Whisked Off

Would the Real Chef Please Stand Up? September 15, 2009

It rained all day. I guess I should come to expect it; it is London, after all. But the weather has been so good since we arrived in April that today’s total downpour took me by surprise. Fortunately, there was a full day of cooking to be done.

Writing this blog is addictive and I spent too much time trying to fix my photos over breakfast and was rushed getting to school. Last in the locker room. The two Portuguese women (Chef calls them ‘the sisters’ although they’re not) were leaving as I entered and greeted me with “Aha, we’re not the latest ones today!” Tomorrow they will be once more.

My friend Lu held the last seat in the front row in the demo kitchen for me. The angles made it hard to see from there but I took it as just punishment and watched most of the lesson on a monitor nearby.

Cheese Souffle with Gruyere and Parmesan

At 9am Chef Eric sharpened his knife on a flat steel (more effective than the rounded ones) and talked us through the day. Today’s menu was a warm gruyère and parmesan soufflé, rack of lamb with mint, cocotte potatoes (very cute little football shapes!) and green beans, and crème caramel. To prepare the dishes in the required time, Chef explained that it is best to begin with dessert.

Did you know that to get the best flavor from a vanilla pod you cut it in half, scrape out the seeds and then add the pod and the seeds to the dish? And, you can dry the pod, stick it in your sugar jar and reuse it later? I didn’t.

Other revelations:

• When preparing a Bain Marie (hot water bath around ramekins) put wax paper under the ramekins to prevent the water from bubbling up into the custards.
• Cook green vegetables in boiling salted water to fix the color and keep them bright. But start potatoes in cold water without salt and bring them up to boil.
• Raw meat yields like an old tennis ball. Well done meat is firm like a new tennis ball. Medium is a ball after the first set of the U.S. Open Men’s finals.
• Butter browns and burns around 150°C (250°F) and olive oil burns at a much higher temp. When frying with butter, add oil to raise the flashpoint of the entire mixture and prevent burning.
• Rest cooked meat loosely covered, off-heat, for 10 mins before serving to allow the muscle to relax and the blood to run through it, making it juicier.
• Technically, a rack of lamb has at least 7 bones.  Serve 3 per person. Eat one yourself.

But the best part of the day was plating the main course after cooking all afternoon. We each had a rack of lamb. Our task was to clean it, prepare the jus from the trimmings, bones, and mirepoix, and then cook our beans and shape our potatoes. The beans were easy; the potatoes impossible. I had flashbacks to my days as a Girl Scout attempting to whittle a figure from a pine block. Practice makes perfect and Chef suggested I pick up a 10 lb, er 5kg bag of potatoes on my way home.

But back to the highlight of the day. Chef scolded me for undercooking my beans (the French prefer them sans crunch); for omitting butter from the final step; and for “leaving the ends wild.” He did, however, praise my plating.

Can you guess which is his from the morning and mine from the afternoon? [Hint: look at the beans.]