mango on an apple

Inside a chocolate tartlette

We had one last tart class before embarking on some breads, and it was my favourite tart class so far. In the demonstration, it was a little bit chaotic despite the fact that we had our favourite teaching chef, the young one, showing us everything. He had to make the chocolate tartlets and orange tartlets we were going to attempt in our practical class, plus lemon tartlets, pear tartlets with almond cream, almondine tartlets, and brittany tartlets with apricots – all in large quantities for the class to sample. He also had to work “logically” (one of his favourite words), so he was constantly switching back and forth between different recipes, which made it very difficult to keep our notes straight for each recipe.

I had a little break for lunch before going into the practical, and my thoughts were all over the place about how to organize myself. (Remember, I’m the person who writes down steps like “weigh out flour in large stainless steel bowl, then put it down and go melt your butter”.) We had the chef who’s responsible for Superior Pastry classes, so I was a little nervous to see him in the classroom observing us, a bunch of beginners. He spent the whole class telling us to hurry up. He said it in English, in French in many different ways, and even in Spanish to one of the girls in my class. The chef was also helpful, though. He’d tip the mixing bowl for me when I scraped, drop off a spatula if someone needed one, or pick up a used bowl on his way to the sink. I made a blunder early on by not sharing a baking sheet with another student when I made the soft chocolate centre for the chocolate tartlets, and he questioned me on it, which totally flustered me. I apologized and attempted to move my parchment around a bit to find another person to share with me, but he waved me off…though not before he scrutinized my name tag from very far away (he’s clearly in need of some glasses) and made a mental note. Bah.

Tartlets in the locker room – I left 4/6 behind, for the sake of my health and waistline.

The chocolate tartlets had a layer of “soft chocolate” which is like a non-gooey version of a chocolate lava cake. Then it was topped with lovely shiny ganache glaze that not only had the usual suspects (cream and chocolate), but also honey and butter, which made it that much more delicious. The only weird thing I noticed about these tartlets is that I think the school’s cocoa powder tasted a little alkaline for some reason, so the chocolate layer was a little tinny when I tried it on its own. Combined with the ganache, and the crunchy almost cookie-like tart shell, it was divine.

Hi, I’m a runny orange tart…

The orange tartlets were delicious. As you can see, my orange cream was a little runny and by the time I got home, a lot of the filling had escaped the little tartlet shell. However, in my defence, in the demonstration, the chef’s orange filling was SO liquid that he didn’t even cut up any for us to sample. So I thought it was normal to go with a runny creamy centre…until I took my orange cream off the heat, stirred in all my butter, and then saw the chef tell the people still cooking to leave it for longer to thicken up more. I just didn’t have the energy by then to correct my orange cream because it had been so hectic in the kitchen already, and I wasn’t necessarily ahead of schedule. I would’ve liked to make it more properly, because I loved the taste. It is probably the only type of semi-pastry cream that I can get on board with, because instead of milk, we used freshly squeezed orange juice. (Yes, yours truly squeezed two oranges for that precious juice. It is DIY everything here.)

I had fun making the little tartlets because I was looking forward to the end products. However, these little babies were very labour-intensive, so it was also one of the busiest practical classes yet! In the midst of it all, one of my classmates reminded me that I’m going to be repeating this hectic-ness for many days to come, since we’re only at the beginning of my diploma program. Oy vey!

One last picture of my favourite :)

Palets aux Raisins & Bâtons de Maréchaux

Classes were lulling a bit last week in terms of inspirational and delicious recipes. It was also a busy week because I was the assistant, so I didn’t really have time to blog when I was too occupied with stressful thoughts like where to find pear alcohol and chopped almonds in the pantry.

We made a caramelized pear tart with a sweet pastry on a sweltering hot day, and it was so warm in the kitchen that the chef told us to roll out our dough completely between two sheets of parchment. He was a new chef to the school, and I laughed inside about what the other chefs would say/do if I whipped out two sheets of parchment for rolling dough during the final exam.

  

The tart consisted of too many things going on at once that I didn’t enjoy it very much. It is a nice sweet pastry filled with cooked canned pears dotted with raisins and canned black currants. Then we made a dacquoise-esque egg white and almond mixture to pipe on top so it had a cake-like crust on top, and then sprinkled with almonds and icing sugar. I think it’s a tart with an identity crisis – is it a cake? a tart? a fruit thing? Plus, raisins are definitely on my list of offensive foods. I can only take them occasionally in an oatmeal raisin cookie, all other forms are denied. So this tart really had no chance, poor thing.

During the practical, the new chef who speaks only French was very abusive with my name – he would call me for the most random things, and the way he called my name made me really jumpy. Take, for example, him showing up next to me when my dough was flash-freezing. I was measuring out dry ingredients for the next step. He came by, said in French three times because I couldn’t understand him right away, that I shouldn’t be doing this because my dough wasn’t moulded into the tart ring yet. By the third time, I was getting pretty nervous – what the hell could I possibly be doing wrong that he needed to emphasize something so many times? When it finally dawned on me, he had moved on, I had lost a few brain cells, but was a little indignant that I didn’t get a chance to reply. So then I had to keep an eye out for him to come back around to me, so I could rebut, a few minutes too late, that I had nothing else to do…so the logical thing was to prepare the ingredients for my next step even though I wasn’t quite there yet.

It was exhausting, this constant back-and-forth, and needing to stand up for self because he wasn’t quite on board with me but knew I understood just enough French so he could continue to stalk me. At one point, thank goodness I was quick enough, the chef called out my name urgently as I went to the sink to drop off my whisk. I ran back to him, thinking oh no, my egg whites weren’t done, I misunderstood him! He held up my pear-stirring spatula and asked why I didn’t take it along to wash. I was quick enough to point to the myriad of clean slotted spoons next to me to say that’s what I use to fold my egg whites. I didn’t have the language skills to say, can you please not be so concerned about my spoon, but hey how about let’s talk about my technique here?

In all fairness, the chef was a nice man, and definitely friendlier than some of the other chefs. However, his obsession with me that day made it really hard for me to concentrate and feel confident about what I was doing. That, combined with the fact that I wasn’t even looking forward to the end product, made for a really trying practical class. I couldn’t wait to be done, and had a drink at the bar by the school before I came home because it really was that kind of a day.

Moving on to the “marshalls’ batons” and raisin cookies…it was a bit of a weird class. It was a class meant for “dry petit fours”, but it is really randomly placed in the curriculum as it has nothing in common with what we’ve been doing (a lot of tarts and cakes if you haven’t noticed). We got to practice whisking egg whites again, but basically I think this class is kind of known as a “write-off” class to many people at the school.

The demonstration for this class was fun, though. On top of the batons and cookies, we saw the rolled cigarette-like cookies, and macarons made by the chef. The macaron technique was carefully explained, since we had the young chef who goes through a lot of detail. The class went into overtime, but we all enjoyed the lesson so much that it didn’t even feel like a really long class.

For the practical, we had a chef who I think is part-time at the school. He is the epitome of “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. He was friendly, helpful, and super calm during the class. He didn’t hurry us, he stopped by and pointed out where things weren’t good, he encouraged, and he even helped me put things away to alleviate the assistant duties. He wasn’t too jolly that he was joking with us, but he was easy to work with.

Ha, not so much at the end. When he marked the class, he gave everyone 3’s (out of 5) and I think there was one person who got 3.5, maybe two. He wasn’t hiding the grading sheet, so I kept craning my neck to read it. I was so surprised that the grading was so harsh for someone who didn’t criticize too much and was generally calm and in a good mood. I think the French girl in my class was really outraged, because she stayed after class and asked the chef about the marks, and received a very, very long lecture instead. I stuck around to listen to part of it, but zoned out and made my escape when the lecture went over 5 minutes and my eyes started glazing over.

The cookies were good little snacks – I ate the batons sprinkled with almonds and dipped in tempered chocolate, and Alex devoured the raisin cookies. The batons were baked to be crunchy on the outside and chewy meringue-like on the inside, and since it’s doused with nuts and chocolate, it tastes primarily of the dressings rather than the cookie itself. The cookies are not my favourite type of cookie dough feel – they’re soft and cakey, especially since they didn’t spread very much on the parchment. However, they are still sugary and dipped in glaze, so Alex gladly ate them all anyway.

From here, it’s onwards and upwards, as we venture into more exciting recipes! We’re making little orange and chocolate tartlets next – the best flavours for tarts, in my opinion. Then we’ll be off to the land of croissants and brioches – yum!

One last photo of the pear tart while I’ve got it here…