Seafood Feuilletee with Beurre Blanc
When was the last time you either ordered a Mousseline in a restaurant, or,better still, made one at home ? Well we had our first introduction to Mousseline making on Monday and Tuesday this week, the first Salmon, the second Scallop.
It’s a painstaking process of ensuring all your equipment is fridge cold, blitzing up the product in question in a Magi, and then using a dough scraper to push the salmon/ scallop through a Box Sieve to achieve a super fine purée. You then have to emulsify it by adding double cream,gradually, on a one to one basis in a bowl over ice, which takes forever. You sort of lose the will to live and then – if like me – you accidentally get some of the cold water from your ice bowl into your mixture it does not emulsify properly which you only understand when you try to gently poach it but it just collapses into a pile of nothingness. Well worth all the effort !
Not a great start to the week, but at least the lemongrass and ginger broth for the Salmon Mousseline was very tasty.
The scallop Mousseline ended up in Tortellini married with crab and prawns in an enriched Pasta we had made earlier. This was another bit of a fiasco with not enough Pasta machines to go around, people getting their pasta stuck on the bench, on each other’s pasta (as there was not enough space on the bench), and most people rolling to thin in the machine causing many headaches when shaping. Notwithstanding this chaos I ended up with a dish that looked somehow presentable and tasted pretty good even with a collapsed scallop mix – gratefully masked by the addition of crab and prawn.
The following day we were all so happy to put Mousseline behind us and move on to something new. However it was not really new – we had to debone a chicken again but this time stopping at the legs/ thighs so that we could use the meat from them to mince up with other ingredients for a stuffing that was to go into our Chicken Ballotine. We had to recall how to debone the chicken as there was to be no new Demo in class – albeit we thought there would be – and this caused a headache for some. I find it quite satisfying deconstructing the chicken to its skin and then filling it again with the breasts and stuffing – beats Mousseline any day of the week.
Skin before being reloaded
Thursday was an all day cook utilising Puff Pastry made earlier in the week to make Seafood Feuilletees with a Beurre Blanc sauce. We all think we can make a Puff blindfolded now, so we are Masters of the Universe Puff Wise ! With our “Roasted in a JClothe Ballotine” we had to make a Chicken and Thyme Jus – basically a posh gravy with great depth of flavour and silkiness, if you get it right, and some Veg and a layered potato accompaniment – Chefs choice. 
This dish all went well for me other than the Potato which ironically was the only thing I had bothered practising at home. In my kitchen at home I had use waxy Charlotte Potato’s with clarified butter to make a Pomme Anna in a small frying pan (Jamie Oliver recipe) and it was fab. In school they had different Pots, I used duck fat which made it grey and greasy and the pots just collapsed as either I had cut them too fine or they were not waxy. I will know better next time. But the Jus was perfect and Chicken pretty good too.
Had an unfortunate accident with our Apricot Sorbet during the week. I had left it on the side whilst being marked and one of my erstwhile colleagues dropped a heavy large saucepan from the top shelf which crashed down on top of our sorbet spraying it in all directions. I laughed at the culprit whose apron and jacket had been splattered only to be told that I had not seen my own Orange back yet which was somewhat resembling a Jackson Pollack painting. My Chef Whites will need a good wash this weekend !
Our Non cooking activities started off Monday morning with an extremely entertaining Spirits session. The presenter Peter Wilson was very engaging and used pictures of his dog Ruby in his slide presentation to indicate it was time for a drink. It was a little challenging for some to start their Monday morning drinking Vodka/ Gin/ Whiskey and Cognac before lunch, but made all the more memorable by Peter, not once, but twice, tripping over the wires to his laptop bringing the slide presentation to a stuttering stop, his laptop crashing to the floor and on one occasion with accompanying glassware. His Irish humour shone through and we all enjoyed his 3 hour lecture.
We also had a Chocolate Demo and tasting which was quite popular and certain students became excited by the knowledge we would be experimenting with chocolate next week. 
The final day of the week was an all day Demo that in the morning involved Terrines,Confit And Foie Gras, and in the afternoon a Croissant masterclass. I love Foie Gras and some of the food plated up and given out to taste was some of the best we have had for the whole course , even if some people had ethical issues with the Foie Gras process. We were all a little shocked to learn that each 100 grams of Foie Gras contains 400 calories so we probably all consumed in excess of 2000 calories during a two and a half hour Demo!
Who knew that Foie Gras was also behind the invention of the Sous Vide ? A producer of Foie Gras in France was tired of losing 50% of his produce when being cooked as it was melting away. He came up with the idea of sealing it in a bag and cooking it in water to ensure none of the product disappeared, and thereafter, after this success, he went on to work with Alain Ducasse and Thomas Keller and came up with the Sous Vide method of cooking and machine. Good food history there !
Another good week, and a long weekend to look forward to before next weeks sweet offerings.
Upon entering you continue along a corridor and up a steepish staircase to the upstairs dining room where I immediately spot Mr.Parry busily at work at the open fireplace/ wood fired oven/ coal area. The room is inviting , all wood, bar down one side for walk ins, and all the cooking being performed right in front of you within an area basically doubling up as kitchen and pass, space being at a premium. Indeed so close to the oven/ grill was our table we were feeling as smoked as the food by the end of the evening – but that’s not a complaint.
Thereupon the menu appeared with a list of snacks, starters and mains all of which I would have happily eaten – that’s just how inviting and intriguing (albeit at the same time seemingly simple) the menu is. Narrowing it down to just a few dishes to share was extremely difficult but we went for the Oysters Roasted with Seaweed, Langoustines, and at Giles behest, as he commented that “it was the greatest new dish invented in this country in decades” the Chopped Egg Salad with Bottarga. The latter not being something I would have rushed to order without Giles’s revelatory recommendation.
The Oysters were maybe one of the best Oysters I have eaten, lightly smoked, and just warmed through to give an even more satisfactory mouthfeel than an Oyster normally provides. Langoustines were very lightly roasted/steamed ? with Rosemary so that there were almost raw. 
The meat was soft and silky sweet as anything, and by sucking on the head you had just a hint of the rosemary coming through.
Unsure if it was “Epochal” as quoted by Giles – it had the feeling of eating very underdone scrambled eggs with salty fish eggs running through it, all in a very positive and enjoyable way, with the crunch of the toast complimenting the softness of the topping.
They are roasted in special “cages” seemingly purpose made for them, and after being exposed to the wood charcoal fire they are rested for a short time in the wood oven and then basted in their own gelatinous juices with an oil style Pil Pil emulsion before being presented at your table.
The only accompaniments on offer with the fish were a Tomato salad and smokey potatoes. We went for the Pink Fir Apple Potatoes which had been roasted skin on, and were gnobbly and gnarly, good, but I would have preferred them to have been crunchier on the outside, softer inside and even smokier, but a minor criticism. Could you oblige Mr.Parry ? 
When I was told I had to wear a chainmail glove I realised how dangerous this machine could be but thank good no injuries to report !
In close proximity to the eels were all the salted fish – Bacalhau- or salt cod to you and I, and many others such as haddock which is stained yellow (using turmeric) more for tradition than anything else. It did help to disguise a slightly older fish in days gone by but apparently now people just expect to see the yellow colour.
Onions and Apples were festooned around the place and the ambience was very exciting. We were a little early arriving and clearly the staff were still busying themselves in preparation, therefore I was not too perturbed in organising ourselves at this stage and approaching the bar area and organising our first drinks of the evening – a themed punch which contained Aperol,Pastis, Gin,milk of some kind and a grapefruit twist. £22 for a jug, and whilst a little sweet for my usual liking tasted quite pleasant and quite alcoholic. This had to be paid up front as apparently there was no method of toting up the drinks bill for each individual booking which I found a little strange and lacking in organisation, but OK we could let that slide.
Good. 20 minutes or so this style followed but with a whole array of meat dishes arriving more or less all at once with waiters giving some dishes to us directly some to our neighbours with no explanation other than “Lamb” or “ Guinea Fowl” or “Rabbit Pie”!
There was also a huge bowl of salad which was hardly touched being out of proportion to the rest of the food, and due to all dishes arriving like London Buses there was of course no room on the table, so we ended up balancing dishes on one another. Admittedly there were some hits, beef cheeks were falling apart due to the slow cook and had a nice depth of flavour and the rabbit pie was great comfort food.
The Mac and Cheese was luxuriously rich and you can never go wrong with croquettes !
Another main course followed which I chose as it was on the tasting menu- Anhui province red braised fermented fish belly – upon arrival I established it was Cod fish belly. It was served with a little paintbrush and some sweet chilli sauce which we were told to paint onto the belly under the nasturtium leaves on top. Delicately prepared, with the cod difficult to pick up being so silky and soft. But delicious.
Pastry rolled out and butter placed in the centre
Baking !!! Hurrah !
This is not exactly my recipe but made by me without having any recipe. I had seen it prepared at The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow whilst working in the kitchens there but never had the chance to cook it ! When I returned home I tried preparing it for myself, and so now will claim it – but with a polite nod to Padstow!
