Savouries – Mon Voyage Culinaire

Lamb

This lesson was the second last lesson I had for my cuisine course. My partner, Kaylin, and I were given one whole lamb and we were asked to break it down by ourselves.

This photo was taken by one of my friends in the class. We all had the same kind of lamb, almost the same size and we had to break it down the same way.

On the very last lesson of cuisine, we can cook anything we want, using the lamb cuts that had been broken down the day before. This was the most interesting lesson because my class has so many people from so many different countries, and we cooked the lamb differently, based on our culture.

I cooked 3 lamb dishes,
1. Lamb burger with caramelized onions served with chips and baby spinach salad with honey balsamic vinaigrette. (No photo)

2. Yellow rice, lamb satay with peanut sauce and malbi.
This is a combination of indonesian dishes. It was absolutely delicious. I got the recipe from my mom. The yellow rice was infused with lemongrass and cooked in coconut milk. The lamb satay and malbi were marinated with galangal, garlic, shallots, nutmeg and ginger one day before cooking. The malbi was stewed in coconut milk with sweet soy sauce, red palm sugar and bay leaves. The lamb satay was pan fried with the peanut sauce and sweet soy sauce.

3. Rosemary lamb noisette stuffed with spinach and mushroom duxelle, served with cauliflower puree and rosemary jus.
This was a very simple dish. I marinated the lamb with rosemary, cider vinegar and olive oil few hours before cooking. I seared and roasted the lamb in the oven for about 15 minutes with some rosemary leaves. The smell was absolutely amazing. I love rosemary.

Coulibiac of Salmon

Prepared by me

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.

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:

(Source: Google.com)

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

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:

(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 !

Spinach Ravioli with Goat’s Cheese

I made this last week – Spinach Ravioli filled with Goat’s Cheese. The most interesting part for me while making this dish is the chlorophyll that we used to colour the ravioli. The chlorophyll that we used is made of spinach puree. It really gives the ravioli that nice fresh green colour. I basically combine the chlorophyll to the pasta mixture while making it into a dough.

The filling for the ravioli is really simple but absolutely delicious. I mix the goat’s cheese with some chopped herbs like chives and chevril so it’s more fresh and not so plain. It is really an awesome dish that I really enjoy.

High Tea

High tea at Le Cordon Bleu, Wellington from 24th february to 1st march. High tea service has been such a wonderful experience for patisserie students. We learned how to work in a ‘real’ kitchen, how to do the service for the high tea and the most important – how to work as a team.

The production of the pastries was from 9am to 2pm and customers started coming from 2.30pm to 4pm. We made many kinds of pastries:

-Coffee and chocolate eclairs
-Two types of mini sandwiches (ham, gruyere cheese and grape chutney) and (smoked salmon and horseradish cream)
-Zucchini and apple quiches
-Florentines
-Madeleines
-Fruit scones
-Lemon tart in a glass with apple crumble and topped with meringue
-Gateau opera