Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

Pastry starts with me shaping and cutting our prepared ciabatta dough whilst S. preps the ingredients for focaccia. I ask chef about dealing with sticky doughs and he gives some tips (and later calls me over for a demonstration). This is useful as I’ve made a mess of ciabatta at home before. But this is dough we prepared yesterday so not too sticky and we end up with 4 ciabatta slices proving away. But after S. has dealt with the focaccia, I prepare dough for burger buns which, once mixed, is very sticky indeed. Still, following chef’s tips, I manage to cope and am pleased with the ball of dough we leave in the fridge for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, of course, our croissants and pains aux chocolat have been baking away. Despite our concerns, the croissants have turned out OK and 4 of the 6 pains aux chocolat look most acceptable with the puff pastry layers clearly visible. S. notes that chef hasn’t singled any of ours out to show how faults at various stages show themselves in the final result. That’s probably, though, as he has already explained why you end up with cone shaped pains aux chocolat like two of ours!

Our croissants, on the other hand, look to pass muster and certainly taste good, although not as spectacularly superior to any decent patisserie offering as were yesterdays pains aux raisins.

To fill our time we have kouglof preparation, where a brioche-like dough starts with yeast being whisked into warm milk. Two lots are worked in common for all of us whilst we prepare multiple variations on a financier mix. S. prepares ours while I take our ciabatta out of the oven and brush them with olive oil then we share piping the financier mix into moulds. We end up with a whole load of pastry to take home. Fortunately much will last until tomorrow when J. arrives.

There’s also a fair bit to take home from the afternoon cooking class since, as well as a relatively simple exercise in plating our pâté en croute, we also have to prepare a gravadlax tartlet.

It is, of course, my turn at the pastry component (G. is pleased as he’s not that keen on this discipline) so he prepares a salt, sugar and beetroot cure for the salmon as I start on the dough. Chef says this should be somewhat like a pasta dough so, once everything has been brought together, I start to work it on the bench as I’d work a pasta dough at home, in best Rachel Roddy manner. Chef is looking on, though, and not impressed. He shows me a much more vigorous technique rolling the dough around with the heel of my hand. It certainly works much better!

We’re not going to put the cured salmon directly into the tartlet case, though, naturally. There’s a dill “veil” (the French “voile” sounds better, somehow…) to sit in the case first. This is set partly with agar-agar, partly with gelatin, so that it will be more flexible—the idea is to have a thin film that will mould itself into the case. More on this later…

Whilst the salmon and voile are in the fridge to cure and set, we work on the pâté en croute plating. The difficult step here is cutting the pâté. Chef demonstrates how, using first a serrated knife and then a straight blade. Cutting our pâté in half is easy enough and G. and I are pleased with what we see (as, mostly, is chef later): a good filling around the strips of duck and chicken breast, a nice pastry and the jelly at the top.

Cutting slices is a bit more tricky. I have a bit more luck than G. and just need one attempt to have a reasonable slice to plate. (To be fair to G. he’s not the only one who needs more than one attempt and chef thinks some of the offered slices are way too thick—cutting a thinner slice is harder, of course—given that this is meant to be a starter, not a main course.)

So, on to the plating for the salmon… G. and I have the opposite problem to yesterday: our voile hasn’t really set enough. I realise this as I cut the first circle and offer G. the chance to try taking this first so he can have another go if needed. It’s a bit frustrating so he switches to work on something else and I find, to my surprise and good fortune, that the opposite corner of our tray is set better, even though it is thicker. Luckily, the folks on the bench opposite have enough for a spare disk so G. is saved.

Then, a demonstration of why I come on this course… My finished tartlet looks a little naked with no topping but we don´t have anything left other than a thin small slice of fennel. I place this on top and it certainly looks better but chef show me how I could have rolled this into a tube and made a more artistic offering. Easy when you know how!

We overrun on our scheduled time but don´t really notice as there are no bells since we started an hour earlier than normal. Still, I’m back at the residence in good time and feel my goûter has been well earned. The pain au chocolat, I feel, could stand comparison with one from one of our usual boulangeries.