Homemade Baguettes - Easy & Awesome

After hauling myself out of bed after the most enjoyable Sunday lay in I have had in the last six days, it was time to get up and bake some bread.  I decided upon making a “lean dough”, as in one that contains no fat and settled upon a nice quick recipe for Baguettes that I found and tried a while ago.

A quick note, I am using a granite chopping board to bake my bread on. I keep it in the oven and make sure it is really hot before putting any dough on it. The idea is that it replicates a proper bakers oven and starts to cook the dough from the bottom as soon as it touches it. You can pick these up quite cheap, I got mine from Argos for £7 reduced from £15 in a clearance sale. An alternative could be an upturned heavy bottom roasting tin. You can just place the dough into the oven on a cold baking tray but you will not get a consistent crust all around the bread, it will still be good eating though, just not spectacular!

Recipe

10g fresh yeast (half for dried)

280g (approx) water

482g strong flour

10g salt

Method

Sieve flour and salt into a large bowl.

Take the fresh yeast in one hand and a small handful of the flour in another. Rub both hands together as if trying to warm them on a cold day, crumbling the mix into the bowl containing the flour and salt.

Add the lukewarm water reserving a few tablespoons in case you don't require it all. Using a knife or the handle of a wooden spoon gently combine the ingredients together. When the mix looks like its almost formed add the remaining water if there is still some flour remaining at the bottom of the bowl.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for ten minutes. You will know when the dough is ready as it will have a smooth appearance and will spring back when lightly pressed with a finger. It is important not to take any shortcuts here as the kneading develops the gluten that will impact the texture of the finished bread.

Unproven dough

Place the dough back into the mixing bowl that has either had a light coating of oil or a sprinkle of flour (I prefer flour personally as I don't want a greasy dough), cover with a damp tea cloth and leave in a warm place until doubled in size. This could take 20mins in a very warm room or over an hour in a cooler spot. The dough will no longer be springy, you can make a 'belly-button' and the dough will hold the indentation.

The dough is now double the size and the gluten has relaxed and is no longer springy to the touch

Preheat oven to its maximum setting, French bakers ovens are a lot hotter than home ovens so we need to get as close as we can. Ensure the cooking stone or upturned tray is in place if using, and place an empty tray on the bottom of the oven... you will see why shortly.
Gently turn the dough out onto a floured surface and slap the dough a few times to remove any large packets of Co2 that have formed. Cut the dough in two and create a “backbone” in both pieces of the dough by following the technique below...



As you can see my technique is not up to scratch, but I have a feeling the bread will be OK, don't know why, I just do... ;-) I folded and pinched etc three times and after this the dough was elongated and more cylindrical.

After one go at shaping the dough and 'inserting the backbone'.. hmm more practice is needed!

This will help the dough have a nice round shape as a baguette should and not a flat bottom like a ciabatta.

Gently roll the dough to the desired length. If you are baking the bread on a conventional baking tray that is not heating in the oven, place the dough upon this, cover with a cloth and prove for 15-20mins in a warm place or until nearly doubled in size.

Shaped dough on floured tray ready to "slide" onto baking stone after further proving

If using a baking stone or similar, place the dough on the back of a floured upturned tray or chopping board, cover and leave to prove for 15-20mins in a warm place until nearly double in size.

To make a poppyseed baguette, beat an egg and lightly brush the dough, sprinkle with poppy seeds and then take a lame (bakers razor) or a slightly serrated knife (what I used) and quickly and confidently slash the bread seven times... I cant count so I only did six, mother will be cross. Of course you don't have to add the poppy seeds, just bake without the egg wash.

 Egg washed and poppy seed coated.. ready for the oven

Slide the dough quickly from the board or tray onto the hot baking stone in the oven, pour ¼ glass of water onto the baking tray at the bottom of the oven and quickly shut the door. The steam, strangely, helps to give baguettes its characteristic crust.

After 5-6mins open the oven to vent the steam, if there is still water on the tray remove it from the oven. Continue cooking for 6-10mins until it is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the underside. Leave to cool on a cooling rack and don't eat for at least 20mins!!! Hard to resist but the inside needs time to dry out a little.

Venting the steam from the oven, here you can see the granite chopping board I am using as a baking stone

To make the lovely looking 'Epi' you could have followed my pictures... had I taken any. Instead follow this video...



Make sure you do this either on the baking sheet you will cook it on, or on the board you will transfer it onto the stone with. Again with the stone, confidently slide the dough onto the stone with a good jerk.

Bake as per the baguette.

Let me know how you get on... because this is soooo easy you will be making it, won't you?!?!?!

Bon appetit!

Dylan

p.s. a great site for recipes involving yeast http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/

Undersell/Over-deliver... The Budget Lunch

If there is one thing that annoys me more than any when it comes to dining out, it is how dishes are described. Its all good and well telling me what is in the dish but I don't need to know everything! There seems to be a worrying trend where restaurants are trying to out do one another by detailing each and every component that forms a dish, and this has gotten worse of late by telling me where every item on the menu has come from!

I understand restaurants want to highlight there use of seasonal and regional products, but just tell me that's what you do at the start of the menu, I will believe you, and I for one will be a happy chappy. By all means restaurants should have this information available, but to be honest if I wanted to know where my lamb chops grew up I would ask the waiter to find out. I could then take it upon myself to drive down the road and find the farm and heckle the remaining lambs telling them that their brother or sister tasted very good, and that next week I will be back again, for one of them (insert sinister laugh). Maybe I would take an empty bottle of Reggae Reggae Sauce with me to taunt them with the prospect of ending up under its sweet and spicy blanket, while all the while I sing along to the Levi Roots song....




You see I believe that as with most things in life, a little bit of mystery does one good. Isn't that the very reason that Lingerie was invented? When you order a dish from a menu that has detailed the DNA profile of the dish, all you are waiting for is for it to be delivered so you can consume it and go and find the mother of the Dunfermline Dexter Steak you just devoured and lick your lips and rub your belly in front of her. My personal preference is for understated menus that give you a surprise when it turns up as you weren't quite expecting what you see before you.

Of course for all the fussy eaters out there they will probably have an acid reflux attack at the very thought of what I am suggesting, but if I had my way these people would have been dealt with by Darwins Theory of Natural Selection, that and a little help from me and a blunt object. Alas with the UK laws being what they are at present this is unlikely to become a reality for at least a couple of years.

A  clear case of Over promising and Under delivering!

In the stock market world they call my preference “Undersell and Over-deliver”. Steve Jobs and his team at Apple are famous for giving earning estimates which they know they can easily beat. The analysts cottoned on to this quite quickly, raising their own estimates above that of Steves, yet Apple still leave room to allow them to over deliver on the analysts expectations most of the time. Of course the equation could be reversed... but who would want to risk a dish being perceived as under delivering? My point is over explaining a dish could lead the diner to expect too much, thus leaving room for it not to meet the standard they have created in their head... with the dish served having no faults.

Now imagine this from a diners point of view... a few select words describing the key constituents of the dish, the mouth starts to salivate, the mind starts to imagine how its going to look when it arrives.... and then it does, but with a few little things that you weren't told about, a few little nuggets of flavour and texture you hadn't been preparing your tongue, nose and brain for. Ohhh yes, that's what I am talking about, that little bit of, as the French say “je ne sais quoi”! Marco Pierre White had a tenancy to do this at Harveys, it would seemingly slip his mind that a dish contained not just a little, but a whole mountain of truffle shavings for example, resulting in an unexpected and greedily welcomed surprise for the diner. I would wager this doesn't occur too much nowadays, and the world is a sadder place for it.

So its with this in mind I would like to introduce the Budget Lunch task I will have to undertake in about 6 weeks time at Tante Marie. We have been challenged to create a family meal for 4 guests, comprising of 3 courses for the total sum of £8. That's £8 for the whole thing, not £8 per person or £8 per course £8. Total.

Having thought about this a few times since we were informed of task last week, I believe I have settled on a menu.

Soup

-------

Shepherds Pie

-------

Rice Pudding

Isn't that lovely. What more do you need to know? Is it understated? Yes. A little too understated? Maybe. I guess the challenge for me now is to develop serious flavour into each dish, as well as utilising a number of techniques to allow me to expand the descriptions a little, but still leave room for that little bit of “je ne sais quoi” of my own. Working with the budget I have, my skill set and the time limit of 2hrs 45mins may make this a difficult goal to achieve, but as ever I am always up for a good challenge. Don't be surprised if I bite off a little bit more than I can chew... as I fully intend on chewing it!

More on the Budget Lunch task to follow at a later date. For now, just ponder what 3 courses you would make remembering to stay within that £8 limit.... my menu is not set in stone, any suggestions are welcome in the comments area below.

Dylan

Week 4 - Ramsay, Tarts and Fish

Glazed Fruit Tart... mother will be proud.

I will start this post by saying WOW.

This WOW is in reference to a certain Mr Ramsay, but is not to do with him as a person but more as the brand. If you read my last post you will know that Gordon, or El Gordo as we, his close friends, like to call him, popped into Tante Marie last week to freak out most of the students. I would like to believe that his visit and my subsequent post on the matter had no real influence in the number of hits my blog got that evening and the next day. No, I would prefer to believe it was down to my eloquent prose and witty humour which somehow the readers could sense in the ethereal world of intertwining interwebs and were drawn to these very pages. Unfortunately the realist in me finds this hard to swallow.

So what pull does “Brand Ramsay” have... well since I began this blog at the start of this month, and up until I posted about El Gordo, my little blog had received 891 page loads from 609 unique visitors. Not bad an average of 28 unique visitors per day for 22 days. I posted the “Ramsay Post” at 17:56 on Thursday the 28^th January. I had 22 page loads from 17 unique visitors if my memory serves me correctly. By midnight, 6 hours later, I received a total of 200 page loads from 134 unique visitors. The following day I received 188 page loads from 99 unique visitors! As of today my blog has received 1279 page loads from 842 visitors for the month, not bad work, not bad at all. A thank you to the people at Stat Counter for providing the data as well as those at Google Analytics.

Pasta sauces created by El Gordo for Comic Relief

Well thats enough of that, I am sure only I am interested in all these numbers.... but just for your information, looking at the map Google Analytics provides of where you, my readers, come from, if I want to take a well earned holiday far away from all you blog fans out there, its going to be a tough choice between The Democratic Republic of the Congo and North Korea, neither of which, unlike Brazil, I am big in.

Week 4 at Tante Marie saw a few challenges, the first of which was to cover our celebration cakes (made in previous weeks) with an almond paste. Now lets be honest here. I hate this kind of thing, when I found out we were going to have to decorate this horrible fruit cake (and boy do I hate fruit cakes), and not only decorate it but we would get marked and it would go towards our final mark for the course, I wept. Please note though that I wept “on the inside”, it just wouldn't do for a northerner to be seen weeping in front of all these “soft southern furries” now would it?

And it wasn't just the fact that I hate fruit cake that had me weeping (on the inside, just making sure), but the decorating. My elder brother is the artist in the family, he can draw trees by “drawing where the trees aren't”... yeah he is that good! I on the other hand am not an artist, not in the slightest. The thought of having to make figures out of icing, little pretty flowers and piping little designs fills me with dread... firstly because of my complete ineptitude in such delicate things,but mainly at the thought of what “the boys” back home will think I have become down in the soft south.

Alas, stage one was to cover the cakes with a almond paste, a task that went surprisingly smoothly. Tomorrow I have to cover the almond paste with cold fondant which will serve as the final finish... oh dear god help me!

A face only a mother could love - Monkfish Head

A highlight for me last week was the fish lecture held by a lovely man (I forget his name, sorry) who is close to 70 years of age and has been dealing with fish since the age of 12. You could say he knew his stuff. I especially enjoyed the parts where he would show us how to fillet different fishes, just before which he would say “I'll do this slowly so you can see what I am doing”.... a flurry of movement and 2.67 seconds later a lovely Plaice had been turned into 2 half fillets and one full fillet... in the words of the late and great Tommy Cooper, “Just like that”.

Classmate Debs (she's Canadian and everything) Beef and Guiness Pie... don't ask what happened to mine!

As for actual cooking, the week saw the creation of Rough puff pastry and its use in a Beef and Guiness pie, a Tarte aux fruits, Carottes vichy, Simple fruit brulée (a recipe stolen from my mother), Vegetable stock that went into our Crème jardinière soup, Crème caramels, Lemon and herb stuffed roast chicken, Pommes de terre duchesse, choux au gratin, Quiche Lorraine and finally Chocolate muffins. Thursday saw the full day taken up by the hygiene course talked about in my last post, and the interruption by El Gordo, and that as they say is that.

 Crème Caramel... with some pointless whipped cream and blueberries.

Nothing terribly challenging this week, although the rough puff pastry was something I enjoyed making and will probably feature in my Budget Lunch... something I will tell you about in my next post.

So come back soon and find out how I get on covering my cake with the fondant icing, and how one goes about cooking a 3 course meal on a very restrictive budget.

Dylan

When Dylan spanked Gordon Ramsay.......

Now who owns a car like this?

Well wasn't that an unexpected event. Today we had a full day of theory classes culminating in an exam, upon successful completion of which will give us a Level 2 Award in Food Safety. The class was taken by the husband of the lady who presented the healthy eating class I wrote about in the last post.

This was however quite a different kettle of fish, meaning it was two things, both interesting and informative.... as well as being a prerequisite to work in a catering establishment. We learnt all about bacteria and viruses that can be spread by food, cross contamination, how to chill food fast and get it through the “danger zone” within the allotted 2hr time frame before bacteria start to multiply... and much more.

Some of the more interesting parts where the lecturers little tangents about work he had done as an expert witness in court cases, his work on tv shows such as Panorama and the “Britain's Worst.....” series where he was involved in finding the worst restaurant from a hygiene point of view. All much better than being told we could make pastry with low fat margarine!

Anyway... it was whilst we were learning the differences between detergent, disinfectant and sanitiser that we were rudely interrupted by the school principle Andrew Maxwell, a co-owner of the school and joint founder of Absolute Taste, Lyndy Redding and a geezer who likes to cook a bit and apparently does a not too bad job at it.It was a brief visit, he wished us luck with our exam that was following shortly and informed us that food hygiene courses are...


“like that ugly French teacher you had at school, they seem pointless and boring but when you get to France and see all the women you wish you had paid more attention”

Inspired.

The food safety guy then had a light hearted pop at one of his restaurants only getting 3 out of 5 stars in a cleanliness inspection... but it has to be said that 3 stars equates to a “good” rating, 2 stars being “satisfactory” and one star being “poor”... not all bad then!

We then had to get on with our learning while students looked at each puzzled and wondered if that actually just happened. It did. I have photos priced at £10 to prove it.

A covert picture taken by myself of Gordon Ramsay interupting our class, I tell you some people have no manners these days.

The test was dully administered and we had a full 60 minutes to complete it... we started at 16:00 and 25 multiple choice questions later I was out of the door by 16:10. Fate it would seem was smiling on me. As I exited with fellow classmate Lewis, we turned around to see Gordon Ramsay (if you hadn't guess it was him yet) leaving for his brand new Ferrari as a couple of the students on the year long course stood around star struck... not I though, oh no. I scampered... yes I said scampered, over to him thrust my hand out and asked in a tone which left little room for any other answer than yes, for a photo. We posed while Lewis tried to work the camera and I instructed to Gordon to “smile.... I'll make you famous” to which he had no response other than the awkward grin, but that could equally have been caused by me slapping his arse. Oh yes I did.

Gordon... meet the competition... look at the fear in his eyes...

he is trying to hide it, but its not working!

I am sure he was thinking... “who the fuck is this guy and why the fuck do I have my arm around him?” A question which he will soon know the answer to the first part at least. You see, unbeknownst to Gordon at the start of the year wheels were put in motion that could quite literally change the landscape of the British restaurant industry, and with his investment in Tante Marie he was playing a part in the rise of the next great culinary master (that's me if you were wondering) which will inevitably eclipse his own great accomplishments......

OK OK maybe not.... but you never know, maybe.... does one no good to ever count me out! ;-)

And that's that. My meeting with probably one of my only 'idols'... a word I would have been hesitant to use until actually meeting him after all the years of watching him do something I love on telly.  Today was a good day.

Dylan


p.s.  Its a Ferrari California if you like those sort of things...plate reads "8 GJR"  Gordon James Ramsay!

Week 3... and a healthy eating fundalmentalist

 A whole Lamb, just thought you may like to see it

Ok I lied again, I didn't post a recap of last week on Saturday evening like I said I would, what can I say, a bottle of Vino Tinto got in the way... so here is a very very brief recap on what we covered in no particular order last week at Tante Marie.

Pâté de foie de volaille (Smooth chicken liver Pâté) with Melba Toast, Pâté demi-feuilletée (flaky pastry), York fingers, Crème de tomates with croutons, Pavlova, Rack of lamb with garlic and parlsey crust, Potato purée with leeks, Bread rolls, another go at Pâté demi-feuilletée and finally we learned to make a 'Water lily napkin' to serve our bread rolls on.

Told you it would be brief!

There was not a huge deal of cooking last week as you can see, this was mainly because we had three demonstration mornings, a theory class and all day Monday we did our RSPH Level 2 in Healthier food and special diets... and this is what I want to talk about.

I guess the clue was in the tittle “healthier food” and should have prepared myself and the rest of the class for what lay in store, although I still think it would have come as a bit of a shock. We spent the day learning about healthier cooking methods, eating a balanced diet, special dietary needs of some people such as Celiacs who are gluten intolerant and so cannot eat wheat products for example. All very good.

One of our lovely Government handouts so we can eat properly.  I dont see 

the Pie group on here though??? How curious.

It was the “healthier food” section that was the winner on the entertainment front. I mean, why didnt I ever think of making a bechmel sauce with milk and thickening it with cornflour... no need for the butter used in the the roux, oh and while we are at it we can use skimmed milk to ensure that it completely devoid of any flavour. Salt, we dont need salt. Are you mad? Have you gone insane?Whats that you say? We could use low fat margarine to make our pastry with? Are you being serious sweetheart, are you? And the day progressed on this note. At first I thought the lady teaching the course was a comedian with a uncanny flare for a dead-pan delivery of her routine.... I was wrong. Seriously wrong!

Now don't get me wrong I understand the point of the course, its hypothetical, its the “theoretically you could do this” line, which yes indeed you theoretically could. But lets be honest here, just because you could does not in any way shape or form me that you should! If you cant enjoy food, if you cant have your butter, your salt, your cream... then what is the point. Give me a intravenous drip and feed me the nutrients I need to survive.

And this was what I think most of my fellow classmates were thinking. We are on a course learning classical French cooking techniques, and yes we use lard, we use cream, we use butter, we use salt, we make pastry all the time, and no we have never used margarine to make it! And this lady, lovely as she was, was attempting to rock the very foundations of what we were learning, it was as if she was trying to tell us that indeed the world is flat.

Enough of the ranting, I want to talk about the highlight of last weeks food very quickly, and that was the rack of lamb. My butchery skills are limited to hacking apart whole chickens whilst at Uni and trimming a couple of whole fillets of beef so just the perfectly cylindrical eye of the fillet was left whilst on a yacht. Getting stuck into a rack of lamb and French trimming it, removing all the meat, fat and sinew from the bones was great fun... and it tasted bloody good too.

Unfortunately there are none of my pictures of any of this due to the thieving scumbag who stole my camera, however the recap of this weeks work will indeed be in full technicolor. You lucky lucky people you!

Dylan

p.s. Please tell me any of your amazing substitutes for creating low-fat versions of things that should not be eaten in a low-fat form... I have a pen and paper ready to make notes.... promise.

Musings - The London Underground

Have you seen this man?  

 

Ok I lied to you, and I am not sorry. I did not post more frequently this week as it was confirmed my camera was 'thieved' by some scumbag on the course. I feel that a blog without pictures is like chips without the salt 'n'vinegar. Pointless. So my replacement camera is here now, but I wont bore you with last weeks happenings at Tante Marie until this evening. For now you will have to make do with my musings about 'the tube' in London. What has this got to do with cooking you ask? Nothing, but you are here now so shhhhhh yourself and listen....

Yesterday I travelled from Woking to White Hart Lane to watch Tottenham vs Leeds in the FA Cup, a game that was frustratingly drawn 2-2. But that is neither here nor there. I travelled by train and then by tube and noticed not for the first time how down right weird these people from “Landan Tawn” are.

A busy tube - is that the correct terminology?

So what is the deal with Londoners? Specifically those that frequent that wonder of a public transport system... the tube? Can you catch AIDs from making eye contact with a stranger on the tube? Has the government been covering this up? It seems like a silly question to ask if I am honest, but that is the only thing I could think of to explain how if someone makes the slightest hint of eye contact with someone else, theirs eyes dart away so fast their corneas must suffer some sort of whiplash in the process. It is the weirdest phenomena I have witnessed, yet makes a great game if you are as bored as I was. Just keep finding people to make eye contact with, when they glance away keep staring at them, they will look back eventually and when they do, throw them a wink... it freaks them right out! Its almost as good as getting into a lift that is full of people, and not turning round! You stand there, facing into the lift and smile and nod at everyone and watch how this blatant disregard for lift etiquette gets them completely weirded (don't think that is a word, but I like it!) out. Good times.

And god forgive the person that speaks on the tube, even more so if it is to a stranger. Yesterday I witnessed on multiple occasions that these tube users will not utter one word to anyone even if it is clearly in their best interest to do so. At one stage the train was packed, we were like sardines crushed together in a can. The train stops. The doors open. A few people get off, a few more get on. I watched a man try and force his way through the sardines without so much as a word. He tried to slip and slide between the bodies of strangers forced naturally close to one another with out making a sound. I assumed he must have been either an Mi5 agent covertly tracking a suspect, or a Ninja assassin slowly creeping towards his target unnoticed. Truth was not as exciting as I hoped, he was a guy trying to get off at that stop but could not bring himself to say something as ground breaking as “excuse me” or “sorry, can I squeeze past this is my stop”. I assume he must have been in fear of offending the whole of London with his bold and forward thinking, that or he didn't want to distract them from their strenuous efforts to not make eye contact with one another. I must say I did find it quite funny when the doors shut and he was still no where near the door! Next stop for you laddie boy!!

Another classic I have witnessed before occurred as I strolled towards the correct platform to take me north on the Victoria line, a gentleman comes flying past me at a near sprint to try and get to the train. He misses it by five seconds if that. Then the most amazing thing happened, he went nuts. He literally freaked out and started shouting, swearing and screaming while hurling himself about in apparent disgust at himself and the tube service. Very peculiar behaviour indeed and it got me thinking why would one get so upset of such a trivial matter... but before I could finish this thought, actually, before I could barely start my thought, I was rudely interrupted by the next train arriving! They run every god damn two minutes... TWO MINUTES... unless you are drowning two minutes is not really a long time. Have a think of what you could do in two minutes... not much, you could probably make a brew, but you couldn't drink it. Two minutes, all that fuss over two minutes... sort your life out sir!!!

White Hart Lane Stadium - Home to Tottenham Hotspur FC

So then it happened, as it always seems to happen to me... my meeting with the local nut job. I was off the tube at this point but I feel I may as well continue on with this rant for my own psychological well being. As I awaited my father to meet me outside White Hart Lane, the resident nut job decided I would like nothing more than to become his new best friend on a chilly Saturday evening. As he began telling me about how the police horses were freaking him out I could do nothing than do the the very English thing of smiling and using the occasional nod all the while wondering how the hell to best get away from this guy... but in a polite manner of course. The conversation he was having at me was at a intellectual level I am not yet ready for...

“you see mate, if they used tigers instead of horses it wouldn't be so bad, tigers will only bite you on the shoulder, but you get a horse.... mind you it has to be a clever horse, and not all horses are clever... the horse can kick the tiger and kill it. They are the same as elephants that's why elephants don't get killed by tigers, they are smarter than us. But they always use these horses and they scare the shit out of me, horses and tigers, they freak me right out.”

Seemingly this is not one of my mans "clever horses"

And this continued for a few more minutes until thankfully my phone rang and I could beat as hasty retreat to meet my father over the road. I must say he was a polite nutter and thanked me for my time and for “talking” to him. I wonder if he is on Twitter or Facebook..... might have been nice to keep in touch....


Dylan

Week 2 part 2 - Breakfast Salad, Calves Liver & Angelica... yes Angelica!?!?!

Previous part of this post can be found here.

Next up was 'Truite aux amandes' to my mother, or Trout and almonds to me and you. Our first chance to gut a fish and our second go at filleting one. We then tried our hands at turning some potatoes, to make them into pretty barrel shapes, a traditional French technique. We then had our first theory class, in which we received the dates of such delights as our 3 day wine course... yes it involves tasting, wines, spirits, champagnes, liquors.. everything. Yes spit buckets are apparently provided, no you don't have to use them if you think spitting in public is vulgar, as I most certainly do, Mother just wouldn't allow it!

Thursday – Morning was a demo, followed by making the pastry for the Latticed Apple Tart and blind baking, assembling with our previously made filling, baking and then completing with a heavy glaze. We also made Crème Asphodele, a lemon mouse set with gelatin. I found this to be very retro, what with the angelica garnish and all! Seriously.... angelica!!??! Traditionally one would use two diamond shaped pieces of angelica placed together to form a heart like shape. I was told that my two off centred strips making an 'X' shape added nothing to the dish, and we should endeavour not to add things to the dish that doesn't add anything to it. My response was simply “So why are we adding angelica to the dish? It adds nothing but a bright green, awful textured, over sweetness to the dish... which isn't good a good thing” my point was seemingly missed. I cant see Crème Asphodele being used too much nowadays unless as a component of a dish, and only if the amount of gelatin used is reduced to create a less dense texture (like the ones I made... shhh don't tell anyone or I may get in trouble for not following the recipe).

Friday – Saw us make a 'Salade de petits déjeuner avec oeuf mollets' (breakfast salad with soft boiled eggs), Glazed calves liver with sweet potato mash, stir fried brussel sprouts (yes I said sprouts, stir fried, pay attention!), Anchovy cheesecakes and finally Tart Frangipane as mentioned at the start of the earlier blog. The salad was a straight forward affair, the only bit that needed attention was the egg. Oeuff Mollets has no English translation apparently, but what it is is an egg cooked half way between the usual soft and hard boiled eggs.  (You can see an example in the pic at the start of this blog, the egg that occupies the top and central portion of the pic) I decided upon a time of 5 minutes after slyly watching some of my class mates undercooked and over cooked attempts. Remember in my earlier post when I said 'NEVER AGAIN'? Well seemingly I forgot my previous statement and I left it to my onion soup partner to make a note of the time, put the eggs into boiling water, add 5 minutes to the noted time then remove to ice water to stop the cooking, whilst I got on with some washing up. Seven minutes (not five) later the eggs came out.

Enough said.

The calves liver was a delight, with the balsamic and herb glaze, really quite splendid. The sprouts were sprouts... so long as they are not over cooked they are edible. The only thing to talk about was the 'cheesecakes'. These were not the cheesecakes you and I would recognise. They indeed contained cheese, but rather than a cream-cheese they contained a nice mature cheddar. Rather than having a buttery biscuit base, these has a cheesy pastry base. Rather than having a lovely sweet topping, these had a filling of anchovies and butter in between two of the pastry 'bases'! Alas, these are cheesecakes in the loosest sense of the term and are indeed little nibbles one may consume with some champagne whilst debating the latest exhibition at the Tate Modern. Quite tasty and very morish, despite what their name may suggest.

So that's it for now, I will try and get myself back to full health this week and post a new blog every couple of days rather than a big recap like this. If I find my camera I will update these two blogs with pics, if not I guess I will have to extort some funds from someone in order to purchase a replacement. A blog without pictures... what's the point in that???

Dylan

p.s. For those of you that know me personally and are disappointed at my lack of rants that have made their way into this blog... fear not! I can feel one or two slowly bubbling up from deep inside where I have kept them quite well quashed. How much longer I can keep them confined to my mind is anyone's guess. Lets just hope it doesn't rain any time soon, and I don't find myself following some ****head again with the worlds largest umbrella meandering around a crowded town centre, obliviously blinding half the population of Woking. They call them 'Golf Umbrellas' for a reason, think about it!