Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

No, not some weird Heston Blumenthal recipe, but highlights of the day. It rained overnight which, apart from meaning no yoga lesson this morning, had brought out hundreds of snails along the cycle path. At first there were just brown shelled ones here and there which were easy to avoid but at one point hundreds of white-shelled ones turned the path into an obstacle course. And all clear on the way back. I guess any crushed ones had been eaten by birds (the cycle path runs through the edge of the Bagnas nature reserve, apparently a major stopover point for migratory birds).

So, after arriving at school having tried to kill as few snails as possible, the thread through the morning is the plating of our cream cheese mousse and strawberry dessert. Yet again I cut and bake circles from the sablé K. made yesterday while she prepares a cocoa sablé for tomorrow. Then I prepare a mix for fruit paper by boiling strawberry purée with sugar and pectin, adding gelatin, spreading this thinly on a silpat sheet and leaving it to dry in the oven. K., meanwhile, is tempering 75g of strawberry chocolate, much the harder task. We’re supposed to produce a thin sheet of chocolate covered with elegantly piped strands. We don’t. But we do at least remember the instructions to keep what we have produced under our chopping board so it stays flat rather than curling up and cracking as the chocolate sets.

There’s then an interlude as we set up a sourdough starter in readiness for the bread week next month. K. is a little disappointed to be missing this (she’s just here for the two month course), but happy to set things going. Whilst preparing his, chef warns those planning on a career in patisserie of the hard road ahead. I am again very pleased just to be doing this for the pleasure!

That interlude has given enough time for our fruit paper to dry so we are set to work to cut out leaves that we have to curl over a rolling pin. The sort of task a junior pastry chef would be tasked with: “just turn out 500 of these, will you?”. We need three, I produce seven of which four are acceptable. Chef meanwhile has produced a vast array of shapes showing how this preparation can be used for decoration. Then chef demonstrates the plating he expects. Mine is let down by the strawberry chocolate element, but I’m otherwise happy—and the strawberry juice he prepared on Wednesday is pretty good too.

The fish today was cuttlefish. Something I have never prepared before but come to wonder why as the basic preparation is no harder than for squid. For chef, the key advantage is that the flesh is thicker so less skill is needed to make parallel cuts almost through the flesh and then another set at a small angle; this is so that the cuttlefish will curl up into spiky roll. This is my task while M. prepares a risotto of venere (black) rice. Then I prepare a carrot purée (there is some confusion as I follow what chef said, not what is written in the recipe…); our colleagues on the table opposite prepare a spinach purée. Then there is a tempura batter to prepare for a basil leaf garnish. Written down, it seems less complicated than pastry, but we are certainly kept busy. I guess for me, “prepare a risotto” doesn’t need any more explanation than that. “Prepare a pate à bombe”, on the other hand, meant nothing to me until yesterday.

But I am certainly learning techniques in cooking and my knife skills are improving. Chef reckons I did OK for a beginner on the cuttlefish preparation, even if it was clearly not as good as that of F. opposite. F., though, is a professional. But we trust each other when it comes to the purée preparation! I think he´d make a good partner; I heard him explaining the cuttlefish preparation to my one-time pastry partner S.

The final element is an orange foam which we make using an aquarium oxygenator! Made this way the foam apparently lasts for a while so a good number of plates can be prepared one after the other. Using a blender with a disk attachment to work in the air only produces enough foam for one plate at a time.

Plating is free again and I try to be a bit less formal, earning a “pas mal” from chef. I sense he is rewarding the effort rather than the result.

And one more cooking picture; one taken by M. yesterday:

No wine course tonight, but a long list of chores: shopping, yoghurt making, charging the battery for my bike, catching up on homework, meeting my CERN mentee, …