Mon Voyage Culinaire

Macarons

I’m back in Indonesia now. In my spare time back in July I baked these macarons for my boyfriend, we finally reunited! I surprised him these pink mini macarons. They were not perfect but they were good enough. The flavour was plain with vanilla for the fillings. The fillings were more like whipped cream texture instead of ganaches. I also packaged the macarons myself, using any stuff that I could used, it was not so bad really.

It was surprisingly different when I baked in indonesia and when I baked in New Zealand last time. The different environment, different kitchen, different oven and also different equipment and ingredients. I wish I could perfected these macarons next time, and of course other pastry products too. Sorry for the late update. Going to post more amazing stuff from indonesia !

Cuisine Cup and Graduation Day

The day before the graduation, Chef Paul (chef de cuisine) asked superior students to compete for one last time. We were given the opportunity to go to the fridge and freezer and take any items that we wanted. We were divided into 2 groups to make 6 plates of mains and 6 plates of desserts. There were supposed to be 6 people in the competition but 2 couldn’t make it so only 4 people left ,2 in each group. 1st group: Kaylin & I ; 2nd group: Jonathan & Hood

The photo below shows Kaylin’s and my dishes. We made sirloin steak with carrot & squash puree and lentils cooked with duck confit.

The desserts are mini baked Alaska, with chocolate cremeux, caramel sauce, raspberry coulis and freeze dried raspberries.

The winner was announced on my graduation day and I will post some pictures of the night of my graduation.

And yes Kaylin and I did win the cuisine cup. I was so grateful because not only that I finished the course, I finished the course proudly, I was one of the top 2 students in Patisserie class as well as Cuisine class. That really was a dream come true. After everything that I’ve been through, this was and still is the greatest moment in my life.

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.

Original Gateau and Patisserie Exam

By the beginning of June, I had to prepare my original gateau for the exam. Original Gateau is an entremet (cake) which is being created by the students themselves, the flavour, colour, texture, glaze ,decoration etc. This is my original gateau.

This is a Matcha Green Tea entremet. It is pistachio dacquoise layered with lemon curd, white chocolate ganache, matcha mousse and glazed with white glaze. The photo was taken during the trial ,one last lesson before the actual exam. The good news was that this cake was really good, the flavour went really well together, the decoration was neat, clean and really simple. However, the bad news was that it didn’t look like that during the exam.

I didn’t have the photo of the full cake as I was really upset with it. This photo was taken after the chefs tasted the cake. As you can see, the layer is different, instead of having 2 biscuits in one cake, I only have one and that caused all the trouble during the exam. Since I removed one of the biscuits from the cake, I should’ve increase the quantity of the mousse but I didn’t and I didn’t have enough mousse to build up the cake. I made a second batch of mousse and put it on top of the first layer that’s why you could see the difference on the top layer. However, I managed to finish the entremet, and be able to fix the problem under the pressure. I finally finished the patisserie exam.

Sugar Works

First of all, sorry for not posting for about a month. I’ve been really busy, so I’m going to post my last lesson in my patisserie course today.

It was an interesting sugar week, last week of may. This piece was made of pastillage, 100% sugar which has been coloured. Pastillage is made of powdered gelatine, water, glucose, icing sugar and corn flour. The flexibility is similar with marzipan or fondant icing, but if it’s left uncovered for too long, it’s going to become hard and keep its shape.

The 2nd sugar product is a fruit basket. This is the most frustrating sugar work that I’ve done. I used the classic sugar recipe and casting sugar recipe. Blowing the sugar to shape it into the desired shapes might be the most difficult part but it got easier as you did it and I honestly felt like it was the easiest job to do by the end of the lesson. HOWEVER, when I did the assembling, it was easy at first but when I started to assemble all the pieces together, the side of the sugar basket started to crack and fell into big pieces. Everything went really well until the assembling part. I was really really upset, but still it was a wonderful experience.

The 3rd product of sugar work is my first ever sugar sculpture which is the most amazing lesson ever. The sugar used for casting was isomalt. The flower and ribbon were made using the similar method – pulling. The most difficult part for me is to keep the petals of the flower thin. The sugar was so hot that it was a really painful job to work with them, but I did it anyway and finished it. Really amazing experience indeed. Thank you Chef Sebastien.

Plated Desserts

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

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:

(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

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 !

Coconut – Passionfruit Entremet

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.