Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

Half the pastry class is missing this morning as the bus was running 20 minutes late. Luckily, the half of us that are there are all working on different benches. As all teams are represented, chef has us roll quarter sheets of plastic (this is called, in French, feuille guitare, i.e. guitar sheet, for some reason) round a plastic former and fasten with sellotape. In other words, to make the tubes into which we piped carrot purée yesterday! I’m working on the second task, to cut our apricot shortcrust into 3x10cm lengths and bake when B. arrives and, after softening it with a spatula, starts to pipe our yoghurt cream into the newly made tubes. The cut shortcrust lengths need to be transferred from the plastic sheet (more feuille guitare…) after cutting and chef tells us it’s always a good idea to give the pastry a brief stay in the blast chiller so we’re moving solid fingers, not floppy ones.

As I found out yesterday, piping stuff into tubes is difficult, so B. is still working on this as I make an apricot jelly which is poured into two 18cm square frames and left to set in a thin layer. Then B. prepares caramelised apples for tomorrow’s tatin dish whilst I spread out blobs of apricot tuile mix on a silpat sheet and put them into bake. Meanwhile, the jelly has set and our yoghurt filled tubes have frozen solid in the blast chiller so we have to roll the tubes in the jelly and cut 10cm cylinders. There’s a lot going on and my baked tuiles have set too much by the time I get round to cutting out 4cm disks. Fortunately, another minute or so on the oven softens them up without turning them too dark. But we’re running a little behind as we’ve also to use a microplane grater to even up one of our shortcrust fingers (luckily we have a few as we each break one doing this…) and top these with three 3cm disks cut from slices of the baked pine nut cake. Plus B.’s caramelised apples have finished baking under a foil cover (not pastry; this is going to be a gastronomic tatin, not a bistro one…) and she has to shape them into ring moulds for tomorrow.

Somehow, we get everything done in time for chef’s demonstration of the plate we need to produce. And my reproduction gets his approval, by and large. The zig-zag of jelly and the placed apricot slices are particularly praiseworthy, but my cannelloni is a little askew on its bed and the placement of the swiss meringue fragments a little too regular. Still, worth a trip to the photo room.

Fish again in cooking class: spinach covered monkfish. Fortunately, chef demonstrates the removal of all the skins and cuts portions for us. As ever, our first task is to start making the sauce—or, more precisely, a fish stock for the sauce. This is simmering on one of the main gas hobs as we soften onion and garlic, use a mandolin to cut thin lengthwise slices of yellow and green courgette and then fry these briefly in oil to soften them. I take on the task of blanching a whole load of spinach for the three tables at one end of the kitchen. Part of this is doled out for the spinach covering, the rest is blended for a couple of minutes with grapeseed oil in which I’ve heated keffir lime leaves and lime zest to make a green oil for plating.

The process to cover the monkfish with spinach is the same as that for covering the carrot tube with radish slices yesterday: create an appropriately sized rectangle of spinach leaves on cling film and then roll this round the pre-cooked monkfish portion. Both the spinach leaves and the monkfish are larger than their counterparts of yesterday, though, so the task is a little less fiddly and the result a whole lot more successful. These parcels are then steamed for 5 minutes.

Then another fiddly task: fit the softened slices into rectangular moulds, alternating slices of yellow and green courgette and the softened onions and adding in a slice of comté. This is topped with a cover made of alternating bands of yellow and green courgette—another fiddly task… You can really see why the cost of dishes in a restaurant depends a lot on the cost of personnel. Our pastry chef mentioned this point this morning: a slice of simple, pastry-topped tarte tatin served with chantilly or a scoop of ice cream needs a lot less staff time to prepare and plate than the offering we’ll be plating tomorrow.

Anyway, time for us to plate our monkfish. We are given a plate to use but otherwise left free, although chef does demonstrate making courgette cylinders from the softened strips and provides blanched samphire and poutargue. I think about the plating as the tian and monkfish are in the oven for a few minutes and roll some courgette strips round stalks of samphire. I also decide to cut the monkfish parcel on the bias—we keep being told to add height to our plated offerings. I’m not too happy with the tian (the cheese layer makes it a bit messy, I think), but chef is pleased with what I present, although I notice later that it resembles a smiley if looked at from the right… Maybe that’s why I wasn’t quite sure about the petal placement at the time. Anyway, it was worth another trip to the photo room.