Day 1 of Light and Natural Cooking

In Light and Natural Cooking, (if it was even conceivable for butter and cream laden dishes typical of French cuisine), we aim to reduce the use or use reduced fat butter/cream, or use yoghurt in place.

Today, in Day 1, we learnt mainly Entrées. This is unusual cos' most of the time, Chef demo's 1 starter, 1 or 2 mains, 1 dessert. Well, this Chef decided to break up to day 1: Entrees, day 2, fish, day 3, meat, day 4, desserts. Which is a good break from usual as well.

First dish is a soup: Leek and Potato Soup, or Fr: Vichyssoise, which can be eaten hot or cold, according to the season. We placed some poached haddock in the middle, some diced Spanish piquillos in the bottom and on top. Some flaked almonds, and a sprinkling of Espelette pepper.

Chef liked it, though I would have placed more leeks in it. This photo is what I've made. (I thought for a change, I'll put my own creation in place of Chef's, but if you wanna see Chef's pics, lemme know, I'll post them up as well.)

Next are 2 dishes which we didn't make, but were Chefs demo's. The first is Cured Salmon with Ginger and Air-dried Beef (as the red crinkly juliennes in photo).

The second is Poached Tuna with Piperade garnish. Piperade is a delicious blend of blend of bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic. Some onion chips on the sides.

The next dish we made in practical was a toast of tomatoes confits (over dried tomatoes), and marinated young mackerel fish (marinate: garlic, olive oil, espelette pepper, cider, cider vinegar). At the end, the marinate is strained, and whisked into a vinaigrette. This was the dish I presented.

Next dish I presented, was Smoked Tuna on a Galette de Pommes de Terre (actually, a giant blini!). The tuna was first cured in coarse salt for abt an hour, and then washed. It's placed in a improvised smoking device (woodchip on the base of saute pan, fish on top of a round grill, covered and smoked slowly).

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!!

Fish and more fish!

Yeah, about half of superior cuisine's mains has to do with fish, I am guessing the chef who is in charge of us this term likes them a lot.

Starters:

a)  Foie gras terrine.  Cooked in a bain marie, it needs to rest for a few days, followed by..

b)Presentation of the foie gras terrine.  Foie gras should be eaten with something sweet and a little sour, it should work well with chutney, like this beetroot and red onion.  The pink swirls are tuiles made from rice flour colored with beetroot juice.  Also on plate, fig bread.

c)  Haddock and Potato Terrine

Mains:

a)  Red Mullet with Tapenade sauce.  We made the fresh egg pasta ourselves in class, it's so easy, I'll never pay for over-priced pasta at Da Paolo Gastronomia ever again!

b)  Herb crusted salmon supremes with mushroom flan and red wine sauce.  Delicious!  Who knew red wine can be paired with a fish!  You actually can, for fatty fish, e.g. tuna.

c)  Sea bream sauted, squid filled with cilantro flavored langoustine risotto.

Desserts:

a)  Frozen choc parfait, orange cream and citrus fruits and basil

b)  Inversed peach melba, red currant jus flavored with hibiscus (rosella)

c)  Crisp sweet puff pastry with berries

Cuisine - more exotic!

Last week, we made quails.  We deboned the whole bird through the opening of the neck and back, so that the bird still looked 'whole' - just 'deflated', and we pumped it up with foie gras laced stuffing.  Man, for so small a bird, it has a lot of blood!!  I felt like a midwife.

Live crayfish, they were crawling around and trying to escape, their claws snapping away.  We have to 'castrate' them by pulling out the mid portion of the tail fin first before dumping them into boiling water briefly.  They are served with Nantua sauce and fish quenelles (French fishballs?)

The last noteworthy dish is the rösti looking potato pancake, which has a mushroom filling.  It entails flipping it in midair!  We all managed quited well.

Let's go again!!

Welcome back.  I hope you did not miss the weekly features .  Well, school started 

on Monday.  Your eyes (at least) will be in for a treat.  

In intermediate cuisine, we will be following different regions of France and their regional specialties.  In intermediate pastry, we are using the basic building blocks of basic pastry, with more creativity, piecing different bases with different mousses, creams, tastes, colors, etc.  These usually takes more time, so organisation and planning is key.

To start off, here are some 'dryer' cakes that keeps well, aka 'travelling' cakes - which you can bring with you on a journey and need no refridgeration.  (Hint hint:  One of them will travel with PG to SG over this CNY.)  These basic cakes can be embellished with choc glazing, fresh cream and fruits like the photo above.  These will definitely sell in a pastry shop window.  Some other plated desserts, snow eggs in creme anglaise with blackcurrant, apple charlotte.

In cuisine, we had tomatoes stuffed with goat cheese and aromatics, shellfish soup with garlic glaze.  For our practicals, we made spring chicken with spring vegetables (notice the herb butter under the skin, like how I showed Idah how to make before?).  Stuffed salmon rolled in cabbage leaves with red wine sauce.

Good thing this term we finish all our cuisine practicals at 7pm; perfect timing to bring them back home for dinner!

Cuisine week 13

This week in Cuisine, we came back to fish:  pan-fried with fennel, fish terrine (inspired by Kenzo, lol) with beurre blanc sauce, and smoked salmon scrambled eggs.  We touched briefly on guinea fowl pot roasted with cabbages and morteau sausage. 

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!