Sadly, I can't make myself function like that -- life's too short to sit at home reading about gelatine each evening -- but I generally revise a few chapters on those days a test is likely to fall.
Last night I toyed with the idea but thought sod it. Today we had the most vicious and horrible test yet.
I just managed to remember the minimum legal quantities of dry cocoa matter in dark and milk couverture, was lucky enough to guess the ingredients of baking powder (along with their respective roles) but could only manage "harvest", "grinding" and "putting in sacks" for the processing of flour. As for the absorption rates of starch and gluten -- didn't even bother guessing.
In the labo and feeling slightly better, we set about making a load of different quiches. We also finished our "Costa Rica" entremets from yesterday. From the bottom up: a layer of walnut biscuit, chocolate mousse, a disk of coffee crème brûlée, a crunchy layer of walnut/almond nougatine, more mousse, another layer of biscuit and finally more mousse.
Once decircled, we sprayed the entremets with couverture/cocoa butter from an airbrush to give a velvet finish. The secret to the velvet finish is to spray onto a frozen surface -- so the entremets had been in the blast freezer to chill them right down.
We used the puff pastry I've been banging on about to produce a couple of rather strange savoury dishes (not yet cooked). Here's a quick vid showing 500g inverted puff pastry. The beginning shows the beurre manié coming together as described in the puff pastry post, then you see the turns. Each time a slide pops up is rest time in the fridge. You can see the prod-marks which are a reminder of how many turns have been given.
NB Just noticed the contrast is a spot dodge and the last slide too short. Bad luck.
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