This last week brought some useful and not-so-useful new skills at l'ecole and some interesting observations about French culture and how subtle some of our differences are.Truffles? Yes!
First, to the truffles...the chocolate kind. Both in and out of class, chocolate truffles were one of the big highlights of last week. Our Pastry class on Wednesday took us away from tarts, cakes, and pastry cream and into the world of truffles and fruit. The class had its highlights and lowlights, and perhaps some of those highlight differences in what we expect based upon what we were brought up with, but there was no doubt that the highlight was learning how to make chocolate truffles.
After I got over the horror at learning that our chef didn't care for dark chocolate all that much and thus used a chocolate for our truffles that was "only" 66% cacao (I usually bake w/70% and sometimes even go for 85%), I learned how straightforward it was to make a truffle with chocolate ganache...and how hard it is to make them in either (a) attractive shapes or (b) of a consistent size.
The ganache was much like others that I'd made in the past - particularly for my Mocha Hazelnut Dacquoise cake (damn, I wish I had my kitchen here so I could make one!) - just a blend of melted dark chocolate, cream, and, while we would use sugar, the chef had us use "inverted sugar" with the texture of thick honey called trimoline - a sucrose variant that avoids crystallization in the end product. These are cooked and blended together to make the filling, then refrigerated to make it thick enough to pipe out onto parchment with a pastry bag to form the core of the truffles.
After 30 min or so, we pull the ganache out of the fridge and start to pipe it onto the racks lined with parchment to make our truffles. When the chef shows us how, he creates beautifully-shaped truffles of even size all in a line. When we do it...not so much. While some of our truffles (yes, I'm talking about you, Suzie) looked great, most of ours varied in size from one to the next and looked like Hershey's Kisses or, as the ever-delightful Sarah kept calling them...poo. Yes, very appetizing. Thank you, Sarah!
Despite Sarah's best efforts, we were not deterred. After creating our sheets of truffles, we put them back in the fridge to firm them up for an hour or so, then melted some chocolate, and while it was cooling a bit, filled a tray with cocoa powder, and then proceeded to assemble our truffles. To do so, we just dropped the truffles in the the melted dark chocolate - this would form the outer shell. Using special fine-tined fork-like tools, we pulled the truffles out of the melted chocolate and rolled them across the pan of cocoa to coat them, then set the finished truffles aside.We each walked away with bags of 2 dozen truffles or so, but, believe it or not, we all felt we were taking as many as we could and still left a dozen or two to...I know it's shocking...toss away.
Please forgive me.
Since that class, I think I've eaten 2 or 3 of the truffles, but going to meet Pierre and Sophie and her parents on Saturday for lunch, I did the right thing, took them out of my fridge, and brought them to lunch so that Sophie and her mother could split and enjoy them. Whew! Dodged another artery-clogging bullet (although, I freely acknowledge, my coming to Paris and facing the once or twice-daily menu with foie gras, duck confit, great butter, chocolate mousse, and tarte tatin is, to follow the analogy, equivalent to throwing myself out into a hail of Mac-10 fire during a drug war).
To contrast a bit with the dark chocolate, we concurrently focused on a couple of fruit projects. Although perhaps nothing new to many of you, I had never made preserves before, so learning how to make confiture was a real pleasure for me. Creating both raspberry and pineapple-mango preserves was pretty straightforward - the biggest challenge was the endless stirring of the cooking fruit until it was thick enough that a drop on a plate didn't run when the plate was held vertically. I haven't tried them yet...perhaps these'll be some treats to take back home to the land of the free and the home of the fog.
Finally, we learned to make something that is popular with kids - particularly if they were not made into little squares like we did in class, but rather into what we all know as "fruit roll-ups". These fruit jellies are pretty damned simple to make, but I have to say that they're just too sweet for my taste. You can also easily see why making these with machines would turn out a very lovely and evenly-cut product - something a little challenging for us imperfect humans. Still, if you know how to present them, they could make a nice little touch at the end of a meal...but, truthfully, I'd still probably go with the truffles - they'd pair better with tea, espresso or cappuccino.
Truffles? No!
Talking about truffles...I thought I might interject a related observation. I think we all were aware that the French are protective of their culture and proud of their traditions. Rightfully so, in my opinion. The French have many wonderful foods, a beautiful language, a tradition of great art and architecture, and certain je ne sais quoi.
...but sometimes, methinks, it goes a little too far.
Case and point was my other truffle adventure this last week. When I'm in the US, Katy and I often buy cheese to serve as an hors d'oeuvre when guests are coming over. Some of our favorite cheeses (often from our favorite cheese shop, Say Cheese), have truffles in them. Most of these come from Italy, but pretty consistently, we can get them at any time of year.
- Sottocenere - a semi-hard cheese with a coating of truffle dust
- Cacciota - a firm mozzarella-like Pecorino with bits of black truffle inside
- Teneralla - a fresh Italian mozzarella with cream, fresh Ricotta, and white truffles inside
- Truffle Tremor - a Californian goat cheese with truffles (wow!)
OKayyyyy.
I'll just try another Fromagerie. Shock! Amusement! Mais non!!!
Another. Ditto.
What...is...up with that? You go to any decent cheese section in the US and we have American, Dutch, French, Italian, and English cheese. Here? Seulement les fromages de France. Zut alors!
Hmmm...can you say "market opportunity"?
No comments:
Post a Comment