Vanessa and her odd green friend

Ah yes, yet another shiny chocolate cake. I promised there would be more and I know I wouldn't let you down. The interesting thing about this class is that we did two cakes with a frozen jelly creme brulee incorporated in them.

The shiny traditional and named Vanessa does it so traditionally by enclosing her vanilla creme brulee layer in between two very traditional chocolate mousse layers, enrobed in a blindingly shiny chocolate glaze.

Vanessa's odd little nameless green friend, he of the hidden apricots, chooses to brandish his frozen gellified pistachio creme brulee layer of TOP of the delicious crumble-like type one would normally have as the finished final layer of a cake. Very odd, and yet oddly delicious.

Autumn Leaves

This cake is called Autumn Leaves. You know, one thing I love about French cakes is that they all have names, and these names trademark them so that no one can ever ever make a cake and call it Feuilles D'Automne if it isn't this exact recipe with this exact finished look. In fact, this is not even a Feuilles D'automne because the fans on the top aren't big enough and don't cover the entire cake in a big flourishy mound. They are so particular about their traditions that it's borderline insane.

I often sit in class and wonder what it feels like to come from a country that has such a long and rich history that centuries later the people of that country feel so strongly about its traditions that if you change the presentation or flavour in a cake and call it the traditional name then you may as well be spitting on their mothers, and their mothers' mothers.

But anyway...this is the cake, not shiny on top, tempered chocolate all shiny and nice stuck around it instead...It's three layers of meringue piped and baked (dried) between layers of chocolate mousse. Plain inside, fancy pants outside.

Nest of Bees

This is the Nid Abeille...beehive, bee's nest, whatever. It's sticky and honey flavoured and it's insanely delicious. It has honey mousse surrounding frozen/jelly strawberry coulis with 2 almond biscuit layers and an extra crispy almond cookie-like situation on top, propped up by fresh strawberries. It's pretty yum, and unique. It's a nice change from the shiny chocolate mousse cake, no? Though there are more shiny chocolate mousse cakes, never fear.

Green Cake

This cake cracked me up. It was pistachio and raspberry coulis inside layered with white chocolate mousse. Did I perhaps go a little overboard with the green deco? Perhaps. But it was fun and I wanted to practice the different techniques, so why not. The plated dessert (which we always have to do in Superior pastry) is SO 80s and so cheesey and the chef loved it. Cracks me up. The only problem is that it wasn't beautiful 360-degrees around, so I have to consider my boyfriend (as the chef says) because he's sitting to the back of my dessert and don't I want him to see the beauty from where he's sitting too? Huh. I guess I didn't think about that.

I spoke too soon

So I lied, this dish doesn't actually have eggplant in it. It's a pot au feu with monkfish, veggies, and weird chewy gnocchi. Bizarre. We turned tiny little veg for this, which has actually become my favourite turning size. Baby turned carrots and potatos. So cute.

The Beginning of the Eggplant Era

Get used to seeing this. And by this I mean eggplant. I think every single dish we're made in superior cuisine so far has had eggplant in it. There are very few foods I dislike, in fact the only one that comes to mind is eggplant. I just don't like it one bit. I always try it for the sake of giving it a chance, but there has been only one time in my life that I have eaten it and actually enjoyed it. Thank you Perilla.

This is a weird fish situation on top of eggplant. And fricaseed artichoke on the side. Weird.

Now Superior

So my very first photo from Superior....

We had a fruit carving class right off the bat in pastry class. Super fun and much easier than it looks.

We made any number of things that we watched the chef make during demo, the most interesting being the watermelon flower and the apple turtle. That little guy is just so cute. We also learned how to make a palm tree out of a carrot, half a canteloupe and some grapes. Hilariously cheesy actually, but I didn't make one. I stuck with the flowers and critters. See also the apple swam and the apple butterflies. You can turn an apple into just about anything.

Market Workshop update

And here are the pictures from our market workshop genius. Our menu (this was the 5-course meal for 2 people at a cost of under $60 to us). Our courses were a citrus chili oyster for amuse bouche, a mango spinach confused (apparently) salad, an asparagus and spinach ravioli for the pasta course, then for the main it was bison, beet rolls, beet compote and a rich mushroom meaty gravy. Dessert (my genius) a strawberry mousse encasing a frozen rhubarb surprise middle. Lovely. This may be the last time I've felt like I was capable of making things look good in the kitchen....sigh. How life continues to beat you down.....but anyway....

So Long...

Oh it's been so long since my last post that I don't even know where to start! I will try to start at the beginning of Superior...but I don't have a lot of pictures or stories to tell. The bottom line is that it's hard. Much harder than intermediate and DEFINITELY harder than Basic. Now we're basically expected to forget all the traditional crap they made us copy in the other levels, take the techniques we've learned and launch out with them into a land of creative wonder. How hard is it to switch gears? You have no idea.

So, in short, I have a ton of pastry pictures and I'm pretty sure I don't have a single cuisine picture from the last 4 weeks of this session. I just keep forgetting my camera, and, well, let's be honest, my plates look like shit, so my motivation to snap snap even when I have the camera is just not there.

So let's start with the bits and pieces I was missing from last session. First the garde manger workshop from oh so many months ago. I know that mum has been waiting to see these. Here are all the pics from that "buffet" with our beautiful flowers pulling all the plates together. To refresh the memories out there, this was our jelly workshop with my brilliant salmon spiral mousse. So bit by bit here are the dishes we made:

The brilliant salmon mousse

The Russian Salad

Potato Salad

Canapes

Terrine 1

Terrine 2

Monkfish Terrine (Heidi's genius piece)

Flat Chicken

This was the most delicious thing we've made since January. Bar none. Hands down. Flat chicken is delicious. Cut out that backbone flatten it and grill it. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on it, salamander for crispness and boom. Done. Deliciousness. We grilled tomatos and mushrooms, fried some waffle chips and made a peppery diablo kind of sauce that I didn't enjoy. Easy day, delicious dish.

They gave us an easy day before our market workshop, which I will post about tomorrow. I must go to bed now and I feel the market workshop deserves more time and thought than I can give it right now. I leave you tonight with flat chicken.

Plated Dessert Workshop

I honestly don't know what this day was supposed to be. I know that what it ended up being was all of us having no idea what to do or how to do it with a chef that speaks no english, left to our own devices to make 2 random plated desserts. Who knows? I made these. Pretty, no?

The first one is some kind of millefeuille with a weird crispy batter sandwiching cream and fruit.

The second, a poorly made macaroon (chef's fault, everyone's were crap because he kept macaroni-ing the batter too much until it was soupy).

My neighbour broke my chocolate decorations while they were in my fridge, so they aren't as pretty as they could be. I was pissed. What she was doing in my fridge all day, I have no idea, but she couldn't keep her shit straight and kept putting things in my fridge until she finally pulled out my baking tray with my choco decoration squeezed in between and CRASH. They hit the floor. Then the chef told me later that if I had put the choco decoration on that I would have received a 4.0 instead of a 3.5 for marks. Greeeeat.

Black Box

Oh the black box. Basically this means that we showed up in the morning, were taken downstairs to a counter full of ingredients and told to choose what we wanted in order to make an appetizer and 2 mains out of the same protein. No dessert, which was sad. But we got crabstick. That's right. CRABSTICK! Ridiculous tuition costs and they give us fake crab to make our appetizer. I still can't believe it. All this hoity toity French crap and hifaluten ingredient talk and they give us crabstick. So I took the crabstick, and I took a chicken. The other proteins were also poultry, but I didn't want to deal with the tendons in the pheasant and the game hen was too small.

So we ALL made some kind of crab salad for the app because you can't really heat crabstick to a good result, and mine was fine. He didn't say much about it, which is usually a good thing. It's crab salad on tomatos on endive. The crab salad has a tarragon and other herb mayo on it that I made.

Then came some crazyness. I deboned my chicken, took the legs and pounded them flat and made a leek and mushroom roll out of it. Seared it, braised it, done. No prob.

Then I took the breasts, "breaded" them in pistachio nuts, seared and finished in the oven. I made 2 different sauces, both had to be from the chicken bones. Then we had to make different garnishes for each. I made a backup garnish...the carrots, and it's a good thing I did because I accidentally burned my pommes noisettes while chasing after my mustard that the idiot took from my fridge. Sigh. But that's why you have a plan B, right? The chef had seen my potatos and knew where I planned to put them, so I got some points for that I guess (they were beautiful too, perfectly round....sigh). But then I did pasta and I had the carrots. Whatevs, it all worked out fine enough. I shall live to cook another day.

Rabbit Three Ways

Oh rabbit. I still believe that you have bones that connect your arms to your body. Why are you so easy to take apart? And yet not always that delicious? Such a kitchen contradiction.

On this rabbit day we watched the chef make this dish and thought we wouldn't finish before midnight for a 6 pm class. We had to take the rabbit apart and marinate its various pieces. But the legs stayed dry and you had to debone them and flatten them and make a leg roll with mushroom and truffle inside. The whole roll was wrapped in caul fat and then seared and braised. We then had to saute the shoulders and ribs and tie the loin. So I guess technically it was only rabbit 2 ways....but it was kind of 2.5 ways because we had to do some weird stuff to the loin that we didn't have to do with the other bits and pieces (mainly tie it and then untie it to cook it through...really weird). Plus we had to manchonner (french, the language and the english verb "to french") the ribs. Loyal readers will remember the rabbit rib from last session. When frenched and cut it is barely larger than a small mushroom. Its ribs are like toothpicks. Insanity.

We also had to make stuffed mushrooms (though the verb "stuffed" is up for debate when all you do is pour onion puree into them) and fondant potatos, which just take longer than they should but are quite delicious. You cut them in half and shape them lovingly...then you brown them in butter, stock to half height, cover, oven until soft....reduce away liquid on stovetop - but not too hard or you'll boil apart those soft (fondant) potatoes....so they're glossy and gooey on the outside. It doesn't sound like that much, but trust me, it was. I did finish on time. Three of us did. So Phew! But it was a challenging day. And it was a Friday. On the plate clockwise from noon: the leg roll with sauce under, the tenderloin, mushrooms, ribs, potato, shoulder.

Another Shiny Happy Cake

Put on your shades because it's time for another high-gloss cake. How do you like the reflection of the microwave in this shot?

Why they grouped all the shiny cakes together at the end of the course, we'll just never know. But this one was WAY more delicious than the other ones, even if the gloss on the sides leaves a little something to be desired. Oops.

My glazing paste was the right temperature, but sadly, a pastry chef cannot rely on thermometers alone to tell her when to glaze. She must trust her eyes. I went with temperature and watched my beautiful glaze coat my beautiful mousse like a chocolatey curtain...and then I watched it melt off the sides leaving it ugly and mottled. The top still looked damn good though. And you have to cover the sides with chocolated decorations anyway. Sadly, my chocolate decorations were too thin that day and didn't do a great job of camouflaging my glazing error. Whatevs.

So it tasted MUCH better than it looked. On the bottom is a hazelnut dacquoise...a nutty kind of spongey cakey thing....(just icing sugar, egg whites, hazelnut powder and sugar) a yummy praline crispy layer, chocolate mousse, thin milk chocolate layer, more mousse....precarious glazing. It was yum.

What is this?

I looked at my pictures, in chronological order, and I was like "what the hell IS this??" Not only did I have no recollection, but it didn't look like anything I could have made....sadly I did. And even sadder, it was pretty close to what the chef had made. Snails my friends. Little snails in a thick red soupy sauce. They were pretty delicious, but they will never rival the ones we ate on the cruise that time through the pastry.

Slimy little escargots and some pretty boring cod with endive cooked any way we wanted. What freedom! I just sauteed straight up. Endive is not that thrilling, may as well give it some butter and colour. A boring class where not much was learned given that we handed a big ol can of escargots and a ready-to-go filet of cod. Snore.

I know I'm a terrible person.

I'm sorry!!! I know I have taken yet another 2 weeks to post anything. This session is hard and I'm working on being a superstar. It's taking all of my energy and there hasn't been anything left at the end of day in my brain to remind me to bring my camera home. But I have been remembering to take pictures, so I will do my best to update everything as quickly as possible. Exams start on Monday and I need to study.

So here is the Bavarois. It's one high sheen cake, no? That little blip you see in the middle of my perfect glazing is where the chef put his finger. You see, as in life, the inside just isn't as pretty as the outside of this baby. My third and top layer of mousse was a little domed and wouldn't spread out because the cake was too cold and so it set rather quickly. As a result I had glaze on top of that that was thin in the middle and thick around the edge. The chef needed to check that I wasn't lying by sticking his finger into the middle apparently. White chocolate, milk and dark mousses layered. Not shabby. A little "wooby wooby wooby" gelatinous for my refined tastes, but not too shabby.

Here's a shot of the small one from the side so you can get an idea of what the inside of the big one looked like.

Reminder to Click

B would like me to remind all of you once again that if you click on the pictures on this blog they will pop up in life size, or larger than life size depending on your screen I suppose. He believes you can only truly feel my genius when viewed in large scale. I agree.

Pacific Opera

This cake is beautiful. Am I right? It's a hot cake. (Not temperature hot, hot looking.) I am awesome, or at least I was on Wednesday. We had a two cake day, the Pacific and the Opera. Let's begin with the Pacific.

This beauty is composed of Jaconde Biscuit (a not-as-dry cake) imprinted with multicolour cigarette paste (stupid) and layered inside with strawberry and lemon mousses, both of which were extremely delicious.

I do love fruity desserts! Then I did a magical job of piping some waves on it (it made sense being Pacific and all. Those colours on the side are supposed to be tropical by the way). I bought chocolate and practiced my piping on Monday night when I got back from the cottage. How's THAT for devotion to this cake? The chef has been telling me that my piping needs to improve, so I've been practicing. It's clearly paying off...or so I thought until the Opera cake later that afternoon.

Ah the Opera cake. I thought it was going to be disgusting and at one point during demo asked the chef if we would have to eat it with a spoon. It was SOAKED. And I'm not exagerating, SOAKED in coffee syrup. Chef says that when they make it in big slabs in pastry shops they just pour a bucket of coffee syrup over each layer of biscuit and let the excess run out the sides.

So the layers are (from bottom to top) soaked cake, coffee buttercream (french buttercream, which uses egg yolks, as opposed to Italian buttercream, which uses egg white and italian meringue) wet cake layer, chocolate ganache, we cake layer, coffee buttercream, chocolate glazing. I hate hate hate soggy cake. You can ask anyone who knows me well and they will tell you that my least favourite dessert is.....anyone? Yes, Tiramisu. Blech. Oddly enough, this cake is so over the top with the soaking and all the layers that once it spent a little time in the fridge and the chocolate outside got a bit hard and snappy I thought is was delicious. It was a tasty surprise. So I made sure to give both cakes away.

The piping on the Opera cake...certainly not my best work. But then the chef tells me that it's the best he's seen me do. The border, I will admit, for the first time doing that border, actually went all right because it's also really tiny piping, which is so hard to do. But I was offended because my writing on my Fraisier cake was CLEARLY the best I've done. But he wasn't there for that. So I had to send him a picture of it to show him what I can really do (I'm such a jackass). This Opera crap was just that. AND I put the accent the wrong way to boot! hahahahha. That actually made me laugh really hard when he pointed it out and then proceeded to give me a French lesson. Too funny. All that planning and work and I just casually put the wrong accent in there. Hyster. I'm not even that bad with French, I can understand some and I understand accents so it cracked me up that I was so blase with this one. (and yes, blase should have and accent on it, the same one the opera cake needed...I think).

Duck with Orange Sauce

Why does gastrique sauce have to be so damn impossible to do? Forget that (as Annabelle pointed out) gastrique sounds totally unappetizing, it's also damn near impossible to get right. Mine, apparently had the right taste, but I can't seem to get the consistency of it right. Bah. I give up on it. I made a really good gastrique last session, but asking us to deglaze with jellied Grand Marnier? That is just wrong.

Why is the Grand Marnier jelly? Because chefs are notorious for having drinking problems, so all of our hard liquor is jelly (it gloops out of the bottle) and all our wine is salted. This might just be me, but if I wanted to get drunk bad enough I would likely shoot some of that jellied booze back like I was at a Stag and Doe. It makes controlling your salt in your sauce hard because you can't separate sodium from wine flavour. So you want to add more wine to have that flavour, but then you end up oversalting the sauce. I say let them drink and let their fates befall them. And let me deglaze my caramel for my gastrique with liquid Grand Marnier.

But anyway, we just served that annoying sauce on the side of this duck breast. What the point of the exercise was I'm not sure. They also made us sear foie gras, which I found to be annoying because my pan wasn't hot enough and it didn't get enough colour. My pan was smoking, but apparently it has to be on the verge of bursting into flames before foie gras will sear and get colour and not just melt. The grape sauce we had to make for the foie gras turned out really well for me, but I was bitter about having to peel the grapes. I mean, do the French not have good strong teeth? The skin is part of the grape. Just chew it.

Another Esoteric Dish

I love my clear tupperware container to help me set up a good picture of my tiny stuffed birds. They look suspended in mid-air, just like the osso bucco did in this same container. Look at that one spread-eagling (spread-quailing?) in the top right corner, hahahaha. It looks like a cartoon. A sick, sick cartoon.

So these little quail get deboned with your fingers. Yes, too small to use any tools, you have to feel around inside their little chests to separate the muscle from the bone, slowly turning them inside out like you're balling a sock on laundry day. Getting the skin off the spine without ripping it is the hardest part. Once inside out you remove the femur (scraping the meat down and off the bone, again like you're pushing your own socks down your legs to your ankles) and then you turn them right side out and stuff them with a chicken liver farce and serve them on a little toast raft smeared with chicken liver pate.

They were actually quite delicious. I have eaten quail before, but a deboned quail experience will change your life. Seriously. I will never eat quail with bones in ever again. What is the point? There are so many tiny bones, how does one even begin to but to find meat? But deboned? They're like little sausages with leg and wings. Yum!