The day started out smooth. Putting together a sweet pastry dough. Rolled with pistachios. Baked. Topped with sweet mascarpone, whipped cream. And garnished with strawberries.To serve 8.
Sweet Pastry Dough
125 g flour
30 g powdered sugar
Vanilla powder
Salt
85 g butter, cold, diced into small pieces
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30 g pistachios or hazelnuts, crushed
Filling
150 g mascarpone
6-8 basil leaves, finely chopped
Vanilla extract
100 g cream, whipped
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1 kg strawberries, hulled, washed, and quartered
Sauce
200 ml orange juice
50 ml balsamic vinegar
50 g sugar (if needed)
Filling Mix mascarpone, basil, and vanilla extract. Fold in whipped cream. Fill pastry bag fitted with a round tip and store in refrigerator. Roll the strawberries with a little bit of powdered sugar, vanilla, and balsamic vinegar. Allow to macerate at room temperature. Drain, reserving juice to decorate the plate.
Dough Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. With fingertips, incorporate the butter until a sand-like consistency. Drop onto a sheet of parchment paper and finish kneading until a ball forms. Do not over knead. (Note, the dough will be very crumbly before and after baking.) Let rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes. Roll dough out into 1/3 – 1/4 inch rounds. While rolling, top with pistachios, working into dough. Cut desired shapes with ring molds or cookie cutters. Gather scraps and repeat. Bake in a preheated 170 degree Celsius oven for 10 minutes. Slide onto a rack to stop cooking.
Sauce At a slight simmer reduce orange juice until a syrupy consistency. Do the same with the balsamic vinegar in separate sauce pans. If the orange juice is not sweet enough, add sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved strain the orange juice, and balsamic vinegar into one sauce pan. Combining them. Bring back to a boil, and slightly reduce. Strain.
Decorate baked dough with mascarpone mixture and strawberries. Garnish plate with orange juice/balsamic sauce and reserved strawberry juice.
To start the typical bistro menu we made a lightly saffroned mussel soup. A fairly simple soup, packed with flavor.Sandwiched between the mussel soup and strawberry biscuits was a sautéed veal chop. Served with onions, mushrooms, and lardons. Prepared grand-mère style. And finished with shallow-fried, olive-turned potatoes.
My practical for the veal chop was this morning. Saturday morning, 8:30 a.m. I was trimming some raw veal. A great way to start the weekend!
Having Chef Lesourd – my current favorite chef – the group pressed through the recipes. Everything went well for the most part. My potatoes were a bit undercooked and my jus wasn’t degreased.That brings me back to the instruction. Like I said, the day started off smooth. Chef Stril, in his usual fashion took us through the recipes. About two-thirds into his demonstration things started to unravel. Get a bit chaotic in fact.
Things falling off the counter. Loosing ingredients. Running out of items. Forgetting where he was. Chaos irrupted. The class. Shocked. Held our breath. And hoped for the end.
In the midst of Chef Stril’s chaos he managed to burn his potatoes. Neglect to degrease his jus. And presented some sad-looking desserts. Wow.
We all felt bad for the chef. We could tell that it was a bad day. A day that I am sure he just wanted to finish.
When things begin to fall apart you start to panic. Stress-bubbles pop within. You rush and try to correct. There comes a point however, when you just give up. And all you want is for it to be finished. No matter the outcome, you move as quickly as possible to the finish-line.Once the potatoes started to burn, we could tell that Chef Stril gave up a little bit. It was from here that he just moved as fast as he could to the end.
We all knew not to cook our potatoes as black as we saw in the demonstration room. But we didn’t know to degrease our jus. Everyone in my practical this morning was given this advice. Always degrease your jus. Always. Now we know. That in spite of what we see during instruction, there are fundamentals that we need to follow.
It’s nice to know that even professional chefs have off days.
Lesson 21 – A typical bistro menu
- Lightly saffroned mussel soup
- Sautéed veal chops, Grand-mère style garnish (glazed onions, mushrooms and lardons)
- Strawberries Italian-style with pistachio biscuits
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