Westminster Kingsway College – Cookery School (Days 16 & 17)
Posted on Wednesday, 17th June 2009
This week we made puff pastry. It’s not so much complicated as it is time consuming, waiting for each turn of that pastry to set before rolling it again. And all that butter! Surely it cannot be good for you. I suppose I have always known how fattening pastry is, but knowing and seeing aren’t necessarily the same thing. You attain a new sense of reality when you work with food, and so perhaps ignorance was indeed bliss.
Puff pastry goodies
As we didn’t have enough time to make the pastry and work with it (it takes several hours to rest after the final roll), we decided to freeze it and use it next week instead. And so for our sausage rolls, apple turnovers, jam puffs and goats cheese tarts, we turned to the bought variety as a substitute. I worked with G this week, and his fingers were too big to be able to crimp the edges really nicely. So you have it boys, some things a girl can definitely do better!
I didn’t blog about last week’s class, during which we made delicious fresh pasta (carbonana, spinach and ricotta ravioli and lasagne). For some reason, we were all particularly ill-tempered that day. Tensions were high, and it didn’t help that R, who probably isn’t the most liked person in the class, would not stop chatting to her neighbour, O, the whole way through the tutorial on matters unrelated to cookery. I ignored her, but this was obviously the cause of some irritation to the others.
By the time the practical rolled around, you could tell we were in for some sort of a showdown. Things got really heated when R, in her usual undiplomatic way, accused G of hogging the pasta machine. At that point G simply lost it. He started yelling blue murder and hurling expletives: ‘f’ this, and ‘f’ that. At one point he threw down his apron and threatened to storm out! Chef had his hands full trying to maintain calm. See, a kitchen is indeed a hotbed of activity. As for me, I was probably not in the best of spirits as I was down with a cold. It surely made for an interesting day…
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June 17th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
just joining up on your cookery school series, will have to backtrack to the rest of the posts
June 17th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Yummy puff pastry goodies!
June 17th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
That is amazing you made both fresh pasta last week, and now puff pastry – I’d be over 200 lbs if I went to cooking school !
June 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Hi Kang, thanks for reading.
Hi Natasha, yeah, they were indeed yummy!
Hi Loving Annie, how is your diet going? I am exercising very hard!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Oooh I love the drama! I could see this as a slightly camp BBC comedy/drama – like Hotel Babylon but set in a catering college! I’ve been wondering, does this class lead to some sort of professional qualification? Are most people there for fun or are some doing it more seriously?
June 17th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Hi Hilary, It was high drama indeed. R didn’t come to class this week so things were fine. But I wonder if tempers will flare again when she next comes?
About half the class already work in the industry. The rest of us are either doing it out of interest or considering career changes.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Puff pastry very impressive – and yes probably best not to know what goes into it!
June 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Hi Gourmet Chick, I shall cook with a blindfold from now on! 🙂
June 20th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Sounds like an interesting lesson last week for sure!
I’ve never made puff pastry before, I guess I’m just lazy and use the bought stuff! I love making fesh pasta though, I was amazed at just how easy it was the first time I tried it. Tastes great too!
June 21st, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Hi Sam,
Making puff pastry isn’t so much hard as time consuming. You might like to try it one day and compare it to how you like it to the bought stuff.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:06 am
wow…those are great! YUM YUM~~