2nd last week of Superior Cusine

It's been almost 9 months since I'm in Bangkok, and coming to an end to my 3rd and last term in Le Cordon Bleu Dusit. Time flies... well, onto more photos!

Starters:

1) Line Caught Whiting fish (Fr: merlan de ligne) grilled with warm salad and condiments from Nice.

2) Lightly pan-fried Scallops with Scallop Parmentier and Carrot butter. Incidentally, this was our 2nd dish of the week to prepare for our practical. I guess the chef wanted us to work with live scallops. Yeah, live, not just in the shells, but their shells are clamped tight! We have to shuckle them as we would to live oyster, remove the 'beards' for the parmentier. They are very delicate and you have to be careful in handling them. I love scallops, as raw as possible!

3) Duck bavarois, mesclun salad and tomatoes confits. Bavarois is a term usually reserved for a type of cream based dessert mousse. However, over the years we have seen the lines of terms becoming blur between pastry and cusine, and I guess how this term was coined. It is in fact lightly cooked foie gras and magrets of ducks sifted and lightened with whipped cream and chilled to a paté consistency. Yummy! Served with smoked magret sliced thinly that taste like jamon.

Mains:

1) Thick Tuna steak with burgundy style garnishes and potatoes fondants.

It's your regular pan seared tuna, still rosé in the middle, but we added a bacon wrap. Served with red wine sauce, and potatoes slow-cooked in chix broth till melt in your mouth consistency.

2) Squab (Pigeon) wrapped in cabbage, legs stuffed, tartlets of wild mushroom.

3) Sole stuffed with mushrooms and glazed, with surprise crêpes parcels

We just finished with this dish today, it's quite interesting, the sole is split in carefully cut in the middle, fileted, but still attached to the body, and carefully, you have to remove the skeleton and keep the fish whole! So there is absolutely no bones at all when you cut into this dish.

Desserts:

1) French toasts (!) with berries and rhubarb compote.

I know traditionally we know french toasts as sandwich loaf dipped in sweetened beaten eggs and pan fried. Well, not the case in LCB! We make a crème anglaise to soak the bread, and sure it has to go with some healthy fruits!

2) Chocolate tart with marmelade filling. Marmelade is very easy to make, easier than jam. Prick some oranges, half submerged in water, boil till soft, take out, slice them (if you like, in traditional thick slices). Then cook them again peel, pith, and juice (except seeds) and all until a jam like consistency. Adjust to taste with sugar.

Chocolate sweet dough (pate sucree) half baked, fill with marmelade and cover with ganache lightened with whipped cream, and bake.

3) Cherries pan-fried in port wine and caramel ice cream

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.

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.