Day thirty-five: Hot and sweet, with a luscious recipe
Posted on | August 31, 2009
No, this is not porn. I’m just roasting from this heat and full to the brim of sweets.
And I am so pissed off at one of my teammates (Mr. Big who is acting very, very little) I yearn to give him a spanking and tell him to grow up, already.
“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?”
~ Charles De Gaulle
The problem with going to school as an adult is you treat other people as adults and expect to be treated the same.
Good luck.
Today, when I was busy elsewhere, Mr. Big thought it would be funny to swap my nice, clean side towel for his filthy, I’ve-never-done-laundry, rather smelly side towel. My towel was equally filthy when he returned it.
Laundry night. Again.
Yesterday, he thought it would be funny to stick slabs of hardened caramel on nice, white jackets (well, at least our jackets were white). Another laundry night. (And, yes, I now have a permanent orange stain on my coat.)
Mr. Big is the student who all but brought Mama to tears. She told me she thinks he has PMS.
So is there any good news here? Why yes! Mr. Big has asked to move to the night class for our third, and last, term.
Please, please don’t let him change his mind.
“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”
~ W.C. Fields
Which reminds me, I should probably let you know what’s coming up.
This, my second term, ends shortly. First, we’ll do some savory baking. Then two days of game (boar, duck and so on). Then (oh dear!) two days of testing.
On one day, we will have product ID in the classroom and practical skills in the kitchen. I don’t know yet what the practical skills will be, but I suspect they will include tasks such as making crepes and biscuits. I have no doubt fish will enter into the equation, too.
On the second day, there is a final exam and a black box. The black box is surprise ingredients we have to turn into a three-course meal.
I told you I don’t care about grades; just about learning how to cook. But, still, it’s nerve-wracking.
“Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.”
~ Woody Allen, “Without Feathers”
Today, we were supposed to make lemon curd, pâte à choux, and pastry cream. I made the lemon curd, Mr. Big made the pâte à choux, and Gawky Guy made the pastry cream.
Mr. Big’s pâte à choux turned out nicely enough, but then he split half of them and filled them with a savory cream cheese and salmon spread he made. Big points for creativity. Zero points for taste.
Gawky Guy took the other half of the pâte à choux, split them, filled them with pastry cream. Then he made a chocolate for topping. Yum!
I made a lemon curd as well as a lime curd, and took the pastry dough I made the other day and baked some tart shells. Gawky Guy very generously offered some of his chocolate for my tarts. The plan was to paint the bottom of my cooked tarts with the chocolate, fill them with one or the other of the curds, then decorate the plate with the chocolate and the crème anglaise I made yesterday. But, without asking anyone to show what they had made, without tasting or commenting on anyone’s food, the chef told us to clean up.
Bah! So I just tossed my cooked tart shells into the garbage and stuffed my curds, raw dough, and crème anglaise into a bag to take home. I’ll finish my learning at home.
“I bought some powdered water, but I don’t know what to add to it.”
~ Steven Wright
We did get a great lecture from Chef Ewok on tempering chocolate, so for everyone who wants to try it, here’s the easiest way to do it:
- Put a pot of water on your burner and bring the water to a boil. Then turn off the heat.
- Put your chocolate into a metal bowl and place it on top of your pot.
- Stir non-stop, until your chocolate is melted.
- Cool your chocolate to 80 F (you can place it in an ice bath – simply a bowl filled with ice and icy water)
- Heat your chocolate to 90 F and use it as you wish.
Now, if you are wondering why you would want to temper chocolate in the first place, you do so because it gives chocolate a pretty gloss and because it raises the melting temperature of chocolate. What’s the advantage of a higher melting temperature? Well, say you are doing chocolate decorations. Wouldn’t it be nice if they stayed nice and firm throughout the time they were displayed, say, on a birthday cake, instead of doing a slow and nasty melt?
Especially when it is 900 F outside. As it is today.
Recipe: Lime curd
We were given a recipe for lemon curd, but I wanted to try making a lime version (actually, I wanted to try making a pink grapefruit version, but we didn’t have any pink grapefruit at school). So I played with the lemon recipe and this is what I came up with. You should note, I wanted a serious citrus flavor. So feel free to add more sugar if you like it sweeter.
3 ounces lime juice
10 egg yolks
5 ounces sugar
6 ounces butter, diced
Put a pot of water on a burner and turn heat to medium / medium low. Put all ingredients except the butter on a metal bowl and put it on the heat. Whisk the ingredients ever minute, until thick.
Remove from heat and mix in butter until fully incorporated.
Store in refrigerator with a sheet of plastic wrap on the surface of your curd (so you don’t form a skin or get discolorization).
Now, I like curd so much I will hide behind my refrigerator door and eat it with a teaspoon. However, if you want a more civilized way to enjoy it, simply pour it into a parbaked tart shell and chill.
Then eat that behind the refridgerator door.
Comments
5 Responses to “Day thirty-five: Hot and sweet, with a luscious recipe”
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August 31st, 2009 @ 8:13 am
Well, at least you’re learning what it’s like in the real world. All those irritants are present in a professional facility. Only they’ll be paying you instead.
Mmmm. Citrus curd. Pink grapefruit? Oh now I have to make some of that!
August 31st, 2009 @ 10:24 am
mmm citrus curd! Love the stuff…
I’ve found that lemon curd is relatively shelf/table stable (i.e. it doesn’t break if left a room temperature for an hour) and refrigerates really well. This characteristic should apply to all citrus curds, since they seem to be made with the same technique.
I’m not sure that, in a professional environment, childish pranks that border on malicious would be tolerated. Don’t chefs’ whites reflect the kitchen staff as a whole? I guess it depends on the organization.
Heck, I know of two tech start-ups where a mandatory dress code was implemented to better reflect the professionalism the companies offer prospective clients. This way, when client representatives come in for meetings, the developers don’t look unkempt or disheveled.
August 31st, 2009 @ 10:29 am
[...] Day thirty-five: Hot and sweet, with a luscious recipe : cookingschoolconfidential.com/?p=536 – view page – cached #RSS 2.0 RSS .92 Atom 0.3 » Day thirty-five: Hot and sweet, with a luscious recipe Comments Feed index How I ended up in cooking school Day thirty-four: Here’s a chocolate recipe you’ve probably never seen and simply can’t live — From the page [...]
September 1st, 2009 @ 8:43 am
There will always be jokers who think they are “funny” and are just stupid. Didn’t he taste the salmon filling before using it? Pate a choux is a bit bland; so your filling should be frisky! : ) Try soaking your jacket overnight in Oxyclean. Great stuff and it does not rot the fabric like bleach.
December 14th, 2009 @ 10:57 pm
Oh my gosh reading this has brought me there. I know exactly what you mean. all chefs are assholes, i mean a very different breed but assholes nonetheless. im in culinary school aswell and coming up is my 2nd quarter. so excited! but it’s the same thing everywhere, stupid people who shouldnt be in a kitchen and the people who think they’re the shit. but such a thrill.