Backtracking to where my last post left off, that 'technical demonstration' turned out to just be a theory class which was pretty boring and felt like they were testing whether or not we'd been listening at the Food Hygiene Training! The good stuff started later that same day though and we had our first demonstration on making fruit salad with a flavoured simple syrup and boiling sugar to various different stages. If somebody had told me that this course would involve crazy amounts of frantic note-taking, I honestly would have looked at them like they were stupid. But with that first practical alone, there ended up being about three pages of notes almost completely spent detailing different types of fruit cuts. At first, I had taken all the notes on the recipe page in our binders, but there came a certain point where nothing else would fit on the page and I realised that I would never be able to read the actual recipe in my practical if I left it like that... thank goodness for erasable pens! And iPhones: for taking pictures of the chef's notes when he is moving too fast!
Here's what I ended up coming up with in the practical for fruit salad:
Now... my apologies in advance, but the rest of this blog post is mostly going to be a pretty quick re-cap of what I've made so far... because I've left it so long now and writing full blog posts will take me years to do for each of the things I've made!
One busy day after trekking all around Holborn to find the Argos I reserved my weighing scale at, I also decided to get my knives engraved at a little hand-engraving stand in Bond Street Station. I was so, so pleased with the results and, after everybody having the same old knife kit, it felt so nice to know that my knives were now really and truly mine and that they all said 'Laura' on them! I even got the lock for the case engraved!
The next practical lesson involved making different types of meringue, pastry cream and whipped up Chantilly cream to practice piping with. The pastry cream was pretty boring, and mine ended up being slightly lumpier than I would have liked, my cream wasn't quite whipped perfectly... but the meringues were so cute! Here are some piped rosettes and shells:
The next two practicals made up a pair with a whole host of different things being made. The first day was mostly spent preparing creme brûlées, creme caramels and creme anglaise as a mise en place; the next day was spent 'burning' the tops of the creme brûlée and decorating it with sugar cages and fruit and plating (!!!) creme caramel as a real finished product with all sorts of frilly bits like chocolate piping, fruit coulis and tuille biscuits! The second of these two practicals definitely also caused me to have a tiny (...read: fairly massive) mental breakdown that was mostly to do with piping chocolate, but was probably heavily influenced by the fact that the day in general had been kind of terrible.
I burnt the top of the creme brûlée a bit... because, well, it turns out using a blow torch for the first time after already having a mental breakdown was kind of terrifying. I did, however, manage to cover up most of said burnt bits with a sugar cage and some fruit though ;)
The creme caramel plating job, though, after quite a lot of stress and wiping plate clean is what I really think I was proud of that day:
Look at it!! I made that!!
Anyway...
Most recently and now bringing us up to date in this post, was the first of our three potential practical exam pieces that we will have to make... and know by heart... and be brilliant at.
And... here it is. Or... was. I took it into work and it was devoured by all manner of co-workers and homeless people who seemed to enjoy it!
I realise this picture is... kind of terrible. I should have included the entire tart. But at least you can see the piping! And all the perfectly julienned lemon peel!
Until next time! (Which should include an apple tart made with a sweet pastry!)
