Series Three: Part Five - Cordon Bleu - Course #11

One of my fond childhood memories involves flicking through my mother's collection of the Cordon Bleu weekly magazines. Glancing over the recipes, my delight was with the photo's. Here I could admire the fashions of the day, the presentation of the food and I always looked out for those few shots which included the cordon bleu instructors hands shaping up some culinary delight .  One of my favourite photo's would have to be the front cover of course #11. The combination of human interest with a young happy woman preparing food dressed in a crisp white shirt wearing a gingham apron may have been the selling point. But the arrangement of fresh vegetables at the front and that blue wall at the back that so nicely matches the apron could have been the tipping point of making this THE most favourite photo.
#11 was themed around the "cold table". My children reacted in disgust at the scenes for pressing a tongue and the description of jellied game read aloud to them truly did traumatise them. The combination of pigeon, rabbit, wings of a hare, and pheasant seemed more fitting for a witches brew! However they did believe that the 3 course dinner party choice for that week sounded more appealing. This included "potage bonne femme" with croutons, sauté of beef with port and mushrooms, creamed potatoes and for dessert, Tangerine mousse.
Highlights of this meal included the beef cooked in the port, which gave it quite a different taste to the likes of a boeuf a la bourguignonne or a herb infused casserole.
The Tangerine mousse became an Orange mousse as I couldn't source a tangerine. The mousse used gelatine ... a product I have not had much experience with. I had brought a new packet of gelatine but I found an old one in the pantry. Reading the package which stated that this product would remain imperishable if stored in an air tight container I took reassurance that despite being over 10 years of age it would be fine... however my confidence dropped when I was mixing the gelatine into the rest of the ingredients. Supposedly the mixture would start to thicken... it wasn't. I had a flashback... the old packet of gelatine had not been in an air tight container and even worse the packet have been open to the air - had it perished? Luckily my husband who had played with gelatine whilst making tellytubbies marshmallow for the girls when they were little, came to my rescue. I proceed to make the gelatine mix again with the freshly purchased product and indeed everything went to plan.


It was a good hearty family meal. Comparing notes at the table we extended the entertainment to attempting to recreate the photo of the plated main. I had even brought over priced gourmet carrots to attempt to match.  And in relation to  recreating my favourite photo scene... I was a long way off, with dirty pots, pans and cooking equipment everywhere and no matching blue wall or gingham apron!

Caroline assisting with potato prep

Potage Bonne Femme - with croutons

Saute of Beef

recreating the scene #1

recreating the scene #2 (by someone who doesn't like mushrooms or sauce)

recreating the scene #3

Tangerine (!) Mousse

 

Series Three: Part Four "A Cordon Bleu meal for all seasons "

Sometimes you are just spoilt by choice... and with 72 Cordon Bleu magazines to look through I had that exact predicament.   What to choose???  To resolve the problem I decided to take the whole 3 course prescribed meal from course number four. This consisted of:
 - Melon Salad with Hot Herb Loaf
- Carbonade of Beef with Creamed Potatoes and Braised Red Cabbage
- Austrian Coffee Cake


I had all the ingredients at the ready. Albeit the honeydew melon... not thinking that this would be a sufficient reason to trip over to a trophical island, I braved a replacement of kiwi fruit. This did turn out to be a refreshing start to the dinner with the combination of tomatoes, cucumber and the kiwi. I did start to peel the tomatoes as instructed but abandoned the idea pretty quickly not thinking my skinning skills would allow hardly any tomatoe left by the end of it.
I prepared the French dressing which is added to the prepared fruit / veges, along with a final sprinkle of mint and parsley.


One of the fantastic additions to the 3-course meal section of the Cordon Bleu magazines is it timetable section. This was a great help and kept me organised (for the start of the day anyway). I peeled the potatoes, made and baked the cake, prepared the herb loaf and sweeten the coffee with sugar and added the rum. For a 8pm dinner I needed to return to the kitchen at 5pm. For a Sunday evening with lunches to make, a week's neglected washing to do 8pm was far too late. However my plans to return earlier were stymied by the enthusiasm of clearing out a front section of our garden. The family was in full flight with chain saws, weed eaters, filling the trailer with rubbish and even fitting in a trip to the local native plant nursery. Of course there was scope creep and we kept on being distracted with another area to clear.. and so the time went flying past. At 4:30pm I was in a right mess and in desperate need for a wash.... so much for my timetable!
Needless to say dinner was on the table a little later than planned. I am not sure if it was because we were all starving hungry after our strenuous afternoon but the 3 course meal went down a treat. Even Caroline ate the Austrian coffee cake (with the rum!). With the combination of the timetable and the decision of what to cook made, I even surprised myself with the smoothness of getting the 3 dishes on the table. This theme of choice was reflected in my short shopping spree in the afternoon when purchasing plants where (with no prompt from me) the nursery owner observed that he found customers seemed more content with a reduced choice... I must say all I could do was agree!

Tui added to the Carbonade of Beef

Adding the browned almonds

Melon / Kiwi salad

Hot herb loaf

Carbonade of Beef

Imke finishing the decoration of the Austrain Coffee Cake

Series Three: Part Three - Brioche

Back to basics with bread and water (fresh) is the theme this week after a local district water supply is under investigation for contamination. The local populace of Havelock North is suffering in high proportions from gastroenteritis and the region is high alert with local council, health agencies and the like running around trying to control this little nasty. Lucky for us living in the country we have our own supply of water. Although that in itself can be a problem, youngest daughter had insisted we had a filter jug to give our rain water catchment another layer of cleansing. So with a family stay at home weekend, clean water and everyone all in good health I decided to try out a traditional Brioche - the king of breads for our Sunday lunch.

According to Wikipedia, Brioche  is considered a Viennoiserie, in that it is made in the same basic way as bread, but has the richer aspect of a pastry because of the extra addition of eggs, butter, liquid (milk, water, cream, and, sometimes, brandy) and occasionally a bit of sugar. Cordon Bleu Cookery Course 51 provides the recipe for brioches, brioche loaf and brioche buns. The loaf and buns are traditionally cooked in fluted tins. In an overzealous shopping spree at a kitchen shop I had purchased a loaf brioche tin and it had been patiently waiting for me in the cupboard for over a year. Almost as bad as Sonny Bill William's lack of commitment to one code of sport, I too was guilty and moved my allegiance from CB to Will Torrent's "Patisserie at home" cookery book. And I suffered the cooking world's equivalent to an Achilles heel rupture!

I had that uneasy "this doesn't feel right" at the start. I followed the instructions of sprinkling the dried yeast into the flour mix (with no attempt to activate first in sugar and warm water). Second alert was when the expectation is that the dough should "feel very wet and messy to start with but this is good" and mine was dry and crumby (this is bad!). Third warning sign was that after leaving the brioche to rise overnight it looked no different in the morning as it did the night before. Nor did it raise when left uncovered for an additional 2 hours (although by this stage my level of expectation of success was as that of the NZ male 7's Olympic team after the game against Japan).

The skewer came out of the brioche with a glue like substance around it after the recommended baking time. After doubling the cooking time and my patience slipping away I retrieved it out of the oven and plopped it in front of the family. I had made a giant scone!

Luckily we like scones, so we carved out the best bits and spread some jam on. The rest went to the sheep! Like the local water supply it may take some investigation of what went wrong... and word to self ... don't take the basics for granted!

Our water tanks

Brioche a la scone

Bread fit for a sheep

Series Three: Part Two: Cordon Bleu - Brazilian Bananas

In an attempt to encapsulate some of the spirit of the Rio Olympics, page 15, course 55 of the Cordon Bleu Cookery Course series provided the recipe for Brazilian bananas. It was rather challenging to recreate any feel of Rio as Hawke's Bay was in the middle of a weather warning with severe rain downfalls, dropping temperatures, snow to 200 metres and intermittent power outages. However being a simple recipe and having all the ingredients, a fire pumping out the heat I bear with!
You just need to slice the bananas thickly into coupe glasses and sprinkle over some rum. Make some coffee cream, cover the bananas and finally scatter a few browned flaked almonds on top. Serve chilled.


I was convinced that I had sufficient food stuffs, that I should be able to make something for the main without having to leave the house. All the answers were in this particular course 55. For some strange reason I had purchased a cabbage. No one in the family has a particular bent for cabbage, apart from the old coleslaw in summer, I wouldn't use cabbage in any recipe I could think of. I must have been influenced by the seasonal cheapness of this vegetable and tossed it into shopping trolley having a belief that I would be creative and not leave to rot only to turn into expensive sheep tucker. Well on page 4 voilà there was Cabbage Lorraine. I enjoyed throwing the whole cabbage into a big pot of boiling water for a few minutes then cutting into quarters and packing into a ovenproof dish. I then poured over the prescribed concoction of onion and stock and baked until the cabbage was tender.
In ready supply in the freezer was our home killed sheep (has featured in a past blog as the run away sheep often seen in the garden). On page 13 there was a recipe for "Lamb Goulash". Keeping with the traditions learnt by Julia the meat is patted dry first before browning. The lamb was cooked within a blend of onion, garlic, paprika, tomato puree, stock, bayleaf and s&p. This was a tasty hearty number with the Cabbage Lorraine and accompanying new potatoes which did a fine job of soaking up the juices.
Being confident that the power would last to enable me to cook the dinner, we did an impromptu dinner date with our neighbours next door. On eating the Brazilian bananas we all could appreciate that in a hot tropical environment bananas cold would be suitable and yes indeed a banana themed dessert would be appropriate for those athelets in Rio. However after just witnessing the rerun of the French gymnast who broke his leg doing the vault I could not help but compare the devastating symmetry between the shape of his swinging leg and with the shape of a banana! He too may feel a need to be doused in rum!

Lamb Goulash

Cabbage Lorraine

Enjoying the company of our Neighbours