Cooking class, lesson 5; patisserie

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:10:36 +0000

Our ingredients for today

It’s ofcourse a little less impressive in terms of the ingredients that we used for the patisserie lesson. A pile of fish or meat looks quite different then a lot of stuff in various bags and boxes…:) Since the ingredients for any cake or dessert need to be followed much more closely then for instance preparing a piece of meat, this was the first time that we worked from recipes rather then making it up as we went along. We worked in group of 2 or 3 people preparing something and we tried to follow the recipes also in a way that would make sense so not everyone was using the machines at the same time.

Tom and I started with making dough, which we didn’t process any further but it is in the fridge here so I might be making something out of it later this week. Have to think what that would be… Then we went on to make a chocolate cake

Our chocolate cake

and that is what went a bit wrong. I am not sure what went wrong but the fact of the matter is that it came out of the oven looking good on the outside but still completely wet on the inside. Oops…. Keeping it longer in the oven would have meant a burnt outside, so my guess is we should have put it at a lower temperature and for much longer. Although it could also be that we somehow mixed up the right ingredients and did something wrong there. Who can tell?? We took it home and tried it but as soon as we cut a piece out of it, the inside was really liquid.

We made chocolate ganache, we made puff cakes and we made sausage rolls combining puff cake dough with meatloaf to create lovely fluffy rolls. We used the puff pastry that you can buy anywhere and it was so much easier to make then I thought it would be!

And they were quite tasty too!

Rob also showed us how to make a really quick tarte tatin. Just caramelize sugar in a ovenproof baking pan, add apple or pear put some puff pastry on top, pop in the oven and voila a few minutes later you have a very tasty tarte tatin!

Sausage rolls

Very quick tarte tatin

Ofcourse you can make it look nicer, but this was just to show how easy and ridiculously quick almost it is to make something like that. Add some vanilla cream to it and you have something very tasty. We also made vanilla icecream, but since that had to go into the ice-machine it wasn’t finished when we left this afternoon, so we will probably be seeing the results of our icecream next week.

We’re all kind of disappointed that we are almost at the end of this fabulous cooking class, so we’re already thinking of ways to keep cooking together or start a cooking club or something along those lines. It’s a fun group and it would be great to keep doing something together, but more to follow on that!

As has become a habit now we went to get a drink at one of the many bars in Amsterdam after the lesson and while we were having our second glass of something, Rob came in to ask if I wanted to come back to the studio as he just brought in a huge monkfish! They would be having a group 0f 24 people in that night for a bachelor party type of cooking class and he was getting fresh produce from the market.

So after we finished our drink, Tom and I went back to the kookstudio to find this monster lying and waiting

Monkfish wrapped in pancetta with asparagus

Simone (junglefrog) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:07:45 +0000

What I try to do each week is to plan our meals a bit so that we at least have some decent food. The reality is that our lives are quite hectic so it is sometimes just not feasible to prepare a good meal and still do all the things we want. In my line of work it is sometimes necessary to work evenings, weekends or other hours, while Tom loves to go fishing with friends. Fishing is apparently essential to do as early as possible in the evening (after he comes home from work, which has fairly normal working hours)
So if you look at a typical evening such as we had yesterday, that means that he comes home around 6 pm and this particular case I had to leave at 6.30 since I had a family photoshoot in the studio at 7.30. Leaves precious little time for a normal meal!

I had set my mind to make a recipe of Jamie Oliver’s book “Cook” wit involved pancetta, asparagus and monk fish. Tom had promised to be home early, so I figured I could still make the dish… Taking a photo of it would be nice, but if I could find the time… was doubtful.
I bought the fish in the afternoon which was incredibly expensive by the way (18 euro’s for about 500 gr. of monk fish-fillet. It still had to be made into a fillet which meant I had to pay for the entire fish and not just the fillet)

The recipe calls for pancetta, which of course I could not find anywhere around here, so had to do with regular smoked bacon.
All in all Tom was still quite late or at least later then he said the day before so it was a bit hurried but at least we still had a lovely meal. I did take three photos in a hurry so the styling is not exactly how I had wanted it but still half decent…:) The recipe is definitely worth a try and you can choose cheaper fish such as haddock, whiting or hake, which funnily enough my fish market didn’t have yesterday.

Monkfish with lemon mayonaise and asparagus

Recipe (for four persons, from Jamie Oliver’s Cook):

Monkfish wrapped in pancetta with asparagus

Recipe type: Main

Author: Jamie Oliver (from Cook)

Serves: 4

Easy and delicious and with that lemon mayonaise it gives it a lovely tang

Ingredients

4 fish fillets, 2,5 cm thick each around 200 gr each. without skin and bones. I used monk fish
2 sticks of fresh rosemary, only the leaves, finely chopped
grated lemonzest of two lemons
black pepper
16 thin slices of pancetta or bacon
4 tablespoons mayonaise
2 large bunches of asparagus, cleaned

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Sprinkle your fishfillets with the lemonzest (without the bitter white stuff!), rosemary and fresh pepper. No salt is needed because they are going to be wrapped in delicious salt pancetta. Put the slices of pancetta on a chopping board and flatten them extra with the side of knife. Put four slices together on the board, put a fishfillet on top and roll the package closed.
Heat a large, ovenproof frying pan, put a little oil in and add the pieces of fish with the good side up. Fry them for about a minute and after that put the pan in the oven, for about 10-12 minutes depending on the thickness of the filet, untill the pancetta is crispy and nice golden brown.
While the fish is in the oven you have time to make the lemon mayonaise with either fresh mayonaise or mayonaise from a jar. Add enough lemonjuice as the intention is for the mayonaise to be a little bit too sour. In combination with the fish and asparagus that will be less. It’s ok if the mayonaise is a little thinner then usual.
Cook or steam the asparagus and serve them with the fish and the lemon mayonaise.

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Junglefrog Cooking » monkfish

Cooking class, lesson 5; patisserie

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