Week 3: Puff Pastry, the F*cking Pheasant, Coquilles Saint-Jacques and “Le Travail de L’Entremetier”

Is it really the end of week three?  Time is really flying now, and I just haven’t had the time or energy to blog this week, so let’s get caught up!

Remember how I said that the dishes were going to start getting a lot more difficult?  Well, no kidding.

Perhaps I should re-phrase that:  the dishes aren’t getting that much more difficult in terms of technique, but they are much more hectic in terms of organization.  Instead of focusing on one or two techniques like in Basic Cuisine, the dishes now have several things going on at once, all of which need to come together with the right timing. 

A perfect example was Monday’s dish, Coulibiac de Saumon Frais et Fumé (Fresh and Smoked Salmon in Puff Pastry).  It’s an interesting presentation with layers of rice, mushrooms, salmon, onions, hard boiled eggs, and parsley in a puff pastry crust. 

After the demo on Monday morning, I had a break of a few hours before the practical.  I decided to be a keener and go home and make a batch of puff pastry.  It’s not a difficult thing to make, but I don’t have a lot of use for it at home, so I rarely practice it.  I baked a few pieces and it turned out perfectly.  Yay me!

Famous last words.

When we got into the kitchen for the practical, the room itself was an oven.  It was hotter than the surface of the sun.  The other Intermediate Cuisine section had just finished their practical so ovens, flat tops and burners had been on for hours.  Every surface in the kitchen was warm, and puff pastry demands cold but softened butter.  You can imagine what started to happen.  Rapidly melting butter was squishing out the ends of my pastry every time I tried to roll it.  I ended up throwing the thing in the freezer to get it to firm up just a little.  I chilled my hands before working with it, chilled my rolling pin, etc.  But every time I touched the dough it got messy.  I said some very bad words.

Fortunately, my dish turned out mostly okay, but I spent far too much time praying over the pastry and could have been done, with a better dish, a whole lot sooner.  Lesson learned – if there’s puff pastry, make sure the sous chef brings a bin of ice to class.

This week we also made Ballotine de Faisan Farci (De-boned stuffed pheasant).  I simply call it The Fucking Pheasant.  If you are unfamiliar with pheasant, once it’s stripped of its colourful plumage, it’s a scrawny little game bird (think over-grown grouse).  It has lots of delicate little bones, a zillion tiny nerves and tendons everywhere, and thin flesh and skin.  And it has to be de-boned completely without ripping it to shreds.  Arrrrggggghhhhh…….

And if that weren’t frustrating enough, we also had to make a farce fine, similar to that from the Chartreause de Riz de Veau last week, but with fun additions like cooked barley, chicken livers, peeled pistachios, and pickled ox tongue.   Then roll it up, tie it, pray that it cooks, glaze it, and somewhere along the line prepare some artichokes and onions and a sauce from the pheasant bones.  Two and a half hours?  Yeah… right. My pheasant was undercooked, but it wasn’t a wash-out.  I came home, threw it in the fridge and studiously ignored it for the rest of the evening.

The other dishes this week were a little simpler, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t go spectacularly wrong.  On Thursday we made Coquilles Saint-Jacques à la Nantaise (Scallops), and Petit Marmite Vendéenne (basically a mixed seafood dish).  But the catch is that, for the purposes of the practical class, they are prepared together.  And much of the preparation is so similar (searing scallops, steaming mussels, etc) that you can completely lose track of what dish you are working on and what goes on which plate. 

And the Chef (who, like most other Chefs) has a mildly sadistic streak, came around at the beginning of the class and asked us what time we would be ready to present our dishes.  The guy at the station next to me, who is pretty fast, said he would be ready at 8:30.  When the Chef asked me, I said 8:40 – I figured if I could keep a good pace and allow an extra few minutes to screw something up/lose my shit, I would probably be okay.  When the Chef shouted “Sarah, 20 minutes!” I looked at what seemed to be several dozen pots on my flat top and thought “Okay Fudge – you can do this.”

I think I plated close to on time, but I had a serious problem – my sauces started to break.  If you’ve ever heard the term but don’t know what it means, it’s when you have an emulsified (fat being combined with liquid) sauce, and the fat starts to separate.  If you have time, you can often get them back together with a whisk and some elbow grease, but once it’s on the plate, you are more or less screwed.  I was sorta screwed.  But, at least I put the right sauce on the right plate, unlike at least one of my classmates, and I didn’t cremate my scallops under the salamander (broiler).  In fact, the Chef thought my sauce wasn’t browned enough and stuck it back under the broiler just long enough that I thought I was going to burst into flames. 

Friday was our first workshop class – Le Travail de L’Entremetier.  It was a five hour class designed to test our ability to work in groups and to prepare and serve a variety of dishes on time.  In the kitchen brigade, the Entremetier usually prepares dishes like hot appetizers, soups, eggs, etc.  Our group prepared Quiche Lorraine, Pommes Dauphine, Mousseline de Celéri-Rave, Gratin de Courgettes, and soft boiled eggs with spinach and Sauce Mornay.  Not especially difficult, or shouldn’t be by this stage.

The Chef we had for the workshop was not our usual Chef.  This Chef had a very different, much more hands-on style that I found instructive on “the right way” to do things, but too helpful in many ways.   When he saw someone struggling with something, he would snatch it out of their hands and pretty much do it for them, even though there was lots of time on the clock.  I found that very frustrating – that’s not how I learn.  Maybe he just wanted to get home at a decent hour like the rest of us?

I also expected a few curveballs in the workshop, but none came.  No requests for dairy-free or gluten-free.  No special orders, no last minute requests.   I would have thought for sure they’d find a way to make a simple menu a little more difficult, just to see if we could handle it.

We plated on time, and other than our Mousseline being a bit cold, he liked all our dishes.  No criticism at all.  Usually there are at least a handful of comments about plating style, taste, etc.  Maybe I don’t get enough positive reinforcement in my life, but I was a bit weirded out.  On the other hand, I’ll take a good grade when I can get one because the next workshop may not be so easy.

So what’s next?  Tomorrow is our mid-term evaluation with the Chef in the form of a 15 minute sit-down to talk about how we’re doing, what we need to practice, etc.  I’m not anticipating any surprises, but wish me luck!