A moment of sadness as I realize that this is the penultimate techniques cooking class. No more getting gussied up in a chef's coat and flame-retardant, checkered pants...what will I do with my Monday and Wednesday nights?!
Tonight's class was Pot au Feu and Fruit Tarts. Yes, it's a bit of an odd combo, but I guess they wanted us to feel like we could make a complete meal by the end of our semester. In this class, we started by giving our puff pastry one final turn. Mine cracked a bit, because it hadn't fully defrosted. But, my partners worked out beautifully. Obviously, we used hers for our tarts. After the final turn, we rolled out the dough to the size of a sheet pan, put it on the pan, and put this in the freezer. We did this, because we didn't want it to deflate when we cut it into the tarts.
In the meantime, we began our meat. For the Pot au Feu, literally "pot on fire" (because traditionally it was a pot of everything cooked over a fire), we used short ribs on the bone. We washed the short ribs and then blanched them in cold water to get rid of any impurities in the meat. We strained this, then returned it to the pot, covered it with marmite stock (the burnt onion stock that we learnt about in the stock class), added a bouquet garni, and brought it up to a boil and then simmered it for over an hour. The point of this method is to take a tougher piece of meat and cook it long enough that it becomes tender. Traditionally, pot au feu is served with cornichons (pickles), vegetables, and a strong sauce. We kept to these traditions by cooking some vegetables as accompaniments and making a sauce raifort (horseradish sauce). For the vegetables, they tortured us one last time by making us "turn" our vegetables (carrots, leeks, turnips, and celery) into football-like shapes. We cooked these in a separate pan in some of the broth about 10-20 minutes before the meat was done. The sauce raifort was pretty easy. It involved making a flour-butter roux, cooling this roux, and then whisking in some of the meat cooking liquid. We then put this back over the heat and added creme fraiche and horseradish. I loved this sauce and thought it very necessary because the meat was a little bland without the sauce. We also took some marrow bones and poached these for a minute or two or until we thought we'd be able to slide the marrow out of the bones. We then sliced the marrow and sauteed it very quickly and placed it on top of the short ribs for platting. It sure looked good:
Once our puff pastry set up a bit in the freezer, we removed it and cut into rectangular tart shapes. From the remaining dough, we cut additional borders to edge these tarts, gluing them to the base with some water. These were decorated with x'es that we made with the back of our paring knife, just barely cutting the dough. With a fork, we pierced the center dough all over and brushed it with an egg wash. This was baked for about 20 minutes and cooled it completely before using it. In the meantime, we made a pastry cream by whisking together egg yolks and sugar, whisking in flour and cornstarch, and tempering in some hot milk steeped with a vanilla bean. This was put back over the heat to cook out the flour and cornstarch and stirred constantly. Once this was mixed fully, we poured it over some white chocolate and then put it on an ice bath to chill. I loved this vanilla pastry cream...I think the white chocolate and vanilla bean added a lot of flavor to it and I was eating it by the spoonful all night. When we were ready to assemble our tart we piped the pastry cream onto the center, cut the fruit we wanted, and arranged this fruit so that each slice would get the same fruit. We brushed this with some melted apricot jam so that the fruit would maintain its color better and the juices would be sealed in. I went with strawberry, orange, and kiwi.
Until the next and final class (Lobster and shellfish...quite the send-off!),
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