Patisserie – Week Four
A sweet week indeed! This week was all about working with sugar. HOT sugar. Chef was very nervous on the day of the roses because it is easy to get burned, and badly, as you can imagine with a hot, stick-to-your-skin, substance. Thankfully, we all brought our A-game and there were no injuries. The sorts of things you can do with sugar is pretty amazing! Is it hard to believe than some people’s careers are based purely on sugar work? I feel a tooth-ache coming on.
This Week’s Main Project: The Boat:
Pastiage is what the white pieces of the boat are made from.
Plated Dessert:
On Friday, we backed away slowly from the sugar, and embraced plating. The is the first time we plated in pastry class and chef critiqued our work. I got an “c’est pas mal”. English translation – It’s not bad. Chef’s translation – Wow, you didn’t mess this up. Your dessert makes me so happy I could dance a jig!
There were many elements coming together in this dessert. The cake’s layers from bottom to top:
- coconut dacquoise with lime
- exotic fruits in litchee jelly
- passion mousse
- coconut crumble
It was served with an exotic soup and caramel, vanilla and ginger ice cream. We also enjoyed a glass of white wine with it. Très bon!
A La Cuisine – Week Eight
œuf à la Coque:
These soft-boiled eggs have had their yolks removed, added to an emulsion of cream and cress, and finally added back into the egg. All we are missing is the ham to go with these green eggs!
The Big Spread of the Week:
Much hard work here! You can see our molecular gastronomy at work again with the blue caviar and champagne.
Sea Urchins:
A little yucky as you can likely tell from Nomi’s face!
Today
What a wonderful day it has been!
In the light of the moon, at 6:30am, Chef picked myself and two other students up to take us on a fieldtrip. We were off to a teeny tiny produce market to get supplies for our week of cooking. We blasted the music on the drive, sang and even danced along.
After market, Chef made us espressos and freshly (warm!) baked fruit and nut bread with butter at his restaurant.
It was only 9:00am so I decided to head to the beach for a quiet, reflective walk. It was so peaceful.
Praise God for his goodness!
It took me another mug of coffee, a warm blanket, a book and a couch for a couple hours to warm up again once I returned home!
Patisserie – Week Three
Chocolat:
How interesting to learn not only how to properly temper chocolate, but why it is necessary and what is happening to the cocoa butter molecules during this process.
There are two main steps to creating “good” chocolate or a perfect crystallization of couverture.
The first step is melting the chocolate, or decrystallizing it. To do this, milk chocolate is brought to a temperature between 45 and 50 degrees Celsius and dark chocolate is brought to a temperature between 55 and 58 degrees Celsius. Ideally, this is done over 24 hours as trying to melt it too quickly or by using excessive heat can lead to a dull finish or accelerated thickening.
The second step is tempering the chocolate. The goal of tempering chocolate is to re-crystallize the chocolate in the correct way. By correct way, I mean to end up with as many of the ideal crystal forms as possible. You see, cocoa butter has six different possible crystal forms, each with different properties. “Good” chocolate has a majority of type five crystals in it. Type five crystals possess the following properties: glossy, firm, best snap and melts near body temperature. If you have too many of the other crystalline forms you may end up with chocolate that is crumbly, melts too easily or has a matte finish rather than a glossy one.
The two classic ways of tempering chocolate are:
working the molten chocolate on a heat-absorbing surface, such as a stone slab, until thickening indicates the presence of sufficient crystal “seeds”; the chocolate is then gently warmed to working temperature.
and
Stirring solid chocolate into molten chocolate to “inoculate” the liquid chocolate with crystals (this method uses the already formed crystal of the solid chocolate to “seed” the molten chocolate).
In class we used the first technique for tempering our chocolate. We took a bowl of molten chocolate and poured 3/4 of it out onto our working surface. We then worked it, cooling it to 26-27 degrees Celsius for our milk chocolate and to 28-29 degrees Celsius for our dark chocolate. The trick here was that we did not use a thermometer to check the temperatures but rather used a dab of chocolate on our lower lip as a tester. It takes a lot of practice and chocolatey lips to get familiar with the temperatures! Next, we added this cooler portion of chocolate back into our bowls where the remaining warmer 1/4 was left. The goal is to then be left with chocolate in your bowl that is at 28-30 degrees Celsius or 31-33 degrees Celsius for milk or dark chocolate respectfully.
A note regarding “seed” chocolate (a method which we have not used in class) – Did you know if you add a piece of solid, well tempered chocolate to a batch of molten, untempered, chocolate, the piece of solid, well-tempered chocolate will cause the liquid chocolate to crystallize in the correct way? Cool!
Marshmallows and Cacao Beans:
The product (recipe) is called cacao beans, but they are chocolate covered candied almonds. I guess they look like cacao beans, but certainly taste sweeter!
A La Cuisine – Week Seven
Poulet (Chicken):
We prepared a couple different chickens during this class. The one in the photo is more of a wild chicken. Chef wasn’t sure of the translation into English on the type of chicken. Was it a pheasant maybe?
If you look really carefully at the last picture you’ll see the little rabbit ribs I prepared. So tiny. Very tricky!
Lapin (Rabbit):
Depending on your sensitivity, you might find this first photo disturbing. I did! That said, I thought it was important to show all sides of what we do in cuisine, not just the pretty plates at the end! Quite often we are working with very raw ingredients. No starting out with nicely packaged chicken breasts!
I was put on rabbit detail and also worked on producing stocks from the chickens. Taking the meat off the shoulder in one piece was challenging!
Fruits de Mer et Legumes Frais:
Lobster caviar anyone? The fish in the photo with the purple mash is Turbot. If you recall from a much earlier post, I call it the Ugly Fish!
Macarons:
There has been a lot of macaron making these days in the kitchen! Sometimes they work out very well and other times they don’t. Refer to Patisserie – Week Two for more information on macarons.
The purple ones were mine and then I helped another student the following day make the pink ones. Girly macarons! You should have seen the eye roll we got from Chef when we asked if we could make pink macarons! Priceless!
Molecular Gastronomy:
We’ve been kitchen scientists this week! Originally, the term Molecular Gastronomy (coined by Hungary’s Nicholas Kurti and France’s Hervé This) referred only to the study of the physical and chemical processes occurring during cooking. However, the term is now used (misused to many) to describe a whole new style of cooking which became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There is now not a single term used to describe this cooking style and Molecular Gastronomy is more of a general term. Some of the other terms used for this style of cooking include Culinary Constructivism, Avant-Garde Cuisine or even Techno-Emotional Cuisine.
Molecular Gastronomy uses a variety of methods to play with, alter and investigate food, food combinations, textures, states and more. Natural gums and hydrocolloids are often used. Spanish Chef, Ferran Adrià, said to currently be one of the best chef’s in the world, even sells Spherification Kits online for home exploration of such cooking. This kit is the very thing we used in class to make our mango caviar and raviolis. By mixing mango juice with alginate and then submerging drops or spoonfuls into a solution of calcium chloride and water, one can obtain a more solid form of what was previously liquid. This was my first time experiencing such food-play so forgive me if my basic description of the process or term is lacking!
Ferran Adrià prefers to refer to his cuisine as deconstructivist rather than molecular gastronomy. For an average price of 250 Euros you can eat at his restaurant, El Bulli, in Roses, Catalonia, Spain. It is only open for 6 months of the year though and books a year or two in advance! Adrià’s goal is to “provide unexpected contrasts of flavour, temperature and texture. Nothing is what it seems. The idea is to provoke, surprise and delight the diner.” As he likes to say, “the ideal customer doesn’t come to El Bulli to eat but to have an experience.”
Other famous restaurants for Molecular Gastronomy currently are Chef Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago and Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, England. On The Fat Duck menu you might find snail porridge, sardine on toast sorbet or bacon and egg ice cream. Doesn’t that just say, “good morning!”
