Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

Remember I said classes don’t end until all is clean and tidy? Today was one of those days in pastry class and I had only about 15 minutes to eat my sandwich (no time for clementines) before starting to get ready for cooking class in the afternoon.

Why? Well, mostly because we dipped the chocolate cakes we made on Monday into a prepared chocolate and chopped almond glaze—a glaze I was entrusted with stirring from time to time to ensure the chocolate was all melted and well mixed with oil (grape seed). Why the oil? Well, after being in the fridge for over a day the cakes had been put in the freezer overnight and the oil protects the chocolate as the frozen cake is dipped in. That dipping takes a while and it is one person at a time so the cleaning lasted a while. There was also a long queue for the photo room so you’ll have to make do with the amateur photo taken at my flat. Gastronomicom’s media/web person took a photo of me holding my just-dipped cake, though, so maybe I’ll add that later.

Before we got to that, though, we made Dacquois Agrumes. Dacquois are named after the town of Dax, apparently famous for almonds. So they have a sort of almond/hazelnut meringue base with crème pat filling and (in this case) an orange and grapefruit topping (the agrumes). We made the crème pat yesterday—or, rather, E. did; it turns out she didn´t just bake at home for pleasure, she was a pastry chef in a fine dining outfit before coming to the school—so today we piped and baked the bases, piped in the crème pat and added the topping. Here´s my final product which, whilst less elegant than E.’s doubtless tasted just as good.

Today’s cooking challenge was Tortellini tartare de moule, bouillon de moule clarifié. Probably not the best tortellini I’ve ever made and I didn´t get much of a look-in on the bouillon preparation but I did shape and bake two pains de mie from dough we prepared yesterday and gave a hand to L. as his partner was amongst those absent ill today. I completely forgot about taking a picture of my presentation, but here’s A.’s; mine was similar but with a somewhat more classic tortellini shape (chef seemed satisfied, at least).

Given that A. was back, I came second in the aroma testing game during the wine class with 12 out of 14 correct. Guess who got all 14 right? Beforehand we tasted 4 rosés, the second of which I wouldn´t wish on anyone. But we had to explain why it was bad, not just say “yuck¨. The first was an easy drinking light rosé, the third a more complex 2022 saignée rosé from just carignan grapes that was probably past it’s best, and then another easy drinking light rosé which I didn´t appreciate as much as the first. That’s it for the lessons this week but we’re off on a class outing to Domaine Castigno, a producer of AOP Saint-Chinian wines, on Sunday.