Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

My sourdough loaf was finally ready for baking this morning! Student loaves are baked at 7am but it was suggested that I arrive around 6:30 and help to shape production loaves. That was a useful exercise as I learnt how I should have shaped my loaf yesterday. Still, the end result out of the oven looked OK:

And it looked and tasted OK in the evening.

My assigned recipes today were poached monkfish with a red pepper vinaigrette, frites and a green aubergine dip (think baba ganoush with added parsley and coriander). My order of work looked a little empty in the middle so I figured I’d add some pitta bread to go with the aubergine dip, not remembering that other students had been assigned pitta bread. Benita, though, was happy that I go ahead with this. And also happy with the result. I think I might have preferred a little more colour, but I hit the Ballymaloe nail on the head.

I didn’t actually have such a big hole in the schedule as I’d imagined as, this being Ballymaloe, you don’t start off with a monkfish tail you’d buy at a fishmongers but a whole monkfish.

One interesting, but doubtless never-to-be-used-again tip I learnt is that you should pick monkfish up by the eyes; the sockets and the ridge between them provide an excellent grip point! We cut out the cheeks, cut off, filleted and skinned the tail and cut that into small collops. Which then went into the fridge while I prepared my frites.

Here, my idea of frite size didn’t match Benita’s expectations. Naturally, though, she was right. I did have a bit of justification, though, the recipe says that the frites are to be first blanched in oil at 160°C and then browned at 190°C; those instructions corresponded to by 1cm square pont neuf chips; Benita’s 0.5cm square frites need only one frying. Benita admitted that frites that size were probably best cut with a mandolin but I, of course, had to cut them by hand as a julienning exercise… One positive aspect of this, though, is that I needed only one turn at the deep fat fryer so had less time to wait around for that to be free.

Whilst waiting, I whizzed the charred aubergines with the parsley, coriander and oil. Then, with the frites keeping warm, I poached the monkfish (useful tip: keep this warm on kitchen paper in the upturned pan lid above the poaching liquid).

Benita was generally happy with the main course presentation of the monkfish; my red pepper should have been chopped more finely, however. An alternative presentation is with less fish as a starter; that’s actually recommended but the recipe says an option is to serve as a main with chips…

Benita was less happy with the aubergine dip. She was right that the aubergine taste was overshadowed by the parsley, coriander and garlic. I pointed out, though, that I hadn’t been able to char the aubergines as much as I would normally (on a barbecue). I guess I could have slowly added parsley and coriander, checking the taste as I went along but the dip was supposed to be green. Anyway, it’s the pitta bread I’m more likely to make in future…

I also served the Zabaglione Semifreddo I made on Tuesday. I don’t have a picture of the presented plate as, given the heat in the kitchen, it had to be kept in the freezer and taken out at the last moment. Here’s a picture of the semifreddo without a scattering of praline or an accompanying whipped cream quenelle that I took in the cottage this evening.

Interesting, two fellow Pennywort students were not at all keen on this; both thought it tasted rather too strongly of rum. I liked it, though, as did my partner in the kitchen—and also, thankfully, Benita.

The afternoon demo included a rabbit, mustard and sage dish that I’m minded to use as the main in my examination menu. Unfortunately, it’s not been assigned to our section for the practical cooking session tomorrow morning but it seemed easy enough to cook even without a demo assistant so I’ll try fitting it in to an order of work over the weekend.

I am scheduled to cook fish again (poached ray with vinaigrette, so not vastly different to today) plus a simple lemon ice cream plus, as I’m on bread duty, a loaf of bread. Again my order of work has a few gaps so I’m going to add in some shortbread biscuits. These go well with ice cream and I don’t have to tell Benita that I’m planning ice cream as part of the exam menu…