Month: May 2014

Plated Desserts

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This week I prepared some plated desserts using the same components in every plate but different designs. The dessert is a lychee mousse on top of the hazelnut dacquoise garnished with tuile, meringue, tempered chocolate work, raspberry coulis and mango & passionfruit coulis. They tasted amazing but on this lesson I focused on the plating. This lesson was really amazing because you can see everyone’s creativity in their plates and they all looked different. I plated these 4 desserts, I wasn’t too happy with all of them as I was running out of time but they were not bad, yes ? So which one is your favourite ? 🙂

Traditional Celebration Cake

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I love this lesson so much. This celebration cake / wedding cake looks really beautiful. It’s a dark fruit cake inside which has been coated with marzipan and white fondant icing. I piped the flame around the cake using royal icing. Garnished with flowers and leaves that were made of fondant icing as well. I used marzipan to cover the whole cake before I covered the cake with the fondant icing. The reason was to get the cake to be as smooth as possible. As you probably have known that dark fruit cakes look like this:

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(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk)

As you can see the surface of the cake is not as smooth as a sponge cake. That’s why I covered the whole cake with a thin layer of marzipan (2mm) before I put another layer of fondant icing (3-5mm) on top of it. This cake could last up to 5 years as it was made of fruit cake which has a really long shelf-life.

Coulibiac of Salmon

Prepared by me

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Coulibiac of Salmon. Simple, traditional ,yet really delicious. It’s salmon layered with quail eggs, duxelle and puff pastry. Duxelle is made of rice pilaf, herbs, velouté and mushrooms, it has a really beautiful flavour. This dish is extraordinary, you could feel the crunch and buttery texture from the puff pastry, the flavour of salmon and the duxelle really goes well together. It was my first time making this dish ,it turned out pretty well even though it wasn’t perfect.

Squid Ink Pasta & Roast Loin of Venison

Both dishes are prepared by Chef Paul

Finally gonna post some cuisine stuff! If you’re wondering why I don’t post the photos of the one that I cooked is because during the cuisine practical, we want to serve the dish straight away to the chef for tasting while it’s still warm, really different with patisserie practical (where I could take a picture of the product at the end of the lesson) that’s why I don’t really take any picture of the food that I cooked during the cuisine practical.

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Lesson 10, the first dish is Sautéed crayfish with herb butter and squid ink pasta. I love the squid ink pasta, well, it’s like a normal pasta but it’s black. The crayfish in this dish really stands out ,served with herb butter. The crayfish was really fresh, they were still alive when they arrived in the kitchen, that freshness makes it even more better. This is the crayfish that I’m talking about:

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(Source: Google.com)

The second dish that we prepared is one of my favourite dish in superior. (Not an easy one unfortunately)

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We made a Roast Loin of venison with mushroom crust, served with parsnip and eggplant timbale , and also redcurrant and port jus as the sauce. As you can see, there are fats in the middle of the meat, those are actually lardo (pork fat) that has been pushed into the venison meat for cooking. For example:

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(Source: Google.com)

I love to eat venison rare because the meat is not as chewy as beef when it’s eaten rare ,when you eat it the lardo just melts in your mouth, the sauce also compliments the flavour. A really fantastic dish, love it !

Coconut – Passionfruit Entremet

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One of my favourite entremets so far , coconut and passionfruit entremet. “Russe”, coconut biscuit meringue ,layered with coconut mousse and passionfruit curd, glazed with white mirror glaze and garnished with tempered white chocolate and macaron shells. I really love this entremet because the flavour is really refreshing, the acidity from the passionfruit curd balanced the sweetness from the mousse, biscuit and the glaze as well. I love the smell of the coconut, and the texture it gives to the biscuit. We fully glazed the cake with the white mirror glaze and garnished with plain macaron shells as well as different shapes of tempered chocolate. It was a really delicious entremet, absolutely fantastic.

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Chocolate – Vanilla Entremet

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Last week’s entremet week ! One of the entremets that I made is chocolate-vanilla entremet. This entremet was made of chocolate mousse, flourless chocolate biscuit and vanilla crème brulée insert. Yup, crème brulée as an insert. The amazing thing about the entremet is I used Varlhona chocolate for the chocolate mousse. For those who have tried Varlhona dark chocolate, you know that Varlhona chocolate has a unique flavour, I think it is more fruity than normal dark chocolate that we eat. The other interesting thing is that I used tonka bean instead of vanilla beans for the creme brulee, which looks like this:

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It doesn’t have that strong vanilla fragrance, it has a unique flavour and you can smell the different spices all combined in one bean. It’s really interesting for me because back home I didn’t really use tonka beans.

If you’re wondering about the glaze, we used a spray gun (chocolate milk flavoured) to glaze the cake so it has that unique texture. This is a picture of my chef, Chef Sebastien demonstrated how to use the spray gun. It was pretty cool. Follow my Instagram: nananadyas, to see the video of the demonstration.

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This entremet was also garnished with cocoa nib nougatine and shiny chocolate glaze.

Cheesecake Entremet

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Let’s rewind a little. A few weeks ago we had an entremet week, a week when we made entremets. I love those lessons, we learned different types of products that we can assemble as an entremet. The photo above is a chilled cheesecake entremet, layered with scottish shortbread and raspberry gelee insert, glazed with raspberry mirror glaze. It’s a really simple entremet and yet really delicious. It’s almost like a normal chilled cheesecake with but with a little surprise in the middle which is the raspberry gelee insert.

I also made a small version of the entremet (photo on the left) sooo cute and also can be used as plated dessert. I garnished the top of the cake with tempered chocolate which some have been coloured using a coloured cocoa butter. It’s quite a challange for me to work with the cocoa butter, I hope I could do it perfectly by the end of the course.

Amazing Chocolate Work

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Okay, so far, this is the most amazing lesson in Superior class. I mean those chocolate works look awesome, yes ? I love this lesson so much, even though I was sick during the practical ugh but I did a pretty good job and I was really happy with the products that I made. I made egg sculpture, chocolate box and bonbonniere. It’s really amazing because all that you see in these photos are made of chocolate. Yup, 100% chocolate, including every small parts in the egg sculpture. Pretty amazing, huh?

I’m really glad because this is my first chocolate sculpture that I’ve ever made and it turned out pretty good, and I have to temper the chocolate by myself which is quite a challenge for me as I have to keep an eye on the temperature of the chocolate. However, the results are amazing. The bonbonniere that you see (the chocolate with ganaches fillings) has different ganaches flavours. They are raspberry ganache, pistachio ganache, milk chocolate infused star anise ganache and they are amazing. Absolutely delicious. And a big thanks to my awesome chef for teaching me , Chef Sebastien !

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Behind the scene, I told him that he was too tall, so he laughed, squatted and took another picture with me 😛