Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

… Agde. And across France. So it’s a pleasure to be in the air conditioned kitchen after a night with the apartment temperature around 28°C, but, fortunately, with a cooling breeze.

Anyway, our pastry class this morning is devoted to preparations for a very chocolatey chocolate cake: chocolate sponge, chocolate cream, chocolate mousse, chocolate glaze and a chocolate sablé that’s crushed and then mixed into a crumble with more chocolate—with a few almonds thrown in for good measure. No picture, but we end up with a “puck” of the chocolate sponge inserted into the namelaka mousse (two layers, with mousse and more chocolate, pearls this time, in between) topped by the crumble mixture. This is left in the freezer overnight ready for glazing tomorrow. That won’t take up all the lesson, but we’ll also learn what we’ll be preparing for the graduation and anniversary cocktail.

In the afternoon we prepare sweetbreads, pommes dauphine and a morel sauce—something I would order like a shot in a restaurant. Sweetbreads are, indeed, something I order often at Chez Arno in Segny. After the usual demonstration of how to clean and prepare our portion of sweetbread, we put our potatoes in the oven to bake for the pommes dauphine and also put a whole grapefruit in to bake as well for the cheffy addition of a carrot and grapefruit bitter jus. My partner (who has a new phone and is a great partner today, so I’ll give him an initial) puts carrot juice on to reduce for this whilst I make the choux and cheese component of the pommes dauphine. Then S. starts on the morel sauce as I compress our poached sweetbreads into a ring. S. continues with the sauce (he does make good ones) while I tamis the baked potato flesh, mix it in with the choux-and-cheese, form little balls and deep fry them. By now the grapefruit has been baked black and the carrot juice heavily reduced so we blend these together, adding a little butter and olive oil, and leave the jus to thicken as we cook the sweetbreads.

Free plating… I consider the morel sauce to be an essential feature of the dish, not a small extra, so I’m keen to serve this in a bowl. The large one is brown, though, which wouldn’t look good with the brown sauce and the beige sweetbread. The lighter bowl, though, is just too small so I opt for a lipped plate. Our carrot jus is really the wrong consistency: not reduced enough for small dots, but reduced too much to have a larger amount, but my main concern having plated everything is that some green is needed. I’m not the only one to think this as the green oil squeezy bottles are being taken from the fridge, but this is not the consistency I want. Fortunately, I spot the chopped chives that were supposed to be added to the sauce at the last minute. Just the thing. Chef considers my plate as “très joli”; I think he means this is something that he takes as being a good exemplar of my style, but perhaps not “très joli” as a plate he would present.

Back to the residence for a cold shower, a lie down on the bed in a cooling breeze and, eventually, a brief but welcome thunderstorm.