Sunday 26 January 2014

Leiths: Intermediate Term, Week 2

Have you ever spent four days making a pie? Had a brain for breakfast? Sampled 6 wines before midday? Such is my life as a cookery school student, and pretty fab it is too. Here’s what went down in week 2 of the intermediate term… photo 1 (3)I was pretty apprehensive about Monday’s cooking session – making cullen skink (smoked haddock and potato soup) to a strict service time in exam conditions. This brought back bad memories of ‘Chewable Soup Gate’ on mock exam day, something I was in no hurry to repeat. Happily there were no such disasters this time around and the soup was delicious, hopefully dampening my pureeing fears for now. photo 5 (1)Wednesday’s schedule also had me arriving feeling nervous as we settled in for our first offal demonstration. When my friend asked what offal was I sent her Google’s definition: the entrails and internal organs of an animal used as food. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the example sentence Google provides is ‘eating pieces of braised offal turned his stomach’. Tempting as this all really didn’t sound, I was determined to go in with an open mind and stick to my rule of trying everything no matter what it was…even if that may be a deep fried brain. Above is the menu of everything we tried that morning (yep, offal for breakfast) and to be honest it was actually much better than I thought. Our teachers were really enthusiastic and knew they had a challenging, doubtful audience so it was interesting to see the different ways of using the meat – particularly since nose-to-tail eating has become more trendy in recent years and more prevalent on menus. Whilst I still don’t think offal would be the first thing I’d choose on a menu, it was good to once again vastly add to the list of foods I’ve tried.photocombo2After the unfamiliar ground of the offal demo, it was back to more well known territory with some baking. Dinner rolls meant practicing batch baking skills, rolling perfectly neat spheres and weighing each ball of dough. The main project of the week was a raised veal and ham pie, which was spread over four days and therefore it was quite a relief to finally bring it home unscathed on Friday – although our class must have looked a tad strange all arriving at the pub carefully balancing pies and tarts!photocomboLeiths describes the 3 terms of the diploma course like so – the first term is family food, the intermediate term is gastropub food and the final advanced term is Michelin fine dining. This week definitely saw more of an adjustment to the gastropub level as we did more plated dishes, practicing bringing several components together at the last minute and presenting them nicely. We may look back fondly to the Friday afternoon last term spent making brownies, compared to this weeks Friday monkfish with herby hollandaise, spinach and jerusalem artichoke puree (special mention to my puree partner Chelsie) followed by a pecan pie, but it is also satisfying so see how far we’ve come. Bring on week 3!

7 comments:

La Table De Nana said...

You are mastering so many techniques..and from what I see..you must be a star student Lucy..What accomplishments!

The Caked Crusader said...

That is one handsome pie!

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

A challenging week! Impossible to get bored when learning so many different things in such a short period of time...

Great food!

Cheers,

Rosa

Maggie said...

My first thoughts regarding offal are to hide under the table! Having the opportunity to learn more and being open minded would make up for my squeamishness.
The pie looks extremely well executed and I'm looking forward to reading lots more about Leiths....

Helen @ Scrummy Lane said...

Sounds like a great course, Lucy! All the best with it!

Antonia said...

I confess that I do struggle with offal - well done for trying everything! Your soup and pie look fantastic too - yum.

Karen @ Lemon Grove Cake Diaries said...

I can't say I am a big fan of offal either and when I was at patisserie school we had to do the cookery component, I was no where near as open minded as you were in regards to the dreaded offal. Love your blog and I am looking forward to reading about your cookery school adventures!