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.
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...
