Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

… bake a Fraisier:

It’s actually not that hard, just time consuming. Actually, it’s not that hard when you have a partner… E. made the crème pat yesterday and emulsified it with butter today (with judicious use of a heat gun!) to make crème mousseline whilst I cut up a load of strawberries. Then you just assemble everything with a couple of disks of génoise sponge. E. also made these as I made the sponge for tomorrow’s black forest gâteau a couple of days ago (it’s being kept in the freezer).

Here’s a picture from the photo room of mine with chef’s and some tastefully scattered gariguette strawberries—professional vindication of my exhortations to buy nothing else whilst these are in season.

And, talking of more professional pictures, here’s me with my freshly dipped chocolate cake yesterday:

The cooking challenge today was Tatin d’endive à l’orange, volaille et champignon sur un sablé parmesan, mousse d’orange. And here’s mine:

This actually wasn´t too hard either, even without a partner like E. The endives were cooked sous vide which I can do at home and the making of the filling was mostly an exercise in chopping things finely. Again, though, chef is using the chicken leftover from making the stock for the risotto: nothing can be wasted if you want your restaurant to make a profit. The mousse was from a siphon; it’s collapsed a little as I had to wait a while for chef to pass comment (he was quite pleased, but gave me my message to myself from last Friday: there are times to move quickly, but also times to take one’s time to do things well). I’d probably skip the mousse if I made this at home; like much of the patisserie, it needs to be made in quantities—we made ours with the table opposite. But maybe not; I just need to find a supply of xantham powder and professional size gelatine sheets, not the small things you find in the supermarket.

And, as there was no wine course today, time for a goûter!