Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

Only one new thing to prepare for in pastry class today, and that was right at the end. We start by adding the beurre de tourage to our PLF and giving it a simple turn. Chef explains today that pâte levée feuilletée is essentially a croissant dough and, checking back, I see that the one difference is that PLF has 250g of T45 flour (a fine cake flour for the non-French) whereas croissant dough has just 125g of this with the weight being made up by high gluten flour.

Whilst this is resting and our pain de mie are baking, chef shows us multiple different ways to decorate our apple turnovers. He has five and I have three, so a choice has to be made. Fortunately, one option is to simply sprinkle over brown sugar; I choose that for the ugliest one!. They are put in to bake and I give the PLF a double fold as S. prepares a raspberry cream as one of the fillings—this is akin to a crème brulée but instead of just cold cream, a mix of boiling cream and raspberry purée is whisked into the egg yolk and sugar mixture and some cornstarch is added. I make a crumble to go with this and prepare the mise en place for second filling, banana and chocolate, that we will cook tomorrow. This takes a while as a) I have to do two (chef’s as well since we’re the chefs of the week) and b) our apple turnovers are baked and need to be brushed with syrup (as do chef’s…).

It’s S.’s turn with the PLF so she has the hard task of rolling it out to a 46×35 rectangle and I have the more technical one of trimming it down and cutting it into 12 11x11cm squares. We fashion these into shapes for tomorrow—a sort of basket shape for one and, by half-cutting a circle in the centre and folding the dough over, a rectangle with a semi-circle sticking out and a semi-circle sticking in (if you follow me…) Unfortunately, chef-of-the-week duties preparing a double mise en place for chocolate brownies whilst S. finished her set mean I don’t have a picture. However, said duties did keep me away from the washing up and most of the cleaning. Today was way calmer than yesterday and everything was ready for chef’s inspection well before the end-of-class bell.

No morning picture of the turnovers or pain de mie, either, as they were bagged up during the lesson. Here they are at the residence, though. Just two turnovers as S. and I shared my third (she only had two). Pretty good warm. And not bad either with coffee for my goûter just now.

Not surprisingly after yesterday, carrots featured heavily in the dish we prepared during the cooking class. We took eight of the carrots that were prepared yesterday and, after shaping them more uniformly and cooking them in water with olive oil and cumin, coated them with parsley and carrot powder and rolled them into a cylinder using gelatine powder to bind them together. The gelatine is the one element that makes the plate unsuitable for vegetarians, although there are vegetarian versions. The carrot powder was made from yesterday’s peelings; they were left in a dehydrater overnight and blitzed. The parsley powder, on the other hand, was made from parsley that we dried by giving it 3-4 one-minute blasts in a microwave on full power. A very convenient method of producing dried green herbs according to chef, but not something that works for harder things like carrot peelings.

As accompaniments, I prepared a carrot ketchup and carrot pickles with H. preparing a feta cream and our share of a cream, lemon juice and ginger emulsion that was pooled with that of the other teams in our half of the kitchen and thickened with xanthan gum to be served from a siphon.

Free plating! Two slices of the carrot cylinder to be served along with the prepared accompaniments plus the option to use various other powders and preparations for decoration. I had a basic idea of one slice propped up on another on a square plate (most people went for round), piped on the feta cream and ketchup and made a conscious decision not to do too much more—aiming at a simple but elegant look. I’m not entirely sure what chef thought of it, but at least I wasn’t told to go back and use the time available to add more decoration…

If I were doing this again (and there is now someone who has joined us for cooking in the afternoon in addition to his morning class having given up pastry), I think I would repeat my same basic idea, but size and place the cream and ketchup knowing that there would be nothing much else on the plate. And, of course, that is what, with hindsight, I could have done with the extra time. There would even have been enough of the carrot cylinder to cut an extra slice if the tilted one had broken…

* Yes, I know, it isn’t really a cornucopia, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration after yesterday’s title, especially with ‘c’ following ‘b’.