Saturday in the kitchen with Manu

Last week was a short class week - field trip on Monday (visited Valrhona Chocolate - and, yes, they did give out samples!!) and then a demo on Tuesday by one of the visiting professional chefs - so only three days of kitchen time.  Obviously our class has become gluttons for pastry punisment - because we actually requested to have an additional session on Saturday, just to get in as much kitchen time as possible.  Our request was granted - and we spent 8-2 on Saturday learning some classic French desserts with  Chef Emmanuel (Manu, for short).  None of our usual chef instructors was available for a Saturday class, but Chef Manu agreed to help us out for this extra session.  Even though we haven't had him for class,  we all know Manu very well because he lives with us in the Chateau...so we often chat with him in a mix of French and English during coffee breaks and in the evenings. 

(Side note - in addition to being a great chef, Manu's also a top-notch bowler - we found this out the hard way last weekend when the Students challenged the Chefs for ENSP bragging rights.  We all descended on Planete Bowling - one of the hot spots in Yssingeaux - for the big "bowl-off".  Luckily for the students, bowling is not a requirement for graduation, or we would all be in trouble!  The chefs beat the baggy pants off of us - with Manu taking the high score, getting strike after strike.  Who knew our chefs were so multi-talented?)

After a relatively sunny week, we were back to lots (and lots and lots) of snow again on Saturday, so it was a good day to stay in the kitchen and cook...

Our lesson was filled with some classic French favorites - great recipes to have in your dessert arsenal - either for professional or personal use. 

We made a smooth and creamy panna cotta...

...topped with a mix of fresh pineapple, lime zest and a pinch of vanilla powder...quite tasty.

Next, we made a decadent chocolate tartlet...sweet pastry shells filled with a rich, chocolate ganache...

...simple to make (in spite of the crazy face I'm making)...

...but really delicious... 

 

...and very lovely on the plate, especially when garnished with chocolate ribbons, chocolate sauce and coconut ice cream.

 

To continue the chocolate theme for awhile, we made a classic Chocolate au Moelleux - a French chocolate fondant, or molten chocolate lava cake...

 

That's Chef Manu behind that piping bag - you can tell by the fancy chef's hat!

 

...again, a relatively simple recipe and technique - but it's really lovely when accompanied by some rich white chocolate/coffee ice cream.

 

 

And, of course, we had to break out the torch for some creme brulee...

 



...and it wouldn't be a class on French classics if we didn't work in a souffle.  I'm always amazed when I see these lovely little pillows of yumminess rising up out of the dishes...

...Souffle citron vert - lime souffles...light and airy with just a hint of lime zest...

...obviously this was one of the class favorites!

 

 

We all had a great day in the kitchen with Chef Manu - he shared some simple yet classic French recipes and techniques, along with some tips for plating that kept us all snapping photos the entire morning...

 



...even the chef himself took the time to take off his hat and capture a few shots with his iPhone.

 

 

 

I don't know about you, but I think that looks like a pretty great way to spend a snowy Saturday!  

Plated Desserts...Ooh La La!

This week's topic was "plated desserts" - i.e., desserts consisting of multiple components that are assembled into lovely layered creations...this is typically the type of "fancy dessert" you might get in a restaurant.  In addition to learning some new recipes and techniques, the big trick for this week was organization and planning - mastering how to get all of the components of each dessert ready and get it plated and presented in a beautiful manner - without something melting or falling apart.  Our chef instructor this week was Chef Richard - one of our favorites - a high-energy Australian who really puts alot of thought and effort into his classes.

We made five different recipes - and each of them consisted of multiple components...so we started the week out making some of the building blocks for our recipes...

mini baba's, soaked in an exotic (passion fruit, mango)  syrup

meringues...

...some of which turned out better than others...

Most of our plated desserts contained some sort of ice cream or sorbet, and, instead of the large ice cream churning machine we had used previously, we learned to use a smaller machine, the PacoJet, which is what you often find in restaurants since it can quickly churn small amounts of many types of ice cream...turning it from a frozen solid mass to a creamy, luscious treat...

By Friday, it was time to start putting it all together...again, the key here is organization - making sure you have all your components ready and prepped for plating.  We organized our work as a class - checking off each component as it was made and turning each of our work tables into a prep station/assembly line for one of the five dishes.

Here's a relatively easy but tasty dessert - Parfait Glace - a marble of frozen vanilla and dark chocolate mousses, frozen in a large square mold, cut into various sizes - each piece is then sandwiched between two thin layers of dark chocolate - garnished with a little more dark chocolate sauce, just for kicks...

 

...kind of like a fancy French Klondike bar...

...good to look at - and good to eat!!

Here's how it worked for one of more complex recipes -  Intense Chocolate.  First we molded chocolate mousse...

...then we coated the molded mousse with rich, dark chocolate....

...and we brought these pieces together with all of the other chocolate components that we had been working on  - molded chocolate shells, a rich chocolate creme, a baked chocolate crumble, mini chocolate financiers and, of course, chocolate sauce for garnishing...

...each of us had to work quickly to put all of these ingredients together...melting, piping, stacking, drizzling...

...until we had our Intense Chocolate creation plated and ready to go!

Intense Chocolate - a light chocolate financier is buried in a rich chocolate cream, topping this is a crunchy chocolate crumble, and then a sphere of chocolate mousse coated with dark chocolate..all of this sits in a bowl of dark chocolate and is garnished with even more chocolate - this is for the serious chocolate lover!

Some of our other desserts were remixes of classic French favorites...

A Baba Exotique - mini baba are soaked in a syrup of passion fruit, pineapple and mango, placed atop mounds of white chocolate/coconut whipped ganache, and then finished off with a mix of fresh pineapple and lime, lime sorbet and a swirl of exotic syrup, for good measure.

A Vacherin Exotique  - swirls of meringue are baked, then filled with a layer of exotic sorbet, a layer of exotic coulis, and then finished off with ribbons of chantilly cream and splashes of more exotic coulis.  As you can see, exotic flavors - mango, passion fruit, pineapple, coconut and banana --  are very popular in France!

This was definitely an exercise in planning - and also a race against the clock - getting our buffet ready before all of the ice creams and sorbets melted was quite the challenge.  Each of us was scurrying around, and, I must admit, there was quite a bit of chocolate sauce and exotic coulis splashed about - but, we made it!! Here's our buffet of plated desserts...Ooh La La!

Piece of Cake

This week's topic was Cakes and Petit Fours...we spent the week doing lots of creaming, sifting, mixing and piping...learning to make some very traditional and classic French cakes and small treats.

I was in the morning class again this week - and it is usually dark outside our windows when we start our class.  After several weeks of cold, gray and snow, we were treated this week to some sunny and clear days, that started with a beautiful sunrise...

One of the perks of morning classes is that you get some sort of fresh-baked breakfast treat - some croissant,  pain au chocolate or other viennoiserie that one of the classes has made.  This week we got an extra special treat - one of our chefs, Pierre, was making beignets in the class next door, so on Thursday we got a Valentine's Day delivery of fresh, hot beignets for breakfast!



Pierre with a special delivery - beignets for breakfast!




 

We spent part of the week focused on cakes - and, of course, we started with the classic, Cake Quatre Qart - which translates to the French version of a classic pound cake, with equal parts of 4 (quatre) ingredients - butter, sugar, flour and eggs. 

 



 Not only did we make the classic version of the cake, we made it with chocolate, with lemon, with candied fruits, with pralines - and decorated each of them differently -- flavored syrups, chocolate, candied fruits, nuts, etc.

The rest of the week was focused on making some classic French "small treats"......everything from speculoos (ginger/spice cookies), to madeleines (light and fluffy small cakes, molded in a shell shape), to rocher coco (what we in America would call a macaroon - rich, coconut cookies)....

...we piped baton marechaux....a sponge-type cookie...

...covered with almonds, baked golden brown, filled with a hazelnut/almond paste (think Nutella) and then dipped in chocolate...

.
...we made cannelle, the rich and eggy, rum-infused, fluted treat from Bordeaux...

...we made three types of financier, small cakes made with browned butter - rum, chocolate and pistachio -  and also made the classic Sable Breton, a rich, buttery cookie from the Brittainy region...

..we tried our hand at almond tuiles (tuile means tile, so named because these thin, almond cookies are shaped like the roof tiles of French homes) and classic French chocolate cakes, seen here in a mini version...

 

 

...and, of course, we made macarons, the French favorite - pink filled with raspberry coulis and yellow filled with a light, lemon cream...

 



And, suddenly, it was Friday and we had a rack full of trays with all sorts of cakes, just ready to be displayed on our buffet.

In addition to our usual stands for displaying the cakes, this week we used large brandy snifters for decoration, filling them with a single ingredient that was representative of that specific petit fours...

Sable Breton - featuring LOTS of butter

Baton Maracheaux - sponge cake "sticks" or "batons", made into a sandwich with hazelnut/almond paste and covered with almonds and chocolate

Pain de Genes Chocolat - a chocolate cake made with almond paste, decorated with sliced almonds and syrup or a raspberry jam

Cake Agrume - pound cake with lemon and lime zest, brushed with a lemon-sugar syrup and decorated with candied citrus

So - here's the final spread - lots of cakes!

 Hard to believe we are at the end of week 6 - only 2 more weeks of classes to go!