Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

I wake up on French time again and am beginning to think this will be a good routine as it will give me time for breakfast etc before any of the possible activities in the Bread Shed or Fermentation HQ (a couple of keen folk walk past the window in their whites as I’m in our kitchen in my dressing gown…). And talking of our kitchen, it’s pretty large:

It also seems demo photos drop overnight so diary publishing may need to be in the mornings. Here’s a picture of one of the carrot soup presentations from yesterday.

The school, pleasingly, favours Telegram over WhatsApp (although they do use Instagram, it seems, as that’s how many people found out about the place), and there’s a bot that gives useful information. I learn that I’ll be expected to make lemonade for lunch today—that was a recipe I didn’t mention in my list of those demo’d yesterday—and clean the larder and empty rubbish bins after the demos tomorrow. Duties I have to enter on an Order of Work we have to prepare each day—but we haven’t been told anything about these yet.

But we are told (vaguely) during our morning demo session which also covers how we know what we have to cook. Teams of two are tasked with preparing 3 or 4 of the recipes shown during the previous demo session but with each taking responsibility for an entire recipe. To ensure we all get to learn the various techniques, though, they will be repeated—so tomorrow I’ll be cooking a Gruyère and Dill tart (so pastry & lining a tart tin) then on Thursday the pastry skills will be needed for a desert and so my partner should take the relevant recipe rather than me. Overall, I’m quite impressed with the general organisation; let’s hope it works well in practice!

The morning demo session today also covered stock making, salad washing, salad identification (we’ll be tested on this in week 6!) laying a table and serving and clearing dishes. Basic stuff but I still picked up some useful tips. It was also strongly suggested that we label the slots in our equipment roles. Fortunately for me, MB, a fellow Pennywort resident, labelled mine legibly!

After the demo session we were finally let loose in the kitchens! Well, not quite. There’s one teacher for 6-8 students and for this morning the teacher had the Order of Work and saw us all through it, showing us the ingredient stores and weigh stations, how the equipment is stored, the washing areas and so on. And they also did a fair bit of tidying up. Tomorrow it’s all on us! I remember towards the end that I’m supposed to making lemonade but, fortunately, am told that the rules don’t apply today.

After lunch (communal; eating the food we’ve prepared) we have the demo session for the dishes to be cooked tomorrow. We were running behind schedule but I managed to fit in a 30 minute bike ride before knuckling down to my homework. Which ended up as being a joint study session in the kitchen with some discussions which show that we’ve not yet really learnt what we’re having to do. I’m worried, for example, that I’ve missed off salad preparation from my Order of Work as JB, who is making a different tart, is making one. But I think that simple salad preparation is one of the duties so I’m probably OK.

My printer does get some use, though, here’s the proof. I’ll tell you tomorrow what teacher thinks.

And here’s what my Gruyère and Dill tart is supposed to look like.