Results!

Well the course is finished and the results are in. Can’t believe it’s back to work on Tuesday. My overall score for the course was 79.37% so precise! So I just missed a distinction (over 80%) which I can’t say I’m happy about but in the overall scheme of things it doesn’t matter – I know I should be pleased but it’s the perfectionist in me. I got 85.4% for the practical exam (really chuffed with that) including full marks for organisation! 94% for the written exam so it was the continuous assessment that let me down.

I really enjoyed the course and I learned a lot which I can now apply to my cooking for friends. It gave me a whole new level of respect for chefs and I watch Great British menu with a new, more informed eye. I know for sure I don’t want to be a chef – cooking and the decisions on what to cook and buying the ingredients are therapy for me. Cooking to order and getting something ready at the last minute for a set time is stressful and to do that for a living is not for me. I may try to do a supper club at some point but I will see how I cope with being back at work first. I am going to make the rack of lamb in a parsley crust for Sunday lunch this weekend so I hope my family like it.

Thank you all for your comments and support, especially those who came to the practice sessions for the exam. I will try to continue to do the restaurant reviews but the Cordon Bleu experience is complete now.

Blueprint Cafe, Tower Bridge, London

A friend from Canada was coming to town and was keen to see the Lichtenstein at the Tate Modern so I decided to look for a restaurant nearby that I had’t been to before. The Blueprint Cafe was made famous by Jeremy Lee whom has moved on to Quo Vadis and I wanted to see if the standards had been maintained and the menu looked interesting from the website.

Located on the first floor of the design museum just east of Tower Bridge, the restaurant has floor to ceiling windows and binoculars on the table which was a nice touch. It had a casual, relaxed atmosphere till a table of 12 pretty drunk people arrived and sat down close to our table. The menu is very seasonal and we both started with scallops with cauliflower and wild garlic pesto. There was the ubiquitous smear of a green puree with a very smooth texture – it turned out to be the cauliflower element but was under seasoned and the texture seemed wrong – there was no granular element that I would expect with cauliflower. The ‘pesto’ had small cubes of apple (not the evenly sized brunoise expected of the cordon bleu) which brought some acidity and crunch which was welcome but the acidity wasn’t enough to cut the creaminess of the scallop and the green goo – this was also woefully under seasoned.

For the mains, I had cod with chorizo – the cod had been cooked sous vide I suspect and flaked beautifully and potentially the chorizo had been too – it was really anaemic, greasy and spongy. I would have preferred to have it crisp to give a contrast to the soft cod. This was all put on a salad of fennel, rocket and hazel nuts – I really dislike hot with cold in a main course as you finish up with tepid hot food and wilted cold food. The hot food was the victim this time round. My partner had a lamb steak which had a good minty flavour but was well done – bad, bad. The portion of ‘spring greens’ was a tiny portion of unseasoned kale – disappointing.

We had been struggling with our waiter’s ability to understand English all evening and this was brought to the fore for dessert. We asked if there was cream in one of the desserts, he went to ask the kitchen and said no then when it arrived it did. They did bring something else and didn’t charge us so they got a brownie point. The chocolate fondant was suitably chocolatey and running but the sticky toffee pudding was very poor – again a sponge microwaved to within an inch of its life which meant it was tough and quite unpleasant.

I like the location but not good enough to justify a return visit given the schoolboy errors with the food.

Last week of Basic Cuisine

Cuts:0; Burns:0
Hard to believe but after this week it will be all over for me at the Cordon Bleu, for now at least. I’ve decided to go back to work as originally planned but I hope to find time to continue to blog about the restaurants I go to.
Monday was classic French desserts – creme caramel and oeufs a la neige. These require custards made very differently with the same ingredients which I found out graphically the hard way. For creme caramel, like creme brulee, you want the custard to cook in the oven so it sets to a slightly wobbly or ‘wibbly’ consistently. Creme anglais, you cook in the pan stirring all the time hoping not to get sweet scrambled eggs. For the creme caramel I didn’t realise at the time that I had my milk too hot so it cooked the eggs while I was mixing them and so the custards never set in the oven. Chef said my caramel was good though so not a total failure (some people had to do it 3 times!)
The oeufs a la neige or illes flotant as I know it were pretty successful. Chef, who worked at the Waterside Inn at Bray for many years, said he was ‘happy’ with my creme anglais and poached meringues and that the meringues had been delicately poached – praise indeed. The Waterside Inn has 2 Michelin stars and is owned my Michel Roux Senior – one of my culinary heros. I aspire to go there for dinner some time. The poached meringues have a strange texture – like light marshmallow. We didn’t do the sugar work to go with this which made it very sweet – it needs something bitter or astringent to cut the sweetness in my book but the potwashers were very happy to eat it. Sorry forgot to take a photo.

Yesterday was the practical exam. I met people who had already finished and they had all cooked chicken so I guessed we would get fish (the tasters would be getting tired of eating chicken) and I was right and this probably saved my bacon as there’s less to do. I wasn’t that nervous beforehand but when I arrived and saw some of my group already dressed 45 mins before the exam and pacing around then waiting to go into the kitchen it started to get to me such that when I got into the kitchen and had to write the ‘bon economat’ – basically the recipe, my hands were really shaking. My post was ‘lucky 13’ – good job I’m not supersticious. After we did the bon economat, all but 2 of the group were sent out the kitchen and we went in over 5 mins intervals so I had time to calm down or fret more. Luckily I relaxed as I was going through the recipes with class mates and realised I knew the recipe pretty well which was really good as it took me way too long to prepare and fillet my fish. However, due to my relativey relaxed state, I didn’t panic although the odd expletive was issued when I looked at the clock. All my work to look at what needed to be started when really paid off as I was able to get things started to cook while still preparing the vegetables including my nemesis – turned potatoes – all 12 of them.

I am really happy that I am very unlikely (never say never) to have to turn another vegetable unless I go back to Cordon Bleu and that will certainly be a major part of the decision criteria. You have to turn mushrooms in intermediate which are even worse than potatoes! During the exam 2 chefs, and sometimes 3, were prowling around the kitchen watching everything which can be rather off putting although I was deperately trying to just focus on getting everything done. I got my food to the pass 2 minutes early and apart from forgetting to put the mushrooms in the stock I was pretty happy with the plate of food I’d made. Let’s hope the judges thought so too! Today it’s the written exam but it’s only worth 10%, the practical was 45% and you lost 2% for every minute you were over the 2 hours but unfortunately I don’t think I got an extra 4% for being early 😦 The continuous assessment is also worth 45%. Will let you all know how I do when I get my results. Thanks for your good luck messages this week.

Top Tip: Let your milk cool down before you make the custard for creme caramel. Backward planning really helped me get my dish ready on time – I had worked back from when I needed to plate up, when I needed to start cooking things and I could be doing other activities while they were ‘sweating’, boiling or whatever.

Beef and baking!

crab
Cuts:0; Burns:0
It’s been a hectic week with 2 practicals and a demo Monday, 2 demos and a practical Tuesday and a demo and practical on Wednesday so not much time to blog so thought I would just combine everything together. We made a dressed crab and moules mariniere, steak and chips, beef stroganoff and eclairs. I’ll start with the negatives: My hollandaise split – it was a bit thick but I turned round to get the herbs to add to it and when I looked back it had transformed into scrambled eggs and clarified butter. Turns out that you can add too much butter – the knack is to know when to stop. Did manage to make a second batch in the nick of time so was only 5 mins late at the pass. Also on the steak dish I would not have believed it would take so long to cook. Maybe it was the fact that so many steaks were being cooked on the griddle at the same time but it took about 20-25mins for medium rare! The potoatoes weren’t the right type of chips, hence the strange colour and they weren’t that crispy either.

My other disaster was with my creme patissiere for the eclairs. In the demo, Chef told us to add the eggs to the flour and sugar just before you add the milk however I’ve always added the dry to the wet. When I mixed them it immediately went to scrambled eggs. 2 of the chefs stood around me confering about it and then watched me as I tried to make it the second time – no pressure then! Thankfully it worked the second time. I almost took out one of the chefs with my elbow when I was making my choux pastry – he managed to get out of the way in time luckily.

All in all it’s been a really good week and the chefs have been pretty happy with my efforts. I got a well done for the eclairs and I did eat one despite the dairy issues and it was delicious – crisp, light choux pastry, indulgent, vanilla custard inside then sickly sweet fondant icing on the top. Not for every day but once in a while a real treat. The potwashers got the rest of them – they do such a fantastic job and some are quite cute. I could do with one of them for when I’m doing my practice runs for the exam which is next week!!!! Last 2 practices tonight and Saturday – I’m getting pretty tired of these dishes I must admit. I long for spicy food so it’s Thai tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Top tip: when making hollandaise, you need to whisk the eggs and vinegar reduction till you get a mousse like foam before you start adding the butter so you have a stable base which reduces the chance of it splitting. Adding warm water and whisking hard can sometimes help but in my case it didn’t despite chef’s help.

Bam Bou, Charlotte St area, London

Bam Bou sits at the end of Charlotte St and when you enter more resembles a house than a restaurant – there are several rooms on different floors and there is a Singapore feel to the place. The tables are fairly well spaced and despite our room being full, it never seemed really noisy. Service was prompt and efficient but our waiter wasn’t very friendly or cheery. To start we had Crispy Squid which was very crispy and not all greasy, the squid was cooked to perfection and the portion was quite generous; a pork and beef lemon grass skewer which was very tasty with quite a chili kick and the meat was moulded around a stick of lemongrass so it looked appetising too. The crab and green mango salad was a bit lacking in dressing but was fresh and flavourful as was the cuttlefish with lemon grass, ginger and chilli although a wee bit more chilli and lime juice would have lifted this to perfection.
For the main course we had spiced lamb which was meltingly tender but there wasn’t enough sauce which was very good what there was of it; whole crispy bream and pan fried duck breast (could have been pinker) which was ok but nothing to write home about and some morning glory (a vegetable side dish) which still had some bite – could have eaten the whole plate of it myself. We finished with coffee which came with these oriental versions of rice crispy caramel chews which were delicious plus the 2 bottles of Torrontes (went very well with the food with a refreshing acidity to cleanse the palate) and it came to 45 pounds including tip. Good value for money and would go back especially as it’s a good area for bars and people watching.

Trout aux almonds

Cuts:0; Burns:0;
Freshwater fish today and round instead of flat. Learned a much better technique for filleting these fish – the Scandinavian method which means you cut round the head then turn the blade and just take it straight down to the tail rather than cutting down from the top of the fish. We didn’t have to skin the trout but we did have to scale it carefully as it has very delicate flesh and if you press too hard, the fillets start to break up. My next door neighbour was rather ‘rough’ with his poor trout and the fillets just broke up when he tried to take them off. Good job today, even the turned potatoes went well except I forgot my lemon garnish. My Hollandaise was a success and was delicious with the trout. If you get the beurre noisette (heat butter up till it starts to go brown then stop the cooking by adding some lemon juice) and add the almonds quickly so they go really crunchy it’s a great contrast to the softness of the trout. I actually ate this in the class which is rare for me.
Top tip: When cooking delicate fish, especially if the skin is on; put some baking paper in the bottom of the pan and add the oil/butter on top of the paper then you are sure that it won’t stick to the pan. Just be careful that you don’t damage the skin when you take it out the pan as I did!