#95 - And so ends the year of food...kind of...

I am finally back in Sydney and getting settled back into my "normal" life.


The flight back to Sydney was uneventful, preceded by the usual countdown of "last"s whenever  I am getting ready to leave for somewhere (last brunch, last sunset, last dinner, last night in front of the TV with my sister)...she records The Game of Thrones when I'm home and we watch it together later at night, when she has time for herself.  Of course, there's no way she's going to wait for me to come back to watch the rest of the series so hopefully they won't get erased off the recorder when she's finished.

My flat is a bit of a shambles - half unpacked suitcases in the hallway by the front room, paperwork in piles on my dining table and a complete lack of enthusiasm to put anything away with the spectre of another 11 boxes to arrive from London with the remaining bits and pieces for the kitchen.


Chatting to friends has revealed that quite a few of us are returning to our jobs and hoping to balance that with opportunities to keep up with what we've learned.  Perfecting anything will be difficult when we don't do it every day but hopefully my notes will be good enough to get me through it.  Or else there will be lots of awful experiments which I can't inflict on my beloved family and friends.

It turns out that quite a few people have been practicing various things.  I had another run at my dessert from my final, taking into account the chefs' comments but without the sauces and glaze or tempered chocolate.  I used the reduced syrup from poached pears in the salad above  (poached pear in Lambrusco - an Italian sparkling red dessert wine, infused with cloves, cinnamon - with beets, goat cheese and mixed baby greens in a vinaigrette) because I didn't have a sauce but my parents seemed to like it.  All I could thing was "coulda, woulda, shoulda" and how things might have been different if this is what I had done during the Patisserie finals.  However - as a good friend says, a pass is a pass and at least I managed to get this done at home which is nice.


As I said to one of the chefs - I don't have what it takes to work in a restaurant kitchen, but I'll be an acceptable home cook.  Well - maybe occasionally able to make something a little bit more fancy than a muffin or cupcake should the occasion demand.  Generally home cooking still stays in the realms of comfort food but at least I have the recipes, notes and pictures if I want something a little more complicated.


So until next time - happy eating.

#94 - Life continues after LCB

After we all received our pass confirmations, it was time for a few well deserved drinks.  It was a warm March day so we all gathered in the courtyard outside the LCB Cafe.  There's a pub there so they provided us with drinks (and me with food) - there's a student discount, which was a bit of a bonus for our very last day as students.


We gathered for the last time - the others would see each other at graduation but I was due to get on a plane the following morning so this was our last chance to say hello.  Several of us also had quite a bit of packing up to do and limited luggage space in which to do it.  One of the things about missing graduation is that I wouldn't get to wear the chef's hat or get the medals from the chefs.  CB, one of the very nice people in LCB administration went upstairs to get my medals because they weren't going to be included with my diplomas which would arrive by post.  I carefully wrapped up the hard-won pieces of metal and packed them in my bag.  Then I had several rounds of repacking, with the result that it took me a couple of days and virtually unpacking everything when I got home to find them again (carefully tucked away in a plastic container).  My sister and my parents requested that I wear them while cooking - all I could think of was the universal horrified look which would cross one of the chef's face at such a suggestion...


Life after LCB...
The last couple of weeks since I got home have been pretty busy.  I'm not sure how, since I'm theoretically on vacation...some of it, of course, has been spent cooking for family and friends.  There's a certain expectation when you come home and you (theoretically) have been trained how to cook, that you will cook for people.


The difficulty is learning to differentiate between cooking / playing time and a cooking / time sensitive time.  That is to say, teaching that difference to well meaning friends and family.  It's sweet people want to participate but as one of my brothers told me, they don't (so he claims) know what they're doing and it's all about fun.  Which is fine, as long as their fun time isn't my time sensitive time because then it just stops being fun for everyone.  (Let's just say that trying to grill stuff on a grill which needs to be fired up and trying to make a theatre time is not the stuff of relaxing and fun dinner preparation.  Neither is fancy plating.)


A simple lunch turned out to be quite a large one.  What was meant to be lunch for 4 somehow rapidly expanded to 6, then 9...an example below of our simple lunch - grilled fresh mahimahi, grilled lemongrass/keffir lime/ garlic shrimp, salad with vinaigrette and grilled veggies.  My brother had been dying for fresh fish and as we had a pescatarian, this was friendly for all.  I still have dreams about cooking, but I'm hoping those dreams will get fewer and further in between.  It's no fun when the dishes are imperfect even in dreams - surely that must say something?


You say potato, I say potahto...
There's a place called Diamond Head Market and Grill here.  Several people are completely in love with their blueberry scones.  I have a slightly difficult time with this because the scones I'm used to (Australian/English influence) have always been circular ones which slightly resemble the biscuits of the American Southern cooking:  slightly crisp-ish on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.  The scones I've had in the US usually resemble...triangular heavy dough things which could take out an eye, so I was doubtful about the blueberry scones.


I was immediately suspicious when I saw these large things because they were so shiny - yup, coated with some sort of sugary thing.  But actually quite delicious.  They put cream cheese in the batter so that gives it extra moisture and it's nice and kind of oozy and gooey when fresh out of the oven (first thing in the morning will do that).  I'm not a huge lover of sweets but I have to say that the next time I have a sweet craving, I might just head over and get one of these.  Perhaps tomorrow morning, if I get up early enough to eat one before ballet class - have to have enough time to digest it so that turning doesn't make you want to hurl.  That's not so elegant - not to mention it's a dead giveaway to the teacher that you haven't been spotting.  For more on spotting, I suggest you watch an episode of Gilmore Girls (the one where Rory is getting ready for her debut with the Daughters of the American Revolution).


Several evenings...with Schroeder and friends
It has been a music filled week leading up to Easter.  There was a wonderful concert last week - the soloist was Something Wolfram or Wolfram Something (from NY?  I don't have the program anymore or I would be able to tell you) and he played Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto.  He was this tall, imposing fellow who was so tall they had to lower his piano bench so that he could fit his legs under the piano.  It reminded me of Schroeder from the Peanuts comics - Wolfram's knees weren't quite up to his ears, but they weren't far off.


The newly reconstituted Hawaii Symphony Orchestra then played Dvorak's New World Symphony.  One of the oboists (coincidentally she's also the English horn) is staying with us so we got a little preview while she practiced - anyway, wow!  I asked later - she and the bassoon had discussed the blend of their sound and it sounded wonderful at the concert.


Later on in the week, we went back for another concert:  Russian Easter Overture (Rimsky Korsakov), the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Tchaikowsky's 5th Symphony.  I forgot how long the symphony was and I kept nodding off in the last movement.  Oh, the whiplash!  Still, an enjoyable night and sweet lullabies...


Easter
The end of this trip is drawing to a close, marked by my first Easter at home in over 10 years.  It was a beautifully (mostly) sunny Sunday.  We started with Easter breakfast by the water.  It was supposed to be brunch but they did a couple of seatings and we left the arrangements sufficiently late that the only table we could get was at 9am.  Slight rate of attrition due to the early hour, but I like to think we acquitted ourselves well.  After the first couple of rounds to warm up (coffee, water, coffee, omelette, bacon, fried rice, coffee, some kind of BBQ chicken) the non-vegetarians went for the meats.  I headed for the prime rib (how could you not?  It's not something you would be cooking at home for breakfast - or at least, not something I would cook at home because you'd have to be up at the crack of dawn to do it), more rice and more bacon.  Bacon makes everything better...


Eventually defeated by the limited capacity of our bodies (stretched to their absolute limits) we headed for the water after applying copious amounts of sunscreen.  Yes, you can get into a swimsuit and get in the water, but to describe what we did as "swimming" would be like saying...actually, I'm in too much of a food coma to come up with a suitable simile.  More accurately, I think you could say we dipped ourselves - just enough to cool off.  I was going to do some reading this afternoon but fell asleep instead - and woke up just in time to make it to Easter dinner (another buffet!  Thank goodness I'm going back to Sydney and cooking for one) where I'm sure I stretched my capacity for food intake once again.  I don't really cook when it's just me so I took the opportunity of having quite a large supply of guinea pigs at home.


Now it's time for a second attempt to read about transferring proceedings from one court to another and the biggest challenge of all:  staying awake long enough to process it so that I can remember it tomorrow.  Finding the time to get caught up on readings has proved to be quite a challenge between all the things I have to do (unpack, repack, etc. etc.), the cooking and the resting.  I've been sleeping a lot since I got back - I think the stress of finals still hasn't fully worn off - I seem to remember not sleeping more than 6 hours or so on a given night during March and there's still a little bit of jetlag although that finally seems to be abating.


So until next time, happy Easter/Pesach and happy eating!

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

#92 - It eventually goes away...

For better or for worse...
Cuisine final is over and I am still recovering.  15 of us going into the kitchen - they had people going in 2 by 2 (opposite sides of the kitchen) and I was second to last - had to wait almost an hour before I got to go in and set up my station.  There was last minute panic in the hallway, a few questions for the Patisserie chefs who were walking past as they set up for their tasting from Group C and a few nervous trips to the bathroom.  At least it was before and not during the exam...


There have been sporadic instances this week where I just wanted to curl up in a little ball on the floor and have a nervous breakdown.  But we don't do that - we're chefs and we deal with it.  Or as one of my friends told me when I told her I just wanted to die, "do it after the exam."  As you can tell, we're a sympathetic lot.  The bright side is that the feeling does go away - eventually - and there are 4 of us from my cuisine group who will be repeating this experience on Friday morning in staggered starts.  The enthusiasm with which we look forward to Friday is as palpable as that which might accompany a doctor's appointment which involves taking off your clothes and being put in positions you normally wouldn't engage in with someone who isn't your spouse / lover / [insert word of your choice here].  It has also reduced even those of us with pretty extensive vocabularies to mostly 4-letter words which you wouldn't say in front of the very young or the extremely elderly, especially when something boils away.  You will note that I have not said "boiled over" - I stopped doing that last Thursday.


The exam...
I didn't take in my time plan because I figured if I had to check it too often I'd been in deep s#$* and looking at it wouldn't fix matters whereas looking at my mise en place told me where to go next.  It was a busy but not horrific 4 hours and if it hadn't been for the couple of things which went wrong (and if I had had another couple of pots and burners) I think I could have done it in a little less time.


Things were pretty on track in terms of timing right up until I had to plate my starter.  Of course that's when things start to go pear shaped.  I recovered from burning my carrots (had to scoop out a couple more, but luckily I had a whole extra carrot so that was no drama) and burning away my wine (for the Hollandaise) twice.  Then...as I was starting plating, disaster struck - my egg broke and the backup wasn't usable because it looked awful.  So I had to poach another egg.  This then threw off my hollandaise schedule a little bit and it was cold by the time I had to plate it - so I tried to recover it with a little hot water - hopefully it didn't split but it started to look thin although it went over the egg fine.  This time I remembered the lemon and the salt so although the tartlet didn't look as pretty as during the mock exam (and I didn't make a spare) hopefully it will taste better.  Also - I presented 2 minutes early!  I suppose I could have used those 2 minutes to try to fix the hollandaise a bit more, but really, I wasn't in the mood to mess with it any more than I already had.


Then the main...everything on track again except for a minor hiccup with the mousse which I will tell you about after the debrief on Monday.  I also dropped the bowl which had my pigeon legs marinating in it, so I had to clean up the floor and wash the legs (I was going to do that anyway).  I don't know how that affects the hygiene marks - I didn't have any spare pigeons and I had to make the legs so since they were going to cook in gently boiling oil for about an hour or so, I figured any bugs would be long since cooked away.  The dish ended up looking quite nice - I think everything was there, including the parsley chiffonade.  And finally the pigeon was cooked, but it's possible one of them was slightly over - ugh, will it never go right???  Time - 2 minutes over because I had to clear my station down so that I could plate - and there were a lot of components:  glazed vegetables, cutting the bottom off the braised and stuffed lettuce, the sauce, the chiffonade, the potatos fondant, the confit pigeon legs where we have to debone the thigh, then pan fry to get the skin crispy (and which took forever), the glaze for the stuffed/braised lettuce and the sauce.  Think one pot or something similar for each of those things which then has to go on 2 very hot plates.


My station was a shambles.  It seemed like crap was proliferating everywhere, but never the stuff I needed.  Another small pot would have been nice (we had an extra one during the mock exam so it was a real nuisance not to have one today).  Also, they said we could trade our used pots for clean ones, but there weren't any in the washup area for the first hour of my time so I either washed my own or I had to do other stuff while waiting for my pots to get cleaned - I can tell you where my 2 minutes went.  In the meantime, there was quite a bit of "hot pan!" and "mind your backs" but otherwise, it was intensely quiet in the kitchen except for the sound of pots going on stoves and oven doors opening.  Oh, ridiculous - I couldn't open my oven unless I used both hands, which meant a little bit of juggling.  Small in the grand scheme of things, but awful when seconds count.


Good night...
The next time you hear from me, hopefully the Patisserie will also be finished and I will be able to tell you that it felt good.  Until then, may you have enough pots and pans (or whatever) to do what you need to do.  And may you beat the clock...

#91 - All clear for exams

(No photos so stop here if you want photos...)


Final hand check
I went for my final check at the hospital yesterday.  As usual, it took an hour to get out to the burn unit at Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton.  It's out past Hammersmith so you switch to buses at Hammersmith Station.  There's a little bit of meandering around, then you go over the bridge.  For some reason I had thought it was blue (a la Tower Bridge) but actually it's a pistachio ice cream green color.  Then it's about another 20 minutes or so to get to the hospital which is pretty much right next to a university.


Luckily the appointment was at 8:30 so I had time to get a coffee before I got on the tube.  The physical therapist and plastic surgeon both inspected my hand.  They were pleased with how well the skin had healed - the PT asked what I had put on it and I told her anything anyone gave me:  Vitamin E oil, Vitamin E cream, kukui nut oil, coconut oil, whatever moisturizers I can get my hands on, etc. etc.  Any residual discomfort is because the nerves and ligaments are still healing, which could persist for another 14 - 20 months at which time they can do surgery to release any ligaments which are still catching.


Preparing for exams
For the moment, I am just resting my hand as much as possible in preparation for the upcoming 10 hours of ordered chaos.  Ordered, because there's method to our various madness, chaos because there will be 15 of us in a kitchen and the porters will have to go full speed in order to keep up with the rate at which we use pots.  We have a set of 7 pots and pans at the beginning of the Cuisine final.  I know that I will have to exchange the 3 littlest pots at least once in order to finish glazing my vegetables and to reduce my pigeon sauce, as well as the smaller saute pan and the medium pot.  It would help if we actually had a whole fridge to ourselves instead of only one shelf.  I suppose the school thinks it's adequate space because we have shelves at eye level as well as below the counter, but having experienced the Mock Final, we use all the space and I'm sure people could use more if they were given more.


I'm sure today will be more efficient, but still - you never know what's going to happen on exam day, what with nerves and things.  All kindness of silliness can ensue:  I forgot to put my sauce through muslin last time so hopefully that won't happen this time.  I've heard of people forgetting their parsley chiffonade - it won't change the world but it's a bummer when you've cut it, presented your plate (or plates, this time - 2 servings of everything) and then you turn around and the parsley is just sitting there.


The battle today will be getting the two portions plated.  I didn't manage to plate 2 portions at the Mock so hopefully it will be better today.  For better or worse, the next time you hear from me my Cuisine final will be over.


Until next time, may each subsequent attempt at whatever you're doing improve on the previous attempt.

#90 - The C word...

Committing...
There it is - the "C" word...once we turn in our Patisserie portfolios, we are locked in with our desserts, decorations and plating.  I'm going to have to take in a photo of mine so that I can remember what I committed to on paper.

I spent Sunday afternoon experimenting with tuiles, puree and plating.  If there was ever a time that drove home how unartistic I am, today was it.  There was also the scientific curiosity which made me see if I could marble blackberry puree with white chocolate for a tempered decoration.  I know that a small amount of water (or other liquid) can make chocolate seize.  I just wasn't sure what the quantities were.  So the unscientific part of me didn't measure, but it doesn't matter.  The puree on chocolate was an unmitigated disaster - if the chocolate stayed tempered, you couldn't see the purple.  If you could see the coulis, it took the chocolate out of temper in a spectacularly disastrous fashion that I would be ashamed to present to the chefs at the Patisserie finals.  What to do, what to do?  I was still dithering as I fell asleep last night...plate design depends on so many factors (like, what if I accidentally overcook my coulis?  It turns out blackberries do have pectin so cooking it too long or cooling it too much will make it lumpy because it does something or other to the water.  I'd tell you more but that would require going into permutations and I'm still finishing the portfolio which just makes me want to curl up and eat Snickers bars.)  You'd think with all the chocolate, sugar, butter, milk and cream around, I'd have no problems making myself something sweet in the absence of any Snickers bars, but no - you'd be wrong.  Making any sweets would require cooking and I am pretty much through except for the exams.  As for the Snickers bar...well, I already ate it so another one would be massively naughty.  And I only had one so actually...


Anyway - the tuiles.  A slightly more successful attempt at the lattice but I am beginning to give up on it.  Part of it is that the equipment at home is a little bit different - like I don't have a blast chiller or a fridge large enough to accommodate the baking tray once I've spread the diamonds on the silmat, before I pipe the connecting batter.  The rest of it was that I was experimenting with the piping but since I didn't use a proper piping bag, the batter melted and I ended up with a closed lattice instead of an open one.


Praticing the plating took a lot of plates.  I think for some of them I tried a couple of designs on the plate.  All I have to say is thank goodness for dishwashers!  This is what the sink looked like after I had cleaned up any and all mess from the preparation and cooking part.  It's a good thing no one needed the kitchen because I had things everywhere (plating area, photography area, rubbish area, etc. etc.)  I got really lucky with accomodation in that the kitchen is actually usable for most of the practice things.


It's all starting to feel real
I have been sorting out my knife kit and Patisserie tools bag only to discover the acetate that I use to line my moulds for the dessert is not thick or strong enough to use for my chocolate twirls (I want a larger circumference on the twirl so I need a less flexible acetate strip).  Ah, the dilemmas of being in culinary school.  They're real in the sense that some people will do this for a living.  On the other hand, they (most likely) won't change the world or bring about world peace or do anything useful to better someone's life or the world so it's not as real as some other jobs I could name where every day you make a difference to someone's life.


There has been substantial panic in the kitchen as tuile paste refuses to cooperate and I keep forgetting which way I bent the tuiles.  Hopefully if it goes on backwards on the day, they won't deduct marks for getting it backwards.


The portfolio has been submitted (with literally just a few minutes, if that, to spare.  Formatting took way longer than I had wanted to spend on it but this is Patisserie - how pretty it is counts.  How pretty everything is counts.  In Cuisine, sometimes you can wing it.  As long as your techniques are good, you can always try to save it by saying it's "rustic" - unless of course, that's not what they're looking for, in which case you're just in trouble.


Must go and start mental review now of my game plan.  And do laundry.  And pack my kit for school.  And organize Patisserie tools.  And pack my bags.  So much to do, so little time.


There won't be much cooking between now and the finals but still a lot of thinking to do.  So until next time, may you have as fun a week as mine will be.

#89 - Death by tuiles...

Replating the desserts... 
I keep thinking it's Friday night but it's not.  My lattice stencil arrived yesterday and I picked it up from a friend today so that I could have a practice run at my plating with all the decorations.  Yech - another try tomorrow...it's a pain because I don't feel like I have a natural talent for putting the shapes and things together.    Nothing came out quite the way I imagined or hoped except for the white chocolate twirls.  I had to make my own blackberry puree so I had to guess a bit.  It turned my tuile mix purple instead of a dark pink or deep red.  I know part of it is the the tuile batter but still...lavender?  And the pretty tuiles broke because I overcooked them so I had to use the crappy one for the plating.

Had to be kind of ruthless with the chocolate twirls.  Hopefully I'll get the same shape or be able to snap it around the same place during the exam - it's hard to get the angles exactly right and depending on the acetate you get, sometimes it's easier than others to get the twirls to be around the same circumference/curve as what you're aiming for.  Got lucky today with the twirl, but still ended up breaking the long twirls into a better height to go on the plate.

Have been having trouble coming up with a design on the plate where I would have enough sauce and still have something that looks clean and interesting.  This still isn't quite what I was looking for, but it's an improvement over what happened during the exam skills class with our plated dessert earlier in the week.  I've been lucky enough to get some suggestions from friends who did this exam two terms ago.  They had a couple of ideas which I think I can try tomorrow so that I can put photos in the portfolio.  At this point if it takes too much time, I'm not doing it for the exam (except for piping the poppyseed tuile and even that has me whining that it sucks when the batter is melting).

The Anglaise came out this time but the coulis is still really thick even though I didn't boil the sugar as hot as the other day.  The coulis gets this weird skin on top - I think blackberries must have some kind of pectin because the coulis looked like it might set if I left it to its own devices for a while.  In any case, the Anglaise wasn't as runny today and the coulis not as lumpy so I think I've fixed my technical difficulties.  Hopefully there will be time to do them again tomorrow - just in case, and also to try out the suggested platings with the sauces.  We've got a few ideas on the go so hopefully one of them will look good.  I don't want to try anything fancy because I know my hands will be shaking by the time I get to plating the dessert and wobbly hands don't do good piping or other fine, delicate work.

JB has been a very good sport and tasted each of the components I made today - a bit of a feat given he was trying to eat dinner and go out while I was plying him with the Anglaise (he wanted to know what it was.  I could only explain it by saying it's kind of like a custard), the coulis and tuile.  He declined the white chocolate - probably just as well, I need the twirls after all so that I can try a couple of more alternative platings.

Dinner

Then it was time for dinner.  I was really craving the goat's cheese and the baby beets I bought last night.  Also the mac 'n cheese.  And I bought some chicken today - baked it wrapped in Serrano ham.  It sounded good in theory but not good in practice.  The bottom part of the chicken  / ham roll kind got steamed / boiled so it wasn't crispy like I had thought it would.  Super classy dinner, non?  I think the best part of dinner was the salad though - the chicken was boring and the mac 'n cheese stopped being nice right around when the breadcrumbs started to go a bit soggy.

Tempering is really taking it out of me.  Somehow managed to get the white chocolate twirls done but my hand has started to peel.  Have decided that I will not cook again before finals after I've turned in my portfolio (well, except to cook dinner or something).  I want to rest everything as much as possible for the big days.

Anyway, it's time to go to sleep.  I've been sitting here trying to formulate a sentence for quite a while now and am afraid I have said something silly further up.  Thank goodness for artistic friends who can make a judgment call as to whether something is pretty or not.  Or clean looking or not.  So until next time, may the suggestions you get from your friends be as good and useful as the ones I have received from mine.