Day 4 of Light and Natural Cooking

Day 4 of Light and Natural Cooking leads us to Desserts! Of course these are nothing compared to the Pastry stuff. But it's quick and relatively easy to put together restaurant desserts.

Yes yes, it's another workshop again. 1 to 1 with chef! And 5 desserts! Lol, I'm getting more bang for my bucks now!

The first you see, is a pan roasted pear (cut in 'pyramid' to have even golden coloration) in a pool of caramel cream (from reduced fat cream).

Here, you will ask, if the cream has less than 30% fat content, one will not succeed in whipping it! That is true! That is why, the caramel cream was placed into a siphon and pressed out right, nice and moussy!! So, here's another advantage of the siphon!

Next is a Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar, Yoghurt with Spice.

We made the yoghurt 2 days ago. It's really simple and delicious! Basically, you bring milk to 42C, not more, and at 38C, add some store-bought

yoghurt and milk powder, let it cool and place in little jars/pots, and place them into a yoghurt-maker (it's like an incubator) which will keep it at a warm temperature overnight, for the beneficial bacteria to grow.

After the overnight incubation, let it cool gradually, before sealing the jars, and place them into a fridge. The first day was a 'drinking yoghurt' consistency, the longer you leave it to mature, the thicker it will become.

Next is French Toast with Wine and Coconut Cream. Red wine and spices are reduced to a nice syrup, day-old bread immersed in it, and topped with some light cream moistened coconut flakes.

These are mini-bananas served with a light flan. That means no egg yolks which are normally in regular flans. We use the eggwhites only, and frankly, it taste like a cooked meringue. I prefer the real flan anytime.

Last but not least, are Duo of Mango and Pineaple, sauteed, and served with yoghurt and Fromage Blanc cream. Looks like a square pineapple!

See you next week for Modern Star Cuisine!!

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.

Sweet endings...

The last practical for pastry for the week was a very simple chocolate lava cake with a mousse and coconut ice cream, but the important point was to test our plating.  (Mine is on the grey marble).  We also made a strawberry cake (fraisier), which I believe most people incorrectly label it as a strawberry shortcake, in fact there's nothing 'short' about it at all ('short' meaning a heavy butter-based crisp, crunchy e.g. shortbread biscuits, tartshells).  This is just a plain and simple sponge with mousseline cream and fresh sweet strawberries.   The green layer on top is marzipan, edible of course!

For cuisine, we deboned a fish (while keeping it whole!) and stuff it with mushroom duxelles, we made an easter pâté in puff pastry (with lotsa eggs!  Doesn't it look like a SG 'steamed meat bun??), typical of Le Berry region of France, lastly, cod (real cod!) panfried, served with flemish-style red cabbage and beer jus vinaigrette.

Other dishes on demo, was a 'belgium pizza' - flammenkuchen, potjevelesch (a sort of jellified cold dish with various meat in it, it reminds me of some chinese cold appertiser), rooster in red wine finished with sauce thickened with fresh pig's blood.  2 plated desserts: mirabelle parfait, and caramel chibouste with speculoos (a type of thin spice cookie), and le poirat - pear tart.

Pastry and Desserts- Week 2

Check out the labels for this post and guess which is which....

Time to get messy.....

Chocolate, nothing but

 chocolate chocolate chocolate.

  Made a dense rich chocolate cake called Alhambra.  Chocolate glacing is not

 really easy either!!  You have to pour all the glace in one go and get an even shiny coating.  Tomorrow we'll be doing a charlotte aux poires (pear mousse cake).

In cuisine, we looked at a flemish leek and cheese savory tart, marinated salmon (raw), the classic blanquette de veau (veal stew in white).  I had that for my white exam this morning.  It turned out alright.  Tomorrow, for cuisine, we'll be grilling tournedos in bearnaise sauce with potatoes pont neuf (like chips, really).

More turned mushrooms..... groan!  Well, blame it on the PAD.  They blocked the airports, so we can't get our artichokes imported!