Leiths Cookery Week – day three

So, if you’ve read Friday’s preview, you will know that this week I’m doing a day by day review of my week at Leiths School of Food and Wine. This is the round up of Wednesday 10th July on the white intermediate course.

Day three at Leiths was all about pastry, summer rolls, and raisin and hazelnut bread. We started off in the kitchens, where we finished our raisin and hazelnut breads from the day before. All our doughs had risen nicely and we kneaded them lightly before adding in the raisins and hazelnut, before chucking them in the oven and forgetting about them. Literally. Unfortunately there was a tiny bit of confusion about who was keeping an eye on the time (Leiths doesn’t use timers as otherwise there would be 30+ beepers going off at random times all day). Anyway, the sad result was that the loaves were ALL quite overbaked, which was a tad disappointing.

Anyway, we soldiered on with the next recipe, which was Vietnamese summer rolls, which are like spring rolls but not deep fried. You make them with rice paper, which I’d never used before.The trick is to chop your filling – avocado, spring onions, prawns, mango, Chinese lettuce – into nice strips before you start. This is what chefs call ‘mise en place’, which is French for ‘to put into place’, and it means you have as much stuff prepared as possible before you start cooking. So that means weighing it all out, chopping it all up, and preparing anything you’re going to need to chuck into your recipe. For the summer rolls, you lightly rehydrate rice paper and then place a small rectangle of filling in a spot, before wrapping up and rolling the rolls. They’re super easy but very cool to make and they’re a delicious summer treat. We made a peanut dipping sauce with chill, hoisin, and peanut butter, which was ridiculously good.

After the summer rolls, we made the duck breasts that we saw demonstrated on Monday. Luckily the breasts keep very well, so after rendering them, we took them home to cook for dinner.

In the demonstration, we watched two of our chefs make pastry. They began with a simple rich shortcrust pastry, blitzed up in a blender to keep the butter as cold as possible. While the pastry was chilling, we watched them make a frangipane filling – a traditional ground almond filling, which I found out you could also make with hazelnuts. A tarte Normande is more about the frangipane than the fruits, so we used two finely sliced braeburn apples on the top, arranged into a trio (kind of like the Mercedes logo). The tart was diviiiine – and so easy! Something I’ll definitely be making myself.

Next we watched them make strudel pastry, which was something I’d always deemed impossible. The lesson has left me very keen to give it a go, and I’m really hoping to tempt Amy from She Cooks She Eats into helping me with it! Basically you make a very simple pastry dough and instead of kneading it much, you slap it down onto the bench over and over to get longer and longer gluten strands. Never ball it up again, just keep folding the lengths into itself like you would do if collecting a rope, if that makes any sense. Then you roll it out over several tea towels covered with flour and then, with two people ideally, you stretch out the pastry until you can see the pattern of the tea towels underneath.

With the strudel pastry, our chefs made a roasted butternut squash and lentil strudel, which was AMAZING. The trick is to create a big log of filling, dot a few bits of filling over the rest of the pastry, then tip up using the tea towels so that the strudel rolls itself up using gravity. Then you roll it up into a horse shoe shape and bake it. NOM.

The chefs also demo’d a warm plum strudel with cinnamon icing, which was out of this world. This recipe uses filo pastry, making it SOO easy as filo pastry is almost impossible to make yourself – so guilt free shop bought pastry for everyone! The demo really showed how versatile filo can be – and I’ll definitely be making mini apple strudel parcels in the future! The main thing to remember with filo is that every layer needs to be brushed with butter, and that it dries out quickly so keep a damp cloth over the pastry while you’re not using it.

Finally we watched our chefs make a savoury tarte tatin with red onions and red peppers. The pastry had polenta in it (an ingredient I’ve never got to grips with!) so it had a wonderful texture and crunch.

Day three was excellent – I learned loads about pastry and the importance of chilling pastry dough. I also made duck for the first time in my life, which was great fun as it’s a very well behaved meat.

Five things I learned today:

• If you need to peel the zest off a citrus fruit, move the peeler from side to side as you peel in a zig zag motion – it will come off much more easily. Then you can flatten and remove extra white pitch with a flexible fruit night.
• The eye is more likely to spot symmetry errors with even numbers, so use odd numbers as much as possible. This includes blobs of sauce, number of pieces of meat/fish – all sorts. Keep it odd, people.
• To sweat onions, place on a low heat with some oil in a saucepan. Scrumble up a disc of greaseproof paper and dampen – this is called a cartouche. Pop right over the onions to create a moist environment.
• To prove a pan (a pan that’s NOT non stick), simply pop a tbsp of salt in with 3-4 tbsp oil and heat until it’s just about to smoke. CAREFULLY using LOTS of kitchen roll, scrub the pan while it’s hot. This will remove any residue and make it easier to cook with.
• Pastry is easiest to cut with a pastry knife, which has a gently serrated. It’s a very versatile knife – worth getting.

Disclosure: I contacted Leiths about their courses and arranged for a discount on their intermediate course in exchange for an honest review of my experience, which I have chronicled over a series of posts.