Day 61: Order In The Kitchen

It's a new semester and there's a little bit of havoc in the kitchen. Cooking basics is running tandem with our advance class in the kitchen. Our new Chef (not new to the school, but new to us) is teaching both classes because the patisserie that was suppose to be teaching cooking basics for their first two weeks was a no show. Order in the kitchen was certainly not a problem for Chef as he worked back and forth between Basic and Advance classes providing instruction in how to make our bake goods for the day.

Things happen and you deal with what needs to be done. Chef was great at accommodating both classes in a crunch. I think this is partly attributed to the fact that Chef has run a few businesses in the past and if someone doesn't show up for work, that he knows how to balance the team to get things done. And a lot was done today.

We started our day off with making the crust for our tarts. This involved first creaming the salt, sugar and butter together, mixing in the egg, milk and vanilla, then cake flour and baking powder. The sugar dough was rolled out and cut into rounds to line tart shells. The bottoms were pricked with a fork and filled with rice before baking. Pricking the shells and filling with rice prevents the pastry bottoms from rising. A tart shell is shallow and room is needed for the filling. My lemon tarts disappeared and they were no where to be found at the end of the day. However, I'm hoping a little birdie will bring me one back so that I can have a little taste ~ I need to know if I did a good job or not.

Chef had us make two types of tarts today ~ lemon tarts and fruit and pastry cream tarts. To make the lemon filing, ingredients included: lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, and heavy cream. All ingredients were mixed together and then poured into the partially cook tart shells. e lemon mixture was poured into the partially cooked tart shells and placed into the oven to bake at a temperature of 350 F until the lemon became set.

For the pastry cream we needed heated milk and sugar, eggs, cornstarch and sugar and butter. We used the pastry cream for our fruit tarts. The tart's base is pastry cream and decorated with a variety of fruit. Fruit available were kiwi, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. We were all left to our imagination to decorate this tarts as we wished.

As an extra Chef had us make upside down cakes. Chef prepared the cake mixture for all of us to share. For the upside down fruit we used a granny smith apple and a few slices of pineapple. These were sauteed in a pan with butter, sugar, pineapple juice and a pinch of cinnamon. The fruit mixture was put into the bottom of a loaf pan and topped with the cake batter and put into a 350 F oven to bake. This cake is very moist and delicious too!

With the baking all done for the day, Chef spoke to us about our two projects for the Advance class. We also received one of our two course books and will be getting a black hat, black scarf and a black apron.