Thursday 19 November 2009

Day 60: The Miracle of the loaves and the seafood chowder

I woke up this morning to the horrifying realisation that I had eaten all the food in the house. I was forced to shamelessly pause at the one shop in Shanagarry and avail myself of a sausage roll for breakfast. It was disgusting. Never again.

The dishes I have to make today are seafood chowder and a ludicrous creation named Gateau Pithivier. In addition, I have candied peel to finish off, some sourdough to bake, and ciabatta. I kick off by slicing the orange and lemon peels that had been soaked and boiled for three hours and get a syrup going to candy them in.

Next on my list is the ciabatta. My biga has been sponging nicely overnight, and is looking pretty lively. I decant it into a mixing bowl with more yeast (sponged in warm milk), water and a little olive oil. Mixing this together, I gradually add the remaining flour. I ignore the recipe again and mix half cream and half strong flour. This gets brought together for five minutes with the paddle before I switch to the dough hook for twelve minutes and leave to rise. It is springy, elastic and wet. Perfect.

Gateau Pithivier is a round cake of puff pastry filled with frangipane or a similar almond flavoured mixture. I cut two 10 inch circles of pastry, and chill them in preparation. Next comes the filling. The one I tried after demo on Tuesday tasted boring and vapid. A lot of effort goes into making one of these bad boys, and it just didn’t seem worth it. Armed with the knowledge that almonds and orange make a splendid combination, and with a vat of candied orange peel bubbling away on the hob, I make an executive decision. In goes a splash of Grand Marnier instead of the rum, and I finely chop a couple of tablespoons of candied orange peel into the mix as well. All this goes onto one of the rounds of pastry and is spread out to the edges. The other round goes on top, and the whole thing is egg washed and chilled.

I have to clean up the mountain of crap that’s growing on my station and treat myself to the first coffee of the day. Things are looking okay, but my order of work is staring to look flaky as it becomes apparent that I will have to fillet all the fish for my chowder. Back to the Pithivier, I decorate it with the traditional swirls out from the centre and flute and scallop the edges. It’s looking good. Back in the cold room to chill further, and I can bung it in the oven whenever I feel like it.

My sourdough hasn’t risen a massive amount overnight. I let it come up to temperature this morning in the hope that it will come on a bit more, but it doesn’t. I bake it anyway. It definitely rises a bit more than the usual spring in the oven, so maybe it could have proved a little longer. That said it doesn’t have stretch marks, so maybe not a lot longer. I actually take it out a little prematurely I think, and bake it for an extra ten minutes when I get home. But it is pretty good - sourer than the first and a better shape. At least I‘ve got something for breakfast now.

Once more the morning has disintegrated before my eyes. I need to get cracking with the chowder. Milk in the pan heating up with a bouquet garni. Bacon diced and in the pan while I chop onions. But the fucking pan is so hot I have to decant the bacon and clean it out. Back in with the onion and sweat away while I measure out fish stock and dice potatoes for the next stage. The pan is too hot again, and I have to decant once more. I add flour to the onion and bacon so the chowder has a nice thick base. The fish stock goes in bit by bit. It thickens into a nice looking sauce. Next the milk and spuds go in - I don’t want the spuds to overcook and break up. Meanwhile, I fillet a haddock and a monkfish and prepare nice sized chunks of their meat. I open some mussels in another pan. While I’ve been doing this, the bloody chowder has split, so I have to strain the whole lot and blitz the liquid back together with the wand. All back in the pan for the third time then, and in goes the monkfish, followed a couple of minutes later by the haddock, and finally some cream and the mussels. I work hard on the seasoning. There is mace and cayenne in there from earlier. It needs quite a lot more salt, and I decide on a little extra cayenne to give it a bit more fight. I plate up with fresh parsley and a couple of mussels in their shells. It gets a big thumbs up for flavour, but it has a slightly grainy consistency. Maybe it needed more cooking, especially for the potatoes, but I’m not sure. The spuds felt really starchy, and I can’t help wondering if a rinse would have helped. I don’t see how more cooking could make it less grainy, but anyway.

Now I have to shape my bloody ciabatta. It has risen like the proverbial salmon while I have been buggering about elsewhere. It is incredibly wet and very difficult to handle and shape. You need three things here - a dough scraper, another dough scraper, and a shitload of flour. You may well know that a ciabatta is a type of slipper, from whence the bread derives its name. I make four loaves - two of which have plenty of flour on them and seem fairly well structured. The other two look more like insoles than slippers. They can rise on the tray for another half hour or so and go in when the Pithivier comes out.

My midday target long since flashed past me. The puff pastry takes forever to cook. Once done, it is dusted with copious amounts of icing sugar and shoved under the grill to glaze the top. It receives universal acclaim for its oranginess. A genuine improvement - all that time and effort from hand making the puff pastry to pissing about scoring it with swirly lines - and it is worth it. I discreetly stash it under my counter - half for me, half for the teachers.

The ciabatta is good. My experiment with the strong flour has worked. It has more flavour than their recipe, and is still well structured, bubbled and chewy. Not only this, but it can take more water, because of the extra gluten. Plenty of people had to use less water than the recipe.

Speaking of water, it has been raining for approximately three days now without showing the slightest sign of abating. It took a long time to drive home tonight - two people flooded their cars driving too quickly through the massive puddles and had to be pushed or pulled free by passing trucks. When I did get home I had to park bloody miles away because of the flooding and am forced to make a giant leap, over my new moat, to the front door. I feel like I am not so much straddling the garden path as the Testaments; loaves of bread, fish and a bloody Great flood.

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