Day 95 – 2 practicals and a lecture – Wed 6th June

After the Queen’s jubilee long weekend we had 2 practicals today, from demos last week, and then a chocolate tasting lecture.

The 1st practical was making the stuffed artichoke en croute and we had chef Neil (Armstrong) for the 1st time this term. Chef Neil was fresh back from a holiday sailing around the Hebrides (though I suspect it was a moon trip!).

A straightforward practical and not too bad for just vegetables, though when the chef asked how this dish could be improved, I suggested some meat.

Next we had a patisserie practical with chef Graeme to make the exotic fruit mousse. Again, not too hard though I though the flavour would have been better if it was just a mango mousse rather than mango and coconut.

Here is a picture of my finished dish. As it was a tropical flavoured mousse I made a tuile palm tree as part of the decoration.

Lastly, chef Nicolas (also just back from holiday) gave us a lecture on chocolate tasting and we tasted a dozen different types of chocolate of different origins including a couple of milk chocolates, a strawberry flavoured chocolate confection and also an orange one, and pure cocoa butter and cocoa paste (pure cocoa mass and cocoa butter, unsweetened). It was interesting to taste the different flavours discernible from a range of dark chocolates all of 70% cocoa solids.