le cordon bleu - day 19

I was never a big fan of poached fruit and after making it in class today, I'm not even the slightest encouraged to make it again. Haven't tasted it as yet but I'm pretty sure it's not that great (as confident as I am about my cooking skills). I looked at the poached apples and oranges swimming in my container as I was coming home; and really, I can't see how you can class it as a dessert?! The chef seemed to think that your poached fruits are quite a multi-purpose sort of thing - you can have it for dessert served with other fruits, with cream, by itself or alternatively, as a bit of a treat for breakfast. Anyhow, now that I know how to make it, I don't think I'll be ordering it off any restaurant menus; regardless of any good reviews. We made some poached pears for a tart tomorrow; that should be slightly more exciting :P


The other things we made were fruit jelly and a berry compote, and watched the chef demonstrate a raspberry coulis. The latter are for the plated desserts which we're doing on Wednesday. My jelly turned out nicely but again, not rocket science so I won't go into the details. I quite like the gelatine leaf which we used; does anyone know where you can get some? I agree with the chef and recommend that anyone making the fruit jelly should use aluminium containers or non-stick loaf pans and avoid the teflon. It's a lot easier to unmold (you should've seen the class hold their breaths as we watched the chef unmold hers - after much effort, it unmolded in a splatter of water but still fixable). And once again, I nearly fell asleep during theory; have no idea what I wrote on that test paper but hopefully it was something that made sense :(