Macarons 1 - sablés hollondais - bugger

Today couldn't have started more badly. I had set my three alarms (radio, phone and classic) to rouse me at 4.30am so I could be in plenty of time to get to school.

Since I moved families at the weekend this is my first early start. There are no buses from here at that time of the morning so I have to walk to the train station to take the metro. I had been told the walk was just 15mins.

First disaster, I do not wake until 5.30am. No idea how I managed that given the bloody racket ringing out in my room. Too bad. I shot out of the house in a stinking hurry and was still trying to make it to the ruddy station over half an hour later. In all it took 37mins. Not a quarter of an hour (or an English one, at any rate).

I finally arrived in the labo half an hour late feeling incredibly ill (fatigue has been going up and up) and ready to give in to the waves.

How extraordinary, then, to go on to spend one of the best days cooking yet.

As for yesterday's comments on biscuits, I eat my words. Or, at least, I make an exception for the sablés hollandais we made with the pâte sablée we prepared last night. They're a real challenge to make regular because you have to cut exactly vertically through two inches of very firm pastry. Because things largely worked out, they were great fun to make. I find geometry hugely satisfying.

And then today became really special: we made our first macarons lisses. The French macaroon (not to be confused with those coconutty abominations) are hugely popular out here and most delish. They are effectively two little coloured meringues held together with an intensely flavoured ganache, cream or fruity whizz. The inside is all chewy (but not sticky) and the shell has a little bite.

Very popular in France, they are pretty hard to come by in the UK but you can usually get chocolate, coffee and pistachio ones at Paul outlets (but beware, these are often rather weak - they reek of having been frozen). I reckon the top place is the Ladurée boutique in Harrods. Ladurée is a luxury grande maison making really first class products (with complementary prices). The company claims to have invented the modern French macaroon after the founder's grandson came up with the idea of sticking two macaroons together with ganache. Interestingly for some, Ladurée was bought out a few years ago by the Holder family who happen to be the founding family of Paul (the things we learn in our economics classes...)

There is no limit to the flavours you can concoct: Pierre Hermé, widely regarded as the best pâtissier in the world, even introduced a foie gras macaroon (Humphrey?).

Our first ones were vanilla, chocolate, lemon, blackcurrant and Morello (sour cherry). Each pair of us made a different flavour (how practical) and ours was cassis (violet in colour) which I bagsied because Purple is the mater's favourite colour. The filling is a little blackcurrant jelly we made with blackcurrant purée, sugar and pectin.

Making macaroons is a favourite hobby of home-patissiers. I discovered this when reading blogs in preparation for my course. A whole mystique has sprung up around the methods (should one use Italian or French meringue, how does one get the frilly foot around the bottom of each shell, how do you perfectly destick the buggers and is Lord Lucan still in Taipei?) with the result that people often think they're very hard to make.

Because of this, I was dead chuffed the little rascals delivered the goods for our first time today but I imagine things are a spot different in a domestic kitchen. Here are just a few photos of how they turned out. We cooked them right at the end of the session (we somehow ended up last in the oven queue), had to turn the oven hotter than ideal to speed things up and then garnished the whole batch of over a hundred in 3 minutes flat. Of course, next time in ideal conditions they'll all go tits up.

The macaroons forming a gentle crust prior to being cooked (contentious point...) Not sure how to rotate this quickly and easily.

A wee purple number showing off its pretty feet. A little extra filling wouldn't go amiss.

The assortment I prepared for my sister who is coming out to visit me tomorrow. Fortunately, they're supposed to improve overnight.

And tonight I went to the pool and cut my finger on a tile. Luckily I'll have the weekend to heal. Typing is hqrd.

How school works - brioche - assorted sods - one for Humphrey

I had little idea how cookery schools worked until I ended up in one. So for anyone interested, here is a sample daily schedule...

7.30 Alarm goes off (but it blasts at 4.30am on a Friday) and I snooze. Wish I could do a Lazarus the second it goes off. But I can't

8.30 Am finally out of the house on an empty stomach. On my walk of just a few hundred yards to the bus stop I pass 4 patisseries. Brilliant France. Depending on the day, I go to the best one open and snaffle a pain au choc + maybe something special. There is even one open by 5am on Friday.

9.30-11.30 Theoretical class. 2 hours without a break. This is tedious. Our classroom lessons include food/business law, applied arts (various drawing and design skills), hygiene, economics and techno (theory of everything we do in the labo... how sugar is refined, why salt is used in sweet pastry, where cacao comes from and so on). We learn by copying notes off the board or filling in worksheets. If we're lucky in hygiene we get an early 90s training video.

LUNCH - we get a decent lunch break. I normally grab a baguette which one of the bakers will have made that morning and nip off to buy some MDC or rilettes.

13.00-20.00 Labo time - this is what it's all about. The labo is made up of 8 workstations for two people. Each one has a mixer, an electric balance, a huge marble work surface, a sink and a single gas ring. Underneath the worktops are drawers into which we stash our utensils and a series of racks for oven trays/grills (which also fit directly into the fridges and freezers).

At the start of the session, the prof will write the day's scheme of work on the whiteboard. If we know what we are doing (i.e. we've done the recipe before) we just set to work. As new recipes/techniques crop up the chef will do a demonstration on his bench. Occasionally we get recipe sheets but generally we have to rely on note taking. Since we do not all do the same things every day you may see a demo several days before you'll be cooking the thing yourself.

Today's schedule. I am in group 3.

And then we just get on and cook. Nobody talks, it's a very focussed atmosphere. It's not a pressured environment like you might expect in a professional kitchen and people are not stressed - but everyone has something to be doing (or rather 5 things to be doing plus a bun in the oven) and needs to concentrate.

While we get on, the chef circulates willy nilly, prods your petits-fours and gives advice when he thinks necessary. I like to ask lots of questions so I'll often call him over to seek wisdom. Except on the days when my French isn't working.

We have a short pit stop for 15mins mid afternoon.

One thing that I find surprising is that there is no proper tasting of finished products. Anything cooked by the break you can munch on and you can try things at the end, but tasting is not an official part of our education. I would have expected it to be paramount (and I am sure it must be in normal cookery schools) but here it is not.

In a sense, patisserie is very scientific and we don't season like normal chefs... there's much less subjectivity. However, I think it's very important to know what we're making. There's not even a point at which the chef casts judgement on final presentation unless he happens to arrive at your workpoint at the right moment or you hunt him down.

So you have to be proactive with stuffing your gob and fishing for compliments.

The last half hour is dedicated to cleaning. Not washing up - we wash up all our own utensils throughout the session - but cleaning the labo to industrial standards. That involves hosing done the floors, scrubbing and squeeging every day, frotting the deep-freeze, bleaching all the worksurfaces and so on. Bloody bore. But when we get in after lunch there's no way of telling the previous group has already spent 7 hours in there that morning. Which is nice.

21.00 I finally get home.

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Today we shaped and baked yesterday's brioche dough which had gently risen overnight. I mistrust yeast and do not like working with it yet. This time round the brioche tasted much better - even proper. With the puff pastry also started yesterday we made another Pithiviers (not yet cooked) and some palmiers. We also made various biscuity type things to continue our petit-fourage. I don't really like these either so I have declined their photo. Very fiddly for a pretty average result. After all, you're never going to beat a chocolate hobnob or ginger nut so you may as well not bother.

Here is the brioche dough as we came to it this morning; once shaped and ready to rise; cooked.

I dedicate my brioche loaf to Humphrey Wilson, Esq. since I could not stop thinking how perfect it would be to have him spring out of the ether with some foie gras each time I looked at it.

One, Two, Three, Buckle my choux pastry

This is the third in a series of posts about choux pastry.

I have just updated the previous parts with some photos:
Part 1 - making it
Part 2 - dressing it
This part - cooking it

Cooking is a great way to ruin an otherwise tip-top pâte à choux so here are some tips I've learnt over the last few weeks.

Finding the right temperature for your oven is very important. The pastry needs to be dried out as much as cooked. If the oven is too hot, the pastry will burn on the outside while still moist within. If the oven is too cold, the pastry will not rise as intended. 220°C should be about right.

Another important factor to control is humidity in the oven. Any sudden changes will cause a sudden drop in humidity, the pastry to collapse and zeugma. This is why you should not open the oven door while you have choux pastry on the hot; at least, not until it has started to colour (at which point the crust will hold the structure).

Different chefs recommend different strategies for regulating the humidity.
- You can leave the oven door shut throughout
- You can prop the door ever so slightly ajar (e.g. with the handle of a wooden spoon) to regulate the release of vapour throughout cooking
- You can start with the door shut so the humid atmosphere helps the pastry rise and then, once at colouration, insert said spoon to lower the humidity and help the pastry dry through

I've tried all these methods and they all seem to achieve the desired result.

For bigger pieces like the outer ring of a Paris-Brest, it can be hard to dry through. One technique is to lower the oven temperature once you are nearly at the desired colouration. Another is to cut the thing open at the end of cooking and replace it in the oven at a lower temp (or just while the oven cools). This really helps let all the steam within out.

It is very easy to undercook choux pastry. If it is undercooked it will still be soft, or it will soften a few moments after being removed from the oven. Given that many choux pieces are filled with cream, you're giving sogginess a head start if your pastry is at all moist. It will, of course, soften up again once loaded. To test if the pastry is cooked, just give your buns a good squeeze. There should be no give.

If cooking chouquettes it is a good tip to double your oven tray so that the sugar grains in contact with the tray do not caramelize too much.

The photo above shows a variety of bits fresh from the oven. You can see how much they've swollen by looking at the dressed pastry here. Not my best. The eclairs are a little wonky, the salambôs a trifle bulky and the bodies of the religieuses are a tad large. Still, it's nice to know my nuns are only human.

In which anticipation mounts for PLF

Today we had a revision of choux pastry which meant bashing out the usual eclairs, religieuses and glands; we cooked the marzipan petits-fours from yesterday; we set some brioche dough to rise for tomorrow and, excitingly, we watched the first part of a demo for a pâte levée feuilletée - which is used for croissants and pains au choc. Can't wait to try and get going with that.

As the chef was doing his rounds today, prodding everyone's petits-fours and pâte à choux when it was dressed badly, I was waiting for his visit with trepidation. Was bloody delighted when he came and peered over my eclairs and salambôs for a good 30secs and then left without touching a thing and even said, "C'est bien". Unfortunately the nuns' bodies I dressed immediately afterwards were a spot on the large side but I was too chuffed to care.

These were nice and glossy until I put them in a rather cold fridge and they went somewhat matte. Life's a bitch.

The marzipan petits-fours with one carefully nibbled with a knife to show the moist inside.

The school

Here is a photo of the front of the school. The left hand wing is the INBP proper (my labo is on the second floor of the LH wing closest to the round bit). On the right is the lycée where the apprentices study. I think. We don't go there.

In the courtyard behind the school is a traditional wood burning bread oven. It is mainly used as a smoking shelter.

Technology abound (one hopes, anyway), here is a clip showing our proximity to the clink.

In which cigarettes, tuiles, tongue of cat and almond yuck

Aujourd'hui on a attaqué des petits-fours secs comme des cigarettes...

...des langues de chat...

...des tuiles (dont je n'ai pas pris de photo à cause d'une cuission un peu trop longue) et des four à poche, qui veut dire des biscuits faits d'une pâte d'amande dressée à la poche à douille.

Our chef was being outrageously particular about our assorted shapes and, as he circulated around our group, would prod and squash any item he thought badly done so we had to start again. He would prod entire rows of items and I had to start again maybe 14 times. And of course, each time I started again, I would be harder on myself and recommence after my own condemnation so I probably had about 30 stabs at them. And they're still not uber. I got VERY frustrated that I wasn't able to pull them off to the chef's satisfaction. I have a sneaky suspicion his particularity was because we had finished everything else and still had an hour to go.

And here is the Asian contingent. Four fifths of it, anyway.

The Asian girls are very snap happy in class, taking endless photos of the demonstrations and the chef's finished items. So you can appreciate the considered irony that makes this photo art and not just pixels.

Now I have my new camera I shall be an honorary Asian.

In which we wonder whether fetishes also can be nationalized

The horror-sign that you find in all French swimming pools. And which the natives embrace with gusto...the national swimming network is run rather like an English prep school.

Before getting out here I bought myself a decent pair of jammer trunks (like cycling shorts - very modest) which is my usual garb for cranking out my granny-lengths. In the past they have always passed the French speedo-radar but on my very first trip to a pool I was accosted by a scrawny locker attendant (very Roald Dahl/Quentin Blake-esque) who told me I couldn't go in because my trunks were not brief enough. The old perv. Luckily I managed to get the life guard to convince her otherwise but it would have been a close shave.

Rather more surprisingly, I was swimming in my usual (pool and trunks) the other night when, not an attendant, but another swimmer took it upon himself to approach me in the deep end:

[Disdainfully] "Vous avez un short?"

"Comment?"

[Very disdainfully] "C'est un short de bain?"

I had to lift my thigh out of the water to convince him I was correctly attired. Quite extraordinary and, most bizarrely, this wasn't some old Cognac-damaged fart but a wee whipper-snapper who must have been younger than me. I simply cannot understand how he could have been fussed. Or even had the balls, basically, to say he'd rather I was wearing skimpies. Maybe this was some kind of French polari.

While I sort of agree that swimming is best done in this genre of attire, the French male's obsession with flaunting himself in revealing lycra is not just in the almost legitimate privacy of the swimming pool. Men of all ages sprint gaily along the pavements in assorted leggings and there are some really quite bizarre sights. When I took Thomas to his handball match a few weeks ago, we passed a game of football where all the boys were wearing tights under their strips. It obviously catches on young. And the other day, I saw a boy waiting in rollerblades outside a shop wearing just a pair of black tights and a fleece. And spectacles. Bloody weird. Even the roller blades alone...

I suppose I shall have sufficiently absorbed French culture not when I start to dream in French but when I feel an unexplained urge to slip into a bodystocking and prance to SuperU.