Exam pieces!!

Ok, I'm done with both my pastry and cuisine exam, man, what a relief!  

Cuisine:  Braised stuffed cabbage.

Pastry:  Plaisir. (Choc and vanilla mousse with crème brûlée top).

Here are the pictures to remind you!  

Both pieces are not too difficult, but it's not easy to make it look pretty either.  I guess I'm glad that all went well, finished on time, and no comments from chef (no news is good news, right?)  Chef remarks only on what went wrong.

Will I get top 5 again, I don't know.  Some of the other students have improved quite a lot this term.  My written exam scores are quite decent though....., anyway, all will be revealed on Wednesday night!!  Stay tuned!

Last of Intermediate Pastry

This week, we had a bread-making workshop, we made some baguettes (of cos!), country bread (part rye), some sandwich loaf and foccacia.  It's another reason to want to go into French culinary - the bread!!

It's not easy at all, making good bread, it's a lot of chemistry and adapting to your current environment.  There needs to be a lot precision.  Afterall, a dough is a living, breathing, eating, reproducing organism until we chuck it into the oven.

Other pastries we made were the Orange Flower Mousse log cake, an Earl Grey tea mousse cake with milk choc covering.  A cheesy lemon tart and a warm raspberry tart.

This is the last of the term, see you in Superior Pastry!!!  Oh by the way, in Superior pastry, we will have to come out with our own recipe of a cake.  We can use anything under the sun.  So if you guys have some sentimental flavors and tastes you would like to suggest, please feel free to drop a line!  And no, I don't think durians quite strike the right picture.... 

Last for Intermediate Cuisine

Calamari in Marseille-style, shellfish soup, bouillabaisse with rouille, veal "orloff", a cassoulet of pork medallions and chestnuts, and on its right, the plated version (vs. the one-pot-all version).

Pastry, last for Intermediate Course

Although there will be just maybe 1-2 cakes this last week, as well as a workshop on breadmaking, last week sees the last of the cakes to be entered into the exam.

Blackcurrant mousse cake, caramel and hazelnut mousse cake, a raspberry and green tea mousse cake called Zevert.  

And the last you see here, the elaborately decorated 'fruit cake', is actually..... drum roll..... a cheese cake!!  We envelopped the whole cake with whipped cream and laced the top with various fruits. American recipe, French presentation!

Cuisine - more exotic!

Last week, we made quails.  We deboned the whole bird through the opening of the neck and back, so that the bird still looked 'whole' - just 'deflated', and we pumped it up with foie gras laced stuffing.  Man, for so small a bird, it has a lot of blood!!  I felt like a midwife.

Live crayfish, they were crawling around and trying to escape, their claws snapping away.  We have to 'castrate' them by pulling out the mid portion of the tail fin first before dumping them into boiling water briefly.  They are served with Nantua sauce and fish quenelles (French fishballs?)

The last noteworthy dish is the rösti looking potato pancake, which has a mushroom filling.  It entails flipping it in midair!  We all managed quited well.

Return of the killer cakes!

Killer cakes are what I call cakes that takes a lot of preparation and time, that if you ever get them in your exam, they will 'kill' you.  You heard of the Opera already, this week is the Passionata - a mousse cake of passion fruit and raspberry, with intricate sponge deco for sides, centre of coconut dacquoise.

Slightly easier from my cuisine class, we had a taste of the traditional brittany crêpe, with home made ice cream and caramel sauce, you can make all sorts of fillings with these versatile sheets, from sweet to savoury.  
Fruit jelly, today was apricot passionfruit, but we can replicate the formula with other fruits.  

Another cake we looked at was the Dome cake (doesn't the spikes reminds you of a durian?? but no, it's not a durian cake)   with chestnut mousse and cream, protected by a fine layer of dark choc from (an industrial) spray gun.  It has 3 layers of hazelnut dacquoise in between, it gives a warm feeling in your heart when you take a bite.   

The first cake we made this week was quite a mouthful, some dacquoise with coconut mousse, topped with pineapple slivers, seasoned with (open your eyes and ears) sprinkle of black pepper and chopped coriander leaves!! Not kidding!  I had a shiver when I first stated it.  Chef said we are free to opt out the black pepper and coriander, which I did.

Getting exotic (relatively speaking)

Cos' it happens that this week, we received our very first truffle to work with!!

It was for a truffle sauce to be served with grilled steak, celery flan and potatoes confit in goose fat, as you can see from the above.  The 'sua koo' me, took a photo of the black diamond on my cutting board in class.  Well, I always knew where to buy some in SG, but I guess I'm not doing it any justice if I don't learn how to use it well, but now I know...... Definitely not content to tiny bits that you (don't!) see on your plates when you dine out, I had mine in tasty slivers, and yes, the chef liked my sauce.


Another exotic food item is the foie gras, we'll get to cook some next term, but chef made a demonstration and when we had the tasting... it was so good!
In class this week, we also made some monkfish encrusted in fresh herbs, rolled in bacon, served with braised artichokes.  The other, a hearty meal, called Cassoulet (comme fait à Toulouse) - white bean stew with lamb and sausages, with duck confit, Toulouse-style.

For demo, we had langoustine, and a warm starter salted cod dish called brandade de morue.  Salt cod, once used to be the food of the poor (cos' they could not afford fresh cod) of European countries along the Atlantic ocean, are now a treat for all classes, as cods are now a dying breed.  This salted cod soaked overnight, cooked and flaked, mashed with some olive oil, potatoes and cream, and served with parsley garlic cream.

Regional cuisine: Touraine, Cote d'Azur

From the delights of Touraine region, we debond a rabbit, rolled over forcemeat of hind legs, and stuffed with mushrooms and prunes, served with goat cheese stuffed baked potatoes.  

From the delights of Cote d'Azur, we made beef provencale stew with handmade raviolis with tomato fillings. 

Last but not least:  Tian d'Agneau, lamb medallions balanced on a trio layers of tomato concassées,  mushrooms, and spinach sautéed in beurre noisette, served with its peppermint flavoured jus.  

The other starters we had raw tuna on puff pastry, warm salad with lightly smoked pikeperch (a kind of fish), marinated filets of fresh sardine with tomato and basil.

Pastry: Mousses and chocolates

Out of the cakes and pastries below, Rus who visited for 3 days this week, had the pleasure of tasting the Douceur Chocolat, base: hazelnut dacquoise (sponge) with creamy choc mousse, a crunchy choc disc balanced in between, another layer of choc mousse and another choc disc with deco.  Sorry guys and girls.... this could not be brought home, it would have melted.  I hope the chocolate pieces will be satisfactory.  We did a lot of chocolate this week....

Every tried 'creme brulee' on a vanilla/choc mousse cake?  

The last pic you see, is a coconut mousse sandwiched with choc joconde, and topped with mango-passion fruit mousse, aptly called Jamaica.