Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

It’s chocolate week in Pastry class and things are about to get messy. First, though, we have an explanation of the difference between praline (sugar coated almonds), pralin (powder from blended almonds and caramel) and praliné (the paste you get if you continue to blend the almonds and caramel). Chef demonstrates making the latter two, preparing a caramel, pouring it over roasted almonds on a silpat and then, after providing a range of pralinés/nut pastes for us to try—almond, hazelnut, proper pistachio (yum) and pistachio flavouring for ice cream, etc (yuk)—blends this to pralin then praliné.

We then quickly prepare a mix of milk chocolate, cocoa butter, hazelnut praliné and “feuilletine”—essentially broken up bits of the cigarette/flame mixture we made last Friday—which we’ll dip in chocolate later in the week before chef explains the basics of making chocolate from cocoa beans. Then we taste 15-20 different sorts: dark, milk & white, different percentages of cocoa, single bean varieties, flavoured, … I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling a little queasy at the end of this!

Then the demonstration of tempering: heat chocolate to 50-55°C in a bain-marie, cool to 29-30°C—by pouring on the bench and using a scraper to mix it around—and finally heating it back to 31-32°C and keeping it there as you prepare swirls and “cigarettes”. Not surprisingly, chef makes it look easy and his bench is clean. Our benches are not and I don’t think anyone managed perfect swirls and twists although some were pretty good. It seems we’ll be having more practice in the coming days—which is just as well as our practical test on Friday is to produce perfect specimens…

It’s meat week for cookery and we start with a demonstration of how to prepare a chicken from scratch: taking off the wings, feet, head and neck and taking out the innards. I seem to manage OK with this, albeit taking significantly longer than chef. I then cut off part of the carcass, so we have a crown to roast (without the wishbone), and debone the thighs. I’m not sure why we aren’t told to bone the whole legs immediately as my partner for this week, C., later takes out the drumstick bones as well.

Naturally, we use all the trimmings to make a chicken jus. C. does most of this whilst I prepare slices of potato to bake in a mould like a millefeuille pastry.

After the chicken has been roasted and rested, we cut the breasts off the crown, trim the wing bones and plate. Chef seems reasonably happy with our offerings!