Day 2 of Light and Natural Cooking

Day 2 of Light and Natural Cooking was to make fish dishes with its garnishes.

I have the pleasure of announcing that in this practical, we made 4 out of 4 dishes that Chef demo'ed!

First, is a Smoke-Infused Milk and Saffron Risotto, Haddock Petals with Asparagus.

Second is a Skate Escabeche, Fennel in Salt Crust. It's an interesting way to cook vegetables (and fish too! except it's more a salt/eggwhite crust) in a salt/dough crust. It's slowly baked till golden on the outside, and when you cut through, the vegetable, in this case, a fennel bulb, remains juicy and full of aroma in the interior.

You can eat the dough, but it's not that tasty.

In SG, we call skate, ray, or stingray, it's fileted and light pan fry, finished cooking with a sour sweet onion/tomato marinate called escabeche which is popular in S.American countries.

The third dish is Hake, Green Sauce with Shellfish.

You can use any shellfish, but today, we've only cockles (unfortunately, I don't like cockles so much, years of watching my parents devour bloody half boiled cockles gave me bad dreams!) But it seems that French cockles look and taste almost like baby clams, with a more iron aftertaste.

We don't find hake in SG (or Fr: Colin). It's a long slender quite a large fish, very tender flesh.

Last but not least, is the Grilled Sole, Little Gems (like a mini Tianjin cabbage) a la Plancha and Meat Jus.

To be honest, we didn't exactly grill both of them, we used the pan with very little oil. After the sole has been cooked, it's neatly filleted, the centre bone carefully removed, and pieced together again. The way the Sole Meuniere would have been done!

There, I proved myself the impossible to finish 4 dishes in 2.5 hrs!

Last of Superior Cuisine

In this week, we had the same 3 demonstrations, but only 1 practical. The other 2 practicals were taken up to prepare for, and the final practical exams itself.

Starters:

1) Green asparagus and crab charlotte, verjus sauce. Verjus is actually the juice made from unripe grapes and lends a tangy taste, thus an alternative to citrus or vinegar.

2) Lobster salad with citrus fruits

3) 'Greek style' artichokes with saffroned mussels

Mains:

1) Stuffed guinea fowl breaks cooked 'en cocotte'

2) Crisp wrapped lamb fillet with provencal vegetables

3) Roast rabbit legs tandoori-style with herb salad. The green juice in the shotglass is cucumber juice to reduce the heat of tandoori. Tandoori is normally served as a whole, but this was sliced to for the photo.

Desserts:

1) Warm mascarpone souffle

2) Raspberry souffle, tropical fruit salad with spices

3) Orange and lime sorbet, sweet wine jelly balsamic vinegar dressing

Thus ends our journey with Le Cordon Bleu Dusit, Bangkok, Thailand. I hope you enjoyed the sensory delights of these dishes, desserts, pastries and cakes as much as I did.

Looking back, it was quite a dive into the deep end, but the best part of all is the satisfaction of knowing your level skills have improved by a couple of notches.

Still a long road ahead in this absolutely fantastic journey! Stay tuned for more updates as I take up an internship and September in Paris for Cert IV "Professional Perfecting of Skills".

Cuisine this week...

Cuisine this week:

Starters:

a) Buckwheat crisps with crab meat and crab 'mustard' - I must explain more about this mustard, it's basically the cream at the back of the brains of crustaceans that gives a rich creamy seafoody sweet taste when mixed into sauce or soups.

b) Terrine of duo salmon and leeks, shallot vinaigrette

c) Sauteed green asparagus spears and langoustines, beetroot vinaigrette. The pink quenelles you see on the left are whipped cream colored with beetroot juice. First time I had a salty whipped cream! As you notice, this cuisine chef of mine likes pink and hello Kitty!

Mains:

a) Crusted Seabass, Lemon and capers, and Chicken Jus, with Maple almonds

b) Filet de boeuf a la ficelle (Tenderloin in bouillon), celeriac "bone" with beef marrow, horseradish sauce.

It's cute, we cut the celeriac and dug a hole in centre to make it look like a bone with a hollow, and stuff some real beef marrow in the edible 'bone'.

c) Lamb rib roast in bread crust, artichoke puree with hazelnut oil. We made a country bread dough, flatten it out, and rolled a lamb noisette (chops without the bones) in it. When it bakes, it looks like a large loaf of bread, but when you cut it open, surprise! lamb and vegetable trimmings!

Desserts

a) Apple crisps with pineapple sorbet, lemon balm-lemongrass syrup

b) White and wild rice with vanilla milk, pan-fried mangoes and honey milk granita

It's essentially Thailand's famous Sticky rice with Mangoes! Sorry, didn't capture the photo well. The crisps covered a bed of rice pudding with sauteed caramelised mangoes on it. I was too mesmerised by the hello Kitty! cut outs..... I told you my chef is crazy about pink (pink icing sugar) and hello Kitty!

c) Seasonal fruit clafoutis and streusel with mango-passion fruit sorbet. Gotta be one of the best mango sorbet I tasted!!

First of Cuisine (Superieur)

In Superior Cuisine, we open up our horizon to take in international influences and modern restaurant menus, while keeping a very central French core.  A good example was on Thursday, we made some Tandoori spiced fish, but the sauce-making and side dishes are very French.  Parmesan cheese from Italy are grated to make crisps to go with asparagus.  The next starter dish, however, is typically French - frog's legs in herb sauce and garlic puree.  The main we made yesterday was a double chop of lamb, with truffle coating, green beans wrapped in bacon, and artichoke crisps.

The desserts are Blancmanger with kiwi coulis, and red fruits melba with chibouste (personally, I think the chef made too much chibouste).  

If you think that the mains are more complicated in Superior, you are right.  There are a lot more steps to get to the final product, and this is the term when we work in teams of 3 or 4.  

We distribute the work process.  E.g. instead of 3 person fileting 3 fishes, 1 person will filet 3 fishes, while the other one starts with the vegetables (quantity for 3 persons), and the other starts with the side dishes (also for 3 persons).  The actual cooking is done by that person, but however, you should just watch out (in case he makes some mistakes, and correct him gently).  Once all the products are done, the actual plating is done individually, according to your creativity.  The result is, the cooking and taste will prob be similiar for the 3, but what shines out will be your presentation.

I should remember to take photos of my plating next, before I rush off to present to chef!  But you know what a rush of adrenaline it is as the clock inches towards service time!

Regional: Auvergne, Basque, Ile de France

In Cuisine this week, we reviewed regional dishes of Ile de France (of which Paris is a part) with Asparagus d'Argenteuil with mushroom flan, Cotes d'Agneau Champvallon (lamb chops cooked in a potato gratin, which made a very yummy dinner above).  From the Basque country, where a very tasty blend of Spanish and French cuisine gives you piquillos peppers stuffed with salt cod,  chicken basque-style (rolled in bayonne ham and cooked in a tomato based stock), and from the Auvergne country, a very interesting stuffed cabbage dish.  The sauce is delicious!  The picture with the red check tea towel was my cabbage (wrapped in caul's fat) before cooking.