7 Courses 7 Wines

Yesterday we had our first wine lecture and tasting. We tasted six wines in total starting with three Burgundian whites, two which were chardonnay and one miscellaneous. Chardonnay is my favourite type of white wine but I wasn't overly fond of any of them, I found them quite acidic instead of the buttery, oakey, crisp chardonnays I've tried in NZ, maybe thats the French style or they were too young.

The most useful thing I learnt was that you can tell the age of a white wine solely by looking at its colour, a very young white will be a very pale yellow green and turning straw yellow, golden and finally yellow/orange (with various colours in between) as it ages. Aging of the wine in oak increases the speed of that aging so you need to keep that in mind when tasting white wines with woody characteristics.

We then tried three red wines from Bordeaux from both sides of the river culminating in my favourite which was a 11 year old Cab sav/Merlot from the left bank. It was all very informative and increasingly more enjoyable in particular for me and the 90% of others that didn't use spittoons after trying the various wines.

Today we went in this morning and spent an hour or two creating:

A White Veal Blanquette with Braised Rice and Glazed Vege
(this is the only photo I have, unfortunately it was before I cleaned the plate)

This is an intentionally pale, rich, thickened veal stew with the vegetables added for flavour and then removed at the end. It looks simple but it's a bit more complicated than a normal stew, with lots of straining and separating needed as well as a roux and a liasion to thicken it. This is probably my best dish so far and even the Chef had no complaints. It was rich like I hoped but at the same time quite delicate, there aren't any robust flavours obvious, more a symphony of subtle ones in agreement.

Tonight a few of my classmates and I are going to a dinner cooked and organised by the cuisine students at their final stage of study at Le Cordon Bleu. This is something that every superior cuisine student has to do in order to graduate; produce a restaurant style degustation dinner for a large number of people. It's going to be seven courses with matching wines and I've heard rumours of oysters and foie gras so I'm looking forward to it! It will also be valuable to see the level that the chefs are cooking at and what I can expect to be able to produce a few months down the track.

I love steak

Today was a busy day of which we spent the majority in the kitchen, yes! The red meat theme continued with a medley of steaks with various accompaniments, I was very excited to get my hands on sirloin and my absolute favourite fillet, steaks and do them justice. Until today I hadn't had a good piece of steak since I left New Zealand in February and that would have probably been one of my Mums famous 'Holy Cows'. Yes I will admit I miss my mother......her meat providing and cooking skills that is!!

Just kidding love you Mum, anyway here are the plates I produced today:

Roast Sirloin of Beef with Garden Vege, Pommes Chateau and Artichoke

or its unfathomable French name:

Contrefillet de Boeuf Roti Accompagne de sa Jardiniere de Legumes, Pommes Chateau & Fonds d'Artichauts Cuits dans un Blanc

For those who speak French I apologise for the numerous missing accents in the above description. I'm trying my very best to learn all the French terms but I find the pronunciation difficult, it was a lot easier in France I picked it up so much faster!

As for the dish, it was hardly groundbreaking but it was good. I was happy with the cooking of everything except my potatoes. Dealing with the artichoke was interesting, I'd never dealt to one before and I'm not sure what it adds to the dish but it tasted nice. I was hoping for a darker, tidier jus but c'est la vie, tasted rich like it needed to.

Steak au Poivre et Pommes Darphin

Peppered Steak with Darphin Potatoes

In this dish I was a victim of my own personal tastes and perhaps even where I come from! Most people I know back home, including myself, habitually add a mountain of cracked pepper to everything. I'm the guy that even puts pepper on his fries from Burger King and McD's, thats right I'm hardcore for cracked black pepper! Don't fret though! I didn't lose my mind completely, it was only my pepper sauce that was a bit too rich..and......peppery. I personally liked it and so did my classmates, but the French Chefs at school do truely detest any more than the slightest amount of pepper on anything. In my mind it defeats the purpose of a pepper sauce but its something I need to work out of my system anyway. To me everything tasted beautiful so  I was very happy, I still need to work on my presentation though, it honestly sucks. At the time in the heat of the kitchen when plating it always looks so good to me, but on reflection later it really isn't as aesthetically pleasing as I thought. Apparently we focus more on presentation later on in the course so I'm looking forward to that.

Tomorrow we have a wine lecture, hopefully we get to try some nice wine. The last nice drop I had was with Giles in Bordeaux, we went into a wine tasting place and tried numerous large glasses of red and had a good time. He tried to teach me French and it was going really well I until about glass #2 where I had to stop him and say; "Sorry mate, I just can't do this right now..........but would you like a glass of Medoc perhaps?" The response being an emphatic yes. We couldn't believe our luck finding the place, the glasses were huge, the wine excellent and dirt cheap, like they were almost giving away the stuff. Suffice to say we made the most of it. We did find out later though that the idea of the place is that you go there for a tipple, and when you leave you buy a box of it. Well we had a tipple or 5 and didn't buy any......oops!!

A long break..

I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter holidays and got the most out of their days off. For us here in the UK and in particular at Le Cordon Bleu, the Easter break has really thrown a spanner at the smoking gear that was our momentum up until two weeks ago. In the last 14 days we've had a total of three working days that weren't affected by bank holidays and weddings. As a result we haven't been as productive in the classroom as I would have liked, so todays post will be a short one. On a side note what did everyone think of the wedding?

I can't remember the order of the things we've done since the last post, but heres a list of some of the things we've covered:

- Making/cooking fresh pasta, risotto

Heres an example of one of the dishes I cooked:

Fresh pasta with sauce alfredo

- Numerous new sauces, for pasta and red meat

- Butchery of a whole lamb: Chef broke down an entire lamb into its French cuts and proceeded to roast two legs and a rolled saddle so the entire class could have a pile of lamb for lunch.

And now a plate of lamb, it tasted so good it took me back to New Zealand:

Lamb rack with gratin bayaldi and jus

Feedback: Bones not trimmed enough, jus good, meat medium/rare instead of rare, not bad on the whole.

- Butchery of a whole side of sirloin: Chef broke down a huge side of sirloin which was about twice the size of the lamb and also contained the largest eye fillet any of the chefs at school had ever seen. It was about 2.5x the size of the fillets I'm used to, a monster. The Chef went on to cook a boeuf bourguignon and about 30 steaks, half sirloin and half fillet. That was a great lunch too.

As you can probably tell we're in the middle of a part of the course concerned with cooking various types and cuts of red meat, it really is relevant to my interests! This continues for the next few days and then we move onto veal, escalopes and veal stews. I've never worked with veal so I'm looking forward to it.

And now some odd photos just because I can:

Everyone needs a blowtorch

My street in South London on a good day

 London morning sky....

London sky, midday. Spot the difference....

Until next time and hopefully with some good photos of meat dishes..

A good choice

This week has been all about tackling one of my greatest fears in the kitchen......pastry. I wouldn't say pastry scares me but until this week I've never used flour except to thicken sauces and batter fish. I'd never made a dough in my life, pastry was something I stayed away from at all costs and I don't really know why, it's quite strange really. Suffice to say, this week I didn't operate in the kitchen with as much confidence as usual as we confronted various pastries from puff pastry to sweet pastry.

Below is a random selection of photos of some of the things we cooked. Unfortunately I keep forgetting to take photos of most of my finished products before I present them to the Chef and he/she dissects it completely and I subsequently eat, sorry!

Quiche Lorraine

Crepes with lemon syrup (I folded this one inside out, oops!)

Our puff pastries before being chilled over night

Everyone in action. I'm in there mixing a roux. We were only using two of the five hot plates to keep the kitchen as cold as possible for pastry.

What have I learnt this week? Some basic and some not so basic pastries used commonly in cuisine. 

I also spectacularly (at times) reaffirmed the fact that I'm not destined to bake cakes and desserts, and I made the right decision to focus solely on cuisine and not on patisserie. Evidently making pastry is not like cooking anything else, one cannot throw ingredients together to fix a mistake or get a desired taste. With pastry everything must adhere to a strict formula and if it doesn't it'll spectacularly fail...

Today we had a lecture on cheese from a seriously passionate cheese guy. We tried around 10 cheeses including some seriously noxious varieties which I really enjoyed while he made cheese from scratch. Cheese making really is fascinating, I can see how some people are fanatical about cheese like others are about nice wine and old whisky. I'd definitely like to learn more in the future.

Finally to end, a photo of the tray of ingredients some of the superior cuisine students were using in one of the kitchens.

Thats right, live lobster and quail. I really want to find out what they were cooking, what an interesting combination.

I'm really loving this school, I'm learning so much at such a furious pace. I can't wait to progress further and make friends with ingredients above!

Glorious Meat

Today we moved on from vegetable cuts and basic stocks and mother sauces to meat, chicken or poulet to be more exact.

Today we roasted a chicken and plated it with a jus, caramelized baby onions and broccoli. I was very happy how mine turned out, the jus was incredibly rich and tasty, nice and clear, everything cooked well. I was really chuffed with the presentation so I took a photo when I finished plating it. On reflection the presentation wasn't as great as I thought it was when I compare it to Chef's demonstration, it's something I need to work on definitely.

Some photos below, first Chefs demonstration dish in the morning, second my version in the afternoon with poorer presentation, hah.

                                                             

                                                                             Chef ^

                                                    Mine ^ Christ it looks ugly in comparison

So yes, it definitely looks bad but more importantly the flavours were on target and the cooking good. I obviously totally drowned my dish in jus, I think that was a combination of liking it so much and also the good old Kiwi tradition of drowning our roasts in gravy, each to ones own.

We're finished for this week, next week is totally crazy with all the Easter and wedding holidays and interruptions so until then..

Adieu 

Bricks, mortars

Just a quick update tonight with a couple photos. Since my last post we've been in the kitchen 3 times I think.

First day we made mayonnaise and tartar sauces which we added to more salads, prepared with our rapidly improving knife skills. I don't think anyone had any hitches with this one, except for maybe one or two mayonnaise sauces that were irreparably split.

Yesterday we learnt the toughest of all the vegetable cuts which is 'turning'. Basically the idea is to cut a barrel shaped piece with pointy ends out of out any sort of root vegetable.The size is variable and has to be cut with a short curved knife called a paring knife. The shape is very similar to the lead end of the fishing sinker in the picture below..... yes this honestly was the first thing that came to mind when thinking about how to describe the shape, I am a proper Kiwi after all!

The barrel has to have 7 sides and of course all of them have to be identical in size and length, we also found out we have to prepare 5 portions of turned vegetables in our final exam so getting these little buggers perfect is crucial. It was tough for me in the beginning but I got the hang of it slowly with practice, I had the size and shape ok, but uniformity was not present at all. More practice needed!

Anyway back to the food. We prepared a mushroom duxelle, which is like a slowly cooked dryish mixture of button mushrooms shallots and parsley that lends itself well to stuffings for meats, it's a match made in heaven for chicken. I love mushrooms so I demolished mine when I finished while waiting for others to finish up. Taste-wise mine was spot on but it wasn't finely chopped enough, a common theme in the last couple days; food tasting good and seasoned well, but more attention to detail needed for the small things.

We also made a tomato concasse, and with our turned vegetables (in this case mouli and baby onions) we cooked and then glazed. All went well, apparently in the time we spend at Le Cordon Bleu we'll prepare 2 million portions of glazed vegetables so it's important to get the glaze right, not too, not too salty.

Today, between all of us we must have produced and surpassed the entire schools' veal and chicken stock needs for at least the next month or so. Stock day went rather well apart from a large stripe on my hand where I grabbed the handle of my veal stock pan after it came out of the 200 degree oven, ouch! We made veal stocks and chicken stocks, nothing difficult here, the former to be finished off in the production kitchen because they need a minimum of 6 hours simmering and our time in the kitchen limited to 3. We also continued with our learning of the 'mother' sauces and made bechamel and basic tomato base sauces, nothing plated today so no photos of food still, sorry!

I do have two other photos for you though, one of me in my full kit in the kitchen and the second is me with the glorious invention.....the beard net. I couldn't be bothered shaving this morning and of course Chef instantly noticed my 1 day of stubble growth, and hence I got to experience the much maligned obstacle to beard glory. It was a revelation! I completely forgot about it. It totally wasn't a big deal at all despite looking ridiculous. I think I may have been wearing it wrong in this photo, who knows? I've noticed loads of guys in the superior courses with them I may just follow suit, kitchen is for work not fashion after all. Five more minutes sleeping in > shaving every morning I think....

Tomorrow poulet

Ciao 

System Shock!

Well today was end of day four at school and its been a busy few days getting into the swing of things. First things first, day one involved picking up our uniforms and knives, some introductory speeches and admin. I really like our uniform and I managed to choose the right size pants and jackets when I applied back in New Zealand which was a bonus.......but surprise surprise my hats are too small. My chef hat currently sits precariously on the top of my head performing very little of its intended function, I can force it on to some extent but I'm afraid it might make my brain explode, especially when all the elements in the kitchens are on and the room heats up. I would have thought the second largest hat possible on the chart would have been big enough but nou! There's just no denying it I have a huge nut on the top of my shoulders.

We met a number of the chefs at school and they're all very approachable and have good senses of humour which is awesome. We also met each other, the entire group consists of about 50 people in total divided in groups of 10, there's a huge number of nationalities, only about 5 people from the UK I think. Some of the countries just in my group of the top of my head are: Turkey, Alaska (it's a country I swear), Canada, Australia, India among others. There's some really great people in my group, we all went and grabbed a beer down the road after day one which was cool.

Day two consisted of a whole day of health and safety lecturing culminating in a multi-choice test for some national standard qualification. It was good to get that out of the way early, now we can all actually get jobs working in kitchens hopefully.

Day three was exciting, it was our first exposure to how the teaching and learning is done. The way it works is: the day begins at 8am with a 3 hour demonstration of various techniques and recipes by one of the chefs. There are mirrors and numerous cameras so it's easy to catch everything and take notes if you need too. Later on in the day or the next day you then go with your group to one of the kitchens where you do a three hour practical demonstrating some or all of what was shown earlier, the supervising chef then looks over, tries and critiques what you've built thus letting you know what to work on.

Our first practical focused solely on the various cuts of vegetable and for many of us including me it was our first exposure to our new knives which incidentally are reee-diiculously sharp as the hole I made in my thumb inside 30 mins can attest. Some of the cuts we were doing included: julienne, macedoine, jardiniere, brunoise, hache, enmincer, chiffonade to various vegetables and herbs. It all sounds very simple and it is, but chef really wanted to see perfect, uniform cut vegetables, it was an eye-opener to the level of precision we're going to need in the not too distant future.

Day four focused on salad hors d'oeuvres. Salads and vinaigrettes in various forms. The practical was fun, we had to produce 3 different salads with a couple of different vinaigrettes, there was a lot of time consuming prep but once that was done it all came together in the end. Managed to cut another hole on the tip of the same thumb which I cut the day before, the knives really are bloody sharp, its awesome. I know now that younger brother Mitch the designated 'knife-sharpener' back home in Auckland really had been slacking off his duties. The main critique for me today was being too heavy-handed with the basil infused vinaigrette on my tomato salad, as it started to invade one of the other salads when I plated everything, oh well, tasted nice though.

I've really enjoyed the way it all works and the first few days at school here in London. I'm even starting to get used to 6:30 starts for my 8am lectures, although I definitely admit the first day or two were a hell of a shock to the system!

Tomorrow is another day of different salads and things I think....

Sorry for the lack of photos so far, I'll take one tomorrow if I create something I think is worthy :)