I had a wonderful weekend cooking at the Ashburton School of
Cookery, thanks to all of my kids! I took the “Gastro Plus!” course – a two-day
course focused on cooking with local ingredients.
There were only 9 of us on the course: John, a tobacconist
from Solihull – the only other male, whose friends had give it to him as a
birthday present; two young-ish (late twenties, probably) sisters that were
hoping to open their own gastro pub; two friends, both about to retire from the
armed forces (a Major and a Squadron Leader, both nurses) who had never really
needed to cook much before; a mother and daughter from London, who were using
it as a “bonding” opportunity; and a rather intense woman from somewhere else.
The course alternated between demonstrations, cooking in
pairs, and individual work. The intention was to cover as wide a range of
cooking skills as possible in a couple of days, with some very imaginative
menus, and quite a few “how the professionals do it” hints thrown in.
Some of the hints:
·
Vegetables – if it grows above ground, it goes
in boiling water; if it grows below ground, cold water. Jersey Royals are the
only exception.
·
If you’ve ever tried zesting citrus fruit on a
fine grater, you’ve probably discovered that more stays on the grater than goes
in the dish. Try cutting a small square of greaseproof paper, and place it over
the grater. Zest away, and when you’re done, peel off the greaseproof and take
off the zest with the back of a knife.
·
“Pin-boning” fish with tweezers is a pain, but
not so much if you dip the tweezers in a glass of water between bones.
·
A garlic clove has a small “heart” that is
easily seen if you slice it in half lengthways – take this out to reduce the
“garlic-ness”.
·
When sweating onions or shallots, always throw
in a pinch of salt – it helps draw out the moisture.
·
A piece of beef that takes 2 hours to cook needs
to “rest” for 1 hour.
Since the course was fairly fast-paced, I learned the value
of a “mis en place” – a list of what needs to be done, when, and in what order,
to prepare a number of dishes. It covers all the preparation as well as the
cooking. Most of us, when cooking, carry this in our heads, but it’s invaluable
to have it written down for a meal that consists of several dish – timing is
everything in cooking, taking second place only to advance preparation.
Which brings me on to the dishes!
We ate everything that we cooked, and cooked everything that
we ate. The menu for lunch on the first day was:
- Seared organic salmon fillet, tomato vinaigrette, griddled asparagus and shaved pecorino cheese
And for dinner:
- Local pork tenderloin stuffed with apple, fricassee of cockles, artichokes, broad beans and Cornish new potatoes cooked in cider
- Frozen white chocolate and cardamom mousse served with seasonal fruits, minted sugar, and praline biscuits
And yes, we husked the broad beans individually, minted the
sugar, and made the praline biscuits from scratch (well, nuts and sugar really,
since you can’t get good quality scratch these days).
On the second day, an “extended” meal that lasted most of
the day (interspersed with cooking) consisted of:
- Minestrone broth with baked red mullet fillet and truffle oil
- Plymouth gin and tonic sorbet
- Pink roasted duck breast with confit leg faggot wrapped in lettuce served with a cassis jus
- Potato rosti
- Green bean and carrot bundle
- Strawberry and lavender crème brulee
We had prepared the duck legs the day before, confit-style,
by slow cooking, completely covered in goose fat, and refrigerating overnight.
Apparently, this is one of the oldest ways of preserving food, and the duck
legs would have kept for months like this. The goose fat can be strained and
re-used several times. The green beans and carrots were blanched and tied with
a thin strand of leek, to be steamed later. The jus was a reduction of red
wine, cassis (blackcurrant) and vegetable stock.
The food was fabulous, the ingredients were the freshest and
tastiest you can imagine, and the instructor was interesting and amusing. I
think I’m not nearly so worried about high temperatures any more, nor meat that
is slightly pink (as it should be). And I realize how easy it is to prepare
things in advance so that the final stages of finishing and “plating” the dish
are simple.
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