A Piece of Cake: Baking & Pastry Arts Semester One Recap

Almond Cake

Poppy Seed Bundt Cake with Cardamom Streusel

At long last, my first semester as a culinary student is over. For our practical final (there was also a written one)  we had to make a pate sucree, lemon curd, and French meringue. In other words, a lemon meringue tart.

Sticky Buns, Challah Bread, Dinner Rolls & Doughs: Culinary School is Back in Session

 

After two snowstorms closed everything down and put the kibosh on my baking & pastry classes, we are finally back to cooking it up. And boy, are we making up for lost time. In one session we produced country bread, a preferment,  and enough dinner rolls (pictured above) to feed an army, and the next week we made copious amounts of sticky buns and  challah bread:

 

In that session, we also made Danish and puff pastry doughs to freeze and use the following week. Now, you may be thinking, "So what? She's making rolls and bread. I can do that. Who goes to school for this?" I totally understand. These are not complicated or exotic recipes to be sure, and, except for the Danish and puff pastry doughs, they require very little in the way of finesse. But I am learning that culinary school is about more than cooking and baking - at least at this early stage.

Tunisian Tuna Tart; Plus, I Survived Day Two of Culinary School

 

Welcome to the first of several posts featuring an ingredient I am obsessed with right now: preserved lemon.  I am at a loss to explain to you how mere lemons and salt have the power to transform an ordinary dish into something absolutely thought-provoking, but somehow they do.

Often found in Moroccan and Tunisian dishes, these little flavor bombs are the kind of ingredient that make people scratch their heads and try (in vain)  to figure out what in the world you did.  I swear to you, it's magic! Here I've used preserved lemon to turn a humble tuna tart into something that deserves to be written - and spoken - with capital letters: Tuna. Tart.

I've been using these guys in everything lately, but I thought I'd post the tart first because I've got crust on the brain. Pie crust that is - today in class we made flaky pie dough and pate sucree, or sugar dough. Even though I am bone tired, I am minding this whole being-one-of-the-oldest-people-in-class thing less and less.  There's zero social pressure - I'm not wasting my time worrying about whether or not the scrawny kid to my right thinks I look dorky in my chef's hat, or giggling with a girlfriend over our exploits, past or planned,  while Chef is demonstrating the right rolling technique.

And thankfully, unlike my very young - albeit sweet -  lab partner today, I don't have to fret over the fact that I couldn't get my acrylic nails off in time for class.  You read that right. After watching her sadly struggle with her dough and the sticky, messy, crumbling Frankencrust she was cobbling together, I ended up helping her out and crimping the edges of her pie for her.

"I guess it must be my nails that's making this so hard," she said. Um ... you think?  (Don't get the wrong idea, I'm no saint: It's my fervent and selfish wish that someone's around to take pity on me when it's time to decorate cakes.)

But back to this tart. The crust is simplicity itself: I used the same combo of olive oil, salt, water, and whole wheat, spelt, and AP flours that I used in my tuna tomato tart, a recipe I adapted from Citron et Vanille's gorgeous blog. For seasoning, I just used 1 T of black sesame seeds in the dough. The key to a good crust here is to not overwork the dough or it will get tough.

For the filling, mix together:

1 medium chopped onion

2 cans of oil packed tuna, such as Cento, drained

1-2 T Dijon mustard (to taste)

3-4 springs of thyme

1-2 T chopped preserved lemon, seeds removed (I bought my preserved lemons at Whole Foods, but you can also make your own.)

Pepper & Salt, to taste

*Very Important: Don't add the salt until you've tasted the mixture, as the lemons are very salty, even if you rinse them.

Next beat together 2 eggs, 1/3 cup of cream, and 1/3 cup milk, and mix this with your tuna mixture. Spread evenly over your tart, and top with some oil-cured black olives and a bit more pepper and thyme:

 

I'm not going to lie to you, I didn't think it looked too appetizing at this point, and I was afriad that perhaps I had pushed my magic lemons farther than they were willing, or able,  to go. But I shouldn't have worried.  After 35-40 minutes in a 375 degree oven, yucky miraculously emerged as yummy:

 

To check that your tart has set, make sure that when you tap the center with your finger, the middle is firm, not mushy and jiggly. The preserved lemon subtly scents the entire dish, offering surprising bursts of bright tangy zing that go perfectly with the earthy thyme, olives,  and tuna. Served with a glass of wine and a nice salad, this is the kind of satisfying, flavor-packed meal that makes you forget it's not really that fattening at all. And given what I'll be baking and tasting this semester, that's a very good thing.

Focaccia with Tomatoes & Oregano; Plus, My First Day Back to School as a Baking & Pastry Arts Student!

So, why would a perfectly sane(ish) grown woman with a graduate degree in literature and a freelance writing career decide to take on unpaid work and go back to school to learn an entirely new trade, possibly embarrassing or even humiliating herself in the process?

That is an extremely good question.  I was asking myself that very thing this morning as I was pulling on the most unflattering pair of checkered chef pants you have ever seen and tying my hideous-yet-sensible black nun-like kitchen shoes,  part of my required uniform as a brand-new culinary student in the baking and pastry arts program at a local, respected-yet-affordable school that I'll call U of Trix. 

And what does all this have to do with focaccia?

You see, yesterday,  as I was making sure my chef's coat and apron were pressed, gathering together notebooks, pens, Sharpies, my knife kit, text books, and going over all of my course requirement lists and checking them twice, I had something of a panic attack: "What was I thinking signing up for this? I have no idea what I'm doing! I do not want to be in a kitchen full of teenagers! I'll feel old! I AM old!" And so on.

I realized that what I really needed to do was try to remember why I had felt compelled to embark upon this mad path in the first place. I needed to bake some bread.

When you decide to bake bread at 4 in the afternoon your options are somewhat limited, so I decided on focaccia. It turned out to be the perfect choice; after all, this was the first real bread I ever made.

As soon as I started to mix the ingredients, I felt myself begin to relax.  (The glass of wine didn't hurt either.) That yeasty smell, the feel of the dough, the way my spinning brain began to slow down and focus ... these were the things about baking I had fallen in love with right from the start.  I felt my courage returning. 

And guess what? I needn't have been so worried. I was over prepared for class, a fairly usual state of affairs in my life,  thanks to my OCD. The whole age thing didn't bother me like I thought it would.  I mean, if being that young means being simultaneously bored, terrified, and extremely awkward, as so many of my fellow students appeared to be, then I'm glad to be past all of that. Besides, there's one guy in there who I swear must be at least 5 years older than I am. What a grandpa!

After listening to a lecture about baking processes, we did some straightforward leavening experiments in the kitchen, so I didn't even have a chance to make a fool of myself. (There will be plenty of time for that later, when we do macarons.) Of course I plan to faithfully record my (modest) successes and inevitable kitchen failures right here.

But what about the focaccia, you ask? What's the recipe? Is this a food blog or isn't it?  I used the exact same recipe I did the first time I made it, only I changed the topping based on what I had: this time it was tomatoes, garlic, black olives, kosher salt, and oregano.

I was certainly tempting fate - if my bread had come out badly, I would have been a complete wreck for class! Who knows? Maybe I would have stayed home with my head under the covers. But fate decided otherwise, and it came out beautifully. Whew.

I know that doing something professionally is a far cry from doing it as a hobby, and I realize that I'm running the risk, however small,  of ruining something I love to do.  But that's a risk I'm willing to take. No, working in a frenzied kitchen is not my long-term goal, though I'd certainly give it a shot. I know that many chefs crave the adrenaline rush that comes with being impossibly, insanely slamming busy, but I most definitely do not. Is there a little Tasty Trix bakeshop in my future? Maybe.  Half the fun is not knowing what the future holds. 

Stay tuned!