Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

The rain did go away! It was cold this morning but I figured things were dry enough to attend L.’s yoga class for the first time. And not the last although I may pick a back- rather than front-row position for my mat next time given my general lack of suppleness and balance!

But on to cooking…. We start the day watching chef prepare a brioche-like dough to become babas for soaking in rum syrup tomorrow. These are put in the proofing oven and later baked—which requires them to be turned in their moulds half way through, something you soon learn to do rapidly as the moulds transmit heat better than you think.

Then we prepare a chocolate crème anglaise for our “petit pot à la crème chocolat”. Or, rather, N. does whilst I do the mise-en-place for our French toast (or pain perdu), as I prepared crème anglaise yesterday. We leave the chocolate sauce to set a while in bowls (so it doesn´t slosh around and dirty the bowl when being moved to the fridge) during which time chef demonstrates the French toast preparation and plating—after starting with a stern admonition that pain perdu is never eaten for breakfast in France, it being rather something for an afternoon goûter.

Sadly for me, pear features heavily. Fortunately, N. really likes pear which helps at the end (she eats that part of my finished result) and also during—we have a rather poor specimen of a pear so my error prepping it was fortuitous as it meant we could choose a better one for the cooking. Which takes a while: prepare the ¨lait de poule” (French toast mixture), soak the dried brioche, bake it, caramelise pear slices then plate everything. My plate decoration skills still need some work, but there are some good examples here along with large blobs.

Even after all that, there was still time for us to add chantilly cream to our chocolate sauce with a siphon and add some decoration:

After a quick lunch it was time to prepare Pavé de maigre à plat, choux croustillant, risotto de quinoa rouge, beurre blanc, oeufs de truite. K. and I worked well together for this, each swapping between cooking and preparation. K. was especially pleased that our discussion prior to stock preparation led to the choice of the correct sized saucepan for the ingredients we had and the amount needed for the beurre blanc as chef objected later to the odd larger pot on the communal gas hobs. Whilst the stock bubbled away there we had to cook the quinoa and some finely chopped cabbage and stuff a mixture of these into cooked cabbage leaves. Next we reduced the stock with vinegar, white wine and shallots for the beurre blanc (during which time we tidied our station and tackled some washing up…) before moving on to the final stages… K. deep fried rice and nori sheets we´d stuck together and left in a dryer for an hour or so (this took a while as there was a queue for the deep fryer) whilst I whisked the butter into the sauce and cooked the fish. Quite well, even if I say so myself, given that chef had said the very lean nature of the fish makes it easy to overcook. And K. also thought the sauce was perfect.

All this has to be said as my plating was a disaster. I had something in mind but didn´t watch well enough where I was being pushed by nori/rice crisps that wouldn´t behave. As soon as I stood back I realised I´d created something that looked rather too much like a dog’s face:

I guess the consolation points are that chef was somewhat sympathetic and part of the reason I signed up for the courses was to learn how to do cheffy plating things…

No wine course tonight (or goûter; the pastry offerings were eaten in class), but another batch of yoghurt is fermenting in the water bath as I type and I also had a first session as a mentor for a new CERN staff member; doing badly at that will have worse consquences than producing a dog(s) dinner…