Some useful stuff in chocolate week, but not super impressed with the teaching in this module. Lots of shortcuts from ways I’ve learned previously in chocolate courses (everything linked to production and profits, understandably). However the shortcuts which might work here in these conditions (eg very cool marble tables) are unlikely to translate to different circumstances and because the basic principles are being shortcutted and not discussed, the students won’t have the ability to figure out why it’s not working. Already I am noticing the chocolate going out of temper during enrobing with some of the students.
And that brings me to my partner this week…. yeeesh. Young guy from Florida. Everything with him is a race, which means slapping through everything as fast as possible with less than lovely results and “oops – I forgot that step”. It was a struggle today getting the opportunity to check the temper of our shared chocolate pot…. grrr. When done, instead of helping others without partners or cleaning up, he grabs the better half of the products off the shared tray and disappears, or stands around. I’m not your elf, cleaning up after you like the interns for the chefs, honey…. I gather from talking to previous partners this is a trend which has equally annoyed others. Yesterday he was overheard talking to another student about his scratchy throat so I had hoped he might be off today but no such luck, he reappeared sans mask today. So tried to keep a distance, and as little interaction as possible but not always possible to bite my tongue hence the countdown….
2 more positive covid tests amongst those who were showing symptoms but testing negative yesterday.
Today, the emphasis was on production of things that didn’t require a lot of equipment which was great; more tabliering practice with chocolate and ganache, some really good ideas and some delicious results (see below).
We dipped ganache squares cut with a guitar – another piece of equipment only specialist chocolatiers can justify – we made coffee (Arabica), Earl Grey tea and Palet Or (plain chocolate) ganache to dip and traded for all. My old lady taste buds found the Earl Grey too subtle, but the Arabica gave a great shot of coffee and got a thumbs up. Will be interested to do a side by side taste test when I get back as the ubiquitous use of the hand mixer in the ganache makes me cringe, but so far no split ganaches – the jury is out if it is as silky as the fractionated addition approach.
We ended polishing molds in preparation for making molded chocolates tomorrow, and made layered ganaches with the pralinés which we made yesterday. These will go onto the enrobing machine later in the week. Love the recipes that use smashed speculoos cookies as an ingredient (can you tell that the chef is Belgian?).