My kind of sausage roll

Today was our last day being taught by Chef Phil and it was just as much fun as ever. By now, we have reached the stage where banter flies back and forth all day between teacher and students, so when I ran out of ingredients and asked for help with a dish today, chef kindly donated some of his, but I was quick to point out that they weren't as nicely prepared as mine!

Most of the morning was dedicated to preparing an amazing lunch. Meanwhile, we were set separate tasks in groups and mine was to make veal stock. We roasted two huge veal knuckles until brown, turning halfway, then spread tomato puree and honey on them and roasted some more. These went into a pan and were covered with water while we browned a mirepoix (chunky cuts of carrot, onion, celery, leek and parsley stalks) in the oven. Once the water was simmering, we skimmed fat and impurities from the surface before adding the mirepoix to the pot and leaving it to 'talk to itself' all day, skimming the surface occasionally. At the end of the day, we allowed the stock to cool a little before straining it and storing it in the fridge.

Chef also demonstrated to us how to make a consommé with the venison stock we had made yesterday, by whisking egg white with finely chopped leek, carrot, celery and onion, a little tomato puree and herbs and stirring this into warm stock. The stock is brought to the simmer, stirring occassionally to ensure the egg does not stick to the bottom of the pan until the egg forms a 'cake' on top of the stock. At this point it is left there while the stock simmers for about 40 minutes so that the egg can absorb impurities from the stock, at which point it is passed through muslin. This can be served with finely chopped vegetables to make a broth, or a poached quails egg, or can have gelatin added to make a clear jelly to set in the base of a glass plate, or cut into cubes for a garnish.

Yesterday we had prepared and marinaded a loin of venison and today was eat day! Lunch had various components, as follows:
Pommes Anna - we placed a tatin tin in a hot pan, added a little oil and layered thinly-sliced potato discs in a circle before encouraging them to cook down in the pan. Once they had begun to sink in the pan and brown around the edges we added butter, seasoning and chopped thyme before repeating the process. Once the second layer looked to be browning around the edges we added even more butter, removed the tin from the pan, flipped the potato 'cake' and cooked it on the other side to brown to base. Once both sides were cooked the 'cake' was put on a baking tray ready to be reheated later.
Cabbage parcel - I have made a lovely pot-roasted partridge with chestnut, sage and sausagemeat-stuffed cabbage parcels a few times around Christmas, with great success, and as the recipe has disappeared from the interweb, you will have to trust me when I assure you of its deliciousness. Today's cabbage parcels were made by blanching cabbage leaves and using them as a wrapper for a stuffing of sautéed shallot, garlic, lardons and shredded cabbage. This was wrapped tightly in clingfilm into a ball and steamed for service.
Braised shallots - I peeled shallots and kept most of the root intact to prevent them from disintegrating before gently frying them in butter and oil, turning carefully once brown. When they had browned on both sides we added some of the venison stock from yesterday with a sprig of thyme and braised them further in the oven. Once they were tender we removed them from the pan and reduced the sauce a little to glaze them.
To serve with all of this we made a chocolate-infused jus by softening some finely chopped shallot and garlic before adding madiera and reducing this to a glaze. At this point we added venison stock and reduced it to a third of its volume before straining the sauce and further reducing it a little. We added seasoning to taste before a few Valrhona chocolate drops were melted into the sauce off the heat as well as a small knob of butter to add gloss and thicken.
The venison itself was seared on both sides before being wrapped in rolled puff pastry, trimmed to resemble a sausage roll, egg washed and baked at 200°C. Lunch today was one of my favourites yet on the course.

After lunch we made praline soufflés. Earlier in the day we had made pastry cream, which you may recall from profiterole day a little while ago.  We mixed a little of this with some of yesterday's praline, before folding into this egg whites that had been whisked to stiff peaks with caster sugar. This mixture was gently poured into ramekins that had been brushed with melted butter (in upward strokes to encourage the egg to rise) and dusted with caster sugar. The surface of the mixture was levelled with a palette knife before the edge of the ramekin was wiped clean and then a little groove was created between mix and ramekin edge with a thumbtip. This went into the oven for 10 minutes while they rose beautifully before we dusted with icing sugar and ate straight away! Mine needed a more decisive 'thumbtrick' as they were a bit shy to rise, and one of mine looked more like a muffin when it came out! Still, I started out today planning to be less afraid of soufflés, and now I certainly am.

Ready for another dessert-fest tomorrow, we made a chocolate mousse by melting dark chocolate and orange juice in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water before stirring in cocoa powder and when cooled, adding egg yolks and Cointreau. We folded lightly whipped cream into the chocolate mix, followed, very gently, by eggs we had whisked with caster sugar to glossy stiff peaks. This was piped into chef rings bottom-sealed with clingfilm and will be chilled overnight.

We also made glass biscuits by melting butter, sugar and glucose together in a pan until melted before stirring in sifted flour. We cooled this mixture for a while until hardened before placing flattened marble-sized blobs on a baking sheet. After baking for four minutes at 180°C we removed them from the oven and place a silicon mat on top before rolling them really flat and baking for a further four minutes. At this point we quickly shaped or cut them as they rapidly cooled, into curves, bowls, shards and strips ready to decorate our plates tomorrow. Check back to see how they look!

Meat sweats

Today we were taken through our paces by the inimitable Chef Phil, who we duly got stuck in with for group tasks like making a stock, having a go at large-scale butchery and helping make staff lunch for the next day. Yesterday's mock, as well as the fact we are now a month into the course, has got us working well as a team together so all in all, it was a good day.

Fred the fillet steak. 1/4/14 - 1/4/14. RIP.

We started the day with an enormous, beautiful and expensive beef fillet, ready for Steak Day. Phil explained that the fillet is an underused muscle, found underneath the sirloin ribs across the back of the animal. He pointed out that the muscle is particularly underused in castrated bulls, for obvious reasons.... The various cuts from the fillet were then explained - the chateaubriand at the wider end, the centre cut, used for fillet steak, beef wellington or steak tartare, the filet mignon towards the tapered end, and meat at the end of the fillet that can be used for stroganoff. Other cuts were mentioned too; the ribeye being the last cut from the forequarter before the sirloin (best eaten medium rare to medium due to its higher fat content), the sirloin, which is removed from the rib unless it is called a porterhouse, where it is left on the bone, and a T-bone having the sirloin on one side and the fillet on the other. The 'rump' is fairly self-explanatory; a rump steak is cut thinner than a fillet, as is a sirloin and should be cooked medium as the meat is tougher, but arguably more flavoursome due to its fat content.
We all took turns in trimming sinew from the fillet to get a feel for it and chef rolled it in clingfilm to give it a consistent shape before cutting it into fillets about 180g each and allowing us to pick our own steak. I called mine Fred. Fred had beautiful marbling and I felt very optimistic about our relationship.
We were to come back to making our amazing steak lunch later, so keep dribbling for just a little longer...

Next, we got onto a bit of venison butchery. Venison is a very lean meat with a gamier flavour than beef, only available during hunting seasons and shot in the head or heart at around 18 months old. Phil described good hunting practises and rationales and presented us with a venison saddle before demonstrating how to cut the meat from the carcass by cutting down the spine and carefully cutting the meat away from the ribs, allowing us each to have a go. Once the saddle meat had been removed, it was separated from the skin, trimmed of any sinew and the large cuts of meat were marinaded in a mix of red wine, crushed juniper berries, coriander seeds and peppercorns, chopped shallot and garlic and bruised bay and thyme. Smaller pieces were trimmed and tightly wrapped in clingfilm to give it a consistent shape, ready for use in canapes. The carcass bones were hacked into smaller pieces, roasted with a little oil to colour before honey and tomato puree were spread on the bones and roasted a little longer. Meanwhile we roasted a mirepoix (chunky cuts of celery, carrot, onion, leeks and parsley stalks) in one oven, and halved onions in another. The bones were covered in a good quantity of water, brought to a simmer and skimmed before the vegetables and aromats were added to make a stock that would carry on simmering throughout the day. It smelled amazing, and it was great to all take turns keeping an eye on it, skimming the surface to remove any impurities, adding water if necessary and sieving it at the end of the day. All being well, we will make a consomme with it tomorrow, which I am very much looking forward to!

Tomorrow we will make a soufflé (oh dear God! Soufflé!! The potential for catastrophic failure is HUGE!) and the base of this soufflé will be praline, which we made next. We toasted some hazelnuts in the oven before shaking vigorously in a closed tub to rub off their skins and finishing this process with a clean cloth. Then we melted some sugar in a pan until it began to caramelise and turn golden, at which point we added the hazelnuts and some almonds which we coated in the caramel, poured the praline out onto a baking sheet and allowed to cool. When the praline had hardened, we blitzed it to a crumb in a food processor. I may have had a cheeky taste *just to check* and found it delicious. So, what with marinaded venison saddle and praline soufflé, tomorrow is shaping up nicely.

Before we knew it, it was time to start pulling together our lovely steak lunch, the last of the dishes we had to learn for next week's assessments. We cut Maris Piper potatoes into even-sized chips which we triple cooked. Cook one is to bring them to a simmer for about 10 minutes, to the point where the edges are beginning to go a little translucent and the chips have a 'flop' developing. They are left to steam dry (not on paper, which will stick to them!) and cool a little before they are deep-fried at 120°C for cook two, drained on kitchen paper and reserved for 'go time', at which point they were deep-fried at 190°C (cook three) until golden for service with a sprinkle of salt. We peeled a large mushroom and removed the stalk (all trimmings going straight into that lovely stock), and roasted this on a bed of thyme stalks with some cherry tomatoes on the vine, having drizzled both with a little oil, salt and pepper and aged balsamic.

Fred went to a Very Good Place

To accompany our steak meal, we made a béarnaise sauce. Béarnaise sauce essentially has a hollandaise base, and for that reason it scared me. Note the past tense there. As of today, I can successfully make hollandaise and béarnaise! First, we reduced some tarragon vinegar (white wine vinegar with benefit!) with some very finely chopped shallot and peppercorns. We whisked egg yolks in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and added a little of the reduced vinegar before very slowly whisking in warm clarified butter until the sauce had thickened and was leaving ribbons. It is critical not to overheat the egg or it will scramble, not to add too much vinegar for the same reason and not to let it get too cool so that it doesn't solidify too much or fail to cook. Once the sauce is made, it should be kept warm until just before it is served, at which point chopped tarragon and chervil is stirred through.

Then, it was on to the steak! I oiled and salted Fred on both sides before placing him delicately in a rather hot pan and cooking him for two minutes on each side before adding butter to the pan and giving him a lovely bath. He then went onto a baking tray and into the oven for 3 minutes before a quick rest while the rest of the meal was pulled together. It. Was. Lush.

I might have had to finish this for dinner.
#firstworldproblems

As if that wasn't enough, we had to drag our meat-sweaty, food-comatose selves in from the sunshine to make bread and butter pudding for dessert! We buttered thick slices of bread that had been left to dry overnight and cut it into rounds, which we halved and layered up in a cappuccino cup along with some sultanas. We then made a custard base of milk, cream, egg, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla seeds and poured this on top of the bread. Leaving the pudding to absorb the custard at this point is crucial, and something that I have neglected to do before. After ten minutes or so, the custard can be topped up as it will have been absorbed into the bread. We put it in a deep oven tray in the oven and poured boiling water halfway up the cups before baking for about 40 minutes at 180°C. They puffed up quite a bit as they cooked, so once they were out of the oven and had cooled and settled a little, we topped them with a dusting of cocoa, cinnamon and icing sugar and tried to eat them! The inside was a lovely hug of squidgyness, with just the right level of sweet warm egginess. Presenting such a comfort food staple in this new way was great, and has given me a few new ideas!

Now, no beef-and-venison-butchery-steak-and-chips-and-breadandbutterpudding day would be complete if it wasn't for also making a cake. Gluten free, of course. We creamed butter and sugar, added in ground almonds and vanilla seeds before slowly mixing in beaten egg to avoid causing the mixture to split. We had zested a lemon and let it sit in lemon juice to infuse the oils, and at this point we strained the zest out and added it to the mix, along with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to taste. Polenta was folded in, along with a small amount of baking powder and the cake batter was piped into rings that had been buttered and coated in caster sugar. The little cakes took about 15 minutes in the oven at 200°C and we served them with sultanas that had been soaking in warm marsala all day.

Last job of the day was frosted hazelnuts. Quite scary, but really easy and pretty cool. Mix equal amounts of sugar and water and dissolve over heat before adding an equal amount of skinned hazelnuts. Keep heating and keep stirring. Eventually the water will evaporate and the sugar will return to its crystallised form, at which point you will need to stir lots to get the hazelnuts coated, and take the pan from the heat before pouring the nuts onto a baking tray to cool. Try not to set fire to the teatowel holding your pan, like I did. When something I'm a bit nervous about turns out not to be all that scary, I have to make it frightening somehow!

Speaking of frightening times, check back tomorrow to find out how that soufflé goes!

Wisely and slow..

...they stumble that run fast."

(Friar Lawrence, Romeo and Juliet)

Today was our mock assessment, ahead of next week's course finale, a three-day fret-fest of three to four-course meals prepared, presented and served by us to our chef assessors. 

I am no stranger to exams and assessment. I have even been known to willingly put myself through them when there is no requirement to do so. I am, however, strangely afflicted with an inability to grasp the fact that I am, in fact, being assessed. This is a good thing in that I don't tend to get flustered or panicked but a bad thing because I can sometimes fail to give my all in a way befitting of a be-all-and-end-all situation.

Today was just a practise, sure, but I spent time over the weekend preparing an elaborate prep list, and practised the recipes, and re-annotated fresh copies of them, and read around a bit for some technique hints. I felt pretty ready for today, and by and large, it showed. 

Why on earth I felt the need to rattle through it all quite that fast then, I have no idea! Much to my surprise, I was the first out of the kitchen having prepared and presented all of my dishes and cleaned down my section. Not only was my prep list missing some ballpark time frames, it also missed words 'BREATHE! SLOW DOWN! TAKE YOUR TIME TO GET IT RIGHT!!' in thick red marker across the top. As well as a reminder to drink water. Had both of these been included, I wouldn't have left feeling quite so discombobulated.

First course was Vichysoisse, otherwise known as leek and potato soup. By this point in the course we can work out pretty well the 'purpose' for each recipe, be it knife skills, technique, heat control and so forth. Vichysoisse is not about how the vegetables are chopped up as much as other dishes, because the cooked ingredients are then blended. Which means the focus is the flavour, the texture and the presentation.

I was pleased with how my soup turned out, and prettyfied it well with nicely chopped chives and a drizzle of cream. However, during the course we had been told that straining the soup was not really that necessary unless the potato is undercooked, which I interpreted as 'don't strain the soup unless you've undercooked the potato'. Of course, when you blend a soup in a food processor there will inevitably be bits that escape in the initial surge of liquid up the sides of the jug, so straining just makes sense. Noted. Also, goodness me this soup can take some salt. I need to focus more on 'does this taste right?' rather than 'gosh I've put a lot of salt in already!' 

Which also stands for my next dish, sweetcorn and chorizo à la française, with griddled chicken. My chicken was largely fine, cooked well and only a few tweaks needed with preparation, but the sweetcorn accompaniment needed to be more saucy, and more salty.

Tart tatin, however, I need a bit more practise with! Had I adopted a calmer approach, taken my time, been a bit more careful, the pastry would have been rolled thinner, the apple would have been cooked that fraction more and the whole thing would have been cooked more fully. If I hadn't been in such a frenzy, my vanilla mascarpone would not have been overbeaten to the verge of splitting, either. By the time I got to serving that (ironically enough, with not a plain caramel sauce, but a salted version, leaving all my salting til the end of the meal!) I was so disappointed that the cream had gone granular that I simply didn't bother presenting it nicely, and hence lost more marks than I could have.

But anyway. The point of a mock is to stop the 'Shoulda, woulda, coulda' before they start, and today did that very well. Tomorrow we learn our last assessment dish - steak and chips! This is not a week for those on a diet...

Chef hands

It's an age-old dilemma. Countless workers in the hospitality and restaurant industries suffer variations of the same affliction, with little attention being paid to their plight. If you come into contact with someone suffering in this way, you will know about it soon enough, often without them even having to say a word. And you will likely make a judgement about their suffering, decide that it is self-inflicted, and let me tell you, this is unfair.

I write, of course, of the problem of going home after a hard day's work smelling like your job.

As I sit here and write this, I cannot remove the smell of fish from my hands. I have scrubbed. I have used a variety of antibacterial handwashes. I am pretty sure by now that I have found all of the errant fish scales seemingly growing from me, but I may stand corrected tomorrow, Sunday even. And I consider myself a rather clean person in general.

This is to say nothing of the pork grease that seems to have permeated from my hair to my underclothes. We made carrot cakes and lemon tarts today as well as the various piscatory and porcine delights, but to go home smelling of cinnamon and zesty citrus would be illogical, of course. Even the richly fragrant tomato, herby, garlicky bean stew would have been better, but no.

Anyway, I digress before I've even started. Today was the last day of week four, and marks the point at which we are two thirds through our course. From here, things start to get really tasty. On Monday we have a mock assessment, the first time that we will be left fully to our own devices to work our way through a three-course meal demonstrating our skills and our time management. Or areas where either need to be sharpened. A few more dishes to learn and skills to pick up and before we know it we will be in our final, assessment week and then thrust into the big wide professional cookery world. What happens when I get there, nobody knows.

We started today blitzing through a carrot cake. I have made a fair few of these in my life and until I have a piece of today's one, my favourite remains an Ottolenghi recipe from his first cookbook, with hints of coconut and a lightness from carefully folded meringue in the batter. Chef Rob is proud of his recipe, which has produced a beautiful-smelling cake and is the result of coarsely-grated carrot and wholemeal flour for texture, a moist sponge resulting from a dousing in citrus syrup and a good hit of cinnamon in the cream cheese frosting.

As soon as the cake was in the oven, we got onto making a tomato and bean stew, by deskinning and deseeding lots of tomatoes before getting them in a pan with some softened onion, garlic and herbs and letting them stew away for an hour or so with some chopped sundried tomatoes. Once this was bubbling away, we rolled out some lemon sweet pastry we had made yesterday, much in the same way as before, but with the addition of lemon zest, and lined a tart case ready for a lemon tart.
We also made the tart filling, by whisking together lemon juice and zest, eggs, caster sugar and cream. We let this sit for a while so that the lemon oils could infuse, and the cream could react with the acidity. Later, once it had reacted, we skimmed the surface to remove any scum and near-curdled cream, tasted how lemony it was before pouring into the tart cases which had been blind baked and trimmed. This was a tense moment, as the cases needed to be as watertight as possible, and the filling needed to be as clear as possible and filled as far up the case as we dared. We poured the filling into the cases while they were in the oven and baked them on a low temperature until they were set but had a good wobble. I am looking forward to my dessert after dinner tonight!

No peeking...

For lunch today, we had a surf and turf of sorts. We had A bit of pork belly left from Wednesday's roast that we reheated in a pan to give it a good edge of crackling, and served with it some of our tomato and bean stew, a panfried sardine and a couple of panfried scallops. When we prepared scallops earlier in the week they had not been delivered in their shell and today we had the chance to try preparing them again from scratch. It was quite an experience to have a scallop shell try to close on my fingers as I prised it open, and chef claims he could feel the scallop twitching in his hand once I had removed it.
We started by sawing a knife as close to the inside of the flat shell as possible. This releases the scallop from the shell, and this side becomes the presentation side. Once the shell is open any grit can be washed away if the scallop is a product of bycatch, as ours were today due to weather conditions making hand diving difficult. Then the whole of the inside of the shell can be removed with a spoon scraping from the outer edge of the shell inwards. The stomach sac, roe and 'skirt' around the scallop can be pulled away from the scallop along with any membrane. We cooked the scallops like yesterday, only today we also had a sardine in the pan!

I have never eaten sardines, so today was a bit of an experience. First, the head is removed, then the body cavity is opened, the guts removed and the cavity rinsed. Once the cut has been extended to the tail, the sardine can be butterflied by opening it on a board and pressing down along the spine to flatten it. The bones inside can largely be pulled away in one go, with the ribs needing to be cut out separately before the fillet is tidied up. The fin on the back of the fish needs to be cut out by removing a little keyhole of flesh from inside the fillet. We seasoned it, dusted it with flour and panfried it skinside down first before flipping over one the flesh had started to cook. As I discovered, sardines taste a little like mackerel, but they will still need a little getting used to! We served our lunch with a mustard sauce made be reducing a little fish stock before heating cream through it, along with a little mustard, chopped chives and seasoning. An obligatory 'monter au beurre' to thicken, and it became a delicious accompaniment to an already lovely lunch.

After lunch, we filleted a lemon sole. This was very similar to the plaice we had filleted earlier in the course, and as we were all so full, chef demonstrated how to finish the dish before letting us take the completed fillets home. We will brown pine nuts in a pan before adding butter and allowing it to cook to a beurre noisette - a nice, toasted nutty stage once the milk solids have sizzled. Then we will stir through brown shrimp, rosemary, seasoning and lemon juice before serving it over the lemon sole which will have been oven roasted back in it's fishy shape.

That, however, will be a meal for another day. I need to wait for my hands to smell normal again before I tackle that one!

A veritable surf and turf of dishes!

Week four has not been too technique-heavy, so today I am letting you know about two whole days worth of fun. Get ready for lots of pictures!

Having humanely dispatched Dave the crab, before giving him an aromatic hot tub wake with his mates, it was time to pick his brains. An ingenious idea to photograph this over timelapse failed (technology, eh?) so if you'd like to see the process described below in action, I'd suggest a more thorough YouTube search than I've done, as I can't find one I'm happy to endorse! To prepare a crab like Dave, you will need a large knife you don't mind ruining and a crab pick, and a couple of containers for the white and brown crab meat.

Dave's demise awaits behind him...

First, the legs are removed by pulling them in towards the centre of the body. The bottom two joints can be removed and retained for stock, whilst the joint closer to the body can be opened by placing it on it's curve on a board and tapping it sharply with the back of the knife, before removing the meat within. Then the claws are removed by getting your thumbs behind their top joint and pulling them in towards the body. The joint closest to the body can be removed from the claw with a firm twist, whilst the next two are a little harder to separate but get there with a little brute force! The moveable pincer can be twisted off and the meat removed, and the rest of the claw meat can be removed by tapping the shell firmly with the back of a heavy blade and picking it out. The meat from all of this so far is white.

Next, the body. By now you will be left with a shell with a honeycomb-like structure underneath. This is called the box or purse, and it can be removed by placing thumbs below it and pushing it up towards the head. From this, the lungs, or 'dead man's fingers' - which are not poisonous, just not particularly pleasant, need to be removed, along with the film-like membrane, which is the diaphragm. Remove the face of the crab by pushing up and outwards with your thumbs from below and behind it. Spoon out the brown meat from the shell. If you were dressing the crab, you could tidy the shell at this point by using a teatowel on top of the open shell and gently pushing the inside rim of shell into the cavity to break it along a natural line to tidy it. Nature's clever that way. You could also make a ring from two of the small legs by inserting them into each other, making a little trivet for Dave's shell to rest on.

Using a teaspoon handle, twist the top leg joints from the box to remove them, and pick out the meat. You can then use the heavy knife to cut the box in half, and have a ball picking all the meat from its honeycomb structure. There will be some brown meat on top and white meat behind. And then, you will be done! The brown meat can be blended in a food processor and passed through a fine sieve, and used to flavour a vinaigrette for a seafood salad, or as the filling for savoury profiteroles, or beignets, or can be stirred through a bisque, risotto, bouillabaisse or chowder. Spread the white crab meat on a tray and very carefully pick your way through it all at least three times to remove all traces of shell.

Chef pointed out this was quuite a lot of salsa.
But so tasty!

We mixed white crab meat with half the quantity of brown meat, finely chopped shallot and chives, an egg yolk, a little cayenne and seasoning before blending with water biscuits ground down into a crumb to make slightly moist crab cakes that held themselves together. The biscuit crumb acts as a binding agent, but anything neutral would work, such as chickpeas, flour, oatmeal biscuit crumbs or breadcrumbs. We panfried our crabcakes in clarified butter but rapeseed oil could be used, and we served them with a salsa of pineapple, chilli, lime zest and juice, coriander, shallot and garlic.

Staying with the fish theme, we learned how to prep squid and scallops today. The scallops were incorrectly delivered already out of their shells, so we didn't learn how to do this stage of preparation. Good scallops should be slightly pearlescent, not white, as this shows they have been stored in salted water and slightly cured. We removed the muscle that attaches the scallops to the shell, which takes with it a small ring of membrane/muscle around the scallop. We removed the coral, as this cooks slightly slower than the scallop. If you can see any dark areas on the coral, use the back of the knife to push them out, as this will be leftover products of digestion! Don't wash the scallops, as they will absorb water and become soggy, and don't store them on paper towel as this will dry them.

We prepared whole squid by gently pulling the head and tentacles away from the body, before cutting just below the eyes and removing the beak right at the top of the tentacles, and cutting them into even bite-sized lengths. Then it was onto the body. The plastic-like cartilage can be gently pulled out, along with any remaining stomach sac or innards. The squid wings tend to cook quite tough so can be removed from the body, along with any dark membrane on the surface. Then, HOW COOL IS THIS! - We turned the squid body inside out by pushing the tip through to the base with the top of a wooden spoon handle! We cleaned the inside and removed any membrane before finding the 'seam' and cutting the tube open along this. We gently scored the inside of the squid tube as it is more delicate, by gently running the knife in a criss-cross over the inside surface of the tube a few millimeters apart. The butterflied tube was cut into four squares with tidied edges.

The scallops were seasoned and panfried in clarified butter at a medium heat, when they caramelised on one side we turned them. It is easy to overcook them and they should be pearlescent in the middle. They should only take about 45 seconds on each side. Once cooked, they were kept warm on kitchen paper and the heat was turned up. The squid and the coral both take about 45 seconds to cook and the squid will curl up with the scored side outwards, which makes for great presentation. Lemon juice was squeezed over the scallops and squid, which were also seasoned, and we served them with pea puree (cook frozen peas for 5 minutes, drain and blend with a little cooking liquid), fried quails eggs (cook them from cold, and gently!) and parma ham crisps (bake at 150°C with another baking sheet on top and cut into shape once cool).

Fishy lunch, and also a fishy dinner! We made salmon en croute by butterflying open a salmon fillet after removing the skin before stuffing it with chopped cashews, sunblush tomatoes, fresh anchovy fillets, olives and lemon zest, basil leaves and seasoning. We brushed two halves of a sheet of filo pastry with rapeseed oil, layering them up and wrapping the salmon so that the seams were underneath, trimming as necessary to avoid excessive layering. We sprinkled this with poppy seeds and baked it for ten minutes, flipping it topside-down after eight. We served with this a blanched, deskinned, hollowed out tomato filled with a pesto we had made by grinding together basil leaves, garlic, toasted pine nuts, parmesan, lemon juice, olive and rapeseed oils and seasoning in a pestle and mortar, and baked for the last two minutes of salmon cooking time. We cut the salmon parcel open to plate it displaying the stuffing.

Ready for some meat? Yesterday we made pork Holstein. This starts life as a pork escalope, which starts life as a pork tenderloin. After trimming the tenderloin to remove sinew, fat, and membrane, we stood it upright so that all the meat fibres were vertical, between two sandwich bags, and flattened them with a meat hammer. We then pané'd the escalope by dunking in flour, then an eggwash, then fine panko breadcrumbs, as we had our plaice goujons. This was panfried in butter and a little oil, once the sizzling had stopped. While this drained on kitchen paper, we fried a duck egg in the oil (be careful not to use too high a heat, like I did, and burn some escalope crumbs!), and plated up the buckwheat salad we had made earlier. This was a mix of buckwheat cooked in vegetable stock, chopped deskinned and deseeded tomato, spring onion, parsley and coriander with lemon juice, seasoning and olive oil. We made a beurre noisette by cooking butter until it stops foaming and then turns nutty and brown, and stirred through capers off the heat, along with chopped parsley and lemon juice. As per tradition, the Holstein is decorated with a criss-crossed anchovy.

For a lighter dinner option last night, we made a full roast dinner. Having braised our pork belly (not our own, although four weeks into the course, things are definitely heading that way!) on Tuesday, it was time to roast it. But first, the accompaniments. We learned how to 'turn' our vegetables into nice, high-end restaurant shapes - and that we need a lot of practise to get this right! We cut potatoes into beautiful seven-sided pointed barrels, carrots into flower-shaped slices, and parsnips into curve-sided mini-spearheads. We blanched cauliflower florets before making a roux (cooking out butter and flour) and loosening into a sauce with milk (making a béchamel),  before stirring through grated cheddar (making a mornay). We coated the cauliflower in the mornay sauce and put it in a dish, sprinking with parmesan ready to bake at the same time as the belly pork after browning all sides in a hot pan with some rapeseed oil, on top of some parchment paper to stop it sticking to the pan. We boiled the potatoes for about 10 minutes until just cooked, in salted water before draining and allowing to steam, and blanched the parsnips for about a minute and a half. Then we fried the potatoes in duck fat until brown, added the carrots to the pan before covering with a cartouche of parchment with a steam hole, and putting this into the oven along with the pork and cauliflower cheese for 15 minutes at 200°C.
While they were in the oven, we made an apple and tarragon sauce by cooking out apple cubes with a splash of apple juice until the cubes began to break down, before adding sugar to taste and stirring through chopped tarragon. We cooked the parsnips by pan frying in duck fat until they started to colour before adding a little honey to the pan. And the gravy! Of course the gravy. We had been cooking the juices from braising the pork belly with added beef stock, having fried off a mirepoix and reducing red wine in the pan after the vegetables had coloured. Once this had reduced, we strained it and thickened with cornflour and water. All of this had to come together at the same time, and we presented it beautifully. It was the most glamorous roast dinner I have ever seen! I must say that being taken through this dish by Tom Ewings has inspired me as well as giving me the fear of God when it comes to thinking about my presentation and level of technique skills for assessment week! A weekend of practise awaits....

A case of crabs

We had Rob Dawe back today, unexpectedly but gladly. Today promised to be a little calmer than yesterday, with a shorter prep list, but with some brand new skills I was looking forward to picking up.

We started off with lots of pork! We prepped pork belly in pairs by scoring the skin with very sharp knives, not to cut through to the flesh but to create a lovely crackling for when we roast the meat later in the week. We sprinkled this liberally with salt, rested the meat in a roasting tin on top of a bed of chunks of carrot, celery, onion and leek, along with thyme, smashed cloves of garlic and broken up star anise. We topped the tin up with water up to the top of the vegetables, covered the meat with baking parchment and foil before putting the meat into the oven at 150°C for 5 hours. Belly pork is an economical cut - 800g will cost about £4 - but it is worth remembering that it will lose about 1/3 of its volume in the cooking process, so a piece this size would make two portions. The meat can also be cooked as a confit to make pork rillettes. Once the meat had cooked, we removed rib bones, cartilage and excess fat layers underneath before wrapping the meat in portions in clingfilm. It will be pressed overnight in the fridge by placing a tray on top of it with a pestle and mortar, and we will roast it for lunch tomorrow.

Pork tenderloin, before.

Next we prepped pork tenderloin. The tenderloin is pork's equivalent of a fillet of beef, found nestled underneath the cannon, below the spine and within the ribs. A whole tenderloin weighs about 800g and would serve about 4 people at a cost of around £8. We removed fat and sinews, and those who had a 'chain' strip of meat attached to their piece of tenderloin removed it. We made a cut about halfway down the meat along its length before making secondary cuts a quarter of the way down this first cut in order to open up the meat. We spread chopped sage, lemon zest, salt and pepper into the opened-up meat before tying the meat three times and browning it in a hot pan with a little rapeseed oil and butter.

The tenderloin was laid on top of a bed of sliced shallot, garlic and fennel, small wedges of apple and sprinkled with thyme. We were making parcels with our meat so this all happened atop a square of parchment and a big piece of foil. We folded out parchment over the meat, then the foil and sealed two of the three ends of the parcel. After pouring away any excess fat, we deglazed our meat-sealing pans with a little cider before pouring this into the parcel and sealing the remaining edge. The parcels would be put into the oven when the accompaniments were ready. Cooking food in a bag is a great way to retain a lot of flavour and moisture, and can easily be prepared in advance, ready to go in the oven and be served with a bit of theatre at the table for your guests. This can be done with a lot of meats, such as chicken, and fish, particularly non-oily fish that take on flavours well, and all sorts of aromatics, such as lemongrass, chilli, lime and a variety of vegetables can be used.

One of the accompaniments for the tenderloin was potato dauphinoise, which is one of our assessment dishes. King Edward or Maris Piper potatoes are used and sliced very thinly (this could be done using a mandolin or even a peeler, but we are being tested on our knife skills!) before being layered up in a small buttered dish with a little seasoning in between each layer. Meanwhile, we heated cream and milk with a smashed clove of garlic until it boiled before taking it off the heat and allowing it to infuse. We were making individual portions to practise for our assessment, but this could be done in a large dish, with portions cut out later. The large dish would also have to be buttered, and if it is also lined with parchment the finished dauphinoise can be lifted out when cold to cut and reheat. The dish can also have the addition of cheese or be adapted by substituting 40% of the potato for other vegetables such as sweet potatoes, parsnips or butternut squash. Once the layers had been built up, we strained enough of the infused cream over them to cover before baking for 45 minutes, pressing the potatoes down into the cream every 15 minutes. Once the dauphinoise had cooled, we used a cutter to cut a tower out of the dish and put it on the same baking tray as our pork parcel to cook in the oven for 10 minutes at 200°C.

Once the pork had had its time in the oven, we snipped a corner of the bag, poured the cooking juices into a pan and started to reduce it vigorously. Earlier in the day we had blanched and refreshed broccoli and now we reheated it in a little water before adding spinach to the pan to wilt in the heat. When the sauce had reduced, we added cream and took it off the heat before adding butter to 'monter au beurre'. The tenderloin had its strings removed before being carved and presented with its accompaniments. I kept the spare bits aside from my presented plate but decided once I had tasted it that it was too delicious to last until the journey home!

Believe me I was more impressed at the prospect than I look

After lunch we became CRAB KILLERS! I have long wanted to prepare crab from start to finish and today we began that process. Crabs cannot legally be removed from the sea until they have a shell span of 12cm, which takes them three to four years. Chef showed us how to identify boy and girl crabs and explained that for sale, the tendons of a crab's claws are often severed between them to make the crab easier to handle. Ours hadn't been through this process and chef recounted tales of students flailing round the room in past classes with a crab fervently attached to fingers. A crab's claws are strong enough to cut these off!

Trying not to get grabbed!

Our crabs were about 1.3kg and would have cost about £8-9. I called mine Dave. Ashburton has a special machine to kill crabs, lobsters, langoustines and Dublin Bay prawns in milliseconds by electrocution in a salt bath, which ensures optimal conduction of the current. The process also kills bacteria in the crab and tenderises the meat.
I have never held a live crab, and jumped out of my skin when I was tentatively reaching into the box of crabs and one of them had a shuffle. The trick is to stay well clear of the claws and to hold them upside down.

Checking that Dave had passed into crabby heaven

By the time my group had our turn with the stun-a-crab-omatic, they had been out of the fridge long enough to really wake up and mine was not impressed at being put into a machine. Tough, mate, sorry. I closed the lid and after a few seconds it was over. This is the most humane way to kill the crabs, the second best being to put them in the freezer for 30 minutes before putting them straight into boiling water.

Dave's demise

Apparently it is now trendy for chefs to cook crabs from cold water, as this is more likely to keep the claws intact, but this takes much longer to kill them and they suffer.

Once Dave had joined the crab king upstairs, he went into a pot of boiling water with his mates and sliced lemon, onion, fennel and celery with bay leaves, star anise and black peppercorns. We cooked them for 20 minutes before leaving them to cool in a sink full of cold water. Apparently it is not too much of a problem to cook crabs for a little too long, but lobster is very easy to overcook. The crabs were stored face down, vertically in the fridge so that water within their shells didn't sit inside and stagnate overnight.



In between our porky tasks earlier, chef had demonstrated how to make pannacotta by heating equal quantities of milk and cream before adding honey, then stirring through gelatine leaves that had been soaked in water. 1g of gelatine is enough to set 100ml of liquid and our recipe called for just short of these proportions because, as chef said, we needed 'to live on the edge' and our pannacotta had to have a good amount of wobble. Once the mixture had cooled, we stirred through greek yoghurt and poured the mixture into mini plastic pudding basins, otherwise known as dariole moulds. These were set in the fridge for as long as we could during the day, and chef moved them to the freezer for a little additional chill as he was concerned that they needed a little longer to set properly than we actually had. We glazed fig pieces in a reduction of orange juice, sugar, orange blossom water and orange zest before roasting for five minutes at 200°C. We reduced the remaining glaze down to a syrup to decorate the plate. Getting the pannacottas out of their moulds was tricky! We carefully used knives to loosen the edges and then very gently used fingers to try to create an air pocket before inverting them over the plate and letting them slowly release themselves.

We served the pannacotta and the figs with tuille biscuits. After seeing them on The Great British Bakeoff so many times I was very much looking forward to having a go and am pleased to report that they are not as tricky as the contestants made it seem! We made the batter by creaming equal quantities of everything - first egg whites and sugar before mixing in sifted flour and then slowly trickling in melted and cooled butter. We added vanilla seeds to our mix but other flavours could be used, such as lime zest or by substituting 10g of flour for cocoa powder or ground nuts. We chilled the batter for a while before piping long strips of it onto a baking sheet and using the back of a wet spoon to create a circle of batter. The batter was cooked in batches for five minutes at 180°C until lightly golden. Once they are taken out of the oven you have 15 seconds at most to use asbestos fingers to shape strips around wooden spoon handles and to squeeze the circles between two pastry tins to make cups. They set very quickly but if you are too slow they can be popped back into the oven for a few moments to re-soften.
Templates can be made using ice cream tub lids and batter can be spread in the cut out area using a palate knife. The biscuits can be kept for one day before they will go soggy, and are best stored in an airtight tin with rice to absorb moisture. Savoury versions can be made by using glucose instead of sugar and including parmesan. I ate this before I left school today, which means having yesterday's tiramisu for dessert after my leftover pizza for dinner tonight is fine, right? Right?

La Dolce Vita

Today could have been subtitled 'The One Where They Cover Italy'. By the end of the day, I wouldn't have been surprised to see classmates gesticulating wildly to express how the day had gone, before knocking back an espresso and driving off in a Fiat 500.

We started the day by making pasta dough and pizza/focaccia dough. We made the pasta dough as we had waaay back in week two, divided it into three and set it aside while we made dough for pizza and focaccia. This was much like the bread dough for the white rolls we had made back in week one, with perhaps a slightly lower yeast to flour ratio, and making a slightly wetter dough. I will need to ask chef about this because the resulting dough was very puffy, just like you would want it to be!

We made two pasta fillings for the various shapes we would be making today - confit duck, and spinach and ricotta. The confit duck legs we had prepared last week were in the oven at 50°C just to melt the fat they were submerged in so that we wouldn't have to dig them out. We peeled away the skin and reserved this to make duck scratchings later. The meat was tender enough to fall away from the bone, and as we removed the meat we carefully ensured the bloodline was also discarded along with the bones as it can be stringy. The meat was finely chopped and softened shallots and a little aged balsamic vinegar. To make the spinach and ricotta filling, we wilted the clean spinach in a hot dry pan before gently squeezing excess water from it in a colander and drying it on kitchen paper. The spinach was then finely chopped and mixed with ricotta, a little parmesan and grated nutmeg. The parmesan should be added carefully so that you don't end up with a filling that tastes overwhelmingly of parmesan, like ours. This will affect the seasoning as the cheese is salty, so it is possible that only pepper will be needed.

Next we were onto the fun bit. We rolled pasta sheets as before, keeping them stick-free with semolina. We made tortelli and tortelloni with the spinach and ricotta filling by cutting the pasta sheet into squares and one by one, spooning a little filling onto the centre of a square of pasta, brushing the top half edges of the square with water, folding the bottom half up to meet the top half, using thumbs and little fingers to seal the filling as neatly and closely to the pasta as possible (no air bubbles!) before using the blunt end of a small cutter to 'seal' the filling in place. Next we cut the pasta into semicircles with about 1cm of 'clear' pasta around the filling using a larger cutter, flipped it over and brought the corners together to make the recognisable 'belly button' shape. (You can see a few pictures to demonstrate the technique more clearly at this site).

With the duck filling, we made ravioli. Ravioli is different in that it is made with two squares of pasta rather than one. We placed a nicely compacted nugget of the meat in the centre of a square of pasta, brushed all edges with water and enclosed the filling with another square of pasta instead of a fold. The square was then cut to neaten, and I crimped the edges with the tines of a fork. Both sets of pasta were set to one side while we got on with our dough. The third ball of pasta was cut into tagliatelle strips ready for later, dusted with semolina to stop it sticking and kept to one side.


By this point our pizza / focaccia dough was nicely proven. We knocked it back and cut away one third to make our pizzas with. Whilst somehow, I managed to make a pretty good circle by rolling my dough and turning it repeatedly, before stretching it a little with my hands and allowing its own weight to weigh it down, it was a fairly small circle, which became an issue later. Chef had made a lovely tomato sauce by bubbling away several kilos of different tomatoes with onion, garlic and herbs for a few hours, and we used this as our pizza sauce, before topping with prosciutto, breseola, salami and mozzarella. This went into the oven at 250°C for about 12 minutes, until the base was nice and dry. And here came the issue. My pizza base was quite small, and hence puffed up, meaning it was thick and took quite a long time more than others to cook, by which time the toppings were in danger of overcooking. Deep pan pizza and then some! The dough was perhaps slightly undercooked but I loved it as one of my own all the same.

Next up was the focaccia. I rolled this out as one large focaccia, which I then covered with indentations with my fingers. What was supposed to be a liberal coating of olive oil became a bit too literal when the top of the olive oil bottle popped off as I was squeezing. Can't have too much olive oil, I suppose? I pushed black olives into some of the indentations, along with mini sprigs of rosemary, and sprinkled a liberal dose of flaky salt on top before leaving it to puff up with a second prove under oiled clingfilm. Once they were nicely proved, they went into the oven for about 20 minutes at 200°C, with water poured in the bottom of the oven to create steam. We took this home for dinner. It will keep for about 3 days but if it's not being eaten straight away it will need a little sprinkle of water and some time in a warm oven to bring it closer to its former glory to eat.

While all of this was going on, we were also preparing our duck ravioli to have with our pizzas for lunch. We melted butter in a hot pan until it had stopped sizzling and foaming, at which point we added chopped hazelnuts and sage leaves, allowing them to become crisp in the hot oil. In a separate pan, we heated a little oil in a fairly hot pan and fried salted strips of the duck skin we had kept to one side earlier until they were crispy before draining on kitchen paper. When the butter had darkened a little, becoming a beurre noisette, we squeezed in a little lemon juice. By now, of course, we had also cooked our ravioli in a large pan of salted water until it was nicely al dente, and the pasta could just about be split by a thumbnail - very important not to make any holes in the pasta shapes before or during cooking as the filling will leak out and /or become soggy when cooking. The ravioli were removed to drain, plated and the sage and hazelnut butter was spooned on top, before topping with the duck scratchings.

After lunch, we rolled back into the kitchen to make some dishes for feedback. First up was tagliatelle carbonara. We cut and fried some bacon lardons to brown gently before adding a pureed garlic clove (I can now puree garlic with a knife. Skillz.) Meanwhile the pasta is cooked in a large pan of salted water, and time to be ready once the garlic has cooked. The pasta was drained, retaining the water so it can go back into the pan for the next pasta batch. The pasta was added to the bacon / garlic pan, followed swiftly by parmesan, chopped parsley which were stirred together. We then took the pan off the heat and stirred a mixture of egg yolk and double cream through. The egg acts to thicken the sauce and enrich it, and the cream stops the egg from cooking. We seasoned to taste and presented to chef.  He seemed fairly happy with mine, commenting that the sauce could have been a little thinner, and that some of my pasta had clumped together, meaning it wasn't thoroughly cooked. I think it was a little on the wet side as a dough, which meant it stuck together when I cut it into tagliatelle, and pulling the strands apart 'stressed' them, making them crinkly! He did, however, comment that the sauce had 'great flavour', and after having it for dinner I incline to agree!

Alongside this, we made a gorgonzola sauce for our spinach and ricotta tortelloni. We sweated a very finely chopped shallot in a little butter, adding salt to stop it colouring, until it was soft, before adding a little wine and reducing this until it was just a glaze, at which point we added chicken stock and reduced it by two thirds. This took aaaages, and I should have transferred it to a larger pan sooner to speed up the process. If the wine hadn't reduced, the sauce would taste sour and be unfixable. The stock reducing is also key to the flavour and consistency of the finished sauce. Once it had reduced, we stirred through cream, and added a walnut-sized piece of gorgonzola once the pan was off the heat, much in the same way as butter is used to thicken a sauce and add gloss. When I tasted my sauce I worried I had added too much cheese but chef commented that I could have had more. On the flipside, the over-parmesan-ed filling I was worrying about earlier went down well.

Chef was not happy with our performance for the presentation dishes. Not to say that we hadn't presented them well, or that they tasted as they should, but rather that what should have been a 30 minute set of tasks took us over an hour. This would not be acceptable in a professional kitchen and we have to work on our time management, especially now we are over half way and have assessment approaching. I was really disappointed but he was absolutely right. I feel confident that I lined up my tasks - what to chop when, what to start cooking when - well, and I never had anything sitting waiting for an ingredient or overcooking, which I am pleased with. I could have cooked my shallot faster, and in turn, got my chicken stock reduced quicker, as this really held me up. It was a sobering moment for all of us, and gave us something to think about this evening.

Chef made a tiramisu for us to take home (today's doggy bags were bin liners!) by layering up sponge fingers liberally splashed with Tia Maria and drizzled with strong coffee, a vanilla custard whisked with mascarpone and double cream, cocoa and grated 72% Valrhona chocolate, and chilling the whole thing for a few hours. It was designed to be a special treat for a long day. I'm saving mine for tomorrow, which I am determined will all go to plan! Well, maybe I could have just a little taste now...