Superior Patisserie

This week I have started my last term in Le Cordon Bleu - Superior Patisserie.

My first day was a mess.

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I don't remember if I mentioned before - we had two cars (one for my husband, one for me), otherwise it's a subject of much controversies - who will get the car and who will go by bus.

Unfortunately, one car died just a week before, and on my first day I took the bus to the train station. And of course I missed my train, and then were "minor delays" on a tube. So on, I came to school 30 minutes later. But chef was kind and let me come in.

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The structure of the studies this term is completely different then previous. It's all about workshops. We no more sit and watch the demonstration, we just making things straight away (since we are smart know :-) ).

This term includes four modules: Chocolate, Sugar work, Plated restaurant desserts and boulangerie.

My favourite, boulangerie, is at the end. So no way to go, I'll wait to the end :-).

We have started from the Chocolate.

What can I say ?!

It's too much chocolate!!! It's three weeks of melting, smelling, building and decorating chocolate! At the end of the first day the chocolate was all over me - hands, face, clothes - sweet woman :-), and I deadly wanted to eat something salty like a gherkin :-).

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It should be a heaven for chocolate lovers!

But I'll wait for my heaven - boulangerie!

It's the result of two first days - chocolate truffles, caramel, nougat and etc.

Gordon Ramsey - the man of my professional dreams!

Gordon Ramsey is a nice Scottish guy!
After a short career of football-player, he became a chef.
And now Gordon Ramsey is a owner of seven restaurants in UK, four in US, another four in the rest of the world, several pubs. He is the author of many cooking books, and TV shows.
A lot of people don't like him too much, because of his strong language.
I think - it's a huge advantage "saying what you really think" directly and honestly, even if it's contain an F word :-).
And I think he is a Great Chef! He makes as simple dishes, so the fancy dishes. And the way he is doing it - very exciting. He is quick and professional!
I just love it!
So, lately we were invited to the our friend's Birthday party to Gordon Ramsey's restaurant in London - Maze .
What can I say!?
It was absolutely delicious. The dishes are small, but very tasty and original. At the end of the evening you don't feel that your stomach is going to blow up. Everything was very good, but one dish was absolutely fantastic - "Coconut panna cotta with black olive caramel, white chocolate granité ". It's a dessert, that we even hadn't ordered.
We got it just as excuse for waiting a long time for our dessert. It was like a play of different tastes in your mouth - cold, soft, sour, sweet - Amazing!
After that evening I admire the man even more!
The title of this post, being more specific - the "professional" world is for my husband :-)
Just kidding :-).
I think the chefs that had an opportunity to work with him are lucky, and I will be lucky too when I'll have a slightly chance to be with him in one kitchen!

Croquembouche or two days to suffer

A Croquembouche is a French dessert that often served at weddings. It is a high cone of profiteroles bound with caramel, and usually decorated with threads of caramel, sugared almonds, chocolate, flowers, or ribbons.

The name comes from the French words 'Croque en bouche' meaning 'crunch in the mouth'.


This week we were so lucky to make this "lovely" cake :-) !
We made it two days, I mean two practical sessions.
I have to say that this is very complicate composition, but for experienced chef it should take a hour to make such a cake.
As our chef says: "You just should find a monkey to buy it from you! :-) "



Now I'll explain how we made it!
That cone of profiteroles is placed on nougat base that made of almonds mixed with hot caramel and then rolled to desirable shape while it's still hot, because when it become cold it like a rock.

This is a base

A little triangles are made also of nougat and then rolled. Since we are not so experienced chefs, we had to warm this almond mix again and again in order to roll these shapes and cut.

This little thing will be placed on the top of the cake.

When I finished to pipe on it ( white glaze) It just slept out of my hands and cracked, since it's very fragile :-)
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Hundreds of profiteroles were baked , filled with pastry cream and glazed with caramel and some of them with nibbed sugar (kind of sugar used usually for decoration, it doesn't melt) and build around the cone as you can see below:

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And here the moment of ultimate truth came, I was supposed to take the profiteroles construction off from the cone mould, and all of them fall apart :-(. Chef said that it happens sometimes :-)

All those pictures are from the chef's demo, because my cake didn't survive!

This cake (when it peacefully delivered to the wedding :-) ) should be served by parts of profiteroles ( 5-6 per person) accompanied with ice cream or sauce.

If some of you will need a wedding cake, you know where to order it, but the price will be very high :-) !!!

Intermediate Patisserie

It's about a month since I have started the Intermediate Patisserie term.
And shame on me, I haven't published any sweet picture!

So, here it comes! (After a couple of words of course :-) )

This term is a little bit complicate then the previous one, we are already supposed to know some basics.

And so far I can say that I like Cuisine more!

I'm not a person who likes cakes a lot, specially not cream or mousse cakes.

If I make a dessert at home it's usually will be some fruit pie or tart, or it's also could be very rich chocolate cake.

But most of all I like the smell of baking dough - danish pastry, brioche and so.

I'm as my Dad, like all the bakery and good breads. I think that's the only thing that I can't resist to. When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband was bringing boxes of danish pastries, and I was able to eat a lot! The final result is a very very sweet girl!

So, I'm an opposite to my mum and husband - they like all things about chocolate. And as higher the percent of chocolate - is better! May be it's the basis of their good relationship - the chocolate desire :-).

Another thing, I hate doing the cake decoration staff - writing on cakes, piping, all of these beauty things.

But I'm doing all my best as you'll see on the pictures, because I have one and a half term till the chef hat!!!

Chestnut mousse encased in sponge













Sticky toffee pudding













Apple strudel





























Danish pastries - my favourite!

Dobos chocolate sliceRoulade with raspberry cream













Pudding souffle













Crepe Soufflees Suzette

Fraisier













Opera

Dinner at rainy day

I would like to share with you a nice idea for the dinner.
But don't assume that we are eating like this every day :-).

For the starter:

Ratatouille

You will need:
1 large onion, peeled, shredded
1 red, 1 yellow and 1 green pepper cut into squares
2 medium courgettes, cut into squares
2 medium aubergine, halved lengthways and cut into squares (not too small)
2-3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
olive oil
2 ripe tomatoes (better if peeled and seeded), cut into petals

2 table spoons tomato paste
fresh basil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oil in pan. Sweat the onions, with no color

2. Add green pepper, sweat, add yellow pepper, sweat and add the red one, sweat.

3. You can fry courgettes and the aubergine separately and then add them to the pan with pepper. Instead you can add them straight away to the pan, without precooking separately.

4. Add tomato paste.

5. Cook till the vegetable almost tender, add the garlic and tomatoes.

6. Season to taste and add the fresh basil at the end.

Ratatouille could be served warm with nice bread or also as a side dish with meat.

Main dish:

Roasted lamb with potatoes
Ingredients:

Lamb shoulder weighting about 1kg (for 3 -4 people, depends how hungry they are :-) )

3 big garlic cloves, peeled and sliced not too thin

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves removed from stalk, chopped

2 springs fresh thyme, chopped

3-4 medium potatoes cut into chunks of 3 cm

salt, pepper to taste olive oil

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Make a little slits on all over the lamb and stuff with pieces of garlic. Rub olive oil, rosemary and thyme, salt and pepper over the surface of the lamb. Let the lamb sit for half an hour to absorb the flavours.

3. Spring potatoes with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, you can also add herbs.

4. Put the lamb on baking sheet, spread the potatoes around and cook for about 50 minutes for the medium condition, it should be a little bit tender on touch. From time to time sprinkle the meat and potatoes with juices.

For the dessert we had a Le Cordon Bleu chocolate mousse cake

The recipe of this cake will come later :)

Bon Appetit!

Children friendly Great Britain!

Did you ever see normal and healthy child that sit down all the time?
I think it must be abnormal when the child doesn't move.
You may come to the restaurant with your children and find out all of those sights or unhappy faces when your child makes noise or moves too much!
May be it's only me that feels weird with it, because Israel is very children friendly country. And children are welcome there. But not here.
Britain's, at most , have children at their late 30's, and not too much. Till then they probably have dog or two and live happily ever after :-).
I think that they should say "Thank you" for coming to their restaurants, also with children, and eat tasteless British cuisine!
And this is a very angry post because finally it's two weeks of good and sunny weather, today we even went to the sea (3 hours trip, due to bad traffic conditions) . And we ate in some sea side restaurant, and I'm just wondering how it can be so BAD, so tasteless!

Here are some French deserts, the last for this term. The exam is next week.
Wish me luck!


Fruit mousse encased in sponge

Cheesecake with Griotte cherries

Almond meringue sandwiched with praline butter cream


Yeast cake soaked in rum syrup

Mille-feuille

Puff pastry filled with almond cream

Mille-feuille with strawberries

Hot cross buns and Sultans Scones (British)

Strawberry cheesecake

Even a Chocolate has a soul!

"Chocolate has only three molecules, but he is not stupid" - said one of our chefs.

Did you hear how the chefs talk about the food?

Food for the chefs it's kind of human being. They talk to food, feel it, hear it and etc. It sounds crazy :-), doesn't it?

In Cuisine it was something like: "The meat should get used to the idea that it has become a steak" or some chef said "Chicken it's as a woman, you should be gentle with her, soft hand!"

In Patisserie it's: "When you make a ganache (chocolate cream), you should slowly add the slightly chilled cream to melted chocolate. Before you add the cream, try it with your finger. And if you say "Aah!" (hot), the chocolate will say "Aah!" too. Chocolate has only three molecules, but he is not stupid." By the way, three molecules are cocoa butter, cocoa solid and sugar :-).

The dish or the dessert can be sexy! It can be just a dish, you know the regular one, or it can be a sexy one. When I see a nice guy and it something in his eyes (or in other place :-) ), you know "something", that you can't explain, sexy. The same is about the food, it can be sexy dish, also a simple dish, but it something about it, something sexy!

And these are just a short examples.

At the beginning of my studies it was sound weird to me, but now I start feeling this way too. I think it's a good sign, I become a part of this profession!

And if you ask me: " Do you enjoy what you are doing"?

I'll answer "Absof---glutly"! (Mr. Big from "The Sex and the City" would say)

And here are some pictures from the Basic Patisserie:

Enjoy!

Black forest

St. Honore

Genoise sponge with Raspberry Jam and cream

Fresh strawberry and Chantilly cream cake

Light fruit cake

Alhambra - Death by chocolate - Very sexy :-)

Home made bread

It's Raining, but very sweet!

Do you know the famous song "It's Raining men" ?

It' goes like this:

"God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman too

She took off to heaven and she did what she had to do

She taught every angel to rearrange the sky

So that each and every woman could find her perfect guy

It's Raining Men! Yeah!"

Honestly, I prefer Mother Nature will find some Sunny guy to be with :-).

It's already two month of rainy weather here, with may be some sunny days between.

According to statistic, more than 35 million people worldwide have been prescribed Prozac - including more than 500,000 in UK alone - since its launch in 1989.

This fact is not surprising, it's enough to look outside through the window and you will find yourself in deep depression looking at this grey, rainy weather.

Since I almost lost the hope to see the sun here, I will go to meet the Sun.

In one and a half month I'm going to Israel to take some tan mentally and physically :-).

Meanwhile this horrible weather (surprisingly my husband likes this weather), I started Patisserie studies. In comparison to Cuisine, it's very relaxed and a bit easier and it's Sweet!

There are some pictures for the start:

Lemon tart

Eclairs and etc.

Stay with me, it will be more!

I'm Chef De Cuisine!

I have passed the final exam!

Looking backward I can tell that those 9 month of studies were very hard. They (Le Cordon Bleu) have to keep their name of the one of the best Culinary School in the world, so the study is not easy at all.

The graduation dinner, as always, was in Four Seasons hotel and it was very nice and tasty.
We got the diplomas with the best wishes - "Keep cooking and smiling!" That's what I'm going to do!
For now I'm going to continue my studies in Patisserie for the next 9 months and may be to work with some good chef - to see how this business works.

Keep looking at my blog, it's going to be sweet!

Here, as you can see, I already have started to meet famous chefs :-)