Time to write in English, I think, because the last few posts have been in French.
This weekend I wanted to try a technique that I saw whilst working at Potel et Chabot - namely, rolling a piece of meat (in this case, a roll of chicken breast that I had prepared the day before) in a mousseline stuffing (made out of chicken, coconut milk, coriander, anchovy sauce, salt and pepper). The end result being a solid piece of meat covered with another meat with a different texture.
I created a recipie which associates the following flavours :
chicken (breast and leg) meat with 2 different stuffings - 1 chicken “sausage” with pancetta (for the kids), 1 sausage with thai green curry paste (for me and Antonella)
2 different moussline mixtures for coating the 2 “sausages” - both with the same basic ingredients of chicken, coconut milk, salt, anchovy sauce and sesame oil. One then has coriander added, whilst the other has poppy seeds.
tomato and coconut sauce - made from a rich tomato sauce with pancetta and fresh chicken stock, mixed in a blender and then combined, at the last moment, with coconut milk.
vegetable “duos” - discs of celeriac and potato with a “mini-disc” of carrot inserted into the middle.
I was tempted by this technique because I like the visual aspect of the end result (a disc of meat with different textures and colours) combined with the sensual aspect (different flavour and texture from the middle to the outside of the meat).
Ingredients and Steps to Follow
Preparation of Chicken “Sausages” : take the meat off a raw chicken carcasse (découper à cru une volaille) - 2 chicken breasts and 2 legs (to be used later for the mousseline). Down the middle of each chicken breast place the “stuffing” - green curry paste (I made this myself a few weeks ago, easy to do and keeps in the fridge for 3-4 months. However, if you don’t have the time to make it, use the “Blue Elephant” brand curry pastes) in one, 2 slices of pancetta in the other. For each breast, roll it into a sausage shape by placing it on a sheet of cling film and then rolling it up tightly, tying both ends with a piece of string. These will both be cooked in the tomato sauce as it bubbles gently - simply placing the 2 cling film wrapped sausages in to the hot sauce and leaving it to “steam” gently for 20+ minutes. Once cooked (i.e once the sausages are firm to the touch) cut open the sausages and throw away the cling film wrappers.
preparation of the tomato and coconut milk sauce : I wanted to have a simple, classic base for this recipie, and so the tomato sauce is nothing more than 1 large tin of peeled plum tomatoes (740g), 3 slices of pancetta, 2 cloves of fresh garlic (more intense than the usual “dry” garlic), salt and pepper, thyme and 2 bay leaves, organic olive oil. All gently cooked together until the sauce reduces slightly to give a rich tomato flavour. This sauce (well, I didn’t use all of the sauce….probably one third, but frankly, the proportion is a matter of personal taste) is then “mixed” with a stick-blender to produce a smooth sauce, which is then enhanced with 1 carton (200 ml) of coconut milk just before serving.
preparation of moussline and using it to coat the sausages : approx. 150-200g of chicken leg meat, approx. 50ml of coconut milk, 1 egg white, salt pepper, 20g anchovy sauce. Blend the meat with the salt pepper and egg white. This should then be thinned / smoothed out using the coconut milk, with the end result being a smooth, yet firm (firm enough to be spread out on cling film without it running), paste. Then, to create the 2 different mousseline pastes, I add in one paste half of a bunch of coriander, and in the other lots and lots of poppy seeds (enough to darken the paste and to ensure that when eating the moussline later we can “feel” the texture of the little poppy seeds). Each paste is spread out (in the shape of a rectangle, the width of your chicken sausages, and approx 10-15 cms in length) onto a separate sheet of cling film, a sausage is placed in the middle and then the mousseline is rolled around the sausage (by lifting one end of the cling film and moving it towards the other end…..difficult to explain, but I figured it out myself and I’m sure that you’ll do the same….just try it and you’ll see, I’m sure). Once the sausages have been wrapped in the mousseline, they are placed in the tomato sause again, this time for approx. 10 minutes. Once cooked, unwrap and keep warm.
vegetable discs : this was the result of me “playing”, and overall, I don’t think that it was worth the effort. However, it’s simply a matter of using different sized circular shapes to cut out the different shapes. In this case I used larger discs of celeriac and potato, with a mini disc of carrot inserted into the middle. I thought that it would be interesting visually, and that the combination of flavours would be worth the effort…..but no, it ends up being way too fussy and overall, a bit up its own arse (excuse the expression) !!
End Result ?
Sauce was much appreciated by my wife - rich tomato flavour (depth given by the good chicken stock, in my opinion) softened by the coconut milk.
The 2 different chicken preparations work and the different flavours are present. Visually effective, but a little dry (I still haven’t worked out the best cooking times for the 2 different steps - cooking sausage and then the mousseline). I’m not sure that the texture would please everyone.
Vegetables were not a great success….too fussy.
Overall, even though it is always tempting for a young chef to put lots of different techniques into one dish, the end result is too intense / fussy / trop chargé. My wife suggested that the chicken discs could stay but placed on a simpler more modest base (for example, a celeriac mash with a chunky sauce).
Last w/end I prepared a couple of tarts, something that I’ve not done for quite some time since it’s just “too easy”….not real cooking, not a real discovery…..yes, stupid to think that “real cooking” only consists of fancy, complicated dishes with an elaborate sauce presented carefully on a large plate !!!
So, a session of “home cooking” produced this magnificent combination of fresh Brittany tomatoes, emmental cheese on a base of celeriac (céleri rave, in French) caramelised in the sautoir. I have to thank my neighbour, Chloé, for giving me the desire to make a tart because when I popped in to see her a few days before she was preparing a tomato and emmental tart (along with another tart - onion and Dijon mustard…..one that I made also but didn’t do very well…tant pis !!). I took her lovely looking tomato tart and simply added some celeriac which I cut into small cubes (a rough mirepoix)…..the result was really tasty and went down very well with my family !!
The steps to follow are,
make short-crust pastry - the usual things…..250g flour, 125g butter, 1 egg yolk, small amount of water (2 tbls perhaps ?), 4g salt - and then keep in fridge whilst preparing the other ingredients
celeriac cut into small cubes and left to caramelise in butter (take out when soft and nicely coloured)
slice tomatoes and grate emmental
roll out pastry and put into tarte circle (I don’t remember what it is called in English !)
line the tarte with the celeriac
cover the celeriac with grated emmental
arrange the tomatoes in a “rosary” (rosace in French)
brush the tomatoes with olive oil and sprinkle poppy seeds across the tomatoes
….and that’s it. Leave in the oven for approx 40 mins at 180°C, remembering to remove the tarte circle for the last 10 minutes of cooking time (to brown the outside of the tart).
Just a quick note to say that, after 9 days of working at the famous Parisian caterers “Potel and Chabot”, I think that I’m progressing pretty well. That means, I’m remembering what different dishes look like and what ingredients are required, and who to go to see to get them. I kind of looked after 2 students this afternoon, which did me the world of good…getting back vaguely to my project management days at Capgemini.
Still frustrated at being told simply what to do next rather than having a list of things to “produce”. My independence and autonomy is coming though.
It’s tiring, though our working day now seems to finish around 17h or 17h30 which means that I’ve got the whole evening with the family which is great. Starting work at 6h30 is still tough but by the time I’m into my tasks it’s fine.
I think that I’ll be happy to finish at the end of the month, but I will learn several things whilst I’m here - none least than “professionalism” and “presentation”.
Pheww!!! 1st day in my new job, at famous French caterer Potel et Chabot…..started at 6h45 and finished at 19h45, with 35m for lunch. It’s work, work, work…..lots of repetitive work, but lots of creativity as well. Everyone seems to have a very good “team ethic”, where we all stay until all work is finished…..it’s odd, but working 12h30 does not really pose a problem since we all want to get the work done - from the head chef down to the trainees.
Given that the French Open has just started we have loads of work and everyone is on a 7 day week for the next 2 weeks. So, even though we talk about it all of the day, I don’t think that I’ll be seeing much of Roland Garros !
Anyway, I simply wanted to record the start of my 5/6 weeks at Potel et Chabot.
Stay tuned to heat more about my experiences in one of the most respected caterers in France.
So there we have it, 8 months of studying in a French school of cookery for the entry level cookery diploma…..and today at 19h50 french time I finished cleaning M. Baucheron’s (one of our teachers) kitchen for the last time.
Today we had our practical exam where we had to prepare 2 dishes in 4 hours -
sole fillets poached in fish stock and white wine (which was then reduced into a wine sauce) with a julienne of vegetables, boiled potatoes and puff-pastry crescents.
black forest gateaux
It was certainly a much more stressfull exam that the one that we had in February, and at the end we were all rushing trying to get the different items ready and dressed in time. Anyway, in the end the different chefs (because we have 4 chefs from Parisian restaurants who come to evaluate us) congratulated us on what we had done.
So, without knowing the final mark yet, I feel pretty confident that I’ve at least passed - I’ll find out by mid-July for the official mark.
In any case, that’s the end of the 1st step. I now move into my 11 months sabbatical during which time I will be doing temp work in Paris until July, working in Newcastle upon Tyne (England) for 3 months and then back in Paris for who knows what.
Just before closing the door on this 1st exceptional chapter, I’d like to show you a brief film of my fellow students, where they explain what they plan to do during the next 12 months. Unfortunately it’s in French, but tant pis….va falloir apprendre un peu de Français, alors !!!!
So there we have it for another year, the end of the 22 days of birthdays in our house (me the 20th April, Noé 28th April and today my wife)…..and quite frankly, we kept the best for last !!
Yesterday at 18hrs I was a worried man - just coming to the end of Noé’s birthday party (delayed by 2 weeks) and I still had nothing planned for my wife’s birthday the following day. However, it has to be said that on the present-front I am a lucky man (not just on the present-front either I hasten to add !!!) because my wife genuinely loves flowers…..and so it was that 1 hour (and a visit to the florist) later, I had a magnificent present waiting to be sneaked up from the basement and into the flat at 5 in the morning when the said birthday girl is fast asleep !
(apologies for the quality of the next 2 photos, even if I actually rather like the effect on the 1st one )
All that was required was a home-made birthday card to prepare and a couple of post-it notes (for each of the 2 small flowers that I had bought as separate “presents” to be discovered) to write.
The end result today was a delighted wife, me relieved and Paris bathed in glorious sun….and so a good excuse for a birthday picnic at the parc des Buttes Chaumont in the 19th in Paris, with friends Géraldine, Christophe (and their 2 kids, Emile and Anouk) and Estelle.
This weekend, with its fine warm Parisian weather (though as far as I’m aware, it was the same in the UK), was the chance to invite friends to spend an evening eating a salad and drinking wine on our balcony.
Monique and Peter were the friends that we managed to tempt out of their parisian flat in the 6th arrondissement, which also gave us a good chance to catch up on Monique’s restaurant project (last year she did the same CAP Cuisine as me) and also gave me the chance to speak a bit of English (Pete being Australian, though he speaks French too).
So, given that Monique worked in La Fontaine Gaillon (see my posts with category Fontaine Gaillon) for her professional training, I decided to concentrate on fish (anyway, I love working with fish), whilst keeping a salad theme given that I knew that we were in for a warm evening.
As per usual when preparing fish for dinner, I went to my fishmonger to see what was in / on offer / looking good, before deciding what to make. As it turned out, it was the red mullet that looked best and was on offer (13€ the kilo). Given that I work regularly with Mullet at the Fontaine, I knew straight away how I wanted to prepare the fish - cut off head, take out spine, take out bones, leave skin on (out of interest, in general, you lose between 40-45% of the weight of the fish when prepared this way, but it means that you have very little work to do once you start to eat the mullet….and I hate having to work even more on something once I’m sitting down to eat….mussels and oysters being one of the rare exceptions)
As well as using fish, I wanted to reuse a salad recipie that I had concocted a few days earlier - courgettes cut into a julienne / fine spaghetti, mixed with coriander (stem and leaves) and mint leaves (finely sliced), bound together with a warm walnut and shallot dressing (straight out of the Tom Aikens “Cooking” book - thoroughly recommended, by the way).
The final touch to the fish, by the way, was a couple of batons of rhubarb, pan-fried in a calvados syrup…..I wanted to add a bit of sweetness with the mullet, and it worked pretty well (this idea came from a visit to a restaurant - thoroughly recommended, by the way - in Paris, “La Carte Blanche” where they mixed macarons with mullet and chocolate)
28th April 2008…my son’s 5th birthday, and of course, an opportunity to do some more cooking, though this time more like good ole’ home baking. So, the birthday cake this year was a chocolate version of the classic “fraisier”.
All the usual stuff - sponge cake (square), crème patissière with butter added, butter softened (en pommade), strawberries, syrup (for soaking into the sponge cake - I did orange flower syrup, but whatever you like I guess…couldn’t really taste it anyway !!!).
The different stuff - raspberries (for in between the 2 sponge layers), dark chocolate (70% - grated into chips and sprinkled liberally on top of the raspberries), cocoa powder (for putting in the crème patissière and for mixing with icing sugar and then dusting on top of the finished fraisier).
So…..the end product ??!?
…..any problems ?? Well, since I dusted the cake with so much cocoa powder and icing sugar, the writing (it’s meant to say “Noé, Happy Birthday 5″) simply didn’t stay put, and thus had a tendancy to “slip”……but what the hell, I think that the end result is almost “arty”….anyway, my client was happy, which the important thing (and there’s none left as I write - 1 day later !!).
Our trip to London this weekend (I’ll write about it in another post) started with a visit to the Chelsea restaurant “Tom Aikens” to talk with the man himself,….well, erm….Tom Aikens of course !!
Without going into the details (coming soon in another post), this prompted us all (3 of us bought one in the end) to buy the Tom Aikens “Cooking” cook book….a lovely book, an interesting intro from Tom, nicely organised with a few pertinent comments on certain products all the way through.
Anyway, being back in Paris, being back at school and given that it was Monday I had the morning to myself….so what to do ??? Prepare for my exam on Wednesday, prepare for my cookery class later in the day, go to the gym….or spend a short while in the kitchen trying out some of Tom’s recipies for veg ?
As it happened, there were some artichokes, a butternut squash and 2 parsnips loitering in the fridge which needed to be used up before they started “turning”.
So, after a quick nose around Tom’s book I came up with the following combination….
3 veg and 3 different ways of preparing them….roasted (squash), mash / purée (parsnip) and sautéed / braised (artichoke).
Butternut Squash with honey, butter, rosmary, salt, pepper - roasted
Parsnip cooked in milk and cream (enough to cover, boil until milk/cream reduced by 2 thirds), mash all together without straining, add thyme, lemon and cumin (depending upon personal taste). Serve with olive oil and balsamic.
Poivrade Artichokes (purple, baby artichokes) - peeled, sautéed and then braised for 10 mins in a light chicken stock (avoid cube stock, it’s too “unsubtle” for this…..unfortunately, given the time constraints, I DID use a cube)
Overall result ?
Squash was good, artichoke would have been good (but for the “chemical” stock), parsnip….well, it was curiously “bitter”…even before adding in the cumin, lemon and thyme. I guess that this was an example of good idea, bad product.
Quite some time since my last post, and since there’s been a few difficult moments, burns, cuts and even managed to stab myself (purely by accident, I might add) ! So, in today’s post I will cover
3rd period at La Fontaine, and end of Le Zephyr
trip to London
doubts - where I’m at and where next ?
sustainable fish
organic food
So, organic food and sustainable fish first of all. For a few months now, I’ve known that what is important to me is the produce, the producer and the quality of the product. Whether it’s because I have some catching up to do, or simply because, like Terry Laybourne, in my opinion it all starts with quality products regardless of the final dish being prepared. As I’ve already said elsewhere on this blog, it’s not only quality, but also the link with “local” produce is important to me….creating the link with the people and identity of a particular region.
I’ve been reading about the seasonality of fruit and veg in France, as well as checking up on what is available in my home region of Northumberland. In addition, at school we’ve been looking at fish, beef, veal (strangely not very available in England, at least not in Northumberland), lamb, offal, veg & fruit. This reading has been backed up by being able to work with good quality fruit, veg, meat and fish at La Fontaine - seeing how the quality is measured by the chefs. There’s a hell of a lot to learn and discover, a journey which is just beginning and should never end - especially when you consider only one particular food source, fish for example, and you touch upon the huge depth of information / variety that exists just in the UK and France….even in France Sea Bass has several different names (Bar or Loup de Mer) depending upon where it is fished, with different breeding periods between Channel / Atlantic / Mediterranean bass.
On the topic of fish, and particularly sustainable fish, I’ve been reading a fair bit these last few weeks (partly in preparation for our meeting with the London chef Tom Aikens who champions this topic). It’s such an enormous topic that it’s all a bit much at times - I’m trying, at the same time, to get to know fish, their names in English & French, seasonality, their availability / vulnerability, adult size (and thus the minimum size they should be when buying them), their cost, the different techniques for catching them and so on….so loads to take in. But fascinating.
With regards to organic food, I’ve been checking out the different shops in Paris which deal with organic fruit and veg - Naturalia, CanalBio (specific to the 19ème arrondissement), Nouveaux Robinsons, La Vie Claire. They’re all more expensive than our local greengrocer and Monoprix, though Nouveaux Robinson seems to be by far the best value - generally not being much more expensive than what we currently buy (unlike La Vie Claire which is outrageously expensive). I still don’t know why BIO is more expensive - maybe because the crops are less “controlled” and thus yield is not always optimal and thus the producer charges more to compensate ? Anyway, as with many things at the moment, I am at the beginning of understanding what BIO is about.
At the end of next week is our trip to London. Really looking forward to getting my French collegues’ reactions to what’s going on in London. I’ll be taking photos and film of the visit so you’ll be able to see what we got up to in a week or so’s time.
I’ll sign off with a short note about my sagging confidence at the moment. I’m not feeling creative, I want to be tested in a kitchen working a service at the hot plate (to prove to myself that I can do it - I know that I can do “cold starters” for 100, but cooking the main courses ain’t the same thing !). Went out to eat last night with my wife at the Ziggothèque in the 13ème in Paris - an opportunity to talk with the chef who is someone that I would like to work for. It was a really good evening - good food prepared by a chef who tries to get good products, who goes to Rungis (Paris’ main market) 2 or 3 times per week, who makes his own stocks and who was available to chat for quite some time. We’ll see what comes of it. I also boosted my confidence by spending today preparing the meal for tomorrow lunchtime when a friend comes to eat. I’ll post the photos in a few days when the final meal is available.
OK, I’ll sign off. I’m meant to be writing more, but shorter, posts…..so this isn’t a very good start….sorry !….and Happy Easter to you all.
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