More Cuisine!!!

The problem with putting away updating your blog is that you suddenly have too much to do!

Starters:  

a)  Creamy Capuccino Mushroom Soup in a Cup

b)  Mackerel fillets, cucumber and cream with lamb's lettuce salad

c)  Duck Foie Gras Terrine and wild mushrooms

d)  Cold French Scrambled Eggs with Botargo, herb salad and green olives coulis

e)  Tuna Carpaccio with parmesan cheese

Mains:

a)  Roasted Lobster Tournedos, zucchini, risotto and fennel confit

b)  Thick Veal Medallions with lemon and ginger, macaroni cake

c)  Chicken breasts with langoustines in a light curry sauce

d)  Roasted squabs (pigeons) with new potatoes and fava beans

e)  "Black Prince" saddle of lamb and country-style bacon-potato cake

Desserts:

a)  Mango Pineapple and vanilla "kebabs" with gingerbread and coconut

b)  Figs in spicy strawberry wine, cocoa crisp and yoghurt sorbet

c)  Soft-centred chocolate cake, pistachio ice cream

d)  Apples slices with cinnamon mascrapone mousse

e)  Mango and pineapple chutney, avocado sorbet

Happy feasting (with your eyes!!)

Plated Desserts

As lovely as the cakes we made so far are, at the end of a restaurant meal, it's very unlikely you'll sink your teeth into one.  As a result, restaurant desserts are rather simple but elegant affairs, usually a few small bites, some mousse, some fruits, some coulis, to cleanse your palate and not make you feel too stuffed.  The important lesson here, is to learn how to plate desserts.  Some creatively, some flair, some intuition go a long way to make the (possibly very full!) customer delight at the sight and want to take a bite.  I introduce here, together with last week's soufflés, a few plated desserts which I hope will please you.

The ones on a grey granite background are what I made in practicals.

a)  Creamy pistachio, coconut sago cream, and pineapple dessert cups

b)  Frozen nougat and financiers with fruits

c)  Fruit kebabs (cooked in caramel), with sweet couscous, pistachio ice cream and orange soup.

Soufflés!

One of my earliest memories of pastry was at the old Paragon shopping centre.  When I say old, I mean really old, like about 20 years ago, where the sleepy old building had a spiral walkway-staircase that goes all the way up to to the 4th (5th?) level (there was Pierre Balmain!).  On the ground floor, there's a little path that leads to the back to the one of the first Body Shop in Singapore (I used to spend hours reading their labels and memorising all the said-attributes of each herb and natural extract used in their lotions.  I digress....)  Behind the Body Shop was Temptations (I think that was what the pastry shop was called.)  And one of the heavenly sweets I (rarely) treated myself to, was the Chocolate Soufflé.  Actually, come to think of it now, I don't think it was much of a soufflé.  Sure it was oblong looking, and a raised choc mousse that looked 'soufflé' (for non-French speakers, soufflé means to be blown up, expanded, thus describing the effect of the hot air rising from the pastry base and meringue, giving us the much beloved light and airy texture.)    So, I think what I had was actually a choc mousse cake given the appearance and name of a soufflé.  I used to think to myself, wow, so exotic!  This new language and food.  Maybe it started, sub-conscientiously, my journey into things French.  

What you see here is the classic Chocolate Soufflé, and a Calvados Soufflé - we carved a receptacle into an apple and baked a souffle out of it, it's quite pretty.  Next we prepared a plated Crêpe Soufflé.  Making crêpes is quite easy once you  get the hang of it.   

Have you ever munched on a hot crêpe on a cold wintry Parisian day, its citrus-y Grand Marnier filling up your nose, and your fingers getting sticky from the sugar?  If you had, in the midst of her alluring monuments, you'll soon realise that life indeed can be quite beautiful.

Continuation of Last Week's Cuisine

Ok guys and girls, sorry for the delay!  Here's part of cuisine last week.  

Starters:  1)  Fresh peas tartare flavored with Peppermint.  2)  Eggs stuffed with truffles, port wine glaze.

3)  Crab and tomato with Avocado cream and orange powder.

Mains:  1)  Puff pastry 'pie' of quails and lamb sweetbread with shiitake mushrooms

2)  Lamb rolls filled with vegetables and parmesan crisps.   (the plate with the 'sail' of parmesan crisp is mine)

3)  Sea bass in a crust Coulibiac style, stuffed eggplants

Desserts:

1)  Chocolate Nougat glace with cherry coulis.

2)  Sago with fresh pineapple, jasmine tea ice cream.  What we call sago in SG, it's apparently more commonly known as tapioca or Japanese pearls.  

3)  Lemon grass cream, strawberry jelly and rhubarb crisps.