Junglefrog Cooking » workshop

Not for vegetarians – meat course part I

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:00:01 +0000

Cleaning a piece of beef

You know me right? I like to follow all sort of workshops, cooking courses or anything really as long as it is vaguely and somewhere remotely related to food. If you’ve followed my blog for a while you might even have seen the bloodiest post I’ve ever written on dissecting a rabbit at the Kookstudio Amsterdam (I just saw that that is already more then two years ago! Wow… does time fly or what??)

While this post will not nearly be as bloody as that one, it does involve a lot of meat and is therefore not so much suited for the vegetarians among us. For anyone that likes a piece of meat… you can safely read on!

Gertjan working on getting the spine loose

A few weeks ago I followed the Broodcursus by Teest and Desemzo and was invited to also follow the meatcourse which was given at a large butcher in Weesp that caters for restaurants and such, Fontijn. I was a bit intimidated by the level of the rest of the workshop followers as most have a background in food (restaurant owners, chefs etc.) but I don’t have to pass a test and I could follow everything quite allright… lol..

We started the morning in the blissfully warm cafe where we were treated to coffee and donuts before Gertjan kicked it of by showing us a little movie about a slaughter house in Brazil (I think it was Brazil but it could have been Venezuela). Not my kind of thing… Pfftt. I was glad when the movie was over. I mean; it’s one thing knowing that it happens, but it is quite another thing to see it happen. Still; I think it is good that he showed it. It only makes me appreciate the meat we eat even more. There was some technical information on the different parts of the animal, origin of the meat etc.

Pieces of liver being measured

After that we got a big tour of the company which was impressive and also very cold… Fontijn is not a slaughterhouse but they import meat from various sources and then prepare it for delivery to restaurants and stores. So the range of products that they carry is extensive. After the tour Gertjan showed us how to clean the various parts of the cow and we worked on a piece of chuck ourselves removing the silverskin and man that was hard! It always looks so easy when someone else does it, but try it yourself and it’s a lot less simple. Chuck is a fairly cheap piece of meat which has a lot of flavor. Some pieces where prepared for us as well and it was delicious.

Dry aged piece of beef... See the difference?

At the end of the afternoon we got to taste the difference in raw meat between the various cuts; from entrecote to t-bone to rib eye and we even had a sliver of raw liver (it wasn’t as bad as you would think!) as well as a tiny bit of a piece of dry aged beef.

Where can we find each piece of meat?

All in all it was a really interesting day and I have a new found respect for meat actually. We were already at the stage where we are eating less of the supermarket meat and more of the ‘better’ meats out there, which is more expensive, but I rather eat less meat of a better quality then eat terrible meat! So if you live in the Netherlands and are interested in learning more about meat then this course (two days) might be something for you. This was day one, so I can’t wait to find out what day 2 will bring us!

Bread baking course part II

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:00:46 +0000

Fresh out of the oven; baked sourdough bread

Isn’t it funny how my blog seems to have transformed into a bread baking blog in the last couple of days? For those of you that do not like bread, I can assure you that all will go back to normal quite soon. But today was our second part of the breadbaking course we had in Vianen given by Robert Verweij from Teest, Edwin Klaasen from Desemenzo en Albert Steehouder from backery Steehouder. We had been “slaving” the entire week between the first day last week and today to make our own sourdough starter. And ofcourse that was one of the things that we did today; bake our own bread with our very own sourdough starter.

My sourdough starter shortly before it is being processed into the dough behind it

We started the day with adding our starter to (already kneaded) dough, incorporate that and put it in a basket to do the initial rise. While that was left to stand, Albert showed us what happened if you took one dough and gave it various kneading times starting at 3, then 6, 9 and 12 minutes in total in a machine. Below you can see how the different breads looked starting from the left with 3 minutes and working upwards to 12 minutes.

Can you tell the difference between these breads?

We got to feel how the dough reacted to kneading, how it changed from being hard and unyielding to soft and stretchy. Quite a good exercise this as it does let you see and feel (and afterwards smell and taste) the difference. Truth be told I would have probably stopped kneading after 3 minutes as it looked fine to me at that point. Once we got to the tasting though, there was a mark-able difference between the different breads with 9 minutes being most peoples favorite. We tasted bread baked with different flours (from soft to harder), we tasted sourdough bread that we baked and the secret recipe of Edwin’s Woeste knoest- brood..

Albert holding up two different types of flour

I almost feel we did more this last day then we did the first day and that was already a lot. We made a ‘partybread’ (comparable to a christmas stollen), we made baguettes again for lunch and they were soooo good. We also found out that making one of those…. mmm, I think they are called ‘pain d’epi”? is really not as difficult as you would think… You need a pair of scissors and of you go!

Making pain d'epi was not as hard as it looked!

Pain D'Epi ready to be baked

I could go on about all the things we learned and well, It’s worth the time and effort and while I certainly liked the no-knead method it does in no way compare to this bread. We had it tonight with fresh pesto, mozarella, rocket and strips of grilled peppers and it was SO good… I’ve got more flour so I will for sure be baking more in the weeks to come!I’m sure it’s gonna be trial and error but at least now I know what I do wrong (or I have an idea what it might be..lol)

I was thinking of giving you a recipe but I decided against it. First of all, they are not mine to give, and secondly I am going to be doing some more breadbaking and will share those recipes with my own findings. We’ve done a lot of things today that cannot easily be put into one clear instruction on how to make this, so you’ll have to wait for more info…

Weighing the flour

Breakbaking course part I

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:16:03 +0000

After kneading the dough went into baskets to rise

Bread… that most elusive of materials… I have to confess that I’m sort of a breadbaking virgin. True; I have baked bread before as you can see here but up till now it has been mostly with premade flourmixtures or has been a complete failure as you can see here…I have made quite a few very succesful focaccia breads but I figured it was time I got my head around actual and proper bread baking.

I love bread. I’ve always been a ‘breadgirl’. Growing up in the Netherlands, bread is a rather large part of our foodculture. We are people that eat a lot of bread in general and some maybe more then others. I actually worked in a bakery in my previous life (which was roughly 25 years ago) but I didn’t really learn much there and if I did I have all forgotten it by now. But when I lived on my own I could go days without ever eating a warm meal, just existing on delicious bread was enough for me. Ofcourse now that I have Tom to take into account that rarely happens anymore. He loves bread as well, but he gets grumpy if he doesn’t eat a warm meal at least once a day. So we still eat a lot of bread but maybe slightly less then when it was just me.

But breadmaking; now that is something entirely different. I’ve always been slightly in awe of people that make gorgeous bread and I have always considered it to be very difficult. The whole process of yeast and rising and kneading got me scared. And if the times that you tried baking bread, it sort of failed you start to wonder what magical processes are required to create gorgeous fluffy bread. So I signed up for a baking course. A baking course purely around bread. This was not a course designed to learn you a recipe but it is based around understanding the nature of dough, flour, yeast and all other ingredients you might use. So if you bake your own bread you understand why something didn’t work and you understand why it didn’t rise etc.

Adding water to the flour is the beginning of the process

The course is organized and given by Robert Verweij from Teest and Culinair Centrum Beverwijk and Edwin Klaasen from Desemenzo (for those that don’t speak Dutch. Desem means sourdough) and is giving in an actual bakery in Vianen, Steehouder.

Cutting the dough for the ciabatta and weighing it

It’s two days in total; one last week and one coming Monday and it is a lot of information to process but I do feel I’m learning a lot too and that’s ultimately what it’s all about. At the moment my sourdough starter is developing in the kitchen so I can’t wait to bake something with it on Monday.

Me waiting to wash my hands after kneading the dough. Photo taken by Tineke Hendrikse!!!

So what did we do on day 1? Apart from a lot of theory on how to bake bread we talked about basic recipes and how you can calculate how much to use of which ingredient. All in all I am still amazed at how good a bit of flour, salt, water and yeast can be. I will share with you how we are making our sourdough starter below. There are many ways to make a starter but the goal of this exercise was to all use the same recipe and ingredients and then see what will happen. Since we all live in different areas of the country we will all have different results. Different temperatures in the kitchen, different water etc. etc. There are so many variables that influence the final result that it is dazzling sometimes.

I am taking care of my little sourdough ‘baby’ and I am sure you will hear all about the results of the second class next week!

Sourdough starter

Recipe type: Bread

Author: Desemenzo

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 5 mins

Total time: 10 mins

Again, there are many ways to lead to rome. This is just one example of how you can make your own sourdough starter. Now as what to do with it… I will tell you next week!

Ingredients

450 gr rye flour
450 gr water

Instructions

Day 1

Mix 200 gr of the rye and 200 gr of water together with a spatula and leave outside of the fridge for a day.

Day 2 to 6

Each day add 50 gr of rye and 50 gr of water to the mix and again let it stand outside of the fridge. After day six keep it cool at around 10C. A cellar would be ideal but ofcourse a fridge would work too if you do not have a cellar.
You will start to see something happening after about 2-3 days.. The volume will expand and there might be airbubbles…

Delightful patisserie lesson 1

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 12:57:13 +0000

We first met Carle during one of our courses at the Kookstudio Amsterdam, where we were very impressed with the way he teaches. His knowledge of baking, dessert and pastry is enormous and he is very good in transferring that knowledge to other people, so when we found out that he is giving patisserie courses as well, we ofcourse had to enrol. It took a while before we managed to find a date, which was mostly due to our ridiculously busy schedule but we finally managed to set four dates for the four lessons. And last night was our first lesson. We went to Amsterdam where Carle has his own bakery and shop, Douglas Delights, in the centre of Amsterdam. Carle is quite well known within the Netherlands and has an impressive resume. He’s worked for the Amstel hotel, has worked in several well known restaurants to end up in Amsterdam to teach us, mere mortals, the ins and outs of his trade.

Carle calculating what we need

We first started (well, we started with coffee and a wonderful delicious piece of cake that Carle made….mmm, but that doesn’t count as an official starting does it?) with going through the list of various batters and doughs that there are. I never knew there were so many!! I am not gonna name them all here, but let me just say that the list is extensive. A lot of them are not well known in Holland, but would be – for instance – well known in France. After going through the list we got to choose what we wanted to make. Obviously you cannot possibly make all of them in one evening, so we picked puff pastry, shortcrust pastry, Joconde and tulip. I had made puff pastry once before, for one of the Daring Bakers challenges where we made vol-au-vents. But we all thought it would be a good exercise to make it as it is not the easiests of dough to create.

Our group is very small, with only three people, which is great as you can ask all the questions you want. Our group consists of Anita, who is also a trained patissier and has had an internship with Carle. She is now starting up her own business in Hilversum. And then there is Tom and me. So we are actually the only two amateurs in the class… But it’s great to have two experts to teach us how it is all to be done! (although technically, Anita is not there to teach us, but we also learn a great deal from watching experts at work, right?)

Preparing the tulip on a baking sheet

Because the space is not big, we make something all together, which works better for me as well. Carle shows us how to do something and then we take turns in either rolling out the dough (and believe me, I am lousy in rolling out properly, but I now I know at least what I am doing wrong!!), kneading something, whipping eggwhites etc. So the end result is a combined effort of us all.

Joconde is a type of batter that is used a lot for decorationcake. And with decorationcake I mean a very thin cake that is baked on a baking paper and then used as a ring (for instance) on another cake. You can make patterns in it by using the tulip batter to make letters or use patterns as is being done above by Carle.

We started with preparing the tulip batter as that needs to freeze before you can use it. The ingredients for this are:

Tulip batter

55 gr butter (very soft)

65 gr caster sugar

70 gr eggwhites

55 gr flour

5 gr cacao

Mix everything together and use to make a pattern on a baking sheet such as per the photo here. Let your imagination run wild! You can color this batter in any color you look using foodcoloring. We used cacao to make it chocolately but you could easily make it pink, red or whatever other color you fancy. Put the sheet on a baking tray and keep in the freezer until completely stiff.

Making puff pastry... forgot to take a photo of the block of butter on the dough...

Once the tulip is prepared and in the freezer you can make the Joconde batter which is essentially a genoise batter but with almond and I think more sugar and flour.

Joconde batter:

125 gr ground almonds

100 gr castersugar

165 gr of egg

Mix all of these together into an airy batter. Works best in a kitchenaid (or similar).

110 gr eggwhite

42 gr castersugar

Beat the eggwhite stiff with the castersugar.

35 gr flour

25 gr of melted butter

Mix the first part of the batter first with the extra flour, then add the butter and then the whipped eggwhites. Fold all of this in gently. Once the batter is complete and the tulip patterns are frozen you can spread this over the same bakingsheet.

Anita spreading the batter

Once it is evenly spread you can put it in the oven at 230°C until it is light brownish on top. Remove from the bakingplate as soon as possible (we sort of forgot and since the plate it hot, it keeps baking making the outsides too thin.. O well, we are students right?)

And this is then the final result. You can then proceed to cut out small strips and put that in rings to put another cake in. We will continue on that next week and will finish it then. We also made shortcrust pastry which we’re going to make into delicious little things next week… Aren’t you all curious what it is gonna be??

Cake with baked in patterns!

Cooking class; lesson 3 patisserie

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:54:06 +0000

Last night we had a lesson in patisserie from Carle Douglas from Douglas Delights. We had a patisserie lesson before from Rob in the first course, but there is a big difference… Rob is passionate about cooking and everything else except patisserie I would say, while Carle is a master in making desserts and beautiful cakes (and YES, he makes macarons!!! Finally found them in Amsterdam!) and it is a huge difference being taught by someone who loves doing something… lol.. No offense Rob!

Making of the bottom

The weather outside was absolutely terrible and while the rain was pouring down we all set out to make a Gateau St. Honore, which – when I saw what we were gonna make – was quite a daunting prospect but with the help of Carle we all made a beautiful creation!

We started out by making dough for the bottom of the pie and I have no idea how that is called in English but in Dutch it is called “Harde Wenerdeeg” I will try and find the correct names later on. While that was being chilled we made Choux pastry for making profiteroles, then on to making Creme au beurre mousseline, creme chiboust and Italian meringue… Yes, you read that right; five recipes to make the one pie!! But how gorgeous does this look! I am not sure we would have been able to successfully complete this without the assistance of Carle, but I have learned soooo many things this time! Remember the Daring Bakers where we had to make our own marshmallows? Well, I finally know how to make them plus I also know now what ‘soft ball stage’ is when talking about cooking sugar/making caramel. It makes a huge difference when you have someone showing you how to do that as compaired to just trying it out for yourself. Caramel does not work that way!

For those that want to give this a try, here are all the recipes! The importance here is also the sequence in which you make the recipes below. I will first list all recipes and then at the end explain how you have to make them all and in which sequence…! So make sure to read it all thoroughly before proceeding!

Dough for the bottom (Harde Wenerdeeg)

100 gr. fine sugar

150 gr butter

35 gr egg

2,5 gr salt

grated lemon zest (one small tsp)

300 gr all purpose flour

Mix sugar, butter, egg, salt and lemonzest in a large bowl. Add flour and quickly mix to a dough. Make this into a ball and flatten it out so it chills faster. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Choux pastry

250 gr. water/milk (50/50)

112 gr butter

4 gr sugar

4 gr salt

150 gr flour

5 eggs

Bring water/milk mixture, butter, sugar and salt to a boil. Take of the heat and add all the flour in one go and stir, back on the heat until the dough forms a ball that doesn’t stick to the wall of the pan. Make sure you do not have the dough on to short or it will be tasting too much of flour. You can smell when it’s ready! Take of the heat and add the eggs while stirring and keep stirring until completely incorporated.Put the warm mixture into a piping bag.

Creme au beurre mousseline

250 gr milk

125 gr sugar

2 eggyolks

15 gr custardpowder

15 gr flour

75 gr butter

75 gr butter (yes, that is twice!)

Mix flour, custard and 2 tbsp of the sugar. Mix this with a little bit of the milk into a smooth fluid. Add the egg yolks to this and incorporate well.

Bring the rest of the milk to a boil together with the rest of the sugar. While stirring add the egg-mixture to the boiling milk. For about a minute keep boiling until it becomes a thick custard. Once the custard starts to make ‘plopping’ sounds you know it is done.

Add 75 gr of butter to the hot custard. Cover with a piece of clingfilm (the clingfilm should cover directly the custard, so let it touch the surface!) and leave to cool completely. Once cool add the other 75 gr of butter little by little while mixing with a handmixer or foodprocessor until you have a smooth and airy cream.

Assembling

Creme Chiboust

120 gr milk

25 gr sugar

10 gr custard

2 egg-yolks

1/2 leave of gelatine

15 gr of Grand Marnier or Rum ( we actually put Amaretto in it and that works lovely!!)

140 to 160 gr of Italian Meringue (recipe below)

Using the same procedure as for the “Creme au beurre mousseline” cook from the milk, sugar, custard and eggyolks a thick cream. Add the (soaked) gelatine and the alcohol of your choice. Incorporate completely before adding the Italian Meringue and carefully fold that into the hot cream. Use the cream while still hot in assembling the Gateau!

Italian Meringue

4 eggwhites (120 gr)

180 gr sugar

20 gr glucosesyrup (if you do not have glucosesyrup you can use ‘basterdsuiker’ which has already a coating of glucose around it so it has the same effect. I am not sure of the right translation but I am thinking caster sugar)

Bring the sugar with 60 gr of water to a boil and if you have glucose add it. Without stirring cook until it reaches 120 C or softball stage. While the sugar is boiling mix the eggwhites (preferably in a standmixer) to a foam. While continuing to whip the eggwhites add the hot sugarsyrup and keep mixing until it is completely cooled of. Make sure not to pour the sugar on the beaters but along the edge of the bowl!

And now for the fun part of assembling the Gateau St. Honore!! The qty’s we made were enough for making two small ones of 18 cm in diameter. The only thing that needs to be doubled is the qty of the Creme Chiboust of you want to make filling sufficient for two.

GATEAU ST. HONORE

250 gr of dough for the bottom

Choux pastry of 250 gr water/milk

Mousselinecream of 1/8 milk

Chiboustcreme of 120 gr milk

150 gr sugar

30 gr glucose

Roll the dough out so you can cut out a circle of about 22,5 cm. Around the edge of the circle make a ring of the choux pastry, making sure to stay inside the circle and not outside. On the same baking tray or a separate one depending on your space add about 20 small profiteroles of approx. 3 cm.

Put everything together in an oven at 180 C for about 20 minutes untill golden and done. Leave to cool.

Fill the profiteroles with the Creme au beurre de mousseline. (Filling you can do by making a small hole in the bottom of the profiteroles or by pushing the piping bag through if that works)

Make golden brown caramel with the sugar, 50 gr of water and the glucose and use that to dip the filled profiteroles into. Make sure not to touch the caramel as it is very very hot!! Leave on a baking tray to cool of a bit and then with the rest of the caramel stick the profiteroles on the ring of choux pastry you made.

Once the chiboustcream is done fill the middle of the gateau with that and leave to cool and stiffen in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

As you can probably guess by the number of recipes needed to make this, you need quite a lot of time to do it all. In total our workshop took about 4 hours but a little less will work as well if you’re an experienced baker! (which I am not…) I just had a bit of this for lunch ( ) and it was incredible! The crust was nice and crunchy while the amaretto that we added to the creme chiboust gave it a wonderful flavor. It’s not something I would make easily again as it involves a lot of work, but it’s a lovely cake!! And great practice in all sorts of techniques too!

Junglefrog Cooking » workshop

Not for vegetarians – meat course part I

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Bread baking course part II

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Breakbaking course part I

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