Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

My first day of proper cooking could have gone better! In addition to the Gruyère and Dill tart I was also down to make a basic soda bread. We made one as a group yesterday but had problems as the loaf tins were industrially cleaned and so lost their seasoning which means the loaves tend to stick. Not too much of a problem yesterday as only the sides were stuck but today the bottom of mine stuck to the tin as well so it basically fell apart as we tried to take it from the tin. Laura, our teacher, was complimentary about the crumb and taste, though.

My woes continued with the tart, however. My mise-en-place for the pastry was according to the tart recipe with just an egg yolk to bind everything together—and I probably picked a small egg at that. This all meant that a lot of water had to be added to bring everything together. Even then, we needed to add yet more as the pastry cracked too much as it was being rolled out. Laura much prefers making shortcrust pastry using a whole egg. I’ll know next time. On the bright side here, I did learn how you can use the heat of a finger to heal small cracks.

But the woes were still not over… I’d chosen an oven below a hob for baking the pastry and the temperature dial had been adjusted down by accident so the blind baking took _ages_. Initially we put it down to me having used a smaller but deeper tin until Laura thought to look at the temperature. Another lesson here: always check the oven temperature even if you set it.

All of these problems led to a less than perfect final result for the pastry but Laura was pleased with my filling and my work overall. Still, I’m on remedial soda bread making tomorrow.

My spirits were lifted during the afternoon demo session when Rachel Allen also had oven problems and also forgot to cook the guanciale for her spaghetti carbonara before cooking the pasta. Errare humanum est and all that.

No pictures today. Far too busy with my woes in the kitchen to think of taking any.