Sadly my time at the CIA has come to a close. I learned quite a bit at Bistro Boot Camp and am so looking forward to preparing Bistro food for my Fam!
Day 4 presented us with the challenge of desserts and baked goods. My team was responsible for cheese souffles, quiche with caramelized onions and brie, and chocolate mousse.
Since I have had experience preparing all 3, my team mates asked me to help with all 3 and they would each take 1 as their responsibility. I started by helping to prep the mis en place for the cheeses souffle.
Day 4 presented us with the challenge of desserts and baked goods. My team was responsible for cheese souffles, quiche with caramelized onions and brie, and chocolate mousse.
Since I have had experience preparing all 3, my team mates asked me to help with all 3 and they would each take 1 as their responsibility. I started by helping to prep the mis en place for the cheeses souffle.
With that done, I moved over to help with the syrup for the chocolate mousse. We got it to the point of just going from little bubbles to big and went to whip it into the egg yolks and ended up making egg hard candy. I was totally perplexed. So... OK, call chef... she too was perplexed! That made me feel much better! We pulled out the hard lumps, made another syrup and ended up with much better looking stabilizer so we slowly mixed in the melted chocolate which I though was about to seize so I quickly turned off the mixer and summoned chef again. She took it out and said the chocolate had not seized but somehow we had made the consistency of truffles. She told us to try to get the whip cream folded in but that was not going to happen. So, we scalded some cream and slowly stirred that into what was now truffle dough and voila'! We got it back to mousse base. We then let the mixture cool a bit and got it folded into the whipped cream to make an outstanding mousse, worth the effort.
As with the rest of my life, I learned the most from my mistakes. If I hadn't had the lecture on understanding of the process of what occurred in that process of stabilizing the base, I probably would have thrown everything out at the first mistake and started again. However, continuing to push forward gave me even more confidence in the kitchen. As chef reminded us, it's food and unless it's burned to a crip, there is almost always a way of saving a mistake!
I will work on a user friendly chocolate mousse recipe to share with you later. But for now, don't give up on your mistakes and trust your instincts!
xo MamaP
As with the rest of my life, I learned the most from my mistakes. If I hadn't had the lecture on understanding of the process of what occurred in that process of stabilizing the base, I probably would have thrown everything out at the first mistake and started again. However, continuing to push forward gave me even more confidence in the kitchen. As chef reminded us, it's food and unless it's burned to a crip, there is almost always a way of saving a mistake!
I will work on a user friendly chocolate mousse recipe to share with you later. But for now, don't give up on your mistakes and trust your instincts!
xo MamaP
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