Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

We’re making classic desserts in pastry class this week and this morning we completed a crème brulée. Chef insists on many steps—such as slow baking at 100°C—to ensure these are as creamy as possible. Having the cream not too cold when the sugar is added and caramelised is another. Apparently Joël Robuchon made his crème brulée fresh each day so they were never chilled. Anyway, mine looks good and my new partner N. is impressed—and happier still when I say I’m not that keen on these and let her have mine to take home.

It’s as well we get on; we’re the chefs of the week so have to look after the mise en place for chef as well as make sure all the cleaning and tidying is up to standard. Fortunately the first day goes well.

We also prepare tiramisu (I’m a little mean with the coffee syrup) and meringues for a pavlova myrtille.

It’s fish week in cookery class and we prepare filet de rouget grondin, raviole de céleri confit au miel, aïgo boulido with parmesan, céleri frit. The first step is to prepare and fillet our gurnard, something I seem to manage OK. Then we prepare a stock from the bones and prepare disks of celeriac for the “ravioli”. K,, my new partner, and I don´t cook our celeriac disks quite enough so our ravioli don´t stay properly folded. We also have an awful lot of celeriac brunoise for the filling so fall behind schedule a little. Still, the final result looks OK (and certainly tasted OK when I ate it this evening), even if chef says I should have centred mine on the plate better.

Finally, our wine course lesson is an exercise in pairing wine with cheese. Our sommelier has provided five cheeses (Rocamadour, Brie, Comté, Roquefort and Langres) and I’ve taken along some Bleu de Gex. We try five different wines: two whites, a red, a fortified red and an orange wine. It’s surprising how well the fortified red partners with the Roquefort but our sommelier convinces us that a well chosen white is likely the best accompaniment to a selection of cheeses rather than continuing with the red chosen to accompany the main course.