing in my microwave - I expect they will be gone within the next few days.  Patisserie goes through eggs, butter, sugar and flour like nothing else I've ever known.  Of course I know a very teeny tiny bit about law (in Australia only), a teeny tiny bit about bees and...that's about it, so I suppose it's a rather limited statement.

The fridge in this photo contains 30 large eggs (63 - 73 g), 3 medium eggs (50 - 60g), 3 kgs of unsalted French butter, 2.4 kgs chicken, 2 containers of left over ganache, 3 cheeses, 2 containers of cream cheese, smoked salmon, miso paste, salad, green vegetables (not the ones for dinner) and other fridge staples.  Unbelievable - can you believe it's just one person who lives here???
I had to have a rest after I lugged home all the groceries.  I then had a quick visit with Michael and Rufus a couple of doors down.  I can't remember if it was just to say hi, but I suspect I dropped off some food - I can't remember now.  Anyway, I was tired and I needed a hug.  Rufus was kind enough to oblige me with a solution to both mini-dilemmas.  Yes, we are lying on a sidewalk - but actually, I am laying on Rufus (who has had a bath and is consequently better than the sidewalk).

The best laid plans - or perhaps not...
Things did not go according to plan.  For one thing, I never made it to the fishmonger to check out the fish and for another, I didn't use the salad that I bought at the Farmers' Market.  You might quite rightly wonder why, to which I can only say - when space is as limited as it is in my kitchen and you spend as much time as I do wondering "where did I put those blasted shallots?  I just had them a second ago!" the two hours allocated run out quite fast.  Of course if I can do it in a kitchen where I don't have enough pots and pans, my pan doesn't fit in the oven for the braising and I don't have space for mise en place (i.e. putting everything in its place) I can probably get it done in the space and number of pots allotted to each station in the kitchen at LCB.

Not one of my more clever ideas
I had this idea I would be super efficient and do all kinds of things at once and amaze myself.  Well, there was amazement, but not in the good way.  I hadn't realized quite how limited the counter space was until I had butchered my chicken on the space where I normally dry 2 glasses and a pair of chopsticks (or in this picture, where the bowl is drying). 

There was no room for all the washing up or a place to put the dishes/pots once they were washed, especially since my dishwasher chose that day NOT to work.  It is now perpetually not working and the agents, despite promises to get onto it straight away, have done their usual stellar job of...well, nothing, as far as I can tell.  Must remember to give them the benefit of the doubt - they may just have forgotten to tell me that someone is coming to fix the dishwasher.
I have no idea how long each thing took so I can't compare it against the tentative timing set out for each task.  Note that the timing didn't allow for having to wash so many dishes and pots because I was doing two practices at once.  Yes, that's correct, I tried to run through two exams simultaneously.  Luckily the fricassee wasn't too bad (no carrots because I had no room and was trying to wash pots and pans while making the meringue for the tart and chilling the lemon curd which refused to set).  Any defects in the dish are mine and on purpose due to various constraints, I swear.  Except for not having enough salt.

Not ready yet
I know I am not quite ready for either exam because I forgot a couple of crucial steps in my Patisserie run - like leaving the rice on the table instead of putting it into the tart pan when I did the initial baking (blind baking) of the tart lining.  It was in the oven, I looked at the table and then had to think why the rice was sitting there instead of in the tart case which was already in the oven, which explains why the tart kind of fell over but not why I lined it badly.  I can say that it took 4.5 hours to do both dishes though - so dishwasher breakdown notwithstanding, I kind of passed both practicals, assuming I get the lemon tart on the final.  I still have to practice the other two (tomorrow we are taking a run at eclairs in cuisine as part of making easy classical French desserts).

My verdict:  Not horrible, not great.  They all tasted pretty good, taste comprising 20% of the marks for each exam, so I have hopes of at least passing, barring any silly mistakes.  LM and MA liked dinner.

This week...
is not over yet.  It is Friday night/Saturday morning and I have to go to sleep soon.  We finished our class tonight just before 9pm - there was no way to go faster because we had to rest our dough so many times.  It was 28.8C in the Boulangerie - which doesn't sound too bad except the butter didn't like it and consequently, neither did the dough for our petits fours.  Tomorrow we have a double Cuisine Practical - Beef Stroganoff (with more julienned vegetables), a quick lunch / water break then back to the kitchens for the eclairs.  But I am getting ahead of myself here.

Evil sabayons
I forget which day we did the grilled steak.  Tuesday, I think.  Once again I had trouble with my sauce - Bearnaise (i.e. Hollandaise but with added vinegar, peppercorn, tarragon & white wine reduction) - it was too thick and then - it split on my bain marie in less than a second.  We managed to bring it back, or rather Chef J did.  I had been told the theory but this time I got to put it in practice.  Um yeah - I did it on purpose so that I could learn how to fix a split sauce...really.
Fries were "way too small, Chef" and the steak unevenly cooked. Apparently it was medium rare, our target. It still feels squishy and rare to me. I had to cook it more when I got home. LM also thought the steak was rare, so it was perfect for when she had it for dinner whichever night it was. Luckily everything tasted good, according to the tasters. I wouldn't know - I haven't been able to smell anything since Monday. Hopefully the cold will be completely gone by Tuesday - seasoning is going to be difficult if I can't smell / taste.

Lord I don't want to be one of their number
We had one day where we didn't have to cook.  I think it was Wednesday - there was a demo (it must have been the eclairs) and then the ice cream/sorbet tech class for Patisserie in the afternoon.  I had to throttle the urge to ask one of the people if she was hard of hearing - I looked for a hearing aid (or two) and didn't see any.  She is one of several annoying Americans who asks the thing the chef just said 5 seconds ago.

     Chef:  "This is called a Pate a Bombe."
    Annoying person:  "Chef, what is this one called?"

Argh!  It's called "If you had been paying attention, you would have heard its name AND how it's spelled!  And if you were paying attention, why are you making him repeat himself and killing the rest of us with irritation???  So glad your mouth works - you have demonstrated it often over the past few weeks - can you please do us a favor and also demonstrate how well it stays closed?"  Ok - rant over.  Too much?  I have stopped asking questions for others and gone back to my previous policy - ask only if I have a question that I think is or might be relevant, they have laryngitis and I think their question is or might be relevant, or they are paying my firm - in which case I wouldn't have any questions for the chefs anyway.  Am also hoping that particular person is going to stop after basic...

Anyway, have decided it is better to throttle the urge than to throttle the person.  I have a feeling that giving expression to your annoyance in anything beyond loud sighs, groans, eye rolling and banging your head against your desk or the wall would be frowned upon by the school.  Plus it would inconvenience others in class and we're not exactly blessed with lots of wiggle room in the demo rooms.  At the moment I suppose it's a good thing if you happen to be trying to squeeze your way past the cute girl/guy you've been eyeing in class.  I have been told by others that we haven't exactly been blessed in the eye-candy department, but I've been too busy taking notes and watching the chefs to notice one way or the other.  Lack of wiggle room is not a blessing when the person sitting next to you is...um - fragrant and not in the just-got-out-of-the-shower or wearing-clean-laundry way.

Practice, practice, practice...
Some friends and I got together yesterday afternoon to practice our piping for last night's class.  You'd think after all that practice, things would be fine.  Well, it worked for the others, but my chocolate was cold by the time I got around to having to pipe my continuous border and...oh dear.

Mousse phobia (Charlotte au Cassis, Mousse aux Framboises, etc. etc. - aka Sponge cake with raspberry jam, blackcurrant mousse and blackcurrant glaze)

Side view


So this (left) is what happens when your chocolate is too cold.  In addition to my problems with the mousse.  This is the second time I had a problem with my mousse - last week it didn't set.  This time the gelatine hardened and made my mix lumpy - it was going to take too long to fix - luckily the recipe was enough that there was more than enough for each cake.  Three classmates kindly donated their excess mousse so that I could finish the stupid thing and go home.  Anyway - mousse problems led to too much time doing other things and cold chocolate resulting in awful piping.  The side view is from today so the mousse has collapsed a bit, but the stripes are layers of sponge and jam, which are actually quite delicious.  I can't bring myself to eat the mousse and it doesn't help that I keep misspelling it to "mouse".

Bad pastry hands
And this brings us back to tonight and our Petits Fours Secs, so called because they were baked in small ovens.  It was really hot - somehow my dough was ok for the first time, probably because I kept my hands out of it for as long as possible.  Warm hands are not good for what we were doing, so I used my scraper as much as possible and worked on a tray that I had chilled in the refrigerator almost first thing.  Piping decoration was another story altogether but the sable biscuits (like shortbread cookies) turned out not to badly.  I can't call them cookies because Chef NH almost fell over and died in a very French and melodramatic fashion when I called them cookies.  The meringues are the lady fingers and the other little disc shaped things (the little ones stuck together with raspberry jam and the slightly larger ones with almond cream piped in the center).

Chef NH said he hopes I don't make such a mess of my chocolate piping at the final given tonight's performance.  "I think you piped more chocolate on your hand than on the batons marechals.  Show me your hand."  I refused - my hand was covered in chocolate and it was oozing between my fingers - and you lose marks for being unhygienic / not working cleanly.  I blame it on lack of sleep last night.

Sleep may be overrated but I still want it
I haven't had nightmares about food and turning, mainly because sleep has been noticeably in abeyance for the last few nights.  I think I managed a 15 minute nap this afternoon but it doesn't really make up for a mostly sleepless night.  I am more impatient (witness the annoying American above, although more people are getting pissed off at her) and grumpy.  Some of the other people seem to be taking this as a bit of a lark - I don't know what their lives are like outside of school - whether they have other jobs, whether they really want to do this - because we don't see them often.  Maybe they are just really good and nothing ever goes wrong.

I am still waiting for the day when I don't have at least one major hitch in my practicals.  Until then, I don't care about the vacations they are planning when the Chef is explaining what happens if the oven is too hot or why you have to do something a certain way.  Could we please keep the conversations down to one side conversation if you have to talk?  Thanks - that way I can try to tune you out with one ear and listen to the chef with the other.  I run out of ears soon after that...

Indications of true chef-ness starting to emerge?
Have also come to the stage where I can no longer tell you how I got which scar on which hand.  There are too many and sometimes I don't know I have a cut/burn until much later - squeezing lemons is always a surefire way to discover any open cuts.  I notice my knife kit has been getting heavier and heavier - the first indication was when it pulled me over one day before I stood up from my locker and it was over my shoulder.  Anyway, I am guessing that this bruise is from the kit...finally fading...it was quite impressive a couple of days ago.
Ok - must try to get some sleep now.  Stroganoff and then eclairs - maybe I won't need to cook dinner tomorrow night - although I still have to cook the other practice chickens...

So until next time - happy sleeping.  May your days be filled with conversations that you are interested in hearing.  Incidentally - it is too late and I am too brain dead to check grammar and spelling, so apologies for the last few posts and this one.

#25 - Approaching the end of the beginning...

I'm not quite sure how it happened but the reality of the rapidly approaching end of Basic is finally starting to sink in. I think the email from LCB confirming the spelling of my name for the certificate did it for me. That - and everyone else panicking.  I know that it's just food, but somehow that doesn't lessen the stress.  I have had to do more homework and study for this course than I ever did for law school or any other university class and there is still a much higher chance of failure than I have ever had to face before.  Everyone is tired, sleep-deprived and it has been a hard week.  Tempers are starting to flare and there is more bitching and moaning - quite justified.  Things that no one cared about much at the beginning of the term are beginning to grate as we all buckle down to study.

I haven't looked at what we are doing for next week so have no idea if it's going to be harder, but I suspect so.  We still have our full load of classes, each practice run is currently taking 30 minutes too long and we have multiple recipes to learn for Patisserie.  If we limit practices to 2 per dish (unrealistic for patisserie) that is still a minimum of 24 hours of cooking proper, not allowing for shopping for supplies which are too copious for anyone's kitchen to accomodate.  Then there's the theory to learn and I can't say, "who cares what the coagulation temperatures for various permutations of egg are?" because the dish will turn into scrambled eggs instead of whatever it's supposed to be - unless it's supposed to be scrambled eggs, but we are finished with scrambled eggs...no nightmares about food yet, but I fear they may not be far away.

Challenge for the Grand Diplomes
The 16 of us who are preparing for both sets of exams (with corresponding theory, only some of which overlaps) have stopped smiling so much in class.  Chef N told us on Friday night, "You are allowed to smile - this is fun!"  Which it is - when impending exams are not casting a cloud over our days.  No study week, as we had at university...difficulty getting the correct ingredients (guesswork on the flour, fondant is difficult to find), the equipment (enormous mixing bowls, huge balloon wisks, substituting any size ring shape for our tarts and cakes) and finding time to practice everything...have decided to imitate a sponge for the next week.

End of seafood (for now)
Anyway - quick update:  we finished seafood this week with moules marinieres (mussels steamed with white wine and vinegar) and crabe farci (dressed crab).  I never thought it possible to hear the words "too much butter" from a French chef...until Tuesday (or...Wednesday?) afternoon.

The crab and I had a bit of a disagreement.  It wasn't really awake when I lowered it into the court bouillon (basically - stock) so that was fine.  It was the getting through the hard shell which was a bit problematic.  I'm not that tall and it wasn't really possible to get the necessary leverage so I really had to whack the knife in order to cut it up.  The bruise on my hand was much more impressive the next day.

However, I finished the dish - take that, stubborn crab!  Also - it was the first time we used our cleavers.  Not the sharp edge of the blade, but rather the flat side - to crack the bottom of the shell so that we could use it for plating.  You can't tell from the picture (and I managed to kind of hide it from the chef) but I broke part of the shell, which is why I had to put 3 lettuce leaves and tomato petals...to support the broken part of the shell and shore it up while I was stuffing it.

Incidentally, those tomato petals are an excellent way to put tomatoes in sandwiches.  I always hated how if you packed a sandwich in the morning, the tomato would make the bread soggy by lunch time, even with copious amounts of mayonnaise or avocado "to creat a barrier between the tomato and the bread".

Next week we have to make a bearnaise (hollandaise sauce with added herbs) to go with the steak.  Remember when I said that I was sure that hollandaise, in some guise, would return?  Yup...and I found out that the students doing the Cuisine stream who were doing the bearnaise on Friday night were responsible for the massive shortage of eggs.  We ran out of eggs for our patisserie class - we needed them for our cakes and for the mousses and the patisserie recipes are already reduced to the bare minimum.  The Cuisine students who messed up their sauces restarted them - but since they used 2 - 3 egg yolks per recipe (whole recipe) and they did more than one, they needed extra eggs with a corresponding shortage for those of us baking and mixing upstairs.  Maybe it's time to start putting a dozen eggs into my utensils bag...

More sponges - and gentle intro to chocolate...
Then it was on to cakes - the Gateau a la Foret Noire (Black Forest Cake) - my first flat sponge...overworked batter so it came out really dense - NOT what we were aiming for.  The chocolate work went a bit better although - you have to be fast.  Some of the stencilling didn't come off because I hadn't worked that patch while it was still warm enough.  Not great, but not horrible.  We happened to go past a pub in search of dinner after class and I didn't want to schlep the cake in the big box, so I gave it to the first person who asked.  Some man who was very excited for the cake (FYI, the box was cardboard and he couldn't see inside).  Little did he know...

The next day (Friday) was our first Charlotte au Chocolat (Chocolate Bavarois encased in light chocolate sponge).  I didn't have the right sized piping tip so any inaccuracies in piping are a lot more apparent - too thin and the cake snaps (like mine did) so you have to make a join and repair it.  Making the bavarois, which is like a mousse except you lighten it by adding whipped cream, has been added to my ever expanding list of things to practice.

For the moment I am concentrating on getting through the next 11 or so days.  We have classes straight through and next week we do truffles in Patisserie.  I forsee many, many days of laundry - cocoa powder tends to stick and chocolate spatters are a lot harder to hide on a white uniform than a dusting of flour or a deluge of milk.

Hopefully today I will make it to ballet class - adrenaline gives a boost to our days as exams approach and the amount of what we have to know sinks in more each day.  The theory is starting not to be so much fun (chocolate is more fun to play with than to learn temperatures for) and I need the activity to clear out my mind...wish me luck, it's the first class this month.  Somehow May has just whooshed by - so much so that I called to wish my niece a happy birthday earlier this week.  Except her birthday is in June!

Well-aimed kick
Tonight I have arranged for a couple of friends to come over for dinner.  Knowing that I have promised to make dinner and they have set aside time to come over is the necessary impetus to make me practice.  I have found reasons to postpone for the last couple of weeks.  Hopefully my lemon meringue and the chicken fricassee will only need one or two practice runs to get the timing right so that I can focus on the others this week.  It's so much easier to learn a recipe when you make it, rather than just sitting and rote learning it.  More delicious when it comes to tasting too...and since we have a max 2.5 hours for all the patisserie, there's also a set amount of time for the practice - going over is not an option because otherwise your kitchen chef (apparently) screams at you to get it done and if you still don't - well, basic is full for next term and visa conditions require that you remain enrolled in your course in order to remain in the country...see where this is going?

Right - must run. Time for a coffee and my grocery shop so that I have time to get set before class. Then it's cooking time - on the menu for tonight - ahi poke (if I can find acceptable fish), mixed green salad with vinaigrette, chicken fricassee with potatoes, carrots, zucchini and baby onion (and possibly rice, since this is my first mini-Hawaii Club in London dinner) and a lemon meringue tart. 

Hawaii Club in London
LM has agreed to give me feedback on the tart as she did this 3 months ag0, although she didn't get the tart on her final.  She got the choux pastry (eclairs) - and of course it was the one for which she wished she had had more practice.

MA and I have started discussions regarding the charter for our multi-national LLC (to be incorporated in Delaware).  We haven't told LM yet, but I think it should be broached after dinner - maybe over the tart.  Not sure about the IRS position, we'll need to check out non-profit status (currently considering UN model but will need to defer to MA's experience and knowledge).

Light at the end of the first tunnel
Am looking forward to the time between end of exams and graduation (22 June 2011) - haven't booked any flights yet, but hoping to get a last minute one to Manhattan to visit friends.  The Columbia alumni in Sydney are also hoping for me to go - they have a shopping list for the alumni store!

Thank you
Somehow I have found out that there are more than 8 readers, which came as a bit of a surprise and for which I am very grateful.  I trust you find the occasional flash of humor in these posts and sources for entertainment.  I am not allowed to give recipes, but if you ever have a question, please ask.  If I don't know it (and chances are that I won't, but you never know) then I know who to ask.

So until next time (which might be after exams! I have a lot of reading, studying, flashcards to do!) I wish all of you well and look forward to (hopefully) giving an account of triumph over the clock.

#24 - In which people have started to panic...

I see that my last post was almost a week ago.  It's a good thing my computer and phone keep track of what day it is - I have lost track of days and had to check with people 3 times yesterday that what day it was (Tuesday, the day that follows Monday, which was the day immediately before).  Also - thanks to those of you who have gently prodded me to get my act together and update.

Apologies as these become a bit more sporadic as a cooking frenzy takes over the next 2 weeks of my life - there will be more tarts, cakes and eclairs than I will ever want to look at again - except we will need to do them, but with much greater refinement and complexity as we progress up the levels.  I found out what the Superior Patisserie students have to do as their Practical exam last night - they have 6 hours of cooking and it incorporates everything they have learned from basic on through to where they are now - I recognized elements from our week 2 in Patisserie. 

Last week

So - recap since last post:  we had a wine technical class last Wednesday (18 May).  I tasted all 6 wines and predictably didn't like any of them.  They all made my mouth feel puckered up inside (apparently that was caused by the tannins).  I also accidentally swallowed some wine (the first Chardonnay we tried).  It's a good thing that class was scheduled for our last class that day, it would not have been good to go into a kitchen and have to cook after that.

We also had our patisserie classes - getting on to slightly more advanced cakes now.  Thursday night was the Chocolate Almond Sponge cake (aka Sachertorte) with a marzipan rose.  The masking at the end was a bit problematic on the sides of the cake, but it looks pretty from the top and according to reports, it tasted good.  I had a tiny taste from when I cut the cake into halves/quarters and gave it away to various people - I liked it, but the crumb was more than enough.

Then on Friday night we did our last potential exam dish - the Genoise Spongecake with buttercream frosting and raspberry jam.  We had to make our own jam (piece of cake!) and apparently the frosting that Michael, my partner, and I made was really good, so I feel a little more confident about trying the whole thing at home on my own.  The problem with doing things in pairs in class for something like this is that when it comes to the exam, we will have to do all the components on our own:  the batter, the jam, the soaking syrup, the frosting, cut, trim, fill, then assemble it all and complete it with piping.  I only remembered when I had to pipe the chocolate on top of the frosting piping Chef G's comment that it is easier to pipe smaller patterns because any uneveness is not quite as apparent.  Whoops.  This cake also went to other people who would be able to eat it.

We had a cuisine practical on Saturday  morning at 8am - more chicken butchery - taking apart all the pieces and skinning it.  It was Supreme of Chicken (i.e. chicken breast) stuffed with chicken mousse and herbes de Provence, poached and served with a Tomato Butter sauce (mine was too thick - more a coulis) and courgette spaghetti- zucchini sliced on a mandolin and sauteed with some garlic and butter.

Life actually
I even made it to a movie - maybe 4 weeks ago?  I'm not sure...it was the most recent Scream movie.  I should not go to those - as silly and stupid as it was, it still scared me.  Total movies seen in London:  2.  Total cultural experiences:  1 ballet (Covent Garden), 1 concert (Southbank) and...do visits to markets count?  No museums yet.  They are still on my list but are always lower on the list of priorities as the kitchen and related things take over my life.

There is a lot of ground to cover and I realize that I have forgotten to include much in the way of social life.  There hasn't been one as such, but I have managed to catch the odd dinner with friends who are not LCB related (MA, who is in town from Hawaii for work for the next 3 months or so) and JB, who is currently posted to Rome during the week (also for work), SO who has the cutest little daughter (they live in Oxford) and my dear PC who was in town over the long weekend in April.

There have been a couple of trips to Kua'Aina burger in Carnaby Street - yesterday I made a mental note of the days when they serve the Lion Vanilla Macadamia nut coffee and now have forgotten them in the exhausted haze which has dogged the last few days.  Most of my other friends are from LCB, a couple of whom have had little parties, as they had to move after the course started.  Unfortunately I didn't take many photos of the one from the week (two weeks?) before,  but here are photos from Saturday:

Recognize any of the food?

Our hosts - Pedro & Angela

 

 

I think most of the people there were from those who are enrolled to do the grand diplome.  Apparently some of the people in the other group are a bit more comptetitive - they have more people who have industry experience, whereas my group doesn't seem to have reached that stage.  Yet.  Who knows - tempers have been known to run hot in the kitchen when ingredients go missing.

The girlfriends/husbands/etc. who also came may have been a bit overwhelmed with the shop talk, but that only came later.  We were all concious of wanting to talk anything except food for the first little while.  We have spent all these weeks together, but as most conversations revolve around organizing some fun time or discussing class, people are still getting to know each other.  I am sure that lifelong friendships will be forged during the next few months, but I am equally sure that lifelong antipathy may develop as well.  There is no way that we can all spend so much time together and not get on each other's nerves and given the strong personalities and wide age ranges involved, I am sure that cliques are already starting to form.

In the meantime, the girlfriends/husbands/etc. are finally understanding what their respective other halves are talking about when it comes to a bad day or things that went wrong.  They said they can put it into context - and they have good naturedly tried to support their tired, grumpy and hungry chefs when they get home.  ("Look honey - I just spent the last 2.5 making this and this is what went wrong and...just try a bite!")  Apparently they have also started to go to the gym, if they haven't already, and those who do exercise, have to do more.

And this week...fish and seafood

8am Monday - butchering a whole Lemon Sole, including gutting, filleting and skinning...rolled with a mushroom duxelles - the one on which I cut my finger somewhere in week 3 and poached in a fish fumet (fish broth) which we had to make from the bones.  We are all hurrying more in the kitchen now and can't believe there was a time when it took us 2 1/2 hours to cut up some vegetables and make a salad with dressing.  Now we are stressing out that it took 20 minutes to take apart the stupid chicken instead of 10.

A whole fish resulted in 4 little pieces of fish (you only plate 3 because it looks better on the plate) with a piped mashed potato border and the sauce...

Yesterday morning we got to do it again, this time with a rainbow trout.  Luckily I already knew how to gut a fish, but it wasn't done in demo and they didn't mention it so I was a little unprepared to have to gut the thing at 8:15 in the morning (well, we had to scale it first).  The butchery went pretty smoothly, but after class we all got together in our little huddles and had our own little debrief.  It appears which chef you have in the kitchen also determines how you season your food.  Oh - and my hollandaise sauce split.  Whatever the reason, I'm sure we'll have to do something like it again at some stage.  So - the trout a la meuniere, which I'm sure my dad would have loved but for the very burned butter...this is what the dish looks like just before I take it to the chef for feedback.

This is what my workstation looks like in the aftermath of the flurry of plating (no time to clean!) and things haphazardly pushed wherever - after feedback.  Ugh - first time I overcooked my fish!

Tonight we have to kill a crab (yes, it has to come to us alive) and make a stuffed crab in its own shell and a dish of mussels (moules mariniere).  That is one that many of us are looking forward to, although there is one unfortunate student who is allergic to certain shellfish, mussels being one of them.  He is in the other group, so I am guessing someone will go to class prepared with a baguette and stick a bottle of white wine in the fridge for after!  Some people are not enthused with the idea of putting a live crab in boiling water - we can't freeze it because our fridges aren't cold enough (especially as they will have been opened and closed so many times during the preceding 9 hours) and we can't use our knives to kill it because we need the shell intact for the presentation.

It is a late start today - 12pm - for which I am grateful.  Some of the girls and I got together after class yesterday to practice turning our vegetables.  The ideal is a football shape (for Americans and Australians) - an oval with points on both ends and 7 even facets.  Right now the chefs are willing to settle for however many facets as long as we don't waste a lot of potato and they are all about the same size.  And now - our practice has been documented...

 






There has been a little consternation from all of us as some of the ingredients we need to practice for patisserie are not available in normal places.  No fondant in the supermarket and the plain flour doesn't indicate whether it is strong flour or soft flour - I suppose I will find out when I try to make my pastry for the lemon meringue tart.  Also - no one sells butter in anything more than 250g (8 ozs).  I bought 12 blocks last night and had to lug them home - each thing that we have to practice uses ridiculous amounts of butter and as pretty as they are to look at, I am not sure I will be able to eat many of these things ever again.

Back to life...
As for life in London - it is, despite my many hours at the school or at home, trying to organize my mind for the following day, still delightful.  We have lunch or drinks out in the sun if there is a break between classes.  The days are still lenthening, so there is light past 9pm - which is perfect for the nights when we don't finish class until then, generally Thursday and Friday nights (and tonight).  The mornings are still cold - some may say brisk, but those are the ones who like the cold more than I do.  They require a warm jacket and a brisk walk to school.

There is a lot of construction going on in London as it prepares for the 2012 Olympics.  Tube stations are being upgraded, new train line/s being put in, streets having things done to them and sounds of construction going from morning until...well, I'm not sure when they stop since I usually get home later.  Everyone generally wants to wind down from the day at the pub and I think that when the school moves to Bloomsbury Square in January, the local businesses will really notice the difference.  You can tell when there's a break between classes because the streets and cafes are suddenly awash with white jackets emblazoned with the blue LCB crest paired with crocs and houndstooth checked pants.  Starbucks gets a lot of people coming in, desperate for a coffee to keep them awake for the 3 hour lecture coming up (or in progress) after they have already had up to 6 hours of class.

Now I must once again gear up to go to class.  A demo for 2.5 hours - this is the target time for our demo chefs, but classes have been known to run over the allocated 3 hours, which can cause a bit of a scramble for the next class - then a break (nap and review of notes) before being back and ready to go in the kitchen at 6pm.

So until next time, happy resting!

#23 - Things I don't understand about the UK...

There are a few things that have puzzled me since my arrival in London and I still haven't worked them out.

Miscellaneous
For instance, why does the deodorant/anti-perspirant need to work for 48 hours?  Camping or being somewhere without hot running water and soap for a certain period of time (like my apartment when the boiler pressure turned off) is understandable.  But if you are home and have access to a shower/bath - why?

And speaking of boilers - mine wasn't working the other night.  It was late, it was freezing and I was tired from class.  I eventually figured it out - there was a certain amount of desperation because the boiler controls both the hot water and the radiators.  Also, because I cannot get into my bed when I am dirty.

Differences in language can be amusing too.  In the US, saying someone is "spunky" usually refers to their personality.  In Australia, it refers to their appearance, in a good way.  In the UK, apparently it refers to...hm, how to put this...male bodily emissions.  So not a compliment here to say that someone is spunky.  There's also a whole thing on thongs, but I won't get into that.  Suffice to say that between the US, Australian, South African and Hong Kong interpretations of the word, it gets interesting.  The conversation in our locker room, by the way, was in reference to rubber slippers.

So - words that can cause confusion, depending on where you are:
thongs, slippers, spunky, next week (geography seems to determine interpretation).  Feel free to add any suggestions to this list because I am too tired to think of any more.

Liquid soap - they have the usual arrows (one way makes the pump pop up, the other way makes it go down and you can usually lock it down).  I haven't been able to make them work, so I just refill the one bottle that got unlocked (but a friend who lives around the corner) and refill that.  Yes, I am not smarter than my soap pump.  Who cares?

OCD is only a problem if it functions with your normal daily functioning.  I haven't done the research (if you do, I will believe you as long as your source isn't Wikipedia).  Anyway - I had tutorials for my Cuisine and Patisserie classes yesterday.  My Patisserie mentor told me to stop cleaning so much (in response to my question as to why I am so slow in class).  He said, "in the time you've taken to clean, you could have made something."  Which is true - I am going to test it next week and see if I get pulled up on it.

Am very disorganized.  Everything looks so organized, but it's all a facade.  Nowhere is it more apparent than in the kitchen when I have neglected to collect the other 3 bowls you will need when you got the first two.  It seems the chefs all have eyes in the backs of their heads.  They seem to see everything (and they talk).  Apparently they notice when we make 5 trips to the sink area to get various pieces of equipment.

Fashion - I think I am sartorially challenged.  Spending most of my time in uniform makes for a lazy attitude towards every day dressing (I walk 4 minutes to class, change, then might go out for quick dinner with friends before coming back home).  Total time spent traipsing around London in street clothes on a school day:  10 minutes - 4 hours...anyway - back to my point.  During the 4 hour window, I have seen many inappropriately short skirts.  A (male) taxi driver told me that is the fashion now.  See?  Fashion challenged - I am being told what is in by a taxi driver.  So I thought I was being a granny but one of the younger girls in my course (she turns 19 in a month) also made the comment that the girls in London dress like prostitutes.  Might be a bit harsh, but accurate nonetheless.  If you have to keep tugging the hem of your skirt/dress down (and you don't have to lean a little to do it!) then it is probably too short, and possibly too tight.

Back to food
Somehow this week has whizzed by and I now have to update more photos.

I can't make soup...no time to take pictures of my chicken and mushroom soup (the soup wouldn't thicken...but the chicken julienne was nice) or the potato and leek (?) soup with julienned vegetables (watery soup flavorwise, but the first time my julienne was acceptable)...



French Onion Soup
with burned croutons

More troubled soups:  burned croutons on the French Onion soup because I forgot about them, and soup a bit bitter because I overcooked the onions.



Beef consomme
with too-brown savory crepe

Beef consomme was still a little too oily and the crepes were too brown.  Agh!  I will never make soup!!!

Basic Breads:
Soda bread and dinner rolls

Basic bread and cakes
Went a bit better.  The bread tasted a bit boring but everyone I gave rolls and bread to seemed to like it - possibly because it was made with a certain something (like, I don't care as long as it's pretty).

Basic cakes:
Lemon cake and madeleines

Cakes - were edible.  A bit too much baking powder in the madeleines resulted in air pockets, but otherwise any stuck edges were on the side not being presented.  I tasted one madeleine and a tiny edge of the cake - the one and the edge were enough.

   





Sienna eating a madeleine

SO & Sienna came down from Oxford to visit their friend Bernice. We managed to meet for coffee before lunch - so Sienna got to do some tasting. Evidently the madeleines have met and passed kid testing - she ate three immediately.


Some research:
Comparing to my test eclairs...

    



Wouldn't you visit this store?

 

This week - more meats and stuff...

A dish to help practice butchery because my chicken fricassee was way behind schedule - where does all the time go?

Poussin with apple compote

The poussin - had problems with potatoes.  I can't cook potatoes either - this is the third time something has happened to them - I hate potatoes!  and forgot to trim the drumstick ends.

Luckily JK and ML each had some spare potatoes so I could plate because mine were not cooperating.  The apples were a bit tart for Chef J, but I thought they were perfect...cut through all the butter and cream.  Oh well - still developing the palate (is that a good thing?)

Then it was offal - yech.  I tried them in demo and told the chef that if I liked liver or sweetbreads, I would have loved the dishes.  As it was, I hated them both.  So today we had to make them...I'm not sure whether I smelled the liver or the sweetbreads while we were in the kitchen, but any residual hunger I might have had from tasting the amazing sole from demo before (on the list for next week) was completely buried.
 

Chef EB refused to taste anyone's liver because he had already done 3 classes worth of tastings today.

Veal liver
with onions & sauteed potatoes

I don't blame him - my one teeny taste yesterday was enough to turn me off liver pretty much forever.  I can confirm that my policy of refusing to eat anything that has ever been on my dissecting table (or a variation of said item) is completely sound, along with the certain discrete exceptions (i.e. fish).  So the liver was well done, as per Chef E's directions, the onions burned to a crisp and beyond repair (I checked my photos from the demo - should have stopped when I had originally stopped) and the potatoes were good except they needed more salt.  Maybe everything needs more salt because we are always so hot in the kitchen that everyone pretty much sweats buckets.  Yes, yes, I know - ladies don't sweat.  Well, we're not ladies - we're chefs!  And I defy anyone to stay cool, calm and collected (and not to sweat) when it is 40 degrees C / 100 degrees F in the kitchen with the clock ticking and the dishes misbehaving.

Veal sweetbreads with
asparagus tips and parisienne potatoes

The sweetbreads (say what?) were beyond yuck - they looked like brains.  Just because something doesn't have latex running all through it like in our fetal pig which we had to dissect for 4 weeks, doesn't mean that it doesn't smell bad or look good.  They also feel kind of rubbery, but not firm - a bit squishy, actually.  So I can make it look pretty on the outside, but this one, which was super thick, should have been cut into small escalopes, then breaded and fried.  As it was, Chef E tasted the potatoes, asparagus and jus - bitter jus and the asparagus had been peeled too much...but the potatoes were good (ok, maybe I don't suck at potatoes quite as much as I thought I did).

So we finished class on time (even me!) and everyone headed to the pub for a drink.  There was a deep sigh of relief as we started drinking down our various beverages (Coke, beer, Pimms...)  I had run out of water during the practical so have been chugging for the last couple of hours.

De-offaling...


My dinner after all the awful offal

I took the longest shower ever - getting the feel of the greasy smoke, even if only in my imagination, took forever.  Then it was scrubbing the day off before I could even think about dinner.  So - the results of looking at innards for two days in a row:  yes, I cooked.  Yes, this is kind of an attempt at presentation, but I really couldn't be bothered.  There's all kinds of fussing about to make things pretty and put them in shapes, which is fine if you are getting graded on it - or being paid lots of money to look it that way.  At home, it's just more dishes to do and I have to do my own dishes - so just as soon throw it all together.

So until next time - no more offal!