Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

A successful end on two levels; I’ve learnt things and—despite all the hard work—enjoyed myself so I’m certainly glad I opted to take the courses. And I think successful in terms of the tests. For the written pastry test I could describe the composition of a tarte bordaloue and a black forest gateau, give the ingredients for a brioche and answer a few others even if I guessed (wrongly) for one and made the rookie mistake (well, it’s a long time since I sat a written test) of not reading a question carefully enough.

I was also pretty happy with the pastry practicals. D. tempered our chocolate flawlessly and I managed to produce 20 evenly sized cigarettes, even if they weren’t perfectly rolled—D. came up with a neat trick to test if the chocolate is ready: we’re supposed to trim the smoothed out blob of chocolate to a rectangle but she left one end untrimmed to use to test the rolling readiness before moving to the trimmed end for production rolling. And even if my spirals weren’t really much good, they were certainly better than previous attempts.

Then we had to reproduce the french toast recipe (and plate) of last week, but using the pastry cigarette mix for decorations rather than dried pear slices. Like many people, D. and I understood we had to create the rolled cigarettes. Chef’s idea, though, was that we simply use the mix and be creative. Our first set didn’t turn out too well but I spotted the cooking time was the same as for baking the toasts after browning so D. quickly knocked up a second batch of the mixture whilst I caramelised the pears. I overcooked our caramel a little but D. managed to rescue it. Partly… it was the one aspect of our dish Chef criticised. But, apart from that, we delivered a warm and acceptable plate on time!

The written test for cooking was a little harder but I managed to recall most of the technical terms. Especially “vanner” for adding butter to a sauce. I remembered chef giving the term on Tuesday but didn’t catch it so I asked him the next day. Good call! The practical test was to produce a risotto and cook some fish; various other ingredients were provided. You could provide two completely different dishes (apparently someone did in the morning), but I opted for a mushroom risotto as a base for the sautéd fish. The cheffy part was a “chlorophyll”—a vivid green sauce made by puréeing blanched spinach leaves and parsley. I started with that and it was harder than I remembered it (I need to check the recipe), but I ended up with something useable. And we had more than enough time to prepare a risotto and cook the fish. My plating idea went to pot, though, as (I put it down to competition for hobs and rings), my risotto was creamier than I’d planned. So rather than a circle of risotto with a green sauce around, I delivered a bowl with a layer of risotto topped by the fish with dots of the chlorophyll. And mushrooms to tell the diner that I was giving them a mushroom risotto (a lesson learnt from our pastry chef). Chef considered my offering “a very good job”!

Back to the residence where J. and N. were waiting then off to Beziers to stay in something which couldn’t be more different: Villa Guy. I’m sure I’ll sleep well tonight—and we’ll probably eat well too: I booked at Le Chameau Ivre on the recommendation of our cooking chef. When I called I was asked where we wanted to be seated; I replied that I had just been given a recommendation on the basis of their cooking and I had no clue about the seating. Apparently we have a window table reserved for us. And the barman here was impressed when he asked where we would be eating tonight.