A Busy Week 5: Puff Pastry, Bread, Eclairs, Tube Strikes, and The Lockhart

An entire weekend passed between our demo and practical, which meant I walked into the kitchen early Monday morning bleary eyed and a bit hazy on what I was doing there. Luckily, I had my notes to refer to and really nice classmates to help me along the way. I was meant to be whisking furiously while making the creme patisserie, but I wasn't capable of doing anything fast that early in the AM.

I finally managed to wake up by the end of the practical and eked out an alright looking bande feuilletee aux fruits de saison. Pretty fancy name for a relatively simple pastry! I've been trying out different cuts for the fruit garnish, but it's impossible to know what the chefs will like. For example, the chef for this demo wasn't such a fan of the diced mango. Who knew?

The hardest part for me is applying the egg wash, believe it or not. It's beyond annoying that such a small element of this dish is what's tripping me up. Arghhh!

What with all the pastries that I've been eating, I've been trying to step up my fitness. It's been a bit difficult since I usually work out at home, and Casper thinks all of this exercise nonsense is a bad idea.

I'm actually pretty glad I started running again since the tube has gone on strike this week and the next. It's nice to have running as an option in case the replacement buses are full. I've been fairly lucky with hopping on a bus for part of my journey since I've had a very early start most mornings, but it seems that lots of other people had the same idea. Traffic was pretty bad even before the sun came up!

Getting up so early for several days running has been a bit painful but necessary as we've had loads of demos and practicals this week.

We had our first bread session, which was pretty fun. I was a bit over enthusiastic about kneading the dough for our dinner rolls and slapping it down against the work bench. Chef said I had enough rage to get the slapping motion down pat. No pun intended. And it was fun shaping our dinner rolls into animals and plaits and even funner to munch on them while shopping on Oxford Street after class.

We also learned how to make another exam dish: coffee eclairs. They're fiddly little things, and I'm a bit terrified of them. I absolutely hate piping chocolate. I end up with chocolate in the strangest places i.e. in my hair, on my back, in my pocket, etc. In any case, I've got to get over it and practice, practice, practice!

On the plus side, they turned out alright and tasted great! I love coffee, and I was a bit worried about overdoing it on the flavouring so I asked my classmates to stop me if I looked like I was dumping the entire bottle in my creme patisserie.

Despite the week being pretty hectic and busy, I decided to stop by the school demo fair where we got to see some of the chefs in action.

Chef Javier with his sugar artistry:

Chef Julie and cake decorating:

It was fun watching the chefs in their elements, and the cherry on top was that we got to sample most everything. Yum! I'm still undecided about continuing with patisserie after the basic course is over since classes aren't exactly cheap and the lure of returning to work and making some money is pretty strong. I guess we'll see.

It was an exhausting week, and I was glad to see the end of it. I kind of just wanted to go home and catch up on my sleep but we had dinner plans with some friends at The Lockhart, a southern American restaurant not too far from our flat.

I'm glad I dragged my tired ass there as the food was amazing! I had shrimp and grits for the first time in my life, and J was in heaven with their buttery cornbread. We wanted beignets for dessert but they were out so we got the lemon meringue pie instead. It was interesting to compare it to what I've been making at home, and poor J let me dig through it before he got a bite. That's love.

Another plus is when you're passed out on the floor from all the rich food, you have a beautiful tin ceiling to look up at.

It's American-owned (obviously), and it really shows in the stellar service. We'll definitely be making a return visit soon!

Week 4: Practice, Grades, and Jalousies

I don't know why, but I can't stop thinking about that damn lemon tart. Knowing that it could be my exam piece and that I'll have to make it from memory is freaking me out. It's gotten to the point where I'm waking up early, and I can't go back to sleep because I'll start rehearsing the recipe in my head while I'm still laying in bed. It's not the ideal way of starting your day.

They say practice makes perfect, and I think actual practice (not just in my head when I'm barely conscious) will probably help me feel a lot more prepared so I've assembled all the various bits and bobs so that I could practice at home. That means I've finally made a long-awaited purchase: a stand mixer! They're bloody expensive so I kept dithering on buying one, but I finally bit the bullet on a KitchenAid.

In related news, these 8AM classes are killing me. They're sporadic throughout the week, so I don't really get the chance to fall into the habit of waking up early. I was thinking how absurd it was that a bunch of people all over London were waking up at all kinds of godawful hours to go watch a guy make puff pastry for 3 hours. This may be why aliens haven't yet made contact with our kind.

We got our midterm grades today. Stupid me, I didn't realise we were being graded on our practicals, and they're worth half our final grade. Being practicals, I thought they were essentially just practice! Nope, wrong. I thought the chefs were just checking their emails or Facebook or whatever when they were tapping away on their tablets. Wrong again. Sigh. I'm doing pretty alright, a bit better than average, but everyone's been pretty cagey about their grades so it's hard to figure what that even means.

Ultimately, my grade doesn't really matter so long as I pass. Hell, I don't even need to pass since I have nothing riding on this. The grading scale is pass, then pass with merit, then pass with distinction. Pretty much everyone passes, and almost no one gets pass with distinction, so I'd like to walk away with a pass with merit. It's my greedy little heart, what can I say? I'm not quite sure if I stand much of a chance if chef takes my behaviour into account. Let's just say I don't have anything to lose and a cheeky sense of humour that's not infrequently directed at chef.

Speaking of practicals, we finally had one today after a weeklong break from the kitchen. We made jalousies out of puff pastry with pears and almond cream. Yum.

Chefs creation.

And mine (after I cut it in half).

I definitely could've left it in the oven for a bit longer but we were running out of time since we had rock hard pears that took forever to cook. I also could've done a better job with the egg wash and gone a little easier on the syrup. But so shiny! In all honesty, I'm just glad I had time to finish as someone accidentally stepped on my rolled out pastry as it was chilling in the fridge, and I had to start over again. I swear, January was so not my month and I'm beyond glad to see the back of it!