Week 12: Two fish and a scoop please

This week, the fine art of frying: shallow frying, deep frying, stir frying, sauteing. I'm sure I see - and eat - more fried food this week than in the past ten years combined. Yes, it's true, fat does taste good - but only when food is properly prepared and cooked. 

All the same, I do think  it is best to interfere with fish as little as possible. In class, using terakihi, we interfere with it three different ways: 



1. Fish/Poisson Meunière - where it is simply tossed in seasoned flour and pan fried. Interestingly, the French word 'le meunier' means miller. Those of you who know French nouns have a gender may briefly ponder a potential franglais inconsistency: in French fish is le poisson (masculine) and meunière is the feminine form.  On the other hand if we refer to the dish as it probably should be referred to, that is as Fish à la Meunière then it is fish in the style of the miller's wife. She probably had plenty of flour to hand and so simply dredged the fish and fried it - in butter of course. And then, if that wasn't enough, made Sauce Meunière - melted browned butter, lemon juice and parsley.

2. Fish à l'Orly - fish in the style of Orly (which is south of Paris in case you wondered). Essentially this is battered fish as you know and love it. In class we use terakihi (yum), beer batter and the deep fryer, and it is pretty good.  Tips and tricks around this are to really make sure the batter only thinly coats the fish but coats it fully. The batter, or indeed any coating, protects the fish from the oil: the theory being it is the steam build up inside the batter than cooks the fish. How's that for justification for eating deep fried fillets??

3. Fish à l'Anglaise - English style is flour, egg and breadcrumbs - and deep fried. This is where the translation really falls apart, as we all know battered fish is an English thing. Not in classic cuisine, however. The two French students who turn up this week to spend two weeks at Weltec followed by two weeks work experience in town, confirm they too call this method of coating food 'pane anglaise'.

We make tartare sauce, of course making the mayonnaise base by hand -  beating, beating, beating the oil into egg yolks. We sauté potatoes, cook tempura vegetables, and deep fry onion rings à la française - in the French manner - which is milk and flour, and deep fry chips. For the chips we cut the potatoes evenly - 6cm x1cm x1cm awakening nightmares about carrot cuts from week one. Cooking the battered fish and chips involves two stages, just like the local fish'n'chip shop. The first frying is at a lower heat - 150°C and is called blanching - partially cook and do not colour the food. It is let cool and then the second frying is at 185°C and crisps everything up. Heston Blumenthal, having spent a long time investigating how to make the best chips ever, brings his chips to the boil before draining and cooling them right down in the fridge. His second cooking is blanching in 130°C oil before he completely cools them again. The final fry is in 190°C oil. Apparently this produces the finest fluffy on the inside crisp on the outside chip. He also spent approximately 72 years investigating which type of potato to use, but hey - he's Heston.



proving an omelette pan

It is the omelettes, however, that cause some people the most grief this week. The perfect omelette is a rare and beautiful thing, and before we start we must prove the omelette pans. Note we don't use any non stick cookware in the kitchen - non stick surfaces have a habit of flaking off eventually and finding their way into the food.  To prepare, or prove, the pan, put in rock salt (which has a nice rough surface) and then over the heat shake the pan and swirl the salt around. This essentially scours the pan and gives a clean, smooth surface which you then wipe out with kitchen towel and a wee bit of oil. We cook a two egg (nothing else except salt and white pepper) omelette in clarified butter. As it cooks, draw the sides to the centre with a fork - I need to take more photos don't I - until it reaches a stage where it is set but still moist (not runny) - the word for this is baveuse. At this point fold two sides in and turn it out onto a warm plate so the beautiful bottom is the presentation side. At this point it can be split and filling added. Most people would generally fill the omelette while it was cooking, but that is not the City and Guilds way.

Dishes of the week for me are the Falafels with yoghurt sauce, and also those we stir fry: Hokkien noodles with prawns and Stir Fried Beef with vegetables. 

The lowlight of the week happens early Monday, with tongue stud girl proclaiming her intention to get a nipple piercing. Now this isn't a quiet aside in the girls' changing room you understand. No, it is  a veritable announcement to all. By Thursday she treats us to a description of how f-ing painful it is. Not much sympathy ensues. Fortunately we aren't asked to bear witness.

Baking next week - everything from scones to fruit flans. I'll take more photos, I promise.

Week 11: Soggy bottoms prove an impediment

This week crosses more boundaries than Shane Warne with a cell phone. We travel from Cornwall to Istanbul, from Lorraine to Tokyo by way of Naples with a short stop in the Mediterranean. Would that it were actual,  rather than simply in the steamy kitchens of Weltec!

Our culinary adventures this week are in grilling and baking - Cornish Pasties, Quiche Lorraine, Teriyaki Grilled Chicken, Char-grilled Vegetables, Grilled Lamb Kebabs, Cauliflower au Gratin  - I wouldn't immediately put that in a list of grilled food but of course gratin fits that category - and so on. The hunter gatherer is home from the wild west, and after eating mountains of hamburgers, steaks and fries for the past month he enjoys the more international cuisine that comes his way this week.

So, in regards to the pastry - Excellent Cornish Pastie if I do say so myself. However, having taken immense pains to blind bake my quiche pastry so it is dry and crisp before adding the filling, I am reduced to sobs as the filling overflows just a tad during cooking: this means the base is not as crisp as it should be. To a person, everyone else in the class under cooks their crusts and so there are no Distinctions in assessment this week. Boo hoo all round.

For those unfamiliar with the term, blind baking does not mean we wear blindfolds in the kitchen - that would be foolish and dangerous. It means pre-baking the pastry shell prior to cooking it with its filling. To do this, first roll out the pastry and place it in the pie dish. Prick the bottom with a fork (this is known as docking and prevents an uneven rise) then put some baking paper in the raw pastry shell and fill with dried beans or rice. This keeps the bottom from puffing up and the sides from falling in. You can get special ceramic baking beads but that is an unnecessary extravagance when you can use ordinary old rice or beans and re-use them whenever you make a pastry case. In an ideal world blind baking it means no soggy bottom pastry baked goods. I exhort you to check out your local cafes and sneak a peek at their pastry - I have to say I see a lot of not quite cooked pastry bottoms around town.

We make an excellent pizza. As I generally use the bread machine and dried yeast to make my pizza dough, making it by hand and using fresh yeast is a new experience. The dough does feel springier. The pizza base is really good and I manage to roll it thinly. To cook them we use those pizza dishes with holes in the bottom and it makes for a crisp crust. It re-heats well and I share it with the financial controller for lunch the next day.

Next week - or actually this week and I finish writing this blog on Tuesday morning! Sorry for the delay for those of you frantically searching your in-box for the email feed. I was away at the vet's 50th for the weekend and didn't get a chance to blog - yes, I know it should be my priority in life but sometimes life gets in the way of priorities.

This week then, we are immersing ourselves in frying - yes, shallow and deep fat frying, so stand by for tips on the perfect fish and chips!