This week

It been another busy week at Le Cordon Bleu, this week we did 4 practical classes. 

Monday: Veal Stew with rice pilaf, onions and mushrooms 

Tuesday: Pork Cutlet with Mash Potato 

Wednesday: Eggs Florentine, Herb Omelette; Potato and Leek Soup, Chicken and Mushroom Soup

Veal Stew 

 Pork Cutlet with Jus and Mushed Potato. I have to say the mashed potato was 50/50 butter to potato, as we were told by the chefs this is industry standard!!!

Eggs!! During the Demo the chef did a number of different egg dishes proving how versatile they are!

Codded Eggs  

 Eggs Florentine. It was really interesting doing this dish as the eggs were poached. the process was first to poach all the eggs in a large pot of simmering water with vinegar. Once cooked you then placed the eggs into a bowl of iced water and left to sit, whist preparing spinach and mornay sauce. Then when ready to plate up we refreshed in hot water for a 1 or 2 mins and served!! The end result was perfect eggs, again chef told us that is this a standard practice in industry that there wont be many restaurants that wouldn't use this process.  

 Duck, Hen and Quail Eggs 

Herb Omelette 

 Scrambled eggs and Smoked Salmon. Looks very unappealing! this also was almost 50/50 butter to eggs!! 

Soup: Chicken and Bacon 

Potato and Leek Soup 

 London Shots: 

The city is buzzing with Olympic fever! I'm so lucky to be here and just loving the atmosphere!! 

Heading off to the beach vollyball and driving next week so will post about them! Here are a few random shots. 

Queens crown made of jelly beans.  

London Life

 This post is just a few photos and things that I have collected over the pass few weekends. 

Acklam Village Market a little food market just off portbello rd, selling a range of world food. 

Movie screening at the end of our street last night.

  Marylebone Farmers Market 

 Ginger Pig Butcher Marylebone

Lunch in Bloomsbury Square Gardens. Garden just opposite Le Cordon Bleu  

Meat Meat Meat

The rest of the week was spent preparing and cooking Lamb and Beef. On Monday afternoon in our demonstration Chef butchered a full lamb, showing us through each cut of the animal.

Chef Gile with Lamb 

 Lamb before butchery 

 Chef slicing the head in half 

 Then from the lamb chef prepared the rack, which we then later did ourselves in the practical, served it with a jus and a layered veg of aubergines and tomatos.  

Next Day we look at Beef. Here is the Fillet and the Sirloin.  

Steak cut

Then in the practical we prepared a roasted sirloin steak with roasted and turned potatoes, peas, carrot, turnips and beans served in an artichoke with a beef jus. 

This week has been beautiful and sunny in London! Have loved just hanging out in the parks and walking around in the sunshine! 

Pasta

On Monday we look at pasta. We made Tagliatelle Alfredo, this involved making the dough for the pasta, resting it, rolling it out and then putting it through the pasta machine. It was fun and surprisingly not too hard!

Tagliatelle Alfredo

 Hanging out the pasta before cooking 

 Rolling out the dough

PUFF PUFF PUFF

After Quiche Lorraine Monday we then spend the next 2 day making the perfect Puff Pastry. This involved a 2 day process of rolling, turning and resting. We followed a traditional french method. The French method of puff pastry is the process of incorporating the butter to the pastry as a cold solids flat square measuring about 2/3 of the dough mixture and then doing numerous folds so that it creates the perfect puff with multiple  laying of dough and butter. So on tuesday we began with doing 3 turns of the pastry and after each turn you need to rest the pastry for at least 40mins. So as well as doing the turning of the pastry on tuesday in the practical we also made Crepes au citron (lemon crepes).       

Crepes au citron

 Making Crepes. We had lots of time to practice our cooking and flipping of the crepes, therefore made about 30 crepes in total!

Work Station

Crepe Pan

Day 2:
Final result after 2 days of making the puff pastry this was the end result,
Pate Feuilletee  (puff pastry with cheese sauce).

Not so perfect ones! Home for my housemates!

Puff Pastry all week long!

This week we will be looking at Puff Pastry!
Considering I can’t really eat any pastry, I have never really attempted any form of pastry, it going to be a fun week!

Today we started with making a Quiche Lorraine. I must say my skills need a lot of work! I didn't manage to roll it out evenly, ending up with an uneven layer of dough on the base of my tin and side were a little thick.. After a bit of doctoring and some help from Chef David my Quiche Lorraine was complete!

Quiche Lorraine