#thethirtythings

[thethirtythings]

No. 4 - Professional Cooking Course: Week 4 (Final Week)

Well. Let me tell you this - the 4 sessions of this course were worth it, not necessarily for the learning, but for the FOOD!!

ROAST RACK OF LAMB, DAUPHINOISE POTATOES, GREEN BEANS & LAMB JUS

I was reeeeally excited about this week when I saw it on the list as the menu is pretty much a selection of my favourite foods. So, once again, I headed over to the school and got my learn on. We had a new French chef, I forget his name, who was nice but spoke pretty quickly in a thick french accent so it was hard to understand him sometimes.

First up was slicing the potatoes with a mandolin - and luckily for clumsy me, also a guard. It was actually harder than it looks but super quick once you got the hang of it. Plus, everything’s nice and even so it all cooks evenly. The picture below is only two spuds chopped up. You get a lot, huh?

We then chucked about 4 ltrs of milk and 12 ltrs of cream (I am only exaggerating slightly) into a pan with some garlic, a ton of salt and some pepper. This would help the spuds cook. 

The thing I got used to a bit more here was the seasoning. We didn’t pre-cook our spuds so there was no way to infuse any seasoning in them. Therefore, you have to over-season the liquid to ensure it transfers to the spuds when you’re cooking them. Clever!

So in the spuds go into the oven, covered in foil. This took AAAAAAAAAAAAAAgges and I didn’t actually think they were going to cook in time but did eventually. They would probably take about an hour if cooking at home.

Next up was prepping the jus - but I won’t bore you with the ol’ mirepoix / bouquet garni info again. It was very similar to Week 1′s jus - cooking off the lamb bones and some cuttings from the rack, add the stock and some mustard when reduced and boom. Tasty stock.

So, the lamb. We were taught how to “French Trim” the rack so it was all neat and tidy, and also take off some of the fat so there’s an even distribution of fat and meat across the whole rack. You then score the fat to ensure it goes nice and crispy when cooking.

It was then cooked - first in the pan a couple of times on each side, then in the oven. Finally, it was the beans, Fairly simple to cook, but the chef recommended blanching them in ice cold water when they’re done. Oh, this is water with another ton of salt to keep the colour. It also has to be a big pan so they move around when cooking. ALSO, green veg you cook in boiling water, root veg you start in a cold pan. Thems the rules.

Anyways, I normally just take them out of the water when they’re ready but this ice water blanch and refresh really helped keep the greens green and the texture snappy. I’ll certainly be doing this when I cook at home.

HOW AMAZING DOES THAT LOOK?

It was honestly one of the best things I have ever eaten. I’m pretty sure Jon agreed too.

So, that’s me done at Le Cordon Bleu. Would I do it again? I’m not sure. For a course that sells itself as “skills”, I guess it makes sense for total beginners, and in hindsight, I knew a lot of the stuff they were talking about, but I rarely have time (or budget) to implement. I think I will try and do the stock thing more often, or at least make really nice sauces from pre-made stock, rather than just gravy granules. When I have lots of time, I’ll defo try the pasta thing again.

I think perhaps a more specific cuisine course would have been better - but I’m going to save that one for Thailand. It’ll be cheaper too!

[thethirtythings]

No. 4 - Professional Cooking Course: Week 3

I turned up to this week's course on tired legs (after the last week's antics) with the only thing getting me through being the prospect of DUCK for dinner. Nom nom nom.

WEEK 3: PAN FRIED DUCK BREAST, PUY LENTILS & VEAL JUS

Our usual tutor, Chef Daniel, is on holiday at the moment so we had Chef Tom Birks instead. Again, a nice English dude who was friendly and informative. We started by preparing the veg - the same bouquet garni and mirepoix as week 1 - but with tiny differences that I guess happen from chef to chef. Again, his precision and knife skills were a thrill to watch and I hope once day I can get somewhere near that.

Meanwhile, we par-boiled the lentils and bacon so ease the cooking later on. It also takes out some of the salt from the bacon, making it a bit more palatable. Then, we put the veg in the pan to sweat, added the chopped bacon and lentils plus 450ml of pre-made veal stock. Veal stock, is used often in cooking as stocks made from lamb or beef have a very strong flavour, so veal is almost a "neutral" that will pack in the flavour but not have strong undertones of a meat not used in the dish.

Then, it was on to the duck. Chef Tom prepared his beautifully by first taking off the silver skin. This appears on all meat and should be removed as it's a tendon that is chewy to eat and will make the breast curl up when cooked. Who knew! We pan fried these skin-down first to crisp, then turned over. I didn't cook mine the whole way through as I wanted to eat it at home so it went straight into the blast chiller to stop the cooking process. This meant it was still pink and juicy once heated up in my oven, rather than being all dried out and over-cooked by the time I had got home and got it into the oven.

The only other thing to do was reduce the stock to make a tasty sauce. Et Voila!

To be honest, I really don't think I learnt anything in this lesson. The veg was a repeat and whilst it's good to practice, the mix of them and the lentils was very basic. I believe the lesson was more basic than the first lesson and perhaps should be swapped round? It was nice to see how to cook the duck but I've done that before and again, really only learnt that small snippet about the silver skin. Still, that'll be useful in future.

Onwards and upwards - next week is a rack of lamb and some other stuff which I can't remember...with a French chef! Perhaps my worries and woes from week 1 will come true after all!

Oh...and who cares if I didn't learn much. Dinner was TASTY.

[thethirtythings]

No. 4 - Professional Cooking Course. Weeks 1 & 2

I’m lucky enough to receive a benefit at work called a “Personal Interest Allowance”, which means I can take any course on the planet, and they will pay 50% of the fee, up to a certain value. It’s a really great perk and I also used it for the photography course way back in February.

I also used it for this cookery course, which made it way more affordable as the course wasn’t cheap - probably because it’s at one of the most world-renowned cookery schools, Le Cordon Bleu, a world leader in French gastronomy and education for 120 years. It’s super posh, the London school based in Bloomsbury Square, with a fingerprint entry system. Ohh err!

Anyways, so the course I am taking is called “Cuisine Technique Essentials” and is less about the recipes, and more about the core skills used in French cookery - stocks, butchery, knife skills etc. The recipes themselves, I am discovering, are things you would normally cook at home, but expanded and made more complicated by the techniques and ingredients used. A gastro take on your Sunday lunch, for example. They taste bloody awesome too.

WEEK 1 - ROASTED POUSSIN, POTATO PUREE & CHICKEN JUS

So I walked from work up to Bloomsbury on the first week, feeling a bit nervous about the course. I’m not sure why - I can cook sure, but I had no idea of how the course was going to run or what the people would be like, or the chef. I imagined him to be a loud and scary French man shouting at me for not cutting the veg all at the same size, to the millimetre.

However, our chef and teacher turned out to be a really nice and friendly English guy called Daniel Hardy (tough to find any info on him, but see page 2 of this doc if you’re interested), bit of a joker and London wide boy. I immediately thought we were going to get on swimmingly!

He started by giving us all our welcome pack which included the recipes, a tea towel and a very fetching LCB apron. We then went through to the kitchen and had our basic safety briefing - washing hands regularly, different coloured chopping board for different ingredients, etc. Today, we were cooking roast poussin (or baby chicken) with pureed potatoes and a chicken jus (gravy). 

It seemed fairly simple, but as I said at the beginning, this was basic cookery made complicated! We started off by making a basic chicken stock, including a mirepoix, and leaning how to make a bouquet garni - which is basically a bundle of herbs and veg (we used celery, thyme, parsley stalks, a bay leaf and a layer of leek) to help deepen the flavour.

Once that was on, we learnt how to correctly prepare a chicken for roasting - including taking out the wish bone, before it’s cooked. Who knew! Also, Chef Daniel recommended we cook the chicken on each leg and then flat on its back when roasting. This is so the leg cooks first, as it’s bigger, and protects the thin breast part. Curious! I’ll definitely give that a go.

Next up was the mashed pureed potato. Fairly simple, but an interesting tip was to bake the potatoes on a bed of salt, rather than boil them, as the latter takes out all the lovely flavour when you pour away the cooking water. Makes sense! And damn did the spuds taste good. We also put a shitload of butter and cream in them, so that helped. (Curious fact, the school goes through 30kg butter EVERY DAY). 

Finally, we made the jus with a bit of leftover mirepoix and stock by cooking on the stove and reducing down. Oh. All the way through this, we were SEASONING. We have to do that a lot. (If you have problems with too much salt, don’t eat chef-cooked food!)

Oh yeah - then we boiled broccoli with half the ocean’s worth of salt.

Ta Da!

So overall, the class was pretty good, and although I didn’t feel like I came out with a wealth of knowledge, the things I did learn will be very useful in the future.

WEEK 2 - TAGLIATELLE, PAN FRIED SCALLOPS & CREAM SAUCE

When I saw the recipe list for this week, I was one very happy bunny! I’ve never made pasta before and I’ve always wanted to try - plus I bloody love scallops! I managed to take a few more pics this week too (albeit pretty rubbish ones!)

One thing I didn’t mention before was the help we get - there are two Grand Diplome staff working with us, helping get set up and checking our work as we go along, as well as two kitchen staff in the back doing all our washing up. Fantastic!

First up was making the pasta. A fairly simple recipe of 00 flour, 3 eggs and oil. Boom. The process itself is a bit like making bread so I felt fairly comfortable with it. The kneading process was much less rigorous too, which is always a benefit. Here’s my pasta dough and finger, sealed due to a burn the previous week! Apologies for the shit photo.

Next up was the scallops. Chef Daniel talked us through the two ways that scallops are fished - dredging and hand-dived. If you get the option, go for the latter as it’s much more sustainable and doesn’t damage the sea bed like dredging does. We then were taught how to open them, take the scallop from the shell and take off all the unwanted bits. I found it a bit fiddly as the scallops themselves are very fragile. I also got two really small ones, but the girl’s next to me were massive. Boo hoo.

Anyways, with that all done, it was on to the pasta - getting it rolled and cut. It was easy, but definitely something to do when you have time, as you have to pass it through the machine a lot, but also quickly as you don’t want it to dry out. We were making tagliatelle, which was one of the options on the cutter. The only annoying thing was that we were told to only roll and cut half of the pasta - as there was enough in our portion to serve 4 - 5. So, Olga and I (the one with the massive scallops - Lolz) dutifully shared our pasta machine and rolled and cut half of our portion. BUT. Everyone else in the room did all of theirs. This meant we went over time and were rushing towards the end - with Olga and I waiting for everyone, then upon realising what they were doing, had cleaned up and removed the pasta machine, meaning we couldn’t do the same. Grrr. Anyway.

Finally, we boiled the pasta and made a cream sauce by reducing some stock which was also being infused with peppercorns, and adding cream and lemon juice. YUM. Finally, we pan fried the scallops and the roe - et voila!

YUMMMMMMMMMMMM. It was seriously tasty, even when warmed up when I got home. The scallops were soooooooooo good, and definitely benefited from the over-the-top seasoning I was made to add!! The only minor annoyance is I now have pasta dough in my freezer (don’t even know if it will freeze well) that I can’t easily do anything with as I don’t have a pasta machine. If anyone would like to lend me one, I’d be very happy!

Next week - pan fried duck breast and puy lentils. NOM.

EDIT - They have awesome icons on the toilet doors...

[thethirtythings]

A Summer Update

After a bit of a hiatus, I thought it was high time to provide a bit of an update for those who have been missing my random ramblings. Here you go, friends.

I’d say with all of the below in mind, I’m about halfway through. 

4. Take a professional cooking course - Booked, starts in July at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school. Watch this space!

7. Achieve a fitness goal - Well, I scored two tries for the Tag Rugby team I play for! Not much, but it was pretty exciting for me. It took two whole seasons for me to score one and I was trying really hard! I’ve also started a new -fitnotfat regime to try and get into shape for the big 3-0. I’m gonna cross this one off for now, but keep at the new regime.

11. Geisha tattoo - Half finished! Will post a pic once it’s complete, but it’s looking good so far!

12. Watch all Star Wars films - I don’t know why this is taking so long, but we now have them all so as soon as we have a crappy, rainy weekend (and we don’t have any plans), it’ll be marathon time.

13. Tarot cards - Complete! I didn’t blog about this at the time because the experience actually really wound me up. I was expecting something fun and lighthearted, but I actually found the whole thing fairly negative. As one could have guessed, the info from the card was fairly generic, but that wasn’t what frustrated me....I simply found that every card that was pulled brought negative connotations and bad emotion. Perhaps I’m just unlucky but I left feeling frustrated and kinda sad. Ha, not really what I was after! Experience done and won’t be repeated.

22. Expensive wine - When I put this on the list, I was thinking some kind of posh champers would fit the bill, but Jon and I shared a lush bottle of 2009 Chateauneuf-Du-Pape on Saturday evening, whilst sharing a Chateaubriand at L’Escargot. Excuse the crappy picture but it was super dark! At a price of £45, it’s certainly the most I’ve ever spent on wine...and not too much to break the bank. Trouble is, when you drink something so delicious, it’s all you want to drink thereafter, right?! Any donations of an even better vintage wine would be welcomed to take this one even further ;-)

27. Posh hotel - For our 1st  anniversary, Jon and I went to a gorgeous little cabin in Kent, complete with sky light and private hot tub. Although this wasn’t in London and wasn’t in a hotel, I’m still going to allow myself to “complete” this, as it was the most wonderful, romantic weekend we’ve ever had, excluding the actual wedding/honeymoon! See soppy lovely dovey picture below :-)

28. IMDB Films - You’ve seen my reviews, but I’m slacking and need to post reviews for The Terminator, Vertigo and Scarface. Watch this space!