Journey Through Food and Wine: Culinary School #11-Pastry

Powered by Blogger.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Culinary School #11-Pastry

So let me just say that I am sure graduating from culinary school will feel like quite an accomplishment. However, completing class on Monday felt always equally as good. It was yet another puff pastry experience for Danah. And I get it, I make crappy puff pastry, puff pastry is not my thing, I do not like to make it and the end. I vow to you, all of my readers, that from here on out, I will buy puff pastry. No joke, I seriously contemplated calling in sick for class on Monday because I was just so done with puff pastry. However, I put on my big girl panties and conquered my puff pastry...almost typo'd and put puff pantie...nightmares.

And don't get me wrong I think puff pastry is beautiful. Check out these incredible puff pastry appetizers we made. There was one that was done with quince paste and blue cheese and another that had candied pecans, caramelized onions and brie cheese. Both were incredible!!

It is pretty funny because next Monday is game night and I am not talking about Scrabble, Operation and Monopoly. I am talking about deer, buffalo, yada, yada. And part of me feels like I should have more fear when it comes to cooking and eating exotic meats, but I just don't. Puff pastry is worse!!

So let me start by telling you about this cool trick I learned. As many of you know I very much dislike parchment paper. I just find that it slides around, it has almost caused me to drop whole sheets of cookies on the floor due to movement, it is cumbersome to cut, etc. Well I learned that if you put a bit of dough on the pan and then put the parchment paper on top, it acts as a glue of sorts and keeps the paper in place. I am definitely using that trick the next time I have to use parchment paper.

I also learned a few cool facts about vanilla. Did you know?

Vanilla is in the orchid family
Vanilla beans should be soft and pliable, not dry and brittle, like we often see them
The best quality vanilla is grown in Tahiti, Madagascar and Mexico. I have been to 2 out of 3 of those locales. Guess I need to put Madagascar on my bucket list.
Vanilla is not brown like we know it to be. Most vanilla has caramel coloring added to it.

Now as we all know a culinary class is not complete without at least one Danah mishap. This class, besides just the general nature of the class, was no disappointment. I did an excellent job of dumping pie weights all over the floor. Here are the pie weights prior to my "accident."

Our demo in class was how to make sugar into strands. Impressive technique and skill and I will never use this again:

I did learn another nifty trick that will come in handy when making cream puffs. Did you know that if you wet your finger and smooth out the top of the cream puff they come out of the oven more uniform?

During class I was responsible for a puff pastry tart that had goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes and roasted zucchini. It was kind of like quiche but with a puff pastry crust: