BP: Week 7 – Fruit Jelly, Poached Pear Tart

Sigh. Yes I admit that I have been stuck in an extremely bad procrastination mood. It’s already week 10 and I still have yet to finish writing about week 6. geez. Maybe I should skim by but let’s see how this goes.

Jelly and Poached Apple

Like I said “last week”, this week we made jellies. Making nice jellies are surprisingly a bunch of hassles. What we did was layer the bottom of the tray with a little gelatine thingy (I added lots and lots of Cointreau ^^), cool it in the fridge for 5-10 minutes, then start decorating the ‘bottom’ (which will be the top after turning it over) with fruits etc. After that, fill it with a little layer of more gelatine thingy (only a little, to prevent the fruits from floating around, 5-10 minutes, and then fill it to cover the first layer of fruits, and then ta-da: 3 more layers to go… . So, now you know how time consuming it is to make a product look nice.

My Compote

We also learnt to make fruit compote and fruit coulis on the first day. And mm bad news, I missed the third day because I just couldn’t get myself up. :p Not a very good excuse but… oh well. Though it wasn’t anything special on the third day, but I really missed out on making Creme Brulee: I would’ve gotten to use the freakin flame gun thingy! :/ One of these days, I’m going to go and get myself a flame gun thingy and use it to burn stuff. Rawr!

Oh and by the way, compotes are basically fruits served in its cooking liquid. You can easily serve it with ice cream by the way. Yumm… . Saw how my compote looks? Now imagine it with other yummy stuffs. ^^ And on the ladle (spoon thingy), the thick syrupy goodness running down can also be called a coulis: basically a thick sauce of puree or something (strained), usually fruits or vegetables. Good stuff to dribble all over ice cream (again). ^^

Alchoholic Bench

Just a side note, the above is a photo of my bench space. See that bottle of wine? See that coffee cup? Well, in that cup was initially a mixture of apple juice and Cointreau. Eventually the bottle of Cointreau ran out (ahem) and it was eventually filled with red wine (we used the red wine to poach the pears). Don’t ask me why that cup was filled with apple juice/Cointreau/red wine because as far as I know, it is against the rules to drink or eat or especially drink alchohol in the kitchen especially while working. But you know, I didn’t say anything. ^^

Oh and see how neat my space is. ^^

Uncivilised People

Before I forget, I really want to whinge about something. I’ve always wanted to talk about this but this time, I have photos to prove it. Ja’s class apparently was pretty civilised about it. According to her, once the chef is done with demonstrating, the students are usually considerate about taking photos of the finished product, some choosing to take a quick photo of the goods and some others choosing to use the zoom function on their camera.

Uncivilised People (again)

In my class, those barbarians (yes I’m a bitter person, especially towards inconsiderate people) tend to start swarming even before Chef Gert says that they could come up to the front for photo taking sessions. Secondly, almost every one of them takes more than 2 photos, averaging about 10 clicks per person: taking a photo from the top, the bottom, at an angle, at another angle, you get the gist. Thirdly, the barbarians swarm around the finished product like flies over a fresh dung on a hot summer day and you know how that is: irritatingly annoying, like flies on a hot summer day. Extremely inconsiderate and constantly blocking the lights, being too close to the food, even (oh my God) touching the finished product and rearranging them to suit her camera angle (YES I HAVE THE HUGHEST URGE TO NAME YOU). Sigh… I just can’t believe anyone moving the product around, or bringing it closer to themselves to have a better shot with her (yes HER) camera.

Totally… barbaric… uncivilised… inconsiderate… rude… girl. (and the rest (most) of my classmates too)

4 minutes after with Chef Gert finally cutting it (yes, I posted this photo because SHE is in it)

So, it usually takes me around 10 minutes of waiting around before I could get a nice shot (READ: ONE SINGLE SHOT) of Chef Gert’s finished product. In the photos above, you can see my classmates swarming around the poor pear tart. Sigh, I want to keep whinging but, let’s move on… .

Tarts and Jellies!

Oh, and the pear tart: inside is pastry cream covered with a layer of Dacquoise base (made with almond meal, meringue, flour and vanilla essence: tastes really good) and then topped with pears poached in red wine (yummy). The photo on the left is Chef Gert’s (so beautiful) whereas the other one is mine (I made a huge accidental mistake in arranging the pear slices, see if u can spot the difference). The jelly in the middle is Hsiu Yen’s whereas the other partly hidden jelly is mine. ^^ No, I didn’t mean for it to be hidden but here’s the story.

Make sure you’re patient, because impatience will get you nowhere. Haha. I was too impatient with waiting for the gelatine to harden and when I poured the next layer of gelatin in, my beautifully arranged fruits ended up floating around. So because of lack of time, I ended up dumping all the fruits inside the mould. ^^ So much for being patient.

Cho Dumpling King, Haymarket

It was a Sunday and I had absolutely no reason to go to Sydney whatsoever. I mean, you really need a good motivation in order to willingly go through at least 3 hours total traveling time. Unfortunately for me, there was a major blackout in one of the Sydney cities and the therefore, the train was delayed. Instead of one 90 minute train ride, I had to spend 3 hours on 3 different trains just to get to Sydney central (another 3 hours back home). >< 

Cho Dumpling King

Fortunately as Ja and I were both walking around aimlessly under the Sydney rain having a great time being lost in Glebe, Ultimo and Haymarket, I happened to chance upon this restaurant: Cho Dumpling King. What caught my eyes first was the amount of people waiting outside (I later guessed that most of them were waiting for their take-away orders). I mean, how often do you see Chinese (don’t you dare get technical on me ^^) people lining up outside a Chinese restaurant. 

Glorious side dishes

The second thing that caught my eyes are the abundant side dishes available which you can see from outside the restaurant itself. There’s a huge menu plastered over the front of the shop and apparently, we had to place our order with the waitress guarding the entrance first (she looked like she would bite if she had to) before you’re allowed inside this little Taiwanese restaurant. Sadly, it seems that the dumplings have all been sold out and I’m sure it would have been great to taste the dumpling king’s dumplings. ^^ (a good reason to come back again)

Simple dinner

Ja and I decided to share a main and 2 side dishes: rice with pork belly (Taiwanese style?), fried anchovies with chili and (stir-fried?) spinach with garlic and some pork belly. Total cost = $12 for 2. O.o The side dishes (changed daily) are $3 a dish and you pretty much just walk to the window and pick up whatever you want (while deftly manuevering yourself between other diners thanks to the small space ^^). So, if you like, you can pretty much grab yourself 6 different dishes for $20! Tell me that isn’t a bargain.

Mmm more side dishes

A few minutes (quick!) after we sat down at our table, the food started coming out and guess what, when Ja first tasted she told me it made her happy. ^^ That, is what I call good, homely, comfort food that you often can’t get at most expensive restaurants. It just saddens me that I didn’t know about this place earlier and at a time when my days in Australia are starting to get numbered. Best Taiwanese in Sydney, enough said.

Cho Dumpling King
Shop 6, 8 Quay St
Haymarket NSW 2000
Phone (02) 9281 2760

BP: Week 6 – Puff Pastry & an Unexpected Side Dish

Puff pastry isn’t easy. Period. The whole day on the first day we were basically turning and rolling and cooking and turning… . I reckon it’s easy to be honest, it’s just that I kept feeling rushed and pressured that I just can’t concentrate and remember the steps that I have stored in my head. We were basically preparing 2kg worth of flour in puff pastries and beef bourguignon for tomorrow. So once again we had nothing to bring back on the first day of the week. 

No problem! says Chef Michael

Puff pastry consists of many fine layers. This happens because between every layer of dough is a layer of fat (usually butter). So let’s say there’s a layer of butter on top of a layer of dough and you roll it out and fold it in half, you’d get 2 layers of butter and dough (or 2 turns). What I did was 4 book folds (each book fold has 4 layers) and a half turn (3 folds/layers). So, if you’re mathematically-inclined, you’d get 4×4x4×4x3=768 fine layers in my puff pastry! Apparantly the French usually do 5 book folds which would yield you about 1,000 layers (which is why puff pastries can be known as millefeuille in French or ‘thousand sheets‘) but because I was so afraid that my puff wouldn’t come out good tomorrow, I decided to just do a 3 fold at then end instead of a 4-fold. :/ But I don’t know. I’m still wondering if I want to do 1 more fold (thereby making it 1536 layers) but overfolding will merge the layers resulting in a breakdown of the lamination and effectively cancelling out all my initial hard work! TT

My class was the only class to have the luxury of using the mixers and the dough flattening machine thingy and it definitely made things so much easier and better looking but I didn’t want to go through the easy path and pushed on doing all my pastry puffs by hand. TT It definitely didn’t look too good by the way. I kept accidentally tearing the fine, fragile dough layers and therefore exposing the butter everytime I handle the dough. >< It was until a little too late that I realised that you really need a lot of flour to be able to properly handle the dough carefully… . But don’t forget to dust off all the excess flour before you fold it! Sigh, I really hope my pastry puffs puff out well tomorrow regardless of how badly done it was. I really wanted to re-do it but there wasn’t any time. :/ Oh well, fingers crossed.

I thought I could handle it but I give up, this fish is dead to me…

Today is the second day and I just want to pen in some thoughts before I go off to bed. I know that my pastry just isn’t good enough so I was doing my thing today with the knowledge that all my products won’t turn out good at all (we’ll be using the same dough prepared on the first day throughout the week). What I did not expect is to feel so disappointed and depressed watching my product come out of the oven. I know that the rest of my class’s puff pastry came out nice because they used the machine, but so what? I knew that I could’ve done better and the fact that I can’t remake it and hence forced to use the same crappy dough throughout the week makes it hurt even more as I have to continue to churn out unsatisfactory products.

Look at how well the rest of my class did

I was prepared for it but I guess since many other external circumstances have already begun to take a toll on me, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve reached my breaking point today after opening the oven. I need something to cheer me up. I’m tired of pretending to smile… .

*end of letting it out*

These puffs that Chef Gert made were really yummy

One thing that really disappoints me so far about this course is how we don’t seem to have enough time to do a lot of things that’s in the book. It seems that my seniors get to do them all whereas due to certain circumstances, we weren’t able/allowed to do some of the things in the book. For example, this week we’ll only be doing 3/4 Puff Pastries, Bourguignon Pie, Samon en Croute, empty Voul au Vents, Pithiviers and Palmiers. What we’ll be missing on (we only get to see Chef make them during the demonstration class) are the Chicken Vol au Vents, Vegetable Parcels, Apple Turnovers (Chaussons), Frangipane and Cream Horns. Do you see how much that we’re missing out on?

Today (day 2) we were also reminded on our practical exams in 3 weeks time. It kinda saddens me to realise how short this course is as well as how fast time flies. I’ve learnt so much yet I feel strongly the need to perfect the art; there just wasn’t enough time. Like I said earlier, things like this contributes to my depressed state and I seriously need a good pick-me-up.

Chef Gert moving on with his fish

I ended up sleeping over on day 3 which meant that I missed the class on purpose. I recently read that going to work actually helps beat depression which I agree wholeheartedly. But you know in my case especially when you’re pretty sleep-deprived and tired and so on, I guess a good night’s worth of sleep can be pretty helpful (minus the guilt feeling). Anyway, I know that there’s nothing important that I’ve missed today; I’ll prolly just end up using my bad pastry to create more bad pastry anyway. Life goes on, let’s move on. Jelly work next week. ^^