CAP: March 2008 Archives
Two nights ago I attended the Easy Desserts with Sauces CAP class. Martin was the instructor again, he did an excellent job teaching the course. He went over all the recipes, gave some insight to dessert making and plating. Color contrast, flavor pairing, and a few tips on making the deserts. We had 13 students, so this meant one group would have four students in it. I was first at station four, and somehow I got kicked off my team and sent to station three. I went over because they only had two members and nobody volunteered to help them; I've seen groups of two before - they never have a good time.
This was another -- hrmmm.. I know how to make all these desserts, where should I go. I had chosen the crepe suzette and strawberries with mousse station, and I ended up making churros. I'm not the greatest fan of fried food, so I immediatly grabbed the ingredients for one of our other dishes. I made the ginger cream anglaise for an apple gallet, while the other two started on the churro batter and apple gallet. I was done in a few minutes, the gallet was formed and in the oven a few minutes later, and the churro batter needed to cool before we could fry it. That's when the downtime started - I walked a round and checked out what the other groups were doing. then we were ready to start the churros. I cut the batter from the pastry bag (other guy was squeezing them out), and the third person made the chocolate dipping sauce. Well, at this point, we were pretty much done for the night. The gallet was baking, our sauces were done, and the churros were mindlessly repetitive. Squeeze, cut, fry, remove from oil, cool, dust with cinnamon sugar -- and repeat. The cooked for 3 minutes, and we had three people to watch them.
This is when I started doing the dishes -- the guy frying the churros seemed to be having a blast, so I let him do it as much as he wanted. I helped Julie clean the pots and pans from all the stations. I found this more productive then standing around and doing nothing. I'd hop back over when they needed to dust the churros, or snip them off into the oil, but for the most part, we were the least active team. The other three stations were making stuff up until the last moment.
I enjoyed the class, but it was a little unsatisfying. When everyone was done cooking and we started to taste, I realized that there needs to be some savory type of dish to help balance out the insulin coma that hit everyone after class. The only thing I could really come up with was a fruit and cheese plate with a cream cheese sauce to dip the fruit in. We would have enough time to make a fromage blanc, you could mix in some dried fruit at the end and serve it with some fresh fruit, honey nut bread, and other cheeses.
This was another -- hrmmm.. I know how to make all these desserts, where should I go. I had chosen the crepe suzette and strawberries with mousse station, and I ended up making churros. I'm not the greatest fan of fried food, so I immediatly grabbed the ingredients for one of our other dishes. I made the ginger cream anglaise for an apple gallet, while the other two started on the churro batter and apple gallet. I was done in a few minutes, the gallet was formed and in the oven a few minutes later, and the churro batter needed to cool before we could fry it. That's when the downtime started - I walked a round and checked out what the other groups were doing. then we were ready to start the churros. I cut the batter from the pastry bag (other guy was squeezing them out), and the third person made the chocolate dipping sauce. Well, at this point, we were pretty much done for the night. The gallet was baking, our sauces were done, and the churros were mindlessly repetitive. Squeeze, cut, fry, remove from oil, cool, dust with cinnamon sugar -- and repeat. The cooked for 3 minutes, and we had three people to watch them.
This is when I started doing the dishes -- the guy frying the churros seemed to be having a blast, so I let him do it as much as he wanted. I helped Julie clean the pots and pans from all the stations. I found this more productive then standing around and doing nothing. I'd hop back over when they needed to dust the churros, or snip them off into the oil, but for the most part, we were the least active team. The other three stations were making stuff up until the last moment.
I enjoyed the class, but it was a little unsatisfying. When everyone was done cooking and we started to taste, I realized that there needs to be some savory type of dish to help balance out the insulin coma that hit everyone after class. The only thing I could really come up with was a fruit and cheese plate with a cream cheese sauce to dip the fruit in. We would have enough time to make a fromage blanc, you could mix in some dried fruit at the end and serve it with some fresh fruit, honey nut bread, and other cheeses.
I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'm a' set straight, this Watergate
I can't stand rocking when I'm in here
'Cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why
I got this f****ng thorn in my side
Oh my god, it's a mirage
I'm tellin' y'all it's sabotage
Ok, well, it wasn't intentional, but it still attacked our dish. We took the pear tart, set the oven, blind baked the crust, cooled it, filled it, and put them back in the oven. After 15 minutes I rotated the pans and they kept cooking. After 30 minutes of cooking we pulled the top tart out, and something wasn't quite right. We decided to let the larger tart cook for another 6 minutes. We were busy eating all the other dishes cooked in the class when Joe, the owner, came over and told us the oven was set to broil.
At this point I panicked, Alexia (Alexia Miles - the instructor) was concerned too. The tart is supposed to cool for 30 minutes, and the insides were not even close to being cooked. We were 15 minutes from the end of the class, so we got creative. I started scraping the burnt parts off the top of the smaller tart, and we let the larger one bake some more. TOTAL DISASTER! This was a sad looking dessert. especially since the pears were sliced at a bias and fanned out all prettily. Alexia and I started serving up tiny pieces of cooked tart. When we had everything plated, I had the bright idea to pull off the fanned pears and drape them over the petit fours. This improved the plating significantly, a little height, and some fruit. some of the cut pieces only had the filling.
They tasted pretty good, which was nice, since the baking was totally messed up.
When we were eating them I think I found out what happened. After we blind baked the crust, the other station needed to toast their bread. they asked em the temp of the oven, it matched theirs, I told them it was on bake, and they put their bread in. we left the oven on to keep it warm, my group was going to need it in a few minutes. The other group put the cheese on their croûtons and placed the pan back in the oven. We were coming close to overlapping oven usage - ours baked for 30 minutes, and theirs needed to broil for 2 minutes. Alexia said they should use the other oven so they could broil the bread. They opted to stay on our side, they said the baking would be fine. After the bread was in the oven for 5 minutes, the person working the oven said "maybe we should have used the broil on the other side, this is taking forever."
One minute later they were done.
Did you see what happened just there? I picked up on it on the way home. I kept running all the events in my head, then it hit me. The woman on the oven hopped it to broil right at the end, and didn't bother to tell anyone, or switch it back. Should I have triple checked the oven - yes, but I assumed that it would stay the same since they didn't need to change the settings. The oven has two knobs, one for temp, the other for bake setting. I had only checked the temperature.
On the plus side, the tart's flavor was good - so at least the class got to taste it.
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I went back and made the tart at home. I poached the pears in red wine. Everything went perfectly - and it looks gorgeous. Here are some more pics of the pear tart :D
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