Stuffed Chicken and exam fish

Cuts: 1; Burns:0
A day of contrasts on Monday as I had two practicals. First was making a chicken and cream mousse and piping it into a chicken breast served with spaghetti courgettes and a tomato sauce. Everything went really well and I got plated up pretty early so was feeling good but forgot to take photo. Roll on 6:30pm and time for exam fish – fillets of sole with a tomato sauce (different from above), spinach, cherry tomatoes and the dreaded turned potatoes. Got off to a fast start with filleting the fish and launched into all the veg prep and stock making. I would not have believed how fiddly it is to take the core out of the cherry tomatoes which was followed by the potatoes and managed to cut myself. No big deal but the potatoes are wet so having lost one plaster I went to get another one Chef suggested I put on a latex sleeve over it (the nickname is ‘finger condom’) and helped to attach it. I managed to raise a laugh by commenting that it was ribbed!

Well it all went downhill from here – forgot to put my carefully made stock in with the sole fillets in the oven which meant they didn’t cook completely and then remembered about it and it was half frozen in the blast chiller, added it to the sauce but didn’t reduce it enough. I had carefully simmered the potatoes then once they were cooked and drained, managed to put them on a operating ring (it’s induction with no colour so you can’t tell from above) so they dried out and started to go brown. I was one of the last to plate up. However, at least I had a hot, polished plate and had presented the dish as dictated unlike the others who were assessed along with me so a small positive. It can only get better from here! The photo was taken after Chef had disected my dish and very clearly noted that it was 30 mins over the 2 hours we have to prepare it (F+30).

le Deuxieme, Long Acre, Covent Garden, London

In need of a quick dinner before a play at the Donmar warehouse in Covent garden, I selected Le Deuxieme for location, it had pretty good reviews and they had a special offer – 3 courses and a Kir Royal for 28 pounds which isn’t bad. Overall, it was pretty good although the desserts let them down. The pre theatre menu was quite extensive with about 6-8 options for a starter and main course. I selected a warm salad of smoked bacon, blackpudding with a poached egg which was well executed – crispy pieces of blackpudding and lardons, perfectly shaped and cooked poached egg but lacked some acidity to balance the fattiness/richness. My companion ordered a seafood tagliatelle which came swimming in what looked like a watery tomato sauce – not that impressed. The mains were good, perfectly crisp skin on my back bream and lovely flakey hake for my friend and the side dish of green beans were al dente. For dessert we ordered lemon tart which was actually a lemon custard tart which wasn’t that lemony but the pastry was pretty good and a sticky toffee pudding which had been microwaved and consequently was very dry inside. The service was quick and efficient considering we had just over an hour to eat. Very convenient for the Donmar and reasonable value but Cote is probably as good.

Offal – a revelation; I actually like sweetbreads!

Cuts:0; Burns:0
Well we had a pan juggling challenge on Wednesday. Don’t worry, we weren’t throwing them in the air – that would have been carnage and one was very big and heavy – I could barely lift it – so much so for all that time at the gym! We had to plate up 2 dishes that had to be cooked at the last minute, especially one – pan fried calf’s liver – it involved 8 pans for all the different componants! We had to make Calf’s liver with onions and sauted potatoes and breaded sweatbreads with pommes parisienne, asparagus and truffle. I would not have believed it but I actually liked the sweetbreads. They had been cooked and pressed then we put the flour, egg and breadcrumbs on and fried them in more clarified butter so they were firm (rather than mushy) and crispy. My sweetbreads went really well, good colour, crispy and the asparagus was cooked well. Potatoes not good at all. You would think I could cook a potato by now but it turns out that I can’t :-(. I cut my saute potaotes too thin so they burnt when I fried them and the parisienne potatoes (use a melon baller to make little spheres) were ‘scuffed’ because I had boiled them too fast before sauteing them so I am going to watch that in my next practice as for the exam we’ll saute the turned pots. Got myself into a real panic about cooking the liver for some reason and got the pan too hot and burnt it (or more diplomatically – gave it a bit too much colour…)and it was ‘a bit over’ (cooked). Both sauces were ok so seem to be nailing that now.
Top Tip: If you are sauteing potatoes and par boiling them first, make sure you simmer them gently and don’t cook them too much so they don’t fall appart in the pan and it stops them from browning properly.

Poussin saute a l’estragon, compote de pommes

Cuts:0; Burns:0
After the carnage of Monday, we had a relatively simple dish to make on Tuesday to bring back the confidence which was butchering a poussin (a small chicken but not a baby chicken I was assured by chef), making a tarragon cream sauce, an apple sauce/compote and most importantly the first opportunity to do a cheffy smear on the plate! Everybody needs practice in butchery however we were spatchcocking the poussin rather than jointing it this time which is bascially taking out the back bone and we also cut it down the breast bone to get 2 separate sides of chicken to cook but still had to French trim the winglet. One of mine fell off for some reason – good job I had 2 so I could present the complete one. I will definitely use this recipe if I need to make apple sauce – very tangy and somehow savoury. I was third to plate up and got good marks for everything so pretty pleased. We also had to cook some new potatoes but in the ususal Cordon Bleu way, they weren’t just any new potatoes, we had to remove the skins and eyes after they had been boiled (another job for the lowest of the low in the kitchen) and cook them off in guess what? More butter of course. I should probably track my weight as I do the course with all this butter etc. So far I have resisted all the pastries and muffins etc. in the Cordon Bleu cafe so not doing too bad.
Top Tip: to get good acidity/tangyness in the apple compote, put the granny smith apple peelings in some muslin and add to the pan as you sweat down the apples and add some lemon juice, salt and pepper

Mela, Shaftsbury Ave, London

Mela is an Indian Restaurant on Shaftsbury Avenue very close to Cambridge Circus. We had a reservation for 7pm which we changed pretty last minute to later and then were late for the new time but they were very friendly and accomodating – it helped that the restaurant wasn’t full I suspect. From a decor point of view, a step up from your average Indian – no flock wallpaper, linen table cloths and napkins and decent tulip shape wine glasses on the tables which they used for water. The reason I chose it was that their menu had a few different things on it from standard and some good comments on Toptable. The highlight was the naan bread – very hot and fresh, thin, crispy and delicious. A close second was the tandoori chicken – it was 2 legs and they were quite succulent and not over spiced but with a good tang – quite often the chicken is very dry as the tandoor is so hot and the chicken hasn’t been sealed before it goes in. We also had a soft shell crab curry, a coconut based sauce, which was ok but was lacking in any kick or tang – it would have really benefited from some tamarind. A sign of a good curry sauce for me is that the dish is clean from dipping the naan bread into it and there was loads of sauce left. The aubergine curry was also rather bland and insipid – an almost white, thin coconut sauce and loads of small, long peppers or mild chillies – unappetising. If I was looking for a curry in that part of town, I would definitely go back but not have the crab or aubergine again.

Poulet saute aux champaux

Cuts:0; burns: 1 near miss
Well I would have expected that the practice at the weekend would have helped more as I took 20 mins longer than I’ll be allowed in the exam to make this seemingly simple dish. On a positive note, I was the 2nd or 3rd person in my group to present but that just means that the rest are really bad! Several chickens, onions and potatoes will have to sacrifice themselves to help me get my time down to less than 2 hours. Maybe I need to do a time in motion study or something. I was searching around for things in the kitchen today which must be avoided as it wastes time but given that I am doing this to improve my home cooking, the speed isn’t really an issue, it’s more whether the food tastes and looks good that is the most important – must keep reminding myself of this when I get in a flap.
My sauce had good flavour but was too runny, so we are homing in on the sauce making I guess (over reduced and too thick before) or in hystoresis for those techies out there. Chef not impressed with the potatoes so the neighbour will be getting more trimmings or I will have to start eating mashed potato and suffer the wrath of the personal trainer for eating carbs – never expected this type of dilema when I signed up for this. Didn’t have the plate flat on the pan of hot water when was plating up, hence why all my sauce is on one side of the plate – duh! Onwards and upwards to the next attempt!!

Exam chicken test run

Since I am a perfectionist and very competitive, I thought I would get a little ahead of the game and invite some friends around for dinner to practice one of the dishes we could cook for the exam. In conclusion it was a good exercise but a bit depressing as I am way too slow. We had the demo on Wednesday for Poulet sautes champaux so while it was fresh in the mind I decided to give it a go. This involves jointing a chicken and cooking it in the oven then making a sauce using the bones and stock then adding mushrooms and tarragon at the end and it is served with glazed baby onions and sauted, turned potatoes (lots of wasteful trimming of potatoes to make them look like a lozenge and peeling of tiny onions – I’m sure most people have better things to do)

First mistake was to invite more than 4 people as it meant I didn’t have a big enough pan to put all the chicken in so need 2 and filling up the oven so I couldn’t warm the plates. Second mistake was to make a vegetable dish which went in the oven as I was seriously running inot capacity issues. The whole point of having a dinner party is to spend time with your guests; they had been warned that I was unlikelt to emerge from the kitchen until the main course had been served so thank you to Ana for dishing out drinks and entertaining everyone. I also split up the cold preparation of the chicken and vegetables, those lovely turned potatoes and baby onions (don’t ever bother to do these – I think they are a way to torture junior chefs and a rite of passage as most professions have) – my neighbour is feeding her kids a lot of mashed potatoes as I’m passing over all the trimmings to her. I actually got cramp in my hand from doing all the potatoes and onions.

I was aiming for eating at 8pm but it was more like 8:30 not helped by the smoke alarm going off and not stopping and broken wine glasses but I got there. Everyone liked it but the plates were cold. More critically, my onions were a bit over cooked, some chicken had slight pinkness but the pototes were fantastic and sauce was good texture but lacking in flavour. One thing to be noted was that Waitrose beef stock has no taste. I had also made a lemon tart in the morning so everyone enjoyed that and as a bounus I raised 80 pounds for Comic Relief as Fiona’s meal relief.

More soup! Consomme and French Onion Soup

Cuts:0; Burns 0
We had 2 of the hardest soups to make today – Consomme and French onion soup. Getting up close and personal with beef mince and egg white at 8 in the morning isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it had to be done. You have to whisk a mix of vegetables, mince and egg white into cold stock then bring it to the boil such that a raft of crud comes to the surface then the liquid is clarified by boiling through the raft. You then lift a bit of this off so you can ladle off the, hopefully, clear liquid underneath. As for the onion soup, I wouldn’t have believed how long and slow you need to cook the onions but it was worth the wait – it was really yummy. Pretty good day at the office really – consistency, seasoning and flavour on onion soup good, consomme just needed more seasoning and crepes were reasonable.
We had the demonstration for the first exam dish today so I’ll be practicing this Friday for friends and will report on how it goes.

Leek and potato and chicken and mushroom soup

Cuts: 1 but no blood, just a nail; burns:0
It is soup week this week. Today we made 2 and we’ll be making another two tomorrow. My mother always jokes that ‘I’m making soup’ is a similar excuse to ‘I’m washing my hair tonight’ but these soups took at least 2 hours to make – I was exhausted. The exhaustion was probably as a result of having to do so much fine chopping under the gaze of Chef. We had to julienne mushrooms which involves making a square block out of a button mushroom then cutting thin slices starting from the top of it down towards the stalk, then making little matchsticks (but thinner) from those slabs. You’ve maybe heard the expression, who’s got time to stuff a mushroom – well, who’s got time for julienning mushrooms unless you’re working in fine dining. We also had to julienne carrots, leeks and celery which is quite hard as the shape is not conducive to making flat slabs to slice. I would say ot was a pretty good day at the office today – I was told I should be proud of my chicken and mushroom soup – good consistency, flavour and seasoning 🙂 My leek soup was too thick but I knew that and I should have cooked the leeks for less time. I have a wee bit of an issue with that as chef told us in the demo to keep sweating the potoes till they were almost cooked before adding the stock. I would have previously, added the stock more or less immediately after the potatoes. I didn’t precisely chop all the veg for the soup but it wasn’t that uneven.
Top tip: very obviously but when you’re cooking a mix of vegetables that cook at differnt rates, add them into the same pan in the cooking order. So I had carrot, celery and leek so add the carrot first, then the celery and then the leek so they are all ready at the same time. Also, don’t over cook a soup as you start to lose flavour.

Eggs florentine and omelets

Cuts:0; Burns:0;
My practice at the weekend paid off. I only had 2 eggs to get a perfect one for my eggs florentine (spinach with a poached egg and a cheese sauce over the top) and I did (result)! Everything went swimingly until I realised that I hadn’t cooked my spinach and didn’t have any butter to cook it with – went to get some and my pan was starting to burn when I came back – this induction cooking takes some getting used to. In my panic, I forgot to season the spinach but I did at least squeeze it out so the water didn’t run all over the plate. On a more positive note, my seasoning and consistency of the sauce was correct, yeah 🙂 Then had to make an omelet with fine herbs (chervil, chives, parsley and tarragon). That went pretty well too – good seasoning and texture although could have had more bavarois. Bavarois is liquid egg. Note that the second photo is after Chef tasted the eggs…
Top tip: A proper omelet is not made as they do on Saturday kitchen which is more like scrambled eggs. Whisk the seasoned eggs then add them to the hot pan which has a little clarified butter in it then draw some of the congealing egg towards the centre to allow more liquid egg to the edges then once the omelet has begun to set, loosen at the edges and then completely. Start to fold it when there is still quite a bit of liquid egg as the egg will continue to cook as you plate up and serve so that the omlelet still has little of this liquid when you eat it.
To poach an egg, put a little vinegar in the water and bring it to a ‘champagne fizz’ simmer; make a swirl and when the vortex is close to dying, add the egg and the white should wrap around the yolk. You must have really fresh eggs.