Oh Gooberfish!

We started today by making granary bread, much in the same way as the other breads we have made and of course, we are now soon to be professionals so this was the easy bit. We used award-winning Cotswold Crunch flour, a mixture of strong white bread flour, malt flour, malted wheat flakes and rye flour, with added pinhead oatmeal and barley. We did a couple of things differently today - one of the benefits of being taught by a variety of chefs with different approaches. We didn't use flour on our surface today, only to dust our hands, and left the dough to prove in the oven set to 32°C as this was a surefire way of providing a stable proving environment. One the dough had doubled in size we knocked it back, shaped it, left it to prove again and dusted with flour before baking. Sadly time ran away with us a bit today due to the other tasks we had to get through (see below!) and when we very carefully slashed the loaves after dusting, and they all collapsed, there was little we could do other than put them into the oven at 275°C, before immediately dropping the temperature to 220°C, and hope for the best. You will have to take my word for it that the bread was delicious enough for me to smuggle some home for breakfast tomorrow.

Next we made poached eggs. Now, I thought I had cracked this (no pun intended) a few months ago, but I was wrong. I liked my poached eggs as a product of a very light simmer, encouraging the eggs to sink with minimal seepage and cooking in a fairly recognisably eggy shape. Chef, however, preambled the correct method by describing this product as 'comedy rubber eggs'. Ah well. Back to the drawing board then. A perfect poached egg is a pod, essentially. The water should be deep and in a large pan and on a fairly vigorous simmer, with a dash of white wine vinegar (I was about to get snobby about not bothering to make them if you only have malt vinegar before I remembered that chef talked about using red wine vinegar with a brunch including shallots and bacon!) If you can position the pan so that half of it is bubbling away and half isn't, all the better as the egg will be pushed from the hotter side of the pan - the entry point, to the cooler side to cook. Crack the egg into a ramekin and lower this into the water at an angle so that the egg is almost pulled out of the ramekin into the water. The egg will take about 3 minutes to cook, at which point the white is visibly cooked but the yolk still feels fairly squidgy (technical term!) to the touch. At this point remove the eggs to a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking process if you are not serving straight away; the eggs can be stored in the fridge and can be re-simmered for about 45 seconds to reheat later. When serving, the wispy pieces of egg white should be removed to leave your 'pod' of poached egg.

(Top-Bottom) A Gurnard, and Jar Jar Binks

Our next task was to fillet a gurnard. A gurnard is a large, catfish-like fish that resembles Jar Jar Binks. It is also, perhaps more commonly, known as 'poor man's red mullet' because of its delicate flavour. They cost about £7 each. It has a defined bone structure quite different from plaice or mackerel, and tough skin with sharp spines protruding from fins and tail. We removed these spines using scissors before cutting in behind the gill up towards the 'neck' before twisting off the head. Quite a lot of flesh below the gill can be removed through this stage as it is not of good quality. Laying the fish on its side, with the tail towards us, we then cut down to the side of the spine in a series of swipes to cut the flesh away towards the ribs, but not all the way to the base of the fish. Then, halfway down the fish, below the end of the ribs, we cut through from side of spine to belly and cut the fillet away to the tail. We then used scissors to free the fillet from the ribs, cut the ribs out of the fillet and used tweezers to remove the tough pin bones. Easy, huh? What was not quite so easy was the sight of (albeit harmless) worms that had worked their way into the belly flesh and needed to be removed. I thought I had a record of four, but a classmate found about 10 in hers. And they carried on wriggling on the board. Pretty grim.

We cut the fillet into three sections, scored the skin, oiled and salted and baked it at 200°C for four minutes, flesh-side down, before resting it on the hot tray under a lid so that the residual heat could continue cooking it to perfection. We served the fish with slices of our granary bread, griddled, some sauteed spinach with a little butter and our poached egg topped with hollandaise sauce (made by chef, we will get our turn next week!). We decorated the plate with garlic-infused basil oil made by warming olive oil with whole crushed garlic cloves, liquidising with a bunch of blanched and refreshed basil and straining through muslin for a couple of hours. All very delicious, as long as you put the worms thing far from your mind!

That duck leg is hiding because it is embarrassed at its state

After lunch we got on with duck butchery. A duck has a more defined bone structure than a chicken so this was decidely easier than last week's butchery exercise. The essential differences are that the breastplate is more defined and easier to cut against, there is a lot more, thicker, excess skin to remove, a tougher wishbone and a larger, longer breast. Once we had battled through the butchery, we kept the breasts in the fridge for later in the week and the legs were dotted with holes ready for confit. We made a marinade with black peppercorns, sea salt, whole unpeeled garlic cloves, thyme and bay leaves pounded in a pestle and mortar with some brandy and the confit process will continue tomorrow after the legs have spent the night skin-side down in this marinade.

For dinner this evening we took home lamb tagine with couscous. The diced lamb shoulder was stored in a marinade yesterday and today we browned it in a pan after sweating off sliced onion and a little salt. The lamb was seared at a high enough heat to begin to catch on the bottom of the pan, so the chicken stock we then added served to deglaze this. Once all of the chicken stock had been added, we brought the mix up to a simmer before adding a cinnamon stick and some saffron and leaving the meat to simmer, lidded, for a few hours until the meat was meltingly tender and the sauce had reduced. Towards the end of cooking, dried apricots were added so that they could absorb the liquid and rehydrate, and right at the end of cooking some chopped coriander was stirred through.

The tagine was served with couscous, made totally differently to how any of us had prepared before, but which made absolute sense. As chef pointed out, what other grain would we ever soak in hot water to cook? Instead, we laid muslin cloth inside a steamer basket and steamed our couscous inside this for about 10 minutes until it had swollen and become fluffy. We broke it up with olive oil as usual, and stirred through toasted almonds, chopped mint, lemon juice and seasoning. And I am off to eat it now!

Chest pains

Today's menu seemed fairly simple, which was a good thing after an exhausting weekend full of amazing food, such as an obligatory award-winning Friday Fish & Chips, and a delicious veg-fest on Sunday.

However, how foolish that was. Our first job of the day was to marinade some diced lamb shoulder in a mixture of garlic, ginger and ground cinnamon that had been turned to a paste in a pestle and mortar ready for a tajine tomorrow. Then we had to prepare a breast of lamb. Now, I have done this before so thought I might be ok. What I didn't reckon on was our lamb breasts today being from young lambs which hadn't been hung for very long and so the flesh was more tender than it could be. We started by cutting the ribs away from the meat, and then had to peel off the layer of fat and the silvery membrane each side of the meat. This was nigh-on impossible as the meat hadn't dried out much, and a lot of it had to be painstakingly cut away bit by bit so that it wouldn't burn on cooking. After a while, it became a bit of a game of 'hunt the piece of meat' on our micro-lamb breasts, which we eventually patch-worked into a fairly tidy square and rolled up into a cylinder before tying with string along the length. The breast can be stuffed before rolling, with lemon zest, garlic, anchovies, capers, chicken mousseline or any other complementary flavours.

We browned the meat after seasoning with salt in a very hot pan before adding a mirepoix (chopped carrot, onion, celery and leek), cooking this through, removing the lamb to a large clean pan and deglazing the pan with a little beef (or veal) stock. All the vegetables and stock then went into the pan before being covered with a cartouche of baking parchment and a lid and being cooked at 200°C for about three hours. After this point the lamb was very tender and we rolled it tightly in a double layer of clingfilm to give it a consistent round shape before cooling. The vegetables and stock were strained and forced through a sieve before any excess fat was removed, and this was also stored ready for tomorrow. This dish will definitely represent a labour of love but chef was sure we will see it as worthwhile, especially considering the meat cost £1.50 - £3 to start with!

By now many of us had pretty much lost the will to live, but gained a growing hunger as we were already close to lunchtime. Lunch today was the mackerel escabeche we had prepared on Friday. To serve with this we made a warm potato, bacon and shallot salad. We cut potato into small, even dice and brought this to the boil from cold with a little salt for about three minutes before draining. We prepared lardons from a trimmed rasher of smoked streaky bacon and fried this from cold so that the fat would render from it. Once the lardons had started to cook a little we added finely chopped shallot, softened this and mixed with the potato cubes. We made a vinaigrette by whisking a little white wine vinegar with mustard and finely chopped shallot and garlic before whisking in a slow drizzle of both rapeseed and olive oils. The vinaigrette becomes quite thick this way and can be loosened with a little water. Salt, sugar, pepper and lemon juice are added to season and adjust the consistency. Some of this vinaigrette was used to mix through the warm potato salad and a little was used to dress some salad leaves. The mackerel had cured beautifully over the weekend and could be broken down into chunks for presentation. We also used some edible flowers to make the dish beautiful to both eyes and palate.

After lunch we made shortbread biscuits by creaming softened butter with icing sugar before sifting in a mixture of plain flour and cornflour and combining this gently. This dough was then wrapped up in a double layer of clingfilm into a roll before chilling for an hour. After this time we removed the clingfilm, cut the dough into centimetre slices and baked the slices at 200°C for about 11 minutes. The biscuits should be removed from the oven before they gain too much colour and sprinkled with sugar to add texture. While the biscuits cool, they harden. These will form part of a dessert dish tomorrow.

Chef commended my quenelle but did point out
that it was a bit of a behemoth.

After breaking down our ham knuckles on Friday, we had ham ends leftover which we used today to make pea and ham soup. We sweated onion and garlic in butter and oil until soft before adding flour to make a roux, and loosening little by little this with ham stock (chicken stock can be used if the ham stock proves to salty but ours was fine). At this stage, defrosted frozen peas can be added and cooked through for a couple of minutes before thoroughly blending in a food processor, straining to remove any pea fibres and keeping warm in a clean pan, seasoning to taste. We presented this dish by placing a mound of shredded ham in the centre of a soup plate before surrounding with the soup, adding some finely chopped fresh mint and a quenelle of lightly whipped, peppered double cream on top.

Chef liked my presentation,
but next time I will use a round plate!

Today we learnt how to make a cointreau sabayon, one of our assessment dishes. This is similar to an Italian zbaglione and is essentially a lightly cooked, highly whisked custard. We whisked eggs, sugar, orange zest and cointreau in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until it thickened - but before it turned to scrambled eggs! This took a little while. We had diced a mixture of fruit so that we had a combination of pineapple, blueberries, orange segments (cut off the peel around the fruit and cut out segments between the fibrous segment divisions), raspberries and passion fruit. The mixture of fruit should change with the seasons. I plated my fruit in a chef ring on a plate and the sabayon was spooned on top before browning with a blowtorch. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed this dish to eat but the execution was fun as was decorating the plate! We learned that the temperature of the plate should reflect the focus of the dish - in this case, the sabayon, therefore a warm plate. However, this presents problems as it encourages the fruit to release its juice, so I drained mine to prevent this.

Tomorrow we tackle a personal challenge - hollandaise. I want to really nail this one. And I will get to tell you whether that lamb was worth all the hassle!

One third full!

We spent the first hour of yesterday going over key points from what we'd learnt, having the opportunity to ask questions over anything that we wanted clarified or expanded upon. Rob Dawe gave us yet more tips as we went along, such as getting beef bones from the butcher for free to make stock, but that veal bones make a better stock and should cost about £1.30/kg, that meat or fish stock, once made, can be reduced to a tenth of its volume and frozen in cubes for later use - but that fish stock ice cubes don't go well in a gin and tonic! We learned that a number of top restaurants will make sauces up to the stage before butter is used to finish them before they are frozen so that they can be easily stored and portioned with minimal wastage for the time that has gone into making them.

Having made goujons from our filleted plaice on Thursday, on Friday we learned to fillet mackerel. Mackerel are currently further out to sea, making them more expensive than at the height of Summer, when they cost as little as £1.50 each. Rob told us of his horror last week when some fish were delivered to the school that cost a legitimate £10 each due to being further out to sea - their massive size doing little to allay the sting at this sharp increase in price. As with other fish, they should be checked to ensure they have bright, shining eyes and clear gills upon purchase, and farmed fish, such as some seabass, will have bite marks on their tails where their high density in the pools means they attack each other.

Having been shown how to fillet mackerel at River Cottage, I have practised my skills on a fishing trip to Cornwall. Ashburton showed us a different way, by first making a cut at the top of their 'neck' before removing the head, but then, rather than gutting the fish - which makes quite a mess of both knife and board - instead removing each fillet by cutting from tail to head, keeping the knife as close to the bones either side of the spine as possible and using a smooth sawing motion. Fish filleting is a job where it is clearer than ever just how important it is to have a very sharp knife which is appropriate for the task in hand. The ribcage should then be removed from each fillet by cutting from its middle towards the underside of the fish and cutting this off. The fillets can then be tidied up before the central pinbones are removed either by using a pair of tweezers or be cutting a V-shaped 'trench' in the middle of the fish - without cutting through the skin, of course! Mackerel fillets should have the skin scored before panfrying, and the seethrough membrane on the skin should be removed if the fish is to be used as sashimi or sushi.

The mackerel fillets were liberally salted and left to cure for about an hour while we prepared a sousing liquor. We finely sliced shallots and garlic and softened these in olive and corn oil before adding bay leaf, saffron, peppercorns and cloves, shortly followed by white wine, sherry and white wine vinegar. We then julienned some carrot (very fine strips) before adding these, cooking them slightly while we wiped most of the salt from the fillets and submerged them in this fragrant pickling liquor. They will be for lunch on Monday as mackerel escabeche - a popular tapas dish possibly from Portugal. The liquor can be personalised with different alcohols and aromatics and this works well with oily fish because they hold their shape well.

Boiled ham knuckles.
Not quite so appetising at this stage.

Having boiled some ham knuckles on Thursday, it was time to turn them into something beautiful. This was messy! We peeled away the skin and then spent time basically tidying them into hocks for lunch. This meant removing a fair bit of fat and gristly material, the large central bone and a nice amount of lovely meltingly tender ham trimmings for soup on Monday. The aim was to be left with something beautiful to look at and so we wlso French trimmed the remaining presentation bon. We made a glaze by mixing honey, demerera sugar and mustard and warming through to dissolve the sugar. This was poured on the ham to glaze it before roasting it for 15 minutes at 220°C, basting the meat with the melted glaze every five minutes.

Meanwhile, we made a parsley sauce by cooking out a roux - a mix of melted butter and flour - before loosening little by little with ham stock until a smooth and glossy sauce was achieved. We chopped some parsley to add at the last minute and tasted the sauce for seasoning before leaving it warming while we fried some chopped garlic in butter, cooked through finely shredded savoy cabbage and a little water and seasoning.

Glazed ham hock with parsley sauce, sauteed cabbage
and piccalilli. Delicious Defined.

To present our lunch, we painted a little glaze on a slate, created a bed for the ham hock with the cabbage and stirred the parsley through our sauce and pouring it into a jug. We also got to have some of the piccalilli we made earlier in the week. Despite having eaten very well all week, being vocal about having to cut this back, and members of our group professing small appetites, we ALL cleaned our plates thoroughly in a silent lunch of unabated bliss. Considering a ham knuckle costs about £3.50, and we have plenty of ham left over, as well as lovely ham stock and jelly for terrines, this is well worth trying at home!

Last job of the day was bakewell tarts. We made sweet pastry earlier in the day in a way I'd never tried - but which makes total sense. We mixed the softened butter with icing sugar with our (cold, hopefully) hands, before adding sifted flour and a little egg yolk / water mix at a time until a soft dough was achieved. It was important not to overwork the dough so that the butter melted and split. Chef informed us that we could use frozen butter grated into the mix and chill all other ingredients - and that he had even seen chefs making sweet pastry inside walk-in fridges! The dough was rested in the fridge while we got on with other cooking, and later in the day we rolled it out, lined deep tart cases with it and blind baked it as we had the shortcrust pastry. This time, towards the end of cooking, chef demonstrated how we could use an egg wash to 'laminate' the tart case and prevent leaks. Once the cases were baked we removed the excess pastry overhang with a sharp knife and brushed out crumbs - to blow them away as you might at home is obviously a big professional kitchen no-no!

We made the frangipane filling by hand too - manually "whisking" softened butter and caster sugar before slowly adding beaten egg mix to avoid curdling the mixture. Then sifted flour was mixed through, as well as ground almonds. We spread a layer of seedless raspberry jam in the bottom of each case before loading the cases almost full of the frangipane mix and topping with flaked almonds. We started baking the tarts at 200°C for 17 minutes before lowering the temperature to 170°C for a further 8 minutes.

Reaching the point at which we have completed one third of our course was a bittersweet moment. I have learnt so much already, gained so much confidence in my cooking and there is so much more to come, but to only have four weeks left seems so little. It was a little relief to learn that we have all passed our Food Safety level Three qualification, and will find out in our final week whether or not we achieved a merit. I am celebrating my achievements so far this weekend with a food festival tomorrow - and a nice long run to counteract some of this wonderful food!

Posh fish finger sandwiches!

Today we were taught by the fantastic Rob Dawe, who has worked with Rick Stein and now, seven years in, tutors at Ashburton part-time while he concentrates on other personal projects such as pop-ups, supper clubs and restaurant consultancy. He has a long history of teaching and enthusing others about food and cookery and it really shows. Like all the tutors, he clearly loves his job, and it's impossible to not be swept up in the enthusiasm and to want to absorb as much information as possible.

We started today by making spelt bread. Spelt is an ancient grain currently very popular as a gluten-free alternative to wheat as it is easier to digest. We made the dough in much the same way as on Monday, creating a wet dough ('wetter is better!') with honey rather than sugar to activate the yeast, and adding a little cumin for flavour, kneading for 10 minutes before proving it in a loaf tin for about an hour and baking it for about 25 minutes. Despite being a whole grain loaf, it is light and has produced an airy loaf with a lovely crust, likely due to the dough being wetter to start. I am having some for dinner!

Rob gave us some tips about breadmaking, such as proving dough slowly overnight in a fridge so that it can be baked first thing in the morning, and proving and shaping dough before freezing it, so that it can be defrosted (allowing it to rise) and baked, which helps with baking large quantities.

With thanks to Daisy for allowing me to take this picture,
as I had started eating mine before I remembered my camera!

Lunch today started by warming through the caramelised onion soup, seasoning it to taste and serving it with parmesan croutons. After filleting our fish yesterday, today we turned them into goujons. We cut the fillets into long strips, dipped these in egg beaten with a little milk, followed by flour, followed by panko breadcrumbs (a process known as 'to pané.) While these chilled, we turned our leftover mayonnaise into tartare sauce by adding finely chopped red onion, washed capers and gherkins and sone flat leaf parsley. We deep fried our goujons at a high heat and had them for lunch with a little tartare sauce.

All through the morning we were boiling a knuckle of ham - we brought it to the boil, changed the water and refreshed it, added an onion studded with a couple of cloves holding a bay leaf onto it (a 'clouté') and left it simmering all morning, occasionally skimming off scum or topping up the water. We will make use of them tomorrow but in preparation we made piccalilli. We cut cauliflower, shallots, green beans and deseeded courgettes and cucumber into the same sized small chunks and layered them with salt, covered with water and left to brine for about 45 minutes. This process keeps them crunchy and vibrant by drawing out excess moisture. Meanwhile we mixed caster sugar, crushed garlic, mustard, ground ginger, turmeric and distilled vinegar and brought this to a simmer until the sugar dissolved. The kitchen turned into quite a potent mist! Once the vegetables were ready they were drained and well rinsed before adding to the mix and cooking for fifteen minutes. Then we added a small amount of flour mixed with fresh vinegar and cooked to thicken for five minutes. It smelled delicious and I will confirm tomorrow! If we were making this at home it could be stored in a sterilised jar for six months and once opened it would need to be used up within a fortnight.

We made sweet pastry today ready for bakewell tarts tomorrow by gently mixing softened butter with icing sugar by hand, before gently mixing in sifted flour and gradually adding an egg yolk beaten with a little water to form a soft dough without overworking it. The egg yolk adds colour and the icing sugar gives a softer and more consistent texture than caster as it is much finer. The pastry will be chilled overnight and used tomorrow. Pastry cases can also be prepared this way, chilled, rolled and used to line cases before being frozen in their case and blind baked from frozen.

Thanks to Liz for loaning me her tart as a model after
my co-chef inflicted a minor mishap upon mine!

We used yesterday's spare shortcrust pastry case to make treacle tarts by blending an egg, double cream and lemon zest with golden syrup, adding breadcrumbs and almonds (for flavour and texture) and pouring this into the case before baking for about 22 minutes. I am planning on treating myself to this with a little clotted cream leftover from last week's scones!

One of our assessed dishes for the course is griddled chicken breast with sweetcorn a la Francaise, and we practised this today with feedback from Rob. We used the chicken breasts we had butchered on Monday (these had been vacuum packed and frozen to preserve them), which we oiled before sealing in a griddle pan to retain moisture and flavour. They were then oven baked for 10 minutes until they reached a core temperature of 70°C. Meanwhile we sautéed potatoes by frying slices of potato we had cooked in its skin before cooling and peeling, using clarified butter for crisp tastiness. The sweetcorn a la Francaise was made by frying thinly sliced shallot and small chunks of chorizo, adding a little flour once softened to make a roux, cooking off the flour before adding chicken stock. Once the mixture had thickened a little we added sweetcorn, finely sliced baby gem lettuce and finished the dish off the heat with a little creme fraiche and seasoning.

Chef was pleased with the finished dish which he said was well seasoned, proportioned and presented. I'll take that! It certainly made a lovely dinner.

Hard to believe that tomorrow marks the point at which we are 1/3 of the way through the course, already. With everything I've learned so far, who knows where I'll be and how I'll be getting on in another two week's time!

Know your onions

I woke up this morning long after the alarm clock had gone off, with dead arms and the pattern of my pillow firmly embossed in my eye skin. These facts told me that I am both sleeping well and needing to. Yesterday wasn't too taxing but I knew that we would be covering a lot today and that if I was too tired to go for a run after school on Tuesday, then it would take some doing to pound the pavement this evening.

We were taught by Rob Spencer again today and it was made clear early on that we should expect the pace to pick up and for demonstrations to be pared down. No more watching chef chop onions, we would spend today watching recipes being assembled and having a number of tasks set in parallel so that we learn to multitask, take initiative and practise our existing skills. 

There were two onion soups to make today, both 'cream of' and 'caramelised', and no tears were shed. We made the former first, which involved sweating off four finely sliced (along the grain) white onions in melted butter, adding salt to encourage the onion to release liquid and to prevent caramelisation. After this had softened and turned translucent, we added finely sliced celery, and after a further few minutes we added chopped garlic. Once this, too, had softened, we added some white wine, allowed it to reduce a little before adding some thyme and a bay leaf along with chicken stock. This bubbled away happily for a good while before being blended, strained (just in case!) and finished with cream. This soup was the first item we have made that required formally presenting to the chef. I knew as I was finishing the soup that it was too thick, and rather than asking chef what best to loosen it with, I left it. This was one of the biggest lessons I learned today - I am getting better asking chef questions, checking done-ness of my cooking and telling him when I think something is ready, and I know that, for me, this is linked with growing confidence in my own skills. As soon as we both sat down, chef asked me what I thought he was going to say, and I told him it was too thick, and when we tasted it it was clear that as my soup had reduced a little too far, the flavour had intensified, meaning the soup was also too cautiously underseasoned. He was absolutely right and this is a learning curve but I did want to kick myself. When I got home to have it for dinner I did have to giggle - after chilling, it could be turned upside down in its tub without spillage. Ah well!

Yesterday's shortcrust pastry and roasted vegetables were brought together in a quiche today, which we ate for lunch. The vegetables were layered with the cheese before the space in the case was filled with an egg and cream mixture and baked. I was surprised that for once my 'eyes bigger than belly' stance was acceptable - the vegetables and cheese could be layered in the case until it domed as it would sink down as the cheese melted. We ate it still warm and it was delicious - not 'eggy' at all as so many other quiches.

 Served alongside the quiche was a fennel coleslaw - we finely sliced fennel, white cabbage and shallot, allowed it to soften with salt and lemon juice while we made a mayonnaise by hand. We whisked egg yolks with a little mustard and vinegar - the mustard helps to bind and adds colour - and then kept whisking as we gradually added corn oil until the mixture thickened. Once we had added seasoning and lemon juice to taste, we drained the sliced raw vegetables and mixed a little mayonnaise through it to bind. We'd all been fearing the mayonnaise making that morning but in the small quantities we were making, it was surprisingly easy - and a world away from shop-bought gloop.

After lunch we got onto making the caramelised onion soup. For this we used red onions, left out the salt while the onions softened so that they could caramelise, which took about 20 minutes. After this point we added garlic we had pureed by hand and cooked this for a few minutes before adding a little flour to thicken the onions before loosening with madeira and adding veal stock little by little. We will have this for lunch tomorrow with the parmesan croutons we also made.

While we made the soup we started on chocolate brownies. We toasted hazelnuts in the oven before skinning and breaking into chunks with a rolling pin. We creamed eggs and sugar, mixed with melted butter and folded in sifted flour and cocoa powder before adding the hazelnuts and white chocolate drops. This mixture was piped into greased and lined baking rings and baked for about 17 minutes. We made mini piping bags and decorated plates with melted untempered 53% chocolate before filling these designs with the vanilla custard we made yesterday. The plate was also decorated with crushed pistachios to add a little colour. I can confirm that after extensive testing, my verdict on the brownies is that they were expertly cooked, with a gooey centre balanced by the but chunks adding texture. Testing is always a hard part of the day, but we have to do it in order to learn, I suppose...

Having rattled through everything on our prep list for the day, we moved on to filleting plaice. I have filleted mackerel before after catching it on a fishing trip, but I've never worked with a flat fish before. Turns out, as long as you have a very sharp filleting knife and some balls, it's not hard!

Chef talked us through what to look for in a fresh fish - shiny eyes that haven't sunk, healthy gills with no discolouration due to oxidisation. Flat fish are gutted at sea because they feed on shellfish on the sea bed which can quickly become toxic and deteriorate or poison the fish after catching. Plaice have four fillets - two on each side, with those on the side of the roe sac and belly being smaller. We started by removing the two fillets on the topside of the fish by cutting along the spine in the centre of the fish and cutting along the rib bones towards the fins. I managed to cut the two bottom fillets off in one go, cutting from the fins inwards and continuing out to the opposite fins. Then we tidied up the perimeter of the fillets and cut them away from the skin. We kept the bones to make stock and will use the fillets tomorrow to make goujons for lunch with tartare made from today's leftover mayonnaise.

Tomorrow is a busy day of spelt bread, treacle tarts and ham knuckles. And a downside to doing a pretty good job of my filleting is that I will be having a big lunch! On the flipside, I will be working in a pair tomorrow, leaving someone else to work solo for a few days.

Oh, and I did manage that run this evening. Another good night's sleep awaits!

Monster mash

Whilst we didn't really cover anything today that I hadn't ever tackled before, it was good to get some technique firmed up and learn some extra tips along the way. Today was my second day working solo although it seemed a lot calmer than yesterday, perhaps because we had less to cover that needed to be completed in pairs. Tomorrow, however, looks manic and will be my last day working alone for a while as we will rotate workstations on Thursday. I have a feeling I will need and deserve a glass of wine tomorrow night!

Stretchy dough skin proves it's time to prove!

First up, we made french-style loaves. These involved making a much wetter dough than last Friday's rolls, and which was also much more delicate after proving. Essentially, the core skills were the same, minus dividing the dough into four and adding seeds. As before, the dough needed to be kneaded (ha!) until it was possible to stretch it into a skin without breaking it. This was trickier today as the dough was much stickier and harder to work with as it must be kept moving to stop it from sticking to the worktop! as the glutens stretch, the dough becomes harder to work with. This is certainly exercise!









I decided to make a jumbo baguette style loaf by stretching the proved and knocked-back dough into a rectangle before slowly rolling it back in on itself, securing each turn before the next, and sealing and tucking under the ends. The shaped loaf was liberally dusted, slashed along the top and left to prove again before baking at 230°C for 35 minutes with water thrown into the bottom of the oven at the last minute to create steam.

Once the loaf came out of the oven it was a beautiful, crusty thing and the taste was well worth the effort. Readers of this blog will know that I am a bread fan, especially the French stuff, and worry more than a little over those who fear the carb.

 As with most baked goods requiring a raising agent or yeast, it is important not to open the oven door during cooking, or at least to allow enough time to pass for the surface to withstand a brief temperature dip when you do open the door to check. We checked our loaves after about 20 minutes and adjusted the timings accordingly. Some needed longer than others depending on their shape and depth, and we knew they were ready when tapping them on the bottom produced a hollow sound. We had slices of still-warm bread with our lunch and took the rest home with us, what a treat!

Another of today's jobs was to line and bake our shortcrust pastry for tarts using yesterday's shortcrust pastry. We allowed the pastry to warm up to room temperature after a night in the fridge before rolling it out on a floured surface. the pastry needed to be repeatedly turned round a quarter during rolling to achieve consistent thickness. We brushed tartlet cases with butter and dusted with flour before cutting a circle of rolled-out pastry much larger than required, placing the tartlet tin base in the centre of the circle under the dough and carefully folding four sides inwards. The tin base was then placed back into the tin before the pastry was carefully pressed little by little into the tin so that there were no gaps, holes or air pockets under the pastry. This was tricky! It is important not to remove any excess pastry at this point as it will shrink as it cooks. It also helps to use a little extra pastry to press the corners fully into the tin. Later in the day we blind baked the tartlet cases. This involves placing a circle of greaseproof paper into the case, filling it with dried beans and baking for about 20 minutes until the base of the tartlet looks dry. The beans help to weigh down the pastry and stop it from forming bubbles or puffing up. After this point the beans can be removed and the pastry can be baked for a further three minutes until it is light golden. Once it is cool, the extra pastry overhang can be removed by using a peeler or sharp knife to cut it away from the centre bit by bit. The cases are left in their tins to protect them and will stay like this with the filling baking in them. We will fill our cases tomorrow with the roasted vegetable mix we made today.

Lunch today was coq au vin with mash. We prepped our chicken thigh and drumstick as part of yesterday's chicken butchery class and marinated them overnight with red wine, whole shallots and chunks of cut celery and carrot with herbs. Today we removed the chicken and left it to dry a little, drained the wine marinade into a saucepan, brought it to the boil and strained it through a damp muslin cloth. The marinading process left behind protein and fat debris from the chicken and this needed to be cooked off and removed through this process. Then we browned the chicken in a frying pan over a high heat, removed this and fried off bacon lardons and a tied bunch of herbs with the vegetables before placing all of these into a pan. The wine and some chicken stock went in too, and the mix was brought to the boil before cooking in the oven for half an hour. After this point we strained off the liquid, removed excess fat by dragging some clean paper towel across the surface of the liquid to absorb it without removing the stock, and then thickened this stock by whisking cornflour and water into it while it simmered. I could have thickened mine more, but you live and learn! We fried off some chunky button mushrooms and stirred these through the casserole with some chiffonaded (chopped) parsley.

As for the mash, well. I have devoted a whole post on this blog previously to the perils of making mash and was interested to see how we would tackle it today. We cooked (medium sized) chunks of (floury) potato in (cold) water with a decent few pinches of salt. Then we drained the cooked potato and allowed it to dry before forcing it through a sieve. We added a decent splash of (cold) double cream, a sizeable and continually checked helping of salt and a LOT of butter, gradually beating this in with a spatula. Mash will take a massive amount of butter, and a half-half mix of potato and butter is a good thing. So good. Don't heat the mash to melt the butter or it will split back out into an oily mess. Perfect mash should be like silk and velvet combined.

In the afternoon we made a lemon drizzle cake. I have made a fair few of these in my life as they were a cafe favourite. However, a few new tips included buttering the tin and dusting with caster sugar to add crunch to the cake, and mixing the lemon zest in early on when creaming the butter and sugar so that the essential oils can be released.

We also made vanilla custard, which I have not done for well over a year but managed not to turn into sweet scrambled eggs! Hurrah. Those of you with a temp probe may be interested to know that custard needs to cook up to 82°C, which means taking it off the heat at 80°C. Cooking the blended sugar, eggs and warm cream/milk mix in a clean saucepan ensures that nothing left in the bottom of the milk pan burns, and using an induction hob for this wherever possible also ensures the custard doesn't overcook.

Tomorrow's delights include onion soup, mayonnaise, quiche and chocolate brownie. And also a long run, by the sounds of it!

How to totally butcher a chicken.

Week two, day one. Already!

Today we were tutored by Phil Oram, who knows his chickens. Which is just as well as he talked us through how to butcher one.

There are nine people in our group and this means that there will always be one person working solo in the kitchen. Today, it was me, and as I learnt very quickly, this is hard work! A large proportion of what we do is in pairs, meaning that the tasks can be shared, whereas a solo worker has to cover all the same tasks in the same amount of time.

Our first job was to make pasta dough ready for later, so that it could rest and chill, allowing the glutens to develop. I've made pasta a few times and have a pasta machine at home, which gets far from enough use and I am always on the lookout for more tips and practise. We used, type 00 flour, an egg and egg yolk for 110g, a little nutmeg, salt and olive oil. The liquid was added gradually in a bowl until the dough resembled damp breadcrumbs, at which point it was brought together and kneaded for five minutes. Much less mess this was than I am used to! The dough was pressed into a disc, wrapped in clingfilm and chilled for later.

Next was tomato sauce, ready for our ragu. This is where solo working was the biggest challenge - I cored, deseeded, deskinned and chopped a kilo of tomatoes, chopped an onion and some garlic and sweated them off with herbs whilst others did this in pairs. But I kept up! Huzzah. Sauce-enhancing substances and techniques included bruising the tomato stalks with a rolling pin to cook with the sauce, and straining the discarded seeds and skins for extra cooking liquid.

While that was left to 'talk to itself' as Phil would say, we prepped some lovely wild mushrooms by giving them a quick dunk in salted water before leaving them to dry on paper while we cleaned and trimmed them. We had chanterelles, hedgehog fungus, and some cluster mushrooms similar to enoki. Some needed gentle de-gritting with a little paper towel, the hedgehog fungus needed the underside of the cap scraped to remove gills that would otherwise burn. Once clean, these were cut into slices that would still look appealing on the finished dish. We also prepared other ingredients for the risotto we would have for lunch, such as chopped onion and grated parmesan.

Once everything was ready for making our lunch, we got on to butchering chicken. Our chickens came from Sladesdown farm, and Phil described the great care that goes into the husbandry of each free range, organic bird. This included what to look for when buying a good chicken - such as not having visible red hock burns on their leg joints, which would indicate that their bedding was not changed frequently and they spent time nesting in their own waste. Visible fat lines on the bird's legs and breasts indicate that they spent a good deal of time freely roaming.

When it came to breaking down my chicken into its component parts, safe to say that a) I did not replicate Phil's skills exactly and b) I will need to buy and portion a good few chickens before I am formally assessed on how to do it properly in a few weeks time.

It should have been easy enough.

1. Remove legs, including the 'oysters' just about the thigh joint (I managed to leave them on the carcass)
2. Remove wings (just about got this one)
3. Turn the chicken breast down and carefully remove the intact wishbone - assessed element (I called chef over when I couldn't find the wishbone. Which was evidently due to the fact I was rummaging around in its arse end instead of the neck end)
4. Cut the breasts out by cutting down either side of the breastbone and between the wing and shoulderblade (somehow managed to chop up one end instead of leaving it in one nice presentable section)
5. Divide thigh and drumstick (think I managed this by luck)
6. French trim the knuckle by scoring the skin and scraping towards the end before cutting off the knuckle after scoring the bone all the way round (by this point everything was covered in raw slippery chicken juice so rather than risk chopping off my finger I instead shattered the chicken bone)
7. Remove the chicken fillets, trim the fat, french trim the knuckle and choose the best breast to present (this posed a significant problem)

We made saffron, pear and wild mushroom risotto for lunch. The stock was infused with saffron, the pear was peeled, cored and cubed before adding towards the end of cooking and the mushroom was fried in olive oil and butter to top the finished dish with grated parmesan. It was so good that I ate the dish I presented and everything that was left over as well. Oops. 

After lunch we made shortcrust pastry, which I was very pleased my usually hot hands managed not to overwork and melt. We shall see tomorrow, however, whether or not the pastry was too short!

We finished the ragu by browning a mixture of beef and pork mince, draining this before adding it to sweated onion garlic and dried herbs and mixing it with what was by now a delicious-smelling tomato sauce (stalks removed!). We left this again to 'talk to itself' while we rolled and cut our pasta. I learnt an obvious tip for keeping the strips of pasta square, by rolling the dough with a rolling pin first, doing a book fold in the dough, turning 90 degrees and rolling again before using the pasta machine. The cut pasta was tossed in semolina before cooking in salted boiling waster for a couple of minutes, mixing with some of the ragu and presenting in a bowl with parmesan shavings. I need to keep an eye on my seasoning, and also need to tone down my portion sizes!

Tomorrow will be coq au vin and baguettes from scratch. Can't wait. Come back to read about it!