Countdown for last Cuisine entries

Yes, it's all coming to an end soon, and this is my last week for Cuisine lessons. Next week are all exams, both Pastry (Sugar work and your own cake creation), and Cuisine (mise en place as well as the actual exam), not to mention written exams for both. On top of it, I was chosen to give a speech for the graduation. So I have to prepare a draft for chef. Busy busy busy.

I will update this entry with more dishes along the week.

Starters:

1) Tatin of endives with goat cheese, sweet sour jus

2) Crispy tart with tomato, langoustines and pistou

3) Taboule with fresh shrimp and vanilla oil

Main:

1) Beef Wellington with turned vegetables. Bouquetier-style means to fan out the turned vegetables in ordered alternatives for presentation. The beef is roasted, brought down to colder temperature, stuffed with foie gras mousse in the centre, wrapped in mushroom and crepe, and again in puff pastry, and baked till crispy. Note: the beef should still be à point, and not overcooked! Served with truffle sauce.

Over several dishes in Superior, they want to test how you can perceive the doneness of your food, when it is covered, in crust, in cabbage, etc. It's simple to roast or to pan-fry and know when to take them out. But when you have to cook the crust and yet not overcook (or undercook) your meat, is a different challenge!

This was what I served to Mel, Kev, Soogee and Kenneth who were visiting from SG.

2) Noisettes of venison with "grand veneur" sauce

3) Red mullet fillets with crispy potato scales

Desserts:

1) Figs roasted in rosemary, cinnamon mascarpone. You can also see some edible crystallised rose petals and borage flowers.

2) Caramelised coconut cake with roasted mini bananas

3) Soft macaroon, candied fennel ice cream, wild berry coulis. The flame-like toppings are fennel chips. Fennel sliced thinly and dried in oven to a crisp.

A Macaroon Diversion

Yes, macaroons!! Again!  This is the second time we made the little bite size macaroons, but this time with a slight difference in technique - we used Italian meringue instead of the traditional French meringue, and end result is that it holds its shape better and removing from the baking sheet is a piece of cake.  The large macaroon 'cake' we made earlier this month was also from the same technique.  

What's so special about macaroons, those who are not initiated, would ask, it's just ground almonds, sugar and egg white?  Or is it...?  There's a lot of care and preparation that goes into its fabrication and nothing less than love, one for its pure divine taste, and two for perfection, can one really succeed....  Of course, putting the fairy tale book down, you will need a good pastry kitchen, well-controlled humidity and room temperature, a good oven, a good hand and a good eye in the techniques required. 

As you bite into a (good!) macaroon, your teeth meet some resistance on the shell, which snaps and gives way completely to a soft crumbly, moist centre.  While grains of ground almonds play on your tongue, you slowly begin to pick up the flavors.  Cool, palatable, fruity, exotic, well-balanced.  Sometimes sweet, sometimes a bright flash of citrus, but always well-controlled, poised, elegant, much like the two berets of macaroon biscuits pieced together in total equilibrium.

I made those in the first picture, chocolate macaroons with a variety of fillings - a) chestnut cream b) banana chocolate, and c) milk choc with orange.  All with a light 'swish' of gold dust.

And I will be happy to try (again!) to reproduce them in Rumia.  

Current trend is to try out different shapes and sizes of macaroon and different style of presentations.  But classic still holds its grounds.

Also in petit-fours, last week, we made some bite size miniardises - choux with ginger lemon cream, green apple 'jelly', cheese mini-cakes, and soft almond mini cakes with passionfruit mango gel centre.

But still, nothing like macaroons.... of course!

Golly! Giant Macaroon!

We looked at more innovative logcakes this week, and a macaroon cake.  Ok first for the logcakes, don't you love the pretty sight of what I call a "Chanel bag" square logcake?  I thought the patterned indentation reminds me of an expensive fashionable purse or bag.  Sitting on a sweet tart dough, the inside houses a disc of vanilla pear cream, and a smaller disc of fleur de sel caramel, suspended in vanilla mousse, then encased by praline biscuit, and then, the outermost with coffee caramel mousse!  *pant pant*  Needless to say, we didn't make it, it would have taken us maybe 5 hrs!

Instead, we made the mango raspberry logcake which you can see mine in the pale yellow creamy logcake.  We laid some dacquoise, which soaks up nice and moist, in between layers of mango and raspberry cream.

Another demonstration was a vanilla apricot mouse cake, while for practical we made the technically more difficult macaroon.  This recipe uses Italian meringue.  While it holds up the batter more easily, it also gives a more chewy texture to the biscuit. I know the soft crumbly texture is much desired in the 'usual' macaroons, but I think it will not work in this recipe, as the minute you pick up these 18 cm discs, it would have fallen to bits or you would have given it undesired cracks.

Did i hear somebody say.... macaroons?

Yes, finally!!  The second other reason for having to choose to take up Pastry... the perfect macaroons!!  (The other reason, if you're curious to know, was to know how to make rich flavorful, flaky and light croissants!  We did that in Basic last term).

Is it difficult?  No!  Are there many ways you could go wrong, YES!!  But luckily for me, we made a good mixture and respected all the parameters to make a good macaroon, and the result is fantastic!!  We went back to puff pastry again, this time with the inverted method, where the butter is outside of the dough.  The result is a surprisingly light and flake texture , less puffy, but still flaky, and it has a more melt in your mouth taste.

Cuisine, we looked at rhubarb and vanilla cream with shortbread cookie, and a "Hello Kitty" cake, I shall stick to that name.