Sunday, June 14, 2009

Life of a puff pastry

My Nemo which I gave away- Salmon en croute


I'm been slow on updating I admit! Been out and about too much that I'm tired from being out. I seem to hardly get enough rest over my 4-day weekend. I shouldn't be complaining really.

Back to the puff pastry products: We made the lovely beef bourguignon pie, a very traditional french pie. How can it not be lovely with close to half a bottle of red wine in it! Basically, its just lean blade beef cooked to a stew with onions, tomato paste, herbs, seasoning, wine and water. The liquids are being reduced so you will end up with a really rich and thick beef stew ready for the pie.
Since my toaster oven has chosen to break down on me, I figured that I should just finish up this savoury pie since I couldn't really keep and heat if up. I shared my beef pie with 2 other friends for lunch. It was definitely satisfying and for once, I did not have to bring lunch to school!
We also made the salmon en croute, another dish of French origin. As its name suggest, it is made with fresh salmon cooked and wrapped in puff pastry to look like a fish. It was quite a joy to be mincing garlic and onions and talking about culinary terms like sweating, sautéing for a change. The kitchen was filled with the smells of these savoury food which was a departure from the usual rich smells of butter.
We prepared the salmon mix by using fresh salmon, garlic, onion, fresh parsley, leek and thickened cream. This filling was then used with the puff pastry where we had to cut the shape of our fish free-hand. We had a whole variety of fish in class; we even had a shark! I confess to being quite an uncreative person when it comes to aesthetics so I was happy to stick with making a simple one, so long it mildly resembles a fish. Doesn't mine look like Nemo? I do think so. Ha
Apart from the savouries, I enjoyed the class on palmiers (a sweet French puff pastry usually to go with tea), pithiviers (puff pastry with frangipane filling)and chaussons (apple turnovers).
Ah! The infinite possibilities with puff pastries!

3 comments:

  1. OMGGG me love the pastry here- i want to bite a huge chunk of it off! yumsss.

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  2. SAVOURY PIE!!! My kind of pie really!!!

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  3. Haha..yeah.!

    oh man.. i just made puff pastry again today..hope it turns out nice when i bake them on Sat.. =D

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