Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

… always read or listen to the instructions!

In readiness for the poire belle Hélène test I’d looked through the recipe and figured out an order to prepare the various components rather than simply running through them in the order they were given. There was cream to whip— so weigh that out first and put it in the fridge to chill—and we could toast almonds in the oven early on, too. But that game plan went to pot when chef started telling us to prepare and bake a brownie and then whipping the cream himself to make the almond parfait quenelles for us all.

So the test came down to a plating exercise. We had one hour to provide a Michelin standard poire belle Hélène consisting of exactly one half of a poached pear (possibly cut up, but no more, no less), 50-70g of our brownie, vanilla cream, some of the crunchy Polignac almond, chocolate sauce, dried pear chips, a microwave-cooked sponge and the quenelle plus at least four of candied lemon leaf, gold or silver leaf, nuts, coriander cress, fresh fruit and chocolate. We were also given instructions about how big or small certain items had to be (no cutting slivers of pear, for example) and how not to use the chocolate sauce.

I wondered about trying to stand the pear up but went instead for placing on top of a piece of the brownie. This, though, turned out to weigh just 37g. But also 37g, so putting two pieces on would break the 70g limit… I decided to cut three small pieces and top these with vanilla cream piped with a star tip. Cue discussion with my partner who wanted to use a round tip. No great problem: you can put a star tip over a round one, but when it got to the piping I had to step down a size. We’d both decided not to temper chocolate and my idea for the optional chocolate was to use a microplane zester to dust the plate with chocolate.

But which plate? I wanted to use a square one but after a trial placing decided it was just too small. So round it had to be. And I decided to go for a dark/light side presentation. I had plenty of time available but couldn’t think of things to do that weren’t more likely to lead to disaster than success. Even I had the spare time, the last 5 minutes crept up suddenly but everything was going well until I started to spoon the chocolate sauce over my pear—a classic poire belle Hélène presentation but something chef had said expressly not to do! Why didn’t I just use a little sauce boat?!?!?

Apart from the sauce disaster, chef wasn’t too unhappy with my plate (even if I suspect it was one he thought didn’t need an hour to put together…) The key criticism was one he has made before: you have to think how the customer will see and tackle the plate. The round brownie pieces should rather have been pear shaped and the dark/light side presentation, although it might have been artistic, separated out the different taste and texture elements. Ideally, customers should be able to take a spoonful with a combination of these. Again, though, this is not a plate I would have been able to present before starting the course, so I was still relatively happy, even if kicking myself for another rookie exam error.

No cooking class in the afternoon, so J. and I head off early to Perpignan for the weekend.