Patisserie – Week Eight
A playful dish to end our course! What fun to make miniature cotton candy clouds and include a medicinal tube of caramel sauce in the plating.
Everything about this dessert was outstanding. The delicious union of tastes included caramel à la crème, crème légère à la vanille, brunoise de poires, glace noujat, barbe à papa, crème d’amande et amandes epilèes, et brioche façon. In English the dessert elements are caramel sauce, light vanilla cream, diced and caramelized pears, nougat ice cream, cotton candy, almond cream, sliced almonds and brioche soaked in rum. I give both the presentation and the taste a 10 out of 10. This delicacy will definitely be making an appearance at my dinner parties in the near and delicious future. Would you like an invitation?
Hope you’ve enjoyed the course blogs! Stay tuned for our further food, travel and community posts.
A La Cuisine – Week Twelve
Our final week of cuisine has come. It was a meaty week and I was happy to be challenged with preparing some bull and a big goose! We also spent lots of time cleaning this week in both the pastry side of the kitchen and the cuisine side. Oh the joys of deep cleaning!
Thursday saw a cocktail party for certificates, mulled-wine, photos, nibblies and goodbyes. It was fun to celebrate together and there was a bit of a laugh when I was presented with three certificates instead of the common one or two. Of course, I had to try a bit of everything – French, Cuisine and Pastry.
A photo of Pastry Chef, Florent Cantaut, and French Cuisine Chef, Iman Bogan, in celebration.
Our Final Week:
Patisserie – Week Seven
Tis the week for chocolate! <tea ganache filling seen above is intended to make you drool>
Filling and Forming:
Three fillings were made this week for our chocolate pieces. In order of my preferences: praline, tea ganache and coffee coffee. Dan’s order would be praline, coffee coffee and tea ganache. Our praline was made by coating roasted almonds in a caramel syrup and baking it until hard. We then grinded these pieces of caramelized almonds until a paste was formed and was united then with chocolate to form our filling. The tea ganache was very soft and creamy making it tricky to work with, however, perfectly creamy as it dissolved on your tongue. We also used a thin layer of almond dough as a base to this ganache. Finally, there was the coffee coffee. I have no idea why it was named coffee coffee rather than coffee, but I like that we doubled up on the name. A nice ring to it, don’t you think? Instant coffee granulates were added for this filling.
As you can see, sometimes there are chocolate “accidents”! What a shame.
Dipping and Designing:
We’re all hard a work dipping our chocolates and finishing them with various decorative pieces or designs. The trickiest part for me in this process is allowing enough chocolate to drip off your piece before setting it ever-so gently down on the parchment paper. You don’t want a pool of chocolate forming around your piece. You want clean edges. I don’t think anyone at home will mind when I need to practice this further!
A La Cuisine – Week Eleven
From sea to land, this was a week of finishing fish and heading into the meats once again. I am proud to say I’m much better at filleting a fish these days than I was a couple months ago. How will the next, and final, week of de-boning the animals go? Will I show improvement and man-handle the wild life?
Bouillabaisse:
I love when we do traditional French cuisine, especially when it is slightly less gastronomic and a little more everyday cooking. That isn’t to say that we don’t put a gourmet twist on it all! My passions for home-cooking, rather than gastronomic or gourmet, have been re-affirmed during this course work, however, it has been fun to get creative with the presentation. I like beauty and for me, food is beautiful.
Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew, thought to originate in Marseille, but served throughout the Mediterranean region. It is a flavourfully prepared fish stock containing assortments of fish, shellfish, vegetables and spices. Common spices used might be fennel, saffron, bay leaf, basil, garlic and orange peel. It is said to be the unique and local spices that set a Bouillabaisse apart from other fish stews. The French and English word, Bouillabaisse, comes from the Provençal Occitan word bolhabaissa, which is a compound word consisting of the verb bolhir (to boil) and abaissar (to reduce heat or to simmer). Essentially, this describes much of how this fish stew is made.
Once our fish stock was ready it was strained and used to cook a variety of fresh fish and vegetables just before serving. I quite enjoyed the flavour combinations present in this dish. In the final picture you will see some scallops on beds of naturally coloured mash.
More From The Sea:
Sausages Make Their Debut:
This week saw play with making pâte à choux tuiles, a taste of tripe and the famous cassoulet. I admit, I’m not really a tripe eater. If you don’t know, tripe is the first or second stomach of a cow. Doesn’t that sound yummy?! Lots of people enjoy it though. I did, however, get adventurous and try escargot (snails) this week, though failed to document the tasting with a photo. I guess with enough butter on something you can eat it! Okay, leaving the sarcasm behind now, I honestly enjoyed my first and second cassoulet experience. My first time trying cassoulet was the dish you see in the photo below that we made in class. The second time I tried it was during our weekend in Carcassonne as this medieval village is famously known for their cassoulet. A warning, it can be quite fatty!
Cassoulet dates back to at least the 14th Century. It is always made with white beans, duck or goose confit, sausages and meat. The cassoulet we made in class had some duck meat and chicken. The one I tried in Carcassonne was mostly all duck meat and saying it was rich would be an understatement! It was so delicious and the seasonings were outstanding. This one made in class was a little less flavourful, more tomatoey and less fatty. I also enjoyed it. I do love my beans!
I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream!:
I was lucky enough to get put on ice cream detail this week. I tried a dark chocolate chili-pepper ice cream and a roasted pumpkin cinnamon ice cream. Those who know me very well won’t be surprised at my making this first flavour! This ice cream making gave me good practice at crème anglaise, a creamy custard sauce which is the key base for a good ice cream.
San Sebastian, Spain
As with most places Carly and I travel, we look for the places that are supposed to have good food. That’s essentially the only reason why we drove 5 hours from Sarlat to get to San Sebastian on the Northeastern tip of Spain. San Sebastian, known for Basque culture, cider houses and endless Pintxo bars was the last stop on our October road trip.
For the uninformed, a Pintxo is essentially a form of a tapa or appetizer (that’s how we’d describe it in Canada, anyways). They often have a toothpick in them, and consist of some sort of meat and bread, or fish, or other deliciousness.
The awesomeness of the atmosphere in these Pintxo bars cannot be understated. They are packed full of people, seemingly from the moment they open til the moment they close. The standard method of getting served is shoving your way through the crowds of people, and yelling friendlily at the bartender to ask for wine, beer and whatever Pintxos you want. He hands them all to you, and expects you to come back and pay for it all later (after you’ve come back a few more times for more wine, and more Pintxos). At that point, you can jostle in the crowd, or feel free to head out onto the street with the throng of other people standing around with their wine and beer, enjoying life and eating delicious food. I do find it incredibly lame that we have no ability to do these kinds of things in Canada, thanks to our rather lame liquor laws.
Another interesting food stop we made was to one of the local cider houses. These places have giant barrels (or at least the illusion of giant barrels) of all-you-can-drink cider that go along with your food. If you run out of cider, you basically just need to shout at the nearest server type person, and/or join the line-up of people getting their glasses of cider filled and trying not to get cider splashed all over them as they attempt to catch it in their glass. Also, the beef was a little rare for Carly’s taste. The cod was a little salty for mine.
Sorry for the rather uninspiring photos, we spent most of our time in San Sebastian eating, and not a lot of time with the camera.
The underground market in San Sebastian was nothing short of amazing between the 80 bajillion butchers and fish mongers. You really have to see it to believe it. Parking was also pretty awesome, ringing in at about €22/night (~$CAD30).
