TODAY’S TIDBITS
- Don’t egg-wash the sides of puff pastry, this will hinder the layers puffing out
- Put puff pastry in the fridge/freezer and then straight into the oven – the freezer helps seals the crust, and holds in the steam better, making for a bigger “puff”.
- Use a pastry brush to wipe the flour off the dough when rolling it out.
Today we made crepes!!! A quick demo of making the batter (milk, flour, eggs and sugar), which we added in beure noisette (browned butter) – not yet sure why the butter needs to be browned). And then it was flipping crepes using the non-stick pans. Nina made the Suzettes, I made crepes stuffed with a delicious gryere, mushroom, cream sauce).
Before we say goodbye to desserts, we made deep fried banana fritters. (Don’t often think of these as French Cuisine). The batter was equal parts flour and beer, with some sugar, salt, egg and baking powder. We dipped banana parts into this, then into hot oil, and topped with a light sprinkle of powdered sugar, served over a chocolate sauce. I’m not a big deep-fry fan, but these were great.
And as a final goodbye to pastry week, we finished with a Bande de Tarte au Fruit. This was a strip of puff pastry, blind baked to ‘puff up’ the sides, then layered with a crème lègere (that we literally whipped up: pastry cream diluted with whipped cream), and topped with cut fruit. Out of all the desserts I’ve brought home, this one won the prize.
Tomorrow’s class focuses on nutrition, with striped bass on lentils. This is quite a step away from our recent sugar-overdose week.