Stinky.

Greasy, oily, soggy...thats right this week was Deep frying. A subtle and delicate technique... NOT!

I'm going to admit it now, I didn't enjoy this week of college. Feeling a little delicate from trivia the previous night and to start with deep frying was not the greatest. Deep frying is meant to be a quick form of cookery where the food is submerged into hot fat for a short amount of time but it took FOREVER. There is only 2 deep fryers in the kitchen and about 12 of us to use them. It took (excuse my french) fucking for ever. 

We sinned and it wasn't my colourful language above. We deep fried fillets of pork. I was ashamed and felt we had betrayed the poor pigs by cooking such a good piece of meat in a terrible way. We also deep fried fish... that tasted horrible, calamari which was ok and banana which I'm going to confess was delicious. Normally when I'm delicate from having one too many the night before all I can think about is a greasy burger and chips smothered in tomato sauce and chicken salt. Not today, I wanted ice water and to be far far away from a deep fryer and anything that goes in a deep fryer as possible.

Although this lesson sounds hideous and I spent most of it feeling sorry for my self I did learn something. The batter for the banana had fresh yeast in it which I had never used before as it is so difficult to find- if anyone knows where to get it please let me know! The trick to getting it to rise when its not a hot summer day is place the bowl with the batter in another bowl of warm water and keep changing the water to make sure its always warm.

The deep fried bananas were yum and I think its because they were still hot when I ate them not like the rest of the food which was cold and had gone soggy by the time we were allowed to eat it. They tasted like a hot cinnamon donut but banana-ree. I love fresh donuts... my weakness!

Theory was terrible. We had a substitute who kept us there until dead on 5pm and the whole bus ride home all I could keep thinking was that I could smell something funny and a little off putting. I was about to blame the guy that was sitting next to me until when I got off the bus the smell stayed with me.... I smelt like a greasy fish and chip shop and had a deep fryer burn to match my smell. I felt sorry for the people around me ... I was the stinky person on the bus.

Banana Fritters

2 bananas

1/2 cup cinnamon sugar

1/2 lemon, juice

1 batch of yeast batter (recipe below)

1. Slice your bananas up into three of four pieces and cover them with lemon juice and a pinch of the cinnamon sugar.

2. Toss them in flour then dip them into the batter (see recipe above).

3. Deep fry bananas until golden then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.

4. Resist for a few min and wait until you wont blister your mouth but eat warm.

To make the yeast batter:

10g fresh yeast

5g sugar

250mL warm water

200g plain flour

2 eggs

pinch salt

1. Add the fresh yeast to the warm water and sugar and leave to prove for about 5 min.

2. In another bowl add all the flour and make a well in the middle. Add your eggs and gradually drag the eggs in the flour a little at a time using a wooden spoon. When it seems you can't mix anymore flour in add a little of the yeast water mixture until all the water is added and you have a lump free batter.

3. Let prove for about an hour by submerging the bowl in a larger bowl which is filled with warm water. Keep changing the water regularly so the yeast can do its job.

4. After the hour, mix the batter with a wooden spoon and your ready to dunk your banana.

Thanks for reading! Keep watching for an Italian favourite Osso Buco & the almighty French profiteroles next time. Hmmm another favourite week maybe?

Meaty, cheesey, creamy goodness...

I'd say this week has been my favourite so far. Can anyone disagree when our practical lesson is scheduled for lasagne and then anglaise sauce for dessert? I don't think so.

Most people have their mum's famous lasagne that is a family secret passed on from generation to generation. For some reason our house hold never had lasagne as a staple regular which I feel has scarred my youth. Lasagne is one my favourites! Layers of tomatoey, rich, meaty sauce in between layers of pasta and creamy, cheesey-ness. Your officially a nutter if you don't agree with me.

I was in charge of the béchamel sauce while my partner was in charge of the meat sauce. I was excited to do the béchamel sauce as I've never made one before and was a keen bean to learn.

It started with 500mL milk heated on the stove with a quarter of an onion studded with 2 cloves, a few white pepper corns and a bay leaf. Once the milk had come to a boil it was turned off to infuse with the flavours of the goodies which I put in it. Next I started the white roux (pronounced roo as in kanga-roo) which is a thickening agent consisting of a mixture of flour (40g) and fat, in this case (40g of) butter. You melt the butter over the stove being careful not to burn it then take the butter off the stove and add the flour. Mix until it looks like really wet sand and cook back on a low heat for 1-2 min. Strain your infused milk into a separate jug for easy pouring. Take the butter and flour mixture off the heat and add a little of the milk, which should now be warm not hot and mix with your savoury wooden spoon. Keep doing this little by little off the heat making sure there are no lumps until all milk has been incorporated. Once the milk has been incorporated stir over a low heat until sauce thickens to your preferred consistency. This takes about 20 min as you have to cook the flour taste out. I then added a small handful of tasty cheese- this thicken the sauce a little too much so I added some extra milk to thin it down.

My partner was making the bolognaise sauce at this point so both we were both ready at the same time. We layered a little bolognaise sauce on the bottom, then an instant lasagne sheet, then more bolognaise, a spoonful of béchamel, a sprinkle of parmesan then another layer of pasta and continued this until we reached the top of our tray. Chef had a brilliant tip which was not to use all the béchamel sauce in the lasagne and add one egg to the left over and then spoon that as your final layer then sprinkling with both parmesan and tasty cheese. We put it in an 180 degrees Celsius oven until cooked through and golden on top. yum, yuM & YUM!

After devouring our lasagne we started our anglaise sauce. Custard and me have never really gotten on like rice and me (until recently, Woop!). My custards alway end up either a watering undercooked mess or a scrambled egg slop. Both sound appealing... not.

A sauce anglaise is the basis of making custards and ice creams so it is pretty damn important to get this right if you want to work in the kitchen. You can't just go out and buy a carton of dairy farmer thick custard like normally would..

The rule with an anglaise sauce is for every 100mL of milk (or cream or a combination of both) you need 1 egg yolk and 10g of sugar. I put my milk on the stove to bring to the boil with a vanilla bean scraped in it for flavour. While this was doing its job I separated my eggs and mixed my egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl using my sweet wooden spoon. Chef told us not to use a whisk because we don't want air in the egg yolk, just to combine them with the sugar. Next strain your milk into your egg and sugar mixture and stir to combine. Place it all back in the saucepan you used for the milk and back on a very very low heat. This is where you either get custard or scramble eggs. At this point in class I had everything possible crossed in hope that I ended up with custard not scrambled eggs. Anglaise sauce cannot come above 83 degrees Celsius so its easier to use a thermometer but today we used the back of a metal spoon technique. The sauce is ready when it coats the back of a metal spoon and when you run your fingers down the back the sauce does not run back and meet again.

SUCCESS! I ended up with a velvet vanilla custard.

All in all a delicious day.
(If any one has some suggestions of words other than delicious please let me know, I feel I am repeating my self... everything is DELICIOUS... delicious, delicious, delicious!)

* Thanks for reading & keep watching for more cooking adventures!

Early morning Chook.

Oops... last weeks...

College started at 8am with the dissecting of a raw chook. 8am is a little early for slimy raw chicken with fat, skin, bone cracking and popping. Not to mention the giblets I found when finally splitting the poor chook in half. (Giblets for those who don't know are the inside goodies like the heart etc.) I know it has to be done and I wouldn't say I'm the squeamish type when it comes to food but 8am in the morning, really? the smell of parmesan cheese was too much the other week.

We washed and dried our chook, learnt how to truss it then cut our chook into saute pieces which is 8 pieces. Four white meat and four dark meat. You usually serve one dark piece and one light piece when serving in a restaurant. Trussing is tying with string so your bird doesn't flap around in the oven or your roasting pan (also for even cooking and presentation).

When I cut my chook I took off the marylands (thigh and drumstick as one piece) first and looked for the oysters. The oysters on the chicken are located on its back, one on each side of the back bone. It's a fleshy piece of meat that sits in what looks like a little oyster shell which is part of the chickens back bone. After removing both marylands I took the drumstick off the thigh bone and frenched the bone on the drumstick. Frenching the bone is cutting the meat away from the bone to expose the bone. We also removed the knuckle but Chef explained that some chefs don't do this because the bone can split.

Next was the boobs. This is a lovely process because first you have to remove the back bone from the breast bone. You hold your chook up and cut downwards then pop the shoulder blades out and remove the back bones from the breast bone. This was not my favourite part of the whole early morning experience. I removed the boobs by placing my chefs knife on one side of the breast bone and pushing down then scraping the meat off the remaining bone. I did this for both boobs then we split them in half so we had 4 even sized pieces with the wings still attached.

This all sounds a little groosem. But I respected my chooky and my 8 peices of chicken were neatly cut and not mongolated. We made a delicious thai curry with the chicken pieces. I made a thigh curry, the boys made a boob curry - as chef put it.

We made pilaff rice to go with it and guess what? SUCCESS! The stove time was minimum so I got away with less time to burn it. We sweated onion off in butter, added the rice, stirred it so all the rice was coated then whacked it in the oven until it was done. Delicious and nutty... will definitely be repeating this at home.

To go with the curry and pilaff we made cucumber riata (chef's recipe) which consisted of yoghurt, lemon juice, salt, cumin and cucumber. Wow, yum. We jumped through different cultures and countries this lesson but it all tasted great for lunch.

Thanks for reading! Keep watching for lasagne (my favourite) & anglaise sauce (scrambled eggs? or custard?).

Trick of the hand.

Bit late on my post about College last week but I've been a busy bee with to be honest, goodness knows what. The job search is still happening, I think I'm being too picky now... not sure if its a good thing or not. They say you should stay at your first place for a year so does that make it ok to be picky? I will be washing dishes and chopping onions for the first few months anyway.

Back to the fun stuff. College was great! We cooked all day and then to top it off theory was cancelled in the afternoon. Could it get any better?! The day was about shallow frying and grilling. We cooked;  Shallow fried breast of chicken with a tomato reduction sauce served with buttered beans and glazed carrot batons. AND... Grilled sirloin steak with grilled tomatoes and potato gratin. I remembered my container this week so I could take my food out side and eat it for lunch rather then scoff it down in class. Not sure if this was a good idea or not. I ate so much and felt incredible sick after by then end and would have probably gone into a food coma in theory anyway so it being cancelled worked out well.

Butter. I smelt like butter after class, I could still taste butter after class and I know for sure that there was butter in or on everything we cooked.

The chicken was cooked in olive oil but the delicious creamy sauce started with butter, onion and garlic. Yum or what? stock and wine was added, reduced then strained. I had never done this before and at the time Chef demonstrated it to us all I could think was what a waste of those delicious goodies. Turns out the sauce is a lot smoother and looks a lot better presentation wise without all the goodies. Cream and a little french mustard was then added and reduced. Tomato concassee and parsley tossed through then served over the chicken which was resting on buttered beans which literally speak for them selves and glazed carrot batons which are carrots chopped into Jardiniere's, simmered in water, butter, salt and sugar covered with a cartouche and cooked until tender.

Whats a cartouche you say? It is a piece of baking paper which covers the contents of the pan not letting out any steam which therefore stops food drying up and locking in flavour. Jamie Oliver quotes in Jamie at Home that the italians often use procuitto instead of baking paper, getting the extra flavour of the procuitto in the cooking.

Onto the steak. I have to admit now that I am a total girl and before college cooked steak to buggerey and sausages on the BBQ until they were charcoal. That is of course until now! I learnt the trick of the hand of how steak should be cooked. If you touch your  thumb and pointer finger together and press with your other hand on the meaty part between your thumb joint and wrist, its rare. Thumb and rude finger, medium rare. Thumb and ring finger medium and finally thumb and pinky and if the meat feels like this you know you should throw on a new steak and start again.

To go with the steak we served potato gratin which consisted of garlic and onions cooked down in butter then layered in between cream drenched slices of potato, topped with cheese and baked until done. Parsley butter and grilled tomatoes with parsley butter and cheese on top.

Julia Child would be so proud of me.

Theory test on food presentation was better then expected (fingers crossed). Off to do homework from last week.


Thanks for reading and keep watching for Poultry Preparation. Doesn't that sound appealing!?