Puff Pastry and Red Meat Week

Puff pastry - Used in both Cuisine and Pastry, there is very little difference in its fabrication.  Basically it is layer of flour/water and butter, folded over and over again to achieve that puffy flaky crunchy texture that is known the world over.  Do you know how many layers are there in a typical puff pastry?  ok, you start with a block of butter enveloped by dough, that is 3 layers (dough, butter, dough), you roll it out (huff huff!) and you fold over 3 times of itself, that is 9 layers, but the dough and dough side by side will be counted as 1, that is, 3x3=9-2=7x3=21-2=19 (second turn), 19x3=57-2=55 (3rd turn)x3=165-2=163 (4th turn)x3=489-2=487 (5th turn, where we normally stop, cos' the wheat flour in Thailand is stronger, ie more gluten, more elastic, risk breaking if continued, or in France, for the 6th turn: 487x3=1461-2= 1459 layers!!  No wonder it is called millefeuille (1,000 layers).

Next turn you bite into a (well-done) puff pastry, appreciate all the work went into it!  For basic course students, all work is done by hand.  so we've been making these pastries withrolling pins and our aching tired hands.  You can only work this dough when it's very cold, so you can imagine the energy put into it.















In Cusine this week, we started on Red meat/Roast.  I have an almost 1 kg of roast striploin and plentiful of mash potatoes for the rest of the week, to add to that, a huge pot of Beef Burgundy tomorrow and by Friday, a Roast Chicken!  

Ok, plenty of butter, and red meat to clog up my arteries, I swear to you this course is hell!  Share my sin, have some free food!

This is a picture of preparation before our practical classes.  2 students on rotation will be tasked to fetch the ingredients from the storeroom, measure and distribute for the class.  At the end of the practical, all equipment are checked and counted, and kitchen declared clean before we can all leave altogether.