Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

But that was in the evening, so to keep you in suspense…

It was time to shape my sourdough proto-loaf this morning and leave it in a banneton to rest until baking tomorrow. As I’m planning to start a focaccia tomorrow I also gave my starter a feed before heading off on the garden walk. The general scenery has certainly changed since late April with unmown grass now much taller. The various crops are getting on with things as well: we picked both tayberries and loganberries this morning and the redcurrants are ready to pick. The first outdoor grown lettuce are also nearing readiness for harvesting…

… the asparagus hedge is now pretty amazing…

and my sweetcorn plant now has a clear cob on the way:

Not everything is crops, though, there are flower borders around the place as well, including this one with a row of Sweet Ballymaloe roses.

Then to our full day of demonstrations: the usual brief biscuits and cheese session, a presentation of various petits fours, a presentation about chocolate and tempering and, in the afternoon, a demonstration of croissant and pain au chocolat presentation.

“Biscuits” today were biscotti and, after blue last week, the cheese theme this week was chevre although the cheese presented included Morbier and Saint Félicien.

The lecture on chocolate and tempering again highlighted the difference between Ballymaloe and Gastronomicom: much less time is devoted to the topic of chocolate here and I’m pretty sure we won’t be tempering any chocolate—and if we are it certainly won’t be swirling molten chocolate around on our benches. We were shown seed tempering today where chocolate is brought to melting point in a dedicated warming machine, cooled by adding pre-tempered chocolate, the last bit of which acts (when the chocolate mass has reached the cooling point) as the seed for the all-important beta V crystal form and then the container kept at the use temperature by the warming machine. Much more useful if you want to produce large batches of chocolates but I’m glad I learnt the messy way last year!

Following the croissant & pain au chocolat demonstration it was time to head to the Fermentation HQ to decant another water kefir batch. I think I might have mentioned that the basil batch I made last week was really good so I headed there via the herb garden to pick some more flowering purple basil. I’m drinking some of the chilli flavoured one at the moment and that’s pretty good too.

Anyway, that was enough procrastination then and it’s enough procrastination now… Back at the cottage I had to ink in the forms I need to submit tomorrow setting out my menu and the various ingredients needed. Although a fellow Pennywort resident considers the pepper salad to be time consuming, I’m sticking with the weekend plan of

Starter: Nyons Olive Soufflé & Bitter Green Salad (Rocket & Watercress)
Main: Pan-grilled steak with roasted pepper salad & Nyons Olives accompanied by Focaccia
Dessert: Nyons Olive oil ice cream on shortbread biscuits.

I worry it’s a little light on techniques, but preparing all of the items and an assigned bread in the allotted three hours won’t be a breeze. The shortbread recipe, for example, says it yields 25 biscuits but as you’re cutting round biscuits from rolled out dough you’ll only get 25 if you gather and re-roll the offcuts. Which, of course, I’ll have to do even though I don’t need more than 12 biscuits—and no, I can’t do half the recipe; cutting down the recipe amount has to be agreed in advance and it won’t be allowed if the only reason is to save me time…

It’s also not clear (much to annoyance of another Pennywort resident), what the evaluation criteria are. We’re told about bonuses if we’re accurate with our prediction of when we’ll present and penalties if we run over time, but how does cooking a steak well compare with baking and icing a cake well?

Still Alea iacta est. And I’m not the only one who felt a sense of relief on completing the forms. We have ten days or so to relax(!) before we have the stress of writing out our orders of work in detail when we know which bread we’ll have to prepare.