Friday, 4 September 2015

Week 9 (Intermediate Patisserie)

This week marked the beginning of the end of Intermediate Patisserie. Only one practical session this week and the last demo and lecture before the exams next week!

Tuesday morning we started on our final plated dessert of the term. Just one to focus on this week! An exotic fruit mousse with redcurrant jelly insert, encased in a stencilled joconde sponge, with tuille biscuit decoration and chilli mango salsa – easy! More bloody gelatine though – bugger. The combination of chilli and mango worked surprisingly well, especially after the flavours had been given time to blend together. The chilli was cut fine and then heated gently in lime juice, it was then mixed with diced; mango, strawberry, kiwi, plum and redcurrants. And the ‘exotic fruit’ in the mousse was mango and coconut, it was nice, I think some orange might have made it a bit more exciting though, or blood orange when the season’s right. The chef plated up about 6, but we were a bit pushed for time at the end as 8 or 9 people in the class got stuck in the lift during the break!! The chef had to hold up the lesson while we waited for them to be released. I have to confess that I found it too funny to be able to show genuine concern for them!

The practical session went fine, I managed to weigh out the correct amount of gelatine this week and the mousse set in record time. In fact it was practically setting in the piping bag as we were piping it into our lined moulds. The stencilling on the sponge was achieved through using some of the tuille mix, coloured, spread on a mat over a stencil, the stencil was removed and the sponge then spread over the top. I blended a red and orange colour together and it marbled and merged very slightly to give a nice effect, much like the colours you get in the last few minutes of the sun setting. I did some piped tuille biscuits and a spread/shaped one. Somehow I managed to make one of the piped ones look like a rasher of streaky bacon, must have been channelling some of Heston Blumenthal’s magic for that! I used the flower biscuit on the plate though, it looked a little more delicate and fitted the theme more! Got some useful feedback from the chef, my tuille was a tad thick (despite it being the thinnest I’d ever managed to get it – must cut the piping bag smaller next time!), and I could have done with a little more height on the plate. The dessert looked good though and was technically sound, so I was happy to finish plated desserts on a high.

I stayed on again, on Tuesday evening, to help one of the chefs with a new run of short courses. This particular course if the same as the last run, however it’s the first evening of 4 evenings in September. It’ll be nice to see a group start and finish the whole course, as opposed to seeing them at the end of the run last week. The first evening was dedicated to pate brisee (shortcrust pastry), and using it to make a chocolate and raspberry tart. The group did really well and there was enough time left at the end to play with some isomalt (sugar substitute) so they could create a nice drizzled sugar disc to decorate the top of the tart with. I didn’t get home until midnight, but it was worth it! They were a really nice group of people, I’m looking forward to the next 3 weeks with them.

Wednesday we were only in for the afternoon, it was a demo on sugar sculptures, to start preparing us for Superior Term. The chef made an underwater scene and showed us three techniques – pouring sugar (in moulds, to create the pieces for the base of the structure), blowing sugar (to create the body of the fish) and finally pulling sugar (to create the ribbon and fins of the fish). He showed us the process from making the sugar solution/syrup, to colouring it and how to maintain it under a heat lamp. As well as showing us how to pull and fold it to give a nice shiny finish to it, if we didn’t want to keep it see-through. It was an excellent demonstration and I really enjoyed watching it. The piece at the end looked amazing!



We could be trying to produce something like this as soon as next month! On one hand I feel grossly under-skilled, on the other I’m mega excited to try it and see what I can achieve!


Thursday was the final lecture of the term - chocolate tasting! It did not disappoint!


As you can see, we had 11 different chocolates to taste (there were lots of pieces in the bowls being passed around, so I didn’t feel bad about taking a couple of bits of each!), the 12th was handed around at the end and was pure 100% cocoa chocolate, before its processed and turned into chocolate as we know it. My favourite was the milk chocolate, it was about 40% and tasted really nice. We had others that were caramel flavoured, honey infused, chocolate with fruity notes, and bitter dark chocolate. It was quite an eye opening session, and a nice lecture to end on. And yes, I did eat all the chocolate on the plate – and a couple of extra pieces I was handed, quite unashamedly too!


This is it! The last post before the Intermediate Term exams, feeling a strange mixture of nerves and excitement. Nerves because I want to do well and not make any silly mistakes, and excitement because I love being in the kitchen and all three potential dishes are really nice. As with the basic term exams, I don’t mind which one we get, all three dishes have parts that I’m good at and parts that will hopefully get better with practice this weekend!



The final plated dessert. I was really happy with how the tuille and mousse came out, it worked really nicely with the salsa as well. A nice one to end on! 

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