Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

Our plated dessert today is “palet chocolat et copeaux d’opaline”, which tasted and looked good but, more importantly for chef, combines lots of different things for us to learn. Not surprisingly, the first task is to cut out and bake the sablé, something we are now expected to do without a second thought. Chef then makes a batch of sacher sponge, talking about it’s properties and uses. The most famous, of course, is sachertorte and some students are astounded at the amount these can cost in Vienna.

Then I have to prepare a chocolate ganache which is piped onto discs of cut out sacher sponge and, after a quick blast chill, a couple of these are cut into quarters and placed on sablé quadrants. K. meanwhile is boiling sugar and glucose, adding cocoa paste and cocoa powder and spreading it out on parchment paper to set. This is then ground to a fine powder and sprinkled onto silpat using a mould to create multiple 3x10cm rectangles. We are supposed to bake these for 6-8 minutes then, after letting them cool briefly, half roll them around a small cylinder and shape them into an elegant decoration. Unfortunately, half of us haven’t properly prepared the sugar and glucose mix so our opaline rectangles don’t soften enough. Fortunately, the other half of us have made 20 rectangles and only need 6 so there are enough to go around and we all get practice at the shaping.

Then we get practice at plate decoration. Not surprisingly, it is harder than it looks and chef helps almost all of us by guiding our hands as we move the brush and adjust the pressure against the plate whilst also adjusting the speed the plate is rotating. As we have enough time, I take another plate and have a couple more goes rather than using the one with the chef-assisted decoration. I copy that one, though, forgetting that I was supposed to be leaving a hole in the decoration. Still, I’m quite pleased with my third attempt and use that for the plating.

After a quick lunch (no time to finish all my cherries…), it’s time to prepare a salmon brioche to be served with a vin jaune sauce. M. takes the sauce, preparing a stock whilst I make a large batch of brioche dough, enough for us and the pair across the bench as there’s just one mixer between four in the cookery class. Then I prepare a salmon mousse while M. blanches some cabbage leaves.

Then it’s another assembly exercise: spread mousse onto cling film, put on a carefully cut piece of salmon, shape this into a rectangle and then, after a spell in a blast chiller, wrap this in a shaped cabbage leaf and (after another blast chill), wrap in rolled out brioche dough. And into the oven. And while it bakes there’s time for the Friday deep clean…

Plating is pretty simple, but our sauce has a little too much of the green oil highlight for chef’s liking, and I have to agree. It still tasted good, though, and the salmon brioche will do fine as a starter for J. and I this evening.

And, after the essential shower, there’s time for what I consider to be a well-deserved goûter of coffee and palet chocolat…