A pretty laid back week

I was supposed to post this on Monday but I'm just now getting around to it so excuse the delay...

The week always seems shorter when you take an extra day of vacation to bask in the Portugal sun ;) Since we were scheduled to have cuisine/charcuterie class last Monday, I extended my trip to Portugal an extra day and skipped class on Monday :) It's hard to motivate myself to attend a class that is based upon things I don't eat (pork) and things that you can feel clogging your arteries just by looking at them - cream, butter, puff pastry, eggs, and cheese. Interestingly enough, even when we make vegetable dishes, the veggies are usually encased in a buttery dough with a cream sauce. 

Our week in class was probably the most laidback week we've had in awhile - on Tuesday we prepared for restaurant service, had service Wednesday and Thursday, did some painting in between and ended the week with cuisine class. There were three plated desserts on the menu which meant we had a lot of prep work to do plus we were moving  temporarily to the 4th floor for service which involved multiple trips up and down to transport things we needed. Never before did we appreciate the convenience of our lab and the fact that it's always (or almost always) stocked with the ingredients we need and machines and tools that are in working order when we need them. There's nothing like making a recipe where sugar is an essential ingredient only to discover that you'll need to run down three flights of stairs to grab the 100 grams of sugar you need. You know what's even better? When the waiter comes into the kitchen for the second time for a dessert with sorbet and it's not ready yet because when you went to churn the sorbet, you realized the machine was broken and had to run to the 1st floor to get a new machine, put it together, and churn out sorbet. Let's just say it was a very lively service. 

The three desserts that we prepared for service were:

Cheesecake squares - a pistachio almond biscuit topped with a pear/cranberry/currant compote, cheesecake and a salted white chocolate square with raspberry coulis

Raspberry macaron (basically Pierre Hermé's Ispahan) - Macarons filled with rose buttercream, fresh raspberries and litchi with litchi/rose sorbet

Marmite lutées - Tropical fruits (mango/kiwi/orange/pineapple/banana) in a lemongrass/cinnamon syrup topped with puff pastry and served with madeleines 

We also sent out strawberry/pistachio "fishbowls" filled with pistachio bavarois, strawberry coulis, fresh strawberries and strawberry gélée for pre-dessert and fresh made nougat (we couldn't stop eating it!) and chocolates for mignardise. We finished way earlier than usual, 10:30pm, partially because we had done so much prep work the day before. 

On Thursday, we prepped our lunch dessert in the morning (cheesecake topped with a cherry and a strawberry/orange/Cointreau soup with cinnamon sablés) and then got to work painting our pastillage. Pastillage is basically a mix of sugar, starch, gelatin and water that is shaped, hardened, painted and used as decor. We brought in photos to paint onto our pastillage and we spent most of the day mixing food coloring with Cointreau and painting to our heart's content. 

Thursday's dessert 

My painted pastillage 

Friday was cuisine class for the 2nd time that week and although I had a very strong urge to skip for the above stated reasons, I figured missing class twice in two weeks was probably not in my best interests. Unfortunately, the majority of my fellow classmates did not share my sentiments. You'll never guess how many people showed up to cuisine class on Friday...4! ....out of 10! We tackled the menu for the day (Coquille St. Jacques, Carolines, Friands, salmon aumônière) and headed out for a lunch of Korean food afterwards...not a bad start to the weekend. 

St. Jacques - Scallops, mussels, shrimp, salmon and mushrooms in a seafood cream sauce

Sausage friands - puff pastry filled with doctored up sausage meat

Carolines - Choux puffs filled with an asparagus cream sauce

Salmon aumônières - fresh smoked salmon with chives and cream

in the best crepe I've ever tasted

It was a lazy Paris weekend for me. I did some window shopping, lots of sneezing(attack of the pollen) and food tasting on Saturday before I headed home to catch up on So You Think You Can Dance online. On Sunday I hung out in the Marais with Laura  for the last time before she headed back to the States today ;((.... 

Gearing up for my big bakery test tomorrow so I'm off to go over my notes