Hey there!
Guess what? I'm a little too happy today! Why? Because today
was my final exam of Culinary Technics. First it was my oral exam, where I
had to take a paper from a bag and start talking about that topic. That paper
also included the recipe I had to make the next day, and as you can see in the
title, the topic was CHOUX.
Do you know choux? (Say it out loud, who?) I hope you have eaten at least once some custard filled choux pastry. It’s
a very tasty treat, sweet but not so much.
The story for today goes like this:
When I first arrived I realized I didn't have partner
to cook with. I asked my supervisor and no one told me anything, until I was
about to enter the lab, chef Cris told me -I don't know if you have noticed,
but you are going to cook by yourself today-
I was in shock, I wanted to cry, laugh, scream or do everything
at the same time. I wanted to know what I was going to do after working with
someone during all this term. Everyone had partner but me. This was a real
challenge, but I told myself I could do it. I had to.
Really determined I started cleaning
my unit, preparing my mise-en-place and talking to myself.
I started preparing choux pastry
and everything was awesome until the time to add the last eggs arrived, as some
of you may or may not know, you have to be careful to get the right amount of
egg in your pastry so you can reach the appropriate point. After 3, almost 4
eggs I couldn't get to the point and my time to get them to the oven had
arrived. Geez!
Some more mixing, some more beaten
eggs and it was done. As fast as I could I managed to get my pastry in a piping
bag, made choux and went for the oven.
While my choux were in the oven I had
to do the custard filling, so I started that task. I thought I was good
with time, but uh-oh it was like… chasing me, real fast! So I couldn't wait
until the consistency was filling-like, it was time to put it in the blast
chiller and get choux out of the oven.
 |
| I couldn't take a picture of my plated dessert, but here's what went home with me |
I went for them, opened some,
filled them with custard and added some strawberries inside and a fan shaped
strawberry, everything in a rectangular white plate. I was happy. I had
completed my recipe and my unit was just a tad dirty.
Lucky me, some friends came to help
me with the cleaning stuff. I’m still very grateful with them for their
support!
Finally, the time of hearing our
feedback and grades came. I was super-duper nervous! As we all heard each other's
grades we became more and more tense. Soon Amanda got to me and she started the
feedback by saying: -Congratulations, you worked alone and did an amazing job,
finished on time with everything clean. The only thing is: I would’ve liked
more consistency in your custard, but overall, congratulations, you scored
98/100-
I wanted to cry when she told me
that, I was like – I can’t believe it, I did it! I really did it!
When the assessment was over, I went
with chef Cris and Amanda, they both congratulated me, and I started crying. (You
knew I was gonna cry sooner or later). All the other girls in the lab also said
nice things to me and I was just… astonished with everything that had happened.
After all I shared choux with my
friends and I’m still happy about today.
One word for today: SURREAL.
I hope you didn’t find this story
boring, as this is on my top 5 of best & proudest moments. Don’t know which
are the other 4, but…meeeh.
Lots o’ love ♥
ps. i won´t leave you just with the story, i'll share both, the custard and choux pastry recipes with you.
