served with garden salad, pistou of fruits and lemon herb vinaigrette
Pan seared Mackerel
served with steam thyme mushrooms, saute baby french bean, baby carrots and cherry tomatoes, baby potato a l'anglaise and balsamic shallot reduction, chive & white wine sabayon
Hummingbird Cake
Banana sponge with orange marmalade and yogurt topping with passion fruit and nuts
This is the menu for the coming Philips cooking competition with healthy food theme. This is a very good opportunity for me to explore what really need for attending a competition and the new trend in this culinary world nowadays.
served with tomato fondue, saute mushroom, fresh green lettuce and Bearnaise sauce
Pan seared Sea bass
saute asparagus, tomato couscous, glazed carrot and shallot, roast zucchini jardiniere with Balsamic reduction and white wine sauce
Creme Caramel
cinnamon infused caramel
This is my yesterday menu in my kitchen class. It turns out good comment from the chef, I'm so happy about it and I will continue to improve my cooking skills in future.
In my kitchen class yesterday, I made the dehydrated food, which are apples and mushrooms crisps. Well, I had no confidence to present these crisps on my main course and dessert, but anyway, it turned out to positive comment from my lecturer. I was relieved.
The dehydrated mushrooms flavors are so concentrated! I like to have one piece on my mouth then chew it slowly as the flavors will slowly conquer my taste buds and enjoy the earthy, full flavor of mushroom originally, without any seasoning.
My first course as stated in my last menu was the Duck Breast Salad. I made a fresh mix salad with almond vinaigrette as the accompaniment. Sauce for the duck was excellent, orange savory syrup has brought out the appetite of the diner with the sliced duck breast. My lecturer claimed that I have not enough seasoning on my salad, thinks that I need to boost up on my seasoning skill.
Seared beef tenderloin as the second course, everything went extremely smooth. This is my first time cooking the beef tenderloin. I made medium rare tenderloin; the texture was so impressive and juicy. Side dish: fondant potato, sauté French beans, glazed carrots, roast shallots and dehydrated mushrooms. Sauces: orange sabayon sauce and port wine reduction. Everything went quite well for my lecturer, just the same problem, under-seasoned.
Desserts are the poached pear served with frangipane tart and Orange flavor chantily cream. My lecturer loves it! There is nothing to comment from him. He added some mark for my effort to make the dehydrated apple crisps. I think there is no doubt that the crisps are excellent for presenting, or even flavoring your dishes.
I will try to think out more dehydrated foods from different kind of ingredients for my next kitchen class. Stay tune!
Food stylist is one of my dream jobs, it's an artistic job that involved photo shooting on foods, plating of foods, background choosing for the shooting of the foods. Be a food stylist need a degree in Culinary of course, and should have the artistic view and patient on every food making in order to create perfect appearances for foods.
Many industrial food stylist used other materials even inedible materials to create the perfect appearance of foods as the substitution for their foods shooting. For example, lipstick is used on the strawberry to let it look bright red in color, vegetable shortening used as a fake ice-cream and so on. It also involved many chemistry item to create effects such as smoke, color and others.
I wish to step my foots in this industrial after my degree program. I want to be the famous food stylist in the future instead of just chef. But first of all, I need to get my DSLR camera ready for the shooting. ^^
Confit is the most easiest method among all the cooking techniques. I tried it first time in my kitchen class, and the result was FAILED to my salmon confit due to the high temperature of the oven and oil.
I like to use tea leaves to infuse my oil before i start my confit, it provide such a nice subtle earthy fragrant and flavor to my confit items. Herbs and spices such as bay leaf, thyme and peppercorn gives aromatic flavors too.
In my next kitchen class, I will try again my confit techniques on cherry tomatoes. Hope it works!
Duck breast salad served with orange citrus emulsion sauce and almond vinegrette
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Fillet le boeuf Poêlé
Slow cook beef tenderloin served with glazed vegetable, mashed potato and port wine reduction emulsion
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Frangipane Tart
Apple and pear Almond filling tart served with chantily cream and Orange infused syrup
This will be my menu for my Kitchen class. I hope it will success for my assessment this time. Molecular gastronomy methods is where my curiosity and passion began. Now i will try the dehydrating method on my foods such as apple slices crisp, mushroom powder and dry orange slices.
Dehydrated foods can be used for snack foods, decoration and even main dish as a dessert in the meal. It's so interesting and versatile.
The method is very easy, just place the thinly sliced fruits or vegetables on a silicon mat or baking sheet, bake in oven at the temperature below 60°C/140°F/Gas½ for fewhours and let dry on in the oven untilit'stotally dry. Keep in the airtightcontainer and it can stored for months as long as it doesn'tcontact with moisture.
